by David Mason
Meanwhile, I kept checking distances. I was obsessive about distances. Opening the map, I made lists of distances I had yet to walk and tried to estimate how many days it would take to walk one map sheet of 250,000:1. I confirmed the calculation made short of Dalhousie Springs. A minimum of 25 kilometres per day. Every day. There could be no rest.
In the evening we camped 10 kilometres west of Victory Downs homestead. When we turned into the station earlier in the day I found to my surprise they had a great little shop! I bought an orange, sweet and fresh, two boiled eggs, one ice-cream, one packet of salted peanuts, six sausages, one can tropical fruit, five disposable razors, one Coke. While talking with the family outside their house, I consumed all but the can, sausages and razors.
At about 65 kilometres west of Victory Downs we met Nathan out on patrol of the pastoral lease. He told me that Victory Downs was losing 300 head of cattle a year from its furthest paddock, near Ernabella, to the south-west. Apparently a man from Uluru country would soon appear in court. He had been turned in by people from Ernabella. The Victoria Downs people posted a $l000 reward for anyone reporting theft of a beast. Nathan told me that people would drive up to an animal, shoot it and hack off meat from the side not on the ground. It meant that along with the killing and theft at least half of the meat was wasted and left to rot.
As Nathan drove off and the shadows began to grow from under the trees and bushes to march across the track, I did a short calculation. We had done l08 kilometres in three days. It hardly seemed possible; we were about 75 kilometres from Mulga Park Station where the track would take us north to Mount Conner and then west to Uluru. To the Western Australian border from Mulga Park was about 400 kilometres. It seemed to me that reaching the WA border by the end of the month was achievable. I could see to the end of the journey and repeated to myself a mantra, ‘I could not, must not fail.’
I sat on the food tin and watched little Dalhousie as he grew up. His ears had peeled away from his head, so that at a call from me or Chloe his ears swivelled and turned. He was becoming ever more assertive and very self-centred. He would purse his lips and attempt to bellow, though it sounded more of a bleat. He even started to eat or nibble some of the plants of his elders but still followed close in Chloe’s wake.
The morning was glorious with the sun rising to a full moon in the west. We camped at the bottom of a red rock weather-worn feature near to the track only 60 kilometres or so from Mulga Park Station. The feed was excellent and I left the camels alone to think camel thoughts while they rested recumbent, chewing their cud.
As the camels languidly chewed their cud, I set up the mobile sat phone and called Amber. It soon became clear that one issue I needed to address was that of permits. Aboriginal country meant I needed permits to move across it. Officers of Uluru National Park and the Central Land Council had called but Amber had no luck in getting in touch with them. I needed permits to move across the land because without them my presence would be illegal; or, at the very least, inconsistent with the relevant legislation and policy – whatever that policy was.
I set off in the morning thinking about paperwork until we moved past the Ernabella turnoff. At quarter right, just two kilometres after the turnoff to the Ernabella Aboriginal community, I could see the giant dinner plate of Mount Conner, so named by William Gosse, another European explorer, in 1873, and also known by its Aboriginal name of Artilla. We were at last moving through the centre of Australia, the great bowl that held Uluru, Kata Tjuta, Lake Amadeus and Kings Canyon, and that early European explorers, including Charles Sturt, thought held an inland sea.
Thinking it rude to turn up unannounced to someone’s home in the dark, late in the afternoon I camped just short of Mulga Park Station. Shane Nicol, the lease owner’s son, came out to see us and he returned later with pizza, beer and fruit cake! We chatted about his former place, down south in South Australia, the prevalence of camels on the property – some hundreds according to Shane – and a route to the west. He even suggested following a station track which would have led to the Docker River road and then west.
His enthusiasm took me to the map and I took it from where it lay on my swag and smoothed the case flat on the ground, my headlamp casting a beam across its surface while the insects of the night buzzed and clicked around my head. Not only was the track through Aboriginal country it was at least l30 kilometres as the crow flew and considerably more given the six metre sand dunes. I knew I needed to call the National Parks people and the Central Land Council. I also needed to speak with the Land Council in Western Australia to confirm permits for Aboriginal country there. There was a lot of paperwork to do.
The camels and I walked in to Mulga Park Station in the morning, only two kilometres or so up the road from where we had camped. Over a cup of tea I met Neville, Shane’s father, and we discussed cattle prices and the fact that there was Aboriginal ‘men’s business’ in the Musgrave Ranges to the west. ‘Men’s business’ meant the initiation of young men into the sacred knowledge of the country. In a practical sense it meant that I could not move through this area, which would have cut hundreds of kilometres and weeks from my journey.
I woke next day in a warm bed of blue striped flannelette sheets and feather quilt, lent to me by Alissa, newly married to Shane. After thanking the newlyweds I saddled up the camels and was feeling fine. By 9 a.m., however, I started to get stomach cramps, daggers that struck toward my spine. The cramps were so bad I doubled over from the spasms. Even so, I knew I had to keep moving. I had so little strength that getting one foot in front of the other was an achievement won from pain.
It was my good fortune that Dorothea, Colleen, and Dorothea’s two boys pulled up just before 5.30. Dorothea was a doctor from Bega on the New South Wales South Coast and had taken her sons out of school to travel around Australia for eight months. They invited me to dinner and fed me boiled eggs and potato and cans of fizzy drink. If I had been on my own I would have had nothing more than a large coffee and to bed at 6.30 or so.
I asked Dorothea why she thought it was so important for her sons to see Australia rather than continue through school that year. She smiled at me a gentle smile and reminded me that it was more important to share a sense of wonder and belonging. Wonder could be had by moving through the country, feeling the sun on your skin and talking to people who lived on the land. Belonging could be had in understanding that this place, this country and the people in it were part of us as Australians. Everything else could be learned. She was right.
Next day we camped within a few kilometres of the great elevated red dish of Mount Conner. I hoped the end of the day would see us on the track to the Curtin Springs yards, but I was wrong. Late in the evening I lay in the swag, tired but unable to sleep. We did not make it to the turnoff, or maybe I missed it. Either way I thought it must have been very close. As well as being weary my body ached and my joints hurt. Dorothea diagnosed me with a stomach virus. As she said, ‘Nothing to be done but to go to bed with a hot water bottle’ so as to slow the constant spasms in my belly. Even so I had to eat and dinner was uninspiring, of noodles, one can of baked beans, one slice of fruit cake and lots of water.
The giant disc of Mount Conner.
Just south of Mount Conner and two days from Curtin Springs.
We passed a sun-blasted rocky escarpment to the west of Mount Conner and camped among the sharp rocks. I did not even bother with a fire. All I wanted to do was lie on my back and sleep. I felt my belly concave, reaching for my backbone, and the gasses in my gut, product of the virus. But I knew that no matter what the day brought, no matter how much it hurt, nothing would ever take away from ‘the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars’.
In the morning, feeling pathetically weak, I forced myself to move and we made it to Curtin Springs. The camels I let loose in yards full of pigweed. As I sat to write up my diary I could hear Kabul rolling and farting with joy. Little Dalhousie was clearly chuffed as Chloe just stood still and he got to drink
his fill. Kashgar sighed with pleasure, the flowering pigweed hanging from both corners of her mouth.
Given the presence of the caravan park, fuel bowsers and the small bar, I anticipated more than a few people stopped to enjoy a few beers. What I did not anticipate were the numbers of buses and four-wheel drives passing through ‘The Springs’ on their way to ‘The Rock’. The road to Yulara, the tourist resort just outside the National Park boundary that includes Uluru and Kata Tjuta, was a good sealed road and just a few hours by car or bus from Alice Springs. While the road did not require a four-wheel drive, I was sure the car hire companies were not quick to tell their customers. After all, how can you have an ‘Outback experience’ without a four-wheel drive?
I made a couple of phone calls, one to Amber to get an update on permits, the other to Nick Smail at the Frontier Camel Depot at Yulara. I was keen to stay close to the Camel Depot and camel friendly people while I did my shopping at the Yulara supermarket.
The small pub at Curtin Springs beckoned. I leaned against the long arm of the L-shaped bar and ordered a beer from Ash Severin, the barman. Peter, his father, ran Curtin Springs as a cattle station, taking up the lease in 1956. But most of their money came from the bar and the restaurant just off the highway. On the walls of the bar were ripped and faded flyers of roundups and rodeos, business cards from around the world and comments scrawled in pen, ‘Great pub!’ ‘Great beer!’ and ‘Great place!’ At the far end of the bar I saw a large green Akubra of the sort favoured by the cattlemen of the Territory and a shiny pink face. He said, ‘and the best thing is, yer jump off the ute, throw yer arms around the mother’s neck and cut the bastard’s throat. They goes down then.’ He brought out a large knife he had in a pouch at his side and in sweeping arcs began to flourish the blade.
‘And then,’ as he was sure everyone was listening, ‘ya push the blade into its chest and rip out the camel’s still beating heart,’ and he clenched the air and his curved fingers moved. ‘Too many camels anyway,’ he said, reaching for his beer.
Ash looked at me, smiled and said, ‘Mate, he’s a wanker,’ and from the corner of my eye could see him shake his head. I took my eye from the green Akubra and two people away along the bar, I saw a smoker. He leaned his greasy green rump against the bar and held his cigarette in his right hand, between thumb and middle finger, so that the lighted end almost burned his palm. When he put the filtered end to his lips it was if he was clawing at his own face. The sleeves of his jumper were pulled up and bunched at the elbows to reveal bleeding tattoos of knives and women. He ordered a rum and Coke and I tuned into what he was telling the two British girls who leaned forward into the conversation, hanging off his every word.
He said he had worked at Lightning Ridge in northern New South Wales. ‘Lots of seam opal there’, he said. ‘You get the black stuff in long seams, like black gold.’ His lies were empty things that fell at my feet. I had worked at Lightning Ridge and knew that the opal came in pockets of nodules that you snipped to see what colour they were. So I sighed to myself and turned my body away from them. Even so, I could still hear his lecture.
He talked about his job, ‘From over East. I sell gearboxes and shit. Give out calendars with pictures of sheilas on ‘em.’ Then, in what was probably a response to a question from one of the girls, I heard ‘Blacks! Blacks! Just let me tell you about blacks.’ And I turned to face him. He was dirty stubble on a greasy face, hair hidden underneath a Caterpillar dozer cap and a shine to his small pig eyes, warming to his subject.
‘Bastards they are. And don’t we give ’em everything? Let me tell ya, my brother had an Abo wife, and a kid by her. Pissed her off and got another wife with three kids. I’m telling yers that the little coon kid gets more benefits than the other three put together.’ And he blew out his cheeks, greasy and bristled. For some reason his shiny eyes lighted on me and as he drew himself almost as tall as me, he asked too loudly, ‘So what do ya reckon about that?’ The bar went quiet and I felt the blood pulse in my ears.
I looked at his boots where the steel caps showed through, to the skinny calves, the smear of grease on a hairless knee, the greasy green shorts, the belly, the beige V-necked bunched jumper, the cigarette, the stubble, skin, cap and shiny eyes. I put my beer on the bar, turned to him and said very slowly to everyone, ‘Mate, you are a liar and an ignorant racist bastard.’
I turned from him and ordered a coffee from Ash. I held the polystyrene cup against me and said to Caterpillar Cap, ‘I’m going outside to drink my coffee in the fresh air. If you are looking for trouble, you’ll find it out with me.’
He didn’t follow, which was just as well. I was having enough trouble walking, without having to deal with a brawl. Sometimes you have to do what you think is right. He was not from the bush, but went from bar to bar across the country where he demeaned himself, compromised others and flamed in me a white-hot sense of righteousness.
I lay down in my swag that night, put my hands behind my head, looked at the stars and wondered why Caterpillar Cap and his wilful violent ugliness were tolerated when all they did was alienate and distance people. In a different environment, he would probably retreat to the shadows and keep his poisonous thoughts to himself. Here, though, where people stopped for minutes or hours and met for moments, it was possible to be whatever you wanted to be. It was possible to tell the world what you really thought without a care for seeing people again or being responsible for your words or actions. Curtin Springs would be just the place for Caterpillar Cap.
At around 2 p.m. next day, 30 kilometres west of Curtin Springs, a Land Rover pulled up and out stepped Mark Swindells. Almost two metres tall, with straight, jet black hair and an open, frank face, Mark had been one of a party walking from Broome to Melbourne with camels, but turned back at the Western Australia– Northern Territory border. We talked about camels and he told me he had worked for Noel Fullerton outside Alice Springs. ‘A real bush gentleman,’ Mark described him, and probably Australia’s foremost camel man.
Mark was with William who reckoned he deserted from the Foreign Legion in the early 1960s. I was not so sure, he didn’t even know the ‘Boudin,’ the song known by every Legionnaire. Mark thought William was with British Intelligence and sent to Vietnam. I smiled. At least William had some yarns. Not like Caterpillar Cap, the poisonous smoker with bleeding tattoos. Mark and I talked about my plans, his plans and what might become of my four camel friends.
Early next morning we saw Uluru and further away Kata Tjuta, the Anunga Aboriginal people’s name meaning ‘place of many heads’, red living things floating on a sea of grey green scrub. Uluru’s colour changed in the course of the day, a beating heart affected by cloudy moods. We moved single file through a forest of desert oaks that bent and sighed in the breeze. I thought that if only we knew the language we could understand the whispered secrets of the land.
I watched Uluru growing in the distance, looking like a giant red tree stump floating on the horizon above the bleached and faded gold of prickly spinifex growing in the red earth. I imagined people looking and marvelling at it for tens of thousands of years. At that thought my heart swelled in a bond with those long gone and a shared experience of looking and reaching for understanding of the country.
More pragmatically, the closer we got to Yulara the more concerned I was about getting through the National Park and to the Docker River track beyond. We had permits for the land beyond Uluru and to Warburton in Western Australia, but the National Park Authority was still to make its decision. I had waited on a decision for months and anyway, why would anyone want to stop a fellow with three and a half camels walking across some country?
The administrative aspect of this trip occupied the brown folder in Chloe’s canvas saddle bag. Emotionally, it was eating me away. Just as I was thinking dark thoughts about European administrators a battered Toyota pulled up by the side of the road. Bill, a European adviser with the Mutitjulu community on the southern side of the Rock where the traditiona
l owners lived, stepped from the vehicle. He said, ‘Heard about you the other day. People are looking forward to meeting you. There’s something about a meeting tonight though. It’s National Parks and the traditional owners’ meeting. They’re talking about your application. The local people are fine. See you in a few days.’ I was delighted and much relieved, and we continued on our way, listening to the whisper of the desert oaks.
I should not have felt so relaxed. Next day, after I set up camp at Nick Smail’s Frontier Camel Depot, I called one of the National Park Service officials named Peter. At the end of the call I thought about naming him a few other things. In his best public official’s voice, he said that the traditional owners had endorsed his suggestion ‘that your camel trip would not be in the best interest of the park’.
To put my application in context, Peter told me of an early-morning patrol around the base of the Rock. It was done by one of his Parks officers ‘a little while back’. It had been just on dawn and he had noticed a wisp of smoke coming from a cave. The cave was strictly out of bounds for tourists. It was a place for secret men’s business, where the rituals necessary for the care of the land were performed.
The ranger worked his way to the cave. At a respectful distance from its mouth he asked if anyone was inside. From inside came shouts of abuse, slung from a female voice. It was not long before she presented herself, blonde, naked except for the red earth smeared on her body and a loud California accent.
The ranger tried to tell her that the place was sacred to the local people, that it was special to the men. That she was trespassing. She just put her hands on her hips and said, ‘Hey man. What’s the problem? Fuck off. I have just as much right as anyone. I want to get in touch with the vibe.’
Later, when the Aboriginal men were told, they spoke together sadly, quietly and spent days tending the place and the land. Peter told me that because Uluru was so accessible, people like the Californian were always a problem. ‘It’s like they think they have a monopoly on understanding,’ he said. But this did not help me at all.