by David Mason
In the morning I stayed in my swag until the sun reached the horizon, my usual practice being to get up at first light, build up the fire, put on the billy and move the camels to better feed. But this morning I reflected on what T.E. Lawrence had done in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, lay back in the swag, and let the day come to me. I cupped my hand under my chin and waited with my senses. I saw, felt and heard the crowing of a distant crow. Kashgar chewing her cud. A strand of spinifex was golden wire. The limbs of a tree reaching for the sky. A dewdrop on a stem of grass, a diamond suspended on the ear of a woman. Colours moving from black and white to shades of grey, to the red of a flower, the yellow of a grass stalk and the green of a leaf.
In mid-afternoon we finally made it to the single-lane black bitumen road that made its way across the old skin of the country. It would lead us to Windorah. I thought that we should be able to make it to town by Sunday afternoon. I needed a rest day to make telephone calls and my belly hungered for mixed grills with lots of chips and eggs and ice-cream.
I looked for a camp but I could not find trees or bushes that the camels might eat. Late in the afternoon I saw a line of acacia bushes in a watercourse. We made it just two fingers before sunset and soon after it was saddles off and camels happily munching. Rather than use my watch to set when we should camp, I used the sun. I held out my arm at full stretch from my body, my hand before my eyes, fingers below the sun and parallel to the horizon. If the sun was three fingers from the horizon I would have enough time to pull up, unload and put the camels onto long lines to feed. I also had time to collect wood and get a good fire going, lay out the swag and set up the camp the way I liked. Sometimes though, finding a good campsite was worth a little inconvenience, especially where there was food for the camels.
On the only road to Birdsville from the east, the track was very quiet. Only four cars and five road trains headed in my direction. In the late afternoon Maureen Scott pulled over on her way home from the weekly shopping at Quilpie 200 kilometres to the south. She offered me a bed and dinner. Her daughter Carly had heard one of the children at Adavale on radio talking about the camel man and she decided to watch out for us. And there we were on her doorstep! I thanked them both for their offer but we were still few kilometres too far away. I promised I would stop by next day.
Maureen and Bruce ran Moothadella Station just off the highway and not far from Windorah. They invited me in for morning tea while the camels had theirs in a lucerne paddock. Morning tea with the Scotts was a taste of civilisation, with coconut crumble of lamingtons washed down with sweet tea from cups that sat on knitted doilies. Sitting at the dark timbered dinner table under dark framed photographs of stern faces, I noticed myself talking too loudly and too quickly. I wanted to share my experiences and reconnect with other people. Maureen and Bruce shared a glance and their faces softened in mutual understanding. I slowed down and was quiet for a moment.
Bruce wrapped his hand around his teacup, and between sips said, ‘You know, this Channel Country is almost 300,000 square kilometres, marked by hundreds of shallow river courses and wide alluvial plains. It’s a tough country; it asks a lot of the people who live here. Even so, you know I’d never leave it, with its enormous skies and the people who are connected to the place.’ He looked to Maureen and said, ‘It’s a part of me and a part of our family’. He went on to wonder why so few Australians seemed to want to see and taste what the Channel Country had to offer.
I speculated that it was not time and distance from the coast, it was more likely its difference from the cities that made it so alien, unpredictable and perhaps intimidating and therefore uninviting.
Bruce and Maureen nodded and Maureen said, ‘Hmm, well, maybe that’s part of it; but how could you feel something that was intimidating and alien that was a part of yourself? Why not try to understand that part?’
I smiled and said, ‘I think you’re right. But then, how many people are truly prepared to confront themselves?’
Later, after another cup of tea, I went to the lucerne paddock and my friends and clipped them together. Maureen followed me and pressed a plastic packet of frozen sausages into my hand. I slipped them into Kashgar’s care and that evening as the saliva filled my mouth, cooked them with Tabasco sauce, pepper and salt. Never before had sausages tasted so good. I ate all nine and as my belly swelled and the fat coursed through my body I felt re-energised and warm.
After more than 2000 kilometres of walking, the Deadman Bridge over Cooper Creek was the last we would have to cross before the west coast more than 3500 kilometres away. The Cooper is one of the four main watercourses of the Channel Country, which includes the Georgina, Diamantina and Bulloo Rivers. The bridge itself was a significant marker, and another test. Charles Sturt named the creek in 1845 and wrote, ‘I would gladly have laid this creek down as a River, but as it had no current I did not feel myself justified in doing so.’ He would have written differently had he seen the creek the day we crossed it.
So there we were, camping on the Cooper where, as Banjo Paterson put it, ‘the western drovers go’. We had worked very hard to get to the bridge and it felt exciting to be there. For the camels there was galvanised burr and pigweed in abundance. Just past the turnoff to Hammond Downs, a cattle station taken up by Europeans in 1877, there was so much pigweed that as I walked down to the creek I could feel the water-laden leaves burst and flatten under my boots.
If we could successfully make our way across the bridge I thought we could make it into Windorah next day. Camels in general, and I knew my three friends in particular, had no fondness for bridges and we tried to avoid them where we could. The last bridge crossing, at Langlo Crossing, had been a near disaster, but with the experienced and steady Kabul in the lead I was sure we could make it across.
I needed a day off in Windorah to do the administrative things that the expedition required, like calling supporters and writing letters to friends and sponsors to secure a mobile satellite phone for the Simpson Desert crossing. I wanted to make Birdsville on 20 June and it seemed to me to be very possible, with the distance just 400 kilometres. So, around 20 easy kilometres a day.
On another front, I was a little worried about my brain, about intellectual stimulation. I had read a couple of books, but during the day it was impossible to read. I learned plenty of Banjo Paterson poems but I knew my brain needed more exercise. Thoughts were becoming mere fleeting fragments, and I was becoming unable to concentrate on a train of thought longer than an impression or a feeling. I knew I had to make myself think, not just act, so I carried a notebook in my pocket and wrote down feelings, dreams and observations, to collect them and give them form. Otherwise I found myself dwelling on the past or becoming fixated by the map and obsessed with distances.
Camels and I made it into Windorah 10 kilometres after crossing the Deadman Bridge. The Cooper had risen and I could hear it lapping against the concrete supports. There were no sides to the bridge, just elevated concrete, maybe 15 centimetres high on its edges. We walked onto the bridge and I looked over to see the water, a swirling dark brown just under the road. We had more than 100 metres of bridge to cross before the safety of the western bank. As I stood on the eastern side, contemplating the gap, it looked a lot, lot further.
Before we began the crossing, I asked a couple of passing motorists to lend a hand. I asked one to stop and flag down any vehicles that might follow up behind. He agreed and his mate in the vehicle behind agreed to go to the other side of the bridge to stop any other traffic from the other direction. The thought of a 50 metre long road train bearing down on me and three camels was terrifying.
Then we started. As I had done so often before, I relied on Kabul. I patted his neck, caressed his wool and told him that this was probably our last bridge to cross before the coast and the Indian Ocean. With a flare of his nostrils he sniffed the air and moaned a low moan of uncertainty, perhaps fear.
Even so, we began our walk across, the three camels looking very regal, noses
in the air and the pink of their nostrils winking against the matt of their skin and woolly coats. They could smell water and lots of it. Only when Kabul could see the water did he really become nervous. There was nowhere to cross but this narrow band of concrete.
Kabul began to make more nervous noises. Low throaty moans were a deep whimper that told me he really was frightened. I kept turning around, touching his nose, patting his face and reassuring him and Chloe and Kashgar that everything was fine, that all would be wonderful once on the other side. Despite the warmth of the day, I felt the thick cold snake of fear wrap around my chest.
We were getting closer to the other bank and I could see the gap in the trees on the far side of the bridge where the road climbed the bank into open country. For some reason, though, the gap began to close. I narrowed my eyes to see 20 people gathered at the end of the road to take pictures of the camels crossing the bridge. They were across the road, and as far as Kabul could tell there was no way out.
Kabul kept moaning. Finally he baulked and stopped. I caressed his face. I reassured him in the calmest voice I could muster. I cried out to the people to move off the bridge and could see some people urging others to move to the bank. Some refused. At last, though, the dark smudge of people moved enough so that there was daylight behind. We carried on and finally made it to the bank.
Some people, clutching their cameras like a tourist’s tika, said, ‘Can you go back a bit? I want to get a couple of good shots.’ There were so many people standing around, making so much noise, I could not quite make out what they were saying. A little way from the crowd one lean man folded himself into a hunker, rolled a cigarette and said, ‘Would never had believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself. Could never have got horses across like that.’
Around mid-afternoon, on the outskirts of Windorah beyond the turnoff to Jundah, a town to the north-east on the track to Longreach, we were stopped by a cattle grid and a padlocked gate in a new tightly strung fence that stretched as far as I could see. On the other side of the fence working in a small bobcat was a mahogany skinned man loading soil into the tray of a large truck. In what I hoped was a nonchalant pose, I unclipped the camels, tied them onto feed trees, jumped the fence and leaned against the gate. Then I waited until I caught his attention. He glanced over to me and indicated with a tilt of his head that he would speak with me once the truck had been loaded.
Merv Geiger stepped from his bobcat in boots, shorts and blue flannelette shirt. We met each other halfway and reached out our arms to shake hands. Merv took my hand in a firm handshake slightly moist from work and gritty from the soil he had been moving. He looked at me with extraordinary eyes, eyes that saw me but seemed preoccupied with another place at another time. Merv’s eyes were faraway eyes. I had seen them in the faces of Legionnaires returning from patrol.
‘How can I help ya?’ he asked with lips that seemed to curl up into a quizzical smile. I told him I wanted to bring the camels into town, check in with the police sergeant and eat at the pub. To get in I needed the key to the padlocked gate. ‘No worries,’ he said after a slight pause, ‘let me drop off the load and I’ll chase up the key.’ Only later, during a discussion with the police sergeant, did I learn the reason for Merv’s hesitation.
Merv was back in half an hour. He opened the gate, we passed through and he locked it again. He indicated where the police sergeant’s house was and said ‘You won’t have any worries there. Kevin is a pretty good bloke.’
Merv was right. Kevin let me put the camels in the police yard and while only 20 metres by 30 metres square it still had plenty of food for the camels. ‘Don’t thank me,’ he said, ‘I’d just have to mow it or something anyway. You’re doin’ me a favour.’ I was glad he thought so.
I discussed with Kevin the road forward and when I proposed to be in Birdsville. ‘No dramas,’ he said, ‘looks to me like you’ll do fine. Otherwise you wouldn’t have got here. Geoff told me you were okay.’ He paused for a moment and said, ‘You must be a silver-tongued bastard. You know why there is a lock on the gate?’ I told him I had no idea. ‘Blokes from around here used to drive their cattle through town. It meant that apart from a few old gums there was no green in the town. Some people, including Merv, got a bit pissed off by it all; put a fence around the town, with a grid and a padlocked gate. Now there’s some kind of council by-law that prohibits grazing animals from entering town. Merv’s on the council and if he reckons you can come in, that’s okay by me.’
Kevin watched me unload the camels and lay out the gear. After the camels were brushed and patted and settled in, I moved off across the road to the Western Star Hotel where my first question to the barmaid related to when the dining room opened.
The Western Star Hotel was serving beer before the town of Windorah, from the local Aboriginal word for ‘place of large fish’, was first surveyed in 1880. I spent two long nights in the dining room of the Western Star Hotel. Wonderful dinners they were, of mixed grills with chips and salad, followed by ice-cream. It took me a couple of hours to make my way through it all and I was one of the last to leave the dining room. A couple, he in creased khaki and she in pastel polyester, kept looking across at me and then leaning forward to share quiet conversation. I had never thought of myself as the most attractive of men and never really cared if people look at me or talk about me, so I waited until they both looked at me and gave them a big wink. They smiled at me warmly and simply said, ‘Good on yer mate. Hang in there won’t you?’ They then got up and left. I was glad I shut up.
The proprietors of the Western Star, Ian and Marilyn Simpson, were like so many other people, patient and they spoke quietly to me, as if I was something delicate and easily damaged by loud noise and ugly words. Ian also shared his knowledge of the working bores on the route to Birdsville as well as a couple of beers. Marilyn went out of her way to see that I had enough to eat and that my clothes were clean.
The camels looked rested. When I checked them again in the afternoon they were down on their pedestals, languidly chewing the cud, bending necks and blinking brown eyes at me. They looked better than ever, with large humps and muscled rumps, and very relaxed in my presence. Seeing my friends so well I headed for the front bar of the hotel for a beer. Sitting and listening I breathed cigarettes, Bundaberg Rum, love for the land and sometimes, in the silent places between words, a quiet desperation among some, born of loneliness and open spaces.
I spent two days cleaning gear, telephoning and writing to sponsors, organising a loan to keep the expedition going and calling the police in Birdsville to let them know what I had planned. I spoke with Amber and she was very keen on meeting me in Birdsville. I told her it was not necessary, all the supplies I needed could be freighted to me. She insisted and I could not deny that I would be very happy to see her again, even though it might mean having to talk about our future and possibly the future of the trip.
I lay in the dark on a Western Star Hotel bed. It was the morning before moving off again and I had a crisis of nerves. It was a sinking feeling of desperate fear; a crisis of confidence. What would happen if I failed? I would look a fool and some would say that I had attempted something beyond my knowledge and capabilities. The years of effort, the dreams of achieving a goal would dissolve and the energy and enthusiasm dissipate. It was a good thing that the cockatoos flew from a couple of nearby conifers. As they wheeled and banked across town on their broad white wings they dropped near with their cry of ‘Wake up! Wake up.’ And I did. As the sun rose it warmed the day and chased the darkness from my mind. I knew that sometimes I felt very, very vulnerable. It was the price I paid to be alone; I had chosen to be exposed and I wondered if the risk of failure made achievement even sweeter.
Preparing to leave Windorah and head west.
Merv Geiger opened another padlocked gate to let us out of town. He also gave me a donation for the Fred Hollows Foundation. As he shook my hand in parting he looked at me again and I had a feeling he was trying to tell me something
with his eyes. His family had been part of this country for a century. Some of them lay in the ground not far from where we stood together for a moment, silently regarding each other. I felt that at the same time the land hurt him he needed it, to be on it, working it and touching it. ‘Take care out there,’ he said, ‘sometimes the country can ask a lot of a man.’
Just out of town a snake crossed our path, a glide of snake belly on tarmac. It was so long it almost traversed the road. It paused for a moment, its purplepink tongue tasting the air. Kabul snorted and we watched the snake’s languid movement as it bent its way from the road and into the scrub. In the afternoon rain fell in the east; I could taste the moisture and smell the ozone in the air.
We camped around 10 kilometres west of Windorah. I found some wooden cattle yards on the northern side of the road full of good feed. Once unsaddled and brushed, the camels grouped themselves in the north-west corner of the yard, all looking west. I wondered what was on their minds. Did they know something I did not? They were dark grey smudges in the west where the sunset put the horizon on fire. That evening was the first I had seen the camels against red desert sand and they looked very much at home. I lay in my swag writing up the day in my diary and again worked out the distance to Birdsville, around 20 days.
As I sat on the food tin next morning waiting for the billy to boil, I consulted the camel man’s bible, Camels: A Compendium by Manefield and Tinson. I decided it was time to start conditioning of the camels to be without water. Popular mythology has us believe that a camel can go without water any time there was a need. Not quite. Camels have to be conditioned to water deprivation, to allow their physiology time to adapt. In the past week or two I had deprived them of water for up to three days. On the track to Birdsville I proposed to formally start the program. Three days, then a drink, three days, a drink, four days, a drink, and so on. According to the book a camel could go without water for 15 days and could cover up to 1000 kilometres in 20 to 30 days.
