Learning to Say Goodbye

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I put my hand to the rock, red dust beneath my fingers. I felt the heat of it, the grit of it, but that was all I felt.

I came to Uluru to learn more about Australia. I had been living in the country for two years, mostly in Sydney where all of my friends were British or Irish. Where I spent my Saturday nights in PJ O’Brians or Scruffy Murphys. 

On Australia Day, I went to the Australian Youth Hotel Bar to play twos up and on Saturdays my friends and I played barefoot bowls in the sunshine. That’s as close to Australian culture as I ever got.

But I was leaving the country. Against my will, to be honest. I would still be there, still be spending weekends taking road trips to drink wine in Hunter Valley or to hike in the Blue Mountains. I would still be there talking about the obscene rent prices and how we’ll never be able to afford to buy here, but damn it, it doesn’t matter when your commute is a ferry that goes past the Opera House or a train across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. But I wouldn’t be doing any of those things anymore.

My visa was running out and I couldn’t figure out a way to get a different one. I was a floundering post-grad with no specialty that the country actually wanted. I wasn’t an engineer or a teacher or a doctor. 

So I packed up my apartment and stored most of it with a friend. I put the rest into an a green 80L backpack that was so heavy I needed someone to lift it up for me so that I could strap it to my back and around my waist. My boyfriend Luke nicknamed it the turtle shell.

I flew to Darwin and rented a camper van and Luke and I drove through the center of the country on long flat roads so straight that our eyes blurred with the heat rising off the tarmac. The only blip on the horizon were termite mounds, some taller than I was. Sometimes people put clothes on the mounds; hats, bright yellow or orange high visibility vests, souvenir t-shirts from Bali or Bristol. 

We stopped at Kakadu National Park to see rock paintings dating back 20,000 years. We tentatively dipped our toes in cool, murky waterways, wanting respite from the heat, but not wanting to be eaten alive by saltwater crocodiles. We sat in the back of the van with the doors open watching the sunset, eating oranges that we kept in the fridge, juice dripping down our dusty hands as the sky went from light to dark in an instant.

We bought CDs from Goodwill because there was no radio reception. White Snake, Billy Joel, and when we couldn’t bear another guitar rift, the soundtrack to Cats the musical. By the end of our two weeks in the desert, we knew every word to Jellical Cats.

One night, we camped in a town called Elliot. The only thing in Elliot was a gas station. You could pay the gas station to park in the back, just off the road. They had a tiny pool next to the parking lot. We bought two cans of XXXX Gold and drank them while we stood waist deep in the tepid waters of the swimming pool. As we were getting out, an older couple pulled into the parking lot towing a camping trailer on the back of a rusting red Chevy pickup truck.

Their names were Ruth and Geoff, although Geoff simply referred to her as my dearest. They were driving from Cairns deep into the Northern Territory. They were nurses who worked for a non profit organization that sent medical care to remote aboriginal settlements. They told us about the children they had adopted from Cambodia, back when they worked as nurses there in the early 80s, just after the murderous dictator Pol Pot had been overthrown from power, just before the world really learned what had been going on there for nearly a decade. We talked about them for months afterward, Geoff and dearest Ruth. We still talk about them today.

We dropped off the van in Cairns, swapping the dry desert heat for the humid rainforest. We swam in rock pools that kept out the box jellyfish. We stayed in hostels with 6 or 8 beds in them, usually full of people even younger and drunker than we were. We took Greyhound buses south along the coast through towns with names like Airlie, Agnes Water, Noosa, and Byron Bay. We rowed a boat down a river, learned how to sail through the waters that hold the largest reef system in the world, and drove Land Cruisers over sand dunes. We saw dingos and browns snakes and spiders bigger than any I ever hope to see again. 

Tanned and tired, we found ourselves back in Sydney, but there was one more place we wanted to see.

I left my turtle shell at my friend’s house, my stuff pouring out of their hall closet, me promising I’d be back for it soon, that I would buy them a beer, a whole crate of beers as I closed the door behind me and headed for the airport.

The town of Alice Springs is as close to the wild west as I’ve encountered. We checked into our hostel and the white woman at the front desk gave us directions to the nearest grocery store. Just be back before dark, she said as we headed out the front door.

In the two years I lived in Australia, it was only the second time someone had warned me of a lack of safety. As a native New Yorker, I scoffed at both.

The heat was so dry here, it sucked the moisture out of you. When you opened your mouth you discovered that you needed more effort to get the words out. The back of my tongue caked in a layer of the same dust that now coated my shoes, the top layer of skin on my arms. Red. Or perhaps burnt orange is a better description. Baked earth, terracotta, fine yet course as you wipe it from your eyes, see it in your tissue after blowing your nose. I would find this red dirt for months afterward, on clothes that I was sure I had already washed, tucked into the pockets of jackets and backpacks.

We stopped at KFC to get a milkshake. Anything to cool down. We sat in the air conditioning with our cups of frozen M&Ms churned through the sweet ice cream, too thick to suck through the straw.

On our way back from the grocery store, two Aboriginal women were yelling outside of a bar. One woman had a metal baseball bat and began striking the other, the sound of the metal hitting her thigh, then her stomach. Luke grabbed my wrist, told me not to watch, pulling me as I turned back to see two bouncers separating them before we turned the corner to our hostel.

The next morning we left for the Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park. We had booked onto a two-day tour with the hostel which would take us out through the famed red center. We would camp in the desert, cook over an open fire, and see Uluru.

“This is a swag,” our tour guide said as he shook out a large grey sleeping bag. “This is your swag” he said as he handed each of us one of them. “This will be your home for the next two nights.”

I laughed nervously, wondering what he meant. Where were the tents? This is the country of the most poisonous snakes in the world. This is the country of giant spiders and scorpions and deadly bugs whose names I didn’t even know. Surely we would not be sleeping on the ground out in the open in the middle of this deadly dry land?

This was not our guide’s first tour. He knew the looks on everyone’s faces well. He knew what we were all thinking, but he did not back down, did not explain himself.

“Just make sure you always shake it our really well before you get in, that way you can be sure you’re sleeping alone. Unless, of course, you don’t want to sleep alone,” he said with a wink.

On that first day, we stopped as soon as we crossed into the national park. 

“Take your shoes off,” our guide said. I kicked off my brown leather flip flops and walked through the fine red dirt. It was so soft it felt like sand at the beaches we had been to in the Whitsundays or the Gold Coast only the week before.

But there was no ocean in sight and this was definitely not sand. My sun kissed feet sunk in and disappeared in the clay-colored dirt. 

We set up at a nearby campsite for the night with the other people in our group. There were travelers from Germany, England, Ireland, New Zealand, and Argentina on our tour. We sat in a circle on our rolled up swags as our guide built a fire. It was steaming hot during the day, but the temperature dropped in the evenings and around the fire we were all wearing sweatshirts and long pants.

We ate kangaroo tail cooked in the embers of the fire, learned how to make damper, a type of bread made of flour and water and cooked like a shawarma over the fire. When it was time to get into my swag, I shook it like my life depended on it, because it did. We were hundreds of miles from the nearest hospital and as a young, broke backpacker, travel insurance wasn’t on the packing list.

I crawled into my swag and laid on my back looking up at the sky. Thousands of stars came into view. The constellations are different down there. I couldn’t find the Big Dipper or Orion’s belt, constellations that my dad had shown me through our telescope when I was a kid. I didn’t recognize any of the stars above me.

That’s the Southern Cross, our guide said as we followed his finger to the sky. Four bright stars making up this diamond-shaped constellation came into view. I knew it well. It’s present on both the New Zealand and Australian flags. Spend long enough at any bar in Australia and someone will show you their Southern Cross tattoo.

Despite being miles from the nearest town, it was both bright and loud in the desert. The stars and moon made it feel like the lights were on. There were sounds from insects that I couldn’t quite place. Were they crickets? Cicadas? Some Australian mega-bug? I closed my eyes and imagined spiders crawling across my face at night, thought of scorpions and how they could flatten their bodies, making it easy to sneak inside my warm sleeping bag. I opened them again and looked around at the 10 other people spread across our campsite. I wondered it they were thinking the same things.

The heat wakes you before anything else. Without a tent, you felt the the sun the moment it rose above the horizon. Australians call this area of the country the Red Centre. I always thought that it was because of the color of the earth here, but in that moment, I thought it must be because of how searingly red hot the sun is here.

We ate bowls of cereal for breakfast. I poured milk over the generic crunchy rice and listened to it pop. Then I added a heaped tablespoon of sugar over the top. I swatted flies as they tried to land on my hand, on my spoon, on the corners of my mouth, around my eyes. I could feel the weight of dozens of them on my back where I was already sweating through my t-shirt. Hundred of flies surrounding our camp, searching for a speck of moisture wherever they could get it.

“Today’s the day,” our guide said as we piled back into the tour bus. 

We drove nearly 4 hours from West MacDonnell National Park to Uluru. Most of us were sleeping or reading or talking during the drive. We had no idea how long it would take to get there or when we might finally stop, but someone was looking out of the window.

It started with a low gasp, then the muffled chatter of a few more people. Then someone who was sitting on the right side of the bus stood up and leaned over the seats on the left to get a better view.

There it was. On an otherwise flat landscape stood this red monolith. 

Eventually we parked and filed out towards the walking path that circles Uluru. Aboriginals believe that Uluru, which translates as great pebble, is a resting place for ancient spirits. 

“Many visitors say that they can feel the power of this place,” our guide said, as he placed his hand on the rock and closed his eyes.

You can touch it and see for yourself.

Luke went first. He placed both of his palms against the Great Pebble and smiled. “I feel it,” he whispered, “I feel something.”

He stepped back and I took his place. Slowly I raised my arms over the wire barrier and placed my hands against the rough red surface. It was warm from the sun. I waited. I closed my eyes. I opened them and looked at the grooves beneath my fingers. I felt nothing. I urged my hands to feel harder, urged my conscience to go away and let the spiritual slide in. But it never did.

I removed my hands and smiled as the group waited for my response. “Powerful,” I said as I stepped away to let someone else have a chance.

I thought about that moment for the rest of the trip. I’ve thought about it dozens of times since, over a decade later. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I feel its power when it seemed like everyone else could? What did they have that I didn’t?

The next day we were back at the Alice Springs airport and after a few short hours, thrust back to the chaos and noise of Sydney and surrounded by all of my stuff that I had thought was so important to keep stored at my friend’s house for nearly a month.

It was time to leave Australia for good.

I looked down at Sydney passing below me from my window seat. The Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, over Manly Beach, and the Shangri La where we had spent one of our last nights in the city with friends, underdressed and over served, watching the city as we spun around it in the rotating bar on the hotel’s top floor.

I didn’t know I was crying until I tasted the salt on my lips. I put my palms to my cheeks, rubbed my index fingers into the corners of my eyes. When I looked down at my hands, I saw some red dust under my fingernails.