The Outback

It all started on April 23rd when Gabi, Chris, Ryan, and I took off on the Great Ocean Road in a brand new Mercades motor home.  However, it really started a couple of weeks before that, when I recieved a text message from Gabi.  I had been living in Melbourne for over two months, which was longer than I had planned, and I was beyond ready to get out.   Over a hundred years ago the city of Melbourne was built on top of a swamp.  Some hippie new age types attribute that to why it draws people in and makes it hard for them to leave.  Maybe that is why I was feeling stagnant and tired.  Maybe, or maybe I was lathargic after seven months in Australia.  Either way, I needed to be pushed in a direction.  


That push came at about nine in the morning in the form of a text message.  Gabi was one of my co-workers at the Wilderness Society.  She is from New Zealand and had been living in Melbourne for three months.  Sick of incestuous workplace drama and tired of living in the city, Gabi sent me a rambley text asking if I wanted to get out of Melbourne and possibly go on an adventure.  We could live cheaply and maybe find some work along the way.  I sent back a nine word response: "Hell yeah!  My only condition is we head west."  


We were able to find a campervan relocation from Melbourne to Alice Springs leaving on the 23rd of April.  That gave me a few more weeks to save up money and say goodbye to Keyon and Steve.  There was only one catch: we only had one week to make the trip.  It sounded do-able, but we needed a few more people.  When we explained our plan to Ryan, he was instantly intrigued.  Ryan also works for The Wilderness Society.  He is a photographer with an affinity for dumpster diving, Australian colloqualisms, and anything that looks iconic and old.  He likes photographic process as much as the product and despises digital shortcuts and anything that is not organic and real.  Ryan is likely to have three cameras at any given time.  He has the point and shoot digital, the old school 80's one, and the really old camera from the 1920s (to get their actual names you would have to speak with him).  Ryan would have taken this trip for artistic reasons alone.  Maybe he did.


The day before we were set to leave, I met up with my old homeslice, brotha from anotha motha, Chris, who I went on the Tassie roadtrip with.  For the few months that I was working in Melbourne Chris was having the time of his life bumming around New Zealand.  That night was meant to be a quick catch up session before we went out separate ways.  However, when Chris mentioned that he had two more weeks in Australia before flying back to The States, I instantly invited him along on our journey.  He responded with that look.  That deep-breath-half-smile-eyes shining-skeptical-intrigued look.  It was all too reminicient of the prelude to our Tassie roadtrip, and I knew before he answered that he would say, "yes."


The "campervan" that we were set to relocate turned out to be a brand new Mercades motor home fully stocked with a kitchen, bathroom, flatscreen TV (which we did not use but is still worth mentioning) and enough sleeping room for six people (though there were only four of us).  We named the motor home Bessy because she was a big, comfortable girl.  You couldn't take Bessy everywhere but she was the kind of girl who had everything you could ever need.  Needless to say, Bessy was HUGE, about half the size of a Greyhound bus.  When they handed over the keys. we just stared in disbelief, they are trusting us with THIS!?


Traveling makes me superstitious and I take my good luck signs where I can get them.  My first sign came on the very first day.  We stopped at a random turn off on the Great Ocean Road.  I got out of Bessy just in time to see a magnificient double rainbow form right in front of my eyes.  It was going to be one hell of a trip.  


We spent two days on the Great Ocean Road, then headed North to the Flinders Ranges.  There, we did an epic 14k hike to the top of St Mary's Peak.  A 360 degree view of the South Australian ranges.  After a few months in a claustrophobic city, the vastness of the outback was a dream.  The Flinders Ranges are some of the oldest ranges in the world.  Ancient aboriginal tales describe them as two large snakes.  From St Mary's Peak you can see why.  The ranges coil together and then open to form Wilpena Pound, an open circle surrounded by mountains.  


We had to back track South to Port Augustus in order to drive North on the Stuart Highway. 

"The Stuart is a hard cunt road."  That's Ryan talking.  The Stuart Highway runs 3,000k from Port Augusta to Darwin.  That is 3,000k of dry, red desert with very little along the way.  Every road stop is a necessity because if you run out of petrol you're screwed.  The speed limit is high but don't let that fool you.  Drivers have to watch out for kangaroos crossing and cows grazing inches from the side of the road.  Our destination was Alice Springs, the halfway point on the Stuart and the only proper city for 1,500k in all directions.  


"You don't drive the Stuart for fun."  Truckers take off on the highway in massive roadtrains.  Some of them carry three or four berths of petrol at a time.  Those truckers are hard.  Hours on the Stuart will change you.  The wide open desolate plains begin to mimic the vastness of your mind and silence you like a solitary cowboy.     


Part way up the Stuart sits Coober Pedy, a dusty old hell hole of a town.  Originally built for the booming opal industry, it is now a myriad of rundown buildings and rusty cars left on the roadside.  The city was the set of a hand full of end of the world movies and leftover movie relics are litered, as if forgotten around town.  The racial tension in Coober Pedy is real.  The largest demographics are white miners and aborginees.  The word segregation is an understatement.  The two communities don't even associate.  It is like two worlds existing in one apocalyptic town.  


We scrambled up a dusty hillside to see the Big Winch, a tourist attraction that is actually a statuic replica of the last Big Winch tourist attraction.  From the large ugly statue, we had a panoramic view of Coober Pedy.  The isolated poverty reminded me more of pictures I've seen of rundown villages in Somalia than anything I have seen in Australia.  The worst thing about Coober Pedy was that feeling that no one chose to be there.  Everyone seemed a bit trapped.    


The desolate town was a photographer's wetdream.  Ryan wore a huge grin as he juggled cameras while the rest of us gawked at the sad dusty vista.  We sat down on a rocky hillside to watch the sunset.  To our left was a bar where miners and their misses drank and played pool.  On our right three aborigional people reclined on a porch to drink box wine infront of a broken down house.  In that instance separate worlds aligned to watch the nightly show, a natural sedative of reds, pinks, and oranges that seeped calm beauty into the broken, dusty landscape.  


Coober Pedy left us with an eerie feeling that took days to shake away.  It was simultaneous discomfort and fascination.  It was the feeling of: I wish I could better understand.  I wish I could do something but I don't know what.  I wish I could get the fuck out of here but I don't want to run away. 


The further we got from Coober Pedy, the more our moods lightened and by the time we made it to Alice we were relaxed again.  We dropped off Bessy at the relocation center.  Getting rid of the motor home was a weight off our backs.  Though Bessy was fun at first, the comfort was a hinderence and she seemed more and more isolating from the outside world.  Dropping her off, we finally felt free for the first time.  


Keyon gave me the contact info for a friend of his who lives in Alice Springs.  Her name is Alex.  She is originally from Germany.  She came to Australia about a year ago as a backpacker and found herself working and settling into a real job in Alice.  Alex is an amazing person and a life saver.  She is outgoing, always has a smile on her face and welcomes anyone to stay for as long as they need.  Alex is friends with every traveler who went drifting through The Outback and managed to get stuck in Alice Springs.  We spent an awesome night at her house, drinking beer and mingling with her friends.    


The next day we rented a car and continued our adventure.  Our plan was Kings Canyon and Uluru, but we did not make it that far.  There are three roads to King's Canyon.  The one we chose had several gorges and trails along the way.  We set up camp on a sandy beach looking out over a river.  Ryan and Chris went to get fire wood and came back with a new friend, a middle-aged Aussie man named Jim who told us stories of the Outback.  After some conversation, Jim invited us to Glen Helen Lodge to see some live music.  


That is how we found ourselves a few beers deep, listening to Slim Pickens play the old country blues on a steel guitar.  Slim must have senced something within us.  Maybe it was our genuine curiosity and our open spirits.  When the set ended, he walked over and sat down at our table.  We told him that we wanted to visit somewhere special, somewhere that really captures the history and culture of the Outback.  Slim directed us toward a signless turn off onto a dirt road that leads to Roma Gorge; a sacred place where aboriginal people have held dreamtime ceremonies for thousands of years.  


The next day we followed the bumpy old dirt road all the way to the entrance of Roma Gorge.  There was an old sign from when the place used to be touristy, if it was ever touristy, that explained the history of the sight.  Within the gorge we found old stone carvings from over six thousand years ago.  Maps were carved into large boulders depicting footpaths and water holes.  A gum tree rested on top of a large red hill that formed the leftside of the gorge.  We bushwalked all the way up to the tree for the sunset.  In the Outback, the sunset is a magical showcase of deep yellows, oranges, reds, orchres and burgandys.  After the sun sinks into the horizen, the bright moon guides your way.  In the Outback the shades or nighttime are as clear as the shades of day.  You can watch the moon travel its course above you and reside into the horizen.  Stars shine brightly in layers of constellations.  Aboriginal tales explain the Milky Way as women dancing in the night sky.  


We spent our final day together at Redbank Gorge, a beautiful swimming hole between two glowing red rock walls.  The next morning Chris and Ryan dropped me and Gabi off at Alex's house on their way to the airport.  Ryan is going back to Melbourne.  Chris is spending his final days in the city before heading back to The States.  It was goodbye.  Goodbyes are hard.  


Today, Alex, Gabi, and I are going to a small music and art festival called Wide Open Space.  Hopefully it will be amazing.  Right now I am reclining on a big cozy couch at Alex's house.  Her place is collaged with half finished art projects, empowering quotes and Buddhist sayings.  My favorite one is on her bathroom wall: "Pain is inevitable.  Suffering is optional."