Sepia Me' - Memoir of a Trip Through the Desert - Entry no# 4

After last night’s storm the car's become bogged in the sand. I’d left one window open again and half expected the car to look like the inside of a washing machine, but the eternal desert sun has done its job and dried up everything, even the giant rock, Uluru. The inexorable truth of the matter is change. Great clouds are moving off the coast and into the middle of the desert. Summers are hotter, winters are colder and the animals are not sleeping when they should. One day, the unwritten bond between our animals and the Australian people will snap, Dingo’s will move from the desert and wage war on small towns, crocodiles will swim up river and walk over the land where humans sit and crows will be here to pick up our remains. Nature’s way of eliminating the threat, ‘we are’ the threat.  The term ‘nature’ implies a state of relative equilibrium between the elements, one extreme begins another and this will be felt in time. As I’m digging in the sand around my tires, the far off cries of the Dingo can be heard. Looking out in the distance, before the blur of the horizon, I can see him standing, the Dingo, watching my every move. I stop what I’m doing; I know he’s looking at me. He’s thinking about it already…

The Tanami Desert has wetlands, that’s where I’m headed now, North West along the Tanami Track, one thousand kilometres from Alice Springs and I should come to Halls Creek. About an hour coming out from Uluru I drove by a man walking along the side of the road, carrying this enormous load of baggage – like those foreign backpackers you see walking out the front doors of an airport, with enough gadgets to build a satellite and more disposable cameras than we sell in most stores. In the desert, the less you have the better. It’s no use bringing twelve litres of water if you’re going to carry it you’re self. I stop by the side of the road and wave my hand.

“Are you lost”? The question just came out; it didn’t make any sense – there are no other roads to be lost on for at least another  day.

'Jump in'. 

There’s only one way through here and this is it. Ether you’re lost because you don’t know whether to leave for the coast or stay here in the desert. Back and forwards, I’ve been doing this for eight months.

I’m talking with this man for the next thirteen hours or so, he says he’s here from Switzerland, studying Geology, the formation of rocks and layers, but right now not heading anywhere in particular. So, we’ve set up camp for the night, off road about a kilometre. I’ve said I’ll take him where he needs to go, but he’s not sure yet. Neither of us are sure. Two wandering travellers, drifting through the days and months with no point in particular but to be void of obligation…what are the odds we should meet. We may spend our entire life’s waiting to be void of all accountability, some of us are too afraid and then we end up here. It never takes long for people to realize; that out here you’ve ultimately gained more responsibility than you could’ve ever imagined.

The sun goes down, the stars come out… in the distance the Dingo heralds another sleepless night. 


David G. P. Martin - Aus, Jan 21 20010