Out Back

In some ways, the continent/country of Australia appears from space to be a heart.  Or, as I peruse the globes and world maps that frequent many Australian schools and homes, that's what it looks like to me.  The arteries are the major water sources - the great rivers - of the continent, which crisscross the borders of states, joining and disconnecting on their meandering to the sea.  But if you were to take a closer inspection of this cardiac continent, you would probably notice that almost all of it has a bad case of angina. Roughly seventy percent of the continent is arid or semi-arid desert which means that the Outback, anything further in than five hours from the coast, is basically on life support.

In much of western and central Queensland, rain has visited about as often as Martians. Of the great deserts of the world, central Australia is not as well known as the Sahara or the Gobi (or even Antarctica - the driest place on earth - for that fact), but it is in the red center of this country that we find such an incredible life force.  There is an indelible resistance to fatalism, that no matter what people do, they will conquer.  The people who live in these places, in the middle of the wilderness, are some of the toughest and most amazing people I have ever encountered.  As I gazed at their weather beaten faces, their eyes permanently squinting from the ceaseless sun that pounds down from the bright blue skies and reflects from the red sands underneath, I see a fixed determination that the lack of water will not dampen their joie de vivre.

It took us a while to get to them, though. 

We began driving on the last of the school holidays day.  The girls curled up in the back seat huddled underneath the keyboard that poked over between the two back headrests; they began reading book after book and every once in a while I'd glance over my shoulder to see if they were still breathing.  I sat in the front passenger seat digesting the baseball game on my phone that was about to become inconsequential in vast stretches of our drive.  Bars of activity would be sources of amusement and for some reason, as the game dragged into the later innings I believed that if I could just hold my phone closer to the roof of the car, I would somehow get better reception.  Kind of like how we used to think that if we put enough tinfoil on the rabbit ears of our televisions, we would somehow get better black and white screen results.

That's the wilderness for you: a place away from home that does not offer the creature comforts that one is used to.  The wilderness is a constant source of frustration, of heat, of comparison, of complaint.  It didn't take me long after we left the friendly city limits of Toowoomba when I thought, "Are we there yet?" 

But Charleville is a long way past Toowoomba.  The sign read Charleville, 551 kilometres.  That's how they spell it here - kilometres, centre, metre, -  it took me a while to get used to and I always pronounce it wrong just to annoy Christine.   It's a long way and not far past Toowoomba did I start to see a difference in the landscape.  I don't know if it's just me, but when the green stops, a sense of hopelessness starts to set in, like a one page newspaper blanket on a homeless cold night.  As I peered around at that which assailed my senses, I hoped beyond hope that our tyres were going to hold up.  (that's how Australians spell radial tires. - I did it again.  I'm annoying Christine.)

The names of the places are as strange as they landscape.  Dalby, Chinchilla, Morven...  We passed creeks like the Wullambilla and the Bungeworgarai (I know you all tried to pronounce them, but don't.  It's like beginning to gag.)  The scenery passed from heartland scrub to sparse vegetation.  The trees and the grass were as hardy as the people and each inch of it seemed to be sharp.  I don't know how to put it other than that - just sharpness.  The grass had evil points - spinifex, it is called.  Only kangaroos eat it when they have to.  The trees are so dense and distrustful of the environment, that they shoot up quickly and thinly, like spikes to heaven, miraculously green in the midst of the dying desert around them.

There is a desperate sense of hopefulness in this dire desert, that somewhere, somehow, somewhen, the rain will come.  The clouds will overshadow the iridescent blue blotting out the scorching sun and drench the red dirt with rain and it will bleed.

The desert will bleed and it's heart will start again.

I can't even begin to imagine the Israelites wandering through the wilderness journeying to a place that they'd only dreamed of.  Like we with Charleville, only whispers of the futre (that's not really how Australians spell 'future' but I like to be cheeky), the Israelites, could not help but wonder where this journey into the desert would take them.  They complained about the lack of water, the lack of food, the lack of normalcy of life.  They forgot that it was God who was trying to filter their collective soul to put their trust in him - in the wilderness.  Sometimes it takes the spinefex and the dry Bungeworgarai to help us recognize our utter and complete dependence on the benevolence of a gracious God.  Sometimes we have to leave behind the 4G of Gatton and recognize that in the wilderness, the only connection we will get to the outer world is a look into the cosmos and the immensity of the stars above.

Our seven and a half hour drive from Gatton to Charleville past the sign at Roma that proclaimed we had reached the Outback of Australia, out back of the constancy and normalcy of every day life, in the midst or the sharpness and harshness and aridity of the dry heart of Australia, was an opportunity for us to recognize our utter dependence on God's willingness to lead us to places that we'd never gone before.

We reached Charleville before the kangaroos hit the roads...