Murray - My life in the sea of cars: a letter from Arnhem Land

JAMES MURRAY

First Published 2009

This e-book edition 2011

Transit Lounge Publishing

95 Stephen Street

Yarraville, Australia 3013

www.transitlounge.com.au

Copyright James Murray 2009

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publisher.

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Front cover photograph by Paul Miles/Getty Images

Back cover photograph by Egon van Engelen www.flickr.com/photos/le_pike/

Design by Peter Lo

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National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-publication data

Murray, James Andrew, 1960

My life in the sea of cars : a letter from Arnhem Land /

James Murray.

1st ed.

9781921924088 (e-book)

Murray, James Andrew, 1960

Self-actualization (Psychology).

Alternative lifestyles.

Arnhem Land (N.T.)--Description and travel.

Arnhem Land (N.T.)--Social life and customs.

Dewey Number: 158.1

FRIDAY APRIL 1ST, 2005

I t starts yesterday when I go shopping. I buy food to last me eight days: muesli, powdered milk, crispbread, peanut butter, rice, pasta, potatoes, onions, tomato paste, curry paste, apples, dried beans, dried fruit. Then I buy the dictaphone Im talking into now.

I go home and pack my backpack. I find my compass, my maps, my billy and cup. I throw in a little medicine kit. While doing the things I usually do on a Thursday afternoon and evening with my children, I get on the phone to tidy up loose ends and make the arrangements that will enable me to be out of town and out of contact for eight nights and nine days.

At about 10 oclock I start tidying and cleaning my house. My ex-wife is staying here while Im away, and I want it to be acceptable for her. I clean and tidy until the 4 am news comes on the radio. By this time I am exhausted, moving in slow motion, so I give up and go to bed. An hour later the alarm rings. I get up, ring a taxi, kiss my sleeping kids goodbye, grab my pack and go out into the dark street.

The taxi driver is very young. He seems to be in a foul mood, and he eventually launches into a bitter denunciation of the new road rule, brought into effect this very day, limiting the speed on suburban streets to fifty kilometres per hour. He drops me at the transit centre, and before the sun has risen I am dozing against the window of a greyhound bus.

I get off at the small town at about 11 oclock. There is a minibus going to a tourist place sixty kilometres away. I am the only passenger, so I sit in the front and talk with the driver. He tells me his life story, his hopes and fears. He is about to retire, and he is very interested in real estate.

The resort is off the highway a few kilometres, so he drops me at the turn-off. Most of the traffic from the town turns there, but the bitumen continues for another hundred and fifty kilometres to another small town and another highway. I move down the road a bit and stand beside my backpack, holding out my thumb to each car that approaches. Ive had a few very long waits in this area.

After two hours of kicking stones, an old Landrover stops and I get in. The driver is a few years younger than me, and he keeps turning to look at his little daughter sleeping in the back seat. He tells me he makes this five hundred kilometre round trip twice a week. On Friday he drives to get his daughter and take her to his place, and on Sunday he returns her to her mother.

He is surprised and a bit suspicious when I ask to be dropped off in what seems to be the middle of nowhere. There is a little dirt track running off to the left. Id been vague about my intentions and I had lied to him when I said I was meeting friends. I didnt want to appear too freaky.

You got enough water?

Five litres, I say, and he considers this for a moment before nodding and driving off.

I watch him go. Except for his car, the road is empty. I hear cockatoos and crows. I shoulder my pack down the track until I am out of sight of the bitumen. I drop my pack. I am exhilarated. I whirl around, laughing, sighing, almost crying.

I figure I have four hours of light left. I can see the escarpment through the trees, ten kilometres away, with outlier bluffs closer, six k through the speargrassed bush. This is part of the Arnhem Land Escarpment, a several hundred kilometre line of cliffs separating the low coastal plain from the high Arnhem Land Plateau. I know that if I walk without stopping I can get to the plateau by dark. Otherwise I camp low down where saltwater crocodiles can be, and I prefer not to do that.

I take off my shoes. Some people dont believe I walk barefoot, but I do. I wear them to get on the bus and to look respectable as a hitchhiker but I dont need them out here. I change my clothes, drink a litre of water, and start bolting down the track that parts the three metre deep speargrass sea. In a month the grass will be dead and prone to falling over, but now it is vibrant green and immaculate. It is flat country, with gums and wattle, cycads and termite mounds. The sun is behind me, pushing me on.

After two hours Im suffering. I realise with a shock that I havent walked like this for nine months. I start to feel panicky about time as my shadow lengthens in front of me. I leave the track and veer off through the bush, and push for an hour through long grass, crashing through like an icebreaker, then at the dark wall I climb. Almost blind with sweat, stumbling and going too fast, I get stuck twice and have to backtrack and go another way. Huge waterfalls thunder into large pools below me, out of sight.

It is almost dark by the time I get up and along to this little patch of sand by the water. Ive made it.

Pack off. Hat, clothes off. Jump in. The water feels very good, but I dont linger. Out. Firewood. Small fire, small meal. I cook and eat lying down. I fall asleep a few times, spoon in mouth. I grab the dictaphone, rest it on my chest, and tell you about my day and a half. The dictaphone is voice activated and stops recording if I stop talking, if I fall asleep.

I am out for nine days, and I will talk to you each day. That will be my letter to you, my friend, my car driving friend.

SATURDAY APRIL 2ND, 2005

I f Australias Top End the squarish top of the continent, bounded by the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Arafura Sea and the Timor Sea, not the pointy Cape York to the east is an old breadboard, buckled and gouged but still basically flat, then the Arnhem Land Plateau is an old rough-hewn slice of bread lying in its middle. The escarpment is the golden brown crust standing perpendicular to the breadboard.