are no street lights. No sounds oth-
er than the birds, the tinkling of my
Enfield’s engine as it cools and the
crackling of the wood on the fire.
Sometimes I’d forego my sleeping bag
and sleep on the ground fully clothed
because I may not get the opportuni-
ty again. I didn’t want a barrier be-
tween me and the earth and leaves.
It hadn’t rained for months so the
ground was dry. Early in the morn-
ing the birds start their breathtaking
songs. Clouds of white cockatoos fly
against a clear blue sky.
Mind you, Mum, I did have a most
alarming occurrence when I spent
the night in a remote spot in the bush
near an old gold-mining town called
Charters Towers. I was siphoning
some water from my jerry-can for
my morning tea and felt something
in my mouth. Whatever it was bit me
on the back of my tongue. You may
have heard that some of the wild-
life here would rather kill you than
not and the spiders are particular-
ly unwelcoming. I spat out the of-
fending creature that was exploring
my tonsils and watched a little pin-
ky-brown spider scuttle away. Not a
black widow or red-back apparently.
But my tongue was beginning to tin-
gle and swell. I got a knife ready to
cut a breathing-hole in my windpipe
in case I couldn’t breathe through
my mouth or nose. I also scribbled
some words in my diary in case the
spider-bite was venomous. I wrote
that I was happy because I had such a
great life and to express my love and
thanks to all those who loved me. Af-
ter a while the tingling stopped, the
swelling went down and I rode off!
This country, this island, this con-
tinent is so huge that the climate
changes from one part to another. I’ll
bet that like me, you thought Austra-
lia is always hot. It’s not!
I left tropical rainforest and croc-
odiles in the north in April, and by
the time I had ridden into May, I ex-
perienced a dramatic change. I was
in desert in South Australia where it
was so cold at night my ‘guaranteed to
freezing’ sleeping bag no longer kept
me warm. But it was very dry. Lo-
cal cattle station owners told me they
had not had any rain to speak of for
three years.
Central Australia used to have a
vast inland sea and this is bored into
for water now. They call it dinosaur
water as it has been there since pre-
historic times. It’s still hot when it
gets to the surface so I had free hot
showers when I stayed on a camp-
site in Muttaburra. The sulphur in
the water smells like rotten eggs and
turned my silver jewellery brown.
Muttaburra is famous because a local
farmer found a dinosaur skeleton.
Like the model of it they have of it
in town which was near my camping
TRAVERSE 34
spot, the Enfield and I were a bit of
a local attraction. People were kind
and on hearing I needed to replace
a broken rear-view mirror, the man
who had found the dinosaur gave me
one of his spares.
This is going to sound strange, but
there is so much sky here. When I
first arrived, and rode to Katherine, I
just lay on the ground looking at all
the blue. The blue fades to almost
white at the edges where it touches
the earth and deepens as you look
straight up.
The space and the sky. That’s what
I’ll remember Australia for. I’ve seen
kangaroos, crocodiles and spiders
and an evil-looking brown snake
when it slithered between my feet
when I was washing up in an outside