Day 53-54 Home

Wed-Thurs, 21-22 July 2021

We ride the long spine of Western Australia’s great north-south highway like a super slide back to our home in the southwest. The mighty Hamersley Range with its ragged ridges of iron ore boast of both the beauty and richness of W.A.’s superlative resources. The last of the scrubby red rock land we’ve grown accustomed to on this long journey starts to recede after our last night, parked behind a pile of picturesque boulders near a roadside rest area north of Meeketharra. The usually dry salt lakes south are teeming with a thin layer of water. North of Wubin, farmlands appear, wide stretches of bright green wheat fields, lush from above-average winter rains. Then the sunny yellow expanse of canola fields, bright and magnificent in their bloom. And water everywhere, turning the normally arid southern lands into squishy pools of fecundity. Wildflowers colouring the receding bush with pale soft colours, purple, magenta, and creamy golden hues.

Thursday, our last day, the setting near-full moon tricks us into thinking dawn is near. The eastern horizon glows with its reflection. We rise at 4am, pack up and drive for 12 hours, covering the 900 kms to home with only a few stops, including a late lunch in the Swan Valley northeast of Perth to celebrate our trip. We arrive home as the day gives way to twilight, our 10,000 kilometre journey complete.

There’s a sadness sits in me whenever we finish a trip. The lived reality of life on the road slides into second place as memory takes over. Then even that fades after not too long a time. I love our home, the life we’ve created in the Australian bush outside urban centres. But camping provides more of an opportunity to be outside, soak up the intensity of nature in a way that never really lands when you spend the majority of your days indoors. I form a relationship with the night sky, the birds and their quirky calls, flora and its mellow aromas, tracks and scat, and an unsatiable curiosity for rocks, their age, shapes, designs, colours and incredible long history, some back to days before anything we know of was in existence. All these things recede into the background, behind a veil that obscures their presence and intensity when life is lived primarily indoors, all too often at a desk looking into a screen.

Before embarking on this trip, I said to Johan I thought this could be our swan song, our final long journey into Australia’s magnificent outback. For fifteen years we’ve explored it, visiting popular tourist destinations and penetrating the more hidden gems on off-the-beaten-track routes. It’s a way of life that suits us both. Like two kids in a playground, we’re energised by nature’s wonders, both simple and grand. Living outside, on the land invokes a wakefulness and immediacy that doesn’t always present itself so fully in the habitual patterns of daily life back home.

But still, it’s not an easy mode of travel. By the time we arrive home, we and our gear are grubby and grungy, everything covered in red dust, which has penetrated even the most well-sealed compartments. Showers are few and far between and clothes don’t stay clean for long. We get used to being feral and unconcerned about how we smell (human!). The rickety ride on corrugated beat-up roads is rattling, taking their toll on our car, camper trailer, and nerves. This style of travel requires strength – physical and emotional – stamina, tolerance, and a love of whimsy and faith in serendipity that aren’t so present in more planned and prudent forms of travel. It’s both energizing – and exhausting. And strikes me as something you gradually give up as aging takes precedence.

And alongside this sits another issue. More than once Johan and I have debated – and I often think about -- the ethical issues surrounding long-distance travel in a world that’s slowly spinning out of control because, primarily, of the way we live. What in our lifetimes has been mostly taken for granted – our ability to move across the globe with ease and comfort in ways our forebears never imagined possible – is now becoming an increasingly urgent question. The travel industry – from the low-brow stuff we do all the way up to the high-end cruises and 5-star vacation packages – is a major contributor to degradation of our planet. Not just its carbon footprint, but the toll those footprints (from feet, cars, motorbikes, ships, planes, hotels, resorts and yes, even campgrounds!) have on nature and its often fragile ecosystems. The millions of cows we herd across the planet may trample the land, but the millions of tourists that visit the many natural wonders around the world trample not only the land, but culture, a sense of the sacred, the endurance of things like silence, darkness, solitude and wonder.

Plus we burn a lot of fuel. How much longer can any of us justify the impact our way of life has on the growing calamities of climate change? Though a global problem, tied up with big giants like industry, politics and capitalism, there must come a time when each individual decides its time to pull back on some aspect of their lives that is contributing to the problem. A small but important contribution to changing the destructive way we live.

We hold this question next to our heartfelt love for travel, especially into the deep recesses of nature that aren’t available to us, even at our relatively nature-centred home. Whether I (or we) can say, No More Travel – I’m not sure yet. My aging body may give a shout out before then. Or life circumstances – our own or society at large -- may preclude any more long trips.

The day after we get home, I fall exhausted on my bed. A day of cleaning, organising, washing, and restocking has left me spent in a different way to how I felt at the end of a long hike. My body aches and my spirit is worn. I pick up my phone and settle back for a bit of relaxed reading. An email from one of my favorite writers, Paul Kingsnorth, includes this extract from Robinson Jeffers’ long poem The Tower Beyond Tragedy. It sums up nicely why we spend time in nature, and offers a fitting conclusion to this chapter of our travel blog:

I entered the life of the brown forest

And the great life of the ancient peaks,

The patience of stone,

I felt the changes in the veins

In the throat of the mountain, and I was the streams

Draining the mountain woods;

and I the stag drinking,

and I was the stars boiling with light,

wandering alone, each one the lord of his own summit,

and I was the darkness

outside the stars I included them.

They were part of me …

How can I express the excellence I have found

That has no color but clearness;

No honey but ecstasy.

 As my Dad would say, Yes, Yes, Yes...

Day 51-52 Out of the Kimberley, Into the Pilbara

Mon-Tues, 19-20 July 2021

A reader has requested a map of Australia with our route drawn on it. This is rough (I’ll improve on it when we get home), but here it is:

We’ve planned a five-day relay to return home, 2580 kms from Derby in the far northwest to our home in Myalup in the southwest, roughly 500 kms per day. Way more time than we’re used to sitting in a car.

It opens up time for reflection. On the multi-faceted character of Australia, on travel, on home, time, relationships, aging. Australia is a beautiful country, but also very homogenous compared to countries similar in size, such as the USA. Nearly everywhere you go, save for green, forested places in the southwest and southeast, you meet a lot of scrub, red rock, red dust, red earth. They don’t call it a sunburnt country for nothing. For all its many wonders, the monotony of the landscape can also get boring.

Travelling from Derby to our first camp spot about 250 kms south of Broome is a good example. Flat, bland landscape, tunnels of flowering acacia running for miles along the highway.

Port Hedland is the hub of Australia’s massive mining industry. Not a large town in terms of population, but everything is industrial in size and character. The harbour, with its dozen or so ships hanging out just offshore waiting to be called in for their cargo, dominates the town centre, a mere strip of two streets of shabby shops along the foreshore. Every second person wears reflective orange or yellow work clothes and nearly every car is a white ute, also with reflective stripes and a dingy orange flag flopping around on a pole high above the cab.

The Great Northern Highway is the main thoroughfare between north and south in Western Australia, and it vies for two major industries: mining and tourism. Judging from the ratio of road trains to tourists it looks like the miners are winning. For every dozen road trains – industrial trucks with three, four, sometimes five cars – there is one caravan- or trailer-toting traveller, often stuck between the convoy of trucks. It’s not easy to pass a truck measuring over 50 metres in length.

The noise of these mega-trains is phenomenal, as we discover the first night we camp in a shady little hub just off the highway. The sound of an approaching then receding truck can last for a minute or longer, filling the airspace of the otherwise silent bush with prodigious noise. North of Port Hedland, things quiet down soon after sundown. South of Port Hedland -- the hub of the Pilbara's mining operations -- where we camp in a lovely valley of slendour white gum trees nominated to be a 24-hour rest stop, it doesn’t quieten down. Most mines run 24/7 so most trucks do too, shifting their cargo from the mines to the port all through the day and night. It is a swirling cacophony of sound, broken only occasionally by a reprieve of calm, the gentle chorus of crickets rising until the next crescendo of truck traffic overpowers them.

Mining in Australia is a century-old industry that, especially in the last 20 years, has brought the country from a modest second-cousin status to a major economic force on the world stage. China is largely built on Australia’s iron ore. Most Australians are proud of this. Even if they’re not, or if they don’t think about it much, most Australians are happy with the wealth it brings. In the 30+ years I’ve been here, Australia has grown from a backwater to a thriving, shining example of modern affluence and prosperity.

Yet the hegemony of the mining industry in Australia drowns out any resistance to or criticism of it. The reality of mining’s impact is complex and difficult to articulate in a culture where wealth and economic rationalism prevail over other values -- such as the environment, the protection on flora and fauna, aesthetics – including our access to silence, untrammelled landscapes, and deep dark skies -- beauty, spirit, indigenous wisdom and culture, all of which have taken a bashing from the unabated expansion of mines in this country. Little of that gets much attention, let alone tolerance, as a legitimate platform for opposition. 

Indigenous issues are dealt with by corralling them into the predominant cultural mindset – we’ll give you jobs in exchange for access to (rape and ravage) your traditional lands. Environmental issues are dealt with by hiring a team of geologists and environmental scientists whose job it is to measure the impact of mining operations on the land, but which doesn’t take into consideration the broader issues of aesthetic impacts or ethical issues around the displacement of natural habitats. All the collected data gets sorted and slotted and reported to give the illusion that some action is being taken to waylay the serious impacts of the industry on climate change. But given its exponential growth and the hundreds of diesel-burning cars, trucks, trains, ships, railways and roadworks that service the industry – let alone the subsidiary industries that benefit from mining -- it’s hard to imagine its carbon footprint is being reigned in.

We read recently that a major “green energy” project is being planned for Australia’s south coast. Fifteen thousand square miles of the Nullarbor Plain, much of it native title land, will be ceded to the development of a hydrogen-producing plant, which in turn will be powered by massive green energy farms consisting of solar panels and windmills. It’s expected to produce enough energy to fuel a new fleet of hydrogen-burning vehicles which will remake the face of the mining industry in Australia, and resolve the issues related to carbon emissions. In fact, the energy produced will be so great, that we’ll be able to export it to other countries, and still have enough left over to broaden our industrial platform: instead of shipping raw minerals overseas we can build our own factories and processing plants here – a double win for the economy and a triple win for the environment.

And what of the silence?

I wake in the middle of the night, startled by the silence. For a long drawn-out breath, the road rumble has gone quiet, the stillness of the night pulsing in my ears as it has for many of the places we’ve camped throughout this trip. I can't help but wonder how long it will last.

Dav 50 - Devonian Day

Sunday, 18 July 2021

Every great show has its grand finale, and so does ours. Our final day of explorations, before we head south on the long 2400 km trip home, centres on the Devonian age and the ancient reef system that lined the Kimberley plateau, under water 350 million years ago. We start with our camp spot.

Dawn’s earliest light starts around 5am. It’s not long after that we roll out of bed, intent on exploring the creek bed that Johan found so fascinating last night. He wants to find the source of the stream he found trickling over the edge of some white-washed rock in the otherwise dry creek bed. The early morning light bleeds through the trees. Bird life is prodigious, in chorus and variety.

Not far up our rock-hopping escapade an unexpected wetlands appears. Pools of clear clean water encircled with dainty pink-flowering greenery. Ducks fly off at our arrival, startled. We follow the pools further upstream. Where does the water come from? I touch the water with my fingers and feel its warmth. A spring perhaps? We follow a dark shrub-enclosed channel up and up – until suddenly it stops and becomes a dry creek bed again. How strange! What’s going on?

Mystery unresolved, we watch and photograph birds, boab trees and the curious fossils embedded in this primeval reef system.

Tunnel Creek offers another peek into the mysterious depths of ancient water sources, half an hour up the road. Unlike our quiet, solitary morning, the carpark is full of bustling tourists, many of them half dressed. We quickly learn that visitors should expect to get wet if they want to fully experience the creek, so bathers or minimal dress is recommended.

The opening to the tunnel cave sits under a massive overture of craggy cliff. Twenty metres into the cave the world darkens and most of the visitors are wearing headlamps or carrying torches. Mums and dads are carrying noodles and other floating devices and I wonder why. Further in, I get it: the only way forward is to wade, then swim across a small deep pool to the far shore, where the quest continues. It’s a scary enterprise, made possible for the kids who are loaded onto their floating paraphernalia and coaxed across the dark pool. With no floaties, we wade in, then sink, then swim. The water is cool, our head torches light the way. The tunnel winds for another 600 or so metres before opening to daylight where we sit on the rocks to warm our chilled bodies before returning the way we came.

The experience is exhilarating, other-worldly. It’s something like a hard core, down-and-dirty version of a Disneyland ride: the one where you sit in a boat and go into deep dark places with “It’s a small world after all” playing cheerily in the background, eerie sights and new surprises around every corner. Stalactites fall like phantoms from above and enormous tree roots hang Tolkeinesque-like from the ceiling, tangled and winding across the floor until they reach the water. A gentle, warm waterfall trickles down the smooth sides of a lampshade-shaped stalactite made of a yellow wax-like substance that glows in the torchlight. Regrettably, because of the need for the swim, we can’t bring the camera to record much of what we see in the deep inner bowels of the cave.

The way in the tunnel echoes with people’s chatter and children’s squeals. But as we head back after our warm sun bath, we meet silence and darkness. It seems we’ve landed in the fortunate infrequent break in tunnel traffic. In the pitch black, we walk hand-in-hand, apprehensive as our meagre headlamps keep us from tripping on rocks and tree roots. For a sacred and scared ten minutes the cave is ours, quiet and desolate.

Windjana Gorge is our final destination, a canyon known for two things: it’s fossilised remains of the great Devonian creatures that lived in the reefs of that time and the prevalence of freshwater crocodiles. The canyon is lovely, but lacks the intensity of the Bungle gorges. Yet the gentle, relaxed setting is welcome and makes space for more subtle experience: the sight of lazy, lanquishing crocs floating on the still waters of the Lennard River; the search for marine shapes fossilised into the rambling canyon walls that line the trail up the river; watching a graceful white-faced heron, unconcerned with the cluster of crocs resting on the shoreline, deep dive like a snake underwater, searching for an afternoon meal; listening to the fresh lively birdsong echoing through the canyon walls; the sweet smell of buds at the top of a Jack-and-the-beanstalk type plant, popping open into pretty purple-and-white blossoms; meeting a shy black-faced wallaby sitting steadily on a rock, nibbling a dry leaf. A calm, restorative end to an event-filled day. 

Fifty kms before the town of Derby we turn onto a dirt road with a sign that reads “May River, 12 kms”. May is a wide rocky riverbed, water flowing on its far edge. It’s here we find a welcome spot on the rocks to make our camp for the night.

Day 49 - Fitzroy Crossing

Saturday, 17 July 2021

In 2015, I recorded in this blog what a nice town I thought Fitzroy Crossing was. Compared to other outback towns, dishevelled and unappealing, the Fitz had something sweet about it. I wonder now whether I was under a delusion, projecting an experience I was hoping to have, or just wrong.

We fuel up in Fitzroy Crossing along with half a dozen other travellers. While we wait in the queue, I go into the roadhouse shop to use the toilet. The women’s is “closed for cleaning” and locked. I open the door of the disabled unisex toilet and see a young Aboriginal girl squatting on the toilet, completely in the buff. The toilet’s a mess, dirty sink, tissue and junk all over the floor. I close the door quickly. She starts calling out and her father, just paying for something at the register, comes running.

The shop is disorganized and grungy. I yank out the bandana from my pocket and use it to push open the front door, covered in grime and fingerprints. We head across the street to the Visitor Centre where there surely is a toilet, but the front door is barred and looking as grungy as the roadhouse. “Temporarily Closed” says the sign on the door.

We head to the local IGA for some fruit. Squads of Aboriginal people are sitting in the parking lot, barefoot and drinking Coke. Others shuffle around in their usual slow gait. An old man with a heavy jacket and backpack walks by himself, seeming lost.

The whole scene of the town is sour and unkempt. Bitter, like the Aborigines who inhabit it. Not even an effort to clean the place up for the hoards of tourists that will pass through during these dry season winter months. Most visitors stay in their cars or hurry out of town as quick as they can.

Fitzroy Crossing and Halls Creek are the only towns in the long 1000 km stretch across the popular Kimberley region between Broome and Kununurra. Those towns at least make an effort to cater for the tourist industry. As a white person pulling my temporary home around the top end of Australia, I feel like I’m in a foreign country, observing the “natives” through my protective glass enclosure as much as they sit and watch the privileged whites towing a wealth of possessions as they pass through their land.

How do we connect? We seem worlds apart, in language, values, lifestyles, culture. You can spout the usual “we are all one, with the same loves and losses, fears and joys that all humans have.” But it doesn’t bridge the gap. They’re wary of us; we’re wary of them. You could say that’s true on both sides of the fence. Do they even want us to reach out?

But there’s also something right about it. The spectacle of an Aboriginal outback town is a chaste reminder for all white Australians, most of whom are urban, on the coast and in the southern parts of the country. It’s a reminder of who’s land this was before the English arrived and took it from the people who occupied the continent for 40,000 years -- and what has happened to them, a few generations later. The wreckage of that imperialism walk around aimlessly in towns that were completely unsuited to their ancestors’ nomadic ways. They have nothing to do. Nowhere to go. They look sad and lost.

And still, I would like to know what their world is like. Whether happiness exists there. Whether their community life provides enough source of contentment and identity to get them through a day. Or whether they sit in their anger and confusion, like it looks, raging at these stupid white people who continue to see them as invisible, even when they’re so blatantly visible on the streets of a place like Fitzroy Crossing.

I wonder if any of us caravan-toting, 4WD-driving white tourists can enter a town like this and not feel uncomfortable, guilty, responsible, sorry, sad, curious?

We drive on. Our last outback adventure takes us up the Leopold Downs gravel road that passes through Tunnel Creek and Windjana Gorge before connecting up with the Gibbs River Rd, 50kms outside of Derby, the western end of the Gibbs River outback trek. As we enter the Devonian Reef Conservation Park we eye a track just before a creek crossing. It winds along the creek bed a ways before ending at an open area with a fire pit. Great camping spot.

If, in the end, reincarnation should prove to be true, I have no doubt that Johan will come back as a geologist. Back in Alice Springs, he bought a $100 full colour, 3-inch thick book on Australian geology that weighs a tonne. As we drive and explore, he’s been making his way through this tome, educating himself on one of his life passions. This area, he tells me, used to be an ancient coral reef, 350 million years ago, on the edge of the Kimberly plain. He goes exploring up the creek while I take a bush bath and returns with a gleam in his eye. He shows me pictures he’s taken of obvious sea fossils embedded in the rock. Also lovely sweet water pools with fish and thankfully no crocodiles.