The Indian Ocean. I stood with my ankles in the shallows, awestruck. The water was the turquoise blue you see in travel photos advertising tropical islands, so clear you can see right through to the white sand below. But instead of palm trees lining the shoreline of this paradise, here the rich red dirt of Australia's arid interior ran down to the sand. It was nothing like the east coast of Australia, where I grew up. It was new for the camels too; they had never seen the ocean before. But while I stood mesmerised, they looked out on the wide blue waters with complete indifference, the magic clearly lost on them. They had no idea what this moment meant: we had finally reached the starting line of our huge adventure. I had made it to Shark Bay, the westernmost point of the west coast of Australia, and was planning to walk with my five camel companions all the way to Byron Bay, the most easterly point of the country-a distance of 4000km as the crow flies, and probably about 5000km by the time I zigzagged a bit along the way.
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This shoreline represented the start of my odyssey, but it also represented the end. The end of years of planning that had consumed my entire being. It had taken four years to learn how to work with the five large animals that stood behind me, to feel confident enough to attempt a journey of my own with them. I had been lucky to meet a diverse mix of talented camel handlers around Australia, and the world, who inspired and shared with me their knowledge. At Uluru, a year before I set off for my trip, I was able to obtain my own camels, train them, and learn the craft of making my own saddles.
Amid the heartbreak of a relationship break-up, the final year at Uluru had been a never-ending list of "to-dos", with so much equipment to be bought.
In the lead-up to my departure, my days began at 3am. I'd spend a quiet hour or two poring over topographical maps on my Hema Maps app, searching for a thread that made a route across the country - all before taking tourists on a sunrise camel ride. Maps fed my imagination, and despite the early starts, I loved the silence of those witching hours.
When I was finally ready to head to the start line, it took six days and 2300km on mainly rough dirt roads to drive from Uluru to Shark Bay with my recently acquired truck licence and all of one day's truck-driving experience. I racked up some serious on-the-job training along the way. My friend Greg had agreed to do the trip with me to the west coast. Grinding through gears and gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles, we arrived in Western Australia with my precious camel cargo. However, the elation of completing this cross-country camel road trip was soon quelled by the outbreak of the global Covid-19 pandemic. When I left Uluru, no one had been taking the virus from China particularly seriously - but a week after I arrived in Western Australia, the borders shut. The world was scared. International backpackers were being told to return home, and Australians were being told to stay at home, with only "essential travel" allowed. All the preparation for my trip came crashing down around me and uncertainty hung heavy in the air. Would I be allowed to travel? How long would the pandemic last? What did a lockdown mean for me? I was now homeless, my address "on the road with five camels". All I could do was to start walking and hope for the best.
So there I was, staring out at the Indian Ocean, at the beginning of the end of a huge preparation phase. I coaxed the camels down the sloping red dirt towards the beach. I couldn't believe I was here. In the past, my many crazy schemes for adventures had always fizzled out-but for some undefinable reason, the driving passion for this one had stuck. Even if I failed to make it across the country, I couldn't help feeling proud at simply having made it to the start.
I pulled my boots off and waded in, gently tugging at Jude's lead rope. He followed me without question into the water. Bringing his long neck down, he took a slurp, and then, surprised by its saltiness, withdrew his head quickly, flinging it around in circles and expelling water from his loose lips in great arcs all over me and the other camels. Delilah, who stood behind Jude, looked disgruntled.
Jude's attempt to drink from the ocean didn't surprise me; he had always been curious, like a bowerbird stopping to examine shiny objects. He particularly loved any kind of rubbish on the track-stopping mid-walk to investigate an old beer can left behind in the sand, forcing all the other camels behind him to grind to a sudden halt.
I knew early on Jude would be my lead camel - the camel at the front of the string. This is a very important role. You have to work one-on-one with your lead camel, and they have to trust you implicitly, because they are in turn leading the camels behind them, roped together from their halter to the shoulders of the camel in front.
With his innate curiosity, Jude and I had a relationship from day one. He was a darkish male, roughly seven years old - a teenager in camel years, with about another year of growing before he reached full size. He was one of four boys in my group. There was Mac, a blond seven-year-old camel and the largest, and six-year-olds Charlie and Clayton. Charlie was lanky and greyish, all long limbs like a young teenage boy who hasn't developed any muscle yet, while small and compact Clayton was dark brown, nearing black. Delilah was my only female, a mature-aged lady who, judging by her loose udder, had birthed several calves.
While Delilah looked put-out by the time-wasting experience of visiting the ocean, Jude appeared to be enjoying himself. The corners of his lips were turned upward, as if smiling. He lifted one of his big feet, a soft two-toed pad with prehistoric-looking nails, and let it fall back down into the water. Splash. He did it again, then dropped to his knees, the clear water lapping at his chest. I anticipated what would happen next. He wanted to roll.
Further along the beach was a little shack, and beyond that, the sand led to some stunted coastal vegetation where I planned to unsaddle the camels and let them have a proper roll. The "shack" was just four posts with a piece of green shadecloth loosely pinned down over the top. The "Carbla Hilton", as I had heard it called, over-looked Hamelin Pool, the protected bay where, in 1977, Robyn Davidson had finished her journey with her camels across the western deserts from Alice Springs. This was where a National Geographic photographer, Rick Smolan, had taken pictures of Robyn in the water with her camels. Long before the outline of my own trip began to form, I had read her book, Tracks, and seen the subsequent movie. Her pioneering feat as a woman was undoubtedly inspirational, but it had never been my intention to replicate her trip. We were two different women conducting our adventures in different periods in history. Still, our stories ran parallel to one another's, and during many moments like this, I would often think of how they compared and what she must have felt.
I looked at Jude, Delilah, Clayton, Charlie and Mac now, happily rolling in the sand on the beach at Carbla. It always made me laugh how camels would roll onto one side and then the other, unable to roll the whole way across like a horse, because of their hump. In Australia we have only one-humped camels, the dromedaries. The other two-humped variety, bactrians, are cold-desert camels found in places like the Gobi Desert.
Jude stood up first to graze, followed by Clayton. Charlie, the most nervous, tailed Delilah, who was like a mother figure to him. Mac, never in a rush, was the last to get up, heaving himself up with a begrudging sigh to forage next to Delilah. It wasn't the first time I had watched this routine unfold, their personalities emerging as I trained them. It was one of the joys of the process, watching them go from fearful nameless animals to individuals, developing an understanding of who they all were and their relationships with each other. I had tried to use this understanding while training them, working with their personalities rather than against them.
My first night on the beach didn't feel like a big deal. It wasn't the first time I had camped out with my camels. I had taken them on a few short three-day to six-day "test" treks, camping around Uluru to get a sense of what it might be like.
I tied the camels to bushes for the night and stood eating a can of tuna with some crackers as the darkness descended. It didn't feel like the "real" beginning; I hadn't even bothered to light a fire. The beach was only 15km from the Carbla homestead where I had unloaded the camels from the truck, and I had left all the saddle bags and equipment there, only taking the bare minimum to the beach. I wouldn't feel like I had really left on my journey until all that equipment was with me. Then I would have to be entirely self-sufficient, relying only on myself and what I had packed.
The next morning, I saddled the camels and walked them back down to the beach.
I walked the camels along the water's edge and paused at the end of the beach, looking at the track that led up the red dirt and back to Carbla homestead. I was restless to get going, knowing that the growing heat would make walking unpleasant, but I couldn't help having one last swim. It would be many months and several thousand kilometres before I would see the ocean again.
I stripped down naked, waded into the calm waters and dipped my head under, soaking up the quiet and picking up handfuls of fine sand from the ocean floor, letting it flow between my fingers. Sometimes I wondered why I had become so enamoured with desert-loving camels when I loved the ocean and craved the water so much. But I had given up many things in my single-minded pursuit of this goal.
Finally, I emerged from the water. I untied my camels and turned to look at the sparkling ocean one last time.
It was time to get back to the homestead and pack my equipment so the journey could really begin.
- This is an edited extract from The Crossing: A Memoir of love, adventure and finding your own path, by Sophie Matterson. Allen & Unwin. $34.99.
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