Here in Ceduna I’m on pause. At the edge of the big desert, I’m resting and walking, waiting for friends to catch up to cross the Nullabor together, in convoy. The caravan park I've chosen is the runt of the litter. It’s cheap. I feel home. My tribe. There’s something about most caravan parks that make me feel I don’t belong. They’re full of big shiny caravans and motorhomes, packed in like sardines, their occupiers rarely leaving the safety of their metal homes. Generally, I bush camp, but when I do rarely stay in them, I feel uncomfortable. Unless I initiate a conversation, a condition I am compelled to do as I crave human company, I’m not approached. It’s as if a woman travelling solo is a threat to some unwritten order.
It feels edgy, the town centre eerily quiet. Poised on the precipice between trees and the Nullabor, meaning place of no trees, in this small patch of otherness, it is the trees and the expectation of company that render my heart still. Their presence represents strength, resilience, composure, commitment.
The earth is the colour of ground coriander seeds, a tinge of pink elevating its taupe. A dozen dignified big gums frame the caravan park, enclosed by corrugated iron, worn horizontally. Rusty car bodies, their tyres long dead, lounge lazily in the dirt. The camp kitchen emanates a rotten egg odour. In an attempt to stem the errant jets of water on the shower head last night, the rebel squirts, my gut involuntarily lurched. Have you ever felt a slimy shower head? It’s more a park for locals, or retreat for those who’ve fallen on hard times than a travellers rest stop. Of course, it’s both. Pre-fabricated cabins, products of another century colonise the haphazard space. To my left is a couple from Kilmore in Victoria who must turn around and return home; ‘my father died’. To my right, a guy living in a boat who offered to help me put up my obstreperous awning last night, and another guy with a Ned Kelly beard who cleans the park to save money to repair his Troopy. Should I mention the benefits of Domestos?
The view from my Camp Hilton @ Ceduna
But it’s not just trees. It’s moments when a flight of swallows rise from the bushes as you pass on the isolated highway, their perfect synchronisation and sway a thing of beauty. The contours of bald hills that seem to defy the flat lay of the land. Gravel roads to who-knows-where, intersecting main arteries, pathways that knead you to remember once all roads were tracks. Striations of spectral colour, the red and orange of daybreak. The feel of movement on the body as I steer the truck across country, the vibration of the ocean crashing against the shoreline while I dream of destiny, living on rubber atop the cliffs where land meets ocean.
Port Gibbon campsite
For the time being, I'm practising being my selfie!
My heart sings. And I’ve finally taken my uke out of its case. But that's another story.
Beautifully expressed, bella Caterina. Thank you for your eloquent evocation of time, travel, place. The transformative power of using word and lens in perfect balance.
ReplyDeleteLove to you, Margaret