I thought I'd share a journey, a tale of urban legend from when I was a late teen called The Red Dirt Road. For many years at highschool we had heard the legends of the red dirt road, a road between two country towns in South East NSW bordering Braidwood and Bungendore. The legends told that there was a haunted road that led far into the bush, a cemetery, an insane asylum. These legends were much like the urban legends, all similar, things like, no one has ever made it down the road alive and that it's a neverending road. Tales of people parking up on the road with their gfs trying to spook them and BAM they're never seen again. All these tales were shrouded in mystery, interesting for us teenagers. We'd forgotten about the red dirt road for a while it was a legend that had been banished and unspoken about until one day on a Monday at school two of our friends came running up to us in the morning all like "guys guys you'll never know what the fuck happened on the weekend!". So they begin telling this story about a road that led to a cemetery, that led to an abandoned insane asylum. It re energised this legend for us that we had forgotten about and right there between friends we made a vow to conquer this dirt road. Now when we were young we had ninja missions, they were like, just random shit we'd do as teens you know, run through the school on weekends etc up to no good well we called this a ninja mission. So we came up with the grandest fucking ninja mission ever, we were gonna walk down the red dirt road at night. We came up with October 30th, midnight, Devils Night and we teamed up with the best team of ninjas we had available. Most of the group of boys in our circle and a few of us chicks too. As word got out what we trying to do, two younger guys came up to us at lunch time one day and told us that they had been down the red dirt road. Now I was a little reserved at this story but certain parts added up to what our other two friends had told us a week before too. But these guys were actually chased by what they described as an Aboriginal tribe that lived on native land and they got caught and beat up a little bit. They then got really pissed off about it and found the Aboriginal camp which they said had an old ancient monestary building and they started throwing rocks at it and then ran away before they could be chased down again. Now, most normal people would have been like oh man fuck that, not ever doing that, but from our perspective, a pack of mongers, we were like oh fuck yeah, aboriginal monks and shit that's fucken awesome we have to do this. So it came the night, October 30th, Devils Night and we had two convoys going. One was in Kurt's Toyota Torago held most of the group and one other car we were in and we parked the Toyota just outside of town on a dirt car park of Bungendore and everyone packed into this car I mean our whole group in the boot and squished in and we drove to the opening of this road in this big ass V8 Panel Wagon, with the old rocking V8 engine, completely not the right vehicle for the mission. And we got out and we were all dressed in black with the facepaint on and some with stockings over their skin. Now we had a rule that on ninja missions we weren't allowed to carry any technology but in this case we thought well if we do run into trouble we better have a phone just in case. We also all carried with us one weapon lol and we had anything from a moose bone to bow and arrows to baseball bat's and cricket bats. It was just past midnight, the sky was dark but the moon shining gave us the little light we'd need to make our way through the bush. We covered up the car with branches and leaves for camouflage. Now the first section of the red dirt road was just an opening and everyone who told the tale mentioned an out of place storm water drain that led into the field. Well we found this water drain and one story I heard was that a group of kids slightly older than us had one day gone into the drains and they found like some weird voodoo shit and voodoo dolls in there. Well it was pitch black and we made a promise not to use any light it was forbidden in this ninja mission but we didn't come across any voodoo stuff from this pipe but we did make it through to the end which opened up into what I can only describe as a cleared field. Like it would have just been from an aerial view, a clear square in the bush. It was a the opening of a cemetery. Now I'd never been too afraid of ghosts and ghouls I mean I'd freak myself out all the time but anyone who knows about anything me might also know I have a connection with this sort of thing and any ghostly visitation I'd ever revieced in life was only positivity, so ghosts and cemetery shit really never bothered me but out in the dark, the bush it's all very different you have animals and shit making noises and the Loons carrying on in the distance just made this all the scarier. One of our friends, Chris, starter banging on about the small mortuary there and I'd never heard this story before but apparently if you'd knock on this door then you wouldn't survive the night out there. So he comes up with a Braveheart quest. Now a Braveheart quest is where on a ninja mission we find something that takes guts and we go and complete it. So we see this mortuary and we crouching down behind tombstones enroute and we knock on the door surprise surprise nothing happens, feeling a little let down, cause we weren't dead or some shit yet, we all start walking up along the red road when we came to a training field. It had all these training obstacles like a army camp or something and across the field we saw some sort of barracks. So we all monkey across the obstacles to this barrack which was surrounded by a barbed wire fence and we all noticed movement within it. So we try and keep calm and be quiet but we are all also breathing heavily. And then I saw it. This big shadow, and the horns a real beast and as I saw the moon light in its eyes my brain started to perceive what I was actually looking at and I murmured out cows. We were in a cow field. So we all jumped the wire fence and the next Braveheart quest was to go through the barracks which we all did and there were cow bodies all over the place and everywhere you turned was another bloody cow. We all made it through the barracks and as we opened the door we realised we had all let the cows out of the barracks and they were all now filing out into this field we stood in making as much noise as a field of cows could make. Then we noticed in the distance a light come on in the hills from what looked to be a house and a man came out and we swore he was holding a shot gun or something. So we ducked our heads and went through the bush back to the road all pretty thrilled like man that was fucken intense. At this time a few people we were with started having doubts and we flipping out and that's when our friend Chris came up with this speech. He was always good at giving inspirational speeches and he said "man we ain't going back like a pack of bitches now we are here we're doing this" and as we all agreed to continue, that is when we heard it. *whistle* from up the road, followed by a whistle to the left, a whistle to right. We were surrounded. Now we realised right then and there that we were being hunted down by an organised group, probably those aboriginals so we called upon Kurt who was good at whistling to imitate to whistle so they would think we are one of them. He could stick his fingers in his mouth and whistle at all different pitches so up he gets and he let's out this bullshit whistle that didn't sound anything like the other whistles. And every noise stopped. It was uncanny just complete silence, so we hightailed it outta there as silenetly as we could until we came over another hill and found ourselves looking over another field and low and behold we saw a building. The monestary. Well holy shit we thought as we gazed over, we've come all this way it must have been a couple of hours by now and here we are and all the legends at this time were true. So Chris comes out with "Braveheart Quest" and everyone was like awe man fuck here we go again you know we were kind of ready to go back again and he's telling us no way we gotta get down there and the quest is we gotta touch that monestary and come back up the hill and we are done. So we are all crouched down and Chris is the first guy down and we all watch him from a distance and he's touched the building and we all start making our way down and then the moment he came back and we realised it was safe we just started running for our lives down to this monestary and we all made it, slapped the wall and hightailed it back up the hill no questions. So we'd completed our huge quest and feeling pretty good about ourselves and time to make it back down the road towards the car and home. We must have made a ruckus though as before too long we saw the headlights streaming through the trees, someone was out looking for us, but several vehicles all parked on a hill clearing with their lights shining back down the red dirt road. Then we heard the gunshots. BANG BANG BANG, most likely blanks, but we all swear we heard pellets ripping through the bush around us. We went back down the road along side was a little gulley and the trucks were on our tail down the hill. We broke up into a few units, I took my girl and we swamped both sides of the road in the bushes and just kept our heads down waiting. One, two, three trucks rolled past us with one following a little farther behind. Now, y'all got that one person in your crew that's always up to no good, right? Well that was our Chris and no matter the night or the function, if shit was going to go down or something broken it was at this guys hand. He said to me Joc Joc give me your bow. I had the bow, if you know anything about me you'll know archery is my thing. So he took my bow and he's standing along side this road behind a bush, bow drawn back and the moment the tailing truck went by, at almost point blank range, Chris loosed this arrow and all we heard was the back window smash to pieces and the truck stalled out maybe 20m in front of us. And the boys full of rage rushed it. Me and the missus took off along the side of the road back down the hill towards the cow and the obstacles, we heard folks running through the scrub I just held her hand and we ran it down with Dan following behind us until we reached all the way down to the cemetary again and waited. It must have been 10mins but it felt like 3 hours, low and behold, one by one, our crew came out of the bush with wild ass stories to tell. They never caught the guys that we after us. Chris had run into a barbed wire fence and had blood all over his face, we's all like man man are you okay what they do to you! But nothing he was alright just cut up a bit. We made it back down to the storm drain again feeing pretty good, we walked back through it, no voodoo shit found again and back to our car. We took the camouflage off, piled in the back and took off back to town. We were feeling amazing, hitting the bottles in the back and the bong with a feeling of excitement and amusement, that ninja mission was the shit. The best ninja mission ever and we fucken went down that red dirt road and we conquered. When we got back to town our friends jumped out to get in the Toyota van and just before we drove off one of them comes running back to us like fuck man fuuuckk! And in his hand was an envelope with a note in with 11 chilling words. "If we would have caught you, we would have killed you" We made it back to the city that night full of chills, excitement, anger, resentment and adrenaline. Chris was super pissed at the note he was about ready to head back out and start some shit but we bugged out and we all went our separate ways back home.
Amazing! You're quite the storyteller! We had the similar road and stories. I was always too chicken to go very far. I saw the house and turned back!
Thanks. I have many more ninja missions, but they're a bit harder to tell. Lots of you had to be there moments. Time we broke into the circus was always fun.
