G’day!
Welcome to Letters From the Road, and letter number 54. In this letter, we work on slaying the dragons that have come to occupy our camp.
Letters From the Road is the story of the road trip around Australia that I took with my wife and two boys back in 2019.
The story comes to you in weekly installments, featuring the journal entries I wrote during the trip. The journal entries are word-for-word, and you’ll see them highlighted in the letter.
If you missed any letters and would like to catch up, you can find the other 53 letters here, lying on the ground and pretending to be snakes.
Finally, you might notice a *new* button in your letter. New-ish, anyways. It’s been there for two weeks. I’ve cobbled together a tip jar, and if you enjoy Letters From the Road, hit the button and drop in a $2 coin or something. I’d be rapped if you did.
Be well,
Luke
When times get tough, go to the pub.
In Australia, every town and nearly every neighbourhood has a pub, so the doctor is almost always in. But what to do when you’re stuck in the bush?
Go running.
I do my best thinking when running. Lots had been happening at Parry Beach over the last couple of days, so I decided to dig out my running shoes. As luck would have it, the Bibbulmun Track ran through our campground, so I decided to give it a look and do some thinking at the same time.
The Bibbulmun is one of Australia’s longest walking trails. It starts on the east side of Perth, runs south to the ocean, and then east along the coast to Albany, a distance of 1,000 kilometres (621 miles) or so. In my current state of running fitness, I’d probably only be checking out five of the thousand kilometres, but five would be enough.
The track is marked with distinctive signs in the shape of a triangle, and a snake pointing the way.
The trail markers are not meant to be ominous. The snake symbolizes the Waugal, a Rainbow Serpent that is seen as the creator of the universe and its peoples, and is found throughout the mythology of Indigenous peoples.
I was happy to have the creator of the universe guiding my way, but regardless the sandy track, hemmed in by bushes and tall grasses on either side, seemed quite snakey to me, and I was a bit jumpy starting off.
The trail rolled up and down to start, and I was thinking each stick lying on the path meant danger. But sticks they were, and I continued on, getting more comfortable as I went. The trail started to rise, and the sand made it a slog.
The run was a bit of an escape for me, getting away from some tension in the camp. We’d all been grumpy since our arrival at Parry Beach a few days earlier, and it was frustrating to rehash in my head as I ran - we’d been arguing about Christmas dishes and raisins.
22 December 2019 - Parry Beach
Katie’s in a bad mood. Earlier she was shutting down Henry who was ranting about people who buy dishes especially for Christmas because they can only be used once per year. He called the practice ‘stupid’. Katie seemed to take offense to this, for some reason. I stood up for Henry, saying that he’s entitled to his opinion. She didn’t like that.
Then I started having a conversation with the boys about cereal, trying to figure out why they didn’t like certain ones that we buy, then moved on to a point / counterpoint discussion about ‘vine fruits’ versus ‘raisins’ - Katie was frustrated by this discussion as well. I said that we were just having a conversation.
At this exited and went to sit in the tent.
I do normally argue on the side of practicality when it comes to dish sets, and really you can call them raisins, vine fruits, or sultanas for all I care. What’s important is that they’re all terrible, and that the arguments all seemed ridiculous from where I stood looking out at the ocean.
I had stopped at the top of a rise, and looking back the way I came, I could see William Bay curving away from me in the haze. The ocean shone silver in the glare of the sun. Our campground was down there somewhere, but I could not see it in the rolling green of the coastal scrub.
This part of the Bibbulmun runs east to west, generally following the coast, so I knew that the ocean was hiding somewhere to my left as I ran. I was too low and not close enough to see it, though. Eventually I crossed a rutted track headed in the direction of the water, so I decided to leave the Bibbulmun to try and get a view.
The track wound around, going up and down through the low bushes and grasses. It crossed other tracks, and though I didn’t know where any of them went, I knew that if I kept heading south that eventually I would run into the ocean. And if I could see the bay off to the east, I could always find a track heading that direction and I would end up back at camp.
As I was working my way across the sandy hills, Katie and the boys were back at camp, probably hanging out with the family that had moved into the campsite next to ours. Mark and Sasha and their three girls are from South Australia and had been, like us, traveling around with a camper trailer for the last six months. Mark was a big guy with a bald head and a respectable beard. Sasha was skinny and tall like Mark, with long straight blond hair. The three girls were miniature versions of her.
The middle one is named Sabella. It’s a lovely name, though it concerned me, because it seemingly dooms the poor girl to a life of saying to people, ‘NO, not ISA-bella, it’s SA-Bella,’. Maybe she needs a t-shirt with that printed on the front.
They’re nice people, I think we’ll get along. Plus having them around to socialise with changes the dynamic - we can’t really bicker amongst each other about dried fruits and dishes when we’re in close quarters with other people.
When I left, Katie and Oscar were teaching the girls to make friendship bracelets. My skills with arts and crafts are sorely lacking - any bracelet I made would not earn your friendship - which was yet another reason to go running.
I continued to climb and finally gained a view of the ocean, after a long and nervous slog. From a distance, the ruts of the sandy track I was following appeared to run straight into the water. But upon closer inspection, the track actually ended at a flat spot on the edge of a cliff that dropped 100 metres into the ocean. To the east, the sheer green cliffs continued down the coast, terminating at a spot called Point Hillier.
The rainy weather seemed to be passing, and the sky was in the process of clearing itself out. Low, puffy clouds were racing across the sky, exposing spots of blue sky and wispy high clouds.
Maybe a change in the weather would help things along as well. It’d been raining since we’d arrived 3 days ago, making it hard to take advantage of the beach at Parry Beach. Instead, little used and mostly forgotten jackets and jumpers and pants were pulled out, and all of our things were things were getting damp for the first time.
It rained off and on all night. In our tent, rain is a loud affair, and I woke up each time the rattling started again. The rain yesterday was the first we’ve gotten since driving from Karijini to Exmouth, when a crazy sandstorm came through when we were inside the Nanutarra Roadhouse. That was 6 weeks ago. I don’t count some little sprinkles in Freo.
And this was surely the biggest rain we’ve gotten in the trip. By far.
It’s good to know at this point, 12 weeks in and just two weeks left in our journey, that the tent will keep us dry in a rainstorm. One less thing to worry about, I guess. Three months and so very little rain… to say Australia is a dry country is an understatement.
Just like the rain moving on, I knew the gray cloud that had enveloped the four of us since we arrived at Parry Beach could move on as well. I certainly hoped so - Christmas was two days away.
Normally the holidays were a time you look forward to spending with family, but since we’d been together for over 80 days straight, maybe what we all needed for Christmas was some time apart?
I don’t know that we had much choice in that regard.
I stayed on edge of the cliff for a while, just watching the blue water crash and foam against the rocks below. Eventually I turned to the task of heading back home. I didn’t know where I was going, which path was right, only knew that if I headed toward the bay that I’d get there eventually. As a bonus, the return trip was mostly downhill, and my momentum made up for the sand.
The run back to camp makes me think of something I read recently, a blog post entitled What Went Wrong On My Run Today, and includes a long checklist of woes that one may encounter when running.
It was put together by a writer named Brendan Leonard. He’s run ultramarathons, rode his bike across the U.S., all sorts of interesting and adventurous outdoorsy things. What makes him wonderful, though, other than the fact that he’s from my former home Iowa, is that he’s under no illusion that he’s some sort of podium-finishing professional athlete, and to that point enjoys reveling in his outdoor mishaps. He wrote a book called “I Hate Running, And You Can Too”, and publishes other writing and videos on his website Semi-Rad.
The checklist he created is very thorough, covering everything from “Was Dehydrated” to “Not enough cheering from passing pedestrians + motorists”. However it missed my particular issue, ‘Encountered a snake, broke some sort of record for long distance jumping backwards’.
As I was happily running through the coastal banksia, short peppermint trees, and other grasses on my return trip back to camp, one of the sticks lying across the path turned out to be not a stick at all and began moving as I was almost upon it. It was long and dark, all one colour, and slid quickly into the tall grass on the side of the path.
I simultaneously stopped on a dime, jumped in the air in fright like some sort of petrified cartoon character, while also flying backward to put distance in between myself and the snake. I’m surprised I didn’t hurt myself with all the bodily gymnastics this required.
I’m not 100% sure, but I believe that it was likely a species of brown snake called the dugite. The dugite is not found on the Top 10 lists of Australia’s most dangerous snakes, though it does rate as venomous and not one to trifle with. A bite from the dugite would have given me a couple of hours to crawl back to camp before dying.
Even after my record setting jump backwards, I retreated a couple of extra steps. What now? Surely, I thought, the snake was angry at my intrusion, and had coiled itself just at the edge of the grass, waiting to strike as I went past.
So I took a deep breath and sprinted past the point where the snake had entered the brush, and kept going for far longer than I needed to, slowing only when I approached another stick lying across the path. Run, stop, run, stop, I was determined to not be surprised again. Grinding along like I was stuck in traffic, I eventually made it back to camp.
23 December 2019 - Parry Beach
Mark and Sasha, our neighbors, are good people and we sat around the campfire with them again tonight. Henry joined us, which was great, and he was comfortable enough to jump into the conversation. I don’t think that’s normal for a 13-year old to sit around and chat with adults.
Going to bed tonight, the campsite is dead quiet, which is good. There’s no moon that I can see, so it’s also dark as anything, and the sky is clear, so the stars are as bright as any of the Christmas lights you’ll find scattered around.
One thing I’ll remember about Parry’s was the interesting kid dynamic. We had some walkie talkies, and on our first day the boys had figured out what radio channel the campground kids were using. To have some fun and cause trouble, they would get on the channel and shout, in a voice as American sounding as they could muster, ‘This is Leuitenant Colonel Jones of the United States Army, who gave you permission to use this channel?’, and then ran with the joke from there.
They eventually got found out, were chased away and caught by a large and rowdy group.
Henry spun this into becoming ‘the most popular kid in camp’, according to Oscar. All the kids wanted to play with Henry, and Oscar was a bit crestfallen. I’ve never seen this dynamic amongst the boys before, with one of them being left out of some group action. Oscar sat quietly as the all the kids rolled by, always asking for Henry.
Then the next day Oscar took matters into his own hands. That afternoon, with Henry off leading his band of merry kids, he went to the car pulled out his armour.
In a special place where craftiness, necessity and boredom collide, at some point during our trip Oscar had crafted a suit of armour out of cardboard and string.
He could then either slip over his head or step into it. I took a black marker and wrote ‘Shining Armor’ on the front, and he fashioned a square helmet out of an old wine carton. It seemed he was steeling himself against the surly kids of the campground.
Maybe he thought he needed something to give him a little more courage to face a bunch of kids who hadn’t wanted anything to do with him the day before. Maybe he just wanted something to make himself noticed. Maybe all of the above.
Amazingly, wonderfully, in a superb turnaround, the next thing I knew the kids were stopping by and asking for Oscar. He was dubbed Sir Awesome, the Cardboard Knight. His court consisted of Jet Scar (a.k.a. Angus Khan), King Mastermind, Sir Lady’s Man (named such because he’d been beat up by two little girls who struck fear in all throughout camp), and Thunder Master.
Henry had now become the villain, Henry the Giant, because he was taller than most of the younger kids. He happily took on this mantle, and with Oscar and his court in tow, they chased Henry around the campground, having adventures.
It was a happy ending to our stay at Parry Beach, one that didn’t start out as much of a fairy tale.
Tomorrow would be Christmas eve, and we were headed to the town of Albany to spend it at that most festive of places, a caravan park.