Arkose

Posted on November 8, 2018 by d4vid

Uluru is composed of a type of sandstone called arkose.The surface of which has oxidized to its rusty color.It is pockmarked with caves and crevices.Some of which trigger my trypophobia.(Shudder.)Another plane flying high over the Outback triggers another thought of Shampoo Planet.Can’t escape from the word “tucker“!

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Conflicted

Posted on November 8, 2018 by d4vid

I’ve driven deep into the heart of the Australian continent, thousands of kilometers, only to discover that I’ve ended up in fucking Disney World.

In 1973, the Australian government relocated & concentrated all lodging facilities around Uluru to the newly-formed town of Yulara about a ten minute drive away, outside the boundaries of the national park.  This town and its airport have metastasized into a ritzy resort complex.The view of the desert from my balcony.Corporate art, like a  horribly distorted map of the continent.(I realize my own hypocrisy and complicity in staying here.  I remain a reluctant foot soldier of late-stage capitalism.)

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Autochthonous

Posted on November 8, 2018 by d4vid

The “island mountain” of Uluru made me think of my all-time favorite English word:  “autochthonous”.

I love that “ch” right next to that “th”.  Sublime.

The Greek etymology literally means “self from the ground” and the word has two meanings.  The secondary, metaphorical definition is a thought that springs unbidden into one’s head.  A passing thought that comes out of nowhere.

The primary definition means indigenous or aboriginal, as if the natives of a particular place sprang up out of the land itself.

 

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Inselberg

Posted on November 8, 2018 by d4vid

At some point in my distant childhood, I developed a fascination with Ayers Rock (which was so named in 1873 by an Australian surveyor after then Premier and Chief Secretary of South Australia Sir Henry Ayers although properly known by it’s local aboriginal Pitjantjatjara name of Uluṟu.)

This fascination was further cemented in the late 80s when writer Chris Claremont (longest running writer of The Uncanny X-Men) moved the team to the Outback for several years and introduced an aboriginal mutant named Gateway who could open up wormholes using his bullroarer.Uluru is an inselberg, rising from the flat desert.

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Phatic

Posted on November 8, 2018 by d4vid

Port Augusta quickly gives way to the Outback.  An oncoming car waited for a herd of sheep to cross the road and I slowed in response.  As we passed, the driver of the car gave me a thumbs up and I waved.  Made sense to me.

After a couple more cars had passed me going the opposite direction, I realized that other drivers were acknowledging me, often with just a single finger raised from their steering wheel.  Intuitively, I started doing it in response.  Then I started initiating it, raising my finger from the wheel with drivers passing me doing the same.

It was sort of beautiful.  A human connection in the middle of vast emptiness.

Apparently this is such a well-known phenomenon in the Outback that anthropologists have even come up with a name for it!  They call it  the “phatic finger“.

 

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Wrong

Posted on November 8, 2018 by d4vid

See, this would have been useful information 3000 kilometers earlier.  My bad.

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Slogan

Posted on November 8, 2018 by d4vid

Crossing into the Northern Territory (and setting my clock back an hour) I stopped at Kulgera for gas and some food.

The place bills itself as both “The First and Last Pub in The Northern Territory” and “The Most Central Pub In Australia”.  Pick a lane, people.

I ate a steak sandwich consisting of toasted white bread, Norms-grade steak, cheese, a fried egg, caramelized onions, and (for no earthly reason) beets.  I assume a Shrute is the short order cook in the back.

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Hilltop

Posted on November 7, 2018 by d4vid

Watching the sun set over Coober Pedy, I found myself thinking of the double sunset on Tattooine.

The sound of distant chicken and sheep and dogs made me think of Gyantse in Tibet.  And how in Chapter 80 of the Dao De Jing Laozi says everyone should just stay home:

Although the next country is close enough
that they can hear their roosters crowing and dogs barking,
they are content never to visit each other
all of the days of their life.

The junkyard look of the town and the people huddling underground made me think of Mad Max.

A plane flying distantly overhead made think of this passage from Douglas Coupland’s Shampoo Planet, where the protagonist is musing about how he actually wouldn’t mind some apocalypse ending consumer culture, but with the following caveat:

If, as we were all down on earth wearing rags and husbanding pigs inside abandoned Baskin-Robbins franchises, I were to look up in the sky and see a jet—with just one person inside even—I’d go berserk. I’d go crazy. Either everyone slides back into the Dark Ages or no one does.

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Underhill

Posted on November 7, 2018 by d4vid

Coober Pedy is a legendary opal mining town.  (Apparently the name is an English corruption of the local Aboriginal term “kupa-piti” meaning “boys’ waterhole”.)  Not quite Hobbiton, but the residents famously live in dugouts underground.

I stayed the night in the Lookout Mountain Underground Motel.I immediately thought of the Vaults in Fallout 3 and the Silos in Hugh Howley’s Wool.The walls show the gouge marks of the excavation equipment……a motif seemingly echoed on the toilet paper!Although extremely well-insulated, a ventilation shaft pokes through to the surface which results in a haunting howl of distant wind. On the hill overhead, the ventilation shafts poke out aboveground.

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Cocktail

Posted on November 7, 2018 by d4vid

The Outback.  The Midterms.  WWI.

Three things dominated my thought as I drove from Port Augusta to Coober Pedy.

The Outback.  Alien desolation from horizon to horizon.

The midterm election.  The die already cast, but unable to hear any election returns without cellular connectivity.

World War I.  Wisely or unwisely, I was listening to Dan Carlin‘s epic, twenty-three hour “Blueprint for the Apocalypse” podcast about the war.

A potent, if dark, cocktail.

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Helliconia

Posted on November 7, 2018 by d4vid

In the early 80s, science fiction author Brian Aldiss wrote a trilogy of books about a planet called Helliconia in a binary star system which means there are regular years (as Helliconia orbits one star) and “Great Years” (as Helliconia & its closest star orbit another star.)  The epic sweep of the story traces the rise and fall of civilizations on this planet, often caused by the changes in these great seasons.

(Come to think of it, I should probably reread these books now that global warming has us heading into a Helliconia Summer.  But I digress…)

One of the ideas in the books that has really stuck with me was the intermingling of Helliconia-native species (which had long-since adapted to the vicissitudes of the Great Year) and Earth-introduced species (which always seemed to get caught unaware by the changes in the seasons.)  An intermingling which happened so long ago that it has been lost to history.

Australia reminds me of that:  indigenous species which evolved to live in this environment with European-introduced species overlayed on top them.  The difference between, say, kangaroos & koalas on one hand and cows & sheep on the other is staggering.  And yet now they coexist in the same land.  Truly fascinating.

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Outback

Posted on November 7, 2018 by d4vid

The Outback is the color of rust.  Literally, the color of rust.  It looks like the surface of Mars or, considering the twisted flora & vicious fauna, probably more like Barsoom.

I had a magical moment while driving north on the lonely A87 which cuts its way through the middle of the Australian continent.

I saw a kangaroo standing at the side of the road, looking right at me.  I slowed my car to a stop to let it pass.  The kangaroo seemed to nod in acknowledgement, crossed the road, and hopped off into the bush.

Smart kangaroo.

(The emu who I came across later were not nearly as smart.  They seemed genuinely surprised that I was waiting for them.)

Kangaroos look & move as alien as any creature I’ve ever seen in real life.  They would fit right in on Barsoom.

 

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Viticulture II

Posted on November 5, 2018 by d4vid

In general, I don’t give much thought to Australian wine.  (Although probably ranking somewhere between upstate New York wine and most Chinese wine.)  Furthermore, judging wines by their names and labels is just as misguided as judging a book by its cover.  However, these caught my attention and amused me.

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Whiplash

Posted on November 5, 2018 by d4vid

I don’t think of myself as having seasonal allergies, but jumping from Northern Hemisphere autumn to Southern Hemisphere spring has got me questioning that.

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Equine

Posted on November 5, 2018 by d4vid

Reassured by this Anglican church with an open door, I stopped for the night in a town called Horsham.  Since Gotham means “goat home” I wondered if Horsham meant “horse home”.  The town does have racetrack, after all.

But apparently it was named after the Horsham in England…whose name means either “horse home” or “Horsa’s home” (as in a Saxon warrior named Horsa whose home was there.)

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