Indigenous – Chris Collins

Into the Red Centre

I have recently read the most fascinating book called Songlines: The Promise and the Power. It’s by Margo Neale and Lynn Kelly and was published by the National Museum of Australia as part of a series of books about first nation knowledge. The main point of its discussions about archives and Western vs Indigenous knowledge is the stuff that many teachers; mainly primary, have also said for years. To whit: you can remember all kinds of shit if you tie it to a landscape, or if you make up a story about it, or you associate it with a character or you draw a symbol or picture or do a dance or song. This is how Australia’s Indigenous people have recorded knowledge about everything in their country and everything that has happened for 65,000 years. It’s just mind boggling. It made me feel like I wanted to jump straight back in the classroom to try it out.

Don’t worry, it passed.

But linking these things is so powerful. And before reading that book, the effect of it became clear when we drove to Uluru with Nick Cave. The music was all wrong. We had hooked the words of those songs and the emotional feelings about them onto the rust reds of Gunderbooka, the sparkling Brewarrina fish traps, the flower laden spaces of Mungo and the dreamy greys of Grenfell as we chased Spring east and met it for a glass of wine in an Orange vineyard. So, although we shouted Do you love me?? on the long red drive from Alice Springs to Uluru, we felt misplaced, shifted over left. Huh. Something felt missing and the memory of the Red Centre is somehow less….red, than red right handed Gunderbooka. That’s the importance of getting the right music for your road trip; to help you with memory.

Anyway, we flew up to Alice Springs. Hired a car, drove into town between two large mountain ridges which had a lovely dreaming story about caterpillar ancestors crossing the river, and on to exploring.

Even in November (think early May, northern hemisphere), Alice was Hot as Shit. Over 40 degrees but I’ve got all the new-place-excitement going on, so I marched us around until we were both miserable. We visited the Botanic Gardens. They were red earthed with little paths around low eucalypts, desert oaks and wattle with other trees and bushes that probably flower spectacularly… some other time and tried to retain some of the things we learned. There are honey grevilleas and desert roses. Couldn’t point one out if I fell over one. The whole set of gardens was set up by a woman at the start of the 20thC. Couldn’t tell you her name or where she was from. It was very hot, you see, and the black and white photograph of this woman stood in front of the tent she was living in on what would one day become the botanic gardens, wearing far too many layers was beginning to distress me, so we headed back to the hotel to find something to eat.

And here’s my take home about Alice – I had to confront my own unconscious bias as it hopped merrily out of my unconscious and sauntered casually in a flat cap and tweed jacket into my full consciousness. I have never seen so many obviously Aboriginal people. And I didn’t know what to do. They were sitting around, like, on a patch of grass under a tree, on a patch of grass in the town centre (pointedly not on a bench) sometimes on street corners like they were waiting for something (those chaps were – a bus came). While this is all relaxed and what-the-hell-is-your-problem-then, despite all my woke reading about First Nation Knowledge and Pascoe and Maddock, my English brain was just seeing people sat on the floor and wondering if they needed anything, like money or food; are they down on their luck. So for god’s sake don’t be dark skinned and plonk down on the ground, or I’ll clearly think you must be homeless. -_- So I had to confront that in me. I need to do a little work on myself. The next day it continued – we found a positively Canberran café for breakfast; hessian mat rugs, bright cushions, old wooden crates for tables, Bowie on the radio, flat whites and noble food with unknown ingredients served with eggs. And everyone in it was white, and everyone walking past it wasn’t. There seemed to be an unspoken exclusion. Maybe it’s the other way around, maybe Aboriginal people don’t dig flat whites or hipster cafes, and maybe sweeping generalisations about the preferences of the entire Aboriginal community is totally unhelpful. I felt uncomfortable about being implicitly separate and didn’t know how to bridge the gap without other-ising; like I’m touristing black people just heading out to buy the paper by engaging them in unwanted conversation. I wrote some poems about this sensation, if I can find somewhere to publish them, I’ll share them. But like all processes of art, it helped me to craft exactly how I felt and be honest what my goddam problem was. And if anyone has anything to offer on helping me work this one out; that’d be awesome, please jump in and leave a comment.

That was Alice. Conflicting. We drove the five hours to Uluru-Kata Tjuta national park on the land of the Anangu people. The week before, as a Brit, I had no idea what Kata-Tjuta was, beyond a word I kept not quite catching that other people said when they told me about their trip. Right, so prepare to be educated: just across from the Big Fucken Rock that is Uluru, there is a whole other bunch of Big Fucken Rocks called Kata-Tjuta. And they are awesome. I believe the two are physically connected under all that earth or something which is amazing because they are both two different kinds of rock. I’ll let you google geology in your own time. We approached Uluru over an open, clear plain so wide it curved, with Uluru itself a hovering rose petal pink in the distance. It was beautiful. We detoured and went to the many headed Kata Tjuta and admired this, then drove up to Uluru itself and looped it in the car. We got out for the Mala walk and learned about the ancestral Mala people who did ceremony there but did not listen to warnings about another group coming to attack them and some of the men are still trapped in the cave. It was more complicated than that. Then we headed to the sunset viewing area to watch Uluru turn red and gold over the dusk, while Kata Tjuta’s many heads floated like grey clouds behind the desert oaks on the opposite horizon. It clicked a memory in my brain from Norse mythology about Odin making the clouds by spreading out the brains of the frost giant Ymir in the sky. This linking of brains, clouds and ‘many heads’ compounded into the wisdom and timeless knowledge of Country and was all very profound and beautiful in my head. Wrote a poem about it. Turns out it didn’t make sense to anyone that wasn’t me.

So look, to break it down. The next morning, we went to Kata Tjuta to see the sun rise beside a silhouette of Uluru and slowly blush the many headed rocks pink and red and gold. We watched the black line of night on the ground stride towards us and retreat as shade under desert oaks, then did the Valley of the Winds walk. This is mind blowing. It’s a 7km loop that actually goes between all the rocks and through different landscapes and forest and my favourite bit was when we arrived at the top of a rock where the valley spilled down before us like a green tongue, the morning sun (it was about 7.15 and already pushing 30 degrees) had beautifully lined up right in the middle of a frame of sharp, rust red walls of other rocks. And flowing out of those beautiful plum pudding stones (red AF) was life, life, life. Spinifex, grasses, soft spires of pink mulla mulla, spikey leaved yellow flowered mulga, deep pink Sturt’s desert rose, waves of zebra finches, yellow throated minor birds and wagtails, cool shade and moisture, dripping and cascading down the sides of the rock. Glorious.

Uluru was the next day. We hired bikes at about 7.30 in the morning from a cheerful bloke into birding from Darwin and cycled 15km. This is a great thing to do in hot weather. You’re going quickly, you get a breeze and because you go fast it’s genuinely child-like fun. We buzzed on past some very, very red shouldered chaps trudging by on the 10km base walk. They looked pretty miserable. Bet they were Brits. So, yeah, nah, biking is the way to go. And it is GREAT! Let’s start with the rock. So it’s big and red, yeah. But you have to go right up to it and look up, take in that sharp, sharp line that seems to slice up your retina and just watch that deep red against bluer than blue. The line seems to glow. And if the sun is behind the rock, this is glorious, the whole sky is golden, and the rock is dark and cool. Then look down. Look at how it just hits the ground and stops – bam, like a high-rise building. Not like the gradual sloping foothills of home where whole towns are part of the lower mountain. Walking among the curves and ridges, it felt like a beautiful big red city sometimes. The colour is beautiful. We arrived and cycled in the shade for a long while and you can really take your time learning the shapes – the bit the Gentleman and I called the wale mouth, the gorge, the bit that looks like lungs, the bit that looks like teeth. Every bit has an indigenous story that teaches about its shape and role and also about social behaviour and morality. Like, don’t steal someone else’s emu or they’ll smoke your ass out and kill you. Fun fact – there are bits of Uluru you can’t photograph or even get within a kilometre of because they are for sacred initiations and ceremonies of the Anangu people. So the bike ride detours a fair bit in places.

Near the end of our ride, we stopped at the Kantju gorge again to prostrate ourselves on a bench and rest. This is a sacred place where there is always water. The rock above is stained silver where streams pour off the top in storms and there is a small pool below, surrounded by trees and breezes. Apparently, emu would come and drink from this pool and the Mala people would wait quietly and kill the last emu as they were leaving. This stopped the rest of the emu becoming afraid of the place so there was always emu to take what you needed. Silly emu. ‘Ohh, you seen Dave-o?’ ‘yeah, nah, mate.’ ‘What a dickhead, he’s always getting lost. Let’s go for a drink; Steve, bring up the rear. … Hey, where’s Steve?’ There is a special feeling in that place. The sun doesn’t burn there, you are protected by the shady red wall, the trees whisper and birth birds. The whole rock just seems to be teeming with life. If anyone has ever told you ‘yeah, it’s all so empty and dead out there that these funny fellas saw this rock and were like, wow, a thing! Let’s worship it,’ that’s bullshit. There’s plenty to worship because life is there, like an oasis, sheltering in the arms and shoulders of stone.

We got back to our hotel room at about 10 in the morning with headaches and napped for the rest of the day because it was Hot as Shit. There are good things about visiting Uluru-Kata Tjuta in the off-season; summer. There are very few people. Apparently, it’s really hard to cycle the base most of the time because you can barely move for thousands and thousands of people. That staggered me. What I want from nature and beautiful geological monoliths is peace and reflection, not running commentaries. And the reason that you get such blessed peace in the summer is because it’s too hot to do anything after 9am and the flies are shocking. But it is cheaper, so suck it up. Get up at 4.30, watch the sunrise, do your activity for the day, go back to sleep, eat lunch and sit in the pool, have another nap and go watch the sunset. Pretty restful. Then have dinner and once again notice that everyone on the resort is white and everyone working there is not and go back to feeling uncomfortable.

One thing that also seemed totally out of place was rocking up for the sunset and my eye being caught by two girls in dresses so ill-advisedly white they seemed to verily attract the red dust. I went back to gazing at the rock as we looked for a parking spot and heard the Gentleman wince. Apparently the two girls in beautiful white dresses had strung up some fairy lights round a honey grevillea and were posing for Insta pics. I’m glad I didn’t see it. I’d have hollered something rude out the window. I really hate vain posing at the best of times, it’s so shallow and false and today’s culture of turning yourself into a marketable brand is just fucken weird, but using a place of spirituality and power as a painted backdrop for it is just disrespectful.

But Uluru is amazing. See it and respect it.

Me, Steve, and the Bad Seeds – Part II

Mounts Grenfell and Gunderbooka, then Bourke to Brewarrina. Moving through me even now.

Now, the next day’s drive was an Adventure; a real Adventure, which is what you tell the Gentleman when it seems you fucked up the Google map he emailed you by poking it and moving the checkpoints and now you’ve driven 2 hours out of your way into – not the bush – but a bush; but he took it all in his stride famously.

Our next night stay was at Cobar (follow the only road out of Mungo, turn left, then turn right, keep bloody going) with a stop at Mount Grenfell. This is another significant Aboriginal site with ancient rock art and there was also the option of a little 5km walk around the hill on which I was Dead Keen. We left Mungo reluctantly on a splendid golden morning and got back on the old red road. Drove nearly two hours through more of the Willandra lakes, waving at emus and red kangaroos (let them know we’re friendly) through a land unflinchingly green. We came to see the desert and were overwhelmed by flowers; yellow, white, purple, magenta, pink, and grass; real, soft, good sitting grass, spreading out like parkland. The sky was wide and blue enough to drown in giving a sense of vertigo, like being upside down or underwater. We saw a dust devil, about the size of a tall handsome man; it gathered up, whipped across the road ahead of us with its red right hand, and dispersed. We listened to hillbilly local radio where the interviewee actually said, ‘we look back very fondly at those moments of real humiliation in our childhood;’ and something about making a bikini out of a curtain, like some sort of shit 60s Scarlett O’Hara. Well now, weren’t things better in the old days! When the first anti-vaxxer called in, we cheered. Then here’s about where our little Adventure started when the map directed us off the unsealed red road through the trees onto what …. may have been a footpath?; dodging bushes and logs until we got to a locked gate. Grass up to your knees. Felt like going for a stroll in Leaden Rhoding. Or when Raffa lurches you off the main road in Capriglio to the veg garden in the woods. We made it back to the road. In silence.

This all meant that by the time we got to Mount Grenfell, there was no time for a walk. But it was sunny, and blood red with soft trees and breezes and we clambered the short walk to the site over wide soft grey rocks. Eucalyptus trees were in blossom, there was a hum of bees and cries of butcherbirds and just… a gentleness, after the overwhelming spaces of Mungo. The art was incredible. Alright, look, I’m into the Renaissance, so yeah, it’s pretty simplistic; it’s red, yellow and white ochre on a fucken rock, so gauge your expectations. But there were nifty little emus and kangaroos which were cool. And my favourite; stencils of hands. Apparently these are ceremonial. I don’t know what of, or what for, but that was amazing to see and think: a man stood here, right where I am, and put his hand there. And because it’s not a print, it’s a stencil, an absence of space, something prompts it to be filled, reaches out and invites you to put your hand there and reach across thousands of years and know with something deeper than just your mind, that a man stood there, like you, before.

Right, but don’t actually fucken touch them because they’re thousands of years old, ok, and if it’s ceremonial then ‘reaching out across aeons’ may well miss the point and there’s a barrier in front anyway. Whatever. It was beautiful there and I wanted to stay, and maybe if I wasn’t such a clumtard with the internet, we could have. And so we drove on, cooing over feral goats and kids (who knew?), and the Gentleman made profound comments about it being nice to actually see some of the stuff that just gets talked about a lot in Canberra. You have to stamp through the surface of Colonialism, he said. I liked that metaphor. It reminded me of my feelings when we first arrived about floating on top of Australia, on a veneer, unattached. We arrived in Cobar, ate a Country Thai (or if going by the colloquial ‘Choinese,’ this equivalated to a ‘Thoi’), read some Pratchett and went to bed.

The next stop was Bourke. The plan was to get there by midday so we could GET A RIDE ON THE BOAT!! which left at 14.30. On the way, we skidded round to Mount Gunderbooka for more rock art. Apparently this ‘mount’ is known as a bit of a mini Uluru; a big fucken rock in the middle of a wide open plain. I can assure you we checked our map very carefully this time. The drive was beautiful, the road was moist red, there were emus running around everywhere – one nearly right into the windscreen, stupid bloody thing – and I kept stopping to take pictures of flowers because I didn’t think anyone would believe me about them if I didn’t. While Grenfell was made of soft and dreamlike greys, Gunderbooka was red and brown; its rocks stacked high in columns and terraces. Great for playing and hiding. There were glorious views of blue hills, blue sky, and lots of shade from butcherbird-decorated trees and lovely fragrant wattle startlingly golden against the reds and blues. The Gentleman said this was his favourite. He could imagine people here, the camp. Here was the beautiful stream, for water, food, for children to play in; here was a soft flowered grassy terrace above it, shaded with trees where a fire could be made and food eaten, and the rocks like the wall of a hall sheltering them, ornamented by art. We drove back along the soft red road admiring birds and flowers, and turning back, we could see how marvellously the mountain stood out. Fucking awesome.

We arrived at Bourke and hopped on the paddleboat Jendra down the Darling. That was pretty great! We had a beer, took pictures of bridges, pelicans and trees and the captain gave a charming commentary which was full occa and worth every penny. Then…well. Bourke was a bit weird. It has a drive-through bottle-o (*English translation: off licence), who thought that was a good idea? a wooden wharf over the Darling and an English steam engine they turn on at midday. That was about it. We did the Bourke Tour of Historic Buildings. Took about ten minutes, and we got a lot of weird looks. Particularly from the guy lingering outside the Court while we tried to photograph it. There were 2 pubs and we had lunch in one and dinner in the other. The latter was a large tin room with a canteen sort of feel to it adjoining an older pub that also seemed to have a bit of an atmosphere vacuum. I suggested getting smashed and leaning in to it. The Gentleman declared firmly that we were leaving, so finish your bloody dinner.

We left Bourke somewhat thankfully the following morning, and to my emphatic delight, discovered our route on to Lightning Ridge would take us through Brewarrina and the ancient Aboriginal fish traps. Being a Woke Canberran, I’ve read all about these in Bruce Pascoe’s seminal The Dark Emu, which I recommend because it is a fascinating enlightenment about the world’s oldest continuing culture. Anyway, we arrived, and a local Elder gave us a tour which was both moving and enlightening. I now understand emotionally the things I’ve read in books. But one of the most beautiful things that Bradley elaborated on (beyond horrific local massacres, segregations, missions separating families and environmental destruction) was that his people belong to the river. They don’t own it. He had a nifty way of repeating himself that was either trying to remember where he was up to or deeply effective subliminal messaging. But belonging to the land, not owning it, just seems to me to encapsulate respect, equality, productivity, and love. Surely this is what Planet A should strive for. And maybe it was the atmosphere combined with the stories, and a lovely day, but the river seemed to be absolutely teeming; frothing; heaving, with life, with animals, and movement. I could understand how it is identity and blood for this group of people. So, Bradley doesn’t watch the telly. But he tells it like it is, hard to hear or otherwise. In one tour, after he’d talked about the ignorance of governments not knowing the historical law they themselves had implemented that gave Aboriginals exemption during WWII to move to the other side of the Barwon river for work, but did not let them cross back again to return to their families; his friend called him up and asked if he’d seen Twitter. No, he said. And there on Twitter, was a picture of Bradley stood next to ScoMo, after he’d told him all this. (English translation: the Prime Minister of Australia). And one of him with the NSW Premier, too. He had no idea who these people were, and if he did, I don’t think he would have held back.

Anywho, these fish traps are the oldest human construction on the planet and archaeologists are arguing between them being 50,000 to 70,000 years old. Right on, Australia. They were beautiful. They’re moving through me, even now.

We got on the road and cranked up Nick Cave.

Me, Steve, and the Bad Seeds

Things have been quiet. For everyone. Remember all that optimistic bullshit I pulled back in March about how we ought to appreciate ‘stillness?’ What a dickhead. Well, my fearless optimism dried up along with all the facebook photos I saw of idyllic family breakfasts after the weather turned and we all hunkered down for a sulky winter. The sunrises stopped being glorious and we watched plan after plan get cancelled until loneliness took hold deep in the gut.

I wrote. I wrote quite a lot, actually. I’ve even had more poems accepted and recently have been commended by the Rose Frankcombe award. It was in between a lot of the usual procrastination, facebook flicking and self-loathing that accompanies all that. Was that balanced by the writing? I suppose. And in it all, me and the Gentleman still had each other, a home, food and jobs and nothing to complain about. Beyond getting a bit ratty at each other from spending a looooooot of time together.

At last, Something Happened. After Queensland closed its borders and shat on our plans for dawn boat rides spotting marvellous birds on the Daintree, we thought ‘fuck it;’ hired a car, and drove Out Back. This is the story of those adventures.

Part I – Griffith to Mungo. Jingle Jangle

To get the title out of the way, Yates and I did not so much find God on our journey as Nick Cave, which might be nearer the Truth. I know he’s a genius and I am totally late to that party, but I’m glad I came. We’d been saying that Screaming Trees’ Dust totally became the album of Encharnted – having recently discovered it in 2015 thanks to Tom Shepherd and listening to it while driving to and from the boat when we first moved on. Remember when we were young, and music was so important, and albums became soundtracks to our adventures and hearts? The way Beck and I can’t listen to Smashing Pumpkins 1979 without remembering sitting at the castle looking down on Vilnius, or hear the Chili Peppers without thinking of Cornwall or driving to Freeman’s and trying to find cyclists to get stuck behind so we could sing along longer. For an epic road trip, we needed an anthem, so, being Australian, we downloaded Nick Cave’s Let Love In and dutifully learned all the words over 1000km.

The way to Griffith is paved with grain silos and railways. We chuckled at that. And Griffith is a funny little place. Of course, by the time we got to the end of the week it was a palatial metropolis by comparison and, I am certain, provides a life for its inhabitants that is rich and full. It is surrounded by vineyards and citrus orchards which is very beautiful, and boasts a radial design as the Burley Griffin trademark city plan so we went for a drive round it. S’got a forgotten few units and warehouses marking its splayed streets. Nothing too exciting. Then it all gets a bit Ainslie, as you drive up the hill and there is crumbly red earth and trees backing on to people’s houses. Above the city in the hill are the remains of a beautiful cave hermitage, furtively constructed by Valerio Ricetti over 20 or so years. He carried stone and built walls, decorated the cave walls with paintings of daisies, planted himself a little garden. Surprisingly, none of it has been obviously heritage maintained. During WW2, being Italian and all, he was arrested, taken away from his cave and never really returned. I think this is sad. I have little truck with the romance of the hermitage – animals and humans living in complex social groups have been proven to be more intelligent (Ackerman, 2020), or for the perceived ‘harmlessness’ of shunning society rather than contributing to it. But he called the hill ‘la mia sacra collina,’ sacred hill. Perhaps as a person who perceived the holiness and intrinsic beauty in the permanence of rocks and plants, and lived with them for their own and his sake, never having more than he needed, he had much in common with the first people who lived among those rocks and plains until only 200 years ago. Anyway, poetic whimsy aside, we cheered when we found a canal, cheered when we stayed in our poky little hotel for hitting the first ‘everyone looks at you when you walk in’ pub; we ate a damn good Italian and tried the local sticky wine at De Bertoli. Although Griffith’s streets did not display the pinnacle Australian Athletic Stereotype, on a sunny day it is open, beautiful, full of wine and good food, with hills to stroll around and enough to do. If Griffith asked: Do you love me? We’d say Not like I love you, but pretty well.

Then we drove to Lake Mungo. This is a marvellous place where you really love and understand place for the very sake of itself. And Space. I’ve read many novels about the Australian countryside that describe it as miles upon miles of barren nothing. I find this offensive; it shows a lack of respect to the land and not least a lack of imagination, a lack of vision. Admittedly, it was a bit edgy driving deeper and deeper into wide bush on unsealed roads watching the petrol tank click down. You realise remoteness matters if you encounter a problem. Then after more miles of more scrub bushes and a howling wind you start to feel lonely. What the hell are we going to do in this place for two days? We ate an elaborate picnic balanced on our knees in the car, watching a silver screen panoramic drama of storms throwing down around us. Spoiler alert – we got away with a whole 2 nights of not actually being rained on, which was awesome, but as we counted seven showers around us smearing the sharp line of the horizon, it seemed impossible to escape. That horizon was huge and far away. I realised from my love of mountains that I like to close myself in a bit, find corners and edges to understand; this thing here, is against that thing there, is different from this over here; I put my back against the wall of a hill as a way of breaking up the frighteningness of space. But eventually unbroken space peels open your eyes, cracks your skull and chest open so you can take it in. Maybe wide spaces widen the mind, widen the heart. We watched the spectacle of rain, whole tragedies of storms play out against the theatre of all that sky, and rainbow after rainbow poured its cascades of colour into the empty lakebed.

Mungo was a huuuuuge lake; horizon to horizon in every direction for a solid 20000 years 60000 years ago. Neat. It’s part of the Wallandra lake system filled up by overflows from the Lachlan river and bits of the Darling river. Remember that for your next pub quiz. It was a stable bounty of food, both fish and water birds among other things and supported thousands of permanently placed people. It dried out and refilled, got salty, dried out during the ice age, refilled; causing the permanent population to move about a bit more. It eventually dried out again 18000 years ago which is where we are now. The ground is clay and sand and 20000 year old footprints have been preserved there. It has these lunettes; clay ….sort of…totally out of my expertise here…hills that were gathered up at one end in a crescent shape from the wind, then sand covered them…because, wind and now they’re eroding. They are fascinating beautiful shapes in white and grey and red sand, and as they erode a whole bunch of stuff falls out, proving Aboriginal culture was thriving there 50000 years ago. Those interested in archaeology, Lake Mungo is the site of the oldest human remains found outside Africa.

Anyway, that’s why we drove five hours on unsealed red roads through rain to get there. We camped, it was fucken cold, we lit a fire and all the smoke blew in my face, so we got into the tent and read Pratchett. The next day we got up for sunrise which was impeded by clouds, so we heated some banana bread and I did a whole bunch of Joe Wicks exercises to warm the hell up. It worked. Think I might do my own travel tour where I camp around the world and film youtube vids of me working out called the ‘Thanks Joe Wicks’ tour. We went for a walk. We did a good 4 hours of marching about, seeing kestrels, kites, wedgetail eagles, other birds with mournful minor calls that broke your heart, we saw dozens of western grey kangaroos with little joeys poking out, and our first ever red kangaroos. We looked at the remains of the white man’s attempt to run sheep farms on the lakebed. We staggered back and ate lunch, then hopped in the car to drive the Mungo trail right up to the lunette – the Walls of China it’s called, which shimmered silver in the distance while the whole earth was shadowed by clouds. We watched more rain…probably falling over our camp chairs we’d foolishly left out. We were compelled and moved by the shapes of the lunette, with yellow flowers and shrubs between them. It felt… sacred. Shut up. It did. You weren’t there; if you go, you’ll feel it. You can’t look at it and say ‘wow, this place has been like this for thousands of years’ because thousands of years ago it used to be a lake. It is a symbol of change. But in the bowl you feel a sense of the eternal, of a permanence, that shifts and reforms but is still made of the same thing. Even if brolgas used to fly above or golden perch used to swim about where your ears are, or by this tree a giant wombat would have strode out, you feel permanence is there and it is something bigger than people. It’s not something you’ll get in a Lakeside carpark.

So while I got all emotional about this, the wind finally dropped and I lit a stonking good little fire. We cooked our lamb and broccoli on it, watched a glorious sunset while ring necked parrots, major Mitchell cockatoos and grey butcher birds flapped about, and drank a bloody good red wine under a treasure of stars while we talked and just enjoyed being together. An evening right up there with the best.