THE OUTBACK AND SO FORTH – Tuesday, 13 March

We are slow to get moving this morning due to the implacable nature of exhaustion. My left ‘index’ toe is fucked: I have the black toenail that runners can get from bad shoes (but I love my Cons) or just running. Coffee, please. At breakfast, we strike up a conversation with an Australian woman and her mum at the next table. She’s able to confirm the lame, semi-extortionary disappointment of some of the resort’s highly touted special event add-ons. Both tables kvell about the Outback Sky Journey, though.

Today we intend to hike a portion of the trails of Kata Tjuta (formerly known as The Olgas), a collection of massive sandstone domes forty-five kilometers west of Uluru. Visible across the scrub plain as a mass of purple mounds nestling and jostling under the fiery sun, the closer we get the more fantastic and breathtaking they become. But if God successfully made a loaf of bread with Uluru, he really botched his Kata Tjuta dinner roll experiment. The Valley of the Winds trail is closed (heat advisory), but we persevere. It turns out the 7K interior loop is what’s closed, but people nevertheless are hoofing it up to the first overlook. We hydrate along, submitting to the indignities of the flies. At the crest, we are treated to an epic vista of red domes receding one either side of a yellow-green and undulating valley. A German woman takes our picture and we hers. She agrees to remove her fly hat.

We are very satisfied to have tackled (nudged) the Olgas. Lunch we take at the Aboriginal Cultural Center between Uluru and Kata Tjuta. There are some helpful displays, enlightening and sometimes amusing. Aboriginal life has strange rules and customs, all of which relate directly to the harsh environment and the incomprehensible antiquity of the culture, and none of which have any Western analogs. I feel sort of abashed. At the store a small, square, painted panel, signed and everything, appeals to me. The artist also turned twisted sticks into wonderful snakes, but they are too complicated to transport. I buy Ali her very own bilby, a small, big-eared marsupial. It’s an early night because we have a long drive back to Alice tomorrow to catch the flight to Adelaide.

THE OUTBACK AND SO FORTH – Monday, 12 March

Well, today marks my thirty-third year of sobriety. So it’s fitting, I guess, that Alice and I should attempt to hike the six-mile perimeter of Uluru. This will be one of those ‘because it’s there’ endeavors. Uluru is a stupendous monolith though not the biggest in Australia; that’s Mount Augustus in WA. Photos give you some idea how solitary this colossus is, but in life, its immensity is so abrupt and discombobulating that the only solution is to abandon our adobe-encrusted Kluger in the parking lot, take couple deep breaths, and start walking. It’s a matter of adjusting to the scale of the thing.

In 1985, ‘ownership’ of the Rock was ‘returned’ to the aboriginal people. We look with scorn at the stream of white folks climbing the sandstone face of the Rock after being asked over and over again not to. I wish they’d rip out the cables and forbid those heedless fuckers from tromping over this ancient territory. And this October, they will.

Our pace is brisk as we round the first third, but we quickly realize that we got a late start. The day grows hotter and hotter and the path edges closer to Uluru itself, a sump of incandescence. Ali had filled her backpack with what I thought at the time was an excess of water, but she was so right. We’re rapidly evaporating. There’s only the weediest shade, which we cleave to at every opportunity. Along the way, various spots have been designated by the aboriginal people as sacred, sacred specifically to men or to women, or even to grandmas. Hikers are requested not to trespass and to refrain from photography. I aspirate one – two – three goddamn flies. Ali, not being a mouth-breather, is spared.

We are beginning to assume every distant juncture of rock, desert, and sky to be a major turn; perhaps the HALF-WAY POINT! Scoffing at other hikers is one way to buoy our spirits, and so is drinking water. Look! There’s a shelter with shade and a fucking map. We ARE half-way. Rejoice. It feels breezier on this side, though our path is much closer to the Rock. It’s hot to the touch. By the time we’ve determined that we’re in the final third, our asses are both dragging and sorry. Do we crawl across the parking lot to the car? No, but we’re completely glassy-eyed and wobbly in a jubilant way.

I can’t speak for Ali, but I collapsed on my bed. It took a supreme act of will to bend down and untie my sneakers. Supreme Act of Will #2 – shower. And then a nap. There’s a knock at the door. I rise from my horizontal, semi-comatose state and in bursts the mini-bar guy. He takes one look at me naked and vanishes. Oh, I’m awake: so awake in fact that only doing laundry could modulate this state of high alert. The front desk apologizes for the intrusion when I complain. They send us a plate of cheese.

After dinner, we are privy to the Outback Sky Journey, which is a pat description for two guys with powerful telescopes in a dark corner of the resort property. The Milky Way unfurls across the southern sky. The Centauri, Alpha and Beta, two bright stars in close proximity to one another, point to the Southern Cross, the North Star of the Southern Hemisphere. The constellation Orion’s visible, tilted in a crazy way, but Jupiter, the coy gasbag, remains hidden by a tree. Through the telescope, we are offered glimpses of nebulae (the middle point in Orion’s belt), star clusters, and the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small one, two small, irregular, nearby galaxies. The show is wonderfully entertaining and, like, cosmic.

Sleep.

THE OUTBACK AND SO FORTH – Sunday, 11 March

We’re sad to leave Ooraminna and the Lorimers – omnicapable Nicky and laconic Morgan with his cowboy tan, pale forehead atop ruddy cheeks and a wide smile – and their independent, curious children. The helicopter we noticed on our way in is how Morgan herds the Homestead’s cattle. The potential efficiencies don’t balance with the utter jackass peril. In the kitchen, Nicky fixes us a box lunch as the two of us gab, while Ali and the girls, Mia and Savannah, work on Cinderella’s jigsaw puzzle. I sit down with them and they ask me if I’ve ever flown first class. I find myself ‘splaining, the gist being – “Big seats that fold down all the way,” I say, pointing the La-Z-Boy by the TV.

Ali and I depart shortly after nine with a five-hour journey ahead of us. The road to Uluru (Ayers Rock) doesn’t seem as monotonous as the one up the west coast. Plus, we stop at every roadhouse for bladder realignment and the pleasure of purchasing each establishment’s hokey stickers. Roughly four hours into the journey, I spy a great red butte or mesa or something that I immediately mistake for Uluru. It’s Mount Conner, another monolith.

Onward. And, at last, the red red Rock, majestic, serene, and singular in every aspect. A sprawling resort has been built nearby to accommodate ALL the tourist traffic, from backpackers to the haute bourgeoisie. We crash and then we putter. The resort is a self-contained little town, complete with post office and supermarket. Liter bottles of water are required for tomorrow’s anticipated circumnavigation of Uluru. Dinner is simple and sleep is semi-delicious.

THE OUTBACK AND SO FORTH – Saturday, 10 March

Alice has a renowned Desert Park that showcases the fauna and flora of central Australia. Paths lead us through four environments, but most fascinating are the half-dozen aviaries, home to a gorgeous variety of native birds. These enclosures are small enough that the creatures are readily identifiable. The birds have occasionally been housed with lizard companions, who, because of the overcast and unseasonable cool, remain cautiously en-burrowed. Upon completion of the wildlife circuit, we gnaw on rudimentary sandwiches accompanied by chicken-flavored potato chips.

I want to visit the Royal Flying Doctor Service Museum. God Bless Ali, she’s game. The RFDS was founded in the 1920s by Rev. John Flynn to serve the medical needs of Australia’s remote and scattered populations. A pasty, nervous fellow stands in front of a TV screen that plots each now airborne RFDS flight in real time and delivers a monotonous spiel. Tiny green airplanes whiz slowly across tremendous emptiness. Given that Australia’s mass can fit the continent of Europe from Britain to Turkey within its borders, that’s damn impressive. Before we’re to be ushered into an auditorium to listen to a ‘hologram’ of ‘John Flynn’, we are invited to clamber into a mock-up of the plane currently in use. We sit snugly in a row of single seats on the right side, while two gurneys end-to-end line the left. A German couple who had lived in New Jersey for many years engages us in pleasant small talk. The hologram is truly stupid and the museum more than a little obscure, but we are nevertheless impressed. Impressed with the enormous size of the continent and the ingenuity and spirit of the people. I purchase Ali a small koala in RFDS pilot gear, our co-pilot from now on.

Shopping does not immediately engage Ali, but the Todd Street Mall is reputed to be the place to find talented aboriginal artists. We slip into the first art gallery we see and, after poking around for several minutes, become the audience for a monologue by one of the proprietors. He transcends loquaciousness. Based on vague hints as to our itinerary, he begins drawing us a map of the Great Ocean Road. When he reaches the edge of the page, he just adds another and continues scrawling. Ali manages to sidle away, but I am made to promise that I will text when I have eaten a rock lobster. Not even two scoops of ice cream are capable of wiping the stunned look off my face.

Back to Ooraminna for recuperation before dinner. In the kitchen, I’m put to work frying barramundi for tonight’s large group of guests, a nice young couple and a tedious gasbag. The fish, it turns out, is undercooked but still tasty.

THE OUTBACK AND SO FORTH – Friday, 9 March

Oh, God, the ungodly hour. Nothing motivates quite as thoroughly as getting up way too fucking early with a job to do. I’m wide awake because I have a purpose! Bleary and grouchy, the two of us, yet wickedly focused. We pile onto the jitney. Qantas finds a minor problem with our tickets which is quickly resolved. Aloft, a snack is served, a ‘croque monsieur’. Ali discovers a piece of wire in hers. Nice. The flight attendant takes the news like they always do – with zero affect and no attempt to resolve the problem. Are they trained to be assholes when it comes to crisis in service, or does Wire In Croque Monsieur = Emergency Water Landing?

Sure enough, it’s raining when we land in Alice. Aussies leave off the ‘Springs’ because everything has a diminutive in this country, usually ending in ‘o’ or ‘ie’. Hertz offers us a big honking Toyota SUV called a Kluger which this time we don’t decline. Ali takes the wheel and navigates the unsealed, i.e. dirt, highway with aplomb. Our vehicle sends up great plumes of terracotta-colored mud as we tear through vast puddles yelling “Whooooa!” The rain/drizzle we met on arrival has been happening for some days. Out here, the landscape’s like the Southwestern deserts in the US, in that there’s plenty of vegetation but no topsoil: just bright red, dusty country tufted in gold and pale green as far as the eye can see. The desert will bloom, but after we’re gone.

We unlatch a cow gate ahead of us and a couple minutes later we roll up to Ooraminna Station Homestead. Rounding a bend, a small helicopter sits by the road. This is the second non sequitur in the moments since we passed through the cow gate. Before the helicopter, we passed by a ‘frontier town’, Twilight Zone empty. Ooraminna Station is one big film set, it seems. The whole 600-acre cattle ranch is available to serve as a setting for film and photo shoots, as well as a destination for weddings and parties.

It’s only eleven in the morning, due to the ninety-minute time change here in the Northern Territory. What we take to be the main building has a long veranda that leaves the interior deep in shade. No one seems to be about. We slide the door open and our hosts, Nicky and Morgan Lorimer, are inside. Their three youngsters, a boy and two girls, dash in and shake our hands. Ali scores the Tin Cabin and I the Timber one. The stone cabin, ‘The Police Station’, has a gaol, i.e. jail, out back capable of sleeping two more. Timber and Tin each consist of a single bedroom separated from the bath by a breezeway. The bedrooms are filled with a mighty four-poster and both cabins have a porch that looks out over scrubby hills, while rising up behind are great granite outcroppings, and off to the left is a billabong largely for show as it must be refilled with a garden hose.

After we settle in, having been warned about the inevitable plague of frogs in the bathrooms, we tiptoe through the mud to the main house where Nicky has promised us lunch – two hearty sandwiches. Then we judiciously retreat to the cabins for a couple hours of chill. The drizzle is intermittent, the sky is gray, and the air is very cool. This weather is utterly anomalous: the Red Center of Australia is usually blazing at this time of year. Ooraminna is rustic, not in a design mag way, but honestly ramshackle. In the main building, kids’ toys are piled in a corner, on a table there’s an unfinished jigsaw puzzle of Cinderella at her pumpkin surprise moment, and at the bar a pink steer’s skull has pride of place. Nicky is animated and helpful, recounting stories I can’t exactly follow. At dinnertime we drive the hundred yards to the main house; walking back in the dark and mud would have been a disaster. The kids are off at a sleepover, so Morgan, Nicky, and Adele, the Scottish nanny, are our company. We feast on a mammoth lamb shank and vegetables.

THE OUTBACK AND SO FORTH – Thursday, 8 March

I read the news today. Oh, boy. The oldest message-in-a-bottle ever found was just discovered north of Perth. It dates from 1886 and had been part of a German experiment to map the ocean currents. This must blow Sting’s mind.

From behind the wheel of our vehicle, we stare at a great plume of smoke rising from where the airport should probably be. Uh-oh. As we approach, it’s apparent that the fire is quite some distance to the south. What’s with the smoke? we ask the woman at the ticket counter. “Bushfire,” she says. “But the rain last night.” “It doesn’t matter, it’s lightening.” The flight to Perth is effortless.

Our lodging is a motel not too far from Perth airport. We drop our bags and call a cab into town. After a crucial bento box meal, we venture to the Apple Store to retrieve the laptop. It’s as good as new, meaning it’s a fucking tabula rasa. All everything, every shred of my nonsense, has been wiped from its memory. Such a bittersweet reunion. But thank you again, Apple Care. I purchase an Aussie power converter as a show of good faith.

Then we set off for the Nostalgia Box, an interactive video game museum that showcases every game console manufactured since before the days of the most primitive Pong. Ali is pumped, because she works for an organization that runs a summer camp where kids design their own video games. This is the mother fucking lode. We try our hand at PacMan to no real avail but playing against each other in Pong gets the blood flowing. The score seesaws back and forth. So tense. I believe her to be the ultimate victor. We have time to kill before our dinner reservation, so Ali naturally aims us toward a bookstore.

It’s next to a barbershop. I duck in for a trim. Ali has gently chided me for my shaggy look for a while now. “A one-and-a-half (clipper) and just tapered down the back,” I say. The stylist nods. Clumps of not-very-long hair tumble down the nylon. She asks if I’d like to have my eyebrows trimmed. I decline. “You’re not Scottish?” she says. I look startled. “Scottish men never trim their eyebrows.” That explains so much. Ali’s new sandals, it turns out, are meant for maneuvering from the chaise to the poolside bar, not for distance walking. I hope her blisters aren’t too bad.

Our dinner destination is obscured by the hip lack of signage. We’re given a lovely window table with a view across the Swan River. Prominent is a luminous green needle-shaped tower that apparently houses a set of bells given to the city by the Queen herself. As twilight deepens an enormous message scrolls continuously across the façade of a nearby twelve-story building. It reads ‘# (something) THURSDAY’. Uh-huh. That’s right. Today is Thursday. Only when we’re back on the street after dinner,  do we discover that the message reads, #LET’S THURSDAY. Oh, Australia.

We choose the tasting menu w/ non-alcoholic beverage pairings. The ingredients are first-rate, but the concoctions and, indeed, the presentation are way too fussy. I mean – emu jerky dusted with desiccated myrtle? And why does everything require a garnish of wattle seeds? And the pseudo-gin beverage that tastes like turpentine. The service starts out brisk and attentive, slows to casual, and eventually succumbs to inconsiderate. We have completely exhausted ourselves, anyway.

Back at the motel, we resolve to rally at 4am for the 4:40 bus to the airport and our 6:05 flight to Alice Springs. I conk out at ten but am fully awakened at two when I notice a spinning yellow light outside the bathroom window. It can’t be an emergency; no siren. Still, that’s the end of the snooze.

THE OUTBACK AND SO FORTH – Wednesday, 7 March

Snorkel Morning has arrived. We shall shortly test the twin seashore perils/challenges of flotation and solar radiation. A hearty breakfast acts as ballast. Note: Australia is a land of orange-yolked eggs. Packing towels and t-shirts, sun screen and water, off we fucking go. Snorkels and flippers are available for rent at the Ningaloo Marine Park HQ. Ningaloo Reef, a fringing reef,  is the only large reef in the world found so close to a landmass that it’s theoretically an easy snorkel from shore. And Ningaloo is one of the few reefs of any kind on the western coast of any place and hosts a bounty of ocean life.

Thus equipped, we head for Lakeside Beach, trekking on foot across incendiary sand. Ow. Ow. Ow. We disrobe, muttering, then sit in the shallows yanking on the goddamn flippers. Breathing’s awkward at first and at second, nevertheless, we somehow manage to acclimate to these ungodly prostheses. Jesus, the Indian Ocean is A LOT saltier than the good ol’ Atlantic. The three young women who preceded us can be seen (barely) bobbing in the distance. Ali and I paddle semi-haplessly, occasionally sputtering and cursing. There seems to be a gentle, yet relentless, current inhibiting our progress. The view through the facemask reveals endless sandy bottom, no fish, no coral. It becomes apparent that (1) this is pretty fucking tiring, (2) the exotic sealife is pretty fucking far away, and (3) snorkel mastery may be merely a Pyrrhic victory. We call it a ‘win’ and back we walk to the parking lot along the waterline, triumphant. Two kangaroos are observed lounging beneath a picnic table, snide marsupials. It’s impossible to describe how elated we are, yet the question remains: Who invented the fucking snorkel and would it be possible to feed his or her descendants to dolphins?

Ali’s at the wheel. I swivel to point out a passing bookstore and, distracted, she almost takes out a charging emu. After a cleansing shower, we search for lunch. I pick out a tasty sandwich, while Ali, still shaken from close-encounter-of-the-emu-kind, picks a boring one. Across the way is a beachwear shop. She finds a pair of ideal sandals and we split the sandwiches. Naptime. I gas up the car. The end. Not quite. It’s my mom’s birthday. What time is it in New Jersey? I place a call and connect with Mom, much to our mutual amazement. She’s happy to hear from me yet is somewhat confused as to where exactly I’m calling from. That makes two of us.

THE OUTBACK AND SO FORTH – Tuesday, 6 March

I’m up, after a bewildering sleep, intent on securing flat whites and banana bread, i.e. consciousness. A short drive away is a café that opens at 7:30am. They owe their great renown to their collection of completed Lego mega-creations. And, Jesus, here come the flies! These fucking insects have been absolutely relentless since we left Fremantle. They are such a nuisance/plague: they’ll follow you right into the car, which will then result in reckless acceleration, useless hand-flapping, and hollering through lowered windows. We have some time to kill before the Space Museum opens at ten, so we go looking for One Mile Jetty. We assume it to be obvious. Heedless exploratory feints almost send me barreling down a boat ramp much to Alice’s alarm and amusement. She turns and points, “Dad. I can see the jetty.” It’s closed due to ‘structural problems’, but, hey, over there’s a short boardwalk loop though a mangrove ‘forest.’ Fuckin’ flies worship us. We might be their gods.

We follow a young German couple with their young boy into the Space and Technology Museum just as the doors open. Carnarvon was the location of a Satellite Earth Station, built to track the Apollo moon landing. Ali and I are captivated. Look at all the cool stuff! There’s a whole room of dusty electronics, oscilloscopes, and components sporting extraordinary tubes and on the wall, photos of local space shenanigans – parade floats, costume parties, fishing trips – from the 60s. It’s very un-slick and DIY, but the enthusiasm and affection here are contagious. Feet first, Ali and I clamber into a mock-up of an Apollo capsule for a dramatized lift-off. It’s ridiculous, lying there, but great. She strikes up an animated sci-fi fanboy conversation with one of the docents my age. My daughter has unerring nerd-dar. One super-cool touch – the museum has a house cat named Buzz.

We hit the fucking road. A sidetrip to The Blowholes has to be eliminated due to time. Passing a roadhouse, we realize we may never see another, backtrack and eat burgers. Epic weather fills the sky as we progress up the peninsula to Exmouth. Great beehives of clouds and, far off, black sheets of rain. Termite mounds have become a prominent feature of the landscape, person-height columns of red soil spaced every hundred yards or so for as far as the eye can see. The Mantarays Beach Resort is just that; a fancy seaside hotel with flies. We’ve been given a set of rooms with dodgy aircon, which doesn’t prevent Alice from napping or me from writing this while doing a load of darks. When we explain the situation to the front desk, we get an upgrade to the second floor (expanded view). Dinner is good. The two of us are psyching up for snorkeling tomorrow. I don’t think buoyancy will be an issue.

 

THE OUTBACK AND SO FORTH – Monday, 5 March

We’ve come this far to see the damn dolphins and they better not disappoint. Every day, three feedings convene on Monkey Maya’s beach. We attend the earliest one, because we have another long day’s journey ahead of us. A crowd lines up along the shore while a dolphin wrangler with mic stands knee-deep in the water. Ali and I nab an excellent vantage point, perching on the pier above the expectant dolphineers. Sure enough, the matriarch of the pod shows up at the appointed hour. She has an angry-looking gash on her head, possibly from a tiger shark. One by one, her young ones appear. Volunteers from the crowd get picked to feed the animals. It’s really quite sweet, except for the climax when parents step forward to feed their babies to the sea creatures. It only looks that way, for many of the moms and dads of infants are holding their nodding progeny facing outward toward the deep as if assuming discernment and curiosity in four-month olds or perhaps they are offering babykins as a snack to the ravening sea creatures. Following an encounter with the breakfast buffet, following repacking, and following the distraction of an emu with attention deficit in the parking lot, we get the fuck outta there.

Alice drives. She guides us to Overlanders Roadhouse, where we indulge in a meat pie lunch (probably our last) while observing a dysfunctional French family run amok, then we turn north. These French parents are probably headed to the afternoon dolphin feeding, however, they give added dimension to the word blasé, perhaps in anticipation to offering les enfants to the water-breathing mammals.

We roll into Carnarvon late in the afternoon, too late to pay a visit to the Space Museum, so we settle into our new digs, a two-bedroom metal cabin at the Outback Oasis Caravan Park. Ali conks out which encourages me to amble to the supermarket for a four-pac of Bundaberg ginger beer (the best beverage in this quadrant of the known universe). I write and sip. And, yeah, it must be time for dinner. Our choices are limited. As the sun sets, a bank of clouds puts on a technicolor display which bathes the town in infinite benignity. We stroll the esplanade, stopping to exchange bright words with a sleek teenage couple drying off after a dip in the harbor.

 

THE OUTBACK AND SO FORTH – Sunday, 4 March

Tell me – How bogus is instant coffee? Making it double-strength only slightly mitigates the feebleness. Ali remains in slumberland, because it’s 6:30. I have figured out where to get joe-to-go and picnic fixings on our way out of town. We both require breakfast (never will I succumb to ‘brekkie’ as the morning meal is universally known here). At a drive-through called Muzz Buzz we order the works. A nearby supermarket provides lunch fixings and water for the 430 kilometer drive ahead. Oh, and my favorite, Arnott’s Gingernut biscuits. I told Ali she should drive and then I got behind the wheel like an asshole. The grass on the hills is gray/gold and what trees there are are dusty green. There’s no one to overtake in the overtaking lanes. Every time the GPS indicates a curve in the highway, we get excited. At one point, we pull off to use the toilet only to be assaulted by a biblical plague of flies. Unswatable little fuckers.

At Overlanders Roadhouse, we park under a ‘tree’ to eat our ‘picnic’. Ali’s brought along a couple audiobooks, so we plug into the first volume of James S.A. Corey’s Leviathan Wakes series (the basis for the excellent Canadian TV show, The Expanse). It’s a mix of solar system politics, noirish detective machinations, and monster-on-the-loose suspense, with plenty of space cowboy techno-jargon.

As we close in on Monkey Mia (Maya, it’s pronounced) it behooves us to stop and pay our respects to the Stromatolites, colonies of the world’s oldest organisms, cyanobacteria whose metabolism gave us the atmosphere we have now. They form large black lumps that spread for hectares in the shallow tidal areas of this, the world’s most geologically ancient continent. Australia has little or no tectonic activity. It just sits there, flat and dry, with its incredible mineral riches. Here be MORE flies. It’s like the Penn Station of Flying Insects. Off in the distance we spy a pair of women resembling beekeepers in bikinis. Evidently, they sell Fly-Be-Gone Hats with a flounce of protective netting draping from the brim.

Monkey Mia is but a short distance further on. At first glance, its layout and the ongoing construction confuse our road-addled brains. But we become registered and find our rooms, which are at opposite ends of the facility. Ali gets a fabulous ocean view: I’m poolside. The WiFi is dodgy. Oh, well. Dinner’s al fresco and by twilight, the flies have mostly retired. The oysters suck, but the meal is delicious. A half dozen little girls in dresses frolic on the lawn as the sun sets and silent lightening lights up the clouds.