Day 41 - Goorrandalng Campground, Day 6

Friday, 9 July 2021

For inexplicable reasons, the campground empties out this morning. Maybe everyone knew something we didn’t, but a few conversations with remaining neighbours suggest nothing new has broken in the news. (One neighbour has a satellite dish and watches the news every night.) Perhaps people were just tired of waiting. We enjoy the quiet while the heat rises, until later in the afternoon when new campers arrive, filling up the grounds again, creating a new configuration of a neighbourhood. By 10 am the world is already cooking, so we set up our awning, park our chairs under it, and spend the day reading and relaxing. And reflecting…

It’s worth noting that my aversion towards the “complainers” down at the border crossing and desire to stay away from them is in fact a discomfort with that part of myself that wants to whinge and prattle on about how unpleasant it is to be denied entry to your home state. By staying away from them, I keep away from that part of myself that could easily take the bait and join in. It seems, for me anyway, the best way to meet this situation is keep a clear eye focused on the good side of things: the beauty of nature, the free time (to read, listen, walk, converse), the goodness of people -- our neighbour shared his firewood and last pieces of fruit with us before heading across the border – he decided to take his family into quarantine. With our dwindling food supplies, an apple and a grapefruit felt like gifts of gold!

I often think about where we’re heading as a society, a world. If even half of what the climate scientists are warning us about now come to fruition, we’re in for some tough years. Social dissolution is a very real possibility – and may already be happening, with increasing incidents of consumer product shortages, power outages, bureaucratic rabbit holes, cyber-attacks, pandemics, and increasing volumes of various types of refugees, those escaping wars and violence, climate crises, poverty and loss. Even those who can’t cross borders to get home because of a few incidents of coronavirus.

Yet we (in the West) are not a world of warriors, at least of the interior kind – we are not trained to fight, protect, or withstand the crumbling of the comfortable and safe world we’ve inhabited our whole lives. If we can’t manage the temporary inconvenience of a border closure, how will we ever handle the loss of other things we take for granted? The plentiful food in our shops? Ice creams, coffees, beers served up on demand? Entertainment and technology? The various energies that fuel our hyper-mobile, comfortable lives? Our home, our cars, our playthings?

When the air hints at a cooling, we hop in the car to fetch water and our emails. GOOD NEWS!! The WA government’s Facebook page says, all things going well, the WA/NT border will open a minute past midnight on Sunday (which is actually Monday). Woo hoo!! Home, here we come…