Death of a River Guide by Richard Flanagan Page A

circle, now reduced to a fine hot dust and a few pieces of charcoal. A kangaroo rat scavenging vegetable scraps at the fire’s edge bounds away the moment it senses Aljaz’s woken presence. Aljaz rolls over onto his stomach and looks at the black wet earth beyond the circle, at the mist above and around, and runs his fingers through the white river sand, dry and warm. He deftly kicks his sleeping bag off and naked walks to the site of the fire, upon which he place a few sticks as thin as string and upon which he then blows gently through pursed lips until a lick of flame begins that morning.
    Â the third day 
    That day, the third of their journey, they paddled their rafts on and their paddling took them further into remote country, more days away from any vestige of modern people. Took them past huge rocks that arose from the water like monsters, past sandbanks bearing traces of strange animal prints, took them through the sound of wind moving manferns in the most beautiful of motions, like sea anemones on the ocean floor. Not that the punters saw this or much else for that matter, for they only saw what they knew and they knew none of it, and recognised little, and most of that was the world they carried within their crab-backed rafts - their tents and dry camp clothes and coffee pots and routines and rules for ordering the crowding chaos that loomed over them and threatened them and which Aljaz felt as a caress. They felt consumed by the river, felt that they had allowed it to chew them up in its early gorges and were now being digested in its endlessly winding entrails that cut back and forth in crazed meanderings through vast unpeopled mountain ranges. And it frightened them, these people from far away cities whose only measure was man; it terrified them, this world in which the only measure was things that man had not made, the rocks and the mountains and the rain and the sun and the trees and the earth. The river brought them all these feelings, and of a night it brought worse: the most terrible blackness, the most abrupt and ceaseless noises of rushing water and wind in leaves and nocturnal animals moving. There were of course the stars, but their infinite space was no solace, only evidence of a further encircling world in which it was possible to be lost and never found and never heard.
    Some of the punters went quiet. Others began to talk more and more. They took photographs of streams that looked like wilderness calendars, and rocks they fancied looked like a human face or a man-made form - a boat, a machine, a house. On balance, Aljaz preferred the quiet ones.
    A cold zephyr raced past them, hurriedly announcing the cold front it preceded, and then like some youthful scurrying envoy of war was gone again, too soon for the punters to readily apprehend its message, long enough for Aljaz to stop feeling relaxed.
    They paddled on. Then two kayakers in boats of bright yellow and luminous blue were upon them and they said that their names were Jim and Fin and that they had left the Collingwood Bridge only the day before. Their kayaks were much faster than the plodding rafts and the kayakers were skilful and nimble in their handling of their craft. They played on the rapids like water creatures, darting back and forth as if they were freshwater porpoises. They talked a little to the punters and said that they were pushing on through Deception Gorge that very same day because the long-range weather forecast was for a huge low coming in from the west and they wanted to be well clear of the gorge before the bad weather really struck. They appeared a little drunk and every so often one would pull a bottle of port out of their kayaks and have a swig and then pass it to his companion. And then they were gone, vanished into the river beyond. The rafters paddled on.
    As they floated past Rafters Race and left Fincham Gorge and entered the long stretch of river known as the middle Franklin, the rainforest gave way to a