Читать книгу As If Death Summoned - Alan E. Rose - Страница 6

Prologue

In the Victorian Alps, some 150 miles north of Melbourne, there lies a vast plateau at six thousand feet called the Bogong High Plains. Part of the Great Dividing Range of Australia, it stands isolated and austere, composed of rock and heath and grasslands. The region was once sacred to the Yiatmathong people. They would climb its higher elevations to escape the antipodean summers’ heat and there listen to their ancestors’ songs carried on the winds. The Europeans who followed were more accustomed to the sacred being enclosed within a building, and with their arrival the aboriginal people were soon decimated, their ancestors’ songs lost, and the land, once sacred, became grazing ranges for the White Fellas’ sheep and cattle.

In 1936, three men— Mick Hull, Howard Michell and Cleve Cole— attempted the first winter crossing of the high plains. Overtaken by a blizzard, they became lost and wandered for five days in sub-freezing temperatures. Hull and Michell survived the ordeal, but Cole died from exposure. Two years later, a hut was constructed in his memory as shelter for others caught in the area’s changeable weather. In the decades since, there have been reports of a lone figure seen wandering over the heathlands. When approached, he vanishes and no trace of him can be found.

I am haunted by dreams of the Bogong High Plains.