The window is Bethany Morrow’s companion on the long trek to the centre of Australia
Spinifex covers 22 per cent of Australia. From the bus window, it rushes past and blurs together like golden grass. Then there’s the dirt. So vast. So red. So ugly.
My first impression of Central Australia wasn’t one of delight. Though I knew myself well enough to be aware I’d be shaking red dirt out of my socks two weeks later and wishing to be back.
The bus was small, our group wasn’t. Travelling with 30 choir girls sounds like a chore but is less so when they’re your friends. Sing-alongs, endless chatter and prolonged toilet stops are all part of tour life. Plans of documenting the trip or reading the novel I’d lugged all this way were substituted with my face pressed up against the window. Watching the endless red. The land stretching on. Stagnant sky.
The bus chattered and buzzed around me. I felt lonely. I don’t think I’d ever been so far away from a shopping centre.
I hadn’t read any [books on the trip]. I’d watched the story outside. It felt like a novel you’re not sure you’re enjoying or even understanding but are compelled to finish.Bethany Morrow“Hold me down, dundunnananah”
The tour guide blasted a mixtape just as I was drifting to sleep. To keep her awake she said. Should this have worried me?
“Hold me down, dundunnananah”
I’d heard that song at least three times before King’s Canyon.
The McDonald Ranges looked familiar as we cut through the desert. I hadn’t seen them before but Albert Namatjira had. His paintings of the ghost gums came alive outside my window. There was a huge sign that announced his memorial coming up. It turned out to be more elaborate than the actual monument.
I lost my phone on the second day of our tour. Fatigue and stupidity let me drop it somewhere between Kata Tjuta and Uluru. The window was my constant companion.
It was a larger window now, we’d all piled into a bigger bus. It had TV. The tour guide tried to make us watch documentaries. Instead there was a vote and all three High School Musical and both Sister Act films entertained us on the trip from Alice to Darwin. My friend tried to sleep next to me in annoyance, her pillow obscuring her face. Another girl rushed to finish an assignment, not feeling quite as joyful (joyful) as the rest of us.
It wasn’t just Troy and Gabriella’s lives that transformed in front of us, the landscape grew and changed as well. Fading red to yellow, yellow to green and finally from green to blue as we pulled into Darwin. We stopped at several little towns along the way. Whizzed by others. The bus slowed just enough to see faces that watched us go by. There are a thousand stories of heartbreak from this land. Stories we often don’t listen to. I glanced, I felt something, then the bus rolled on and it was gone. We stopped at the towns we could take things from. Fuel, food and amenities.
Arriving in Darwin felt the most like coming home. Freeways and cars and concrete. Reception for those who hadn’t lost their phones. My friend beside me was finishing off Go Set a Watchman. The third book she’d read on this trip. I hadn’t read any. Instead, I’d watched the story outside. It felt like a novel you’re not sure you’re enjoying or even understanding but are compelled to finish.
The last bus took us from Sydney Airport back home. I slept mostly. We all slept. Breathless from two weeks of singing and travelling. I didn’t look out the window then, I’d been on this freeway countless times. Across the Hawkesbury River, over the long bridge that I always think is going to collapse. This I just know from memory. Implanted from drives to Grandma’s as a child.
I don’t look out.
Photograph
portengaround, Flickr
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