by David Mason
When all the camels were out on long lines, browsing, burping, rolling and farting, I went for a short walk, just a few metres away over the crest of a dune, and sat down. I felt the warmth of the sand wrap itself around my now bony backside as I settled into the land. I let gravity take the heels of my boots into the sand and the grains stuck to what little moisture remained on my hands. Just then it was easy to imagine the land opening up and taking me to its heart. For a breath or two I even expected it.
A pause in Lake Poeppel just west of Poeppel Corner.
To the west the sharp dune crest darkly underscored the glowing sky and above a planet was the first of many pinpricks of light to illuminate the velvet darkness. Just below my feet was a yellow petalled flower. Looking at it for a moment I thought again of Amber. It seemed that I did not have much to offer her except a beautiful treasure such as this. Apart from the things I learned and kept close in my heart, it was the only thing I took from the desert to give her. Not much, a worthless thing to many people, but so very precious to me.
Camp 10
The cold breeze sucked the moisture from my skin and because the sky did not clear it made the morning seem to drag and be oppressive. One benefit was that there were very few flies. From the time I gave the camels their water Kabul had not once sat down. Chloe was getting so touchy she would hiss and gape when I approached to do up her girth strap, or even tighten it while she was standing. Her udder had swollen to extraordinary proportions, an inflated rubber glove with veins.
A rest on the crest of a dune – a timeless shadow on ancient canvas.
A rest on the QAA Line with rows of dunes across our route to the east.
There was plenty of good feed along the way, and in the afternoon as the sky cleared delightful red-beaked finches. Sometimes alone, in pairs or in flocks, they made a wave of colour when swooping and wheeling in amongst the green and the yellow, white and purple flowers of the desert. It was a special day.
On the radio that night I heard that Anderson and Gates were ‘about 70 kilometres east of Poeppel Corner’. If that was right they had done about 60 kilometres from Big Red, or an average of less than nine kilometres per day. I hoped they could pick things up and move along a little quicker. But at the speed they were going I did not think it possible they would be able to finish when they had planned, if at all. I wondered what they were thinking, knowing that their plans were unlikely to succeed.
We came to another inscription. This time at the turnoff to the Approdinna Attora Knolls. A plaque was set between two star pickets, the inscription made out in strips of metal. It said:
Surveyor and explorer David Lindsay passed this point 11-1-1886 while on a traverse from Dalhousie Station SA to the Queensland border [and here a strip had been removed] Simpson Desert by a white man. Erected 5.8.72. WSA.
On the French Line – headed west.
Lindsay had set out in 1885 from the Finke River and crossed here on the way to the Queensland border. Along the way he visited and recorded nine Aboriginal wells. Believing the country east of the Northern Territory/Queensland border to be discovered he returned to the Finke, skirting the western edge of the desert, and then headed north-east to Lake Nash and finally to the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Camp 11
The day was dark and sometimes very cool. In the late afternoon it began to drizzle a fine mist and as I set up camp it rained. Still, I had no trouble starting the fire and as I sat looking into the flames I thought over the previous days. I had an extraordinary feeling that time was collapsing, folding in on itself so that days seemed lost. There were no physical reference points against which we could measure movement, except the dunes that in their physical effect on me were the same and they went on and on to the west. I imagined people going quite mad where there were so few reference points except the self. As I sat with the mug warming my hands I could believe solitude was the closest thing to eternity. Maybe it was little wonder that people cluttered their lives with irrelevance to keep the reality of that knowledge at bay. I wondered what people thought before they died. Was it a welcome or a screaming white knowing that life had been wasted?
I looked into the sky and did not want to speak out loud. The entire desert was a sacred place, so in low tones I whispered secrets to the camels.
Camp 12
The morning dawned fluorescent orange and blue, bright and clear, with not a cloud in the sky. We walked a day full of sunshine, but for some reason my spirits did not lift. I felt flat, without energy, sore and my hurt tendon was swollen. I had begun to dream about food. I dreamed of greasy T-bones with heaps of salad, tomatoes and lettuce, oranges and apples. My muscles seemed to be melting or dissolving from my body and the saddles were getting harder to lift. In fact, everything seemed to be getting harder.
I supposed we had to be about halfway through the journey, though it still did not seem that the end I had planned was possible or even likely. There was uncertainty in every day, about the camels and the land, along with a dose of pain that was tempered by hope and wonder.
It came as a complete surprise then that, just as we rejoined the track, we met the Land Rover Australia Club. Around 30 vehicles full of people were driving along the French Line. I was adjusting Kabul’s saddle, as his blankets had ridden up his shoulder which often happened as he descended a dune, when the first five of the Land Rovers zoomed by. They did not slow, not even a wave and they disappeared. Kabul was up and down until there was a break in the traffic. And I thought it was courtesy to slow down near a working animal. But these people had no interest in camels or the land other than the sport it provided for their vehicles.
A highlight of that day was meeting John Thompson, a ‘shooter’ or seismic worker with the Compagnie Geńeŕale de Geógraphie (CGG) in 1963. He was part of the team that created the seismic line, now called the French Line, so named because the company that created the line was French. He thought it was great work. He started early in the mornings and only worked till 2 p.m. every day, when he and the others could take time off from work and walk in the desert.
The Land Rover people stood about on the crests of dunes cheering each other over the summits. My heart sank and a part of me was very depressed. I thought the desert was the point. These people did not appear to bring an appreciation or a willingness to embrace the environment around them. Just noise, in their shallow cheers, the changing of gears and the racing of engines.
Later we met two vehicles parked off the track, tail gates down with women preparing lunch. The vehicles bore the number plates of Canberra, my home town. I watched a man descended from the crest of a dune with a loose end of toilet paper in one hand, a flapping fanion. Green-snot kids were walking around in bare feet. One of the adults was wearing an Australian football club jacket and took it off to reveal the club shirt, as if his identity was such an intangible thing he had to wear it or lose it in the desert.
One of the women called me over to a cup of tea, which was kind, but I swore off saying that the Land Rover people had held me up, and imagined that the bloke with the toilet paper would want to shake my hand, without washing his first. I needed to escape the suburban in the desert.
I supposed that seeing all these people depressed me because it meant that anyone could get out into the desert. Yet no one had earned the privilege of being there. Nothing was difficult. All was quite banal. All you needed was a four-wheel drive and some time. After all, was I not the strange one wanting to do it the ‘hard way’? Was it really a stunt, when all I wanted was to touch the elementary in the country and in myself?
I had thought that it was important to earn the right to special knowledge, knowledge that can only come from experience, pain, long suffering and the exposure to fear. While it might have been important once, it was irrelevant now. You can pay to get to the summit of Everest or even a trip into space. What once had taken years of effort required a different knowledge now; a focus on the dollar or the yen or the pound or the rouble. Every
experience has its price. While I did not like it, perhaps it had its benefits, like exposing more people to the land or the sea or the sky – with the effect that more people might act to protect and preserve these special places.
I hoped that the following day we would meet the Japanese guy. I wanted to ask how he felt being in this beautiful exhilarating place. How was it that I had more in common with a Japanese guy than people from home? I was sure that it had more to do with what was in our hearts than where we lived. I would offer to build a campfire and make him a brew.
Later that night, I lay in the cocoon of the swag in that place between the dunes where the crowns of old, gnarled and very tough and enduring trees kissed. The sound of their embraces in the breeze lulled me to sleep.
A wind from the north meant that dust got into everything; my ears, eyes, nose, brew and my food. It was 30 to 40 knots which meant a very gritty brew and, I supposed, more roughage in my diet. Even brushing my teeth felt like stripping enamel with a wire brush.
I gave the camels the last of the water. Kashgar wanted only a few drops though Kabul took up more than 10 litres. I thought this should see them through to Purnie Bore. Laying out the map on the desert sand I could see nothing but the brown of desert scratched by the darker brown of the dunes. I remembered researching the route across the Desert and finding Aboriginal wells marked on old maps. Places called Mirranponga, Poolaburda and Walperracanna, used by the Wangkangurru people. They were not marked on these more recent maps and I wondered if they had been lost or whether they were being protected from football jumpers and their four-wheel drives.
On the map there were no points of reference, no rivers, hills, powerlines or lakes. The map was like the land itself, just shape and colour.
Camp 13
Taking 20 minutes or so to set up the mobile sat phone, I rang Amber in the morning and how wonderful it was to hear her voice!
After we spoke I sat on the sand for a moment thinking of the emptiness around me in the absence of her voice. I felt the hollowness of being alone and we finally left camp about 10.30. The day was very overcast with another strong wind from the north. This meant that the temperature was up and when not on dune crests we were plagued by flies. Even after we camped and after 9 p.m. I was still in my T-shirt, flies buzzing about my ears.
The camels and I walked to the track in the hope of meeting the Japanese walker. In the distance I saw a movement and sun reflected, then more clearly two aluminium poles above his shoulders supporting a pack that seemed so much bigger than him. I tied the camels off to trees and walked on to the track.
When he was perhaps two seconds from a handshake away I put my heels together, my arms by my side and straightened my back. I bowed, a slight inclination of my head. I said ‘Konichiwa,’ and he stopped for a moment in a mirror of me, smiled and said the same.
Kenji told me he was 27, from Hiroshima, and lived only five minutes walk from the Peace Park, dedicated to the memory of so many people of the first city to endure, on 6 August 1945, a nuclear attack. He was a teacher in a cramming school for primary school kids from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. He worked, he told me, to fund his trips away from Japan which had become too crowded, too busy and too noisy.
While the camels looked on we shook hands and I offered to make a cup of tea. We talked about walking, tourists and Aboriginal people. Kenji told me he walked the Tanami Track a few years ago and was distressed by the racism of the many tourists he passed and of the compatriots he met in Alice Springs or Cairns. I liked him very much. I showed him the mobile sat phone – he was so slight he found it difficult to lift – the saddles, and I formally introduced him to each camel. Then I collected some twigs and put together the makings of a brew.
When it came time to say goodbye we shook hands with red grit hands and grit in our eyes. We parted at last and waved to one another on the distant dune crests, he heading east, me west. It was an odd meeting and one I treasured. He at least knew why he wanted to be here, to taste the solitude and the dust.
That night was almost a full moon. Did that explain why there were so many flies? The elevated temperature meant that getting into the swag did not mean comfort. I was gritty, sweaty and very greasy. My hair was matted and my feet far too fragrant. Even so, I did not stop shaving and brushing my teeth every morning. I simply left a little water in the billy, the rest going into my brew mug and inside me. I did not really need that much water for a shave. Once done I applied sunscreen, especially on my right side, where the sun shone in the north. The routine was good, it made me feel a little clean at least, and I never liked mossy teeth.
Camp 14
During the night the direction of the wind changed. It swung from the north around to the west-south-west. The change brought with it a drop in temperature and a beautiful morning, at least for a while devoid of flies. The air was crisp, fresh and new.
We were under way well before 8 a.m. I took great care with the saddling of Kabul and later in the morning took great pains to ensure his girth strap was tight. The daily examination revealed that while some wool had been rubbed off a small area of his shoulder, my attention meant it would probably not deteriorate. I was sure that much of the problem could be avoided once we were away from the dunes and the inevitable forward pressure of the pad on his shoulder as we descended the western face of the dunes.
Late in the day I stripped off my clothes and wearing boots only aired my body and felt my skin warmed by the sun’s last rays. Certainly my body was losing muscle. But more than that, I felt I was wasting away. Skin was tight across hip bones and my knees stood out from the leanness of my thighs that carried so little curve of muscle. Everything was an effort but I knew that a drive inside me would keep me going. It would keep me going west to the setting sun, but I knew it would get harder and harder.
It was a good day’s walk. The desert was changing as it always did. There were fewer dunes that had single crests. Instead, the dunes had become crowded with many summits. This meant that we walked switchbacks that ran across the face of the dunes rather than directly over the top, making climbing the dunes a little slower but much easier. All camels were still fat and as always we spent the first couple of hours strolling along feeding, with me seeking out the green yellow flowering succulents to put into Kabul’s mouth, the others sampling the smorgasbord the country had to offer.
Camp 15
We must have camped about 18 kilometres short of the Colson Track, as the crow flew, as we did not reach its intersection with the French Line until 3.30 in the afternoon. In the morning I decided to collect samples of all the plants the camels ate during the course of the day. In all, I collected 13 different types of plant – eight from the campsite and five on the march. It was obvious there was a great diversity of feed in the desert in a good year, when there were few rabbits. I wondered how often in the last two hundred years of white occupation of Australia the welcome conjunction had arrived. I had no doubt it was infrequent.
A woman and her husband pulled up early in the day. As the passenger window glided down, out came the nose of a large video camera, the large matte black snout of a Cyclops. Kay said it must be a wonderful way to relax, to take it easy and be away from the city. I was taken aback. I told her a little of my background and said that physically and emotionally this was a very, very trying enterprise. I tried to relate it to her by asking her if she had ever bush-walked (no, she had not), ever gone on a solo trip overseas (no she had not), ever been in the army (no she had not). I realised there was no way I could relate my experience to her other than the usual statement of fact. There was no shared experience that could provide the basis for a discussion. As I had to do so often I simply recited facts, saddling hundreds of kilograms, unsaddling, walking, fear of being stomped or trampled and then have the camels escape, finding water, a good camp, the right route and the list went on. She thought it would be pleasant. I put it differently, hard work, pain and tiredness, with moments of pure joy and exhilaration.
The following morning they came as I always knew they would. Camels lived and roamed, lusted and bred in the Simpson Desert and I knew we would meet some. I knew too that when we did it would mean a test. I wrote the following sitting on my swag, just before we moved off again, heading west:
My hands cup warmth, sweet caffeine on tongue and a lick of heat on my cheek. I hunker in the sun burnt desert dust savouring the embers of the morning fire and the sizzle of water in the billy. My back to the Antarctic breeze, an invisible standing wave that carves itself between the red waves that rise up to greet the blue, suspended and never to crash. The desert shrubs and flowers are brittle in the chill morning light. We are alone in the bowl of sand – three camels, Kabul, Chloe and Kashgar, the desert and my thoughts.
I turn to Chloe and Kashgar. They stand and watch at attention, their reassuring rhythmic mellifluous grind no longer. Their eyes are bright and their ears are rigid. I turn to Kabul, my dusky woollen companion, my friend, my lead.
The sun is behind the anchor tree and around Kabul leaves dance dark shadows in the stippled sand. The line of his lead rope hums under tension, its shadow a dark arrow to the south. His small hippo ears unmoving, slit nostrils flaring black and red as he tastes his future. His wet brown eyes are shiny with anticipation. Poll glands behind his head oozing, rancid, black and sticky, like the foreboding in my belly.
