Day 11 - The Central Ranges

Wednesday, 9 June 2021

Progress along the Outback Way has been slow. Not that we mind; we’re in no rush. But we proclaim today to be the day we clock up some serious miles.

On the road, we listen to David Brooks’ latest book, The Second Mountain. We like David, read his articles in the New York Times, listen to his commentary on the Friday night PBS news. For two committed lefties, he offers an intriguing and, we think, wholesome perspective from the conservative side of the spectrum. I listened to his The Road to Character on a cross-country USA trip I did in 2018 and liked it.

This book is unusual in that Brooks parts from his usual social/political commentary and writes what virtually amounts to a personal growth, self-help book. It feels uncomfortable and more than once I’ve thought to switch it off and over to something more palatable, less familiar (I’ve read a lot of these kinds of books and am a bit over them). We listen to David for his world views, not his insights into personal well-being. But we keep listening, and always seem to find enough interesting to keep us going.

Today he talks about marriage. Apparently his first one ended sometime in the last 10 years and his second one came about not long before writing this book. He’s upfront straight away: this is a book he needs to write for himself, his own journey.

David is an idealist. Which is probably the reason I feel an affinity towards him. Johan and I both agree that sometimes his views are a bit too high and mighty, black and white, lacking nuance, traditional in a conservative sort of way. But hey he’s a journalist, has built a career on political commentary. Whatever personal epiphany he’s gone through in the last hard decade of his life has probably catapulted him into a world we’ve been occupying for the majority of our adult lives.

So when he talks about marriage, it’s familiar, sometimes uncomfortable, confrontative, occasionally embarrassing, often illuminating, offering reminders of things we tend to gloss over in the day to day measure of life together. Overall though it has the effect of making us feel OK about ours. (One of the signs of a mature marriage, Brooks claims, is the tendency to talk in the plural – the royal “we” – rather than the singular, which suggests you have too much self-interest to survive a meaningful marriage.)

Which brings to mind the yet-to-be-resolved debate about the nature of the celestial south pole, which discussion continued last night. I had my metaphor of the spinning top; Johan had his cosmic big picture view of the changing position of the Southern Cross, the marker for the southern celestial pole. We couldn’t convince each other that our perspective was the right one. It got so heated that at one point I suggested he seek some help, call up an astronomer the way you’d call up a therapist and make an appointment to work out his problem: his inability to see how a spinning top, no matter how much it wobbles, always has the same point upon which it wobbles. Wherever you are on the spinning sphere, your perspective of that point never changes.

But then I see his point: if the position of the Southern Cross changes with the season, so then must the point in the sky that depicts the celestial south pole, that point around which the stars revolve every night. So maybe in reality we need an astronomer versed in marriage counselling to help us negotiate a middle ground, a compromise, which is what makes most marriages work – or not. But physics being what it is, there’s no middle ground, only a right and wrong answer. We need someone to call the winner of this debate.

Johan's picture of the Southern Cross and pointers (the two stars on the left). To find the Celestial Southern Pole, draw a straight line down the cross, and a perpendicular line through the centre of the two pointers. Where the two lines meet is the CSP, the point in the sky where stars turn around.

We pull into Warakurna just past midday, the last town before the Northern Territory border. The roadhouse is off the main highway a ways and though it has all the same warning signs from Warburton, doesn’t allow for self-service. Johan goes in to get help, then comes back out and gets in the car. They won’t give us fuel if we don’t have a permit. We have a permit, I rebut. Unlike the Warburton roadhouse, an Aboriginal woman runs this roadhouse and won’t let any travellers bypass the permit requirement. We show her the paper and she lets us have fuel.

An hour later the glorious span of the central ranges – the Scherwin Mural Crescent and Petermann ranges -- appears across the horizon. The sun is getting low so we keep an eye out for potential roads into the bush. I eye one that takes us to an open area obviously used by other campers by the many black fire rings. The view of the ranges is stupendous.

While setting up camp we both feel a rising déjà vu. I get out the Outback Wanderers book I made from our 2010/11 trip and sure enough, this was the same spot we camped on Day 10 of that trip. It was stinking hot and had just rained and the base of the lot – an old quarry for road gravel – had collected a pond of muddy water, which I happily soaked in to cool off. We’d taken a walk to the base of a nearby peak, but turned around because of the heat and Johan’s bad back.

Which reminded us how difficult that journey was back then with Johan’s frequent back attacks. It’s been 8-1/2 years since the operation that took his pain away. How grateful we are to have survived that 20-year period. And to have the ease of living we have enjoyed for nearly a decade now. It certainly has made this trip a lot easier – and more pleasant in some ways.