Category: Posted on the fly

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.

Stillwater on the left. Last night in Batemans Bay after about two months of them I was free of mosquitos; was hoping for another one.

But the bastards are in there, and they saw me, too.

At a stop on the road without a destination. Home for the night, and possibly a bit more. Who knows, right?

11.30AM and the chores are done. As if bumping into two extraordinarily unpleasant people I’ve met, fully flourishing with this relative Australian backwater’s lawlessness, wasn’t enough, nor the physical ills this week, a ranger stopped by to tell me where best to park, and in doing so asked if I was camping there.

Happened I’d not, so the early morning ablutions somewhere else paid off.

All messages it’s time to go. I’m not well enough to travel, but hanging around will only make it worse.

In one of the pockets of sleep during a long, but quiet night, my dream nemesis came. The great white shark. I warned others swimming at the water’s edge, and I couldn’t lift my legs out of the gravely sand, stuck in a deep-sloped shore section just as I’ve swum down here recently.

The shark came in and eyed me, face to face. It was very real.

It’s about facing my fears. I could die from a diabetes issue here on. But I’ll start sensibly. North a bit.

And always, always alone.