Tracks (11 page)

Inside three hours, we were back again. Zeleika had stumbled and almost pulled the saddle off Dookie who was in front of her, and two of the canvas bags had ripped because I had not thought of reinforcing the ring handles with leather from the inside. I spent another full day working out how the animals should be tied together: the answer was, with a rope running from the neck of the one in front to the halter of the one behind, the rope passing through the girth, and a nose-line only attached to the saddle in front to keep them from hanging back. So that solved that problem. The canvas bags Toly helped me fix. We were off and once again we waved confidently to Ada who was once again in tears.

It took us eight days of unspeakable hell to walk to Utopia, 150 miles away through vicious and distorting summer. The first day was almost comical in its absurdity. The road leading out of Alice was narrow, twisted and perilous with huge lorries hurtling along it, and if there was one thing that camels hated it was anything bigger than them that moved. So I decided to cut through the back country and meet up with the road further along where it wasn’t so diabolically dangerous. Fine. Only to do that we had to penetrate dense scrub, scale rocky escarpments, stumble over huge boulders and sweat and struggle and panic. If Jenny and Toly remained infuriatingly calm and placid it was only because they didn’t fully understand how unlikely it was that we might make it. Nor how devoid of warning are most cataclysmic events. To my utter amazement, and to their gloating triumph, we made seventeen miles that day unscathed. This minor victory did nothing to alleviate my pessimism — we still had a long way to go.

The next day it became apparent that two of the saddles would have to be drastically altered. Dookie’s shoulder was rubbed white, and one of the pads of Zelly’s saddle kept slipping out. She was a bag of bones by then — she was worrying herself into a skeleton. I did not know that our method of travel was extremely hard on the camels. We were breaking camp at four in the morning, walking until ten, resting in the shade until four, then continuing until eight at night. This was not only tiring them but breaking into their favourite feeding times. They were unused to going without water, and were drinking five gallons a day each and more if they were given it. I was beginning to think all those stories about desert animals were preposterous myths. Jenny and Toly took turns in bringing up the rear with the Toyota. We wouldn’t have made it without that vehicle. I dumped Dookie’s saddle in there and for the rest of the trip he had an easy time of it.

Living on one’s nerves and expecting every moment to produce a horrendous catastrophe is one thing — doing it in 130-degree heat is quite another. Hell must be something like that. By nine o’clock the heat would be so immense, so overwhelming that it would bend the mind a little, but we pushed on religiously for ten a.m., knowing that what we were experiencing at nine a.m. was relatively icy. Then we would begin searching for a spot to rest in — usually some cement drain-pipe beside a melted and shimmering tarred road — and there we would gasp for the allotted number of hours, with wet towels thrown across our burning bodies and sucking on oranges and tepid water canteens. It was not easily forgettable. Toly and Jenny were marvellous. They did not once complain (probably because they couldn’t get a complaint in edgeways) and, to my constant amazement, they seemed actually to be enjoying themselves.

We arrived at Utopia to the welcoming sound of children shouting and hundreds of emaciated mangy camp-dogs howling. The last part of the trip had been almost pleasant, walking along wide white sand-rivers with tall gums to shade us, and dipping our broiled bodies in bore tanks. It had ironed out everything that was wrong with the saddles, gear and me, albeit the hard way, and as such it was a godsend. The work of readjustment and redesign would be enormous I knew, but not insurmountable.

I spent several weeks at Utopia, a beautiful, rich, 170-square-mile cattle property which had been given over to the Aboriginal people under the more generous Labour Government. Contrary to negative press reports, they were managing the property very well, although none of them could hope to get rich as the proceeds had to be divided up among about four hundred people. There were half a dozen whites there, mostly involved in teaching or health work. It was one of the most successful Aboriginal communities in the Territory. The country was flat, grassy, covered in tall scrub in places, dotted with lakes, and through it ran the Sandover River, an enormous white sandy bed which swelled to a red raging torrent when the rains came.

I lived in two silver ovens, laughingly referred to as caravans, with Jenny and Toly, repeating the fiasco of the preceding weeks only on a higher, more finely tuned level of borderline panic. I struggled and dithered with saddles until I thought them perfect or useless. I lost camels, tracked them and found them again. I practised holding my ostentatious compass when nobody was looking. I stared bewildered at topographical maps and tried not to think of certain medical pamphlets. I made lists of lists of lists, then started all over again. And if I did something that wasn’t on a list, I would promptly write it on one and cross it out, with the feeling of having at least accomplished something. I walked in my sleep into Jenny and Toly’s room one night and asked them if they thought everything was going to be all right.

And I was accused by a visiting politico of being a bourgeois individualist. ‘Oh my god, not a bourgeois individualist,’ I thought, as I slunk away to my room, to brood in front of the mirror and bite my nails. For one who had associated herself with the left for years, it was the political equivalent of having VD. I had never been a political animal, even in the heyday of the 1960s, although I had tried. I lacked two essential ingredients. Courage and conviction. This had left me feeling vaguely guilty, a carry-over from when people (including myself) had carried banners stating that if you weren’t part of the solution, you were part of the problem.

I had a long session with the mirror that afternoon, trying to find out if I was a bourgeois individualist or not. Perhaps if I had taken along a company of people and made it a communal camel trip, it would have met with approval? No, that would merely have been liberalism, wouldn’t it? Revisionist at best. Heaven forbid. You can’t win.

All right then, what is an individualist? Am I an individualist because I believe I can take control of my own life? If so, then yes, I was definitely that. All right, bourgeois. A person preferring safety, comfort, illusion, to the hazards and adventures of revolution.’ Well, I supposed it all depended on what you defined as the revolution. And what you considered safe and comfortable. At least part of the revolution had become an effort to puzzle out the very nature of our collective madness.

This preoccupation with whether I was a good guy or a bad guy gradually faded over the next week or so as I watched, antennae out, my Marxist friend perform. He was very bright, with a brain twice the size and weight of a pumpkin. I found him attractive and at the same time he frightened me. I was jealous of his IQ and the way in which he could use the traditionally masculine language of the political intelligentsia to win any argument, and to produce an impenetrable aura of dominance and power around him. He saw any entry into the morbid internal landscape as the realm of the female. He saw it as counter-productive.

Of course, then I understood — anything that smacked of mental struggle, any confession of weakness that might be termed ‘indulgence’ was bourgeois, reactionary, anti-political. Maybe this was why (and I had seen this so often, and marvelled at it, puzzled over it) many politically oriented men — that is, rational, clever, articulate, intellectual, competent, dedicated, revolutionary, verbally aggressive men — found it so difficult to face, or come to terms with, or admit, their own sexism. Because it involved the painful self-indulgence of turning inward, of recognizing in oneself the enemy. While I knew that it is essential for women to become politically articulate, I also believed it might be a good idea for men to understand and use what has, up to now, been the perceptive language commonly attributed to the female.

As it turned out, my friend’s plans for Utopia met with some successes and some failures: the successes because many of his ideas for social change were brilliant and applicable, the failures because he approached Aboriginal people and their situation with a missionary zeal and allowed his political ideals for making a Utopia of Utopia to override a true perception of what was actually happening there, and what the people themselves wanted and needed. When his relationship to the people became difficult and complex for him, when the older ones did not trust him or like him, he translated this as their being ‘reactionary’. And because of his subtle verbal bullying, he missed out on valuable information that could have been given him by, in particular, Jenny, who usually remained silent when he was in the room discussing the future of Utopian blacks. She was made to feel like an inarticulate dodo, and our friend never knew what a wealth of experience and ideas he could have tapped.

He left months later, defeated, and wrote me a long letter saying that at last he understood what I was doing, and that sitting on a sandhill somewhere, contemplating my navel, was not so bad after all. But that was not what I was doing. Once again, I got that nasty, creeping-up-behind-me feeling that I was biting off more than I wanted to chew. Why was everyone so goddamn affected by this trip, adversely or otherwise? Had I stayed back home, studying half-heartedly or working in gambling clubs or drinking at the Royal Exchange Pub and talking about politics, that would have been quite acceptable. I would not have been up for all these astounding projections. So far, people had said that I wanted to commit suicide, that I wanted to do penance for my mother’s death, that I wanted to prove a woman could cross a desert, that I wanted publicity. Some begged me to let them come with me; some were threatening, jealous or inspired; some thought it a joke. The trip was beginning to lose its simplicity.

It was at Utopia that I received a return air ticket to Sydney and a cable saying, ‘Of course we are most interested …’ from
National Geographic.
Now, all this time I had known, or rather, one of me had known, that they would accept my proposal. How could they not? I had written such a cajoling, confident letter. Of course I must take the money and run. I had no choice. I needed handmade water canteens, a new saddle, three pairs of stalwart sandals, not to mention food and pocket money. I also knew at some level that it meant the end of the trip as I had conceived it: knew that it was the wrong thing to do — a sell-out. A stupid but unavoidable mistake. It meant that an international magazine would be interfering — no, not overtly, but would have a vested interest in, would therefore be a subtle, controlling factor in, what had begun as a personal and private gesture. And it meant that Rick would have to be around occasionally to take pictures — something I put out of my mind immediately, saying that he would only come for a day or two at a time, and then only three times during the trip. I would hardly notice his presence. But I knew that this would alter irrevocably the whole texture of what I wanted to do, which was to be alone, to test, to push, to unclog my brain of all its extraneous debris, not to be protected, to be stripped of all the social crutches, not to be hampered by any outside interference whatsoever, well meant or not. But the decisions had already been made. Practicality had won the day. I had sold a great swatch of my freedom and most of the trip’s integrity for four thousand dollars. That’s the breaks.

The night before I was to wing my way south, we all gathered in the caravan with the object of fitting me out for the journey. Julia, a friend of Jenny’s, was there too, and I played dressing-up with their clothes. All I had were old baggy men’s bowling trousers, ten-year-old bright red patent-leather dancing pumps, shirts you could spit through, sarongs with holes in the wrong places, derelict running shoes, and a couple of dresses stained with all manner of camel excreta. We agreed that arriving at a posh hotel for a conference with the heads of
National Geographic
dressed like that would be a bit too authentic. So I tizzed myself up in tight jeans and high-heeled suicide boots. It did nothing for my confidence. I gathered my maps together and tucked them impressively and efficiently under my arm, so as to appear capable and sure of what I was doing, then realized that I didn’t know very much about the country I was about to go over, should they ask me any embarrassing questions. I decided to fake it.

I suffered during that dress rehearsal. My friends clapped hands to foreheads and groaned theatrically. I hadn’t even planned out the route coherently yet. And I suffered. I suffered that sickening, palm-sweating, pre-exam terror all the way to Sydney and right through the two hours with Rick, right up to the moment when I walked into the bar to meet those extraordinary Americans who were going to give me money for nothing — and then I switched into cool, suave little-miss-has-it-all-together-and-you-might-be-lucky-enough-to-get-some 1977. The interview took fifteen minutes and then everyone agreed that it was a fascinating idea and I obviously knew a great deal about the country and yes,
Geographic
would send me the cheque very soon and how charming to meet you my dear, we look forward to seeing you in Washington when you come to write the story and what a marvellous book it would make have you thought of writing a book dear and good luck goodbye.

‘Rick, do you mean to tell me they’ve actually said yes?’

‘Yes, they’ve said yes.’

‘Rick, do you mean to tell me it’s that easy?’

(Laughing) ‘You were great. Really. You didn’t look scared at all.’

My hysterical cackle kept up for about two hours. I was on an untouchable high. I had sprouted metaphorical wings. The trip was real. The last hurdle had been cleared with flying colours. I hooted and clapped Rick on the back. I drank margaritas and tipped waiters. I beamed at elevator men. I surprised hotel maids with my cheery hellos. I swung down King’s Cross like a million dollars. And then I slowly collapsed. Like a bicycle tyre with a slow leak.