Portrait 365 : 263 – 270 The Northern Territory Edition part 2

My mum told me how much she missed me while I was away because I didn’t even blog….. but I did, I said.

I wrote a couple.

I wrote one about the flies and the ugly hat when I first arrived, and another about the concept of a roaming heart and how travel instils a love of adventure in our children (which also has a comp to enter for a trip for two to Morocco, Mexico or Italy.)

It was then that I realised that my email list hadn’t been switched over to the new blog so if you missed out on those you also missed out on my Portrait 365 hitting the desert. Here’s the link to Part 1 of the Northern Territory Portraits.

I loved doing this out there. The light, the back drops. The people.

The people.

The desert does interesting things to a person.

Maybe it’s the wide open spaces or just more time to think, but the desert is as all pervasive as the red dirt. It creeps into all the nooks and crannies.

 

“I came here to Kings Canyon 34 years ago. I’ve been really reflecting on that. I came here then on a holiday with my wife, and now I’m here on a holiday with my grown son.”

“We left Coffs Harbour about four years ago and I was mainly booking festivals then filling in the gaps and traveling around to gigs. We started booking longer gigs and staying in places for a few months. I’d go for a one night gig and they’d ask me to stay. We love the longer gigs because my wife, Shelly, can get a job and have her own identity too.”

 

“I live about 1.5hrs from here in the bush. I come to the station here as often as I can to work with the horses. I’ve worked with horses for as long as I can remember because my Dad was a stockman. I used to watch him and work with him. Now my family come and watch me.”

“Out here I’ve been wondering what I’m going to do with myself. I’m a costume designer but I want to do something more meaningful. I have to leave Australia in December anyway so it’s a bit of a big question – what do I want to do from here?”

“I started riding my bike from the Gold Coast, then I rode to Sydney. I flew over to New Zealand and cycled around there for two months, and then came back before riding to Melbourne, over to Adelaide, up to Alice Springs and now through the desert before riding over to Perth. It will probably be around one year all up. The hardest part of the journey, physically, is the desert… The sand, the dust, the heat. The hardest part emotionally is the desert. It just never ends.”

I saw that smile ride into camp and he did a lazy lap. I thought who is this crazy person on a bike in this heat….. little did I realise that he’s traveling the entire country by bicycle. I had to give this guy a hug. You can check out his progress here, however it is in Korean.

“We mounties are more than just a presence in Alice. We move people along, and we see over fences. There are five working horses here but we all have our favourites. There are no real issues with being a police officer here, look who I get to work with.”

What a great adventure, hey, D Man.

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