"Louie loved gifts."
Louie found himself alone and saw what nobody had ever seen. And Mort had never met anybody like Louie before; he had endured an eternity of isolation and loneliness.
Louie simply couldn't resist an invitation to look inside the old trunk that Mort hauled behind him. As Louie gazed inside Mort's mysterious trunk, he offered to Louie an especially rare gift. And with Mort's gift came the promise of adventure.
As a commercial white water rafting guide, the coolest job in Australia; my office was the wild rapids, rivers, waterfalls and rain forests of Far North Queensland. The highest rainfall in Australia supplies a steady flow of flooding white water and endless thrill-seeking customers.I was badly injured, on river, just over ten years ago. And I will never raft professionally again.It was when I was transformed throughout the healing process that I wholly embraced anger, pain and hatred. I gave to my pain, a name. I gave to agony and suffering, human faces. I started to write when I was tortured or angered. And found out years later my writing was a very accurate account of those emotions. Love was especially hard to see or sense from my then unenviable low vantage point. But it was definitely love and patience that helped the most. I believed, to win, to finally beat pain, I must fight it, be angry at it, become insular, inward and surly. It took many years to succumb and stubbornly change my tune. I wish I could say nobody close to me got hurt or disappointed, but that would be a lie.I still live in the house that my wife and I built on a thirty-acre farm that we scratched out within the tropical embrace of Queensland's two tallest mountains. Alongside the farm a moody, cantankerous river winds its way into the coral sea.
THE EXITING
LOUIE THE STARGAZER
TOMMY LEE
ZIGGY
LOUIE SEES THE SEA
ACACIA BRANCHES
MORT AND GRANDAD
A REUNION
MORT EVER SEARCHING