Namadgi National Park
Friday 25 June 2010
The Nullarbor
In the sad dry shade the Aboriginal man sits, under the Victoria Bitter advert, old and peeling in the sun, and everything about him is heavy: matt-black skin and waves of excess flesh; thick dull hair and eyes cast down as though some invisible yet cumbersome force pulls forever on his gaze.
From the highway, then, a road train roars, and crows, scattered black in the pale blue sky, circle and return, scavengers, to the road, picking at the bits of kangaroo that are still of use; intestine perhaps, or lung. And the dead animal rots, and putrefies the air with a stench so thick you can taste it when you breathe.
Above the man, nailed over a window, a plywood sheet crumbles and flakes - the word 'CLOSED' scrawled across it in big black letters. And then, in smaller ones, 'NO FUEL. NO WATER. NO NOTHING.'
On the man's black skin, the light grey dust of concrete, old and dry and falling slowly down. The weight of the man fills all space it seems, even right angles, as water fills a glass. Perhaps only his efforts keep the wall from collapse. Perhaps that is why he is here.
Flies around him buzz, and around us too. They crawl over skin and settle, parasitic, to feed on the moisture in the corners of our eyes. We eat inside the van where at least there is an end to the attritional warfare with these tormenting flecks of little hell! Through the window I offer unseen and stupid, apologetic smiles. For the flies? Or the 19th century? Or the 20th? For the obesity that sags around his bones perhaps and anchors him to the ground.
A caravan pulls in, slows, surveys the scene. A closed pub. A boarded-up roadhouse falling into dust. Two sad old petrol pumps, their metal stripped of paint. A fat black man sat nowhere. Us. Tourists tricked into visiting this desolate, horrible place. The caravan pulls away without stopping, and soon we follow.
A bicycle bumps in potholes and out of the disused gas station and becomes tiny, one supposes, to the man we never spoke to if he tears his heavy eyes from the dull and dusty ground.
From the highway, then, a road train roars, and crows, scattered black in the pale blue sky, circle and return, scavengers, to the road, picking at the bits of kangaroo that are still of use; intestine perhaps, or lung. And the dead animal rots, and putrefies the air with a stench so thick you can taste it when you breathe.
Above the man, nailed over a window, a plywood sheet crumbles and flakes - the word 'CLOSED' scrawled across it in big black letters. And then, in smaller ones, 'NO FUEL. NO WATER. NO NOTHING.'
On the man's black skin, the light grey dust of concrete, old and dry and falling slowly down. The weight of the man fills all space it seems, even right angles, as water fills a glass. Perhaps only his efforts keep the wall from collapse. Perhaps that is why he is here.
Flies around him buzz, and around us too. They crawl over skin and settle, parasitic, to feed on the moisture in the corners of our eyes. We eat inside the van where at least there is an end to the attritional warfare with these tormenting flecks of little hell! Through the window I offer unseen and stupid, apologetic smiles. For the flies? Or the 19th century? Or the 20th? For the obesity that sags around his bones perhaps and anchors him to the ground.
A caravan pulls in, slows, surveys the scene. A closed pub. A boarded-up roadhouse falling into dust. Two sad old petrol pumps, their metal stripped of paint. A fat black man sat nowhere. Us. Tourists tricked into visiting this desolate, horrible place. The caravan pulls away without stopping, and soon we follow.
A bicycle bumps in potholes and out of the disused gas station and becomes tiny, one supposes, to the man we never spoke to if he tears his heavy eyes from the dull and dusty ground.
Friday 4 June 2010
Thursday 3 June 2010
PRISONERS!!
Mid-March, and the end of summer in Perth, and the first drought-breaking specks of rain in the thin and gasping air. I had been there nearly two weeks, with family, doing nice things like going for picnics and to the cinema, visiting art galleries and eating ice cream, looking out at the blue and blinding yellow sea when I made it that way. I was getting used to drinking tap water again, to not seeing whole families piled on motorbikes anymore, and to the strange and disconnected feeling I had toward this strange and sprawling city of bungalows and sun. Of neat, clean roads and dry, hot afternoons.
Then my mum came over from the UK, and it started really raining. A week later we were saying our goodbyes and heading south past the grey-brown-yellow, barren roadsides and the tangled, wiry bush. My mum had hired a van and we had filled it with food, deciding to meet every 50 kilometres or so for the next 3000 kilometres, and in this way I would eat the food and we would spend some time together.
On the second night, after riding 100 miles, I saw my mum standing in the falling dusk outside the van. She was waiting for me, in a lay by, to emerge from the trees that were becoming now only the black ambiguous silhouettes of anything at all. She looked terrified.
"Get inside, quickly," she said, and waved me into the van, with a face which said: I am not having a good time, I am definitely not enjoying this at all. "There's a prisoner on the loose," she said, and with the terrified seriousness of someone who is about to die in quite a gripping, yet understated film she continued, "There were signs all along the road - 'BEWARE PRISONERS'"
In the thick darkness that lay outside we could make out only slightly the black, gnarled shapes of trees and the deep rich blue of the sky. I told mum not to worry about the prisoner, reasoning somehow that we were sure to be okay, and that the escaped prisoner would almost certainly leave us alone. It somehow worked - my mum fell asleep. I didn't. Rather, I peeped through the curtains every five minutes or so, exhausted from the ride and yet terribly, quite horrifically, awake.
Though the prisoner didn't appear I had the five minutes each time I snapped the curtain shut to consider what kind of a prisoner he was: whether he was the kind to break into vehicles violently, regardless of who was inside, or whether he was simply going to lie low, as they say, and not do anything silly like attacking tourists. Maybe he was a psycopathic killer with nothing to lose. In the dead of night I thought about this being a strange way for my trip to end - murdered with my mum, in a campervan, in Australia of all places, and not even halfway! Then I fell asleep.
The next day my mum saw the signs again. In the new, brighter light however they had changed their stance. They now read, 'BEWARE POISONS' and went on to inform dog owners that poisoned baits of meat had been placed in the area to kill foxes. The next evening was more restful, no peeping now through the curtains and into the empty dark, and we continued on our way towards the Nullarbor plain.
Then my mum came over from the UK, and it started really raining. A week later we were saying our goodbyes and heading south past the grey-brown-yellow, barren roadsides and the tangled, wiry bush. My mum had hired a van and we had filled it with food, deciding to meet every 50 kilometres or so for the next 3000 kilometres, and in this way I would eat the food and we would spend some time together.
On the second night, after riding 100 miles, I saw my mum standing in the falling dusk outside the van. She was waiting for me, in a lay by, to emerge from the trees that were becoming now only the black ambiguous silhouettes of anything at all. She looked terrified.
"Get inside, quickly," she said, and waved me into the van, with a face which said: I am not having a good time, I am definitely not enjoying this at all. "There's a prisoner on the loose," she said, and with the terrified seriousness of someone who is about to die in quite a gripping, yet understated film she continued, "There were signs all along the road - 'BEWARE PRISONERS'"
In the thick darkness that lay outside we could make out only slightly the black, gnarled shapes of trees and the deep rich blue of the sky. I told mum not to worry about the prisoner, reasoning somehow that we were sure to be okay, and that the escaped prisoner would almost certainly leave us alone. It somehow worked - my mum fell asleep. I didn't. Rather, I peeped through the curtains every five minutes or so, exhausted from the ride and yet terribly, quite horrifically, awake.
Though the prisoner didn't appear I had the five minutes each time I snapped the curtain shut to consider what kind of a prisoner he was: whether he was the kind to break into vehicles violently, regardless of who was inside, or whether he was simply going to lie low, as they say, and not do anything silly like attacking tourists. Maybe he was a psycopathic killer with nothing to lose. In the dead of night I thought about this being a strange way for my trip to end - murdered with my mum, in a campervan, in Australia of all places, and not even halfway! Then I fell asleep.
The next day my mum saw the signs again. In the new, brighter light however they had changed their stance. They now read, 'BEWARE POISONS' and went on to inform dog owners that poisoned baits of meat had been placed in the area to kill foxes. The next evening was more restful, no peeping now through the curtains and into the empty dark, and we continued on our way towards the Nullarbor plain.
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