circling songlines

Camp 119   By the time I reached the Gulf Country any hope of keeping this blog relatively current was gone. I had wildly under-estimated the degree to which I would be off-grid. The telco, Vodaphone, assured me at Tullamarine (Melbourne’s international and domestic airport) that they had something like 98% coverage, but of course that was by population, not area … I sussed that out when I asked the eager Tullamarine telco salesperson about coverage at Gibb River, a random outback site that I threw at him. Like many Australians he had no idea of anywhere beyond the boundaries of his city. If that. As one respondent to my Facebook posts noted, I had travelled far more of Australia than most Australians. That was true even before this trip. But it’s now my task to soldier on, finding ways to turn an adventure into words … I hope you stick with me? Oh, and elsewhere a pictorial travelogue is slowly forming too. Look out! So I reached Borroloola, and I reached Bing Bong, and I ...

  Okay. Timey wimey and all that. While some writers, though maybe not so many bloggers, write in the first person present tense, “I walk across the room, I turn on the light,” there are few polite words for that technique. Mate, if you’re walking and turning, somersaulting even, then you’re not writing, see? Willing suspension of disbelief can go so far, can even go to the beyonds of time and space, but walking, talking, turning while simultaneously writing is, yeah, up there with juggling oranges with your ears while eating porridge (“oatmeal” to you non-English speakers) from an Orrefors champagne flute. So yeah. As it happens I’m writing from Melbourne, where I’m cold and damp. I wrote my last piece from Townsville, where Narrative-me has not yet reached, but where at least I was warm. Narrative-me reached Normanton, via Bing Bong, but Typing, Cold-me wants to backtrack, back across the deserted lands of the Gulf, or some of it. Back to Bing Bong and surrounds. Bing Bong...

Rat-a-tat-tat. The decision was made for me. I had to nick out first thing to buy breakfast supplies. The sound of a muffled machine gun under the bonnet heralded the response of my trusty steed. Not gonna happen, bro.  It’s an all too familiar sound to those of us who have experienced a lifetime of mechanically and chronologically challenged cars. But, joy of joys, Son Unit # 1 had purchased me a car-strength power bank for my travels. Brrrrm. Love the sound of a diesel ticking over. I took the Triton for a 40 km run to ensure it was fired up. Turned it off, fired it up again to ensure that all was well. It was. Brrm brrm chugga chug. Took my time over breakfast. Muesli, yoghurt and fruit in the rising Territory sun.  I finished loading and turned the key once more. Rat-a-tat-tat. A local mechanic kindly looked at it for me, after Son Unit’s gift had worked its magic again. He wasn’t sure if it was electrical or mechanical, and his tests were (weirdly) inconclus...

  The notion of “circling songlines” that governed my route plan was, as far as practical, to follow the route I had fondly imagined back in 1982-3, when I and my dreamed-of Goldwing would circumnavigate the continent’s mainland. I hadn’t heard of songlines, back then. Interestingly I saw several “songlines” sweat- and tee-shirts in the north, this trip. After hundreds of years Europeans are acknowledging that Indigenous societies were interconnected by a vast network of trade and communication channels. Songlines criss-crossed a vast continent from Bamaga (and beyond) to the lands of the Nyoongar people around Hamelin Bay, from Karratha to Mallacoota. Perhaps across Tayaritja (Bass Strait) too. Sorry Tasmania.   Remember the Commonwealth Games opening when you were forgotten in the choreography? I haven’t forgotten you. But a bit like our Rakiura, there’s a few practicalities. And I’ve had to omit the York Peninsula, at least for the time being. More practicalities. It’s ...

  Dawn at Five Rivers lookout As I sit down to write after a too long silence (unavoidable) big blops of sub-tropical rain are falling.  Except they’re not, because weather apps, and even the Australia Bureau of Meteorology, assure me it is “sunny with no rain.” Silly me. I haven’t seen rain since, as I mentioned, the Pinnacles, near Geraldton in WA. That, according online apps, about 5263 km. Except it isn’t. You could just about take that route these days because they’re slowly making it passable, but no. Not this little black duck. Not because I’m crazy, but because I’m less crazy that you think I am, it’s actually been approximately 9,600 kms since I last saw rain. Besides, a diameter doth not a circling make. If you happen to be interested in the whole saga, including the extra two or three thousand kilometres necessitated by a dodgy mechanic, the car has travelled 18,146 since I bought it. Which is why I’m taking about twelve days off the big stuff, waiting to ha...

  If you happen to be in Derby (which to the horror of my Derbyshirian friend Lisa is pronounced to rhyme with Herbie) and to be planning to drive East, you face an existential choice. I find such choices are often shaped by conversations in laundromats and pubs. Søren Kierkegaard never mentioned that. Though to be honest I probably only ever digested one paragraph of his seemingly endless angst-thought. Though did I tell you the story of a bus trip I took from Brisbane to Adelaide? Somewhere after Dubbo my next-seat neighbour could stand it no longer. The world’s most moebius strip, most Escher-esque question must be “is that an interesting book you’re reading?” Admittedly it’s fairly pretentious to read Kierkegaard on a bus (as it is to mention Kierkegaard, or write “Escher-esque” in a blog, but moi ?). At any rate I was reading The Sickness Unto Death because I thought Kierkegaard might say something useful for a thesis I was writing about universalist Christology and fo...