10. From Fitzroy to Fitzroy Crossing

Late January 2021

Alone, I dance, hips swaying, arms reaching.
How I dream of my homespace, my family space, my Sarah space. With my stories, my photos, the natural.
I’m ready to be busy for a decade, at least. Busy working on something I feel passionately about.
Healing this relationship with food.
Mending my relationship with money.
It is me, I, who has the power to be that change.
To earn what I need for the life I believe. Enough money not to waste but to create.
I will better this world.
Live my truth.

I apply for jobs. Because I need money for my homespace.
But I wonder.
Is this my truth? 

This perfect summer day. 29 degrees. Mildura.
I grow angry, frustrated, undermined. I’m bored, ravenous.
I prepare, another journey to the open road.
Sarah + Alison + Marianne.
First, I wait, hesitantly consider a date.
I should go, shouldn’t I? Why wouldn’t I go?
I must practice being kind.
I must be Sarah, savouring the moment, the senses it can simultaneously ignite.

I wake longing for more.
There had been the river stars, a near-full moon. Not caring for his tattoos, not caring for his piercings, that piercing, I lay on my back and watched the river stars and the near-full moon.
In that moment, I knew he—the eccentric Italian—wasn’t my forever.
His tongue was sharp and tasted like soap. 

I make Figjam and get itchy hands.
Memories play.

I relish in the green Murray water, floating and kicking, floating and kicking, feet bare and hair sandy.
Naked, he edges in.
I can’t remember wrapping myself around him. I can’t remember wanting to wrap myself around him.
We’re on the towel with grapes and beer. Our bodies touch.
From the stars to the sun. I look to the sky, eyes squinted, bodies burning, the rhythm of nature.

We drive; 4WD fast. The water behind us. Mallee scrub floating out, detail of the paint show in the sky growing in hues of oranges and red wine grapes.
We’re up there above nature, our bush home, and we keep kissing.
We’ve gone from the stars to the sun to sunset.

The summer wind blows in an odd sensation.
Anxiety claws at me.
Standing in Mildura’s Farmer’s Market, I’m lost.
Truly, I hate this.
Because he will take my shyness as arrogance.
Because he asks me no questions.
Because he could have slept beside me; that first night in Marianne.
Because he could come back.
But he didn’t come back.

When will I leave.

It’s a warm week this week. I drive down the dirt road, Alison’s steering wobbling.
I find a spot next to the river and reverse.
Why am I doing this?

I don’t know how to connect the solar to use that electricity instead of the battery.
I want to get drunk or eat lots.

What am I doing with my life?
I should get a normal job and make enough money to have a new car that doesn’t make me nervous and cost me so much maintenance.
I feel sad, without excitement, because I see no future.
It’s an in-between sensation of yearning for people around me to feed my loneliness, and the solitude needed to write.
I’ll turn off my phone and sort this out.

The wind blows away the stars, high swept clouds sending shudders through my home.
I close the canvas behind me.
I’m so thirsty.
I check my iPad for the time.

I wake to first light, body warm and fuzzy.
Across the foot of my bed colours reflect on the river.
I take a strange solace in hearing the buzz of the highway on the other side.
I briefly turn my phone on to delete Instagram.

I want to be busy so that I don’t have my first scotch at midday.
I want to take my passion and take my fire and lead the way.
I want to show how it’s done.
My truth: a world of meaningful priorities.
Then imagine, to share these experiences.
To inspire.

If the eccentric Italian can be a painter, I can do this too.

There are my normal quests: lose weight, be successful, etc.
And there is a continued yearning to disconnect. To disconnect to feel more connected.

So, I will read instead of scroll. Strum instead of browse. I will wake and watch the horizon instead of my phone, diving into the concept of time, listening to what the world is telling me.
Because reading the news, watching the repetition, it brings only anger.

I run along the riverbank, the smell of wine and sweat.
One roll of film, two rolls of film, three.
The water was a mirror, the sky was pink, orange, yellow, speckled with cloud.
We have gone so far in one direction that we are lost. How can we return?
To live to our needs, to fight against greed, I will go. To Western Australia.
Not to ignore the turmoil of the world, but to discover the love.

The bed is small, no longer than my body, but the hot nights leave the canvas open and the netting exposing me to country sky, the edge of the earth burning bright orange before sunrise.
It’s still a man’s world man. And in this man’s world we hide emotions, avoid difficult questions, value the physical.

Some things you can’t unthink.

Afternoons sting hard, still. This one brought news of Alison not being well enough to tow Marianne, and of movements once again restricted (although I’m not saddened by this news).

A dragon fly crawls across my page and up my arm.
The dragonfly, it gets comfortable, it bounces, it dies on my candle.

It’s a hot and overcast morning of Sunday the 21st of February 2021. Sleep was intermittent; bitten by bed bugs, sore stomach from period and three Connoisseur ice-creams, a sudden storm, tossing and turning. I feel low.

Secured an escape to isolation: Broome (jewellery has always been the third link in my triangle).
A life of routine and insignificance.
A journey of intuition.

I had woken not long after five, my mind trying to figure through dates. The morning stars are behind me and the nostalgia of desert mornings hits as I live them—days like they’re already a memory.

As I set out, into the sunset, a year hangs behind. One of dust, memories and growth.

15th March 2021

It’s the end of a long puddle—500 metres, maybe—and it was in the very last second that I was blinded. Now I’m breathing deeply, standing in the pouring rain. Unsure what will happen to my car partially submerged in the water, I take out my valuables. I look down the long puddle, I look up the road towards Broome, where headlights appear through white sheets of rain. There’s an older white man in the passenger seat and a young boy with midnight skin, maybe late teens, driving. The older white man 4WD’s Alison out of the water held in the shoulder of the road, black smoke billowing from her exhaust. She is driven around, checked over by the young boy and another white man who stopped to help. The young boy is the one to notice the black gunk leaking oil. The men decide it’s best to return to Fitzroy Crossing, 100 kilometres back in the direction I had come. Night is nearing, and I’m badly shaken, afraid to drive through more water after that morning, that day, going against the weather.

The week before

The sound of Finn’s crystals is the sound of beyond. The sound healing fills me with comfort, it reminds me, assures me, to my purpose and my understanding. There is so much more. And deep down, I don’t hate myself. Deep down I know; I can be free, be beautiful, be authentic, find my tribe, family, space for creation, connection with nature.

Days later I am still emotional to that sensation, where, if I concentrate inward, I partially return.
Just how much is possible beyond what we can fathom?

I pull into the back carpark at Coles, Alice Springs. An lady appears at my wound down window and we talk straight into each other’s faces. She’s missing her middle bottom teeth. ‘Hey sister, hey sister, I need your help.’ She’s holding cash in her hand. ‘Because they don’t let aboriginals buy it, they don’t let us.’
     I’m reminded of India, the way people on the street seem to befriend you, but with one main cause: themselves. ‘I’m so sorry, but I can’t,’ I repeat. ‘I’m so sorry…I know it’s messed up…but I don’t drink,’ I lie. ‘I can’t…’ Guilt is temporary.

Standing in Alice’s Secret carpark talking to Lauren, who had the DMT in the days before me, it seems we had gone to similar places, but with entirely different reactions. She had restrained, fought against it, felt blinded, remained on this Earth enough to talk and to plead and to know that what she was experiencing was temporary. Where she was fearful, I was welcoming.

Saturday morning, I begin the journey. North, I drive through the rains and the high wind. On the other side of the storms, I hit the sunshine and see a broken down car with people under the bonnet. Ten kilometres down the road I go to the toilet and turn back. I pull up behind the broken down car, get out and ask if they’re okay. ‘We all good,’ they say. ‘Ah you got scissors though? And maybeh some water for the children.’ Next, I give them a flask for the oil and ideas on what to use to replace the missing oil lid. I loiter and wait on hand for parts. The son and the Dad call me Miss, tell me they’re desert people. The desert people are well-spoken and perform bush mechanics with the top of my flask and some gorilla tape. The Mum, the daughter and the baby barrack for Collingwood. Me too, I tell them. The drunk Aunt appears from her nap in the back of the car. Unsteady on her feet, she talks near my face, asking where I’m going, telling me her name is Marianne. Quickly, Marianne decides to come to Broome with me, wandering off to clear stuff from my front seat to make room for herself. When I go to the driver’s side of my car, Marianne is collecting all my spare change.
I feel the tug on my car as I slowly accelerate. I’m nervous, having never towed anyone before, trying to be strong with the dad and son’s reassurance that You’ll be right Miss. Marianne is still determined to come to Broome with me. She touches her ring finger and shakes her hands. It takes me time to decode her English—she’s a single woman, and this is the way she likes it these days. Marianne, she don’t need no man. ‘Fuck me family,’ she says, ‘I’m single woman, I come to Broome.’ She pulls the AUX cord from my phone and attaches her phone. We go through old tunes of the 90s. When Killing me Softly comes on, we go through the whole rendition from start to end, together, beautifully, enthusiastically.
It's nearly an hour that I tow the broken down family the 35 kilometres, unsure on what speed to take. When we pull into Barrow Creek, the family disperse. Marianne takes one more swipe for my change. ‘Okay okay okay, let’s meet halfway on this,’ I propose, ‘I have change, so I will share it, but you say please because in my culture that’s what we do…for whatever reason.’
‘Pleassssse sister,’ she says, unsteady on her feet, eyes droopy, smiling through missing teeth. With all my silver, in hand, she rubs her belly and tells me she’s hungry, before forgetting her last request and going to join “family” in the pub.
I give the dad and son my bottle of water, muesli bars and my last bananas. When I ask if they will call the mechanic who they bought the old Prado off only days before, they laugh at me. ‘Nah miss, we fix it blackfella way,’ the dad says as he impersonates taking the tyre with a plant growing in the middle of it from the dirt next to us and putting it on the car.
‘Of course,’ I laugh.
He shakes my hand and thanks me.

Driving through more storms, driving through heavy rains, across the plains, flashes getting closer, I sit well below the 130 speed. Alison runs hot.
I kill three birds – including a kite – and hold my heart, wondering the significance. Like what the son told me yesterday when I was taking my tow rope from the car, ‘Take it slow.’

Sunburn, break out, processed foods. New moon transformations.

Alone at a rest stop 12 kilometres north of Elliot, Alison’s engine is boiling. Am I afraid? Nah, not really. The lightening is comforting as I breath my connection to land that came from face planting into the middle of Australia. Although, already, I know, I’ll definitely forget this. This all-encompassing understanding of the meaningless game of the 21st century.

Early morning tropical roads, light vivid from the rain. Driving onward with determination. The roads are empty, edged by tall grasses, storms in all corners of the sky. I turn down Enya to listen to insects in Kimberley wet season chorus.

Saddle Creek rest area near the Western Australia border. I lay on a tree branch, listening to the mosquito close to my ear. The noise of the mosquito is like the noise of the ringing that overtook me with the DMT. This noise inspires me to shift my breath, to shift my reality.

The lightning makes the dark night of Saddle Creek rest area like day. It’s pouring rain and has been for hours. I move my car under a structure, forgetting my shoes in the rain. The other boy who camped out in the rest area left just after midnight, leaving me alone in the storms, curled up on my back seat. There’s more lightning, more thunder. I’m in the tropics, 70 kilometres from the Northern Territory and Western Australia border.

I leave in the dark. Slowing through puddles, I don’t get far. At a puddle in which I see no end, I get out of the car, unsure what to do. My lip is bleeding. I trudge into the water to see the depth, still I see no end, have no idea. Back next to Alison, I take deep breaths, prepare myself to drive through, telling myself as I can do this. As I get into Alison and go to do up my seatbelt, a truck pulls up, its headlights bright through the rain.
Shane takes off his boots and walks into the puddle. Nah, we gotta wait for it to go down more, he tells me. We chat as day breaks with a sepia tone. The rain has stopped but the bursting river keeps flowing.
        Having never driven through a river like this, Shane instructs me to stay directly behind the water being pushed out by his truck. Shane instructs me to stay in low gear, to not change gear. My leg is shaking, Alison feels weak with the push of the water.
        20 minutes down the road I pull up behind Shane’s truck stopped before another overflowing river. There are caravans and cars and 4WDs on the other side. As the water recedes, a farmer comes with a tractor to remove the tree branches from the road. I follow Shane through and carry on with my determination to make it to Broome that night.

It’s after 5pm, night is approaching, I race against time. I hit the water at 40, drop to 30, but the water didn’t stop. I grip Alison’s wheel – her wheel bearings having always been questionable. The windscreen is white, I can’t see. Bang. The windscreen is clear, I’m in a body of water on the shoulder of the road. I climb to the passenger’s side, open the door, the water stops just below the door. I step into the water and onto the road, where the 500 metre puddle has ended. What I thought was driving with caution, with the belief nothing could stop me, stopped me.
        And just like that, with a gentle push, the course of my life changed directions.
        I start taking out my treasured belongings: computer, cameras, clothes. I breath so heavily, like the breathing from when I returned from the DMT experience. That morning, I’d navigated bursting rivers. That afternoon, I’d seen a school bus pulled over attending to a rolled car – passing the ambulance with wailing sirens 40 kilometres later. And then, I didn’t take it slow enough. I didn’t listen. I had driven with a high beat, making my life like a music clip.
The ute stops. The older man white man, Geoff, in the passenger seat, and his Indigenous son driving. Geoff is instantly familiar to me. Like we were always meant to be, like all of this was predetermined.
        Geoff steps through the water and gets into Alison. He revs hard, edging up the road’s shoulder, the black smoke billowing. I watch in astonishment as she comes back onto the road without even a scratch. ‘You drove it well, didn’t even stall it,’ Geoff says to me, although it offers little solace seeing I drove her off the road, nonetheless. They check the engine, and Geoff’s son notices the black gunk. I’m still breathing like the DMT, I’m still shaking. Men discuss my options, decide it’s best to head back to Fitzroy Crossing given the weather, the time, and the black gunk.
        Geoff drives my car and I drive with the son. Asking him questions, I hear slow responses, his voice slurred with polite and abrupt answers. He has a gardening business in Fitzroy Crossing. When Geoff’s phone vibrates in the middle console, the son is angry that his Dad left his phone in the car. The son wants to catch up to the Dad. I am in awe to how well the son drives through the dark and pouring rain, puddles on the road growing.
        Ahead in the pitch black, Geoff has pulled Alison over to the side. She’s making funny noises and he tells me he thinks he should tow me the rest of the way into Fitzroy Crossing Lodge, which is the only place answering their phone. Another ute pulls up, two Indigenous men check in. Geoff knows them, thanks them, tells them we’re fine. Geoff instructs me to steer and lightly touch the brake. It’s raining harder, Geoff and the son secure my tow rope. I press my phone, there’s a message from P: where are you?
        Being towed in the dark, through the pouring rain, I quash my nerves with a fierce concentration. Over Fitzroy Crossing’s single lane bridge, the tow rope comes slack. The son jumps out into the wet to fix it, running the rest of the way into Fitzroy Crossing Lodge, where we come to rest amongst a great puddle in the car park. At least the rain will lessen the likelihood of being robbed tonight, I’m told.
        I’m so wet, so cold. Geoff changes into a singlet of his son’s, which is far too small. Geoff tells me that I did well, that he could barely feel me behind him. But again, it’s little constellation as Alison sits beside me in another puddle of water.
        We walk barefoot through the carpark-lake and into the reception of a place I would never consider staying, given my notorious lack of money. When the receptionist asks how I am, I nearly cry.
        In my $265 a night room, I have a hot shower, still shaking. It feels absurd to think how throughout the fourteen hour day I had also been in tears, having verbal conversations with Alison, telling her how much I appreciated her. Now my tears are to Geoff and the son’s kindness.

Am I stupid or courageous?

True presence arrives and I must let it flow, fix my car, secure my escape to Broome. Slowly I drive to the only registered mechanic around, painfully listening to Alison’s death rattle.
        I walk back through town, past the IGA and petrol station I had stopped at the day before, at the time noting the food, the prices, the dirt on the floor and the bars at the window. Shane had warned me of Fitzroy Crossing, to keep driving through. Now, here I am at Mother Nature’s direction. I watch people sit around without time.

It’s the afternoon, the bar of Fitzroy Crossing Lodge. Waiting on my transfer to the cheaper $200 a night room, I order lunchtime chips and wine. I watch every Indigenous entering the bar being breath tested when coming in, and writing their name on a sheet. I watch I a super sized white man with a belly that nearly hangs to the ground sit alone. He drinks about 15 beers. Whereas the locals, they sit together. Just like I had noticed that they’re always together in cars, utilising all the spaces, it heightens my thirst for family.
        I order another wine, the bartender using the rest of the bottle to fill it up—he’s heard about my car—and I take my computer to a power point, continuing with editing my story. At the tables next to me, I get talking to locals. The man who is eating a steak is missing half an ear.
I hear of the different mobs they’re from, the different tongues spoken, their unified connection to country and how they have no need to remove themselves from this connection. ‘I don’t have this,’ I tell them. I feel no emotional or spiritual connection to my birthplace. And maybe that’s why I move so often and eagerly.
        The man who is missing half an ear tells that he resonates more with his mother’s side, The Great Sandy Desert People, who were the last in Australia to enter into this modern world. Here, at Fitzroy Crossing, six mobs were thrown together, and they were made to work for tea, sugar and flour. They weren’t paid money, and money didn’t mean much to them. In the desert they had eaten goanna, snake, cat and lizard. He tells of billabongs, of albino crocodiles, of bull sharks and sting rays in the river. Another man with a ponytail comes, he’s Kimberley mob, north of here. Many sacred places, he tells me with waving arms. Beyond this, I understand little, with English his fifth language. The man who is missing half an eat translates of the hot springs, and of the black magic, with the country telling the man to not bring tourists here. He continues to translate from the man with the ponytail that there is one particular mob who kill people. That there’s witchcraft, there’re killings, there’re spirits, there’re curses.
Later, the man who is missing half an ear mentions humbugging. He tells of the inconvenience, the annoyance, the acceptance that sharing is part of their culture. He also tells of the death, of all the premature death.

I wake early, it’s 4:44 when I check my phone. The eccentric Italian sends me another message. I click through Google to WA roads. Fitzroy Crossing to Derby Highway is closed with flooding. I click into the weather; heavy falls are here until the end of the week. There is no end. I think of becoming a bushranger. But if I did, would I have the intuition to feel what the land tells me? I can’t decide.
I chuck on whatever, tie my hair in a scarf, search for the back of my pearl earrings. Outside I walk along the bright road edged by the bright and tropical green, coming to stop at Fitzroy River. It’s higher than yesterday. The water is gurgling, raging, swelling.

I drag my feet back along the street, sad music through my earphones, passing 4WDs lifting their finger from steering wheels in waving. My car’s officially brain dead, in need of a new engine. If my insurance will allow, I want to bring a beating heart back to her, I told the mechanic. She’s a great old 4WD. But he’d been adamant that insurance are likely to write it off.
        At the bridge, the river is pumping, still rising and the ethereal song of the soaring, whistling kites is fast becoming comforting. I’m alone, mourning the lost of my best friend Alison. The money, the situation, the everything, whatever, it’s Alison I’m most upset for. I guess that’s why they say not to name things.

Wake at 4am, get my period, mouth sore, note down story ideas. Feeling fine while acknowledging there is much work to be done—emotionally, spiritually. With roads still closed, it’s much easier if I lose the attachment to money. Like my Victoria lockdown, this is valuable time here. Today will be dedicated to taking my time. Not rushing through the small things that leave my mouth and body hurting.
I wash my shirt in the sink—feeling good with making do with only few clothes. With time to ponder, I further ponder the concept of time. Do we really need to be working five days a week? So exhausted that we need that money to survive these hours. Who decided these hours, and why do we continue to adhere to them? It certainly wasn’t a woman.
This time marks the beginning of something else.

I walk the street bursting with bright green. Dark grey clouds continue to hang in the horizon of a deep sky. Men gather by the river, which is edging higher still, with torrents whirling and dead trees racing downstream. I focus my breath, come to the moment of kangaroos thumping the ground like coconuts, that call of the kites. Walking this isolated street of Fitzroy Crossing, my phone rings: there is no engine in the country to bring Alison back to life.

Sometimes it feels like the Universe is working only for you.

People’s reactions of my current story: OMG, that’s terrible, etc. Sure, this wasn’t my plan, but as far as an accident goes, this wasn’t so bad. I can get myself out of here by holding on to perspective, by learning from my surroundings, by continuing to swim in the lost concept of time, understanding that I will get to Broome whenever I’m meant to.

One of the beautiful French housekeepers asks; are you an artist?   
Another housekeeper stops me and says she sees me walking the road into town. ‘You don’t get hassled?’ she asks, obviously concerned and frightened by the idea.
        ‘No I don’t.’ It’s a 15 minute walk in which I walk in confidence and with no interest on interfering on all those also going about their day. Like those around me, I’m human.

Notes from my cousin’s tarot reading:

I have been out of sorts; I have lost touch of my true nature by living by the rhythm of others. I must make sure nothing is cluttering me emotionally or physically. I need touch, connection, creativity, collaboration. To nurture, be gentle, be kind, be real. To meditate, embrace, explore.
        This is a powerful time for magic, healing and inner work—create routine and rituals, make time for what I want. Focus on goals and dreams. Find my soul tribe. Express not repress.
The journey ends with Queen of Water, reiterating that emotions will be pivotal in my journey and that I must use my intuition to be as vulnerable and flowing as water. (I wonder if it’s referring to the literal water that led be here.)

That night, I think: I’m an explorer, and I’m an arranger. Of words, of photos, of spaces, of thoughts. I wonder: what do I want to achieve?
-       Beautiful space
-       Community
-       Publishing my book
-       Establishing routine
-       Forming wholesome relationship/s
-       Creating photography series

Greg—the man I’d met my second morning at the reception of the lodge while he was distressed and annoyed by the closure of roads, and who I had help him to see the light, mentioning that the situation was beyond his control, that such chapters are part of the adventure—knocks on my door. He tells me that he’s checking on me. He tells me that his head is like spaghetti. He reckons it’ll still be another week, while I had been hoping it would be Tuesday, which would make it eight nights spent here.

In one week in Fitzroy Crossing, eating all the supermarket-bought packaged crap, I produce more rubbish than I would over weeks elsewhere.

A grand old house screaming my name appears on Broome Rentals FB page. Although I’ve already been offered a room elsewhere, I reply to the ad anyway. Daydreams begin instantly—I try hard to not get too carried away.

Greg has already offered me a lift to Broome, Barry offers to help carry the rest of the stuff from my dead car, Todd the truckie has offered to take Greg’s van on his float when the roads will first open to high clearance vehicles only. That’s been the thing about this time, this Kimberley Rites of passage—as the guy who I spoke to on the phone about the grand old house called it—the mateship.