On the way out of Sydney and through western New South Wales, we passed the environmental devastation caused by the long term impact of deforestation and animal industries such as sheep and cattle grazing. The end result was drought and the breaking of the land itself. The sight of cattle hoof marks embedded in the ground blowing away in the dust was shameful and heartbreaking. Starving red and grey kangaroos waited for death beneath gnarled and dying roadside Mulga and gum trees.
I knew the ten black angus cows that my small company continued to feed throughout the drought at Rylstone in New South Wales, would be some of the few left in the area. This was once river country. Emus were often visible from the roads, if it hadn't rained for a while. Or if it had rained heavily during the winter, they would be wading in the overflow from the tabledrains. But now the dry and dusty roads were littered with hundreds of emu bodies in large and sticky clumps of feathers in piles at intervals. Crows and hawks were everywhere.
I was tired of the negativity and violence portrayed by nightly news and the mass media in general, the fires, helicopters, the falling ash, the sirens, the drought and the water restrictions of Sydney. I drove at a constant speed of around 80-100km an hour for a full four days across several thousand kilometres of Australia, accommodating needs of the dogs the whole way. It wasn't until I was well into the Northern Territory that the sky took on the green hazy afterglow of an abundant wet season and I saw the flat land full and green with water and birdlife.
From Renner Springs to Darwin there were blankets of drizzly grey rain, broken only by large and intermittent thunderstorms and lightning strikes. Unlike the roadtrains and other big trucks, all my driving was done during the day with a few rest stops. The highway signs on the long straight stretches read, 'Stop, Revive, Survive'. Aside from the boredom and cramped conditions for the sleeping dogs there were thankfully no other problems. After driving an EH Holden station wagon for sixteen years, the 4WD with aircon was a luxury and, with the dogs being so frail, we couldn't have made the trip without it.
We arrived in Darwin in late February in 2003, with the idea of setting up a small health and spiritual retreat for writers and artists in the leafy green northern suburb of Leanyer. I had put a small deposit on an elevated house there and had been renting it out in order to pay off the mortgage. It would be risky financially, but I was used to years of living in poverty and on the edge. I always maintained that if I worked hard enough and for long enough, things would naturally fall into place.
This time my aim was to slip into a peaceful and laid-back tropical lifestyle for the remainder of Binda and Kindi's years, as well as offering something to the creative arts community in Australia. I wouldn't have been interested in living in a place like the one in Leanyer, unless I could turn it into something good for others to benefit from. Six months before, while in the outback, I had been told by an "inner voice", you don't have to create heaven on Earth. It's already there. You just have to show them where it is. But as is so often the case, I had ignored that 'inner voice' and gone ahead with the new project anyway.
As for myself and the dogs, we would have been just as happy living in a small room with a yard. We had lived in a variety of accommodations - from granny flats and a caravan, to inner city duplexes, to share houses, through to living out of the EH Holden and sleeping on a piece of tarpaulin on the ground. Once we got to Darwin, I dropped into my friend Tricia's place in Malak Crescent in Malak. Another friend, Maria, came over and we caught up with all the gossip since my last time in town.
