Sawn Rocks

It was a unique first date. Thick scrub crowded both sides of the bush track as I followed the tall young man down into the gorge, nearly jogging to keep up with his long strides. The air was thick with the vapour of eucalyptus leaves distilling in the dry heat and my ears rang with the song of cicadas.

Another couple had passed us on their way back to the car park a few minutes earlier, but now I was alone again with this man I hardly knew. I'd met him for the first time not quite two weeks ago at a Christian Youth Convention. One guy in a crowd of five thousand other people; his smiling blue eyes and shy country-boy ways had captivated my heart.

"Not far now," he called back apologetically. I nodded and transferred my share of the picnic supplies to my other hand. After the conference we exchanged phone numbers and I invited him to lunch with my family to break his long journey home. Maybe he just felt indebted, but he rang a few days later with an invitation for me to spend a couple of nights at his parents' property and experience a little of the country life.

So yesterday evening, not knowing whether his offer was anything more than a friendly gesture to a city girl, I caught a train alone for the first time and travelled five hours west, and arrived with my overnight bag in my hand and high hopes in my heart.

He'd been flatteringly chuffed that I'd accepted, but now that I was here, didn't seem to know what to do other than take me to every tourist spot in the region. It was only the middle of the day and we'd already ridden a quadrunner to an ostrich farm, wandered amongst a mob of kangaroos at the Australia Telescope and picked up sandwiches in town before driving an hour or so up into the mountains. Still on the agenda was dinner at an outback pub and a visit to the famous hot springs at Burren.

We rounded a small bend and unfiltered sunlight dazzled my eyes as the track opened out onto a rocky creek bed. Brown water lay in pools beneath jagged boulders and the stringy trees at the edge of the clearing cast no shade. I realised that the man beside me was staring upward and I followed his gaze, then gasped at the unexpected sight.

On the far side of the clearing the rock face shot upward, a sheer wall of perpendicular columns towering above the bush like the pipes of a massive cathedral organ. I couldn't seem to blink, trying to take it all in. Where each iron coloured rock layer had broken off, it revealed yet another layer of perfectly formed columns - the pieces scattered beneath like fallen pentagonal logs.

"This is Sawn Rocks." There was a hint of pride in his voice as he spoke, "What d'you reckon?"

"But who carved it out like that?"

"It's all natural. This was the core of a volcano, and the columns formed when the lava hardened. Because it cooled so slowly, the crystals in the rock aligned perfectly - that's why they're in such exact shapes." Impressed by his knowledge I looked up into his face and he blushed, quickly adding, "That's what the sign in the car park says anyway."

We ate our lunch at the foot of the rock wall, more intensely aware of each other and our emerging feelings than of the spectacle of nature around us. The sun hung motionless above, unmoving even when I took off my shoes and paddled in the rock pools, my laughter ringing off the stones when tadpoles sucked at my toes. We often talked about the way time stood still for us that day - like the longest day in the Bible when the sun didn't set until Joshua had won the victory over Gibeon. Our victory in that ancient gorge had been discovering that our two lives were meant to be shared together. Later though, I wondered if even the most significant days of our lives would be insignificant in the sight of rocks which stood unchanged for thousands of years. Perhaps those stones even mocked our self-conscious and tentative first steps of courtship?

I stumble, jogged out of my memories as my walking stick skids, and I have to concentrate to regain my balance and my breath. The path seems much longer and steeper than it did that day some forty-odd years ago.

My son, who is so much like my late husband that looking at him always brings a stab of both joy and pain, is waiting for me in the car park. He was reluctant to let me come down here alone, especially when the threatening clouds began to spit, but he seemed to understand why I don't want his company for this particular journey. The path opens up suddenly and before I am ready the Sawn Rocks loom above me again, massive and unchanged. The great love of my life has come - and gone - and yet they are the same as the day it first began.

I heave myself onto a flat rock, staring up through swimming eyes as decades of memories sweep over me. The clouds burst open and I am glad, the outpouring of emotion fitting - as though creation itself shares with me. Knowing if I don't return soon my son will surely come down after me, I haul myself to my feet and shuffle back toward the track.

It is strangely comforting that this sacred place hasn't changed. And as I glance back over my shoulder one last time and see the columns of basalt streaming with water, I realise I may have been wrong about our love having no impact on the impassive stones.

Today, the rocks weep.