My ‘personal eco-resort’.

I awake slowly to the sounds of birds beginning their day - the beating of wings on the water, the rustling, squawking, grunting, chirping, whistling, and the harsh cries of the Raven or is it a Crow in the Coolabah tree above me. The sun is rising. It’s already 20 degrees Celsius.

My ‘eco-resort’ is hands on with nature. It’s taken me a few thousand kilometres to find it. There is no-one else nearby, I’m right on the river with a ‘bird’s eye view’ of … birds. I look over a sand-bank where birds congregate each day going about their lives. Hundreds and hundreds of Pelicans, Little Black Cormorants, Pied Cormorants, and scores of Egrets, Herons, and Whistling and Black Kites

.I emerge slowly, and quietly. I don’t want to disturb them. The Pelicans ignore me, but the Little Black Cormorants are very flighty and take off if they sense movement. I sit in my chair with a cuppa. And all day I watch and read. There is nothing else to think, or do. I may go for a wander over the plains later before it gets too hot, 30 degrees is forecast today, to see what wild-flowers are popping up.

This morning the Little Black Cormorants are fishing in unison with the Pelicans. I’m not sure if it is by mutual consent. The Pelicans seem to object if the Cormorants beat them to a fish. Every now and again a Black or Whistling Kite flies low but the birds squawk it off, unfazed. Each evening the Pelicans swim in unison down the river to a point where it reaches a dry cul-de-sac with a channel veering off to the side. They herd those fish till they have no escape, and then a feeding frenzy begins. Pelicans are diving, catching, rising to swallow, climbing on each-others backs, trying to fly out, or flying in to land on top of of the melee.

The fish in the river here are Yellow-Belly particularly sought after for human consumption. The eggs from these fish may have sat in the dry river sand for years, but once the water comes through they hatch and provide food for these water-birds from distant places. How do the birds know that the fish are here in the Outback rivers now? They are usually found on lakes, rivers, and sea coasts. The theory is that maybe it is imprinted in each generation’s DNA in those eggs. All along the shore here are dried skeletons and heads of fish.

Watching the birds, Pelicans in particular, in front of my place for a week I start to see personalities emerge. The sleepy one who don’t want to untuck in the mornings, the Guards who watch over the sleepers all night, the assertive one who strides through the group, the ones yawning or laughing or talking to each other, the grumpy one who squawks if anyone comes near. Then there’s the cleanliness nerds who spend all day distorting themselves to clean every feather. Some of the contortions leave me wondering which bit goes where

.It is a village of immigrants. The Pelicans, or even all the different species, may occasionally get annoyed with each other, but generally they live side by side, usually ignoring, but sometimes helping and protecting each other. I’m surprised they are unfazed by the raptors unless one flies down and grabs a fish nearby

.At the end of the day it’s mayhem as they all fly backwards and forwards looking for the best camp-site for the night. There’s near misses as it seems as if they’ll collide, and then as they settle for the night you hear splashes, flapping, fluffing, contented murmurings, mewing, burping, grizzling. And then silence from the birds, as the sun goes down and the moon rises. Then the cacophony of insects begins, shattering the silence.

Yes, I’ve sure got my money with this ‘eco-resort’. It’s a FREE CAMP on Cooper Creek, (You couldn’t pay for a better eco-resort.) near Windorah in south-west Queensland. Cooper Creek is formed by the Barcoo and Thomson Rivers merging a few kilometres north of here. It then heads through numerous channels and creeks south to Lake Eyre, and is currently still crossing and spreading across the Birdsville Track. If there is no rain the rivers and creeks can dry out and then next year start to fill again from the cyclones up north. Then they can rage, eroding their muddy walls, rising up, and spreading, with their channels and smaller creeks, over the plains, while still moving south. The same with the Georgina and Burke Rivers that merge into Eyre Creek north of Birdsville, and the Diamantina that flows to Birdsville. This is Channel Country.

I’m camped on the river bank above the river with the ancient flood plains to my back. The grass and plants are green now. The Coolabah trees have signs of flood debris a metre or two up their trunks. All roads are closed in Channel Country when it rains. It rained less than two millilitres a few days ago where I was. Camped. I moved ten metres on the black-soil and my tyres were glugged with no sign of tread with the thick, glutinous mud, and my boots turned to moon-boots.

The Channel Country stretches over 200,000 square kilometres, yet there are less than 800 permanent residents. For two months I’ve felt like a resident, or at least a traveller, definitely not a tourist. I’ve experienced first-hand the dry and dusty plains, the gibber and the floods. I’ve camped by the rivers and creek and driven through the creeks and channels running over the roads. I’ve seen the red sand dunes and the rocky mesas. The shires of Diamantina, Boulia, Barcoo are the heart of the Channel Country. Boulia and Barcoo shires are each roughly the size of Tasmania ( 68,401 sq.km, 26,410 sq.ml), Diamantina Shire at about 95,000sq.km is much larger yet only has 300 residents. No wonder I’ve been clocking up the kilometres in the van

.After weeks of 4-wheel driving and adventures, I’m content to sit here on the banks of the Cooper for a week or so, and watch this phenomenon take place. The birds have come from coastal regions of Australia, thousands of kilometres away. They’ll be here for a short time, maybe a couple of months, until the waters drop or they eat all the fish. I’m privileged to see this miracle of nature so closely. I am over-whelmed and in total awe. Can I bear to leave?

When will the birds leave? Will they become susceptible to the bird flu, that is now appearing in Australia, when they return to more populated coastal areas? All I can do is hope!

Birds

Diamantina National park, very isolated, no facilities, known for its bird-watching and only a couple of other people here. Just how I like it. I’ve come from Boulia on the Burke river where there were quite a few Juvenile Nankeen Night Herons, and lots of very flighty White-plumed Honeyeaters. A woman asked me what they were. I said I thought a type of honeyeater. I’d no sooner walked on, when she came over excitedly with an ID from her phone. “Boulia Budgies!” I pointed out that they were more likely to be honeyeaters with their pointy beaks and no patterning on their yellow feathers – they looked similar to canaries. She was adamant – “Boulia ones are different to normal budgies”. No words. ‘Boulia bloody budgies!!!’

The road south to the National Park has been desolate with endless dusty plains. Then I come to where the rivers and channels and creeks run from the cyclones in the North into the Diamantina through the narrow Diamantina Gate, the opening between Hunter Gorge, where the river then spreads out again, filling channels and creeks on the way South. Channel Country is a different world, barren clay pans and gibber but when it rains it comes alive with Mitchell Grass. And when it floods it is impassable – black soil - the roads turn to thick, sticky, sucking mud and the creeks and channels rage across the roads.

First, I head to Gum Hole at Whistling Duck Creek, one of the creeks from the Diamantina. It is abundant with small birds and Whistling Kites. No ducks. Must be another case of mistaken identity. So many of the golden White-plumed Honey-eaters. They are common across the centre of Australia but are a more golden-coloured in arid regions where they frequent river gums. There’s a few White-Fronted Chats, and other tiny species I can’t get a photo to ID them from.

I sit by the Creek, bird-watch, wander the track, read books. I’d restocked with food at Boulia so I’m having chops and potatoes in their jackets by the camp fire. Such a treat after lean pickings on the tracks I’ve been on. This is my dream life but there is no perfection – the flies are insidious. Rising temperatures, little bush flies in my eyes, my nose, my mouth searching for facial moisture, and they drink deep. And on my food as I attempt to eat without swallowing any. The story is that the drovers used to put raisins in their damper to disguise all the flies that snuck in. But here is a whole creek of water? They should not be desperate.

As the sun goes down behind the trees on the opposite bank, they light in dark silhouettes. Venus emerges, and then a sliver of moon at the base of an almost ghost sphere, reflected into the creek. The milky way is barely evident here but the stars are big and incredibly clear, and definitely appear five-pointed.

I move my camp a few kilometres further along the track to the banks of the Diamantina Gorge, where the mighty river attracts the water birds. How do they know when the rivers flood when the fish eggs hidden in the mud hatch and the rivers are full of Yellow Belly and Perch? But here they are, fishing all day. Pelicans work alone, or in pairs, or groups, herding the fish to each other. They are so funny to watch. When they spot a fish, they dive straight down deep, so their feet and back-sides are all that’s showing. When they emerge, they have the fish in the deep skin bellow the beak. Then they swallow. But how do they see the fish? The murky Outback creeks and rivers are so muddy.

When flying they are so elegant, but when landing they end up contorted or the feet brakes don’t engage and the crash in a heap. This has kept me amused for days.

But there are other birds here too. Intermediate Egrets, White-Necked Herons, Australian Darters, a flock of Black Cormorants, Magpie Larks, and the ever-present Whistling Kites again. It is an endless film of action.

The flies are here too. It is hard to sit still out-side to watch the ever-changing view. In the hottest part of the day, I retreat inside the van, put my fly netting down and read. Because I’m reading so much at the moment, at least a book a day, I have to mix them up. Something literary, chick-lit, a detective story, a mystery, historical novel, whatever I’ve found at the few caravan parks I’ve been to, or have been able to swap with other campers.

About 4.00pm the flies start to abate, the birds seem to move more often, and I can sit outside and try for more bird photos. Lucky, I have my bird-watching ‘distance’ eye after my cataract removal, and my tried and trustworthy sixteen-year-old SLR Cannon. But so many unanswered questions when you sit solo thinking and wondering by a river for days, with no internet to fact check. But also, glorious to be untethered from the internet for a bit.

Then I plan a quick detour north to Winton, the largest regional town for a while, for more supplies, a shower, and hopefully a hair-cut. I look like ‘Catweazle’. I have first-hand the experience of going over the copious channels and creeks, now dried out. And here, although it’s more a station road, the crossings have been cemented and the sides protected so the water damage isn’t as great. There are the same gibber and clay-pan plains, but interspersed with huge, rocky, sculptural mesas.

On the way, I’m drawn to Old Cork Station for another camp by the Diamantina. This river with all its birds, entices me, speaks to me, soothes me. It’s not the fairly intact station ruins I was expecting. A few of the sand-stone walls remain. Built in 1870, it was finally abandoned to the elements in 1980. But the camp site is wonderful – private, big river gums, and no flies. Why would that be, same river, a hundred or so kilometres apart? Here, rather than the water-birds resting, the birds fly back and forth to obviously better feeding spots up or down river. And the Fairy Martins scavenge in the muddy banks below me.

It’s been over a week stopping, resting, watching, wondering, and building up my strength with fresh food. I awake to the Corellas screeching above, and the old windmill that I’m camped below throwing light patterns, like a blessing, into the van.

OK. Maybe just one more day here on the Diamantina.

The song ‘Diamantina Drover’ by Hugh McDonald, Redgum, now brings me to tears.

‘Spekking’.

I love fossicking for interesting rocks. Colours and patterns are what I look for. I cut and polish at the Lapidary Club of Tasmania just to reveal earth’s bounty within. I don’t make jewellery. It is not the monetary value that interests me. I’m looking for the rock that ‘speaks’ to me. Many in the club would refer to those as ‘leaverites’ – leave it right there.

When out at Ruby Gap, east of Alice Springs, I became re-enthused as I picked up splinters of crushed garnets in the dry riverbed. The pink sand was a sure indicator.

To go onto Gemtree, just north-west of Alice was ‘a no-brainer’ I signed on for two tours to look for zircons and garnets. You are taken out to a public or private field, and given the equipment and information, and water, to dig, sieve and wash the muddy finds

.But, have I reached ‘the level of my incompetence’? I can hardly dig in the hard, rocky dirt, and am exhausted in the hot sun within minutes. My strength has diminished at 77 years of age. Of course, I am at a disadvantage being solo, as all the other participants were couples, with a strong digging male and a sharp-eyed spotter. I don’t think eye-sight is the problem though. When I had my cataracts done, I had one close-up lens for fossicking, and one distance lens for bird-spotting. It is the sheer strength that it needed to dig and sieve for hours that I now lack. I was demoralised as I watched the couples process buckets of dirt, while I struggled with just a bucket or two. I did find a couple of examples but not lots as others did. All I could think was ‘Is this another thing I have to give up?’ Then it also occurred to me that even though I carry a metal detector I can no longer dig, bend, check the earth, and re-dig multiple times to locate the target. It is just too hard. The detector will have to go.

Something that has given me so much joy over a number of years, and I have a huge rock collection to show for it, is no longer possible. I am devastated. It is not just the acquisition, it is the search, the quest when on a road trip. Is it over?

But no, my spotter eyes are good, I can just ‘spekk’, and spekking (probably comes from ‘spectacles’) is fossicking talk or slang for no digging, just walking along finding what is on the surface. And big. Big is better. Phew! My mood rises.

I go out to designated fossicking spots in the Harts Range. It is feasible to find garnets, zircons, vermiculite, apatite, tourmaline, quartz, mica by just spekking. The most interesting rocks and gem-stones are often found along road-sides when a grader has been through, or even in a car park when someone’s special find has fallen from a pocket or not been recognised for what it is.

I have the old fossicking maps, but tracks have changed and locations don’t match. Much of the Harts Range has been closed off to fossickers because basically they are a nuisance when cattle raising is the aim. Mt Riddock Station is 2,633 square kilometres so I guess they can still cope with a couple of small government designated fossicking areas. I find a brilliant camp-site overlooking the ranges, but explore the tracks before I set up. The buffel grass has taken over from the red dirt. It is virtually impossible to see any old mine workings or fossicking diggings.

I was feeling disillusioned again, when on a slow rocky jump-up I spot the red sand sign of garnets where the water has run down. I spekked a few samples from the creek. Then I came to a track end, also with the distinctive red sand. I spekked and specked until my back could take no more, and my fingernails were worn down. Now that was a substantial haul. Most will go into the tumbler to smooth and polish, but I might find a couple of cutters when I have enough water to wash them off. I even found some granite specimens with garnet in situ. I’m back in the game!

I set off on the Plenty Highway heading east to Boulia and Queensland. There are plenty of corrugations, mud and sharp rocks, and a bit of bitumen, but this will gradually be sealed to be the Outback way across Australia from Cairns on the east coast to Laverton in Western Australia. A fun fact from a notice along the road. ‘One kilometre of bitumen on this road takes 250 hours of man power, 1700 cubic metres of gravel and in 2016 cost about $250,000.’ It is slow progress.

I camp the night at Marshall River, a mighty river when in flood that I’ve never heard of before, but now a dry sandy surface with patches of small rocks. Dry river beds are a great source of specimens as they’ve been washed down, and tumbled from floods each year. I spekk a few smalls finds for the tumbler – agates, quartz, chert, and a gorgeous unknown bright purple specimen. The feeling of joy. This is what the quest is all about.

Camped right on the river bank, my reverie is disturbed late afternoon by a young ‘squire’ from the station on his trail bike who informs me “You can’t camp here. No camping right by the river.” I have a nice chat about his schooling, birds and rocks of the area, and the station “We have more than 1000 kilometres.” I tried to instigate a philosophical chat about the difference between camping and sleeping in a vehicle, but he was too young, about ten years old, to engage. With his age, I thought I’d charmed him, but as he went to ride off, with all his entitlement, his last words were : “You can’t camp here. You’ll have to move.” I moved up to the public spot by the road.

Further down the road I found an unlikely, unnamed creek full of small pieces of brightly coloured, partly polished chert, coloured I think by aeons of water, wind and sand. Perfect for the tumbler. Hard to choose, hard to stop. I’ve called the creek Chert Creek as it deserves a name.

And then further along where the grader had been along the edges, pure white chert, so incongruous in the harsh landscape, disfigured or decorated depending on perspective, with baked iron from the soil. Found in limestone, this is being crushed to gravel in preparation for sealing the road sometime.

I love spekking. So satisfying! The question now is: Does spekking require a fossicking licence as no basic hand tools are required? Will this be put to the test now I have arrived in Queensland?

Northern Territory, Australia

The Northern Territory of Australia is synonymous with the glorious colours of the landscape, the reds of the rocks, and the white of the trunks of the famous Ghost gums.

Fact of the day! The botanical name for the iconic Ghost gums has recently changed from Corymbia aparrerinja to Blakella aparrerinja. The Northern Territory has determined that some bloodwoods with smooth trunks and differentiation in flowers in N.T. will now get their own genus as determined by molecular phylogenetics through DNA investigation. Wow!

The Territory is rough country with jagged rocks and gorges formed over millions of years of earth upheaval. The rocky plains are scoped with red sand and dune mounds. So much of the land is barely explored and the rest is accessed by bush tracks rather than sealed highways. The temperature here in winter ranges from low twenties Celsius to low thirties depending how far north you venture. In summer the north is getting into the forties, and is hit by vicious cyclones. Most of the tracks are closed then because of flooding. Already you have to be a certain type of person to make it your home. Will it remain liveable into the future?

I’m currently travelling around the central section of the Territory and Australia. At 22 degrees today, it is feasible to explore, bush walk, and even fossick. Sun here feels hotter though, no-one would venture out with-out a wide brimmed hat for protection.

I headed out last week to explore Ruby Gap Gorge. I’ve driven out before but this time the river course had changed because of the floods and it was the roughest 4-wheel driving I’ve tackled. I did see the warning sign – only high clearance 4-wheel drive vehicles, experienced 4-wheel drivers only, but I figured Troopie and I fitted the bill with all the flood driving we’ve done over the last five weeks. And here we are to tell the tale.

The last five kilometres of the 65 km track was driving down dry riverbeds, along wet riverbeds - much more difficult to find the hard surface, along sections where the sand had washed away and it was driving over small boulders, and weaving around larger ones. There were rocky jump-ups and tough touching ‘nose on the bonnet’ down hills. 28psi in the tyres is your friend. It took me near an hour for the last five km, climbing out and spotting for the track, and crawling and bumping over the rocky sections. I let Troopie find the way.

I was the only person there when I arrived at Ruby Gap. The rangers had closed off the previous end of the track because of the height of water in the rock pools and the ghastly buffel grass that has gone berserk because of the rain. I wandered down over the flat boulders, weaving around pools, but in the couple of hours before dusk I couldn’t find a way through to the inner Gorge.

Back at my camp I was collecting firewood when I heard my name being called. People I’d had a cuppa with at Chambers Gorge had arrived and I hadn’t heard their vehicle, with the wind blowing from the opposite direction. At the moment I looked up, arms laden with sticks, a moment of inattention, I tripped on a rock and slammed my left knee onto a rough boulder. With the exquisiteness of that pain, I briefly fainted. I was able to hobble to camp, mop up the blood from the gouge, and bind it. It was obviously a bit more than a knock to the knee-cap, as I was still hobbling, and hobbled, the next day.

It was good to share a camp-fire with my new friends that night and next day they managed to find a rough walking track through the buffel to the Gorge entrance. I spent the day with my leg up on a chair. I decided to follow them out a kilometre or two over the worst of the rock sections when they left the camp to have support in case my clutch knee was problematic. Painful but manageable, and they left me camped under the ghost gums at an architecturally built fire-place, overlooking the Gorge. I rested the knee for four days with a little bit of walking along the dry river-bed to stop it seizing up. Glorious view, plenty of food and water, books to read, birds to watch, no-one else around, and wait-for it, a little bit of fossicking.

In 1886 surveyor and explorer David Lindsay reported “the granite of which this range is composed is studded with rubies or garnets”. It started a ruby rush here hence the name Ruby Gap. By 1887/88 there were over 200 miners here fossicking. By the end of 1888 it was revealed that when the stones reached Europe for sale, they were actually identified as high-grade garnets but with little value. Thus, mining ceased, with miners pivoting to the near-by Arltunga gold mines. The sand in many sections of the Hale River here is peppered with fragments, slivers and grains of garnet. Being unfit for heavy activity, I scraped up some of these tiny pieces with a tea-spoon and put then in phial. A couple of afternoons of activity that was strangely satisfying and therapeutic.

When to stay and when to leave? I guess when the call of more adventure beckons, or before you start to lose the feeling of awe for this magnificent camp. And my knee was on the mend. I think I’ve toughened up in the Territory.

I drove back down the track to Arltunga gold area, 1887 to 1913, now a historic mining site. Those poor, disillusioned ‘ruby’ miners were so tough they didn’t lose heart, they pushed their wheel barrows onward to Arltunga where a similar story emerged. The mine was worked for twenty or so years but then it was decided there wasn’t enough gold for the effort, nor water. Maybe the Territorians today have inherited some of those genes.

I just happened to be in the area for the Hartz Range Races and Rodeo. They start the children on a plastic bull at eight months, graduate to five to ten-year-olds on a real poddy calf, teenagers on a steer, and adults on a bull, and similar progression for wild horses. Those animals reared, bucked, kicked, stamped, and trampled, and everyone managed to get back on their feet and stagger from the arena. That’s tough. And for the spectators. Dust flying everywhere, up your nose, in your eyes and ears. And the height of the steps up to, and down from, the basic grand-stands was enough to damage knees again. I had the Rapigel horse and greyhound liniment out again that night.

This race and rodeo meet is a real community event with a nod to previous generations. There were running races, whip cracking, tug-of-war, lolly scramble and cow tail tossing. I know! And a wild dance party at night for over 16s. That then progressed to parties around camp-fires until 4am. The ‘firies’ (fire--fighters) got their own back. They drove around the camp ground at 8am with sirens waking everybody. I stayed overnight on the camp ground with little sleep, saw some of those party-goers tackle the bulls again next day, but called it a day before the lizard races. They’d offered $10 for every lizard the children could catch the day before to auction off, and then race.

So much contrast in the Territory. It’s a place of immense beauty. The people work hard under difficult conditions, did I mention the flies, but they party hard and love the challenges. It’s definitely an adventure living in, or even visiting the Territory, and you either ‘shape up, or ship out’. And of course, it is the home to a large Indigenous population who survived these harsh living conditions, with great success, for over 65,000 years. Full kudos to them!

I’ve been here for a bit now. I think I’m starting to fit in. ‘I’m still standing’.

Alice Springs

It’s been a long time between bitumen, shops, fruit and veg., and as it turns out, beer. 1500km of 4-wheel driving. After the Oodnadatta Track, the Perdirka and Ghan Tracks continuing North brought new delights – Dalhousie Springs, Mt Dare Pub, more of the Old Ghan Railway and then Chamber’s Pillar in Northern Territory, still following the path of Stuart, the explorer. My hero. I felt like Stuart some days with my supplies depleting, but lucky I was relying on Troopie and not Polly his horse, who was very dependent on water. She would have been right this year though. The tracks when I crossed from South Australia into Northern Territory continued to be ‘ordinary’. The flooding extended far.

Then into Alice Springs. First things first. Straight to a car wash, as I seemed to bring a fair bit of South Australia with me. Twenty minutes later with the high pressure hose the tarmac was covered with clumps of solid mud. I had to get a stick to get the now hardened dirt from around the wheel arches. It had set like adobe bricks. A 5cm adobe layer had even adhered to under the bonnet. What a weight I’ve been carrying.

Then to stock up before the next leg, supermarket, and bottle shop for a carton of beer. But the rules have changed since I was last in Alice. Bottle shops are closed totally Monday and Tuesday, and on other days open between 3pm and 7pm. It is Monday morning. Looks like I’ll be staying a little longer. I hear later the there’s a lot of vans travelling up the highway from South Australia bringing in black market alcohol. Proabition has never worked.

I find a bush type caravan park, Wanngardi, a few kilometres out of town. Alice is so green this year from the rain but my view does face some of the red hills and that the Centre is famous for.

Over the next couple of days, I head into the ‘city’. I don’t plan to visit tourist attractions but do head to the historic Old Telegraph Repeater Station as I’ve visited all the others on the way up, following the line. Mission completed.

But in the town centre I have culture shock- cars, shops, people. The Mall is closed. The paving has been ripped up because to replace leaking pipes, and the art galleries, shops, cafes and restaurants seem to be all closed too. Where is the ‘heart’ of Alice? I am starving. I’ve been on short rations of potatoes and eggs for the last week.

Then I find ‘Feast’, an Asian restaurant in an obscure shopping centre out of town. And feast I do. Truly it may be the best Chinese restaurant I’ve ever been too, and I lived in China, but then I remember, context is all. And the beer ‘Almost Summer’, from the Alice Springs Brewery . I’m at the brewery the next night for pizza and more of their brew. Appetite sated.

But the supermarket, in a big shopping centre, with all those people? I tried, but had to return to tackle it next day. I lingered by the locked trollies hoping I might figure how to release one but no luck. I lugged my groceries around in baskets. The supermarkets look like they’ve had a hard life. It’s probably why there is a new one being built next door. I know I like my lamb chops but I didn’t know that they are so special that each pack has to have a security lock.

At the checkout I find I can buy a token to release the trolley to get my groceries, beer and wine to the car, but it doesn’t fit. I’m now informed that I have to push the token out from the centre of the device that I’ve just paid 50 cents for, and ‘voila’ I have a bottle opener. That seems ironic considering the fuss about bottle shops but I need the trolley for that as well. I’m at the bottle shop at 3pm Wednesday and join the crowd. There’s a bit of a rush – nearly all Whities not the Indigenous. Also, ironic. I show ID to the security guards at the entrance, and then again at the check-out as you can only visit once a day. Lucky my paltry stash fits the quota.

I was only in town during the day but none of the problems the town has were evident - no fights, no drunks, no people sleeping in the streets, no arrests, no shouting.

This whole town civilisation experience has left me shaken, disorientated and bloody exhausted. I feel like I’ve been in a foreign country. Take me back to the bush, the deserts and the lonely roads.

Just for this afternoon I make do with the Olive Pink Botanical Gardens. Olive was a Tassie woman who studied art at The University of Tasmania. The University still has a collection of her botanical sketches and drawings. She was a contemporary of Daisy Bates and spent time with her at her aboriginal camp. This engendered Olive’s interest and she became an anthropologist wanting to work at the missions but was not allowed because she was a ‘difficult woman’. As we now know they could have done with a woman running them. She moved to Alice Springs and set up the gardens living there until her death aged 91 in 1956. She became totally eccentric, and is my heroine. There are over 600 botanical species in these arid gardens and it is a mecca for the birds of the area.

This trip is definitely the roads less travelled, only small towns, natural attractions, endless outback. I’m out bush again tomorrow.

Recommended reading:

Mr Stuart’s Track John Bailey Pan Macmillan Australia 2007

Olive Pink A Life in Flowers Gillian Ward Hardie Grant Books 2018

The Indomitable Miss Pink : A Life in Anthropology UNSW Press 2001

Dalhousie Artesian Springs

Dalhousie Springs is a miracle of nature, part of the group of Mould Springs that rise up from the huge underground Great Artesian Basin. Dalhousie is in a group of thirteen active springs, now managed by National Parks. Dalhousie Spring itself is the largest, about 160 metres long and 12 metres deep, with a water temperature of about 36 degrees, and surrounded by native trees and shrubs - Mulga and Sandhill wattle, Dead finish, Gidgee, Coolabah eucalypts and Saltbush. Because the water bubbles to the surface freely, and is not being sucked up from the depths by a bore, it is fresh water.

I arrive just before sunset. I’ve done over 200 kilometres from my last camp at Angebuckina Bridge, the longest bridge in South Australia, opened in 1892 for the Ghan railway. It’s been a challenging drive with mud, river crossings, sandhills and corrugations. Average speed is about 40-60 kmph. Progress is slow, but I’ve loved it. It is the epitome of ‘Outback’ for me. As the track changes to red sand, swathes of Sturt’s Desert Pea appear along the verges. I stop in at the ruins of Perdirka Siding and Dalhousie Station on the way. These stone buildings tell a tale of the trials of the past. Abandoned because of droughts. Ironic, as I’ve battled floods the last two weeks. A rare event out here in the desert.

Dalhousie Spring is situated on the edge of the Simpson Desert. Because of the state of the tracks the Simpson Desert Track is closed, and there are only a couple of other hardy souls here who’ve come especially for the Spring.

A water temperature of 36 degrees! I’d planned to just look initially, but I can’t wait. And it’s sunset. The sky is muted from pinks to purples, and then to fiery red, to golden orange. There is a faint mist rising from the water to the cooler air.

As I float alone, I shear off the tightness in my body from driving the washed-out tracks. The galahs stop their squawking and settle for the night. All is at peace, except for hundreds of Fairy Martins swooping in above me, flying low to sip from the water, a faint splash as their wings touch, but no sound. I am so invisible or non-threatening to them, they don’t pause. A Greater Egret surveys the scene.

Then I set up camp. No camp-fires in National Parks, so it is left over fish and chips from the Pink Road House at Oodnadatta. I cook tea in the waning light, not using my head torch, as I don’t want to attract insects. I shouldn’t have bothered. The mosquitoes here are voracious, attacking through long pants and socks.

As the stars start to appear I can feel myself melding into the landscape and sky. Other campers are far away. I am one with my environment.

Then late arrivals. The intruders pull in with their caravan, about twenty metres away from me, although there are about 5 acres of empty sites. It takes them about 30 minutes to set up the van, on totally flat ground, driving around, giving directions, loudly : “Over a bit. No go back. Stop. A little bit more. To the left. Nearly”. You can imagine what I was thinking.

Meanwhile their headlights are on high beam shining right into my camp. When they turn them off, they set up two spot-lights, and with their children running around and screaming, they start to prepare tea. I now know exactly what, and how much, everyone in the family is having, and whether they’re having one or two slices of bread with it.

Caravans are actually not allowed on the tracks at the moment. The tracks are open for 4-wheel drive only, no towing, nothing over 3 tonnes. It brings back the sheer entitlement that many caravan owners appear to have. Rules and common courtesies don’t seem to apply. Most don’t slow down as they approach on unsealed roads, and rocks flip up to the approaching vehicle. My windscreen, with 2 big chips and a crack, is testament to this disregard. We are hundreds of kilometres from civilisation in the middle of Outback Australia and these people, parked nearby, have brought all the noise and light pollution of the city with them.

I have an escape. I can go to the Spring. I need my torch. It is pitch dark when I’m away from their spot lights. Maybe, just maybe, by the time I come back, the voracious mosquitoes will have driven them to bed. I put my torch, switched on, on the steps to the Spring so that I can find my way out of the water again. It would be easy to become disorientated with the mist rising from the vast pool now the night air is cold.

There is no moon, but thousands of stars range across the sky. The milky way is so extreme if forms a giant horse-shoe. Other stars cascade to the horizon in all directions. I float as if in a steam bath. There are no mosquitoes here. The niggles of unthinking people float away in the warm water. Now I am relaxed.

I’m up at 6am for a sun-rise immersion. Three other people have the same idea. Their voices even saying “Good Morning” are muted. The steam is thick. There is a disombulence of floating heads. Yet there is a reverence for what we are experiencing.

Everyone here at the camp leaves and I have the whole camp-ground to myself. Other over-nighters will arrive later in the day. May they not park near me. I walk, bird-watch and read. More immersions. And observe the changing moods of the Spring.

On my last morning the Fairy Martins seem to have accepted Troopie as part of the scenery. As I lie in bed they whirl around, skimming up and over, even settling on the air vent peering in at me. I go for my last dip. When I return, I have two Fairy Martins flying inside the van. I open all the doors but they can’t find their way out. I have to catch each one individually. So tiny! So soft! So fragile, yet they fly so fiercely out here in the desert. Water is strength.

Stranded at William Creek.

I’m camped at William Creek on the Oodnadatta Track. It’s only sixty kilometres from here to Lake Eyre which is spectacularly full this year. This only happens maybe three or four times in 160-years. I hear from fellow travellers that there are birds galore in Halligan Bay.

But rain is coming. I check with the pub who have the latest updates. Not till late this afternoon/evening. I head out early morning. The sixty-kilometre track takes nearly two hours. It’s a little dug up by vehicles and very slick, but there are diversion tracks over the worst mud sections from rain the week or so ago. Normally this track would be dry with dusty corrugations. This country that is usually gibber, salt pans and sand is green, now so green, with new growth. Cattle grazing here must wonder at the luck in their lives.

About halfway along the track I pass a memorial to Caroline Grossmueller who perished here December 1998. Such a tragic story. Her boyfriend and her were travelling here from Germany in a hired 4-wheel drive and camped out at Hallagan Bay, when they became bogged. Unfortunately, they hadn’t been given proper advice, or a compressor. Instead of waiting by the vehicle (outback lore), Caroline the fitter of the two decided to walk for help. In the 40 degree heat she died from heat stroke. Rescuers found her body, and the vehicle shorty afterwards. The male was fine. Rescuers released pressure in the tyres and drove the vehicle out. This basic premise of outback driving hadn’t been conveyed. Such an unnecessary event. My tyres are at 30psi as I drive out but I’m prepared to lower them if necessary, not for corrugations or sand driving today, but for mud.

The sky is blue, the sun is out. It is a brilliant day to walk the shores of Lake Eyre and watch the birds. Pelicans and Stilts (Avocets) and of course sea-gulls are the most prolific species in this Bay. All along the foreshore there are skeletons, heads and spines, of small fish. The birds must be fussy this year as there is an over abundance of food.

The water is lapping at the vegetation along the shore. So many varieties of semi-succulents, and surprising heaps of different types of daisies. The foreshore on normal years is dry and arid with stretches of gluggy mud leading out to the white salt pan. What a privilege to be here, and even have a paddle in the legendary Lake Eyre. It’s still a salt water lake of course. I checked.

After a couple of hours exploring I head back. About 30 kilometres along the track back to William Creek, I come to flooded plains. The track and diversions have become a huge lake. The tracks are now under-water and its only with gut-feeling that helps decide which route to take, knowing that underneath that water is thick churned up mud. The next 25 kilometres have had a huge dump of unexpected rain. As I drive along the wipers are on over-drive as the water is pushed up over the bonnet, windscreen and even the roof. I lose all visibility in some sections and cannot stop to take photos for fear of never moving again.

I can feel the mud sucking at the tyres, and the Troopie starts veering in all directions. It takes all my strength to pull her forward again. Some moments I think I’ve lost it, and figure this will make an interesting Substack post if I survive, but also knowing that if I become stuck I will have to stay in the vehicle to wait for help, and with the rain coming, watch the water rise up around me. But once again, there is a god. I finally reach the end of the 25 km rain dump. The last five back to town is light relief.

I call into the pub to report the state of the road as I was the only person coming out at that time. The two other vehicles camping out there had decided to stick it out as “It won’t come too much.” As it transpired an aircraft doing tourist flights over Lake Eyre had seen the new flood and the track had been closed. They were as surprised as I that there’d been this isolated dump. It hadn’t shown up on their radar. There’s no-way you can know that when you’re out there, as there is no phone signal. And it hadn’t rained in William Creek… Yet!

As you can imagine, I was on a bit of a high on my return, and didn’t mind hunkering down in the Troopie as the predicted rain arrived early evening and continued without respite all night. 5 to 10 ml predicted. We got 32 ml! The camp-ground is awash with huge puddles, and you have to be careful not to come to grief in the slippery mud.

Subsequently the Oodnadatta Track is closed in both directions, as are the roads to Roxby Downs and Coober Pedy. There is no estimate yet as to how long it will be before these roads re-open again. The wind, and now sun today will help. The creeks will be running again and with the underlay of mud over the crossings, the mush and depth may keep the roads closed longer.

And what about the two lots of campers that stayed at Lake Eyre? They’d travelled back in tandem for safety and staggered into the pub last night, mud up to their waists. The track had copped both lots of rain by the time they they’d travelled out, and the fan belt had broken with the pressure of the mud on the Amarok. The emergency ‘whatever’, then caused a flat battery about five kms. out. They had to leave one vehicle there, come in, charge the battery, then recover the vehicle. They now have to wait for a new fan belt from down South, and keep their fingers crossed about emergency lights still showing on their dash.

The paddock I’m camped in, for unpowered vehicles, may be bare, but it’s still an oasis in the desert. Everyone is cosy here. There’s a pub, hot meals (no shop for supplies), cold beer and wine, endless filtered drinking water from their bore, warm showers, and internet. Last night flocks of budgerigars swooped overhead, whirling in sync, before settling in the low growing eucalypts. The sky comes alive with the sunsets. There are many worse places to be stranded.

Maree to William Creek

It is very different driving on the Oodnadatta Track this year. Not only has it been closed to vehicles totally because of rain, but now it has reopened it is 4-wheel drive, less than 3 tonne only. Less vehicles are good, because the wet areas are less chopped up. Usually it’s a totally corrugated track but this year there are fewer corrugations and more slick mud surfaces. And so many wet creek crossings. The more drivers try to avoid the pools in the middle, the more the sides become churned mud. Its lucky everyone has let their tyres down to 30psi.

Then there is the sun, or lack of it. Temperatures are still only about 12 to 16 degrees, usually unknown in summer. I’m a sun-seeker. This is not what I’ve signed up for, but I battle on wearing shorts defiantly. But the main difference is the landscape, green like I’ve never seen it before. The salt-bush is invigorated, and different varieties of semi-succulents are springing forth. The small eucalypts that follow the creeks are vibrant. Small birds are gathering, and flitting in delight when the sun breaks through … like me. I camped by Stuart’s Creek.

There’s plenty to see of interest on the Track as it follows John McDougall Stuart 1861-62 journey South to North across Australia from Adelaide to the Gulf country. When the first railway was built in the 1800s it followed his route. The Track follows much of the rail route with the raised tracks and bridges visible. Obviously, it was built for expected floods.

The sturdy stone railway stations and the fettlers sidings appear intermittently, although sadly most are in a state of disrepair. Once they lose their roof to a desert storm, the deterioration is quick. Just the walls left, standing stark on the flat plains. The fettlers probably had the harshest life. The gangs had to respond quickly to constant up-keep and repairs when needed due to flash-floods, sand storms and extreme heat up to 50 degrees Celsius that warped the rails. Beresford Bore, a fettler siding, is a stand-out this year as it had its own bore (now capped) and dam. The dam is now full from rain, even overflowing in some places, the surrounds are green, and full of bird life.

The Overland Telegraph Station, opened in 1872 followed the same route. Some of the 36,000 original poles, the native pines Callitris glaucophylla, still stand.

But pure joy this year! Lake Eyre South is almost full- a rare event. It’s usually a dry salt pan. Lake Eyre South is separated from Lake Eyre North by the Goyder Channel and only fills when flood-waters overtop Lake Eyre North or when localised rain hits the immediate area. Not just the look-out for me. I wanted to get close up and personal to the water. I trudged through the mud, boots clogged to the ankles, and had a sip of clear water. Very salty! Those poor explorers who thought they’d found a fresh water lake. It does look so enticing.

And underneath all this normally sparse gibber (First Nations word for small stone) plains, salt pans, sandy desert lies the Great Artesian Basin, covering 1.7 million Square kilometres of mostly South Australia and Queensland. The water, extracted by bores, is often too brackish for humans to drink but can feed livestock and native animals. But in this area of the Track there are Mound Springs where fresher water bubbles up from the Basin. I visited the Bubbler and Blanche Cup now fenced and conserved. These Springs are how Stuart was able to traverse sparse Australia, and the nomadic First Nations people were able to move around the deserts.

With the advent of pastoralists, this life-giving resource diminished as cattle trampled all over the springs destroying them. The bare rocky hills that have grown up around them are as a result of sand combining with the water flowing from them, forming a hard crust. At Coward Springs, a pastoral station, the water has been harnessed for a spa. Most refreshing, and the water has flowed out creating a wet-land for wildlife. The original date plantation now supplies dates, and even fresh date scones for travellers. I was intending to over-night in this oasis, but with rain forecast I was encouraged to keep travelling to William Creek.

Stangway’s Pastoral Station further up the Track was established because of the water bubbling up from underground. It is now part of Anna Station, the biggest working cattle station in the world, a Kidman property. Many of the old stone station buildings remain. The most impressive is the buttressed water tank that resembles a small European church. These buildings were taken over and expanded as a work and repeater station for the building of the Overland Telegraph line. The station homestead and outbuildings moved to a different location. The Mound Springs visible here are dead or diminished. The area is now a conservation area.

And then, into William Creek, named by Stuart after the son of one of his sponsors. He also named Chambers Pillar South of Alice Springs. William Creek became a repeater station for the Telegraph line after Strangways was decommissioned. Maybe the time has come in Australia to at least re-name places that were named after sponsors and kings and friends. Some of those courageous explorers could keep their name – Stuart Highway or Creek or Mountain.

The tiny town - William Creek historic pub, airline office, airport for scenic flights over Lake Eyre, and camp ground - is on the traditional lands of the Arabana people. According to historical place names the First Nations name is ‘mardi-mangu-mangu’.

And what a refreshing water-hole it is!

Rescue, renovation, rejuvenation.

I’ve been ambling North in a holding pattern waiting for the Oodnadatta Track to reopen after more rain. I drove through the Flinders Ranges, so green this year. With rain comes floods as these outback creeks run, often for the first time in years. And running they were, all access to gorges closed. People camped in Parachilna Gorge had to make a dash to higher ground as the water came through.

As weather hasn’t been conducive to many campfires, I’ve been doing some pub camping. Pubs can no longer rely on locals with our harsh drink-driving laws. The solution has been to open up the area behind the pubs in country towns and outback highways for camping. Maybe throw in toilets, and a good chef, and travellers in vans and caravans will be ‘beating down the door’. It’s caused a revival in renovations, and prevention from closures. Most pubs offer some classic food options, steak, fish and the old favourite, chicken ‘parmi’. There’s always a few locals propping up the bar, or sitting on the veranda, reviving past glories and keeping the oral history alive. Cradock, Lyndhurst, Blinman and Maree have gone for this option.

Some pubs have taken it a step further. Beltana Hotel has reopened after eighty years with upmarket renovations and their own beer label. Nearby Prairie has raised the ante, with their own brewery – PBP Parachilna Brew Project. They have made their mark featuring a menu selling feral species – camel, goat and also kangaroo with white tablecloth service. Would you fancy the Feral mixed Grill (Roo fillet, camel sausage, emu mignon, nomad chicken leg, onion jam, mash potato, roasted mushroom and tomato, saltbush damper, jus. $60), the Feral goat Rogan Josh or Ashed Mallyroo Loin? I went for the emu pate, teamed with the Nilpena Ediacara brew – delicious. This is a niche market and it is priced accordingly. They don’t take cash. People fly in, stay, eat, and maybe do a quick local ‘reccy’, fly out. They have moved far beyond the epitome of ‘Aussie Outback Pub’.

It’s got me thinking about the role pubs played in Australia’s exploration and development from agriculture and mining in the 1800s, early 1900s. Hot climate, thirsty work! Starting from ‘sly grog’ tents, to shanties in the bush ,to stone edifices that have lasted until today. What would the most important building, and probably the first, be in a new town? The pub of course. Then the police station to keep law and order probably because of the pub clientele, the hospital to sort out accidents and drunks, the post office to keep communication open, and the school, maybe later, when families started to arrive after the first influx of single fellows.

Further up the road I came to Farina, a town developed in 1878 as a rail-head for agriculture and mining, and part of the original Ghan track to Alice Springs. Over the years Farina slowly faded to irrelevance, until it became a total ghost town with the re-routing of the rail in the 1950s. Some of the beautiful stone buildings partially remain – the 2 pubs, the police station, the hospital, but not the school. That was just a rougher, tin build and has long gone. It shows the founding men’s priorities. All I can think is how hot it would have been in a tin building with forty or so children in 30-degree heat. Other similarly constructed tin builds for homes and shops have tumbled or been repurposed in other locations.

A dead, dilapidated ruin. Then something happened to save the town – a bakery! In the early 2000s a group of history buffs wanted to save the ruins from further deterioration. In 2010 to fund stabilisation, and some rebuilds, a bakery was started by volunteers in the underground bake-house that was still in-situ, as part of the Farina Restoration Group project. The pastries and breads became famous, the travellers kept calling in, volunteers came from all round Australia. The building work and the bakery only occur for about eight weeks in the middle of each winter, June and July, the cooler part of the year.

Most of the remaining buildings have been stabilised. The police station is currently receiving attention, and the railway station, one of the only buildings in town that was wooden, is being reconstructed authentically from old photos. So many stone buildings, yet the railway station, the main reason for the town, was built in wood? I can’t find any information for this decision. The rest of the railway stations along this track are wonderful stone constructions. The town was built on the gibber plains of South Australia, barely a tree in site. I wonder that wood, having to be brought by the rail from down South, was so special, that it out-trumped the stone that could be picked up locally.

I’m camped in the station’s (not train, sheep property) camp ground next to Farina. Its recovering from the flood that occurred a few days ago. The track into the town and camp is muddy and rutted, but the people still keep coming for the bakery.

I’ve had a bit of good luck here too. As I was driving up the highway last week my windscreen suddenly developed a 15 cm. crack from the driver right hand corner up and across the screen. I haven’t even got off the bitumen yet. I called into the last repairer for the next 1000km but he was too busy to do anything and declared “She’ll be right mate”, even if I will be tackling a lot of corrugated roads. Apparently, new learning for me, even if the crack spreads across the whole windscreen it will not be dangerous unless I roll the Troopie. Very reassuring!

As I wander the camp ground here looking for the driest spot with a hint of grass, I see a sign by a caravan ‘Windscreen chip repairs $50’. There is a god. Mine’s a bit more than a chip, but Darcy is willing to have a go. He drilled the end point of the crack to stop the run, and infilled it with epoxy. Looks good, the test is yet to come.

And while I wander and ponder, more good news, the Oodnadatta Track has reopened. I’ll head there tomorrow.

But which direction?

Indecision! Indecision! Bad weather is coming. Lots of rain. It is unpredictable. Yes, climate change. A lot of the Outback is already underwater, not just from the rivers flowing from the Channel Country in Queensland after the cyclones, but from unexpected rains in the deserts. The Birdsville and Strzelecki Tracks heading north are closed again this year, and the Oodnadatta Track is open, closed again, re-opened depending on future rain.

I have three months before I’m booked on the ferry again. I have no iconic destination in mind this year, no aspirations for the Tip again, or Kakadu, or Gibb River. I usually have a rough plan, and that is to head north to the sun and central deserts. I loathe main highways so the road less travelled, in Australia unsealed, is the way to go. When it rains on these unsealed roads outback roads though, they are closed immediately as vehicles cause inordinate damage when the red dust turns to treacherous mud, and everyone who does venture gets bogged. Australia is the driest continent. 70% of the country is arid or semi-arid. Well not this year!

The trip needs to be an adventure … within limits. I have had a few past escapades. As I age, I need the frisson of adventure to be motivated, otherwise I might as well stay on the couch at home. And it’s important to keep the physical momentum going if you drive a V8 turbo Land Cruiser Troopie, because you need strong knees to jump in and out, and do all that clutch work when 4-wheel driving. The power of the Troopie also raises another issue, the cost of diesel as a consequence of Trump’s war, and the potential for lack of availability.

This is not a holiday, more an exploration, although I do also want to relax as well, preferably in the sun. As there has been so much Outback rain and flooding, the land will be green, predicted to be the greenest for years, so different from its usual red dirt. Lake Eyre will be fuller even than last year when I visited. With the land so green there should be an amazing display of wildflowers in a month or so. Rock-fossicking will be limited as the rocks will be covered by plants and grasses so I will have to get my priorities right. I envisage days of camping by rivers, bird-watching, looking for wild-flowers, writing my journal and Substack, reading good books, and cooking on the campfire with cold beer in hand.

A week into the trip, I’ve had a mixed bag. As I disembarked from the Spirit of Tasmania ferry, the sun emerged so I took a hard left to see the amazing geological features along the Great Ocean Road. And Amazing they were! Limestone cliffs, embedded with sea fossils, but eroded and corroded into freakish shapes, bridges, windows peep-holes and stacks, and of course the 12 (? erosion) Apostles, that stand as sentinels rising from the ocean floor. I was led to various sites by a book ‘Written in Stone’ by scientist, artist and writer, Philomena Manifold, an invaluable guide.

I stayed my first night at Cumberland River, where in January there was a flash flood, and caravans and cars were washed down the river to the bridge or sea. The beach there is strewn with huge logs and branches and the odd bit of ply from wrecked caravans. A lot of the Road is under reconstruction as the cliff edges have eroded to the sea far below. Many walking tracks in the Otway National Park are closed for repairs.

I walked beaches for three days, but then headed inland , and was enveloped in fog, a fog so thick that it played with my G.P.S., taking me for diversions because of closed roads, that eventuated weren’t actually closed at all. At one stage it was trying to lead me up ‘the garden path’, well, driveway of a farm. I hadn’t heard of a GPS being stymied by fog before. Just as well I have Hema maps on my i-pad, and always paper maps as well.

Rain, fog and grey days. I overnighted at Lake Bolac and Green Lake Park, previous stops that are glorious in alternate weather. Then finally, I arrived at the Murray River just below Mildura, ready to chill out for a couple of days. My first campfire, chops on the barbecue, potatoes in their jackets in the fire. This favourite camp site didn’t disappoint. I awoke the next morning to sun shining, birds chirping and squawking, clouds reflected in the river. I put my shorts on, and imbibed the warmth, the fresh air, the moods of the Murray, and the freedom.

Devastated forests

Torrential rain, mud, leeches, mosquitoes, not an ideal environment to be out on a winter’s night in the mountains of Tasmania. I am standing with a group of Bob Brown Foundation activists to defend our beautiful alpine forests. It is particularly poignant at this time of year. In four weeks, logging will have to stop in this area as wedge tailed eagles will be returning to nest. June 30 is designated by environment laws . Unfortunately, Sustainable Timbers, our forest destruction agency in Tasmania, has taken this as a challenge to destroy as much of the area before this date and the return of the eagles.

We halt logging in two coupes in our three days here. Log trucks and contractors arrive about 4am but we block the access with scrub and our vehicles. They can’t legally operate machinery if we are on site, so we defiantly hold banners in front of the logs to be loaded to the trucks. The men push past us and start moving machinery towards us. We hold our ground. They stop. The standard ‘dance’ is that they will call ‘Suss” Timbers who will call the police. A stand-off for the moment. We are trained in non-violent action and most contractors also have learnt not to engage or they will also face the law. It is a waiting game until the police arrive.

The second night a different coupe, a different area. Initially calm, it doesn’t go according to plan. A renegade contractor – the tree chopper, not attached to the previous group, barrels in over the scrub, and squeezes past our vehicles, coming to a halt at our tarp camp. He gets out, shouting and screaming and kicks our fire towards out camp. He picks up a tent and flings it into the bush, ripping it. After he checks the site he comes back, rampaging through our camp. We continue to film as we will need evidence of interactions, if the Action makes it to court. I am the last person he walks past. He comes up to my face and snarls: ‘You old f…... c… moll’. I thought he was going to punch me but I turned my face away and did not react, as trained, and he stumbled off. I was most upset. He called me ‘old’. We do not take Action for fun….

The police arrive. Will we be charged with a myriad of offences that are now available since the protest laws were changed? No, the officer is pleasant , reasonable ,and gives us the opportunity to leave within fifteen minutes. We have a move-on order and we are not to return to the Central Highlands for two weeks. We comply. No more Action for me now. We head home

.Why do we do it? Because we love our forests. We love trees, and all the ancillary plants. All the creatures that live within. The flora and fauna is magnificent. It is an area for diversity of wildlife, some of it endangered. The sheer beauty is breath-taking- such a range of trees, of ferns and mosses and lichens. It’s the ‘stuff of films, of tourist experiences, yet ‘we’ chop it down, truck it away for wood-chips, pile the residue up, incinerate it, and replant, on the ashes, a hybrid monoculture.

But also, the science shows how detrimental this is to the environment, the economy and the planet. Facts, that keep us coming back to these places… to take a stand.

Facts as outlined by David Lindenmayer, Australia’s foremost authority on forests, in his book : “The Forest Wars”.

1. The industry is pulp and wood-chip driven. Almost all saw logs in Australia come from tree plantations.

2. After clear-felling 60 % of the forest is left to be fire-bombed from helicopters.

3. The heat of these fires is so intense that most species don’t grow back, so fast growing hybrids are planted.

4. The fires cause health problems. The smoke is pollution, and is dangerous.

5. After 60% of the forest is wasted and burnt, 40% goes for processing.

6. Of that 40%, 29% goes to paper and packaging and wood chips, and only 20% is actually used.

7. 11% goes to sawn timber. 7% of that is wasted in the sawing process.

8. Of the 4% remaining , 2% is used for pallets.

9. Only 2% is high quality that goes to window frames, floor boards and furniture. ONLY 2%

10. And the environment?

Water is reduced going into catchments.

There is no calculation of how many animals die during the clear-felling, the incineration, and the loss of habitat.

Wet, eucalypt forests are the most carbon dense environments on earth. They store carbon. They reduce our carbon footprint on the planet.

11. Logged forests are more bush fire prone, and generate fiercer fires, than old forests.

12. The industry is now so mechanised that very few people are directly involved in forest clear-felling. Approximately 300.

13. When native forest logging is stopped those people can access jobs in plantations and regeneration projects.

14. The industry, Sustainable Timbers, is subsidised in Tasmania by taxpayers by millions of dollars each year. Estimated approximately $65 million a year. We taxpayers pay to destroy our own forests.

Our forests are worth more standing, in every way. Stand up for our forests!

Reference : The Forest Wars, David Lindenmayer, Allen and Unwin, 2024

A great country to explore more.

After many years of working overseas and visiting many countries, why return to Malaysia where I’ve visited before? Why not go somewhere different? Maybe because it is not important for me to have bucket lists, and I don’t have a goal to visit as many countries as possible. Countries change over time , as I do. A revisit will always be different. Malaysia is not too far from Australia. After years of Tasmania to Europe flights, I detest long haul travel. Gone are the days when I get excited just driving past an airport.

As I said in my previous Substack post I’d previously worked in Indonesian Borneo so it would be interesting to see how Malaysian Borneo measures up. It did, as I posted in my previous Substack. But this three-week trip also gave an opportunity to explore Melaka, towns in Sabah, and Kuala Lumper again.

So many years ago, when I was in my forties, I hopped on a plane from Kalimantan to Singapore, had a couple of days R&R in Singapore, then travelled solo by bus through Malaysia. I was on leave from the jungle, I had a back-pack and a Lonely Planet. Those days nothing needed to be booked. You arrived, you walked to accommodation suggested by Lonely Planet and usually found a room straight away. I stayed a few days in Melaka, Kuala Lumper, Cameron Highlands and then Penang. What stood out for me after all these years was the memory of a rose covered cottage, once belonging to a teacher, in the Highlands, near tea plantations. Peace after my life in the single men’s quarters at the mine-site where I lived. Memory is a fickle thing so I cannot be sure it was really that blissful.

These days I hate doing research on possible destinations. I like to be surprised. I try to be mindful in my daily life, and don’t want to be focused on another county when I’m home. Time goes fast enough in your seventies, I don’t want to waste time planning. I want to be doing. Subsequently, solo travel has given way to pre-organised group travel, hopefully still with some of the frisson of past solo trips.

I started this trip in Melaka. I spent days walking around the sites and streets bustling with everyday sites. Its such an easy entrance point into South East Asia. Everyone speaks English as children learn Malay and English at school. The driver from the airport was also a tour guide so I was lucky enough to learn a lot about the country on the two-hour trip. He was in his early seventies. Pensions are only available for people working in government jobs. Fuel is very cheap as oil comes from Borneo, about AUD1 a litre there and AUD 2 on the Peninsula.

He talked about the religious harmony within Malaysia that is enshrined in the constitution. This was a common refrain throughout the country. With Islam, the predominant religion, stated as the religion of the Federation, there are also a substantial number of followers of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Taoism. Diversity is easy on paper but I imagine it can’t be so simple, as demonstrated to the high proportion of government officials of Islam as compared to other religions. Regardless, Malaysia is a very friendly , safe country to visit.

The Baba culture of Melaka, from the 1800s Chinese merchants, is interesting. You can still see many of these rich merchant homes. Some have been converted to hotels, like the Hotel Puri I stayed in, or museums, or remain as private homes. Close by, is the Jonker Market, an evening street food market , the colonial area, the Portuguese fort, and Malacca River. A river trip on the Malacca River takes you through the city past a 1920s Malay kampong. A great area that gives you yummy food, history, and a sense of exploring a new culture in a small area. No wonder Melaka is a UNESCO World Heritage city. And it’s where I discovered barbecued prawns, that became a defining part of my culinary journey.

The cities of Sabah, in Borneo - Sandakan, Kundasang, and Kotor Kinabalu – have good infrastructure but still a little bit of a frontier Asian touch about them. Great wet markets of course, where you can see a plethora of wonderful fruits, vegetables and fish. Cue in Kotor Kinabalu where you can choose your fish … or prawns in the market and then have them delivered to a far-off table, grilled. If you want a beer with it, whisper to the stall holder and a ‘coldie’ miraculously appears in a brown plastic bag.

Sandakan, has a dark war history in WW2 for Australians. In 1945 2,500 prisoners of war, mainly Australian with some British, captured at the fall off Singapore were shipped here to build an airfield. Those who survived disease and malnutrition were marched, in the last months of the war to Ranau, over 200 kms through mountainous jungle tracks. Those that faltered were shot or bayoneted. Only six of the 2,500 survived. Malays suffered horribly too, of course. I attended the dawn service at the site of the camp, now a peaceful jungle park. Officials from Australia, Britain and Malaysia were there in force, plus descendants of those that died. I can see that continuing memorials like this keep links forged from the past closer into the future for the countries involved.

On a lighter note, I visited sun bear and orangutan rehabilitation centres where you could see these special creatures close up either in a nursery situation, in a fenced jungle enclosure, or in a reserve. As part of the orangutan rehabilitation process the orangutans in the reserve are still fed daily with fruit to assist their adjustment to the jungle, as a supplement to their jungle diet.

Onward to Kinabatangan River to a rainforest lodge, where for three days we went spotting for wildlife. This was the highlight of my trip as described in my previous Substack.

Then to Kundesang, a town in the mountains, with Mt. Kinabalu, at 4,095 metres soaring above it. Often lost in the clouds, it can reveal itself at sunset, when you can see a faint light of the lodge where the intrepid campers rest until 2am when they make the rush to the top, get their sunrise photo, and then retreat before the high altitude affects them. This climb was not for our group, and we satisfied ourselves walking on the jungle tracks around the base and in the botanical gardens. The memorial gardens for the prisoners who died on the Sandakan walk, with their names listed was another poignant experience.

Also, within the mountains we stayed for a couple of days in a Dusan (Dayak tribe) village, now gentrified of course but to be applauded for keeping their culture alive, and staying on their ancestral lands, and finding new ways to earn with ventures like native honey, coffee growing and processing, and the same with pineapple processing. There is a monument here, erected by the British in 1887, commemorating the end of headhunting by this Dusan group, the Kiau, with the neighbouring Dusuns, the Taurun.

Then to Kotor Kinabalu for delicious prawns, a snorkelling experience off a nearby island (dire coral for an Australian, but lots of colourful fish), and then to the airport to head back to K.L.

I’m not a fan of big cities with huge sky scrapers, but there was enough juxtaposition between the old and new architecture to keep me interested. The orchids at the the Botanical Gardens were exquisite. The bird park was problematic as some birds were in small aviaries. Sad to see a Borneo Hornbill so confined. A must visit is the wonderful food street, Jalan Alor, where my craving , you guessed it … prawns with a Tiger beer, was fully satisfied.

Reference: Patch Adventures trip, women only, out of Australia. ’16 days Borneo Adventure’

Change!

The plane appears to hover over the dark jungle below, the jungle criss-crossed with sluggish brown rivers curling and wandering over the dark earth.

Thirty years since I first felt the wonder of ‘coming to the heart of Borneo’. Thirty years since I was heading on a red-eye flight out of Jakarta to a teaching post in a small school, Tanjung Bara International School, deep in the jungle, yet by the sea, in Kalimantan, Indonesia Borneo. Thirty years since I stepped out of the CASA into the fierce sunlight, the 33-degree heat, and the sweltering humidity of the equator, the tropics, that I was to experience and enjoy for the next three years. Borneo, the land know for isolation, jungle, early exploration, Dayaks, head-hunting and hornbills.

And now I’m returning to the island of Borneo, not to Indonesian Kalimantan but to Malaysian Sabah in the North. You can never go back! I rarely return as a tourist or adventurer to somewhere I’ve lived. It’s living in a place that gives the heart connection that can never be attained through a quick holiday or visit. I’m going on a guided two-week adventure – same island, Borneo, different country.

I’m flying into Sandakan towards the north-east tip of Borneo, a much smaller area, colonised by the Portuguese and British before Malaysia gained its independence in 1957. Will I find similarities between the topography of the two areas, the jungle, the villages of the Dayaks and Malay? Will there still be wild orangutans, hornbills and alligators? Will my Bahasa Indonesian, with so many similarities to Bahasa Malaysian, come flooding back? Will it feel like home as I explore Sabah over the next two weeks?

I lived in Tanjung Bara, an expat town built for a Rio coal mine just north of Sangatta. It was mainly Australians, but also other international expats and Indonesians of the management class - a closeted bubble. The only access was by air or boat. We were visited often by wandering orangutans from the nearby Kutai National Park looking for palm hearts in the gardens of the town.

I was one of two women living in the single men’s quarters in conjoined rooms. I ate at the mess. I swam in the resort style pool. In fact, that became more of a home than my sad room. I drank Anchor or Bintang beer at the bar beside the pool, and socialised. I exercised by walking the golf course, down the boardwalk to the mangroves, and spotted for ‘salties’. I played touch rugby, tennis and sometimes was given a bat at the men’s cricket. I joined H.H.H. (Hash House Harriers), an expat innovation, where we ran through the jungle following a paper trail, followed after by a drinking circle. It was very hot. When I had ‘leave’, it was company policy to leave site to prevent ‘jungle fever’.

If I ever had access to a car, or a friend with a car, I’d head to the nearest town, Sangatta, for local shopping at the markets, or take a ketinting (a local, narrow, wooden river boat) further down the river, and on evenings go to the bars and restaurants on the edge of town. Lack of roads prevented further exploration. On leave I ventured further afield, exploring the other islands of Indonesia. I did a couple of up-river, Mahakam and Kelai river trips, in Kalimantan itself with other women from the site. On these trips I truly felt I was getting into the ‘real’ Borneo, visiting long houses, walking in the jungle with Punan women, who hadn’t seen white women before, camping on the banks of the river under a tarp, speaking (often in sign language) to locals. I look back on the adventure of those trips with sheer joy.

Will this Sabah trip now be too touristy? Sure, we visit towns like Sandakan, Kandasang and Kota Kinabalu, large thriving towns set up originally by the British, but with still the local flavour, always found in the vegetable and wet markets. I chose the trip because there were three days, early morning and evening , spotting for wild-life down the Kinabatangen River. I wasn’t disappointed.

As well as spotting the ‘Top 5’ - orangutans, pygmy elephants, proboscis monkeys, crocodiles and oriental pied hornbills, I saw a myriad of other birds and animal, at least fifteen other types of birds, four different types of reptiles, six types of apes, and at least seven other types of animals… and more than once. That, from chugging slowly down the river in our sixteen-person fibreglass open boat focusing on the river-bank jungle .Wow!

That is more wild-life than I saw when I lived on the island for three years.

I was certainly closeted back then. And a car was a ‘bridge too far’ for a lowly teacher in a mining camp. I lament I wasn’t a bird watcher. But I was working, and although we played hard, we worked hard too.

Camping in our jungle lodge on the river now, I experience the afternoon tropical downpours that I remember so well. (Then, usually erupting at exactly the moment I was walking home from work.) The torrential soaking rain, the lightening flashing all around, thunder roaring finally silencing the cacophony of the cicada chorus, while still with the heat and humidity of the Equator. I still revel in it.

The jungle is a constant. I walk through the jungle around the base of towering Mt. Kinabalu in Sabah, and around the kampung of the ‘orang asli’/indigenous people near Kuala Lumpur. The Bangkiri and Meranti trees still tower above to form the canopy. Ironwood is less prevalent here as it’s so prized for timber for housing and products. Vines, vines and more vines, orchids, pitcher plants and even the evil-smelling Rafflesia, not flowering at the moment. All so familiar to me. I love the jungle walking. Rough and slippery and muddy still. The sweat pouring off you, running in rivulets down your back and face, sun-screen leaching into your eyes, but luckily no leeches today. The equator – 33 degrees and humid. No wonder after the jungle walk, I jump on the back of a local’s motor bike (Also, so familiar to me.) for a lift back to the bus.

And the language – my Bahasa Indonesian greetings, politeness, food and travel surface in the brain as I interact with the locals in their Bahasa Malaysian, but thirty years is long ago. And I realise that Kalimantan would have changed in the last thirty years too. Once, not even a television. Now everyone clutches a mobile phone. I suspect Kalimantan will still be overall less developed and poorer than Sabah but the Indonesians are building their new capital city for Indonesia near where I once lived in the Borneo jungle. It will be interesting what changes that makes to the island.

Both Sabah and Kalimantan have been ravaged by logging, and clearing for palm oil plantations. New roads are being constructed through the jungles. The isolation and mystic is no more. But, the adventure is still possible with swathes of jungle still standing, with the wild-life still surviving, and the ‘Dayaks’ still keen to retain their culture. I feel well-satisfied with my return to the island of Borneo.

Reference:

Patch Adventures… out of Aus. A women’s trip. ‘16 days Borneo adventure’.

Wild People Andro Linklater,Abacus Travel. 1990

Sun, sea, sky

It’s my birthday week. It’s a special one, as the Germans would say - Schnapszahl, double numbers, 77. I’m asked what would I like to do? As I’m feeling unsettled and overwhelmed, the answer comes spontaneously – to go away camping alone to reflect, read and write. To be in nature, stepping apart from the daily world. I’ve been feeling angry, is it just me, or have I imbibed the anger of a world gone mad?

It’s come as a revelation to me, that I’ve realised over the last couple of months, I now fit the profile of an introvert. Was I always? I’m sure I used to be a party person, or was it a persona? It shows change is possible throughout our lives.

As I age, I’m finding I need more time alone. I still like socialising of course, but I need space to recover and rejuvenate. I wonder how many people fake being social, only to leave themselves exhausted. I find I expend so much energy being social, that too much can be debilitating. I’ve started to follow ‘Introverts Introduction’ on Substack and I recognise the following indicators. ‘I need time alone to reflect and recover. I’m overwhelmed by an over-crowded schedule, emotional obligation and lack of time alone. I like calm and silent places. (No radio or podcasts for me. It’s no wonder I’m attracted to off-grid camping away from noise and people.) I’m an over-thinker and I have anxiety about expectations of events and people. I have amazing conversations in my head.’

This solitude isn’t loneliness, it’s choice , it’s freedom. I love solo travel with its nature focus and quiet contemplation, and I process the adventures through reading and writing. The antithesis of this to me are cruise ships or large bus groups, particularly being part of forced cultural activities, dancing, dressing up as locals, joining in their craft activities. I’d prefer to wander through villages, bush-walk, or sit on the sidelines, an anonymous observer.

How does this realisation sit with my booking a two-week trip to Sarawak and Sabah, on a small group tour leaving in three weeks. I’m unsure. It definitely does fit with planning a four-month solo trip this winter in my Troopie exploring more of Outback Australia.

I grew up shy. I became more outgoing after my divorce at forty and, in recovery, loved to party. When I worked overseas during my forties and fifties I’d be the organiser for happy hours, drinks, events in my workplace. During holidays I’d fling on my backpack and head off with my Lonely Planet as my companion. Since living back in Australia for the last eighteen years I’ve revelled in my yearly trip exploring the Outback of Australia. Sure, I’ve done stuff with friends but it is the solo travel that I find the most satisfying and adventurous. Am I a hermit? No, of course not. I still like socialising, spending time with friends and family, attending events, having dinner, meeting new people, but in a more measured way with time alone in between.

Now, I’m stepping back, finding solace in solitude. I wonder if this is a common feeling and realisation at this age?

No matter, it is why I find myself at Policeman’s Point on the East Coast of Tasmania, three hundred kilometres from home, on a week-long birthday treat, a solo retreat. I’m camped in my Troopie by the sea with bush, and birds, wrens and Tasmanian thornbills, flittering in the scrub behind me. I swim twice daily in the shallows of Anson’s Bay. I walk the lagoon and along the powerful shores of the Bay of Fires, the Tasman Sea. I observe the kelp, the washed-up battered shells, the sea-birds - pacific gulls, pied oyster catchers, hooded plovers, and red necked stints teasing with the surging waves. The same cohort that was here last visit.

It is Autumn. I revel in the clear, pure Tassie air. All is still, the reflections are pristine. The light is mesmerising. The clarity of colours, the muted evening shades, the fierce sunlight. I cloud watch, the cotton-wool balls against a cerulean sky. Then dark clouds roll in, pre-warning of a storm, with strong winds that whip up the sand that sandpaper my legs as I walk along the shore, the surges and swells battering the dunes.

My thoughts and feelings are heightened. I become part of the sun, the sea, the sky, the storm, the weather defining my days. I breathe in the sea air, and breathe out the anger and stress. When the rain starts to fall, I cocoon in my tiny van, and absorb the peace. I sleep. Oh, how I sleep. ‘The sleep of the just.’

I’ll be heading home soon, hopefully re-energised and ready for the world again A friend recently gifted me a stubby holder inscribed : ‘I googled my symptoms, turned out I just needed to go camping’. I consider myself an ‘intuitive introvert’. I’ll know next time when it is time to head to bush and beach.

Encapsulating memories

I wake at Cygnet, camped by the bay for the Cygnet Folk Festival, to a lull in the wind. The sea is now calm. The yachts on their moorings appear as silhouettes. An egret or heron splosh in the foreshore mud. The music from the day before still swirling, lingering in my mind. Songs of shipwreck, soldiers killed in war, Pete Seeger’s protest songs of the sixties, songs of the forest. All songs of loss and longing. I’m not immune. My emotions are overflowing, tumbling out. I feel the sadness and grief and the longing for times past.

It’s not that the past was sad. It was interesting, exciting , full of possibilities. That is still the case to some extent, but as the saying goes the reality is ‘It was better to be 20 in the 70’s than 70 in the 20s’ with a whole lifetime ahead of hopes, dreams, and possibilities. But thankfully, so many of those fulfilled, accomplished, satisfied. So many memories.

It was in this mood that I saw the Boat Box at a gallery in Cygnet. It is crafted from old Tassie boat-building timber – Huon Pine, King Billy Pine, Tasmanian Oak, Baltic Pine. The recycled timber comes from boats which are either wrecked, derelict or under repair, in this case a wrecked clinker dinghy and the yacht ‘Lucia Kay’. The wood is lovingly sanded back, while retaining some of its original paintwork, rejoined with copper nails, and then configured to be a tangible piece of maritime history in the form of a small box, by Cygnet artist, Amanda Steel.

This box of boating history brought my own boating history to the fore. I grew up with my father teaching me to row and fish on the Tamar in a 10-foot pine dinghy, to the refrain of ‘Row, Boys, Row’. Then, newly married and living by the sea buying an 8’ fibreglass punt to fish on the Derwent, before upgrading to a 15’ fibreglass runabout.

When on a working holiday to Perth in Western Australia we suddenly decided we had to have a 20’ fixed keel, trailer-sailer, ‘a Red Eagle’ design, christened ‘Blue Heaven.’ It was the first time we had tried sailing. We meandered around the Swan River, learning the ropes. The next day we thought we’d picked up enough skills ,and, as it was Easter, we set sail off-shore for Rottnest Island. It was very, very, very rough. We took shelter on Garden Island, where a local, obviously recognising us as newbies, rowed out to tell us we needed to move as we’d be on dry sand when the tide went out. He offered us his mooring for the night, and the advice not to proceed further because of the wild weather predicted. Six people in boats drowned off Perth that Easter.

We decided to tow ‘ Blue Heaven’ to Darwin as we continued our working holiday. 1971 - no sealed roads, corrugations, river crossings and lots of road trains. Sailing to Thevenard near Onlow, off the North-west coast of West Australia, we became used to the huge tide drops and the scary tropical creatures. At Dampier, a sting-ray or was it a skate (I closed my eyes.) as long as the yacht surfaced along-side us. Then near Halls Creek disaster struck. The weld on the trailer split, the yacht skidded along the gravel. A passer-by alerted the nearest cattle station. A foreman and some aboriginal workers were sent to assist. They propped the boat up on its gunwale with a couple of paddles, hoiked the bits of trailer onto their truck and headed to the station to reweld it. I was left standing by the yacht on the road with my two-year old son and a paddle to protect it from scavengers. Luckily, all repaired, if was returned before dark, and the keel was maneuvered with brute strength back onto the trailer. Onward to Darwin.

At that time, no-one could do the fibreglass repairs, that were needed, in Darwin . The insurance company wrote it off and it was sold ‘as is’ there. Subsequently we saw images of it wrecked during Cyclone Tracy in 1974.

All that experience enabled us to get the agency to sell the ‘Red’ range of trailer- sailers in Tasmania. These keel yachts were perfect for Tasmania’s deep waters and we did sell many. With that success we gained more agencies for Tasmania. We sold heaps of Windrush Surfcats, then up-sized and started to sell the Cavalier range of keel yachts too – the Cavalier 26’ and the Cavalier 975m. It was then we got into fibreglassing and started to make our own tri-hull dinghies.

And out of all that work, we ended up with our own Cavalier 975, ‘Rightaway’, that we planned to sail right away from it all. We did sail for a few years around Southern Tasmania – Tasman Peninsula, the Derwent, D’Entrecasteaux Channel, Bruny Island, Maria and Schouten Island, Freycinet and Cockle Creek. But then, during my divorce, Rightaway sailed right away out of my life.

Never defeated, I went back to the beginning. I bought another 8’ fibreglass punt, christened it ‘Revival’ , moored it below my land in Eaglehawk Bay and rowed the Bay looking for signs of the convict settlements from the 1800s, scoured the shores for driftwood, picked mussels from the rocks and caught flathead for tea. It stood sturdy on its moorings but time took its toll and it ended up on the rocks – a jagged tear, lumps out of the gunwale, a battered base. All that fibreglass experience stood me in good stead and after I repaired it and the mooring line, it swayed in the Bay for many more years.

When I moved closer to Hobart, still by the sea, I envisaged many more years of rowing but it became increasingly difficult to jump in and out with the strong surge when launching. It timed with the Council banning boats being pulled up on the beach, as they were damaging the dunes, and I was sadly saved from myself.

Then I saw the box, the Boat Box. The shape is beautiful, the rainforest timbers are magnificent, the history is intriguing, it has provenance. And the smell of the linseed oil took me to back to boat yards. A Boat Box to hold visceral memories of my nautical life. It encapsulates my life by the sea, both then and now.

And this little box, that is the epitome of so much of my life in my mind, will then be perfect to hold my ashes at my wake sometime in the future, before they are turfed on the dunes in front of my home at Frederick Henry Bay. Maybe one of my sons will keep it with a thought, a visceral memory, of his mum.

What goes up must come down.

The new year has been going swimmingly, with lots of swimming, as our Tassie summer warms up some days to the mid-twenties. I had a relaxing New Year’s Eve with a friend in the bush, with a camp fire, by the beach at Lauderdale. We are very much a relaxed, coastal ‘suburb’ where this is still possible.

Since Christmas I’ve been on ‘holiday’ at home. Not planning anything, reading, a bit of weeding, and doing odd jobs I’ve put off for months. 2025 left me exhausted – now a new beginning.

I read, while sitting out-side, watching my three blue-tongues wander along the deck by my feet. Obviously on a quest. There’s a huge, very hefty one that seems to have returned from last year, one middle-sized, and a small baby, all out and about exploring independently. They all have their distinct patterning. I have no idea if they’re related.

A smaller bandicoot has replaced my larger, deep-hole digger who seemed to think he/she was a mole. This one is forming discreet holes, as opposed to ankle breakers, in the bandicoot playground, formally known as ‘the lawn’. And now these two seem to have wandered off and have been replaced by a baby, a very flighty baby. No photo yet. This one shuffles the surface dirt from previous excavations as it learns the skills, and maybe toughens up its toes and nose. I love knowing that my native garden has attracted this local wild-life that is free to come and go as it pleases.

At home the swimming, sometimes three times a day, energises me. And this beach, in front of my home, that is usually empty, actually has people on it. The sun is definitely out. I picked up some driftwood, shells and other beach detritus when I was camping up the east coast last year, and I have been inspired to make a natural wall hanging. While I was on a roll I threaded up some prehnite, from Wave Hill, Northern Territory, that I had sliced thinly on the diamond saw at Lapidary, and ‘voila’ another hanging. I can’t remember when I felt so relaxed. This ‘do nothing home holiday’ is working out well. I’m on a high!

With the blue-tongues and bandicoots wandering around the block, I erected a sign on the gate warning vehicles to watch out as they came in the drive-way. I had noticed the chunky blue-tongue was eating the fallen cape gooseberries near the drive. Consequently, I was being very cautious as I drove in and out.

‘How the mighty fall!’ As I came back from the shop, I ran over it, totally. A ghastly sight. How did I not see it? Was it hiding in the shadows? Did it scurry out if front of the wheel as it heard the car approaching? I felt sick. I was distraught. I loved seeing it wandering, totally unafraid, around the dunes and through my garden. It lived under my deck. I did it! Me, who cannot kill a fly – literally. I have to catch and release. Same with spiders. I ran over my wild ‘pet’! I try to console myself with the thought that death was instantaneous, and it had a good last meal.

But, my mood pummelled. When there’s a high, there will be a corresponding low, but couldn’t the high have hung around longer. The reality is … don’t get too cocky. All will go your way for a bit, but life will always be full of challenges and sadness. Without the lows, there would be no highs, and unfortunately the reverse applies.

To be human, is to feel – happy, content, relaxed, and sad, anxious, angry. To feel a range of emotions is to know you’re alive. I am about to head to the Cygnet Folk Festival. I hope the music will help lift my spirits again.

This piece is in memoriam to my chunky blue-tongue skink/lizard. ‘You had a happy life and a quick death.’ Something we all aspire too.

May it be a year of peace, contentment, exploration and adventure.

What to write as 2025 ends and the new year begins? Something pithy, wise, uplifting, inspirational!

Or, maybe just the musings of a 76-year-old beachcomber/fossicker. As well as seeking those beach and bush finds, I seek to have a full and meaningful life. Robert Dessaix in ‘Chamelion’ talks of “amplifying all the pleasurable, life-giving things”, and focussing on “meaningful happiness” as he ages.

It’s a reflective time of the year so maybe I’ll comb and fossick my thoughts.

This year has been a shock. After years of good health and physical well-being, my body is showing signs of wear and tear. I ‘puff’ (‘Breathlessness’ is probably the correct medical term.), if I encounter the slightest hill, yet I’m a fit bushwalker. How can this be?

After a year of every heart and lung test available to modern medicine, and that’s a lot in Australia under our free government Medicare, there is no solution. I was thinking long Covid at the best, but maybe it’s ‘old age’ Well I can’t be deterred by that. My title is ‘Adventuring Lou’.

As well, my past outdoor life has come back to bite me -figuratively, in the form of a scalpel - as I have had numerous serious skin cancers removed this year. But as my cousin of a similar age tells me : ”If you get to 70 and there’s nothing wrong with you, there’s something wrong with you.”

But a focus on health rather than travel and adventure has shaken me. Do I need to review and recalibrate my idea of self? Once we were defined by our job, our marital status, our hobbies. In ‘retirement’ ( I hate that word. We have not retired from life.), I am now a designated ‘beachcomber’ on all official forms. That title hints of hope, of movement, of discovery. How would you describe yourself? Something that defines you now? Something that gives you a kick of self-esteem, a secret smile to yourself, but doesn’t get you arrested in a passport queue.

A friend has recently given me a support sloth with the wording:

“ Positive sloth. It doesn’t matter how slow you go, as long as you don’t stop.”

That sums it up. The adventures continue. Maybe, they are just as simple as when walking through the dunes to the beach for my daily swim, I step over a blue-tongue lizard sunning itself on the path, or startle the pademelon in the Acacia sophore, or look up to see the fantails chirping in the Eucalypts. Maybe finding a pristine scallop shell nestled in the sand, or maybe just reacting with a smile when a two-year-old on the beach is chuckling as she frolics in the foreshore waves, her life adventures just beginning. Simple pleasures. Awareness and appreciation is ageless!

Before Christmas I had friends from Germany visiting. I loved showing off aspects of the Tasmania that I love. It is also a sure-fire way to reinvigorate your enthusiasm for the place you call home. We went out on the wilderness boat from Eaglehawk Neck, where I lived for so long. The weather was warm, the sea was calm, and as well as the towering mud-stone and dolerite cliffs, we were accosted by the area’s wild-life - hump-back whales still heading to Antarctica late in the season; dolphins diving under and around the boat; seals, flippers raised, lolling in the light swell; and albatross snatching up the fish brought to the surface by the whales wallowing.

I took the rock-climber friends to the base of the Organ Pipes that rise on kunanyi (Mt Wellington) above Hobart. They calculated the route they would climb if they had more time. That’s not for me though. I had enough of a problem ‘bouldering’ , or ‘rock-hopping’ as we say, with short legs and damaged knees. Still possible, but slowly.

Then to Hobart Rivulet platypus spotting, and spot we did. In my youth we would never have seen a platypus in the city but with the rivulet cleaned up and appreciated, the platypus have returned.

So many adventures just around my home, and in my home State of Tasmania.

A meaningful and full life to me, and we’re all different, is to be out in nature, to walk in the bush and along the beaches, to fight to protect the bush and the seas. To read, to understand what is happening in the world, to the environment, and to stand up to protect those beliefs whether it be stopping native forest logging, halting krill fishing in Antarctica, keeping our coastal bays free from rubbish and pollution, stopping inappropriate development or speaking out against war and poverty.

Ahhhhh - a ‘woke’, Green, socialist!

I look forward, in the year ahead, to new experiences, new places, exploration and adventure. I already have my map, on the table, of the ‘mainland’ of Australia to head once again in my Troopie, during Winter, to the dry, isolated Outback and all that it has to offer. I see I haven’t been to Karlamilyi National Park in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia. There’s a destination; and in such contrast to forested, coastal, agricultural Tasmania.

Maybe I’ll do it more slowly than in the past - travel and life - less kilometres per day, more bird-watching, but it is not time to stop… yet!

And you… your vision for the new year?

Free choice.

I wake up this morning at Policeman’s Point, on the east coast of Tasmania. The sun is beaming into Troopie, the wind has dropped, the sea is sparkling.

I’ve just spent the weekend with old friends from the Tasman Peninsula, friends spanning back forty years. It is so comfortable, so supportive, so much fun. I haven’t laughed so much since last year’s weekend away. The venue could be irrelevant, but each year we go to a beach or bush location to walk, talk, and celebrate a friend’s birthday. This year, ‘Picaninny’, a commune set-up from the 70s, acres of native gardens peppered with home-built wooden cottages of interesting designs, adorned with ‘cool’ art, sun-catchers, and wall hangings of twine, driftwood, shells, bones and sea-weed. Birds – wrens, honey-eaters and swallows abound, darting amongst the flowering melaleucas, callistemons and leptospermums. A place to breathe deeply, reflect, reminisce!

The weekend ends. I can’t go back home… yet. I drive on further up the coast, always looking for a camp-site less-peopled, and find myself at Policeman’s Point. Here, I am right beside Anson’s Bay, which I plunge into each morning. Refreshing revitalisation! I roam the edge of the bay and the endless white ocean beaches bird-spotting, and honing my photography skills. I ‘capture’ red necked stints, pacific gulls, oyster catchers, hooded plovers, pelicans. A lesson in patience. Birds rarely stay still by the sea. They revel in the wind and the waves.

I read. The joy of reading a whole book in a day with no interruptions, without having to do anything else, is a treat indeed. And the book is called ‘Gravity Let me Go’. Prophetic!

I am called further north to my camp at Stumpys in the Mt William National Park. I’ve been visiting this spot for forty years, first in my two-man tent and now in Troopie. In fact, I have ‘my’ camp spot reserved in my head, sheltered by the lagoon, but close to the wild coast. It can be very wild at Stumpys, so much so that the swans have learnt to surf on the waves.

Oh no. Someone is in my favourite spot. I park nearby, still by the lagoon, where the wind rustles over the usually calm waters. Out on the beach it is mayhem, with waves crashing, and the sand being whipped up to ‘painful exfoliant’ level. The next day the interlopers leave, and I can return to my spot. I am at peace. Some things never change.

But I sure noticed change as I drove in. This National Park is home to the Forester Kangaroos/Eastern Greys. I usually see dozens grazing on the grassy plains. Not so this year. The Kunzea ambigua , a native plant to the area, has taken over. It is beautiful with its masses of yellow blooms. The all-pervading fragrance it omits is heady to the senses. It creates a magnificent landscape but the balance has changed and the Forester grazing lands have disappeared.

Next day while hiking down the coast I come across a party of young bushwalkers with their aboriginal guide. They are on the Wukalina Cultural Walk. I wander along with the guide and discuss the changes in the area’s vegetation. She suggests that since cultural slow burns, to keep grazing lands intact, have finished, it has enabled the Kunzea to spread. She leads me to an area of huge aboriginal midden mounds by a creek. I have never seen such massive feasting sites. Usually they have been worn down by wind and waves and human interference. Luckily there is a fire trail nearby that heads back to camp, circumventing the beach walk into the wind and the inevitable sand-papering.

The next day the wind abates. I go for a walk to Mt William with its vista of the north-east of Tas. and offshore islands.

Then time to amble, to swim, to read and relax. Not bound by appointments, commitments, must do lists, weeds in the garden, shopping. Ten days of no phone or internet too. Just peace with free choice.

Now I have come home to the restrictions of daily life, I long for the calm of the bush, the beach, the sea with its different moods, the sky with its endless stars, and even the wind.

Sometimes in the fight to save the things that matter – the forests, the unpolluted seas, and against the crippling debt of the stadium in Hobart, you don’t have time to stop to enjoy the things that matter. Sometimes, you just need to step out of daily life, with its constant demands and distractions, to appreciate what’s really important to you … and to find peace.

This is an ode to dying, but in a good way.

I’ve been thinking about death lately, not in a sad or morbid way, but as a fact of life. I know I’m an over-thinker, but there comes a time when it suddenly seems particularly relevant. And it’s not a topic to be avoided.

I’ve lived for over three quarters of a century. That’s a long time. It seems in your late 70s you need to consider your health more. Bodily bits and pieces seem to start wearing out. The Australian government encourages you to have their free health checks as you age – bloods, heart, lungs, skin, bone density. How lucky are we in Australia to have this option? I’ve already noticed I’ve started to slow down a bit, some things I can no longer physically do, core body strength has lessened. Mountain climbing is out, as is surfcat sailing. This may be a reckoning for my past physical life as a hockey player, sailor, bushwalker, beachcomber and traveller. In addition, you notice your short-term memory is precarious.

It is time to fill out your Advanced Care Directive, also provided by our health department, where you specify your life values and end of life wishes. Your life and options can change in a second.

My neighbour, who is just seventy, had been diagnosed with early dementia. Four weeks ago, she was living independently, and was playing golf and pickle ball. Within two weeks her body weakened, she was diagnosed with lung cancer and needed more support. Within a week the family decided the best option was to put her in a care home, and there she is. About to have weeks of radiation and chemo. No Advanced Care Directive. Indecent haste I think. She certainly didn’t have time to consider the options.

We do have a choice in Tasmania to refuse treatment if the outcomes are unlikely to be positive and our remaining good days are likely to be compromised by invasive treatment. We also have the option, with terminal illness, of palliative care or legalised Voluntary Assisted Dying. A friend who died recently made the latter choice. You have control of the timing, and make a very powerful decision to leave on your own terms.

I’ve attended several celebrations of life over the last few months. And celebrations they have been – good memories shared, photos laughed and cried over, old friends reunited. So much more positive than the traditional funeral.

Then, in the short space of a of couple of weeks there was a swathe of celebrities, in my broad demography, dying – Robert Redford, Jane Goodall, Dianne Keaton, Patricia Routledge, and now Pauline Collins from the film “Shirley Valentine”, our role model in our forties. We’ve grown older with these people, we feel like we know them.

‘Dying is in the air!’

I’ve been a collector of “objet d’art”, that are memories of adventures, travel, friendships, experiences, most of my life. A true collector? Or am I just a sentimentalist? I now feel the need to reduce these things. I’m slowly selling on marketplace and hoping to sell them to people who love them as I did. They come with a story, a provenance

.I’ve unpacked my records, LPs and singles from the 60s and 70s. It turns out that these LPs with their magnificent album covers are quite valuable. Sometimes the art work on the LP covers is more valuable than the actual record. Music is a great trigger for memory. It takes you straight back to time and place.

My favourite single, released in 1969, when I was 19 and in my first year out teaching on King Island was ‘Those Were the Days My Friend’. It was so poignant when living away from home, in a hostel , with people who became good friends. Then it was a celebration of possibilities, of friendships and youth. Now it’s a reality, a tear-jerker. I’m swept away with nostalgia, sadness even, for those lost times when life was stretching endlessly to the future. We were invincible. Now the ‘party’ is nearly over.

Maybe ‘the meaning of life’ would be to have an end-date to prioritise and prepare. That’s not to be though, so it leaves us with living each day as well as we are able. All the platitudes have a ring of truth:

‘Do it while you can.’

‘No regrets.’

‘Today is all you have. ‘

We have been given this time to live purposefully and pleasurably. We may be old, we may look old, but we don’t always feel old. When is it time to just sit on the couch? Well, not yet.

In light of that, I’m planning to go camping in Tasmania over summer. I’ve booked to go the Cygnet Folk Festival in January, the Adelaide Writer’s Festival in February, an exploration of Sabah and Sarawak in Northern Borneo in April, and from June to September I’m heading to the Outback of Western Australia in my Troopie Campervan. This is not panic. This is strategic. There is no time to waste.

I’ve joined a physio class that focuses on core body strength. I always said I’d never enter a gym. Now I’m lifting weights. This will hopefully enable me to live the life I love for longer – to bushwalk, travel, garden, swim, and continue to be able to climb in and out of the said Troopie. I’ve had my health checks. No major deterrent yet, although some activities will need to be reined in, modified.

It’s all about living the life you can, and your choice, while you can. It doesn’t have to be about travel. You can do your favourite activities in your home, or your community. Therein lies our power. Choice is power. I have no bucket list. I have already lived a full life, a satisfying life - more than three score and ten.

I have always loved adventures. I can still have more muted ones. And life itself sure is one!

Stop native forest logging.

I turn off the highway. The gravel road has been graded. It means ‘they’ are coming. Last time I ventured this way the road was rutted, with deep holes where you’d be lucky not to lose a tyre.

The road continues on, as a back road, to the Tall Trees Walk in the Styx Valley where Forestry Tasmania showcase the tallest flowering trees in the world, our Eucalypt Regnums, to nature lovers from all over the world. This small reserve is a rain-forest wonderland.

Before you reach that destination on this Forestry road, you drive through a devastated wasteland, a dystopian nightmare, of smashed forest, of washed-out muddy clay, of smouldering ruins of plants , once tall trees, and the incinerated remains of native animals. ‘Forestry’ Tasmania fire-bombs the residue – about 60% of the biomass from the harvesting. The logs that have removed are mainly sent to China as wood-chips. Only 1% of the timber cut becomes saw log products.

This trip I don’t venture as far as the reserve. I turn off towards a coupe that the Bob Brown Foundation had identified as partially logged but with part still intact, with tall Eucalypt Regnums, hundreds of years old towering over the rainforest.

It was abandoned from further cutting in 2024 due to it being too muddy and slippery to continue working on the steep hill. There is rotting residue lying around, not yet fire-bombed. At this height I can see for kilometres. I see most of the area logged in the past has now replanted as regrowth forest – a monoculture of fast- growing eucalypts with an understory of cutting grass and stinky bush. Not a sign of the fragile rainforest is now evident, never to return.

These rare Temperate rainforest environments are being decimated for short term gain for the 300 workers that are directly employed In the Native Forest Industry. “Jobs and growth” is our government’s mantra, but it is more “Jobs and destruction”, as it is an old industry that runs at a loss and is propped up millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars.

But there is one part of the of the original rainforest left in this area. We have named it Puralia’s Stand, after the Tasmanian aboriginal elder Uncle Jim who was arrested here in 2024. It may have been selectively logged in the 1800s, but that process did not disturb the delicate ecosystem, and the forest has recovered. All the eucalypts were never taken and these giants still stand tall today. Huge original Eucalyptus Regnums, hundreds of years old and rising hundreds of metres to the sun, Myrtles with their old leaves carpeting the forest floor, sprinkles of Sassafras flowers falling from on high. Mosses cascading over fallen logs and branches, lichens snuggling up beside and within them. A few fungi still show in the damp conditions along the creeks, now flowing strongly in the rain.

It is home to Eagles, Owls, Swift Parrots and a variety of smaller birds that flit amongst the undergrowth, too quick to identify. Possibly devils, possums, quolls, pademelons still reside here if they haven’t been frightened away by previous logging. But where could they go? The hollow branches and trunks of the giants are their home. It is an intertwined, dependant community. A ‘magic’ place.

A blockade camp has been set up by the Bob Brown Foundation to deter the loggers returning and hopefully save this remaining remnant rainforest. The loggers have prepared the area, the road in has been covered in blue metal, a flat site has been prepared for retrieved logs to be stacked. This area has been taken over by the defenders. Tarps have been strung up with a camp kitchen and fire pit underneath. People sleep in their cars, vans or in the case of the tree sitter, on a platform 50 metres high in a eucalypt. On the road in front of the camp, branches have formed a barrier, with the ‘piece de resistance’ an old car with tyres removed and filled with rocks in pride of place, blocking entry.

The aim is to hold off the loggers for as long as possible. They might decide that breaching the defenders is just too hard and retreat to an easier, less controversial coupe. Or maybe, just maybe, we can hold the line until native forest logging is banned in Tasmania, although the police, the government prosecutor and Forestry personnel have been to site and advised that logging will commence soon. The defenders stand silent and quiet as the site is inspected. They have been ‘in situ’ for 6 weeks.

When I arrive, there are nine feisty women defenders, nearly all over 60 years old, holding the line, with the young male tree sitter towering above us. When he climbs down after two weeks he’s very unsteady on his feet. He’s replacing the Tassie female sitter, a doctor who works with Medicens Sans Frontieres in Africa, who also held the post for two weeks. I can imagine that our forest, still standing, is a healing place.

There is such solidarity among the women. Most haven’t met before but we’ve all fought in various campaigns over the years- Pedder, the Franklin, the Tarkine, women’s rights, ‘Vote Yes’, Palestine, and of course forest preservation in a variety of locations. All women who care about the planet and people! We laugh, we sing , forest protest songs of course, we tell stories, and we ‘take the piss’, as only people with solidarity can do. People step up and cook amazing vegetarian meals over the fire - curries, soups, pancakes, scones, pasta. We feast and revel in the companionship. Different people come and go over the days, all determined to hold the line.

It rains heavily. Well, it is a rainforest. We get snow flurries throughout the days. It is cold. Moments of sun peak through. Time to wander in the forest to clamber and observe. We’re surrounded by choruses of small birds flitting through the undergrowth. One day a kookaburra perches above laughing at us as dusk falls. Black cockatoos fly above. A lone pink robin, breast fluffed up against the cold , visits each day perching on the ropes of our tarps or nearby logs – a watcher watching the watchers.

And we are still watching – ready to act and stand tall if we are invaded by loggers. We are on alert for early morning action if the police arrive. None arrive during my stint.

Can the forest defenders from the Bob Brown Foundation rally enough troops to keep holding the line? Will you join to defend? Will this unique piece of rainforest, home to diverse species, be saved?

I’ll be back!