Hamburgers.

Three days later. It was a long drive and almost one o’clock in the afternoon when I got out of the car to open the lop-sided gate, which had to be lashed to a tree to stay open, onto the campground. The car crunched down a gravel slope and the steep track curved around and the bend opened up a view of the creek down below.

The three stood like figures in a Frederick McCubbin painting; indeed, the soft mist gathering along the creek bed, even at this time in the afternoon, made life resemble art.

The tents were flattened and there was a random scattering of bags that always says we're going home, but not yet.

Breakfast out of cans had been recent. There had been no mishaps or starvation or death by thirst, but one of the three had a large bruise right between the eyes. Walked into a tree at night, he said.

Later, after packing less luggage than they had brought into the same space but it not fitting, I drove off the valley floor and up around curves and over elevations and out of the forest-canopied corrugation in the earth. The three figures in the back rolled around like unrestrained store dummies, half-asleep, but came awake when the car stopped in Rawson. The general store is for sale but for the moment it makes monster hamburgers using a kind of foaccaccia bread in giants slabs. Canned food keeps you alive on camp but hamburgers this good make you alive period.