Summertime’s Arid Maw

A collection of memoir concerning my January experiences.

‘More Legs Than Usual’

Recently I’ve been growing claws. Toying with their calcific sharpness—like the grooves of a grater, the teeth of a serrated knife—keeps me from catching my softened face in the window. Softened by moonlight and sweat and lantern searches across the open road. Smoke rolls through the hillsides; dehydrated grass bleaches into locks of Gaia’s hair. Her body holds its trapped heat, its beauty marks we call stars. Three freckles make Orion’s belt. The stove and fan buzz with the flies. Dense char blooms into a Rorschach across the frypan, apple syrup still cloying the throat. Waiting for tomorrow. Moon below horizon.

Boisterous trees without their milky shawls sway like a coven at night. A fizzled streetlamp meets blinding headlights. A black Jeep trails the millipede of my body, buried in red dirt, nestled against a nervous Christmas beetle. Out of place—I feel as if I have more legs than usual, each following the next in a mindless loop. One must imagine Sisyphus as a millipede: soft, bent legs knowing the centre will not hold. A kangaroo at the edge of my headlamp—Australia’s deer—crouched and listless. Feet primed to spring, snout and eyes caught by a distant light. An angel’s message. I am the conduit. It hops away.

I am always thwarted by sprawling fences, bent-wire police insisting the open road is a fiction, today. But my hiking boots know where to go; they are the first to unhinge their maw and taste the powder of new asphalt. I’m the first to notice what that hill has become in its darkened madness: nothing but the faint taste of Australian dusk staining the lower sky violet. Sweat gathers at my lower back like a reservoir, somewhere to put the skittishness. The headlamp dies. Moon below horizon. Cicadas sing like seraphs in the night.

‘The Yellowed Innards of an Old Train’

Or, my first time camping.

D1 10AM

Waching the sun shine through the tent was a highlight.

The drive down to Dwellingup is strangely cosy. I manage to haggle a window seat – my leather backpack plush against jogging pants, my larger-than-life air mattress lazing across all of our laps like an annoying, sedated animal. I am gifted the crunch of warm brown paper, Red Rooster fries enclosed inside. The chicken salt mingling with the start of dehydration, that terrible papery feeling behind the molars. I watch as the road extends on, collapsing into a continuous parade of tall, proud trees and the veritable beginnings of countryside, down south. The sun grins in a decidedly mild way, ushering us onto the campsite grounds, trickling down onto my pretentious read (that I barely make a dent in, mostly repositioning it like a prop).

D1 2PM

I watch my friends in their tableau against the barcode of trees surrounding them. With great focus they put together the tent, its alien roundness and marshmallow hue. I set the mattress down and notice the way the rays of the sun stare down at me – no curtains, no respite in this semi-open structure, just sky like an unblinking security camera. We make our way down to the shops to get some supplies for the next few nights. Sardines & beans, individually spread across a rectangle of toast, I decide for myself, like I am packing rations for a very minor apocalypse. I can already feel my stomach start to curdle as I inhale the campsite air in its newness, its strangeness — dry bark, dust, something faintly sweet-rotten. My body has always been ultra-sensitive to change. For there’s no air conditioning or air-fryer food out here, just the sound of cicadas and my friends’ voices like a collection of wind chimes.

I need a room in my house that is just full of empty crystal bottles. One day.

D1 5PM

A dog greets us at the entrance to what looks like a menagerie of trinkets and antique goods. I am most intrigued by the perfect display of coloured glass flush against the windows, their hues leaking in the afternoon sun. I acknowledge the crockery, then acknowledge my hoarding tendencies, and leave the store as it is. I pick up a Bubblegum Bill from the corner store afterwards, fully understanding that the gum is the worst part. Tasteless, cold, hard, like chewing on a kneecap. But it reminds me of swimming pools, of my childhood in Sydney, of that whimsical childishness that coloured my dietary habits for years, when novelty outranked flavour every time. I shudder as I remember the canteen burger I ate once, with a green looper hidden inside the lettuce. The flat squelch against the roof of my mouth, the momentary uncertainty about whether I was still chewing food. Is this where my vitriol towards the caterpillar species started?

D1 9PM

A long drive with my friends, accompanied by my MP3 player, done in the hopes of finding a remote stargazing location. When we arrive, the moon is as narcissistic as she could ever be – blinding us and illuminating only the basin and the rocks surrounding it, bleaching everything into one texture. There is now good reason to call it a night, mission over. Sometimes the stars are willing, and sometimes they are not. I know this all too well. As I try to go to sleep, I can hear a group of girls in the camp opposite us singing “Vienna”, with a slightly off-tune guitar, the chords arriving half a second late each time, and I smile to myself. It’s true, Vienna waits for you.

Inside an abandoned train carriage.

D2 8AM

We start our investigation of a collection of old trains, some refurbished and available to ride for a steep price. Mostly, I find my appreciation in the dated signage, the trains hidden behind rusted fences that we are probably not allowed to access, the specific shade of industrial yellow that only exists to warn you. We all walk in anyway, noticing the mosaic of broken glass and ashen walls within. A train that was once beautiful reminds me more of a discarded ashtray in the bottom of a cardboard box. We are always followed by those towering trees, with their strong bodies and the cascade of green curls, bark peeling like sunburnt shoulders. I imagine myself as a red panda, climbing up as high as I can, purely out of curiosity, not survival.

A thing of beauty!

D2 11AM

We now find a larger antique store with an extensive selection of teddy bears, some resembling me. There is also a wall of rifles, the pelt of a fox, and uranium glass stretching across a large cabinet, glowing faintly. But at that point I have seen so much that I stop desiring the items as potential purchases, and instead convert it into a museum experience. Ah, yes, these old pulp magazines. And these Victorian dove brooches and — wait? You guys are buying stuff? Though, credit to my dear friend Frankie, her purchases are nothing short of divine. I like lighters that look like they are not lighters. In her case, the lighter is shaped like an antique pistol. Perfect. Suspiciously perfect.

D2 In Liminal Time

We eventually make it down to a lovely lake, surrounded by some walking trails, and in any usual situation I’d be happy but for some reason, the continual fact of being outside is starting to weigh down on me, like I have forgotten how to buffer myself from weather. I suddenly feel as though the sun is no better than a massive radiation machine, my arms growing heavy and a migraine ringing through my temples, like cutlery being sorted inside my skull. I fail to express this part. For the most part, a scowl comes over my face and I excuse myself, sipping orange juice at a bench, the acid sharp enough to keep me upright.

I find a long, intimidating bridge over the lake and see two young men, sprawled out as if in some classical painting, staring down at the water beneath, shirts riding up slightly, sun turning them into marble. I imagine they’d be the first to be killed by sirens. But you never know.

D2 6PM

The pub in all of its glory. The elixir of hot garlic bread and chips. And a mysterious, watery garlic sauce that I don’t dare try, not today. Our table is offered more than a few raffle tickets for some event, and we use it as an opportunity to play ‘guess the number’ – the paper stuck to our foreheads with someone incessantly chanting, “It’s the worst age to be!”

“Umm… 20?”

“15.”

Ah.

The night lapses into a beautiful blur, the taste of vodka lemonade tart on my tastebuds, the brief swaying of trees like a lullaby around us, branches clicking together like knuckles. A nap turns into another nap turns into my bedtime, and then we’re off. My first time camping. A strange variety of beautiful experiences, that I would certainly do again (with improved judgement).