The Waterfall

• Olivia Rees , Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2018

I woke up to the sound of birds chirping, frogs croaking and waterfalls flowing. I looked at my clock, it was 5:00am. I tried to go back to sleep but it was impossible with all that noise. Last week my Dad decided that my brother Jack and I were spending too much time on our electric devices and thought we need a camping trip with no electricity. That meant no phone, no iPad, no laptop and no TV. When he said camping, we thought he meant at the beach and a fancy caravan park, with pools and jumping pillows. But it meant in the rain forest. We arrived last night after a four hour drive from our house to the camping ground. We set up the tent and then went to bed.
At 9:00am as planned, Dad, Jack and I set off on our hike. I had packed my backpack with snacks, water and an old camera that Dad said he had used when he was a boy, so I assumed that it was ancient. It took 45 minutes to climb to the top of the mountain. Shortly after we discovered it was a mountain range and we would have to walk all the way to the end. We walked for about two hours then we quickly found ourselves walking down the steep mountain side.
When we finally reached the bottom and our legs were aching Jack said to Dad, "Aren't we meant to turn around and walk back along the mountain range."
Dad replied in a confident voice "No, see there is even a track."
It was an old track with weeds and plants growing on it. It looked like it hadn't been used in 20 years, but Jack didn't want to argue.
The track led them to a beautiful waterfall with a river at the bottom of it. Along the river bank there were old tyre swings and an old lifeguard seat. I took out Dad's camera from my backpack while the boys were trying to figure out where we were. I took a few pictures of the waterfall and the rest of our discoveries - then flicked through the photographs that I had taken throughout the day.
In the old camera bag, I found a printed photo that resembled the waterfall, but with children swimming at the bottom of it. I jumped of the big rock I was sitting on and ran to the boys. I explained what I thought it was to Dad and he said that it was a place where he used to swim at when he was little. I looked up and realized that the mountain range that we had climbed was in the shape of a horse shoe, and that we had circled back to our camp. It was right around the corner from where we had set up our tents, and where I had heard the waterfall flowing this morning.