Heaven and Earth

Life in Coober Pedy

The protege of Charles Sturt was John McDouall Stuart. He is known as one of the most successful inland Australian explorer, and has many many things named after him, most notably the Stuart Highway that runs pretty much from south to north and cuts through the center of the country. He is a man that trekked across the country and helped to establish the first telegraph line that ran across the outback. During his expeditions he contracted scurvy, lost more than half his body weight, and often recorded lush and vibrant waterholes only to return a few years later to find nothing but desolation (as what usually happens during the dry Aussie seasons.) Yet despite all that he is is the only explorer to have never lost a man on any of his six expeditions. The real source of Stuart's success is rumored to be that he was a but of a drunk and because of his dependency on alcohol he literally pickled his organs and insides, which allowed him to be more suited to desert survival. Let that be a lesson to all, if you want to survive in Australia, you need to learn how to drink... its a lesson the locals have taken to heart.

As for my own adventures on our first night of travel we stayed in a small outback outpost known as Angorichina, which I am pretty sure is Aboriginal for "Gas Station." I joke, but there was not much in this small oasis of civilization. It was run by a husband and wife, and every two weeks they had to travel three hours, each way, to go shopping. After World War One Angorichina was given to the Australian Army as a rehab station for soldiers suffering from shell shock. It was where many soldiers went to try and get over the horrors of the European trenches and reintegrate into society. After a barbecue and some campfire talk, we spent the night in the bunk rooms where the poor unfortunate soldiers slept. Funny enough it never occurred to me that the barracks house where half-crazed soldiers lived (and died) might be haunted, but we found out later it was. I did not experience anything, but there were plenty of stories about backpackers and travelers being touched, heavy shadows following people through the hallways, ghostly figures, and other typical spiritual behavior. Our guide, Steve, refused to sleep inside and we found out the next day that he slept in the bus. As interesting as that may seem, it was not the last night we would spend among the spirits and supernatural of Australia.

A Man's Cave is his Castle

In fact, one of the only nights were we did not sleep among the undead was on our second night. We spent it at William Creek, which is part of a cattle station the size of Holland. This night we slept in sleeping bags under the stars... or at least we were supposed to sleep. I spent more than an hour just lying back and gazing at the amazing array of twinkling lights in the sky. Growing up in the shadow of New York City, the sky is often void of those celestial sparks of light, and even in most parts of populated America is it hard to come by a decent night sky. So finally I had found a sight I had been waiting my whole life to see, an endless field of stars. I am not joking when I say it was a sight that was on my bucket list, and more to the point it was as surprising as it was amazing. Lying back and watching the stars makes you feel simultaneously small and connected to the universe. It's like suddenly you are only a small speck on a small speck orbiting a small speck of light lost in a vast sea of little lights. However, you realize how alive the universe really is and all the wonders that exists in it. Every light I saw was thousands, if not millions of years old, but they all represented one thing, possibilities. The universe is bigger than we can comprehend and there is more out there than we have even begun to understand. I am not talking in terms of aliens, but in terms of everything: spirituality, God, or whatever. How can we ever think that we know everything there is to know. We have only the smallest fraction of understanding of it all. Anyway, I am digressing...

If you have ever seen the star field of the night sky in its full grandeur you may realize that stars are not just points of light, but clusters of light. A clear as my hand in front of my face, I could see the thick cloud of stars we have come to call the Milky Way as it cut its swath across the darkened sky. I finally understand how ancient man looked up and saw images such as Orion or the shapes of animals in the sky. It is not so much about connecting obscure dots, but it is similar to looking at clouds in the sky and letting your mind create shapes and familiar images out of them. I saw Orion and I mean  I actually saw what our ancestors saw. I saw the hunter. Another startling fact is that the sky is very much a living thing. I saw five or six very distinct shooting stars. All the time there is debris and other particles entering out atmosphere, and if you look at any section of the sky long enough without the nuisance of light pollution you will see them as they streak brilliantly across the sky. Moreover, the stars twist and move in the sky with the rotation of the Earth. I also got up in the morning before sunrise, and watched the sun come up over the distant desert.

Possibly haunted underground bunkhouse

During that time of the day, as the stars faded from sight with the growing redness of the horizon I was met with two more surprises. One, is that Mercury, Venus, and Saturn are aligned near each other, which is a phenom that doesn't happen very often (I mean like in hundreds of years.) Next as I watched the stars as they grew fainter I also was able to track one fast moving point of light as it made its way across the sky above me. It startled me at first, but I quickly realized that I was not watching a star pass slowly overhead, but a man-made satellite as it caught the light from the rising sun. I watched it till it lost the reflection of the sun and disappeared altogether from sight. The morning itself was filled with an inviting stillness. I was the only one awake and the creature of the night were starting to go to sleep as the creature of the day were just beginning to stir. I watched the sky grow redder until the first rays of the sun began to peak over the horizon. I guess I have never truly watched the sun rise or set before, because when put against a point of comparison (like the horizon) it is amazing how truly fast the sun travels across the sky. Within minutes of the first rays of light the sun was fully risen and the temperature around me almost immediately grew warmer. The stars were gone and my retinas were slightly burned, but I was content for the moment. Like the morning itself there was a stillness inside me.

Our third night, was spent in Coober Pedy, a mining town with almost 15% of its buildings being underground. It was a little like the Shire, but with more Australians. We slept in an underground bunkhouse, which was also haunted, but I will get to that. We spent our third and fourth day exploring the town and its underground wonders and we were also joined by nine more people, bringing our number up to 14 people.

The town of Coober Pedy is the Opal capital of the world and in case you were to ever forget it, the town is usually more than happy to remind you. Almost everywhere you look there are signs selling the overpriced gem material. (I mean I agree it is beautiful, but I'm not spending $180 on a pen.) We took a tour of an opal mine and a tour of an undergrounded house and the underground Catholic church. We also went out to the Breakaways, which millions of years ago was the shore of where the ocean used to meet Australia. Now it is a valley of canyons and beautiful desert mountains and peaks. It is also where such classic movies like Mad Max, Pitch Black, and Red Planet were filmed. (Supposedly, the Phantom Menace was also scheduled to be filmed there as well, but George Lucas nixed it at the last moment as the crew and actors couldn't put up with the fly population of Australia.) Again, as it is one of the rainiest years in one hundred years the valley was teaming with life and did not look very much like Mars. However we did see the Australian "Dog Fence," which is the largest fence ever constructed on Earth. It stretches from coast of South Australia near the Western Australia border all the way to Surfer's Paradise in Queensland. For anyone not up on their Australian geography, that is roughly 3,500 miles. (If you were to drive from New York to Los Angeles that would only be 2,778 miles.) It was built to try and keep the dingo population separate from the sheep population of the continent. it doesn't really work, as the fence is not very big and more often than not the dingoes can just jump over it if they are hungry enough.

Our night was spent in the underground bunkhouse with barely warm showers. As it was once an opal mine itself, there were miners who died there in the usual tragic ways that miners die, cave-ins, gas leaks, underage drinking, etc. So the bunkhouse was haunted, and Steve the tour guide slept in the bus again. I don't know how much of it I believe, but I will admit that I was awoken in the middle of the night by strange noises. At the time I just took them as the echoing noises of my fellow bunk mates, but afterwards when we were told of the stories, what I heard fell eerily in line with the stories. Apparently, the most common story is of people hearing whispered voices coming from the walls. I am not saying that's what I heard, but it certainly makes a person stop and think. After all, there are more things in Heaven and Earth than can be dreamt of in our philosophies. Poor Yorick...