A few quiet days…
It’s been storming in Lajamanu since Moon’s run in with a king brown. Each night we’ve fallen asleep under the Art Centre’s tin roof, to the tattoo of rain. Cain toads are standing in the road like stones — and all those roads have turned to mud.
It’s quiet here. Most people are indoors and there are no visitors. Lajamanu road, a corrugated dirt track and the only way in or out of community, is impassable.
Between rain storms, I’ve been accompanying Warlpiri elders into the bush (where the tracks have held) to find bush medicine. Yesterday we found Dudju Munyimunyi, or apple-bush, which is used to treat cold and flu. We also found bush plums, but it’s too late in the season to eat them.
Lajamanu is home to many different raptors — brown goshawks, black kites, nankeen kestrels, spotted harriers, peregrin falcons, eaglehawks, sparrowhawks, little eagles and, of course, wedgetailed eagles. After rain, we watch them circle — looking for small marsupials washed out of their burrows. Brown goshawks circle just above the height of the spinifex, the wedgetails circle at the height of the rainclouds.
This is Jerry Jangala, my Warlpiri Grandfather (and brother by skin). He’s holding an antique knife that we found in the scrub yesterday — probably a relic from the time when the Arts Centre here was a bakery. He is singing a Warlpiri song about a hawk in the Jukurrpa (the ‘everywhen’, or the time before human time began) who carried rain clouds out into the arid desert so the spinifex savannahs and grasslands could begin to thrive. As he sings he uses his walking stick and his found knife as clapsticks.
This is a world that is passing. Even out here, in the desert communities, there are fewer and fewer old people left who remember the songs.
This is Judy and her daughter, with a bag of recently cut apple-bush. Judy will take the cuttings home and boil them in water to create bush medicine. There’s an old lady in town named Molly, who’s been sick lately, so the medicine will be for her. Judy has helped me find the plants and flowers I wanted to press while in this Country. I’m still missing a couple, but I’m sure I’ll find them in the ranges around Alice Springs on the way home.
I’ve been fixing the motorcycle in the hope that Lajamanu road dries enough for me to ride out. There’s around 500km of thick mud between me and the Highway. The road is in much, much worse condition than when we rode in a week ago — and that trip almost destroyed the motorcycle (I’ve written on that earlier).
Assessing the damage to the DR650 today was sobering. The welded metal brackets holding the driving lights on have snapped, and one of the bolts holding the petrol tank to the frame has totally sheared.
The front forks were knocked so far out of alignment that even moving the bike two streets, from my friend’s front yard into the Arts Centre garage, was almost impossible. The air filter is totally choked in deep red bulldust and the engine oil is an impossible red colour. I’m no mechanic — but red oil can’t be good. It’s astonishing to think that riding a few hundred kilometres of heavily corrugated desert track, without crashing, could do so much damage to a motorcycle.
If I’d not been riding a Suzuki DR650, I honestly don’t think I’d have made it here. This is one of the most reliable motorcycles on the market, and it’s been rebuilt with this exact terrain in mind, but it’s still in rough shape. Before Moon and I attempt the Tanami Track in June I’m going to have to modify the motorcycle again if it’s going to hold together.
Yesterday I borrowed a Landcruiser and drove out along Lajamanu road— and what I found didn’t fill me with confidence. The track is heavily gouged. It’s covered in thick clay, deeper than the axle of my motorcycle now. The danger is that the heavy, sticky clay will bind up my wheels — stopping them from turning, and I’ll burn the clutch out. Then I’d have an immobile motorcycle in the middle of nowhere, and nobody could rescue me because the road is impassable!
Looking objectively at the track, I don’t believe I could ride 10km without the wheels becoming chocked up with mud — let alone 500km.
Unless the track dries out significantly, and soon, my only hope of getting home is to put the motorcycle on the last supply truck out of Lajamanu on Tuesday. It would bring the bike to Kalkarindji (Wave Hill), about 200km to the north, and I could ride from there.
It’s not what I want to do.
I’d like to ride out of the desert like Evel Knieval, covered in dust and insect wings. But that’s looking increasingly unlikely. But whatever happens…. we’ll leave the desert on Tuesday, and head south toward home.
