Tracks (5 page)

I flew back home in a light aircraft over the endless wastes of the Simpson Desert which had me thinking twice about the foolhardiness of my trip. Nancy and Robin lived on a fruit farm in the granite hills of southern Queensland. Oh the lush green sogginess of coastal country. It was so long since I’d been there and it now looked closed in and cluttered.

Nancy noticed immediately the changes in me and we talked into the wee hours of every morning over coffee and whisky and cigarettes. Many of my friends were there and it was indescribably good to be once again in an atmosphere of loving kindness. I entertained them with tall tales and true of the legendary West. It was like medicine to be able to laugh like that again. The afternoon before I was to leave, Nancy and I went for a walk in the bush. We didn’t talk much but eventually she said, ‘Rob, I really like what you’re doing. I didn’t understand it before, but getting off your butt and actually doing something for yourself is important for all of us. And although I can’t say I won’t miss you like hell, and won’t worry about you often, I can say that what you’re doing is great and I love you for it. It’s important that we leave each other and the comfort of it, and circle away, even though it’s hard sometimes, so that we can come back and swap information about what we’ve learnt even if what we do changes us and we risk not recognizing each other when we return.’

That night, we had a going-away party in the barn and danced and drank and laughed and talked until dawn.

I have never uncovered anywhere the same bonds of friendship as I found in certain small sections of Australian society. It has something to do with the old code of mateship, and something to do with the fact that people have time to care for one another, and something to do with the fact that dissidents have had to stick together, and something to do with the fact that competition and achievement are not very important aspects of the culture, and something to do with a generosity of spirit that can afford to grow within that unique sense of traditionless space and potential. Whatever it is, it is extraordinarily valuable.

The trip home reinstated a faith in myself and what I was doing. I felt calm and positive and strong, and now, instead of the trip appearing out of character, instead of worrying about whether or not it was a pointless thing to do, I could see more clearly the reasons and the needs behind it.

A couple of years before, someone had asked me a question: ‘What is the substance of the world in which you live?’ As it happened, I had not slept or eaten for three or four days and it struck me at the time as a very profound question. It took me an hour to answer it, and when I did, my answer seemed to come almost directly from the subconscious: ‘Desert, purity, fire, air, hot wind, space, sun, desert desert desert.’ It had surprised me, I had no idea those symbols had been working so strongly within me.

I had read a good deal about Aborigines and that was another reason for my wanting to travel in the desert — a way of getting to know them directly and simply.

I had also been vaguely bored with my life and its repetitions — the half-finished, half-hearted attempts at different jobs and various studies; had been sick of carrying around the self-indulgent negativity which was so much the malaise of my generation, my sex and my class.

So I had made a decision which carried with it things that I could not articulate at the time. I had made the choice instinctively, and only later had given it meaning. The trip had never been billed in my mind as an adventure in the sense of something to be proved. And it struck me then that the most difficult thing had been the decision to act, the rest had been merely tenacity — and the fears were paper tigers. One really could act to change and control one’s life; and the procedure, the process, was its own reward.

T
HE TIME HAD COME
for me to choose my two camels. I singled out a stubborn but quiet old dowager called Alcoota Kate and a beautiful young wild thing — Zeleika. Sallay approved the choice and wished me well. My friends at Basso’s Farm had moved to the city, leaving the house for me to live in until it was sold. It was a stroke of luck — nothing could have been more desirable at that stage. It meant I could hobble my camels out in the wild fenceless back country where they would have plenty to eat, and I could live in a home of my own. No people.

The last day at the tent was a disaster. While I was away Akhnaton had flown off with his friends never to be seen again; I had somehow to work out how to get two edgy camels six miles down a major highway without killing myself and them; Kate had sat on a broken bottle a few weeks earlier and lacerated her brisket, but no one had paid it much attention, simply treating it occasionally with Stockholm tar; Zeleika had a large infected gash in her head; and Dennis and I gave way to our hostile impulses for the last time.

I got them to Basso’s at last, after only minor traumas and a near nervous collapse. There was no one but myself to rely on now, no Kurts, Sallays or Dennises to help or hinder. I cleaned their wounds, hobbled them out and watched happily as they munched their way along the dirt track leading to the hills in the east. My camels. My home.

It was one of those brittle-bright days such as only a desert in bountiful season can produce. Crystal water sped down the broad bed of the Charles River, a foot or two deep in some places where it swirled around a giant trunk of a dappled river gum; black-shouldered kites hovered above their hunting grounds in the back garden, catching the light on their shimmering wings and in their blood-red predatory eyes; black cockatoos with flamboyant orange tail-feathers screeched their music through the high trees; sunlight exploded, flooding everything with its harsh pounding energy; crickets grated intermittently from the flowering pomegranates and made, together with the drone of the blow-flies in the kitchen, an anthem for hot Australian afternoons.

I had never had a home of my own — having left the barred windows and regimented dormitories of boarding school to enter immediately the communal life of cheap shared houses with large groups of friends. And here I was with a whole castle where I could be queen. This sudden transition from too much bad company to the prospect of none at all was a pleasant shock. Like walking from the din of a busy street into the heavy silence of a shuttered room. I wandered and roamed through my domain, my private space, smelling its essence, accepting its claim on me and incorporating every dust mote, every spider’s web into an orgy of possessive bliss. This sprawling, tattered old stone ruin, which was sinking gracefully back into the ground from which it had come; this delightful, roofless pile of rocks with tough thriving fig trees and tall smothering grasses; its permanent guests, the snakes, lizards, insects and birds; its dramatic patterns of light and shade; its secret rooms and recesses; its unhinged doors, and its nestling correctness in the Arunta rock complex; this was my first home, where I felt such a sense of relief and belonging that I needed nothing and no one.

Before that moment, I had always supposed that loneliness was my enemy. I had seemed not to exist without people around me. But now I understood that I had always been a loner, and that this condition was a gift rather than something to be feared. Alone, in my castle, I could see more clearly what loneliness was. For the first time it flashed on me that the way I had conducted my life was always to allow myself that remoteness, always protect that high, clear place that could not be shared without risking its destruction. I had paid for this over and over with moments of neurotic despair, but it had been worth it. I had somehow always countered my desire for a knight in shining armour by forming bonds with men I didn’t like, or with men who were so off the air there was no hope of a permanent relationship. I could not deny this. It lay, crystal clear, beneath the feelings of inadequacy and defeat, the clever, self-directed plan that had been working towards this realization for years. I believe the subconscious always knows what is best. It is our conditioned, vastly overrated rational mind which screws everything up.

So now, for the first time in my life, my aloneness was a treasure which I guarded like a jewel. If I saw people driving up to see me, I would most often hide. This precious happy time lasted for a month or two but, like everything, had to follow the laws of change.

My closest neighbour was Ada Baxter, a handsome Aboriginal woman with a wildly passionate nature and a warm, generous heart. She loved high times and flagons of wine. Her shack, which sat at the back of Basso’s, was very different from the impoverished humpies of her relations on the other side of the creek. It had been built for her by one of her succession of white men-friends (to Ada, an association with whitefellas meant status), and in it were the treasured knick-knacks and paraphernalia of a material society which she had partly adopted but which, in essence, was not her own. She came over often to share some booze, or camp on the floor if she thought I needed protecting. Although she could not understand my desire to be alone, her company was never an infringement of my privacy, as it was easy and relaxed and carried with it that ability many Aboriginal people have to touch and be affectionate without stiffness, and to be comfortable with silence. She always addressed me as ‘my daughter’, and was as kind and understanding a mother as I could ask for.

One of the potters who had lived there before had told me a very funny story about this remarkable woman. They had all been sitting at home one night, listening to the sounds of drunken battle wafting over from Ada’s camp. Suddenly, the shouts became louder and more urgent and my friend went over to see if there was any trouble. He arrived in time to see Ada’s boyfriend staggering around the shack emptying a can of petrol on the way, then bending down with shaking fingers, trying to light the stuff. It had all sunk into the dust by then, so there was no real danger, but Ada was not to know that. She had gone to the woodpile, picked up the axe and felled the man with one blow. He dropped flat on his back, blood streaming from the wound into the ground around him. My friend thought for sure Ada had killed him and screamed at the others to run for an ambulance. Being so certain there was nothing he could do for the bloody body, he did what he could for Ada who was by then in shock. With trembling fingers he wrapped her in a blanket and handed her some of his tequila. There was a groan behind him. The man struggled on to an elbow, fixed my friend with a swaying glare and said, ‘For Christ’s sake, man, can’t you see she’s had enough?’

Just before moving to Basso’s, I had met a group of young white people involved with Aboriginal rights. Like me, they had brought with them the idealism and indignant morality of their various good educations. It was against this small group that the catch-cry, ‘Do-gooder troublemakers from the city’ was levelled by many of the locals. If this were true in the beginning, and it often was, it rarely remained so, because life in Alice Springs quickly replaced political and personal naivety with astuteness. I liked these people, agreed with them and supported them, but I did not want them around me. I had won so much, had gained so much ground all on my own, that I felt, psychologically at least, self-sufficient. I did not want potential friendships complicating things. They did, after all, require energy that I needed to direct at camel trips. But two of them in particular — Jenny Green and Toly Sawenko — sought me out and wooed me with their wit, warmth and intelligence until I began, surreptitiously, to look forward to their visits, and the cheeses and wines they brought, now such a luxury in my austere, monastic life. They gradually and tactfully broke through my reserve until, months later, I had become hopelessly dependent upon them for encouragement and support, until they became so inextricably involved with that era that I cannot think of it without remembering them.

The distorted memories of the next few months are all stored together in my brain like a tangled adder’s nest. I only know that from such wonderful beginnings at Basso’s, life degenerated into a farce that almost had me believing in fate. And fate was against me.

I was still spending time with Kurt and Gladdy — for one thing I was manipulative enough to want to use Kurt’s yards and facilities and knowledge. This I succeeded in doing by being sweet, apologetic and everything Kurt admired in an underling. But I paid. Oh how he made me pay. There was none of the former tentative camaraderie between us. It had been replaced by total animosity. And there was Gladdy. I wanted to maintain my friendship with her, who was so badly in need of it. She had been talking about leaving Kurt, who was half-heartedly trying to sell the ranch at an astronomical price. Gladdy wanted to stick it out for a little longer, at least until the sale came through, so that she would have some money — as a symbol of having remained unbeaten rather than a desire for the money itself. And there were Frankie and Joanie, two Aboriginal children from Mount Nancy camp, with whom Gladdy and I had spent so much of our time.

Joanie was a beautiful girl of about fourteen with the grace and poise of a natural model. She was also extremely bright and perceptive and, already, well acquainted with despair. I understood her depression, it was the kind engendered by a feeling of helplessness in the face of insurmountable odds. Joanie wanted things from life — things that would remain for ever out of her reach, because of her colour, because of her poverty.

‘What have I got to look forward to?’ she would say. ‘Booze? Getting married to someone who beats me up every night?’

Frankie was slightly better off. He at least had the hope of an acceptable identity as a ringer or station hand — itinerant work at best, but which would allow him a certain amount of self-worth. He was a natural clown, Frankie. And we watched lovingly when he made that transformation from child into young man, with his too large boots and his copied swagger. He would come up to visit me at Basso’s all man-talk and man-action, then suddenly, noticing it was getting dark, sheepishly change back into the boy and ask, ‘Hey, you wouldn’t mind walking me across the creek, would you? I’m scared at night.’