Mundrabilla - Robert Halsey

A goanna lumbered across the Eyre Highway and disappeared into the surrounding scrub. In a land where time is intended to stand still, it knows all the secrets of survival…as long as it doesn’t lumber across the intruding black asphalt ribbon where demons from another world race madly to meet deadlines. They have all but wiped out the indigenous fauna in the desert land where now no vultures fly.

This is no place for human habitation, let alone any civilized existence. That is why there are only fifteen remaining residents here today whose destiny lies in the success of the commercial venture that is the roadhouse which serves petrol, diesel, food and drink to the itinerants who race about to fill the shopping centres with food and other products associated with civilized existence. The roadhouse community will never get rich and they know it. They have no illusions about their fate. That is not why they choose to live here. Their roots, they claim, go all the way back to the sheep people, the Afghan cameleers and the nomadic aborigines who now seldom make an appearance.
Life is made exciting by the small wildlife park they serve. Here live a trio of scruffy emus, four iconic camels who spend their time dreaming of their past glory, or so it seems from the way they sleep off time that has changed things so enormously that there is no room for them beyond the wire fence; this they cannot understand. The kangaroos hop about lethargically when it’s feed time or when there is some disputed issues to settle. The aviary brings the community the only sweet sounds from off the desert. Mundrabilla is not altogether without some tenuous claim to fame. Fragments of a meteorite that fell many years ago, more than any living soul can recall, and lie scattered over an area 60 km wide. It is said to be one of the largest remains of meteorites in the world.
I fly a tiny Cessna into Mundrabilla whenever I feel like a break from Adelaide corporate life. It takes a couple of stops along the way to get here. Craig, who owns the Mundrabilla Roadhouse, his son and two locals some time ago had cleared away a landing strip and erected a wind-socket of sorts to help me. It was all I needed to get in and out. I am the talk of the social circle of our law firm, Anderson, McGregor and Luciani and my colleagues make no secret of their chatter about their elderly eccentric senior partner. They have often asked me what takes me out there. They are amiably confused. I have laughed them off. They would never really understand. I have been coming here for some four years now. I discovered these outback desert places, Balladonia, Cocklebiddy and Mundrabilla to name a few of them, when I first drove over with my family about ten years ago. I then promised myself I would return one day, and I have been doing so ever since. My wife no longer accompanies me on these trips, ill-health preventing her from doing so, but she never stops asking me about my visits. The desert, I know, has also claimed her as it has done me all these years.
The desert exerts a rugged and powerful spell over me. There is a primordial energy that flows all around me, enveloping me in its mystery.
I admit I cannot claim it is a common human experience. I rather doubt it but somehow I tend to believe that maybe it does even if one doesn’t care to admit to it for one reason or another. The experience could be below the level of consciousness, but it must be there all the same. That could be one reason that most human beings fear it and would rather move away as soon as possible to feel safe.
In Australia, civilization dares to encroach upon it from time to time… roadhouses… petrol, tyres, batteries, Coco Cola, beer cheap accommodation in lumpy beds…twenty-wheelers…tourist coaches…detritus strung out along the black ribbon of a highway … empty beer cans and bottles…. “LIZ WUZ HERE”…work of some graffiti vandal, obviously…
From on top of the Hampton Tableland a desert wind bears down in winter and chills the marrow and in summer it burns the skin and cracks it open. Looking out from a vantage point one is acutely aware of the insignificance of man. It makes me wonder about the exaggerated sense of our importance in the scheme of things in the universe. It is a quietening experience that humbles and restores ones sense of proportion, gives one a clearer picture of our place in the cosmic scale of life.
Everywhere we look, as far as one can see and far beyond it, there was once an inland sea where waters roared and teemed with life. When it all drained away it was forever, and left behind it a dry and thirsty land that gasped for life. This is a red world pre-historically alive that has now to tolerate the intrusions of this tawdry civilized world from the coastal fringes of Australia that are now teeming with what Stephen Hawkins once called “chemical scum floating on the surface of the world.” His views are scarcely complimentary. I am aware of another view, a view of the waters draining away leaving the imagination of struggling life forms dreaming its dreams of life coming into being and passing away in the enfolding eco-drama of the millenniums. There is an urgency about the aesthetics of this endlessness that summons the tribute of the senses.