Day 3: Boondi Rock

17 November 2010

Boondi Rock is a national park approximately 100kms east of Yellowdine, just 150kms short of Kalgoorlie. We arrive at 2pm and decide to stay when we find a shady spot in a free campground next to a man-made dam. A watercourse extending out of the dam leads to a granite outcrop where, 100 or so years ago the early settlers built a two foot high wall at its base to channel rain water into the dam. I walk around the five acre span of ochre and brown rock, disturbing stripe-tailed lizards who seem to move at the speed of light on long legs. Sometimes they stop and watch me, their heads dipping as if they have a nervous tick. I swim in the dam, even though it’s full of minnows and green slime, and feel refreshed. We eat kangaroo and veggies roasted in the new Dutch oven - simple and delicious – with a bit of mayonnaise squeezed over the top; real camp food. When the daylight dies, we watch an episode of Lost in the tent while the near-full moon casts grey shadows on a still warm night.

  

“What then shall it profit the man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul.” 

~Billboard in the bush on the Gr Eastern Hwy just this side of Kalgoorlie

Day 1-2: Myalup to New Norcia to Meckering

15-16 November 2010

One forgets that there is never true silence – or at least rarely. There’s always background noise, in our minds, in the murmurings of community life, in our many distractions. So it is with New Norcia. The first thing you’re struck by is the stark beauty and stillness of the setting. A true place for contemplation and the life of a hermit. We’d like to forget that behind this is the restless agitation of two communities: the monks struggling with their inner demons and outer relationships; and the staff who aren’t so conscious about seeing their time at New Norcia as an exercise in personal and spiritual growth. The murmuring continues unabated.

But we’re not part of that anymore, thank God. We can enjoy it again for the special place that it is: a retreat from all the noise and hubbub of the secular world.

The only background noise we have to contend with is from nature. We park the camper trailer on the north edge of the oval and set up camp with an unhindered view back towards the monastery. During the night the wind picks up and bashes the flaccid sides of the tent, keeping us awake and anxious most of the night. At dawn a cackling chorus of galahs perched in the tree above our camp provides an unwelcome alarm clock. Throughout our brief stay they leave a trail of droppings on our tent and equipment.

The monks are more hospitable. Abbot John invites us to dine with the monks at their midday meal. The refectory smells of dark wood and ancient traditions. We listen to readings from various Catholic tomes addressing issues of war and peace, nuclear proliferation, birth control and the need for silence during meal times. Everything is programmed and precise and I push my half eaten lunch aside when I realize I’m the only one left eating. The server takes it away and rolls the squeaky trolley back to the kitchen while the reader takes a measured pause. After a third course, a delicious pumpkin and pistachio pie, the Abbot rings his bell and we stand in unison, waiting for the final blessing before we depart single file.

We’re invited to the monks’ parlour for an aperitif, coffee, Benedictine liqueur and chocolates, to farewell us on our journey. It's a far less formal affair and despite being the only woman in a circle of black-robed monks, I enjoy the light-hearted banter. My association with this monastery extends back seven years and has been full of the complexities and challenges of any good intimate relationship. Despite its quirkiness (or maybe because of it), I feel at home here and will miss the opportunity to make regular pilgrimages once we move to the USA.

It’s 2pm before we’re on the road; not many daylight hours left for travel. We head east and find a isolated spot on the edge of a dry river bed just outside of Meckering to set up camp. The night is quiet except for the occasional freight train rumbling towards Perth astride the Great Eastern Highway.

The Art of Wandering

I mentioned to a friend recently that my life was more like a collection of short stories than a novel. How many times have I changed the scene, setting, props to re-create what appears to be a whole new life? Probably more than is good for me. But here we go again...

Six months ago my life was as busy as anyone else’s. Full-time work, a long commute, various volunteer activities, a garden to tend. Bit by bit it has all drifted away as I have unravelled a life that took two years to build, and which had turned out remarkably satisfying. Now all there is left to do is get ready for this trip.

The story of how I got from there to here is long and convoluted. It started out as a whimsical conversation that turned serious and eventually moulded into a five year plan to return to the States to be near by parents for a while. That became a three year plan, then a year. It’s now down to nine months, a perfect gestation period for giving birth to our new lives in Port Townsend, U.S.A. in April next year.

But first there’s a country to see. Collectively, Johan and I have sixty years of life in Australia (37 and 23 respectively). We’ve both become naturalised – legally, but also in spirit. The red earth and wide open spaces of Australia are deep in our blood and it’s not easy to leave. What better way to honor our time here than to journey through the heart of this big, bold land.

From our home in Myalup, we’ll venture northeast, towards the goldfields of Kalgoorlie, then north to Laverton, a dusty, derelict town on the edge of the vast desert. The Outback Way is a 2750km trek across the Great Central Road. Three-quarters of it is unpaved, becoming bitumen through the heavily touristed areas of Uluru (Ayer’s Rock) and Alice Springs in the dead centre of Australia. When we come out the other end, in Winton, Queensland, we’ll let serendipity be our guide. We may be gone a few weeks – or a few months. Our only deadline is to board a plane on a day in April, which will take us away from this, our second home, back to the land of my birth.

As fate would have it, a CD turned up in the post just before we left. A joint birthday present to us from Johan’s daughter, Noonja, Songs from the Road chronicles Leonard Cohen’s recent year and a half world tour. Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, wrote an essay for the CD jacket cover. An ode to Cohen’s poetic largess and nomadic spirit, “The Art of Wandering” suggests that “itinerancy refreshes and expands the spirit”, (as does Cohen’s music). I like that. It’s as good an explanation as any for why my life has always been on the move, changing its cloak when things get too stale or staid.

The introduction to “The Art of Wandering” provides a poignant reminder of why we travel, and how important it is, on this upcoming road trip, for us to stay attuned to the nuances of this beautiful land and whatever experiences it has in store. I offer it here as a blessing on our journey.

The road is not a line between places; it is a place between places, a place of its own. You cannot understand the ravishments of the road unless you overcome the logistical way of looking at things, which is perhaps the most powerful impediment that our hustling way of life puts in the way of experience. Since we cling to a mainly instrumental view of the road, we have forgotten how to be travellers and we are tourists instead, sitting still before the window and watching the world speed past, when in fact we are the ones who are speeding and it is the world that is still, for those who possess the capacity for stillness.

We are too enamoured of destinations. We hunger too much for arrival. We treat the road as an interval between meanings, an interregnum between dispensations, and so we are blinded to the richness of meanings and dispensations in the road itself. If departure is the past and arrival is the future, then the road is the present, and there is nothing more spiritually difficult or spiritually rewarding than learning to live significantly in the present. This is accomplished by a schooling in transience, and the road is such a school. Almost as powerful as the sea and the sky, the road is an emblem of immensity: the horizon, which is the promise of a release. From the stretch of even the most ordinary road, you may infer a suggestion of infinity.