Day 48: Happy New Year!

January 1, 2011

The reports on the ABC radio give graphic details of what’s going on in Queensland: rivers peaking at over nine meters; thousands of homes and businesses flooded; thousands more in danger; mass evacuations; helicopters airlifting emergency food supplies; even the possibility of a cyclone for New Years. Family from Europe and America email to find out if we’re OK; their news reports are telling of record rains in Queensland and a natural disaster costing in the billions. Our reports reel off familiar towns now in danger: Bundaberg, Rockhampton, Emerald – we passed through them all the week before Christmas. Our mad attempt to escape from the unpalatable task of camping in the rain now seems like a flight from peril, a virtual tsunami of wet.

But now there’s a new peril: a heatstorm in South Australia. Even Adelaide in the far south clocked up 41˚ for New Year’s Eve day. Our car thermometer sits on a steady 43˚ the entire day. We stop for lunch in Coober Pedy hoping for a cool restaurant to save us from the unappetizing prospect of a picnic at high noon in this treeless town. But it’s New Year’s Day and the streets of Coober are quiet, all except one pizza restaurant with a neon sign flashing “Happy New Year!” and an Open sign in their window. Pizza on a sweaty day doesn’t sound appealing but maybe they have something else on the menu.

The fans are swirling hot air over the smattering of guests seated at the tables. Either the air conditioner is failing in its bid to defeat the day’s heat or the manager can’t afford holiday wages for his staff plus a hefty electricity bill trying to cool his customers. We order an ice-cold tropical smoothie, a garden salad and a chicken yiros (a Greek wrap). Halfway through the smoothie, our bodies have cooled sufficiently to enjoy lunch.

The vast salt pans of South Australia begin to appear again late in the day. It’s been four weeks since we camped at Lake Eyre and waded in the ankle deep water, but these smaller lakes further south are dry. We set camp at Lake Hart, an oval shaped dry lake a hundred kilometers north of Port Augusta. We eat a hasty cold fruit and yoghurt dinner before I set out for a walk across the salt pan. Unlike Lake Eyre, the shorelines are visible in every direction so there’s no chance of getting disoriented. I keep my eye on my target – a flat topped mesa a couple kilometers to the northwest – and on my starting point – a huge pile of gravel near the railway tracks next to our camp.

There’s something disconcerting about standing in the middle of a dry lake, the shoreline a kilometer or more away in every direction. There’s a gut-dropping sense of vulnerability, like bobbing in a row boat in the middle of the ocean, or traversing a vast open plain of snow or sand with nothing but yourself to rely on. As the sun starts to set, sending my thin shadow sprawling across the empty whiteness and the clouds above ablaze with peach and orange, I feel like Julie Andrews on her mountain, arms flung wide, twirling around in ecstasy at the sight of so much natural wonder.

Shimmering mirages dance on the hot highway

Sunset on Lake Hart