Day dreaming

I'm daydreaming.

Dreaming of a day when unspoken words are spoken, and paths ahead converge and merge without my even noticing clear space ahead.

I was asked the other day if I plan to settle here. My response was that it was not possible. The simple answer: it's not my country.

I have a spot picked out that would be perfect for a little house. Something small, self-sufficient. Solar powered. Open verandah across the spinifex to the distant ranges. No fences.

Today, while going for a walk to a nearby hill, the perfect camping spot arose and enfolded. I could see small family groups sitting around a fire, winnowing and sifting. Or swags and a camp oven, settling in for the night.

Weaving my way around and over silent spinifex, poised to pounce, I noticed tiny tracks. Animals. Feet. Ancient tyre tracks. Not nearly so ancient as all around me.

It's not my country. But I feel it, still.

The exit interview you never had

I have a theory.

Leaving your job can be a pretty hard decision for most remote workers. It's more than just a decision about what job you do. It's also about where you live. Who you spend time with. The daily challenges you enjoy or feel energised by. The new (often strange) experiences you've had.

Everyone knows that life in remote communities is hard, and there is a high turnover of staff. I think since many people could not contemplate making the life decision to move out here and work, it's easy to conjecture that people leave because they don't want to be so isolated anymore.

I could be wrong. But after many years of seeing workers come and go, and leaving once myself, I have often reflected the reason for leaving may be different.

My theory is that people leave more often because of the challenges of working within their particular organisation. It is a reality that very few of the organisations in remote communities, if larger than the community itself, do not really understand or accommodate the needs of remote workers.

Similarly, life in remote communities brings a certain luminous focus to the quality of relationships within the organisation. Having a supportive boss is essential for day to day sanity, as mainstream assumptions and preconceptions clash with daily life. Alternatively, or worse in addition, working with other colleagues in the organisation who do not understand your situation makes life endlessly frustrating.

And sometimes there is just the challenge of dealing with big personalities in a small space. The experience of dealing with challenging people at work cannot be easily absorbed into other quality work relationships. This is because the impact of that one person will be far greater by virtue of  (usually) being the main person you have to deal with in that organisation.

I could be wrong. In fact, I'm fascinated to know if I am indeed wrong. This subject is probably worthy of a PhD, but in lieu of spending a few years tracking down ex-remote workers (let's just say, of the Central Desert region), and writing thousands of words on the topic, I'd be interested in hearing from you here.

So for all the challenges of living remote, working in a confusing, cross-cultural context, with the flies, heat, dust, isolation, poor housing, and limited social life, is there instead another more important factor at play? Having accepted that life would sometimes be challenging, is it the frustrations of working within your organisation what tipped you over the edge in deciding to leave?

Here's the opportunity for the exit interview you probably never had...


(Anonymous comments also welcome from those who would prefer to remain so)

Little miss ...

I miss having a playground that is clean and functional. I miss my gym in Alice Springs. I miss the possibility of going to the movies. I miss going to festivals and events. I miss catching up with good friends for Sunday brunch. I miss the library. I miss catching up with friends in person.

There are a few things I miss. But mostly I can do without, quite happily, with  most of the things I used to do. Going out for coffee, wandering through the shops, seeing too many movies.

What I like about my current life is that it's pared back to essentials. A simple life is really the life I choose. When I'm too close to the centre of town, or right in the heart of the city, invisible tentacles of consumerism slowly creep and enclose. 

I think I have learned that I need to live just a little out of town, to make all the things that I do miss possible. The trick is leaving far enough away to avoid falling into the excesses of our culture. A little house, a little way away, with enough open space and nice flat bitumen road to town.

I'm not quite there yet, for I don't miss all those things enough at this point. But the day is approaching, and no doubt will be here quicker than I expect.

Through the window

After five years on (or near) the Lands, I'm getting to the point where I want to start to write something about my time out here. Observations, musings, reflections.

Lands equivalent of a crystal ball

I am struggling with a concern about my legitimacy to put pen to paper (so to speak). I can name five people in a heartbeat who are infinitely more qualified than I, in terms of time on the Lands and engagement with people, to comment publicly.

I've also always been wary of advancing my thoughts, in a way that may benefit me, off the back of  experiences with one of the most disadvantaged groups in Australia. There is an element there that seems, plainly speaking, wrong.

For all these misgivings, however, I also think that I've perhaps had a better opportunity to stand at the window I've been gazing through and observe what goes past. Events and experiences accumulate, repeat, grow in depth.

Most people stand at the window a short time, get confused, frustrated, or tired out, and leave. I've pulled up a chair and sat back for a little longer. I've moved the chair around a little to get some new perspectives. I've observed the same things happening time and again.

Now the time has come to process these thoughts, churn, contemplate, regurgitate. Here's hoping it's a worthwhile wait.

p.s. Yes, we did get back to the Lands at last, yesterday. Courtesy of a serendipitous charter from the Department of Education, leaving Kalgoorlie empty to pick up school teachers for the holidays. We managed to hitch a lift, and flew home in style on a twin jet.

Home sweet home

I am preoccupied with the idea of home. Getting home. Going home. Home.

At present, we are somewhat stuck approximately 900k from home (being Warburton, add another 200k if you imagine Blackstone). The tyranny of distance rears its ugly head in response to a simple weather event (rain).

A large hole in one part of the road from Laverton to Tjukayirla has had that section of the road closed for weeks. The only other option to get in to the Lands from the west has been the mail plane. Currently booked out 3 weeks in advance. Waitlisting chances are probably good, provided we're prepared to pack up at 6.15am two mornings a week and take our chances. Separately (three seats on one plane being impossible).

For all that, it is more than the mere act of getting home that is preoccupying me. Sure, I miss it. I want to be out of hotel rooms. I've had enough of my morning coffees, and eaten out in restaurants all that my body can take (too much). I'm tired of the convenience, the parking hassles, the frenetic pace of city life.

I'm preoccupied by the idea of home. The allure of an oasis in the desert is paling. It's certainly a complete package that I enjoy. It's challenging, interesting, exciting, relaxed, remote. But fundamentally not home.

The closer we get to the point where Eleanor needs to go to preschool, or primary school (if I delay just a little), the more the question draws closer. Where is home?

Are we nearly there yet?

Wide open spaces

Whenever I return to the Lands from holidays or work trips, I rarely enjoy a trouble-free trip. It's not the long hours in the car. I have always liked the timeless quality of passenger travel, moving steadily from one world to another, briefly without obligation or commitment beyond the hours of the journey itself. I let myself loose on an orgy of daydreaming, allowing extended role plays that are impossible on short trips or in snatched moments throughout the day. Although, I must admit that with Eleanor in the car, my opportunities for daytime reverie are now regularly interrupted by demands to send over snacks, pick up her water bottle or sing repeats of her favourite Playschool tunes. Nevertheless, hours spent driving are not a problem for me. Coupled with dramatic scenery that fills my daydreams with imagined lives of people only recently gone and rock formations that beg for their story to be told, I should be floating back home when I return.

This is not the case. My dreams are typically interspersed with lingering concerns about choices. Choices I've made that have set my life on certain directions. I linger over which choices, which directions, were pivotal or consequential. Choices about when to leave and how long to stay. A deep and undeniable yearning for a green base - as if all my Anglo-Saxon heritage compels me to own a little piece of earth. A yen in direct contradiction to my current life choices. Life in an arid zone Aboriginal-owned far flung place that I could never call my own.

While I am deeply drawn to the landscape here, I am also daily conscious of the transitory nature of my time here. Few people stay for long, and I know of only one non-Aboriginal person who ever retired here. A unique constellation of circumstances meant he had a little corner of the Warakurna roadhouse to call his own, complete with its own postbox (a salutary tip of the hat to retired life off the Lands, there being no postal service that calls for a box by the door). As we came through Warakurna today, I see that even his postbox has gone, six months after he lost his battle with cancer. I felt sad to see the shallow quality of corporate memory (meaning the memory of staff who are in charge of things like removing or keeping odd things like a postbox outside a hotel room). His small but solid footprint on the Lands wiped away, as if he never existed. Except in the memory of the locals and a few old-timers, which I seem to have become.

I wonder also if the turmoil in my thoughts as I drive back 'home' (can you call it home if it really isn't, if it is always a staff house?) is related to the constant challenge of the daily life I am heading back into. The more I know the less I know what to do. I recall clearly the day I set off to live in the Lands for the first time. My car loaded to the gunnels, a bike strapped to the front bullbar with nowhere else to hide, and a heart filled with adventurous confidence. I felt blessed to be travelling in convoy with two women who know the Lands well, having come out to be linguists in the Warburton mission in the late 60s. Blessed indeed, as they asked me to join hands with them in prayer to start the journey. While not a believer, it seemed to herald the new world I was going into, requiring extra assistance to secure our safety and guide our way.

Eleanor returning home to Blackstone

As chance would have it, the car I drove had no CD player, and being in a radio-free zone, I purchased the first faintly interesting cassette tape I could at the Erldunda Roadhouse, two hours south of Alice Springs. Wide open spaces, by the Dixie Chicks. Not only did this start a love affair with the Dixie Chicks, in some ways this song remains the anthem for my life on the Lands. And while I'm not the wide-eyed girl of the song, I am the wide-eyed woman for whom the lyrics resonate in different ways. Struggling as I do with the substance of my life choices and the possibilities of all that could have been and is yet to come.

Who doesn't know what I'm talking about
Who's never left home, who's never struck out
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone

Many precede and many will follow
A young girl's dream no longer hollow
It takes the shape of a place out west
But what it holds for her, she hasn't yet guessed