It was time to get out of this city - with not much time and not much money we decided to find out where you can take a three tonne truck in Western Australia. We threw a mattress and some camping gear in the back of the work truck and left Perth on Sunday afternoon. No bookings, no planning, just a last minute decision to see where life would take us.
In a three tonne truck, droning northward, sounding like a 747. At the speed of a 7 and three quarters. But whats the hurry? The passing stands of black boys are not moving at all. Humps of golden heath met rolling dunes, struggling to defend themselves from the engulfing sands.
An evening picnic at the Pinnacles - Ancient beings trapped and immortalised in limestone obelisks. Petrified dragons, mushroom castles, empire of a distant time. I feel insubstantial amongst these timeworn monoliths, wondering what mysteries they hold within.
We settle for the night by the emerald ocean, its edges slightly tamed. A wilder world out there, beneath the whitecaps, calls to me. I am trapped on land by my human form and let the ocean rhythms lull me to slumber in the back of the truck.
We wake, make a cup of billy tea and follow the coast northward to Greenough where we head inland for a change. Through fields of gold and purple, we head to Ellendale Pool for our next camp. Oasis. Rock meets river. Eucalypts nurture the river bank, home to a cacophony of birds. A swinging rope calls from the opposite bank. After a swim, nothing to do but listen to some bush guitar and watch the colours change on the rocky outcrops as the sun retreats.
The next day, a little further up the road, we stumble on Coalseam Reserve, the perfect place for a mid-morning cook-up in our mobile truck home. Red and black and green, a coal inflected landscape, the colours deeper and more intense than the coastal strip. Once a river, now a wildflower bed. Spring sparkling yellow, pink and white, bursting from red gravel.
Back on the road, three tonne truck in the outback now. Red and silvery green. Random goats and sheep chew on the tender tips of recent rains. Roads and windmills are scanty evidence of human habitation. As far as the eye can see, lands touched only by the relentless sun. Lands too uninteresting or just too harsh, that man has not sought to tame it?
Next stop - the Granites in Mount Magnet. Granite walls frame the desert sunset. Light shifts across the plains, dark creeps towards us from the horizon. Sights become sounds, we retreat into the hypnotic symphony of the night. And awake to the song of a morning bird announcing the sights are back. The shadows start their day in the west and end pointing east.
Heading back to wildflower country now. We navigate the gravel to a dot on the map, a place to rest our heads. A find awaited us. Springs feed multi coloured flower beds. Mingling azure, purple, yellow and white, glistening in the afternoon light. Breasts of the motherland tower above us, buxom mounds of natural beauty soaking up our gaze. A perfect place to recharge.
Last day and night, we head to an old goldmine for a squiz. In red earth central, beds of wildflowers break the harshness of the landscape. Rusted tobacco tins and other leftovers of a once bustling community litter the ground. We lose ourselves in the history of the place and before we know it we are lighting a fire and settling in with the gold digging ghosts of a time gone by.
Heading homeward, i reflect on where the universe has taken us on our journey. The oldest of lands, the youngest of countries, still somehow tied to a pioneering spirit. Still it seems possible there may be something to discover by such intrepid explorers as ourselves, even if all we discover is a deepened sense of awe for our beautiful land.
