Entry 1

It’s been a couple of weeks on the road now, and in the hope that I would settle into a more relaxed mode, I realise that that might take longer than I thought. I struggle to sit still and not fidget whilst removing red dust from the van, but to recline and see the sunset with a glass of red, swatting mosquitoes is something to aspire to. To be part of the grander process….

The first few days on the road were a desperate attempt to run from all responsibilities.. a futile prospect as my day to day living involves me. Exhausted, I packed and unpacked and packed a small van. All the necessities of survival in this modern hooked in world. Solar panels, storage backup power packs for iPad, iPhone, laptop, digital camera, usb mozzie blue light ( definitely one to have) milkcrates of various cables and gas cylinders for the small stove. Foldout chair to bed and another camp chair that I grabbed from the farm shed. Now I realise it is broken, and was broken on the last trip some 20 years ago. But I persist with using it, with fingers crossed it doesn’t collapse.

So I drove, I walked the Canarvon Gorge, drove some more, and then some. And finally I am at the cross roads of my trip. The border of NT & WA..
I knew two days ago, as I had a relapse into a memory of life that no longer existed.. that I must do this trip for me and me alone, not look to relive a past.

Everyday I have thanked the universe for the day, the small joys of nature and the blissful visuals. But always on my birthday, always a day of great expectations and general disappointment, I am not given the daily gift of visuals but always a closer look at things more challenging in this incredible life I have been given. This is the birthday gift…

I started the long laborious drive north from Tenant creek to Katherine, and found myself in a trail of caravans and 4x4s. Grey headed people in a swim of groups heading one direction or the other. A depiction of the times and the great need for discovery, or just to fill in the fading days.

I decided to visit Daly Waters, a place I remember as quaint and one horse town.. but now after 20 years it had turned into tourist Mecca. An unrecognisable town of Australiana and placards of information relating to a town that never existed. The once roadhouse is now a swim of bra tops, business cards and footy trophies. The outside dunk pool now 2 modern pools and all signs of the past extinguished.

The vast caravan of searchers will never experience what was, but can only dip their cameras into a fictitious made up past.
For now these voyagers will be filled with memories of todays adventures, another view from a different angle.

I again realised that the world of memories is an area of personal files. Fortunate for those of us who hold them in there, and a wake up to the world that is in existence now.
My life, filled with electronica, is in a constant change. It’s charged with a rush of conversations and organising parts of my day to day that I no longer have to be present to orchestrate. Things move quickly, conversations need not be finished because we know the ending. Youth with more knowledge than ourselves, and in-site into life that has taken most of my generation their whole life to acquire.
But at the end of the day, when the sun goes down. Mossies take a final bite and the stillness of the changing of the guard takes place.
The resting takes place. A calm breeze picks up again as the temperature drops and birds and beasties settle into the dusk.
I noticed today at noon the wind picked up and blew across the plains.
And in the camping area of tonight I have listened to a Frenchman incessant talking, his wife sits quietly. I have not heard her utter one word. I have not heard her voice, just his endless chatter..I’m glad I don’t understand him, just his Frenchness pattering along. Chattering through the changing of the guard, when we should be in witness…

The birthday gift this year was the understanding of times.
My world that I grew up in doesn’t exist anymore. The same as the world of the Indigenous people. Their world ended when we arrived here. The artworks of land and rhythms are the same but the way we navigate through them have shifted. As I watch the winds gather during the pace of the day, the sun rotate to change guard with the moon, the bird song at dawn and their nesting at night. These rhythms are the backbone of life. Humans have a changing rhythm, a generational one that is at the moment fast paced and spiralling to the next transition, what ever that will be.
To be of an age when one has travelled through a few changes in progression is a challenge to self. Maintaining a sense of mental balance and of spirit to remain in play is the quest.
The lost indigenous souls that mill at the local white man’s corner watering hole is a sad note. The same as the lost grey nomads that drive in circles hoping for the same result. There is a new adventure, different to what I knew before. It is neither better or worse, just different. Allowing the change to wash in, that is the progress.

I am now at a resting point some 300 kilometre from the WA border. Visiting my sister in law, who has a posting in this rather beautiful landscape, although it remains hot even in the middle of Australian winter.
The last leg was an arduous 370 k with no outposts. I have now realised that the vessel that I travel in is inadequate. I’m not sure how far to travel in it, and whether, as I do have to return, at what point do I do that.

Leaving the sanctity of a safe space and on starting the vessel, it grinds with and aggressive grind. Ominous, and perhaps a warning.
But now fuelled up and on the road, I feel the journey has just begun. Landscape has changed into stepped flat topped ancient rock formations. The power of the land formidable and grand.

I have booked into the Keep River National park and with 18 kilometre entry on dirt road. We shall decide on arrival.