Living

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life."

My home for another night.

Arrival.

So after 26 days, 7368.1 kilometres travelled, 78 hours of driving, 16 petrol stops, $600.42 in petrol, 1127 songs listened to on ipod, two audiobooks, 6 episodes of The Mighty Boosh radio series, 6 stone cracks in my windscreen, $80 to repair the first three half way across and a $150 speeding fine only 112 kilometres from my final destination I arrived, safe and extremely happy about my final arrival. They are the stats and here are a few of the stories and photos from along the way.

Gates on the way to waves in South Oz.

Roof top hoe down

It started cooking dinner, when Liam picked up the acoustic guitar and started to freestyle the blues in a loud husky voice to a basic blues riff . Once dinner had been brought to the boil we moved ourselves onto the window sill where I had been spending a good duration of my time observing and Liam continued to play and sing, we grabbed a tamborine and Jerpy grabbed his harmonica and it was a full on blues hoedown on the window sill whilst we ate our dinner. Before long we moved out onto the roof on the corner of, and above the busy intersection with Liam’s foot in the gutter, Pani sitting next to him and myself leaning on a traffic light we continued to acoustic freestyle blues session. With the sun setting over the city in front of us the buildings were and amazing orange as the sky gradually darkened above starting with a purple filtering through to light blue then into and amazing dark blue and finally to black. The traffic stayed busy through the intersection and with people consistently flowing beneath our feet Liam would continue to sing, well more scream at the top of his lungs to women as they would walk past, keeping in time with the simple riff he would call them the devil and proceed to mention that the devil wears a black singlet with grey shorts or whatever the clothing situation may have been with each individual woman, just so they could be sure that they were the devil we were talking about. When no one was walking past he would sing about whisky and women for the people waiting for the lights to return to green.
It was different watching peoples reactions, whilst most people were more than happy to relax and enjoy three friends hanging out on their roof playing the blues. But for some reason, that is foreign to me and I am still unable to figure out the small demographic of passers by that were so uptight they would have a look and then quickly look away like they had seen nothing, while others would try and blatantly ignore it. Like it is in anyway possible to ignore three shirtless males sitting two meters above your head with musical instruments screaming at the top of their lungs.
By the time the sun had completely disappeared it had been quite a few hours so we decided to call it a night.
I will never be able to understand the mentality of those that chose to ignore the different and mainly enjoyable activities of others. It is human nature to be curious, if it has nothing to do with you then so be it, but if its just someone enjoying themself and sharing that enjoyment with others I feel people should be more than willing to embrace it.

Leaving Melbourne

I knew how I felt and I had made assumptions on how I thought I would feel, but when the time came to actually leave Melbourne I was feeling a little more than nervous. I only had a one hour drive to Dave’s but after that there was no one that I knew the rest of the way across Australia. I don’t know how David manages to do it constantly, but for me it felt so daunting, if anything were to happen I have no idea how I would manage the situation. My mind was creating a thousand worst case scenarios that were playing out on the road in front of me as I drove, then after about 4o minutes, The District Sleeps Alone Tonight by the Postal Service come to the front of the shuffle on my ipod and all of a sudden everything I had been considering and worrying about just melted away, it reminded me of so many early morning surf trips up the coast with good friends in search for waves on a constant quest for adventure, and I realised that this was just me growing.
Others grow up to go to uni or get a trade, or work a 9-5. I am growing up to follow what I am passionate about and not let myself fall into what everyone else considers “growing up”. I want to surf, to travel, to grow as a person and to achieve all the childish dreams I once had. There is a life outside what we have been told by everyone since we were first introduced to school. There is a life outside what we are educated towards and what we are told we need to do. School, Uni or a trade a good paying job saving for a house and a car preparing for a wife and kids, living a life, preparing for something that may never happen. I just want to be happy, I want to live on a daily basis and know that every night when I go to sleep I can close my eyes and think that if I do not wake up tomorrow I will be completely happy with the day I just put to an end.

"As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference wether you are committed to a farm or the county jail"

(photo) My home for a night in South Oz.

Sunset along the coast.

My first night out of Melbourne was pretty special to me. Not the whole night or anything I did. But the way the afternoon presented itself to me. As I was following Bridgette home the sun was setting directly along the line of the coast we were driving. The sky was the most amazing orange colour in amongst the clouds, the cliffs were painted dark as they were facing away from the sun and as we passed over the hill I saw the sun drop behind the large gums of the dry desolate landscape, the likes of which I had never seen, and all I could think was that it was one of the most incredible things I had seen since I left Byron. That day I had been very concerned I may have been doing something I should not have been, I was scared. This as far as I am concerned is the most intense, scary and by length the biggest expedition I have set out apon. To me that sunset was the confirmation that I was doing the right thing, that I should not be scared and that the most amazing experience of my life was waiting for me. It played itself almost angelically in my head and that all I had to do was follow that light and if even for only one second, somewhere along the way I would find a piece of the world, a small piece of heaven on earth, that, for the rest of my life I can call mine and no matter what happens from then on I have seen it and nothing will ever be able to take it away.

I am in my car in the middle of the South Oz desert about to go to bed.

5/2/09

Yesterday I drove an undesirable distance for any one person to drive in one day, roughly about 1400 kilometres. The landscape of the desert along the Nullabore is monotonous, subduing and dreadful. This country is completely impersonal. It is a landscape without physiognomy, no faces of life or men, no bodies of recumbent animals, are suggested by the shapes or lack of shape of the land. Dull yellow and gawkily bending shrubs and trees give way to red clay and seemingly relentless unyielding road for as long as anyone would care to see. Having said this the desert has a feeling completely unparallel to anything I have experienced before. There is a raw beauty hidden amongst the harsh desolate nothingness. It is a beauty that has to be studied to be truly observed, a beauty that despite the repetitive seemingly vacancy continues only to grow more intense with each hour passed watching.

The picture is two road trains with police escorts taking up the entire road.