SLEEPING WITH THE SOUTHERN CROSS

SLEEPING WITH THE SOUTHERN CROSS

All night and into the dawn, the Southern Cross star formation, a trusty guide to pioneer navigators, stood watch above my swag. It was comforting to look up at it through the insect screen before going to sleep and awaken to its steady gaze in the wee small hours of a Western Australian morning.

What scenes of human folly, triumph and tragedy it has seen. Early aboriginal nomads foraging the plains, Eyre losing his mate and himself striving almost unto death to establish the east-west route along the Great Australian Bight, he called the Nullarbor. Now it is largely the preserve of the lordly road trains and the lesser but increasing lines of grey nomads, proud in their spanking new Akubras, at the wheel of glossy four wheel drive monsters, motor homes or towing caravans and even the occasional car.

What could it make of a single, white, Honda bullet, dodging suicidal kangaroos and clean up teams of carrion crows, blistering west as though for its very life.
What might be the driver’s mission? Licence plates speak of where it has come from but where is its driver bound? To the stars it might readily seem no different from his forebears yet another, albeit 21st century, pioneer in search of a dream.

But yet there was something different about this latter day wanderer. He had found his dream and needed no guiding star for he was travelling his songlines road.


But still nice to sleep with the Southern Cross, just in case!