Walk across Australia

by David Mason

  Just before the sun moved above the horizon in the morning, I turned to the west and saw the moon before it set. The dappled sphere was as large as I had ever seen it and solid gold. I returned its smile and, as the fire’s embers flickered, sucked on the sweet hot coffee in my hand.

  We must have walked over 25 kilometres as we moved into Diamantina Shire, dropping through a gap that led to a magnificent view of the country west. There was a clear drop to the rusty bowl of the land and a view to the horizon that bent around the sky. I wondered what the Aboriginal people called this country west of the escarpment and sadly admitted to myself that I would probably never know. We camped at a gravel borrow pit full of water at the foot of the drop. After the camels decided not to drink at Taracara Bore earlier in the day, there was nothing but desultory slurps after four days without water, I tried again. That evening though, they really took it up. Kashgar pursed her lips and took more time than the others. I wondered why she seemed to need more when she carried so much less than the other two.

  But it was a miserable camp, stony with no breeze to cool my cheeks. I had hoped to camp on something that held better feed for the camels. Dropping down to the gravel pit seemed a good idea, such places normally had plenty of pigweed. Not here. Maybe the ground was too hard. My body was still sore but I felt a little better, helped by a wash in the brown water of the pit. I washed my hair and my body and, despite the cold water, the grit and the mosquitoes, I felt refreshed. I felt so good I smiled for the second time that day and the dried silt of the pit cracked on my face.

  On the track next day, just short of the Betoota Hotel, I met Dave Graham. He was on his way to Mount Leonard Station, a cattle station like all the places out here, only 10 kilometres away. He stopped his vehicle and I saw him reach across the seat. I heard a full bottle clink and he said with his head through the window, ‘You probably wouldn’t mind a drink!’ The beer was warm. He had brought the carton in Windorah earlier that day, a place for me that was over a week away. I tied the camels to a bush and joined him leaning against his car.

  Dave Graham.

  At 52 years of age he looked what he had done all his life. His legs were bowed, his hands large, dark and callused. His eyes were narrowed from looking too long into the sun, his nose broken from too many Saturday nights in town. The diamonds in his eyes grew brittle and he said, ‘I’m a ringer and a horse tailer. Always have been, always will be. And no one is going to tell me any different.’

  Camels and I arrived at the Betoota Hotel, just a boarded-up one-storey stone building, early in the afternoon. Simon Remienko, who people referred to as Ziggy, owned and ran the pub for 35 years and only the year before shut it down, though he still lived there. He had come to Australia from Poland when he was 25, became a grader driver out of Boulia to the north and brought the pub in 1953. He allowed me to put up the camels in one of his outside pens full of pigweed. The crunchy sound of the moisture-rich weed being chewed by my friends was music to my ears.

  That night Dave Graham and I sat with Ziggy and talked. We sat in the kitchen with the flames of hurricane lamps flickering – Ziggy had switched off the generator ‘to save important diesel,’ he said. Sitting there, on hard chairs, elbows on an enormous dark wooden table, it was like being in a cave, the light from the lamps stroking shadows on the walls. Dave tried to extract beer, and his eyes keep glancing to the door leading into the bar and its dust-coated bottles, but Ziggy ignored him and wanted to tell stories about drug-running and crime out in the west. He was in his eighties, lean with a pinched face of fear and anxiety. He said he distrusted everyone and when his attention turned to me he could not believe I was doing this trip for adventure and to raise money for a charity. Instead, he turned his head to look at me from the corner of narrow eyes and said in his Polish accent, ‘If I cannot understand why you do things, I cannot understand you. If I cannot understand you, how can I trust you?’

  Dave commented that this was very insightful and licked his lips. For my part I asked, ‘How can we ever really know another person; their fears and their hopes? Isn’t it better to treat a person as you would be treated – at least until proved otherwise?’ Ziggy snorted and called me naive.

  In the course of that night I did learn that as long ago as 1885 the Queensland government set up a customs post on the bleak gibber plain to collect a toll for stock headed to South Australia. This was discontinued at Federation in 1901. The town was surveyed in 1887, expanded to include three hotels and a police station and became a site of a Cobb & Co. change station. There was little left now though, just the one hotel, surrounded by wire, broken bottles, flapping corrugated iron, enormous views and the pinched fear of one man.

  We left breaking camp a little later than usual as the feed was so good, because Ziggy was not up until after 9 a.m. and because it took him so long to unlock the fortress that was the pub. As he moved through the stone building I could hear the sliding of chains and the rattling of keys. Eccentric and fearful? Absolutely, he was paranoid.

  Chloe was shitting a bit wet early in the morning and was very flighty in the afternoon. Her udder was so swollen it looked like an inflated rubber glove. There seemed little doubt that a calf was on the way. I wondered when it was due and what I would do when it was born. I decided there was no need for a decision just then so put it out of my mind. I’d worry about these things when the birth occurred.

  On the walk from Betoota along the track to Birdsville we followed a mesa that trended west. Small, rust-coloured gibber stones and stunted grey-green leaved trees with white trunks painted the ground of the country sloping gently away north to the Diamantina River. The course of the river was a denser green, a songline of sand, white trunks and canopy shade. It was the umbilical cord to Lake Eyre a thousand kilometres away. To say that I loved this country was not enough; I needed it. There was a poignant sparse beauty in the loneliness, the caw of a crow, the screech of a cockatoo or the loping hop of a kangaroo. Time and space on your own permitted the petty and small matters to dissolve and allowed transcendence and the heart to sing.

  I had been carefully checking the map and at last there were sand dunes on the left-hand side, the western side, of the map. Sand dunes! And not long before midday we reached the first. As I sat on the swag that night I knew that at last the real test was about to begin.

  That night I tethered the camels to bushes, ensuring the rope was wrapped around the base. There was a yellow flowering succulent plant that the camels loved. It was similar to pigweed with an even greener stem. The camels munched their way through great mouthfuls that I relayed to them from along the dune. While I was collecting I did not have to worry about pricking fingers on a cactus. Cacti rely on seasonal torrential downpours. Here in western Queensland, rain is less frequent than that and these succulents would disappear after only a few months. I placed the crunchy green clumps in sacrificial piles before each camel. They did not even have to stand to eat their fill.

  The following day dawned grey and overcast, with the occasional drop of rain and no wind. Later in the afternoon we were slowed down by a mob of brumbies. The horses had probably never seen camels before and were prancing and snorting into the air with the strange smell of them. Led by a large dark stallion, they circled and galloped off, circled and galloped off. At last they lost interest and cantered away to the south. The camels were not alarmed. They just lifted their noses, winked red nostrils and sifted the air for new scents.

  I set up camp under a sky spitting cold needles. It was bitterly cold and my hands did not want to work. Kabul rested with his head stretched out on the sand in front of him. His eyes mesmerised by the dancing flames of the fire. As I lay in the swag that night I could feel the sharp hard ends of sleeping bag feathers against my skinny white thighs and I wrote up my diary in the thin beam of my headlamp.

  Dawn next day was a repeat of the day before. For a moment I entertained the deliciously tempting thought of slipping back into the swag and waiting for the
weather to clear. I shook my head to clear it of such self-indulgence, packed up and headed off. It was a grey and miserable morning with an odd meeting. A car pulled up just beyond us and poked a video camera out of the passenger window. As we drew up to the vehicle the driver revved the engine, dropped the clutch, and in a cloud of dust that engulfed us accelerated away. As the vehicle moved off I could hear the last part of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ loud and thumping with a deep bass.

  What was the point in coming out here? Why not have a friend take a video of the road, sit at home and watch it, with appropriate air-conditioning and music, and a fast forward through the less interesting parts? I could picture people in their cars, the land scrolling past, no sound, smell or feel of the land, consulting a road map as if it were a television guide.

  There was more feed for the camels and I had not watered them for four days. They were still shitting wet and pissing plenty of clear water. Obviously the availability of pigweed was the major determining factor and I reminded myself that we were moving in a very good year indeed. The land was one of open vistas and were it not so vegetated would be very like the Republic of Djibouti where the rocks were so much newer and therefore not so rounded as they were here.

  Only a few days from Birdsville.

  I sat on my food tin and wrote up my diary in a few square metres of firelight, my home for the night. On that track to Birdsville I wondered if anyone would ever know I had been in that place, dreaming of the future. As I did so often to focus my mind, I prepared a list. This list was of supplies I needed for first recorded solo east to west crossing of the Simpson Desert:

  Muesli bars

  100

  Tins smoked mussels/oysters

  18

  Tins tuna

  12

  Tins baked beans

  8

  Tins corned beef

  18

  Kilos of rice

  5

  Packets of spaghetti

  4

  Packets of sugar

  4

  Packets of muesli 750g

  6

  Packets of noodles

  21

  Packets of dried fruit

  4

  Small cans tomato paste

  22

  Just outside Birdsville.

  We camped just away from the turnoff to Roseberth Station. From the campsite I could see that at least one station building was 30 metres above the river on the end of a dark red spur line. From its windows there must have had a wonderful view of the open plain to the north and across the Diamantina River. It looked like a Crusader castle perched as a precaution against siege from flooding.

  The day before we made it into Birdsville I was very cold in the morning and the dry frigid air sucked the moisture from my throat. We moved at last off the harder, stony country and into the sand hills around Birdsville. We were so close to town that we watched a light aircraft angling down on its run to Birdsville airstrip.

  We camped only 15 kilometres out of town, in a little hollow to escape the breeze, but it still seemed to find me and touch my bones. I wondered if Amber would be there to meet me. In hope I boiled some water in the billy, gave myself a hot sponge bath and even washed my hair. How good it felt to be lathered and clean.

  I lay in the swag and wondered how I had made it that far.

  5 Across the Simpson Desert

  – 24 June 1998

  The most forbidding our eyes had ever wandered over.

  Charles Sturt, 1845

  Camp 1 – 24 June

  The camels and I camped on the other side of the ‘ten mile’ dune, named because it was that far from the Birdsville Hotel. It was where Malcolm Fraser, a former prime minister, came for a break from the pressures of office and camped in the desert.

  After unloading and turning out the camels on long lines, it was all I could do to cook noodles and heat a can of baked beans before I went to bed. I had a pain in my head that threatened to burst like a live thing from my temple, probably brought on by a recalcitrant Kashgar, loads that did not seem quite right and the stress of the departure from Birdsville.

  Everything was done in slow motion. With the pounding in my head I barely managed to bend over and pull the saddles from the camels’ backs. Knowing I was in trouble I forced myself to double-check the knots of each line and give a quiet word and gentle brush to each camel. All I wanted was the deep sleep of the swag and to rest. Before 8 that night I was horizontal and dreaming.

  Birdsville is 1590 kilometres west of Brisbane with a permanent population of less than 100. Proclaimed a town in 1887, like Betoota, Birdsville was established to collect tolls from those who drove cattle, mainly from Queensland to the railhead at Maree in South Australia, at the end of the Birdsville Track. When Federation saw the end of inter-colony tolls the town declined. Before itwas gazetted, some of Australia’s most famous European explorers moved through the district, following the Diamantina River. Explorers included Sturt, Burke and Wills, Madigan and others. I had read their reports or, at least, many of the books about them.

  Sure, my time in Birdsville was wonderful, but not really relaxing. There was plenty to eat and drink and it was wonderful to see Amber again. To hold her, touch her soft skin and smell her hair made the days of emptiness worthwhile. We laughed and smiled at each other again. I was sorry I made her cry as I took off my clothes. She told me I was very skinny and I felt her tears on my shoulder as she held me tight at night. Perhaps she was frightened by what she saw, not only my physical condition but my obsession and determination and commitment to continue. If she did not raise the question of our relationship, I knew I would not. So we kept silent on the future and held each other close in the present.

  In the few days I was in town I met a number of locals. One morning I was feeding the camels on the western edge of town when a tour guide offered to show Amber and me a tree that had been blazed by Burke and Wills. These two had undertaken a journey through this country in 1860 and 1861 on the first crossing of Australia from Melbourne in the south to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north – and back. The tree’s trunk was narrow and it looked to me like the blaze was dated from 1961. Whoever had scarred the tree forgot that Burke and Wills cut their trees with roman numerals. There was nothing fictional about the story of Burke and Wills though, and the pain, suffering and coincidence sat equally as a tragedy worthy of Shakespeare and as an important fragment of Australian history.

  Robert O’Hara Burke and his second-in-command, William Wills, died in circumstances that bring tears to those who hear or read of the story for the first time; or for that matter, even those who read it more often. That they died was in part due to inexperience and a lack of knowledge of the people and country around them. Their deaths linger in the minds of so many Australians precisely because their deaths are testament to, and confirmation of, fear of a place that is unknown, threatening and unforgiving.

  At least one reason to dispel uncertainty about what lay in Australia’s centre was driven by the quest for better and faster communications between Australia’s colonies and the rest of the world. From the First Fleet of English officers, convicts and settlers who departed England in 1787, communication came only by ship. The journey took six months, sometimes longer, and too often the ships did not arrive, lost on the rocks of Australia’s coastline or in the seas of the Roaring Forties. By 1860, though, plans were being made for a submarine telegraph cable linking Australia with India and the rest of the world. The question for decision makers in the Australian colonies was where the cable should land. Leaders in South Australia argued that it should be brought ashore on the northern coast, near the mouth of the Victoria River, and then cross the continent’s heart to Adelaide. In Victoria and New South Wales others argued that the line should be brought ashore at the Gulf of Carpentaria or Cape York and then south to Sydney and Melbourne.

  Birdsville Hotel.

  In practical terms though, the centre of Australia ha
d to be crossed before the line could be surveyed. The South Australian government offered a £2000 prize for the first expedition to cross from south to north. In Melbourne, the Royal Society of Victoria set up an Exploration Committee which raised £3000 and appointed Robert O’Hara Burke, Inspector of Mounted Police in the Goldfields, as leader of its expedition.

  Burke’s expedition set off from Melbourne on 19 August 1860. There were 15 Europeans, 3 Indians to manage the 25 specially imported camels, 22 horses and more than 21 tons of stores and equipment. After arguing with most of those who accompanied him, including those who had far more experience of the inland, Burke appointed William Wills as his second in command. He then split his party and on 16 December set out from Cooper Creek, south of present day Birdsville, for the Gulf of Carpentaria, some 1200 kilometres to the north. Reaching the Gulf on 11 February 1861 the small party of four men, one horse and six camels turned to retrace their steps to the relative safety of Cooper Creek and the depot camp party they thought would be awaiting their return.

  Before leaving Cooper Creek, Burke told the leader of the depot party that he was not to wait at the Cooper longer than 12 weeks. The leader, William Brahe, later told the committee of inquiry into the expedition that Burke had said to him, ‘If we are not back in three months, consider us dead.’ Though Brahe waited four months, Burke still did not return.

  Moving away from the camp east of Birdsville and into town and toward the Simpson Desert.

  Despite the suffering he and his team endured, Burke, Wills and John King did return to the depot on the Cooper in the evening of 21 April. The same day, Brahe and his men had abandoned the camp, leaving a cache of food at the base of the famous ‘DIG tree’ on the northern bank of Bullah Bullah waterhole of Cooper Creek. Blazed on a branch by Brahe was the date of his departure and on the trunk: