‘Home.’

He turns onto the freeway that will take us north. ‘Good luck to you then.’

When Dad nudges me awake we’re driving in rainforest on a winding road made shady by the tall gums that arch across the bitumen and knit into a blanket of mottled green, brown and grey, letting in needles of light. I open my window to the forest air, better than anywhere aside from the beach. Rainforest air is moist, rich. You can smell the wet leaves giving back over to the soil, the eucalyptus and myrtle oil, the rot and renewal of it all. Strips of peeling bark hang from tree branches. Whipbirds ‘whoee’ and bellbirds ‘ping’.

‘Here,’ Dad says. ‘Open this up.’ He takes a piece of folded paper from his shirt pocket and passes it to me. ‘Map.’

‘Skye drew this?’

‘I told you I was going to come here for the boy. Hadn’t planned on these circumstances, obviously . . . The first turn-off road should be near here. Once we’re on that we’ll need to follow her instructions carefully.’

I unfold the hand-drawn map and a sheet of lined paper with tidy writing on it. The two sheets of paper have been folded and refolded so many times they’re near transparent on the crease marks. A small tug from each end and they’d fall to pieces.

He brakes. ‘There. The purple sticks. Those are what we’re after.’

We turn onto a dirt track humped in the middle and marred with holes. Dad drives slowly but the undercarriage of Abby’s car occasionally scrapes and bumps the earth. I study Skye’s map. ‘This road goes for five miles till we turn onto the next one.’

After a while, the road becomes smoother and flatter, the surrounding landscape lush.

‘Read the part where she says what we do now.’

‘Uh, five miles blah blah, sign blah blah. Okay, she says, “The road will get steeper. On the passenger’s side of the car you’ll see a cluster of big boulders, three of them, clumped together. There’s a sunrise painted on the middle one and the scrubbery has been brushed away to make a clearing.”’ I look over at my father. ‘Scrubbery?’

‘Keep reading.’

‘“After you pass the sunrise rock, drive up the hill until the road forks and you see a path barely wide enough for a car. Go up here but not too far or you won’t be able to get back out. Only go so far that the car is hidden. From here, you need to walk. At the top of the track you’ll find a cleared spot – a lookout. You can see the whole commune from here. Hoping there’s no one on duty when you show up.”’ I sigh. ‘Well that’s encouraging.’

‘Sunrise.’ Dad points at a cluster of boulders, one of them painted as Skye described.

‘What are they, two-year-olds?’

‘Would’ve thought you’d like that kind of thing. Living with hippies.’

‘Totally different scene.’

He mumbles something but I don’t care that I can’t make out the specifics. I don’t want to tell him how different our tribes are, that sunrise aside I reckon these guys won’t have a childish bone in their bodies. From what he’s said, I think my life of surfing and bonfires, fresh fruit and running water would seem like Play School to them. Now, seeing how cut-off they are and with a bit of educated guessing, I know these outliers will be hardcore, self-righteous. And they’re in bed with the cops. To the untrained eye our clothes and hair might look similar, but we couldn’t have less in common. Creedence acoustic vs Zeppelin on acid.