The Legend of the Finke River Mission Bread

Letter #13 - Kings Canyon to Palm Valley

G’day!

Welcome to Letters From the Road, and letter number 13.

For those of you for whom this is your first letter, welcome! Good on ya for signing up and reading. Letters From the Road is the story of a family road trip in Australia, told using my journal entries written during the trip. This is what one might call a serial, in that it is a story told one installment at a time, in this case, once a week. So if you’re into that idea, you might head back to Letter #1 and start there. It’s a long trip, so no worries. We’ll wait.

Knackered, Cactused, and Rooted

You’ll probably figure this out, but I thought I may as well mention that the quoted bits in the letter below are my journal entries, and the rest is me filling in the gaps with road grime, a spare tyre, and a lot of red dirt.

If you’ve just joined us and want to catch up, you can find the other twelve letters here, in the glove box of a Suzuki Vitara that’s been abandoned on the side of the road.

Artwork is by my talented brother Nick. You can find more of his work here.

And now, to your letter.

Luke

---

Sometimes all we really need is a bag of taco chips, or a good piece of toast. Sometimes it’s those little things that matter and can steal the show. Today’s letter is like that. Today our hero is a loaf of bread. 

Before we get there, we’ve got to pack up. We’re leaving Kings Creek Station, the campground where we stayed for two nights, and headed toward a remote spot called Palm Valley. It’s not far away as the crow flies, but it lies down a hard road. 

17th October 2019 - Palm Valley, Finke Gorge National Park

Wow. 

I don’t know why I just wrote that. 

Leaving today was ok. It seemed to take forever, but I think it was better than that. The boys had a blast at Kings Creek Station, because we met Dave and Trish and their four kids Oscar, Seth, Rosie and Macie. The two girls are a little younger, but the boys are about the same age, and they played basically all day yesterday. I didn’t really see them. 

Both boys were grumpy in the morning, because we were packing up once again. Consequently, they were useless at helping. Katie and I took down the tent and the awning. 

One of the most controversial, argued about, and fought over features of our camping setup is the awning. It’s made of heavy canvas like the rest of the tent, with integral aluminum poles that have to all be folded and wrapped together perfectly when taking it down for storage. 

Folding up the awning is an act of physical and mental gymnastics. The awning covers two sides of our camping trailer in a curving shape, stretching out on a hinge like a bat wing. The whole massive thing folds up into a long bag that hangs off the side of the trailer.

To get the huge awning into the skinny bag, you have to start at one end, and fold up the five vertical support poles, shortening and folding them up into the canvas while you go. All the while, you’re pushing heavy canvas over the top of the folded up poles and suspending the whole load, which grows ever heavier as you go, up over your head until you’ve collected all the poles and canvas into a bundle and have to shove it into the bag. The whole thing is then secured into the bag by a tiny pin that goes through an eyelet attached to one of the poles, one of the ones that you’re currently holding over your head. Of course, two or three of the poles have eyelets attached, so you must be careful not to pick the wrong one.

Meanwhile, while you have the poles and canvas held over your head and are simultaneously trying to connect them up to the bag using a tiny pin, many flies are swarming around your face, going up your nose, and popping in and out of your ear like a kid coming in and out of the kitchen during commercials. Just then, your face sweaty, your arms failing, your mouth full of angry verbs being directed at the eyelet, the nice couple from the campground next door whom you had dinner with last evening, pulls up next to you in their car. They say it was nice meeting you, and safe travels and god knows what else because you’re in the middle of something serious. It’s like you’ve just orbited the earth and now you’re nearing reentry, and someone stops to ask how the tomatoes in your garden are coming along. 

Your focus is demanded elsewhere, so Dick and Jane or whatever their names are, nice as they were to have dinner with when you’re in the middle of nowhere and there’s no one else to have dinner with anyways, they received little more than a confirming ‘you too!’ and a head nod. It’s about then that you somehow maneuver the pin into the eyelet then gently let go in the hopes that the whole thing doesn’t collapse on top of you. When it doesn’t, you then roll the canvas up and crank on the zipper with far more force than is probably recommended in order to zip the cover shut, exhausted. 

Later, when Katie asks about setting up the awning, you say, ‘I’m not sure we really need it this time, do we?’

The road leaving Kings Creek Station headed west, and just past a touristy spot called Kings Canyon Resort was the start of the Mereenie Loop.

The Mereenie Loop took us back east, cutting straight through the rocky landscape of ravines and valleys where Kings Canyon formed. It’s a terrain seemingly built by a higher hand making slashes through the deep red and brown coloured rocky hills. The road returned us to the heart of some amazing scenery, but it wasn’t much for actual driving.

Early on, we passed a yellow oil drum on the side of the road, where the words Lift Um Foot were written in black stencil. Translated, that’s ‘slow down the bloody car, ya drongo’, and this was good advice for several reasons. The roads were a mixture of rocks, gravel, and dust, and driving too fast on this type of surface could be treacherous. 

You also never knew what you were going to come across. Around one corner could be a cow, wandering desperately between single blades of tough grass, or yanking leaves from angry bushes.

Or an even bigger surprise could be encountering another human. At one point my mind was wandering, and the seeming emptiness of the world lulled me into allowing the car to wander all over the road as well. Then we drove up over a rise in the road and almost ran over a guy riding a bike. He was moving slowly in the opposite direction, partially due to being loaded down with a full assortment of panniers, partially because the deep dust of the rutted road wasn’t ideal for him either. I swerved out of the way, then honked as we passed, all of us cheering his effort. I always try to acknowledge bike packers that are out having an adventure, all their worldly possessions condensed into whatever they can hang off their bike. He waved and gave a weak smile in return, before disappearing into a cloud of red dust we left in our wake. 

Large rocks or equally large holes could appear out of nowhere just like our friend the biker, and if you hadn’t Lifted Um Foot, you could end up in a bad way, as was the case with a car we came across. One of its front wheels was bent at a sickening angle, the glass had been smashed out of the passenger side window like someone was trying to get in - or trying to escape - and there was trash strewn across the side of the road. An empty box of water lay next to the car. It was cactused to the extent that we decided to stop and investigate. 

Wheel snapped off at the axle. The tyres were barely made of rubber, not the caliber of car I’d want running on this road. Australian Greatest Hits CD in the glove box. In the back was a folding chair, an open bag of taco chips and a loaf of wheat bread. The bread was a bit squishy, but not yet mouldy. Couldn’t have been there long. On the driver's seat was a green box containing a new shock absorber. Maybe that would have helped with that whole wheel issue? On the passenger seat, covered in the glass from the broken window, was the repair manual for the Suzuki Vitara. You would not have found any simple maintenance item in the manual to solve the issues with this car. 

What happened here? 

One can only wonder. You’re driving your Vitara too fast in the remote, unforgiving Outback, when you hit a giant hole that tears one of your wheels off. The hole was invisible, filled in with dust from the road, from the desert. First, you kick yourself for not having installed that new shock absorber. Then, you pull the manual from the glove box. It’s no help either, just like a bandaid wouldn’t do much for a broken leg. It’s 40 degrees C (104F) outside, and your box of water is empty. With no other choice, you set off across the desert, in the hopes that you’ll be able to make it the closest bit of civilisation, which could be 50 to 100 kilometres away. 

But you don’t take the taco chips with you?

The road became paved once again, and 30 minutes afterward we arrived in a little town called Hermannsburg, the last stop before we headed into the wilderness once again.

Hermannsburg. Indigenous Australians, with the talk of respect for the land and the sacred places, then you get to a decent-sized bush community and the first thing the boys notice is all the rubbish all over the place. We drove through the quiet streets, past the one servo in town, past the under construction housing development that’s been sponsored by the Northern Territory government, past the footy oval and baseball field that are devoid of grass, 100% dirt. Past the Community Centre and a humble neighbourhood with a sign outside saying private, no trespassing. 

---

I’ll break from the narrative here for a second. It should be said that when I re-read that journal entry from when we first drove into Hermannsburg, it strikes me how culturally insensitive I was. To this day, I’m still relatively dense when it comes to understanding the plight of Australia’s Indigenous peoples, but I have learned enough since then to know that if the only observation I could make upon arriving in Hermannsburg was to imply that the Indigenous Australians are hypocrites because there is some trash lying around town, that I was completely clueless.

Such is the benefit of time, I guess, especially when I have a journal that documents what I was thinking and feeling at a certain point in time. I’m able to look back and realise how much of a muppet I was. 

This cultural aspect comes up again later on in my journals, and I’ll expand upon the thought more in a future letter. 

---

Around 600 people live in Hermannsburg, mostly Indigenous Australians, despite the town’s anglicized name which makes it could be filled with German beer halls. Like many places in the centre of Australia, the town also has a second name - Ntaria - after the sacred land upon which Lutheran missionaries founded the settlement back in 1877. The Mission persevered through sickness and drought and several rounds of founders dying, and the little town grew up around it. 

We came there not expecting much - country towns are typically quiet - but even then were surprised by the starkness of the place. On the way into town, we crossed the parched and stagnant Finke River, a crossing which was guarded by a sign warning that the river is potentially dangerous. All we saw was an overturned baby stroller lying in a muddy puddle. As I observed in my journal, garbage along the highway welcomes you into town. 

The 40 degree heat and slanting rays of the sun washed out all the colour from Hermannsburg/Ntaria, making it look dull and lifeless to match the feel. There were hardly any other cars on the streets. 

We arrived at our destination, a low slung green building with a carpark filled with dust and rubbish. In front of the building was a small group of Indigenous kids who were happily carrying giant bottles of Coca Cola while exiting the building.

The Finke River Mission. It’s a humble community shop and bakery. Their stock was pretty sparse - a cooler full of relatively expensive vegetables, a few meats, some cans of Heinz spaghetti (no, Henry, we cannot get canned spag) and spam. They offered a selection of homemade pies that looked good. We needed bread, so I pulled the only variety they had off the rack, a big loaf of white. Not something I usually buy, because white bread is ‘devoid of nutrition’, I often tell the boys. I noticed that this bread appeared to be made by the Mission itself, and it looked a little different than a regular loaf. It cost $4.50.

Fresh fruits and vegetables were hidden away in a refrigerator, each apple and cucumber individually wrapped in plastic and selling for an exorbitant price. Where do these apples and cucumbers come from? I wondered. Surely not from the never ending rocky plains of red dirt that ran for hundreds of kilometres in every direction. 

We settled on everything else we needed, but I hesitated on the bread. We needed some to be sure, but I was skeptical about this plain white sandwich loaf. I’m not a bread snob, if there is such a thing. At least I don’t think so. Most of the time while traveling I ate evil gluten-free bread that has the texture of a car tyre that’s been sitting in the sun. So my standards are set relatively low.

But I take issue with plain white bread in principle because, generally speaking, it’s colourless, tasteless, and contains no contents of value, so what’s the point? I also don’t appreciate how some varieties turn to goo in your mouth, like chewing on a ball of Play-Doh. Only Play-Doh at least brings some saltiness and a bit of gritty texture to the palate.

Loaf, The. By Nick Naughton

The Mission’s big white loaves were nondescript aside from the words ‘Finke River Mission’ on the bag in black letters, along with ‘White Hi-Fibre Sliced’, and ‘Healthy Food, Active Body’. Hi-fibre. Healthy food. All suspicious, marketing speak. I wandered the store looking for another option, but could not find one. In retrospect, I would advise that if you ever find yourself in a tiny country town like Hermannsburg/Ntaria, an outpost in a harsh landscape where emus and dingoes outnumber people by what’s likely a huge margin, both animals of whom would be happy to pick through your remains after you die under a bush when your axle snaps and you run out of water, that you not fret over the quality of the bread at the grocery store. Instead worry about running out of fuel, making sure your shock absorbers are in good shape, and that you don’t forget the taco chips. 

In the end, I bought a single loaf.

---

It was after dark on our first day camping at a place called Palm Valley, in the Finke Gorge National Park, when we thought we may have been in the presence of spirits.

Katie and I and the boys were sitting at our camp, talking quietly in the dark when we heard an eerie, soulful wail. None of us moved, as we listened closely, waiting to see if the noises came again. The chilling, ghostly sound returned, rising and falling like the wind. It was a new moon, and the darkness in the campground was complete. There was nothing to see but stars. Nothing to hear but our breathing, and the moaning. 

The noises seemed to be coming from near a creek that ran alongside the campground. Cautiously we wandered down to have a look. We heard a rustling on the other bank of the creek, and showed a light across to see if the spirits had a form. After waving the light around, we spotted the culprit: dingoes. Four or five of them had made their way down from the hills to the creek for a drink, and maybe to see if we had any sausages. 

They ran upon seeing our light, leaving us standing on the bank, staring into the darkness. There would be no encounters with ghosts, no spiritual experiences, on this night. 

But the next morning was different.

It was time for breakfast, and my boys had pulled out the new loaf of bread to make some toast. I volunteered for toast duty, mainly because I was standing in the kitchen and blocking the stove while I tended to the more important task of making coffee. 

Making toast is a precarious endeavour on a camp stove. Because you are cooking directly over flames, your piece of bread goes from uncooked to toasted to charcoal in a matter of moments. Thus focused attention is necessary. During the process, I noticed that the Mission’s white bread behaved a bit different than generic white bread. This bread had some substance, some pull and give, it wasn’t limp and spongy. And when it toasted, it gained a bronzed patina, caramelised and crisp. Impressed as I was, I had my gluten-free car tyres, so I left the golden toast to my boys. 

Then they started eating. ‘This bread is amazing!’ my eldest Henry said with wide eyes, crunching away. My other boy Oscar agreed, also chomping his toast like it was something special. 

It did look good, I thought, but did it taste good as well? Could I - should I - trust the opinion of my boys, two kids who thought Froot Loops were fit for brunching, and Cheezls - the ring-shaped cheesy poofs that Australian children are taught to eat off of their fingers starting in Kindergarten - a fine accompaniment to any dish?

Katie, less of a skeptic than I, and lacking any shame that would keep her from stealing food from the mouths of babes, tore off a corner of someone’s toast, to cries of objection. ‘Oh my goodness,’ she said, making happy munching sounds. The boys retreated with whatever scraps of bread they had left, like the dingoes had when we exposed them to the lights the night before.

So I relented.

Simple toast and butter was all I needed. The smell of the toasting white slice overcame me as it sat on top of our little gas camp stove. I attentively pulled off the hot bread in a timely manner, just as it turned perfectly golden. I smeared good butter across the bread’s rough face, the yellow square of butter slowly melting, seeping its way into the cracks and crevasses on the surface of the toast.

My first bite was satisfyingly crunchy, yet soft. Toasting the bread had indeed caramelised it, giving it a slightly nutty flavour that mixed with the creamy and slightly salty butter and made me close my eyes. The butter flavour lingered, almost like the bread itself was infused with the stuff, like a French brioche. This is what bread should be like, I thought.

From that point forward, the remainder of the loaf became a treasured member of the family. We coddled it, fought and argued over how best to use it, and kept detailed track of how many pieces each of us had eaten. A fight broke out between Henry and Oscar because one thought the other had eaten more than his share. We ate it fresh and toasted, with sandwiches and burgers. And each time we could not help but wax lyrically about the virtues of each slice. 

And then it was gone, too soon, and we were all left wondering: would it be worth it to drive for an hour through a rocky riverbed leading from our campsite back to town, so we could fetch another loaf?