reasons of dreams

 

Gantheaume Point 

Yeah, Marble Bar, which wasn’t on this itinerary, was another place I’d dreamt of visiting. I blame my brother for that one. Way back before I ever came to Australia he mentioned in a letter that he’d been in Marble Bar. Was it ’82? It sounded so Australian. And yeah, bull bars, akubras, beers and red dirt, it was. 

To be honest, back in ’82 it wasn’t until I was half way across the Tasman, New Year’s Eve, that I realized I had no idea where Melbourne was. That was when I was loosely hoping to ride a Gold Wing around the continent. 

A Triton is more suitable. It's achieved the half-way, now. 

Perth, Sydney and Darwin I could place. Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane? No idea. My plane was heading for Melbourne.

But I knew where Marble Bar was.

Well, roughly I did. And I think I sort of forgot over the years. I hadn’t placed it on this itinerary of circling songlines, because I figured that by keeping as close to the coast as was possible, omitting Cape York, I would at least embrace all that I could not reach across the centre of the Big Red Isle.

But mentally I had moved Marble Bar closer to Newman then it actually is. My sidetracks to places like Exmouth and Onslow added kilometres, but nothing like as many kilometres as would somewhere down Newman way. Thankfully and serendipitously, as I dropped in on longstanding friend Josh in Port Hedland, he set me to rights. This famously, or perhaps infamously, hottest town in Australia (although Winston claims the hottest recorded temperature), is a mere couple of hundred kilometres down the road from Port Hedland. So what’s to deter?

That said my quibbles with AustralianSuper were still failing produce any dollars and I was getting a little nervous that cash would dry up somewhere in the Kimberley.

Marble Bar is visually uninspiring. Yet there is something special about being in a place where all the brutality of Australian heat, like sunlight focused through a magnifying glass, reaches its hellish hottest. Even I, thawing out at last once I reached Port Hedland, baulk a little at temperatures in the low 50s centigrade. Not that it was. It was a comfortable 32˚ C.

So I have been to Marble Bar. It was there, and I was there, and it still is, and I am not.

Maybe that is something about this streak of insanity that I harbour. As I stood on the rugged rocks near Pardoo the next day (or whenever!) I could not help but be reminded that these determined forms had battled with the sea and the wind for millions of years and cared not one iota about this speck of dust that stood upon them.

As a former atheist, if not a particularly good one, I have been powerfully aware of the weight that is an empty universe. Earlier in this blog I attempted to be all Zennish, but of course that is not my gig. And out here whether it be in Marble Bar (which has incidentally some of the heaviest traffic that I encountered since Perth - endless streams of ore-bearing road trains, each sixty metres long) … but whether it be out in that meteorological hotspot, or standing on the timeworn cliffs near Pardoo, I am left with the powerful dichotomy: am I utterly, utterly alone, or is there somewhere a mastermind who not only flung formative dust across universe after universe, but flung love and hope into the human heart?

And yes, Gaza, and Sudan, and Ukraine, and the sword of Damocles of mortality that hovers over every human head. But somehow out here in the vastness I am saturated by the dichotomy, the enigma, that this dust and light flinging Creator inexplicably gives a fig and so much more about this crazy mortal being hurtling at legal speeds across a big inhospitable chunk of red dirt.

And I must add, a Creator who can and does care about every indigenous person who arduously trudged this same red dust then I hurtle across in the comfort of my air conditioned vehicle.

For a moment in Marble Bar I paused. I was standing at a wall of remembrance, dedicated to the memory of those who died and were buried in unmarked graves far from their European origins. Such lonely deaths. But in the end we are all dust, headed to the dust once more … and yet … and yet … as I scurry or scramble across the surface of this earth I feel the whisper of that greater, more ancient Truth.

So I headed for Broome. And spent as little time there as possible. Topped up supplies, topped up fuel, topped up water, and was gone from that mish mash of human hurry and opulence (though the rocks at Gantheaume Point were awe-inspiring).

I scurried on into the night, not too many ’roos, and certainly not as many wandering cattle as I had encountered on the road to and from Marble Bar.

But every segment of this journey is different. A bit like you and me, really. I’ve spent 36 hours in wonderful Derby and now off again, into the dawn. Gibb River, here  come (slowly).

More of that next time. But by the way ... after forty days and forty nights my money has finally come through. I can travel (and repay gorgeous daughters).