Painted Desert.
William Creek to Coober Pedy, South Australia.
I mishear him at first.
“I’ve got a coffin-run at Coober in the morning. Flying it out west for some big funeral. You’re welcome to come along for the ride. See the Painted Hills.” It takes me a little while to work out Trevor means fly to Coober before he picks up the coffin. It seems like a great idea.
Another great idea (at the time) was the second Bundy at the bar on Saturday night.
The William Creek hotel must be one of those magical places where strange and wonderful things happen for no apparent reason. It’s a popular place, obviously. The ceiling is festooned (and I’ve never used that word before) with old driving licenses, ID cards, business cards, student cards etc etc, all tacked up as leave-behinds from past visitors. One area above the (soon-to-be) dance-floor is open for travellers and guests to leave their mark: graffito is scrawled everywhere in black marker pen. Boast about beer consumption; km travelled; vows to return one-day; testaments to the best night ever; proposals of marriage. I look around the simple, modest bar and wonder how true these messages are exactly.
We eat in the aeronautical-meets-C&W themed restaurant, and the food is honest enough. No pretensions to grandeur: it’s meat, or fish, and fries, simple as. There’s a 1kg Steak Challenge on the menu. A small pin-board declares those few have braved said challenge and conquered. Others probably fell at the road-side like so many cattle we see on our journey. We demure form such a meat-feast, and chat quietly about the next few days of the trip. Couldn’t tell it at the time but somewhere something was ticking away, ready to go off.
We adjourn to the bar to finish our beers. There are some regulars sipping their Pale Ales from stubby-holders, probably discussing the game (Freemantle won, as a matter of record. Kent shrugged).
There’a a French bar-man called Michel, who everyone calls Michael. Another Michael. There’s also the bar-manager who is also the resident DJ. By DJ I mean he’s the bloke who controls the CD player like a teenager at a school sleep-over.
“Here, listen to this, you’ll like this,” he says and he presses play in another atrocious country-rock song. We scream playfully to change it. We go through various Bryan Adams tracks; and some Aussie Country artistes who are Big in Australia... but he hits pay-dirt with Grease. And large Bundys all round, on the house.
Some strange spontaneous spark lit our Saturday night. Before too long the volume of the place has increased. Arms are flailing, People are hugging. It’s all kicking-off in William Creek.
Reader, I will not go into details.
( ... I have this vision of some lone, night-time traveller seeing the sign for the hotel and anticipating a gentle night’s sleep. He indicates, needlessly, and pulls in to the parking lot. He kills the headlights. Puts the car in neutral. Hears screams of Wella, wella, wella - huh. Decides he’ll make it to Coober after all...)
The flight in the morning over the Painted Hills was amazing. You can’t reach them by road as they’re in the Restricted Area associated with the Woomera atomic tests in the 1950s. The Hills look like toasted marshmallows from above. White, caramelised, beautiful.
I really don’t want to get used to Australia’s scale.
The first time you see a vast, open plain of outback is jaw-droppingly special. You realise there’s nothing -- really: Nothing -- for miles and miles and miles. Cattle Stations (farms) stretch as far and as wide as Oxfordshire. No wonder people calculate Australia in number of Waleses you can fit. It’s huge.
While we’re driving, or on these short flights, it is difficult not to think about the first explorers, what they thought about the land they were opening up for the West; and also about the Aboriginal Peoples, whose land it has always been, the stories of the Dreaming Time, the making of the land.
I don’t want to lose that feeling of awe. Of discovery. Of mind-boggling beauty. I soak it all up; every ghost-gum and desert oak, every pinch of yellow dust. The Painted Hills, those lonely toasted painted hills, especially.