Joie de Vivre

I like French Jean. Really like him. He’s a warm, sensitive, interesting guy. We’ve been meeting here and there by chance, we’re both slowly heading towards Perth, and now sometimes we arrange to meet up, in a very loose kinda way. He has a great sense of humour, but also a subtle sadness about him, as if he’s looking for something but can’t quite seem to find it.

He’s riding a big 1000cc road bike around Australia, which is a tough and tiring task, and he told me he’s found the last few weeks difficult, and is glad to have someone like me to hang out with. He keeps thanking me for my support, which is pretty cool because all I seem to do is go out to eat with him, drink beer and wine, have great conversations, and go for walks in beautiful places.

Jean’s not Gene, btw. He hates that pronunciation. Think of him in the French way. He told me that he used to have it all, “the Bondi property, the trophy girlfriend, the sports car, the investments, the high profile high income IT job,” all the things that he thought you needed to live a happy life. But the thing is, he wasn’t happy. Shock horror! You mean it’s not about that!?

So he left everything, and went to live in Phnom Penh, in Cambodia, to try and discover if Eastern philosophies had any answers for him. His life completely changed. He’s studied many schools of Buddhist philosophy, the Vedas, (ancient Sanskrit scriptures), qigong, and all of the modern teachers and thinkers who write about the art of happiness. He told me he’s found some peace in those things. Now, while he still has his home in Sydney, he moves around a lot, and doesn’t feel like he wants to be there much anymore.

Jean’s from a middle class family somewhere in Brittany, and joined the army when he was 19. He was sent to Chad in Africa, then to New Caledonia, and to other French ex-colonies and protectorates, as part of the Special Forces. It was hard. They did some seriously dodgy stuff, like attacking targets with hand grenades and other weapons in the middle of the night, on missions launched from inflatable dinghies, a-la the Rainbow Warrior. Shit! Maybe he sank the Rainbow Warrior??! Bloody hell! I’ll have to ask him about that one. Maybe I can try and get him to refund some of my decades-long Greenpeace subscription money.

Jean came back from the army traumatised. His father forced him to do an engineering degree, then a neighbour’s dad offered him a job in Australia, which he jumped at. What he loves about Australia is that social and class expectations are far less prevalent here, compared to France. In France he said there are three important things, “what you do, what you have, and what other people think of you.” While that’s true for some parts of Australia, most Aussies will generally talk with anyone, everyone is basically seen as equally human here (unless you’re indigenous of course).

Jean and I met up again a couple of nights ago at a campsite at the beginning of the dirt “road” to Purnululu (the Bungle Bungles). My rough plan was to leave my car there, and cycle the 65km in to the National Park, and check it out for a few days. But then I met Ralph, from Melbourne. He’s a mountain biker, has the full rough track mountain bike rig, and he told me it’s the roughest and hardest track he’s ridden so far with high rough corrugations the whole way, and six river crossings. At the moment, at the biggest crossing, the water level is as high as the middle of my thigh (butt-depth for most of you), and very wide, and there may be crocs in there. Hmmm. But my adventure spirit forced me to try cycling the track myself, which I did the next morning.

It was nuts. It was also very very anti-nuts. The corrugations were atrocious, especially on my bike, which isn’t a mountain bike. I know now what it feels like to bearhug a jackhammer for hours on end. My brain was shaken so violently I started to get a headache, and started thinking in Mongolian.

After 20km I was already exhausted, and my hands and butt cheeks were totally bruised, it felt as if I’d just spent the whole night furiously spanking myself. Hard. Well, errr, ummm … I should say it felt like what I imagine that may possibly feel like, in theory. I was so busy cursing through the waterfall of sweat pouring off my upper lip that I forgot to take any pics of the torture chamber itself.

So, given all of that, and as I’d been to Purnululu before anyway, I made the executive decision to abort that particular mission impossible. Phew. I’m so lucky abortion is still legal in this country. For now anyway. So instead I planted my tenderised rump on a soft car seat magic carpet and flew off.

Bush camp cockatoo sunset sentinels

Those road train drivers need to stop drinking so much milk (or is that the Calcium in the water supply)?

Where’s that pig when you need him?

Sock drying rack. Current drying time = approx 2 mins

I think it’s a disgrace that wives aren’t allowed in the toilets

I love the red-green colour coding. Or is it brown-green?

Danggu (Geikie Gorge)

This place, on Bunuba traditional land, is stunning. The scene here looks like the ABC Giant Baby dripped wet black beach sand through its giant hands, all over the place, sculpting, leaving these amazing soft-edged Gaudi-esque shapes that dried into rock. It’s freaky. The beautiful escarpment that runs through here is called a Devonian reef, which is quite strange, given that it’s miles from both Devon and from any ocean.

But it wasn’t always so. This whole region was covered by a vast tropical ocean once upon a time, during the Devonian geological period, over 360m years ago. Inside its waters, algae containing calcium, and these other weird lime-secreting organisms, built an extensive barrier reef system that skirted the then coastline. They kept at it for awhile, about 50m years, give or take a few weeks or so. The reef grew to 2km in depth. Impressive. Then crusty earth movements lifted up the Kimberley, and the sea retreated, unable to keep up, exposing this remarkable Devonian reef.

With the late afternoon sun generously pouring its coloured filtered light all over the gorge reef-face, the scene is absolutely stunning. And, again, there’s no one here. Not one human animal. I’m wondering if my personal camping-pong is actually paying dividends.

I’ve been for a swim, because I can - there’s only freshies here, and they won’t hurt you unless you accidentally jump on them, or if you scare them while you’re in between them and the water. Or if you decide to challenge them at fencing with a stick, which, unfortunately people do. En guard, vous scoundrel! There’s a warning sign at the carpark with a photo of a completely croc-lacerated leg. It wasn’t pretty.

Swimming in this hot hot weather is a super treat. And now I’m sitting on the steep deep sand bank, beautifully cool, taking it all in, after taking it all off. The birds around me are starting to get excited, it’s that time of the day. Like when the tradies finish work and go to the Middle Pub. As I look across the Fitzroy River I can see how high the river gets in the wet season. It’s hard to imagine it so high and wide, check out the pics. Of course I couldn’t be here at that time of the year, unless I came by boat. Much of this whole region is completely inaccessible then.

Btw I’ve become so enlightened on this trip that I’ve learnt how to Astro travel, I don’t wanna brag but I decided to take a selfie of myself zooming around the river on a tree-cloud:

Fitzroy Crossing

What a strange strange place this is. I remember it well, from a crazy trip to this area in my twenties. I’d driven with my sister Mish all the way from Adelaide to Perth, in my old cream Ford Falcon station wagon, one of those old squarish ones with a tailgate and a very back window that you could wind down. It was the best cruising car ever, big, heavy, as strong as a Katherine bouncer, and so wide you could fit 4 people in the front bench seat without their sweaty legs annoying each other too much. I’m pretty sure Mish and I stopped at every single national park in between those cities, it took us months, and was amazing.

Anyway I left the Ford tank with Mish in Perth, and took a non-stop bus all the way from there to Pine Creek, which is north of Katherine. That’s 4000 km by road. What was I thinking? It took about 50 hours, and, actually, the bus did stop, but only for ablutions and sustenance, if roadhouse food could be called that.

I got out at the southern turnoff to Kakadu with my backpack and guitar, it was mid afternoon and it was the middle of summer, over 40 degrees. No, I don’t imagine I was thinking much at all. I was probably too excited, and probably stoned. The bus driver looked genuinely concerned for me, asking me if I had enough water (I didn’t, but told him I did).

Of course it all turned out for the best, because a young Danish couple came past in their van and picked me up, we ended up having a hoot in Kakadu, cruising around, smoking large quantities of side-splitting-laughter-inducing plant substances, and swimming naked whenever we could get our kit off. I was very happy about that particular part, I know that for a fact because I noted it too many times in an old journal.

Anyway, where were we? Sorry, I was thinking of other very nice things. Oh yeah, so I ended up hitching all over the place on that trip, all the way back down to Perth, and to many of the places I’ve been writing about in this blog. At some point I got to Fitzroy Crossing. What a place. It’s like a weird frontier town, and the strange thing is, it still feels exactly the same. There’s not much of substance in the town itself, there’s a roadhouse, a small supermarket, a caravan park, a new tourist lodge for weary grey nomads, and of course a well maintained big police station (which is a given in pretty much any tiny little outpost around these parts, makes you wonder doesn’t it). And then there’s loads of mob, just hanging around, chatting, calling out to each other across roads, or on roads, they all wave at me if I wave at them.

On my hitching trip I distinctly remember an old bar I went to down on the river, a little way out of town, where the mob used to drink. To call it a bar is a bit of an overstatement, it was actually a cage, outside on the riverbank, a fenced box that you could enter, through a high gate, and then the gate was shut after you by a bouncer. You could order a red can, that’s all they sold (red was Emu Export). It was a bit rough in there sometimes, I remember a few arguments breaking out, and when that happened I knew it was time for me to leave.

So I had to go back there this trip, and, of course, it’s still bloody there! But it’s been modified. The cage is now bricked in, it’s a proper building now, but it still has a wire gate as an entrance. The other entrances are roller doors, and there’s a big fenced off area out the back. When I got there it was closed for the day, but by the look of the riff raff around there it hadn’t been closed for long. There were a few bunches of people sitting around under trees, on the median strips, and on the actual road.

One guy hailed me down, not from the footpath, but by walking right in front of my car on the road. I wasn’t going fast anyway. He asked me if I could give them a lift, then he looked inside my car and saw it was jam packed with stuff - most notably my bike + loads of other stuff taking up all the back seat area. However I said I could fit one in, and of course the priority passenger was the oldest fella there, David.

It took me at least five minutes to make room for him in the passenger seat, there was stuff everywhere, and he kept trying to get in and sit down before I could get my bananas etc out of the way of his butt.

He eventually got in and I took him home. What a character! He was the friendliest loveliest man, and so bloody interesting.

He asked me where I was from. I knew not to say Mullumbimby. Nor Byron Bay for that matter. So I said New South Wales. He said, “ah, hey I don’t know where that is, ‘xactly. I know where Melbin is, I bin there, I’s workin’ down there, years ago, but I don’t know that other place.” I asked him where he was from. “From ‘ere mate, bin ‘ere long time.” He told me he liked it around here, and he’d had a bit to drink today, but not too much. Then he told me he was blind in one eye. I asked him if that was from glaucoma, he excitedly said “yeah mate, that’s the one, it’s that one.” He was so appreciative of me bringing him home, he tried to give me a handful of silver coins. I took them all.

No I didn’t, silly.

Bandilṉgan (Windjana Gorge)

The wet season mud has either dried to dusty sand, or is still hard, and criss-crossed by wide cracks. The hot afternoon sun has dipped below the cliff face now, as I slip around the corner, and sit on the sand. A tall, pure white heron glides into the water, and fossicks in the shallows. A long, triple-line of ants work their way to and from their nest somewhere near me, and then back down to a food source near the water’s edge. It’s still and quiet, except for a few soft bird calls and a slight rustle of breeze through the leaves of the big trees in front of me, that are bent over almost horizontally, forming precarious mud-encrusted bridges that thrust out over the river.

I’ve just been chatting with Emma for about an hour. Comforting her. She’s just left her partner of 20 years, and left her three kids, aged 17, 15 and 9, with him. For good. She’s stricken with guilt, but just can’t do it anymore. She’s left Perth, and has taken a locum job with the Derby Shire Council as a Ranger. Just before we met, she had a fire, letting go of many things, by writing them on paper sheets and burning them. She burst into tears as she told me about it. It’s so sad. I told her she needs to nurture herself, if she wants to be able to properly nurture others. But basically I just listened. From the moment we met here she told me her story, she needed to tell someone, and a stranger is sometimes perfect. I was at the right place at the right time. I hope she’s ok, and the rest of her family is too.

This place, Bandilṉgan, (also Bunuba country) has been carved out by the Lennard River, and is also part of the ancient Devonian Reef system, like Danggu. And all of that ancient marine life is also fossilised in the gorge face here.

A grey heron has now rocked up in front of me as well. What is it with me and herons? This is a stunning gorge, taller and grander that Danggu, and you can get much further up by walking. I came in at sunset last night, it was mindblowingly stunning.

They’re not logs

That’s not a half-rotten roo carcuss

There’s a lotta tourists here though, I gotta say. Not here where I am, because I walked up the gorge, but at the gorge entrance, 15 minutes from the carpark. The Gibb River Road is nuts busy at this time of year. The gorge itself is a couple of hours from Derby, you need a 4WD to get here, unless, according to one local, “you don’t care about your car.” Well, I’ve been on worse tracks than that with my little baby. I reckon a bit of tough love is good at the right time.

So, anyway there were lots of tourists at sunset last night, one of those 8WD armoured amphibious tourist tanks rocked up, and all the occupants spilt out all over the gorge entrance:

I said hi to those guys, then went outside the gorge, and walked around the other side of the escarpment, completely alone. Am I turning into a hermit? Maybe. I guess I’d better be careful, with all this navel gazing I might completely disappear in there. Lucky I’ve got an outie, that might help.

Anyway at times like that, I guess I do feel quite hermitty. Sometimes I really wanna fully take a place in. Alone. The waxing half moon shone overhead, the sun burst onto the orange and black rocks, and I greedily gobbled up all that soul food, all that manna from heaven, keeping it all for myself. And for you guys, of course.

Btw have you noticed that I haven’t once used the old “gorgeous gorges” pun in this whole blog? Despite all the gorgeous canyons I’ve visited. See! I didn’t even use it then, and I easily could have, just slipped it in. It’s just so overdone isn’t it. It’s because I’ve got such high standards in my writing, I’m sure you’ve noticed. So I promise I won’t use it, except by accident, in which case my editor should catch it before it gets published.

Anyway the soul food I gorged on on my sunset walk (Ed: you sure you wanna use that word?) was only my dinner, for there was still dessert to come that evening, in the form of a beautiful campfire jam (well, singalong, as I was the only one with an instrument), with a bunch of amazing people I met there, or had met previously. It was soulful, sweet, and beautiful. I really loved it, and it was particularly special for one young couple there, Shane and Maria, as it was their last night on a long trip together, and exactly the fitting end they’d wanted. Perfect.

This is all getting too much, really. I’ve had so much soul food lately, my soul is actually getting quite stuffed. I’d better watch out, I might start vomiting happiness.

Facing Up To Things

So I’m almost at the ocean. I can nearly dip my mulattoes in it. They’re long, but not long enough. My current location is the eye, in this photo of Australia’s face:

I’m not quite at the coast, although it looks that way in the pic.

It looks to me as if Australia is running from something, heading madly to the right. Don’t you reckon it looks scared, mouth open wide like that? Maybe it’s trying to get away from its troubled past? But it’s losing ground, you can see it, the past is finally catching up with us. Of course it’ll catch up, eventually. It always does.

So, from the eye, I’m gonna make my way up the dude’s sweaty forehead next, and then inside the head a bit, to the Pilbara and the Hammersley Ranges, a magnificent vast area of ranges, gorges and incredible river systems. It also happens to be miners Gina Reinhardt and Twiggy Forrest’s golden egg, (or iron egg, to be more specific), and for decades they’ve been ripping and scarring their way through the chook to get to it.

But don’t worry, I’ll show you the good bits❤️