​The end of an awesome odyssey - October 2017

Our good old van, our home away from home for the last 8 months, has a new undercover home. Safe and sound. What a champ she was! She’ll be getting new undercarriage before we head back out on  the roads less traveled - not the Canning Stock Route but road/tracks such as Tanami, Buchanan, Strzelecki and  .....

We’re back! Our ‘odyssey’ was one hell of an adventure, long both in distance and time. Was it worth it? Oh, most definitely yes! My mind is still digesting all that we've seen and happily that will continue for quite some time. From remnants of the Supercontinent of Ur in the Pilbara dating back 3 billion years and living fossils in World Heritage Shark Bay to dinosaur footprints along the Dampier Peninsula. From ancient rock paintings depicting Yingarna, the Creation Spirit who emerged from the Arafura Sea to populate West Arnhem Land, fast forward to rich goldfields, stock routes, jasper deposits and European exploration and settlement. A history still in infancy which rests as light as a mist net on top the ancient history of our land. I have learnt so much!

Pieces of ancient earth crust engraved with over a million petroglyphs, Burrup Peninsula/Murujuga, WA

Rock painting of the female Creation ancestor, Yingarna. Photographed on the sacred Injalak Hill, Arnhem Land.

Board walk over some of the stromatolites, living fossils, in World Heritage Shark Bay.

Deep glorious veins of jasper at Marble Bar, WA

We joined in the Malandarri aboriginal cultural and arts festival in Borroloola. Everyone joins in!

The ancient ‘lost city’ in the Carabirini Conservation Reserve, NT

Once done on the hoof so to speak, cattle droving has in the main been replaced with huge road trains. This one was coming in from Finke, NT.

Buchanan Highway a stock route forged by Nat Buchanan and ‘Greenhide’ Sam Croker in the late 1800s. Routes like this criss-cross Australia.

What started out for me as an interest in flowers and plants became quite a challenging and exciting experience. The more I looked, the more I saw. The more I delved for answers or identification, the more and deeper I learned to look. I will now go back and back and back again to my pix because there are many plants I didn't identify and some, perhaps quite a few, I got wrong. I identified almost 150 different species during a short period of a couple of months. Not too shabby for a novice. And of course there’s the fungi!

And we came home to this! Our beautiful orchid after 8 months of fending for itself, truly! What a valiant plant is it and quite lovely. My father potted it for me more than 20 years ago and I have done little to it since. Must love neglect. And our birds were back the morning after we arrived home. They have obviously cruised by every day looking.

Sadly the cupboard was bare else we would have celebrated with champers - again!!

Lindsay and I are determined to learn more about this amazing country and have already quite a list of places we want to explore in the future. People who I discovered, or rediscovered, on this trip. People such as John McDouall Stuart, Alfred Canning, George Goyder, Augustus Gregory and Len Beadell, all surveyors, explorers and history makers - inspire and fascinate me (and I’m no history student). Hopefully we can trace more of the routes they established and/or explored in some of the most arid, inhospitable and remote regions of Australia. Water! Springs and native wells punctuate many of those tracks - I now know. Boy how gruelling, albeit exciting, it must have been!
But to return to more urbane pursuits ........ I will miss the quiet sound of the winds hustling across the plains, waking to the dawn chorus - and so much more! Thank you for being such marvelous travel companions. I hope to share some of your journeys.

What’s on the cards for us next year? We will be gypsies again albeit this time in Ireland and Scotland, but in a much much smaller van. And we will also be heading out to sea in a wee expedition ship to explore the remote islands off the Scottish coast - must read up about the Norsemen! The trip back home from the cool climes of the UK will be via ......... ? well I'll leave that until next year except to say that on my current reading list is ‘Book of the Marvels of the World’ ....
Travel well and let questions be your guides!

A challenge!