Diary

Wednesday, 27th May 2009

The Alice Springs literary festival is a low-key event compared with the teeming, multi-act affairs that are a mandatory feature of the cultural calendar in bigger cities.

Early the next afternoon we reached Point Counts at the far end of a high quartzite ridgeline. Small unidentifiable birds darted between the cliffs and shattered chunks of sedimentary rock covered the ground like broken plates at a Greek booze-up. The path, often barely discernible, demanded constant attention. The ranges extended before us, twin rows of hump-back caterpillars creeping towards the four highest points west of the Great Dividing Range, purplish smudges on the far horizon. Exhausted and exhilarated, we fell upon our picnic lunch and contemplated the vision splendid.

By day three, we were total ratbags. Our American companion had morphed into ‘Dingo Dave’. Ascending a sharp incline, we found Jennifer Byrne rolling on the ground in paroxysms of laughter. Linda Jaivin’s description of the plot twists in her Song dynasty opera scenario grew more baroque with every mile. Raymond, now bereft of any hope that we might be capable of shutting up for even the shortest time, announced that he had decided to let us talk. I pumped him for dirt on Doc Neeson and the Angels. Conversation ranged across topics from Cormac McCarthy to the difference between a cad and a bounder to cheap eats in Istanbul. Only rarely did we encounter other walkers, groups of older folk mostly, with serious expressions and ski-stock walking sticks. They looked mildly scandalised as we trooped past singing selections from The Sound of Music.

Our campfire revels, fuelled by lactic acid and sauvignon blanc, were descending into a vaudeville of literary one-upmanship and oops-a-daisy drinking games. My ‘Clancy of the Overflow’ was gazumped by Dingo Dave’s recitation of ‘Beowulf’ in Old English, which it turn was buried alive by a round-robin tongue-twister initiated by our driver Evan. Again the moon beat down with such intensity that the only way I could get to sleep was to wear my in-flight eye-mask. I dreamed that a dingo with a meal trolley asked me if I wanted the chicken or the fish.

Halfway across Ormiston Pound, a massive enclosure formed by the collision of two ancient mountain ranges, we encountered a string of waterholes, stripped off our boots and soaked our throbbing plates in the icy water. Following the slew of bounders into the gorge, we passed between towering rust-red cliffs, the very bones of the earth.

In four days, we covered about 50km. By the time we finished, my legs felt like they’d been worked over with a length of garden hose. I was out of cigars, slightly dizzy and badly needed a shower. But those sheilas knew for a fact that at least one Australian male could outwalk them and outdrink them. His name is Raymond and he certainly sets a cracking pace for an old roadie.