So How’s It Going?

The idea: put everything in storage and head off into the Australian landscape, making it up as I go along. Stay in highway rest areas or free camps, because petrol and travel incidentals could add up to the equivalent of the (cheap, because the places were cheap) rent I was paying, and maybe meet some people out and about as well.

Still a beaut idea, but it looks better in synopsis.

Fact is, it took a few weeks to achieve the "put things in storage bit", with rain, ridiculous constrictions on storage access, public holidays and the new daily time cost involved in cooking, cleaning, finding showers, toilets, and fresh water. That’s all in the locality in which I rented: i.e. I knew the area and enough of its facilities. (Did discover more.)

Finally, today, sick, fevered, achey, no appetite, urinary infection and weak – hardly the triumphant societal breakout – I flounded up at an uneventful highway spot one Shire away.

Believable, I think, to describe it as not much of achievement.

But the deeper truth is I have no idea of what I’m doing. Nothing reliable or substantial to guide me in how to live this kind of life. Not pissing anyone off, regarding where I stay, toilet, shower and gather water is huge on that unhelpful empty list.

That said there’s also a mental bond to my post office box because there are two documents arriving soon which, after successfully completing the rigmarole of doctors’ appointments, allow me to do this. Drive a car.

In a stationary place I know exactly how to make it work. Set up my art and gear in the right spot and get the people to come to me.

That’s an utterly different world. I’m a clueless beginner with massive experience behind me that doesn’t now mean anything at all.