\u201cAs I walked through the country, I was becoming involved with it in a most intense and yet not fully conscious way,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t just see the animal tracks, I knew them. I didn\u2019t just see the bird, I knew it in relationship to its actions and effects. The environment\u2026 became an animate being of which I was a part.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Later, she writes about the challenges this gives her, in reference to language.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cThis all linked up with the Aboriginal reality, this vision of the world as being something they could never be separate from,\u201d she writes. \u201cIn Pitjantjara and, I suspect, all other Aboriginal languages, there is no word for \u2018exist\u2019. Everything in the universe is in constant interaction with everything else. You cannot say, this is a rock; you can only say, there sits, falls over, lies down, a rock.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Devils](\"https:\/\/s1.at.atcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Devils-Marbles-2.jpg\")
Karlu Karlu, or the Devil’s Marbles, are more than “just rocks”.<\/p><\/div>\n
It was, she says, but the barest inkling of an experience. The crudest, most basic glimpse of a worldview built on 40,000 years of Aboriginal culture. Yet it was glimpse enough. That small experience reframed her life\u2019s perspective, she says, from a separatist, \u2018me-versus-the-world\u2019 mentality to one focused entirely around existing as one with the land. Talk about a light bulb moment.<\/p>\n\n
Most of us will never make a journey like Davidson\u2019s: not to our country\u2019s interior and certainly not to our own. But to drive up the Stuart Highway, which barrels straight up the middle of the continent, is to journey into both. It is good, it is bad, it is not, in all parts, particularly pretty; but it is also impossible to leave without feeling glad to have been here.<\/p>\n\n
Our coastlines might be what convince visitors the world over to fall in love with another country, but it is here, in the heart\u00a0of our outback, where Australians learn to wholly love their own.<\/p>\n\n
The road out of Alice Springs is long, flat and straight. Just two lanes, which slice through our middle in a line that heads almost true north. Impossibly, desperately vast, the landscape which surrounds it is one of sharp contrasts; the kind of brilliantly hard place that might bring out the best, or the worst, in a person.<\/p>\n
![\"NT](\"https:\/\/s1.at.atcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/NT-Termite-Mounds-1.jpg\")
Termite mounds are a frequent sight on this road trip.<\/p><\/div>\n
But there are shades of undeniable softness here: small but magnific hills of muddy green and blushing grey, wide cracked pans of ochre and brick, scrubby flats, hypnotic plains; and they smudge into each other by degrees as we drive the hot road, with the rhythm and fluidity of a love song. It takes only six hours to drive between the Alice and Tennant Creek, but there is so much more to this road than the drive. A place like this needs time.<\/p>\n
Colourblind<\/h2>\n
A handful of conspicuous tourism destinations sits along this stretch of highway \u2013 the so-called UFO capital, Wycliffe Well, the character-filled roadhouses and, of course, the Devils Marbles \u2013 but it is a homestead at Tennant Creek that is the surprising capturer of hearts. Owner Jerry Kelly, who is half-Warumungu, half-Irish, offers the typical tourist horse trail rides, but much more besides.<\/p>\n\n
Abandoned by his Irish father, he was brought up by his mother and the elders working on the station he lived at, and so learned to value the purposeful existence of station life as much as his traditional heritage (\u201cthere was no alcohol, and no trouble\u201d). Now 54, Kelly runs extended rehabilitation courses for those facing alcohol and delinquency issues \u2013 but for anyone who is struggling, he says, not \u2018just\u2019 indigenous people.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cThere is no colour, there is no races anymore,\u201d he says bluntly, sipping on a cup of strong tea. \u201cWe teach people to ride horses, clean the troughs out, workin\u2019 with animals, workin\u2019 with other people, we show them how to cut the boomerang, make bush tucker\u2026 The Aboriginal mob wanted me just to train the black kids,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cBut bullshit. This is my business. No black, no white, all people. No races here. I train everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
You can\u2019t help but admire such incredible values and colourblindness, and clearly many do \u2013 his business has been bestowed with several local awards. But doesn\u2019t he want to help those from his culture specifically? Why the focus on teaching the ways of the white world? What about his culture, his indigenous heritage?<\/p>\n\n
Jerry shrugs. \u201cYou got the white fella world and you got the black fella world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Black fingers draw two circles on the chipped, dark wood table. \u201cIn between\u201d \u2013 fingers point to the middle \u2013 \u201cit\u2019s nobody world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
He looks up, calm and bright. \u201cYou gotta live in white fella world now,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing there in black fella land anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Cockatoos scratch out their calls in the golden afternoon. The sound of wind chimes drifts through the breeze. But your culture, I repeat. What could be more important than culture? He doesn\u2019t even hesitate.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cYour job.\u201d He stirs his tea.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cWorking is the answer,\u201d he repeats.<\/p>\n\n
Kelly\u2019s Ranch is not a particularly big, nor a particularly grand, patch of land. Conversation takes place under a wide, open-air roof, on a concrete floor that backs onto red soil housing horses, dogs, cows, chickens. Many of the creatures here were taken in as a last resort; injured strays who would have otherwise been put down, animals abandoned by previous owners who gave up responsibility before Kelly accepted it.<\/p>\n
![\"Devils](\"https:\/\/s1.at.atcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Devils-Marbles-3.jpg\")
Karlu Karlu \/ the Devil’s Marbles are particularly spectacular on a clear night.<\/p><\/div>\n
It is initially difficult to reconcile such remarkable actions with the seemingly emotionless person who sits here, calmly speaking of moving on from the enormity of this past. Walk a while, though, and it becomes clear that his approach is neither an apathetic surrender, nor a reaction born of anger and injustice but an acceptance of what is; a means of embracing the future.<\/p>\n
Crossing the divide<\/h2>\n
Type \u2018Ali Curung\u2019 into Google, and you\u2019ll be warned about the area\u2019s drinking and violence issues via a host of media reports. Twenty-two clicks to the east of the Stuart Highway between Barrow Creek and Wycliffe Well, a drive through this small dusty town \u2013 really, just a collection of a few, quiet streets housing 500-odd people \u2013 tells a tough story. But the flipside to this coin is a positive one.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve gotta start somewhere to change the systems that don\u2019t work,\u201d asserts Ian Grieve, a white fella who, alongside wife Judy, has managed the art centre here since its inception, six years ago.<\/p>\n\n
We are standing in the middle of it, a solid timber shed stuffed with paintings of every colour, which stack and topple in piles and on walls in a riot of swirls and dots. Having relocated from Noosa with plans of staying just one year, the Grieves ended up recalculating when the flourishing art centre saw their initial role expand into one that not only fosters a local art industry, but offers training for the community, in topics as broad-reaching as budgeting, computing, retail, basic literacy and numeracy. Put simply, the art centre is now employing and training the community through its own success.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s probably really only been recent times where non-indigenous Australians have been aware of Aboriginal culture in a way that is broadly appreciative,\u201d he says. \u201cBut there\u2019s a real hunger to know more now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Two artists, absorbed in painting with meditative hands, sit quietly amidst the morning busy-ness, as two dusty-looking road trippers, on their way from Arnhem Land\u2019s Nhulunbuy to Alice Springs, chat to one of the assistants. Outside, a scruffy looking dog pads soundlessly by.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the great thing about indigenous art,\u201d he adds. \u201cIt\u2019s bringing people across that divide.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Almost as if on cue, a local wanders in. Jangala \u2018Joe\u2019 Bird is a ninety-one-year-old elder of the Warlpiri mob, wearing bright skin and a grin as wide as his Akubra\u2019s brim. He looks closer to seventy.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cNow this is the kind of story that isn\u2019t normally broadcast by media,\u201d says Grieves, putting his arm around Joe, who looks back at him with good humour.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cHe doesn\u2019t drink, he doesn\u2019t smoke, he works every day. He can speak seven different languages and he\u2019s taught me more about remote Australia than anyone. I can find water, make a fire, get food\u2026 And all,\u201d he adds respectfully, \u201cfrom a guy who can\u2019t read or write.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Joe just stands there, smiling with his eyes. I ask what his secret to longevity is.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cWork,\u201d he replies. He is still smiling.<\/p>\n
Wonderland<\/h2>\n
Of course, the obvious highlight of this road trip is the Devils Marbles, or Karlu Karlu (loosely, \u2018round boulders\u2019). Each morning the sun rises afresh here, as though everything, including the air itself, has been filtered through a liquid purifier.<\/p>\n\n
Unlike the maturity and grandeur of so many natural Australian attractions \u2013 the drama of the Kimberley\u2019s gorges, the quiet majesty of the Nullarbor \u2013 the land here feels young, and light, full of nothing but promise and life. It is easy to understand why many would fight over it.<\/p>\n
![\"Karlu](\"https:\/\/s1.at.atcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Devils-Marbles-1.jpg\")
It was only in 2008 that the area\u2019s Traditional Owners were granted title to Karlu Karlu.<\/p><\/div>\n
Which indeed they have. It was only in 2008 that the area\u2019s Traditional Owners were granted title to Karlu Karlu as freehold land; even as late as the 1990s, there were talks of putting a railway line straight through the middle of this site (fortunately, though, those plans were successfully derailed).<\/p>\n\n
Today the area is a jointly managed conservation reserve, overseen by representatives of the Warumungu, Alyawarra, Kaytetye and Warlpiri peoples, as well as the Northern Territory Government.<\/p>\n\n
Despite this, the Marbles themselves remain a place of joy. To wander through here is to wander through the happenstance of an Alice in Wonderland narrative, where half-broken boulders lie, scattered, as if dropped from a careless child\u2019s pocket as she skipped across the sky. It is all too easy to become disoriented here.<\/p>\n\n
Having entered in one direction and walked in a direct manner to the other side, you might expect to end up precisely where you planned, but that rarely happens. It is only upon exit that you\u2019ll discover you have not walked to where you wanted to go, but have taken a circulatory deviation this way and that, meandering here and there, and have in fact been churned up and spat out sideways.<\/p>\n\n
It\u2019s not a stretch to see why the women\u2019s dreaming, Kwerrwympe, warns of eternal enchantment here. There are caves that exist underneath the Marbles here, and real people who live in them, who can entice you to follow them underground to stay with them forever. Or so the dreaming goes.<\/p>\n
Growing change<\/h2>\n
Outside Ali Curung\u2019s art centre, you\u2019ll find a small, carefully tended vegie patch. Filled with native bush foods, it is sprouting slowly and surely under the hard light of the outback sun; a solid, honest contrast to the struggle of weedy strawberry plants and fungus-covered tomatoes of my inner-city yard.<\/p>\n\n
The garden was planted as a means of allowing \u201cnon-indigenous and indigenous people to engage in a way that is non-threatening,\u201d says Grieves; a place where clumsy but well-intentioned questions might be asked, and forgiven. In a world where, elsewhere, that is sometimes still a challenge, it is a lovely thing to see.<\/p>\n\n
One can only imagine how tough it must have been for the expedition of explorer John McDouall Stuart, who slogged through this unfamiliar land in 1860 with no idea that the environment was in fact not barren, but filled with life when looked at with the right pair of eyes.<\/p>\n\n
Thanks be given that we\u2019re finally seeing. \u201cAnd it\u2019s only taken us a couple of hundred years to get to this point,\u201d enthuses Grieves, with the kind of passion that makes you want to give him a hug.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in a transition period of change now, and those changes will continue, but that\u2019s normal. Every society changes. No one stays the same.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
He is right; cultural evolution is absolutely inevitable, though the answer to how that should be addressed \u2013 how the past should be preserved, and the future embraced \u2013 is as individual as each of us. Yet the value is arguably not in finding the answer. It is in asking the questions.<\/p>\n\n
If every Australian were to come here, and do that, we just might live in a different place.<\/p>\n
The details: Alice-Springs – Tennant Creek – Devils Marbles<\/h2>\nGetting there<\/h3>\n
Fly to Alice Springs with Qantas. Tennant Creek is a six-hour drive north, straight up the Stuart Highway which stretches from Alice up through Katherine to Darwin. All major car rental companies service the airport.<\/p>\n
Staying there<\/h3>\n
In Alice Springs, we stayed at the very comfortable (and very air-conditioned!!) Lasseters Hotel<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n In Tennant Creek, we stayed at the basic but surprisingly comfortable Bluestone Motor Inn<\/a>, which also has a great little restaurant.<\/p>\n\n In between the two towns, we would recommend the Wauchope Hotel, just\u00a011 kilometres south of the Marbles. It\u2019s a fantastic spot to base yourself, if you\u2019re interested in seeing the Marbles at night (and don\u2019t want to camp).<\/p>\n 1. Slow down near Barrow Creek \u2013 you\u2019ll want to get out and take pictures of the pretty ranges here.<\/p>\n\n 2. Stop at Ali Curung and purchase some local indigenous art at ARLPWE Art and Culture Centre<\/a>. 100 per cent of profits go back to the artists.<\/p>\n\n 3. View the souvenir shop at the country\u2019s UFO capital, Wycliffe Well. It\u2019s cheesy, but you really can\u2019t not!<\/p>\n\n 4. Visit the Devils Marbles \u2013 ideally at sunrise or sunset when they are at their most memorable.<\/p>\n\n 5. Take a trail ride, learn about local bush tucker and talk country with Jerry Kelly, at Kelly\u2019s Ranch<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n 6. Visit the Battery Hill Mining Centre, a weird and wonderful little museum at Tennant Creek.<\/p>\n\nPlaying there<\/h3>\n