Way Outback

The Great R... Green Centre

There has been a great and wide history of white men blundering their way through the Outback. And like all great men, most of them suffered and died in horrible ways. The outback or "The Red Centre" as they call it around here, is a place full of indescribable wonders, but also a myriad of dangers. Take for example the journeys of Charles Sturt. He was convinced that Australia must have an inland sea... because hey it can't all be desert out there... In 1829, Sturt set out on an expedition to find out where the western-flowing rivers of New South Wales flowed. Among the useful things Sturt brought with him was a disassembled whale boat. After dragging it halfway across the desert he did get to eventually use it to traverse the Murrumbidgee River which he traced to the Murray River (one of the main rivers in Australia.) However, when they reached the sea they found that the Murray River was an impassable maze of lagoons and inlets that was unusable for shipping. Then he was faced with the arduous task of rowing back up the Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers. When the trip took too long and the boat bottomed out as the river began to evaporate around them, Sturt sent two men out to find supplies. They barely made it back in time to save the party. Unfortunately they were not in time to save Sturt's vision as he went blind for several months and had failing health problems for the rest of his life. Now any normal man would take abject blindness as a sign that you are on the wrong career path and retire from the expedition game, but not Chuckie. He was so obsessed with finding the mystical inland Australian sea that in 1844 he tried again. This time with 15 men, 200 sheep, and a boat. Long story short, boats don't work as well in the desert as in the ocean, He was stranded for months in the heat and eventually contracted scurvy. He did eventually make it back and retire to England, but he never found his fabled inland ocean.

Sturt was a pioneer in outback exploration and as I set out on my own adventure I found myself following in the footsteps of men like Sturt, in both direction and in horrible mishaps that could have cost me body parts. Without going into detail, let's say that I am the only person in the world who can get caught on a barbed-wire fence in the middle of the world's most desolate desert. Other dangers involved dehydration, heat exhaustion, poisonous snakes/spiders/etc, and suffocation by flies. Yes, I said flies. The further north you head the more their population grows. I have always known that the insects of Australia have been overly friendly, but there is nothing like being swarmed by small black insects who seem intent on getting intimate with you. Not only are they drawn to humans, but they seem particularly drawn to the insides of ears, noses, and even eyeballs. Thankfully, their population is controlled this time of the year, due to the coming winter, but I could only imagine what it would be like during the summer, as you walk around like a rotting zombie corpse with flies invading every orifice you can think of. Since I am an American, I did what we all do most naturally and I dumped the most powerful chemical spray on myself I could find, but apparently modern science has yet to make the spray powerful enough to repel the Australian Outback Fly. It helped, a little, but it certainly was the most annoying part of my trip.

The abandoned town of Farina... I think I used to play this
level in Call of Duty

Yet I tried not to let it bother me as much like those old time explorers I set out for adventure and the unknown. (Well sort of unknown... I mean I booked the trip and the itinerary was listed right there, but stop taking everything so literal. I am trying to set a mood...) I began, bleary eyed from Adelaide at 6:45 AM on Friday, regretting my decision to attend a pub crawl on the previous night. We set out as a party of five, including our tour guide and driver, Steve. (Let me take a moment to say a word on Steve, whose vocabulary was often limited to phrases such as "Brilliant!" "Jesus!" "Fantastic!" and "Any questions?!" He was a pretty weird guy, but he has a lot of good stories and I enjoyed the conversations I had with him about everything from Aboriginal culture to American history.) Our first destination for the day was the small town of Quorn, one of many small towns we would be traveling through over the never few days. By outback standards Quorn was actually pretty big as it had a population of roughly 1,000 people. The only reason for the existnce of the town was because it was where the original railroad stopped before World War One. (I mean it literally terminated,) and any cargo going north had to be unloaded and packed onto camels and walked through the outback.

During the First World War the railway was extended further north. It was named "The Ghan" in honor of all the Afghanistan people who used to work the camel trains. In Quorn, it was also where I learned that Steve is somewhat of a "foodie" and all our meals over the next few days would not only be of excellent quality, but have surprisingly tidy presentation. Other small towns we passed through included Hawker and Marree as we followed the old "Ghan" railroad north. I use the term "town" loosely, as they are really nothing more than an assortment of buildings amounting to a gas station, a few houses, and a pub. Marree has a population of 12. It is also one of the most historic unknown towns in the Outback. As it was the second place where the Ghan Railroad terminated heading north, until 1929, where the railroad was extended further north again, but some idiot used the wrong size gauge for the second track, so trains could not drive straight through. It was in Marree that the cargo had to be unloaded from one train and placed on the second so it could continue its journey. When the new railway was built in another part of the desert in the 50's the town was basically abandoned, but it still has the oldest Mosque in Australia.

Aboriginal cave paintings

Other sights of interest included the abandoned and desolate town of Farina. The Australian Government used to give land to farmers who were willing to work it and build infrastructure in the outback. The town of Farina was where some of those people lived. It took them fourteen years to realize that you could not farm the outback and in their frustration the people just picked up and left, leaving towns and homesteads abandoned.

We also saw Aboriginal cave paintings that told part of the Song Line story that helped the indigenous people learn about how the Earth was created and directed them to watering holes and warned of different type of dangers. It was like a highway of mythology.

We also saw a weird sculpture grounds placed in the middle of the desert. It was put there to draw attention to protests going on against the Australian Government and an American Company that had allowed nuclear materials to be sold to China and Pakistan which wound up being weaponized. (Sidenote: Because of this incident and subsequent testings, New Zealand banned all nuclear powered ships from entering their waters. This turned out to be a bad move as New Zealand was a major port of call of the US Navy's Pacific Fleet. Unfortunately most of our battleships, carriers, and submarines are nuclear powered. Also unfortunately, those ships helped make up the majority of trade done in New Zealand wool, and the industry completely collapsed in New Zealand. They switched to herding cattle instead of sheep and the price of lamp skyrocketed in Australia. So Pakistan gets the bomb and the Aussies can't get a descent lamb.)

We also saw natural wonders like Lake Eyre, which is a huge dry inland lake (which is why Sturt never found it), which is about 3,600 square miles in length. It is one of the lowest point in Australia (49 feet below seas level), and when all the continents were connected it was part of the sea. When the continent broke away from Africa several hundred-million years ago, it twisted and distorted all of Australia was raised up 80 meters (160 feet or so), and the sea became isolated into a huge inland lake. Eventually all the water evaporated because of the intense heat and the sun, leaving a dry river bed. Nowadays, it is only full every ten to fifteen years or more, as it catches the run-off of all major storm systems across the continent in a rainy year. This also gives the added wonder of giving the lake and its surrounding area its own weather system as the water evaporates and recycles. When the lake does fill it is first a fresh water lake and then a salt water lake, before evaporating again for another ten to fifteen years. The really interesting part about the lake is that the behavior of the animals around it baffles scientists. When the lake fills up, thousands of pelicans make the trip to the lake, carrying fish in their beaks. They then drop the fish into the newly formed lake and repopulate the lake with fresh water fish. When the lake turns to salt water, they do the same, traveling all the way to the ocean and back to get saltwater fish to repopulate the lake again. Scientists have no idea how they know to do this, or even how they know when the lake is going to fill. Another strange type of fish, exclusive to Lake Eyre, is a fish that can bury itself in the dry earth for up to four years and go into a suspended coma. When water again fills the middle and deepest parts of the lake it comes back to life, digs itself out, and lives in the water again (like God intended it to.) When the lake dries up, the fish goes back into the Earth. this type of fish has not been found anywhere else in the world.

Lake Eyre (Sturt's mythical inland sea)

Normally, Lake Eyre is dry and the Outback is a desolate and red sandy place, however, following the principles of Adam's Law (Anything that can go wrong will go wrong... for Adam), Australia has been experiencing the rainiest year it has ever had in nearly one-hundred years. Thus, not only is the lake filled, but the Great Red Centre needs to be renamed as the Great Green Centre, as there is more vegetation sprouting up that hair on the head of David Hassalhoff. As wondrous and majestic as that is, it can be a little disappointing. I came to see a landscape that resembled the planet Mars and I got one that more or less resembles Colorado in the summer. I have determined that a side-effect of Adam's Law is the prosperity of Australia, as not only is the landscape in full and vivid bloom, but the Australian dollar is now crushing the American dollar by a factor of 1.10 to 1.00.

Still, I cannot deny the wonder and beauty of the outback, be it Green or Red. I have stood in the middle of the harshest environment in the world and gazed out to the horizon. The desert is desolate and rejects all life, yet with the slightest touch of water it comes alive with surprising vegetation, color, and animal life. It is truly a place that seems unreal. Most of my time spent was spent in awe, trying to convince myself that I was not seeing some huge painted movie backdrop or special effect trick and that I was actually face to face with beauty on a scale I hardly imagined. The pictures cannot do it justice, nor can my paltry command of the English language. That is why I will end here for now, but there is much more to come.