Now, I know that most you would also choose a 1987 Toyota Station Wagon Camry to drive deep, deep into the Aussie outback, (a region of the world, I might add, which continues to consume less wise travellers) but would you be also be so wise as to pay no more than $600 for it, and purchase it without driving it whatsoever?
Haha my friends, we see now where the wisened are seperated from the novice. As a final note to any future car buyers, do as we did, and take care of the most important step: naming your car. In fact, if you are a very talented mechanic and auto afficiando such as we, than you will realize that creating your car's personality is far more important than say, even letting a single qualified person look at it before driving 5,000 kms into the desert. But hey, I squeezed the fan belts and they were okay. I think. Also, moustafa has purple tinted windows, and a spoiler for chrissakes. And so our steed was chosen.
Anyways, it was Jess's birthday on the 22nd, so we went down to the Victorian coast to a town named Warrnambool for some surprise pony riding and general birthday celebrations.
After the journey south, we geared up for the long haul north, aiming to spend Christmas Eve in the desert around Broken Hill, NSW. Oh, I might have forgotten to mention, and did to many people, that we didn't really go through all the fancy pancy details of say, "registering" our car, or really making sure it had a "road worthy certificate", or something as flimsy as "insurance", or for all practical purposes, those pesky "driving licenses". So we had to drive very, very responsibly, and stay very, very far away from all forms of law. And if anyone saw the car, we had to chop them up and put them in the boot. Sigh.
Finally we pulled into Mutawintji National Park, piked up the homestead and settled in for one of the most beautiful Christmases of my life. The park was completely empty, a vast national treasure left solely to us, and we relished the silence, and the company of the wildlife. A small pack of roos sat around our campsite, and the trees were literally teeming with cockatoos. The sun melted deep into the desert hills, igniting a sky with pastoral clouds and drifting zephyrs. The sated ghosts of Christmas past seemed curled at my feet.
Jess made an incredible dinner to mark the sunset, a four course fantastica cooked in a two-pot campsite. In a moment of balance, the final diminished sun gave way to a rapidly rising and weighted moon, full in grace and pale glorious with intent. The soft crooning of imported Christmas carols drifted alien but welcome across this most foreign of landscapes. It was my first Christmas overseas, my third since I left Edmonton, and yet the continuation of all my years and traditions, the same ripple in the same footprint, a relic of ritual brought like a fragile ember to an unknown land. Here a moment of maturity, another lesson, for me, in becoming a man; the world is not as it demands, but as I bring to it, not a table prepared, but the bekoning of my appetite. A feast prepared in the desert, the produce of a will brought to a supple branch of the earth. It was a beautiful evening.
But then! Presents! Wake up Cockatoos, it's Christmas morning!
An orgy of presents, an entire box of sweet swag from the family back home, and a gorgeous violin from Jess. I call it my guilt-box, and now have the pleasure of dedicating my life to this beautiful yet painfully difficult instrument. Merry Christmas to you to J.
Anyways, went for a quick hike in the park Christmas day, barely squeeked out of Broken Hill, and headed south along the blindingly straight Barrier Highway to South Australia...
More to tell later, Merry (belated) Christmas Everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment