In the mid 1970s - and what a different age that was to the then inconceivable lives we now lead - there was a lady called Robyn Davidson, who decided at age 25 that she needed to train up a herd of camels so that she and her dog could travel across the desert, from the Alice to the ocean, taking however long it took, risking pretty much everything, her life and those of her fellow furry travel companions included. Now, Miss Davidson did indeed make that trek, and it was documented in a beautifully photographed book called From Alice to Ocean which was published in 1992, some 15 years later. At the time of her trek back in the mid 70s, I was living the not-so-childhood dream of feeling like an orphan at age 10, because my mother had to all intents and purposes abandoned me, and into the care of a rageful alcoholic "father." Now, I am what I am, formed as we all are by our childhoods, but you can make a hell of a life out of broken beginnings.
At the time From Alice to Ocean was published, and myself spying it in a bookstore somewhere, I was 28 years old myself, engaged, and not terribly keen on marrying or even having children for that matter. Being a wife and mother seemed like something you did in some kind of weird parallel universe that I had never been part of growing up, and still wasn't, although I was having a fair old crack at it with a man I'd been with for four or five years at that stage, was still uncertain about, but had somehow agreed to marry at some point unknown.
I guess you could say I'd always lived life a bit by the seat of my pants.
1992: I bought this enormously expensive glossy big book, read it from cover to cover in the deepest fascination, and then promptly took it over to my mother for her to enjoy (we had mended our relationship some years prior and were, and remained till her demise in 2006, the best of friends). Mother did indeed love the book; apart from her own wild sense of adventure (having left Switzerland and all her family behind at some tender age to jump on a boat bound for Somewhere Else, Australia as it turned out;) she also had a previously unknown - to me anyway - adoration of All Things Camel. This was a book about a lunatic female adventurer who crossed a desert solo with four of these spitting farting beasts. And one black dog, called Diggity. Enough said, because Mother's other love is All Things Canine.
That book remained forever at her house in her little bookcase in the entry hall, jutting out enticingly to me whenever I visited, and every now and then I'd flick out the book and relive Ms Davidson's adventures. At some point, a stone camel took pride of place sitting just above where that book lived its dusty days. And when Mum passed on to a better place on her birthday in 2006 at age 76 (seemingly deciding she'd had enough of being trapped in a body that didn't function anymore) that book came back to me, along with it's friend, the stone camel. In fact the critter is sitting in all its sunbleached glory by my pool here in Noosa, as I sit here, dreamily lost in full creation mode. My clumsy Boofter dog has broken its head off a couple of times and it's always been carefully recapitated (is that a word?) with Liquid Nails. And the book, well that's beside me right now....
So getting to the point (and I do have one!) last night I FINALLY got to see the movie version of Tracks; it only took almost 40 years to be brought to the big screen, lasted a few nano seconds at the cinemas (yep I blinked and missed it!) and suddenly here it was in my lounge room on a Sunday night, for my viewing pleasure. And I enjoyed it so much, I've felt like I'm going out of my brain with restlessness ever since!
When I first was exposed to this story, I was 28 and engaged. And now here I sit, and I'm 50 and, yep, engaged. I'm still getting to know this man I've met so recently and so spontaneously decided to marry; this decision wasn't one that was years in the making, this time it's been a matter of weeks. Does it make it a bad decision? No, there are no bad decisions. Is it an interesting journey, living with and getting to know your fiance, rather than thinking you know him properly first and then deciding to marry? Oh you betcha. It's so much more fun!
Said fiance slept his way through the movie last night, which was just as it should be, because I needed to absorb it in my own time and space, albeit with a strong but comfy arm wrapped around me while I soaked it all in. It was heaven, even the anxious moments where the camels took off, and the awful moment where Diggity's day was done. It was a story so real, and so old and familiar to me, that I was right there in that desert with that lone lunatic; I'm following every track she made in those sweeping desert sands, in fact I could feel the prickly saltbush and had an even drier mouth, because I did not get up off that couch once to get a drink. And it's a damn long movie. And when she reached the ocean at the end of it, and swam with her camels and without her dog, I had the salty tears to make the whole experience complete.
A restless night's sleep followed, and this morning I couldn't wait to go out to my office and put my hands on The Book. I knew exactly where it was too. It was waiting for me. I brought it inside the house, made a coffee, and started venturing back into that desert, slowly turning the glossy pages, soaking up her words that were of another age, that were of a time when women still felt cheated or trapped in some ways, but where this most adventurous soul decided she was actually going to do something about it.
A piece of paper, brown with age, dog eared its way out of the book, and I pulled on it with idle curiosity. Is it book-marking something? I'll never know, because it's not mine. But there's some of my deceased mother's handwriting on it. Looking closer at it, and with keen interest now, I see it's not actually writing, but numbers, written in her very distinctive hand. Six numbers. Two supplementary numbers. It's Tattslotto numbers, that's what it is. From my mother to me. I was always going to find this one day, whenever I was meant to. Did it take the film makers to make the movie, for me to watch that movie, so I'd go and revisit that old adventure again, this book I hadn't opened in at least a decade and maybe more; a book I might not have reopened for another decade, or maybe never? I think we will leave that question to float out there on the ether, because I sure as hell can't answer it.
I showed my man the piece of paper, and of course his reaction was we have to put a Tattslotto ticket on. It was my first reaction also. On reflection, I'm not so sure. I think that piece of paper had a much more profound impact in just being there. It reminded me of my Mum, and how she loved adventures, and how much we both loved this story. She and I certainly shared a few together; she was then in her 60s and me in my late 20s, and some of them in the wild Western Australian gorges that this book is also about. It also reminded me that life is short, time's a-tickin', Mum has left the building some eight years now, and those aforementioned Winds of Change are picking up momentum...
I had a call from The Man about half an hour after he'd left to go to work this morning. "You might think I'm crazy, but...." (words I've been waiting to hear from this soulmate of mine, because I just knew he had it in him, because that's why he's my soulmate!) ... and my reply? "Let's do it." A bit like our engagement cake a few weeks ago (after a courtship of only some weeks' duration) that had the Nike tick on it and a "just do it".
So... What are we doing? .................*
When are we doing it? ............. soonest!
Why? .................. why ever not......?
* insert dreams and/or imagination!
" The most difficult thing has always been the decision to act; the rest is mere tenacity. And the fears are just paper tigers. One really can do anything one has decided to do, whether it's changing a job, moving to a new place, divorcing a husband or whatever. One really can act to change and control one's life; and the procedure and the process is its own reward. Just do it"
- Robyn Davidson (thank you) & CazHow Xxxx
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