Author Notes
An amicably divorced 49 year old father of two grown-up kids, Derek loves the music of Bach and Beethoven, the movies of Kurosawa and Kubrick, Wake In Fright, The Wire and Mad Men, the podcasts of ABC Radio National, the popular science books of Paul Davies and Oliver Sacks as well as popular writings by a wide range of authors such as JM Coetzee, Bernard Cornwell, David Marr, Patrick White, Paul Theroux, Joseph Conrad, de Saint-Exupery and Ruth Park.
Whilst supporting his family, Derek worked in a wide variety of environments including the BHP steelworks, Shell oil refinery, electricity generation and in technology and sales roles with a number of banking / finance institutions located in Sydney. He has worked in nearby countries such as India, The Philippines, China, Malaysia and Fiji.
Nowadays he lives simply and frugally in a little house on the Central Coast, with rainwater tanks in the back yard and rooftop panels that generate more solar power than he uses. Derek runs a web design business from home to keep the bills paid whilst pursuing his lifelong dream of writing. He is often seen walking to the beach with a surfboard under his arm.
Derek spent nearly a year driving solo around Australia in a 4WD camper. He was humbled by the landscapes and even more humbled by the people he met.
Synopsis
Having juggled the starting of a brand new business with looking after a house and two teenage kids for four years, Derek is ready for a break by the time his wife returns. Departing for a solo 4WD camper trip around Australia, he has no itinerary nor any idea of how long he will be away. All he has decided, is to turn left at the Pacific Highway as it snakes its way past his Sydney suburb up the eastern seaboard.
During his eleven months on the road, he swims with manta rays and whale sharks off Ningaloo Reef, wanders through the alien beehives of the Bungle Bungles/Purnululu, rescues 4WDs and a pair of Japanese tourists stranded in the middle of a creek with their large motorcycle, surfs secret reef breaks in WA, faces off cassowaries in the depths of the Mission Beach rainforest, revels in the abundant waters and rock art of Kakadu and Ubirr, is enveloped in the mystique of Kata Tjuta and Uluru, dives the Ribbon Reefs off the Daintree, is trapped barefoot amongst snakes at night, glimpses the green flash of sunset off Vlaming Head, surfs sharky Cactus, snorkels with the friendly seals of Jurien Bay, is forced by sun blindness to drive along unfenced dirt tracks at night amidst vast mobs of kangaroos and drives across the full 1500km width of the camel-infested Sandy and Gibson Deserts of WA not once but twice.
Although Derek travels alone, he never feels lonely. He gains a deep admiration for the people of outback Australia, discovering that the further you are from the trappings of civilisation, the more you can rely on your fellow human beings and the safer you feel. Resourceful, kindly and always willing to impart their hard-won knowledge, it is never too much trouble for a local or fellow traveller to lend you a hand.
Through the use of his laptop computer and wireless internet, he continues to generate income from his web design business whilst travelling through remote Australia. Discovering the delights of listening to music and radio podcasts in the absolute dark and quiet of the night, he gets to thinking about the bigger questions in life – such as the limits to music and art, epigenetics, global warming, multiple universes and the power of human choice.
During the long hours driving alone, he sometimes experiences flashbacks to his childhood and debates these and other issues with friends and first loves from his past. As his trip nears its end, there is an emergency dash back to Sydney. His son is lying comatose and totally unresponsive in intensive care. The diagnosis confirms complete brain death due to prolonged oxygen starvation, but, armed with a deeper understanding of life from his travels, Derek believes in a very different outcome.
This is the very personal story of a mind-expanding 32,000km solo journey around Australia that culminates in heart-rending choices and the eventual triumph of human choice over destiny.
CHAPTER 1
Departure
yearnings surgings shuddering tremors and burnings
writhing in the tumult and torment
of unspoken longings
quivery thrills
ice shivers
cascading down my limbs
oh, torturous dreams, release me
or else take me
WITH THE NEVER-ENDING PACKING AND LAST MINUTE REPAIRS, my departure date had already slipped two days. My head was head aching as I stowed the last of my personal, computer and work essentials into the 4WD camper parked in the street outside our house. I wryly remembered how Jacquie and I had carried everything we needed on our pushbikes during a cycling holiday in Tasmania.
I was packing a lot more this time, though – trying to cater for all the contingencies associated with travelling through many thousands of kilometres of remote Australian landscape. Cooking utensils, plates and cutlery. Bedclothes, pillows, clothing and toiletries. My work folders and laptop computer. A surfboard, snorkelling gear and a folding pushbike. A Nikon digital SLR camera, iPod, CDs, videos and books. Spares, tools and recovery equipment for venturing into even the harshest parts of this great continent.
Based on a 1991 Toyota Landcruiser Troopcarrier, a rugged go-anywhere 4WD, my Troopy was named Shiralee after the classic Australian bush novel by D’Arcy Niland and included a built-in electric fridge, loads of cupboard space, a twin burner gas stove and a pop-up roof to provide sleeping space at night. Reassuringly stoic, it was parked at the bottom of a short twisted cul-de-sac cut deep into the edge of the Hawkesbury sandstone plateau in the bushland suburb of Hornsby Heights. With so much now stowed in the vehicle, it was becoming increasingly difficult to live in the house. I had to sever the umbilical cord – it was time to leave.
It was late March and moisture-laden clouds were billowing in from the warm Pacific Ocean. Torrents of rain tumbled down the shoulders of the harbourside city. Restless swallows jagged across the grey above, until, finally yielding to the tug of the tropics, they all suddenly disappeared.
I had no fixed route for my own journey into the tropics. All I knew, is that I wanted to reach the opposite side of Australia for the Whale Shark season, peaking in June/July, when these beautifully spotted huge fish pay their annual visit to Ningaloo Reef. I had long been mesmerised by fantasies of swimming with these harmless giants in the clear blue waters.
The remote, desolate coast of northwestern Western Australia held a deep and mysterious attraction for me.
I had often declared to Jacquie, “When we retire, we should move away from Sydney and live in a little shack, on a deserted beach somewhere in northwest WA.”
Jacquie would tilt her head quizzically and gently laugh at my eccentricity.
Living shoulder to shoulder in a city of 5 million, I craved getting away from the crowds. Above all, I was haunted by a desire for simplicity. I wanted a life distilled down to the very basics. A little hut, baking in the hot sun near the crisp white sands, with fishing rod and surfboard leaning against the wall, a rickety stove in the corner, books to keep me company and a bed to dream in.
With Jacquie now wanting a separation, all my dreams of a richly rewarding urban life together had been crushed. My primal yearning for beaches, sunshine, isolation and simplicity was all that was left.
We had lived in our Hornsby Heights house for more than twenty years. Our son and daughter had moved out a week ago to share rental accommodation with some friends closer to their university. Sitting out on the silent deck after their departure, the house seemed unbearably empty, their bedrooms vacant and desolate.
It felt eerie to be leaving Sydney with no idea of when I’d be back. Questions cascaded through my mind as the camper slowly chugged up the steep little hill to the main road.
How far would a sixteen year old vehicle with 258,300 km on the odometer take me before breaking down? Would I get lonely? Would I really be able to continue my web design business whilst travelling? How soon would I run out of money?
I stopped at my parents’ place to say goodbye. There was something poignant about the way my Dad watched me reverse down the driveway for my 30,000km journey.
He watched my departure with concern, arms folded. I knew what he was thinking. Did the throbbing diesel sound healthy? Were there any oily stains or suspicious drips left on the driveway? Did the tyres look properly inflated? Was the pop-up roof properly retracted? Was anything hanging loose?
My father’s final check-off reminded me of dawn departures from Sydney airport on business trips.
After the doors had been closed and our jet had been pushed from the departure gate, the younger ground crew would quickly turn their backs on the plane and return to the comforts of their warm office.
The older engineers were wiser to the inconsistent vagaries of man and machine, however. With interphone in hand and overalls flapping in the wind, they would run a carefully considered eye along the aircraft as we taxied away.
Were the baggage doors latched flush with the fuselage? Were all the pitot heads clear? Was anything left dangling down from under the belly? Were there any leaks from the fuel tanks or from the engines, slung pod-like under shiny wings streaked with early morning dew?
Any of these factors could down an aircraft. They knew. More than this, they felt.
It was 21st March 2007. The clock showed 11:45am. I knew that my Dad felt.
CHAPTER 2
Baptism – The First Night
like an endlessly skipping stone
bouncing smooth and round and hard
o’er the eternal stillness of the deep black pond
soft meniscus of sleep
touching slow motion embracing
only to flip back hard
into wakefulness
endless thoughts skimming
vast contorted mindscapes
those sleepless summer nights
SMALL SWELLS PULSED SILENTLY TOWARD THE SAND, rippling in from a limpid Pacific Ocean beyond. With a desultory toss of the head, each little wave toppled over. The foamy edges coasted gently towards the scalloped shoreline, before finally expiring along a sinuous line of vanishing froth. Long rolls of heavy cloud squeezed the orange bands of dusk like the coils of a python.
I had arrived at Halliday Beach on the mid north coast, with its long row of family holiday cottages stretched out along the sea. I drove up onto an empty block and pulled up near one of the patches of unkempt grass set amidst the crumbly sand.
After turning the key to the off position, my hearing suddenly felt numb in the quiet that followed. I opened the door and stepped down from the running board. Walking around to the rear of the Troopy, I opened the two doors and climbed up in the back.
I unhooked the canvas fasteners and the four main clasps that keep the roof safely down whilst driving. With an upwards shove, the canvas walls unfolded on all four sides and the spring-loaded scissor arms pushed the entire rooftop upwards, expanding the interior space by another half.
With the roof popped up, I could now stand upright. A narrow carpeted corridor ran up the centre of the vehicle, a bit over two metres in length from the rear doors to the front seats. The passageway to the front was partly blocked by a large red cricket bag containing my bedding roll, which I lifted and tossed onto the shelf above the driving cabin.
My kitchen, dining room, study and bedroom for the next eleven months measured just 1.4m wide and 2m high.
Opening the canvas windows allowed a wash of cool air to come flooding in through the mosquito netting.
Outside, the oncoming evening was drawing dark wings across the turbulent sky. I wanted to dive into the water before it got too dark. I started looking for my bathers.
I opened one of the beige cupboards and drawers that lined the righthand side of the vehicle. Not being able to find my swimmers amongst my collection of shorts, underwear and socks, I snapped the little clothing cupboard closed.
A flat benchtop ran across the top of these cupboards, hiding a two-burner gas stove and griller and with a little stainless steel sink for the washing up.
The cupboard immediately beneath the sink held my cutlery, a pot for boiling rice and a pan for frying the mouth-watering fish that would come fresh to my doorstep.
Adjacent cupboards held my clothes, as well as my Toshiba computer, carefully buffered with fleecy tops to protect it from being damaged; for those rough 4WD tracks in the outback.
The laptop was not only for keeping contact with family and friends. It also allowed me to continue my web design work and keep the cash coming in whilst travelling. Stored in drawers alongside the laptop, were computer disks and a Nikon SLR camera, with which I was to take thousands of photos.
Containers of spare engine oil, gearbox fluid and coolant took up the lower portion of the cupboard at the front. I also kept my aerials there, which allowed me to work from a deserted beach thousands of kilometres away from my unknowing customers.
The HF radio antenna, a fishing rod and awning were all slipped into the tight space between the cupboards and windows on the right.
All the lower windows had curtains that could be drawn across for privacy.
A large metal toolbox, screwdriver set, portable drill, folding picnic table and chair were crammed behind my ergonomically sprung driver’s seat.
Having surveyed the entire right side of the vehicle’s interior, I still could not think where I had packed my swimmers.
I could more quickly rifle through the left side, where most of the space taken up by the Liemack fridge/freezer and a two seater couch.
A total of five hidden storage compartments held a staggering amount of emergency gear for the vehicle. It was reassuring to know that items such as the following were safely stashed away: spare tubes, bead breaker, puncture repair kit, bullbag for extra lift, winch anchor, chains, shackles, tommy axe, saw, spare belts and hoses, snatch ‘em strap, tree trunk protector, tow rope, various bolts and studs, fuses and fusible links, workshop manual and even a spare water pump and fuel filter.
In addition, a hi-lift jack, short and long handled shovels were strapped in under the front bullbar.
Looking through to the front cabin was the CB radio, an HF radio for long range communications with the Royal Flying Doctor service and a GPS that I could easily detach for walking in the bush. There was also an emergency beacon in case I needed to send a plea for emergency assistance via the ever-present orbiting satellites above.
A 1kVA Yamaha generator and battery charger were located in the footwell below the front passenger seat. The generator was to become exceedingly useful in the outback, chugging quietly in the background whilst sipping only parsimonious amounts of petrol. It allowed my fridge and laptop to run day after day in the remotest parts of Australia.
The front passenger area also held a folding pushbike, which I hardly ever used during my trip, but never quite could bring myself to dispose of, despite it occupying the entire front seat.
I knew that people died every year of dehydration in the Australian desert and had no wish to become a statistic myself. In addition to the more than 70 litres available from the two inbuilt steel tanks and plastic bottles, I also had an extra 10 litre emergency container stashed under the fridge.
A Warn winch was bolted onto the front of the vehicle to bootstrap myself out of trouble and an onboard air compressor was mounted behind the passenger seat for inflating the tyres after my frequent sojourns onto the soft beach sand around the coastlines of Australia.
Apart from all the necessary equipment, a metal container spanning the gap between the couch and the front passenger seat brimmed with reading material, maps, a bird identification book and travel guides.
The books ranged from solo adventurer books like Dead Lucky by climber Lincoln Hall and Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St Louis to epic poems like Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas and Raka by NP Van Wyk Louw, to be read aloud against the background of dingoes howling in the stillness of the outback night.
Also, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John le Carré, 2010 Odyssey Two by Arthur C Clarke, The Burnt Ones by Patrick White, Shakespeare’s The Complete Works and the ubiquitous Roget’s Thesaurus.
I also had my beloved 80GB iPod to listen to. Not only did it contain vast amounts of music but it also held the most recent podcasts of ABC Radio National programmes that I would download each week.
My surfboard stretched along the fridge and two-seater couch. A wetsuit and snorkelling gear lay hidden in the storage area below.
Even a Troopy has to run out of storage eventually! It was with regret that I left my radio controlled airplane at home.
Despite all it could hold, the camper was only slightly longer than a family sedan and could fit into any standard shopping parking space.
Now, where were those bathers? Then I remembered the very last rear-opening cupboard. It was all too easy to forget about this one, since you needed to climb out the back of the vehicle and swing open the rear door before being able to access it. Here were the miscellaneous items like buckets, torches, first aid kit, towball etc – as well as my bathers and towel. They were stuffed in to stop the heavy towball from bouncing around.
Having retrieved my swimmers at last, I changed and clambered out the back doors. Challenging to the brooding stillness around me, I ran out onto the sand and dove into the little shore-break.
I loved the sea. Ever since the days of high school, when sunny days and the astringent Indian Ocean acted as a miracle cure for my torrid teenager skin, the sea has always been my gym and mental health retreat. Swimming, surfing and snorkelling in the ocean connects me to nature, liberates my soul and keeps me feeling fit and healthy.
That the wind, waves and oceans around the world give away all of these body and mind benefits liberally and without charge, is a source of wonderment to me.
The little waves held up taut and trim as I bodysurfed beneath the darkening sky.
It was nearing the end of summer and the holiday houses were looking shabby and weary after four months of eating, drinking, bingeing, playing and sex.
I, on the other hand, felt refreshed and energized, dashing through the salty shallows with abandon; my pounding feet exploding fans of water out beside me.
Walking back to the empty block, I rinsed off under an outdoor shower, towelled my skin dry and climbed back into the camper feeling invigorated and content; my first day of travelling complete.
CHAPTER 3
Into the Cool of the Mountains
the pedestal lurches back and forth
he can nearly touch the jagged walls
punctuated by gulping tuba mouths
big enough to swallow a man
down, down, down he goes
until, deep as a kite flies high,
he tugs on the cord and
the podium jerks to a stop
swinging and swaying
he kicks the gangplank
across the yawning gap
to the other world
THE MORNING SKIES WERE STREWN WITH LEFTOVER CLOUD after the storm. The air was still, the sea mirror smooth and the rising sun was trying to beat down the billowy clouds amidst a sky of surreal beauty.
The scene reminded me of a surrealistic painting I had seen a couple of years earlier. A friend had invited me along to a piano concert at the Bellevue home of James Agapitos and Ray Wilson. During the interlude, with my friend Colin chatting with pianists over a cup of tea out on the balcony, I wandered back inside and immersed myself in the magnificent art collection. A large Gleeson, spanning more than two metres across, exploded out of the wall in a rich intensity of colour, shrouded in deep swirls of allegorical mystery.
“What do you think?” a man with sand-coloured hair asked, suddenly appearing at my elbow and startling me out of my reverie.
“I don’t know,” I replied honestly, “it seems to be a storm of some kind, and it looks pretty sensual, but I can’t make out anything much else.”
“I think it depicts orgasm” the man said very definitely.
He expanded upon his thesis, showing me hidden penises and explosive ejaculations buried in the painting. I felt sympathy for the poor blushing girl that had arrived mid-flow, holding out a tray of sandwiches for us to choose from.
I rejoined Colin out on the balcony overlooking the lovely foreshores of Sydney harbour and found Evgeny Ukhanov amongst the mingling musical talent. Evgeny was a gifted young pianist from the Ukraine, achieving a top finalist spot in the prestigious Sydney International Piano Competition when he was only 18 years old.
Whilst talking with him, I discovered that he was living in a unit in Hornsby, near to where I was living. Evgeny was lamenting in his soft Russian accent that he had to leave the unit, this was due to neighbours complaining about the noise.
You have one of the world’s most talented young pianists living in your block of units, so what do you do? Do you stop him in the courtyard for an autograph? Do you tell your friends to come over and throw open your windows to hear the most exquisitely played music, free of charge?
No, you complain to the body corporate and you ask for him to be evicted.
I was ashamed of our inhospitable behaviour towards the young Russian virtuoso. Taking my mind off my mortification, I took advantage of a break in the conversation, standing out there in the sunshine, sipping tea and nibbling on the small cut sandwiches.
“I’d like,” I said, “with your permission, to ask a stupid question.”
The musicians around me nodded.
“I’ve often wondered why somuch classical music was composed in the times of Vivaldi, Bach, Beethoven and Mozart but so little in the 20th century,” I said.
“What about Prokofiev – and are we not also forgetting about Stravinsky and Shostakovich” asked Evgeny, looking slightly offended.
“Yes, you’re right,” I conceded, “but how about we take the second half of the 20th century – how many quality works have been added to the classical repertoire since 1950?”
“Tastes change,” Evgeny shrugged.
I wondered about that.
Lovers of classical music all around the world continue to pay good money to hear these talented young musicians play classical pieces. I imagined some wunderkind going against the present day cultural tide and composing a Beethoven-esque symphony. Or a set of keyboard variations like those by Bach in the early 18th century.
Imagine how orchestras would leap at the opportunity to showcase a symphony by the new Beethoven!
I worked on some database scripting for one of my customer websites. The clouds were soon banished from the skies and it became warm inside the Troopy, its outer skin steaming gently in the mid-morning sun. After consulting a map, I packed everything away, pulled down the roof and drove towards the cool inland mountains of the Kippara State Forest, leaving only tyre tracks in the sandy ocean block behind.
Whilst climbing up through the green foothills and winding valleys past scattered dairy cattle and horse paddocks, my thoughts drifted back towards the question of modern versus classical styles of music.
I began by thinking about technology rather than music. Why, I asked myself rhetorically, do we adopt new generations of cars, computers and portable devices? Well, the answer was obvious – modern vehicles were safer, more environmentally friendly, more comfortable and more reliable – and every new computer we bought had more disk space, more memory, a longer battery life and double the performance than the last.
Unlike new technology, however, each new style of Music or Art was not measurably better than the last. New works could certainly be exciting, different and interesting. But they were not better than the old, otherwise the works of Handel, Rembrandt, Turner, Shakespeare, Conrad, Rodin and Michelangelo would all have disappeared from our lives as completely as the hand-held abacus had in the technology world.
The road was getting narrow and winding, with the occasional steep corner as my Toyota and I toiled our way up through the valleys.
Good. This meant I was getting further into the mountains, separating myself from the maddening crowds below.
I slowed down as the Troopy approached a short steep decline, overhung with dark forest, deep-rooted along the winding stream. We rattled over an old timber bridge in the black shade and I gunned her up the other side – back into sunshine and past some battered horse jumps strewn amongst an unkempt field to the left.
My reverie deepened. If we accept that millions of people still listen to classical music – then it must obviously still be much loved.
“You’re asking why people don’t compose music in the classical style nowadays. Well, first of all, what do you mean by classical style?” she asked.
Silk-screened against the blue sky ahead, a girl was sitting on a beach towel. Her head was resting pensively on knees drawn together and her right hand slowly caressing the sand as she spoke. I was just fourteen years old and we were perched on a little sand dune overlooking the glittering ocean.
A friend of some distant relatives, Melanie had been staying at our house for two days, waiting for a coach to the neighbouring city. The first day had dawned with sunny promise and my mother had asked me to take our guest down to the nearby beach for a swim.
After getting off the bus near the beachside cafe, we followed the path into the nearby littoral forest. We saw a group of vervet monkeys pitching through the trees above us.
“They sometimes sit on a branch and tease my dog. They just sit there, looking into the distance, their tails dangling just above his frantic leaps. He barks so much he loses his voice. They have this bored expression on their face but I think they secretly enjoy it!”
She laughed.
“Once our history teacher was held up by a troop of baboons you know. They were getting closer, they must have smelt food on him or something. Mr Carlson is a big guy but baboons can be pretty aggressive and have huge teeth – luckily there was a metal rubbish bin nearby and he picked up the lid and beat on it with a stick and they eventually moved off.”
I could feel her body close to me as we walked barefoot along the soft sandy track.
We emerged onto the open sand and the blue ocean sparkled and danced to the offshore breeze. When she stepped out of her yellow frock, I felt unfamiliar stirrings in my blood. She was so close, her breasts cupped and the coloured triangle stretched taut below her soft belly. My mind was whirring in a tumultuous mix of confusion and desire. I needed to get away, to try to think, to try to work out what to do.
“I’m going for a surf,” I said.
“Sure, I’ll lie here and enjoy the sun.”
With Melanie soaking up the heat on a little sandy hill behind me, I slid my Bilbo Baggins surfboard into the water and paddled into the peeling break. Out of nowhere, a pod of dolphins suddenly appeared and flicked their shiny black bodies in and out of the jade waves. My heart was bursting with deep kinship and affinity, I yearned to be as joyful, skilled and unafraid as they were. They surfaced close, their glistening backs arching out of the water. So close I could see their blowholes opening and closing and hear the suck and exhalation of their breathing in and out. As my board sank into the trough before the oncoming waves, their shapes flitted sideway inside the translucent wall above me.
Exultant, I returned to where Melanie was sunbaking and dropped my board in the sand alongside. I playfully shook my wet head, spraying her golden skin with cold water droplets, telling her all about the dolphins, she smiling the whole time, her lips parted and eyes gleaming. It seemed miraculous that pure chance had conjured up such an alluring girl, sitting here on the beach next to me. A sudden rush of pride and possession filled my mind.
Once we had snuggled back down into the warm sand, Melanie said “I’ve been thinking – you say that people don’t compose music in the classical style nowadays, but what do you mean by the classical style?”
Lying alongside her, feeling ripples of unfamiliar yet intense pleasure flooding through my body, I tried to think.
“Well, by the classics, I mean starting from around the time of Bach, then through Mozart,” I said, “and then into the time of the romantics like Beethoven and his successors. Maybe up to the early 1900’s or so?”
“Oh” she said, continuing to sweep her hand in slow circles on the white sand next to her towel, “but you must know that music changed a lot during that time”.
She paused. My gaze slid up her slender arm, still sketching patterns in the sand, up past her naked shoulder. In my mind, I could feel my lips gently pressed in the hollow of her neck.
“Even if you take just one composer, like your Beethoven, for example. His early sonatas are classical, his late sonatas are romantic and his last string quartets are so damn abstract that they are completely different again,” she said, lifting her hand away from the sand and now resting back on her elbows.
There was challenge in her brown eyes. My roused instincts were burning, knowing the destination – but being despairing of how to get there.
Having left the coastline and valleys, I entered the Kippara State Forest in the New South Wales hinterland. The muddy track was surrounded by tall trees with narrow trunks, putting all of their energies into stretching upwards towards the light above. I stopped and clambered out, my body stiff.
Visiting each front wheel in turn, I twisted the hubs into the 4WD lock position. Moving to the front, I hung onto the bullbar and swung down onto my haunches, looking underneath the vehicle for any leaks or loose bits hanging down.
With the underside looking reassuringly tidy and the front wheels locked, I slotted the lever into high range 4WD and I started down the dirt track for the Wilsons River turn-off. It was meant to be an area for day visits only, but the mountains seemed devoid of people and I hoped no-one would mind me camping down there for the night.
I ruminated on the truth of what Melanie had said – that Beethoven had progressed through at least three different styles of music during his lifetime.
His early works were along the lines of traditional Haydn-like compositions, formally constructed and tightly constrained. Then, whilst still a young man, Beethoven moved onto what Lockwood called a “high road of Romanticism, with its insistence on the power of immediate emotional experience…physical and sexual passion”.[1] His final string quartets belonged, however, “to a special and rarefied plane of musical thought”[2]. These transcendental works were the culmination of Beethoven’s monumental life of incandescent musical passion, a passion that blazed out from encircling stockades of deafness and pain.
What a wondrous wilderness was starting to envelope me! After parking the vehicle, the air outside felt fresh and cool.
There were three different walking trails into the depths of the forest. I began with a short meander called the Botanical Walk, where signposts pointed out some of the trees towering overhead – including Sassafras, Coachwoods and Strangler Figs – as well as the quaintly named Walking Stick Fern with its ramrod stem stretching up from the forest floor below.
The second walk was called the Waterfall Walk. It was even more enticing, culminating in the clear depths of a beautiful plunge pool beneath the waterfall. What bliss it was to strip off my clothes, surrounded only by wilderness, and sink into the cool water swirling over crunchy round pebbles. After clambering out, I stood for a while, rejoicing in the cascade of nature around me and waiting for my dripping body to dry off enough for clothes again.
I returned to the car barefoot, stepping around the multi-hued fungi that decorated the forest floor. A brush turkey scuttled across the path and lizards darted for their holes as I passed. The air rang with constant bird calls from amongst the hanging birds nest ferns and mossy bark of the tree plumage above.
Climbing back into the driver’s seat, I continued down to the Wilson River day camping area.. It was nestled in the deep shade of a valley with dark festooned forest climbing up the steep slopes on all sides. The Troopy coasted to a stop near the gurgling mountain stream. There was no-one else and it was beautiful.
After popping up the roof to give myself enough headroom in the back, I emptied a can of beef stew into a pot and heated it on the gas stove, eating whilst I read, dipping slices of bread into the warm tasty stew. Finishing my meal with a cleansing green apple, I switched off the light and climbed out for a stroll. There was just a faint silhouette of the ground, quickly fading into black in front of me. Whilst the surrounding forest remained impenetrable, a small part of the track in front of me gradually etched itself out of the darkness.
Amongst the desultory pops of occasional frog calls from the utter blackness beyond, there came the barely perceptible swish of a tawny frogmouth (or was it an owl?) brushing the air near my head with downy soft feather strokes.
Ethereal curtains of tiny laser blue lights appeared on my right as I walked up the hill – wondrous wavy dotted threads of pure unblinking blue, studded on black and just out of reach – looking like tiny blazing lantern droplets cast by the wands of fairies onto translucent folds of gauze hanging against the pungent dark depths of the hidden forest behind.
Entranced and curious, I returned with a torch. The beam revealed sticky threads hanging from roots exposed by the road cutting. Tiny translucent bodies hung on the threads – the size of pinheads – miniature dewy drops of light strung along like microscopic pearls. I discovered that they could move away surprisingly quickly when I placed a fingertip nearby.
Climbing into bed that beautiful dark quiet night alongside Wilson River, my thoughts returned to the way music moved relentlessly from one style to the next, never to return to the previous.
“I suppose it all depends on where you think the music comes from”, said Melanie dreamily, lying back on her towel, her body achingly beautiful. “Was it hidden inside Beethoven’s brain? Or did it come from outside, and good old Ludwig was just a convenient conduit for it?” Suddenly that seemed to be a crucial question.
Was music woven into the very cloth of the cosmos? But how? And if so, why did it matter?
The next morning, I woke to exuberant birdsong with the stream burbling under the bridge alongside my campsite. It dawned on me why the source of music mattered. If music was forged solely by individual creativity from within the composer’s brain – then they, their contemporaries and successors could continue to compose music of a particular genre forever, since each new brain brought new music.
If, on the other hand, new music was accessed from some external cosmic repository, then maybe there was only so much music available in the universe. Composers of a particular genre of music might be forced to move to a new style because the previous genre had been depleted and there was no more.
I imagined a giant mining operation, with many different ore bodies. A particularly rich vein – now called Baroque Music – was discovered at the start of the 17th century in Europe. After being excavated by the formidable intellectual prowess of the likes of Bach, Vivaldi and Handel, there was no more worthwhile baroque music to be found and this particular seam had to be abandoned.
Another had to be found – this turned out to be the one we now call Classical. This new seam was mined out through composers like the prolific Haydn, with more than one hundred symphonies to his name, and the irrepressible Mozart.
Once this second body of ore had been depleted, a third Romantic seam was discovered and hollowed out by the likes of Beethoven, Chopin and Schubert.
Here, for example, is how I see Beethoven composing his monumental Grosse Fugue:-
the miner broods hunchbacked
against the bitter sheddings of rain
that sweep across the moonscape
of rough-piled rock tailings
he walks out onto the rickety timber platform
that hangs and swings tick-tock
in grotesque inverted mimicry
above the open maw
the pedestal lurches back and forth
he can nearly touch the jagged walls
punctuated by gulping tuba mouths
big enough to swallow a man
down, down, down he goes
until, deep as a kite flies high,
he tugs on the cord and
the podium jerks to a stop
swinging and swaying
he kicks the gangplank
across the yawning gap
to the other world
inside the tunnel he crouches down
deaf as a chock, pick axe striking at blank rock
until sparks of sulphurous alchemy fly
into air ringing with dropped notes
sawing and propping like a madman
to hold, hold, hold against the discord
with predatory growl and fierce joy
amidst hellish syncopation he strikes true
thunderous chords echo about the cavern walls
answered by the strident trumpeting of an epoch of elephants
as they pound the vast drumming ground, surrounded by horses
galloping their orbits of perfect synchronicity
spittle flying from their whinnying mouths
hemmed in by the shuddering waves of contrapuntal dissonance
with charcoal eyes pining for the long-lost meadows above
…they keep the beat
earthquakes shake shrill shrieks of
complaint from the tearing rocks
folding about them like putty
…and still they keep the beat
drawn taut as a wire close to madness
where no-one has been before
air shivering, tightrope walking
glass shards of sound clashing
threatening to bring
the whole great misshapen
stupendous creation
crashing to the floor
the deaf miner, a Moorish
magician, marches gaily
across the ice-cold
subterranean streams
a mischievous moth
darting amongst ethereal
cloistered chandeliers
of unheard sound
an underworld goat
leaping the rough hewn steps
higher and higher to where
dangerous gases and golden orbs hang
here he catches brief glimpses of Elysium
green meadows below puffy white clouds
and black swans with graceful necks
reflected in shimmering ponds
it is dusk in the world above before the stooped shadow
of a blackened man stumbles past the abacuses
of tadpoles and bubbles
hiding in dark puddles
to rest before the next dawn
to be drawn back to the seam
after all, his claim on it
is only temporary
Baroque, Classical, Romantic. And so on and so forth – with generations of composers mining out many different cosmic ore bodies – right up to the modern day including Jazz, Rock, Reggae, Pop and all the other musical genres of our western culture.
———————–
As a footnote, composer Philip Glass put forward a similar idea, as I was to discover when watching his biography[3] on television, around one year after returning from my trip around Australia:
“Where does music come from?” (question from the interviewer)
“Like an underground river”, came Philip’s reply “Like an underground river, you don’t know where it has come from, and you don’t know where it is going. The only difference is whether you are listening to it or not. For me, writing music, is listening to music. I don’t think of it – I listen to it. In other words it is already there, it is not something that has to be imagined.”
“I’d begin by hearing very little”, he continued. “Very little. I hear something and I train myself to follow the sound. Follow the thought of the sound. To follow the sound of the sound, and eventually I’ll hear what it is”.
———————–
Whether we think of music as hidden seams of gold ore or as an underground river, it appears to lie outside the conscious mind. Composers of today could not compose any new works in the old classical styles even if they wanted to, all the worthwhile Baroque, Classical and Romantic music having already been extracted during the previous centuries.
Here then, lay the answer to the question I had posed to the classical pianists out in the sunshine on the Bellevue Hill balcony.
Why were new works of classical music not being composed?
The answer was both simple and profound – it was because our cosmos held no more!
This meant that any attempts to create new works in old styles, would be destined to be either repetitive or derivative. It was no wonder modern composers found new styles of music to compose in – they had to.
So could humanity be facing an end to musical creativity soon, with all the worthwhile seams of music having been mined out? And what of visual art? Was it also subject to the same grim prognosis?
I finished my breakfast and strode through the damp chill of the dewy grass to wash my cereal bowl in the gurgling river. It was a lovely morning with clear blue skies aloft.
After striking camp, I felt adventurous and explored some of the 4WD trails on the way out of the mountains, the Troopy hemmed in by the verdant promiscuity of towering mossy trees and dense ferny gullies.
Dropping down below the mountains and forests, back in 2WD and cruising with ease towards the New South Wales coast, I could see goosebumps on Melanie’s arms, hazy and golden in the late afternoon sun.
Realizing that the shadows cast by the dunes behind would soon overtake our remaining patch of beach warmth, we rose sun-weary and sea-doped. After shaking the loose sand from our towels, we slowly made our way along the sandy track. I felt tired, but captivated by the rush of new feelings from our day on the beach together.
Heading towards the change rooms, two large log cabins laid end-to-end shady and dark under the littoral forest, Melanie tackled my new cosmic limit principle, “What about those software programmes, the ones that produce unlimited music in the style of Bach and Mozart?”, she asked, “Where does that music come from, if it is all supposed to be gone?”
“Have you listened to any of it?” I queried, “It’s not the same, it doesn’t sound the same, it sounds all dry and brittle, there’s just no spark to it.”
Software-generated music was a kind of fool’s gold, I thought to myself, especially when pitched against the real lustrous metal mined out by the likes of Bach and Mozart.
“Well maybe so, but then where is this musical in the cosmos that you’re talking about and how do the minds of composers get to it?” she asked.
This was a much more serious challenge and I had no answers. All I could do, was to console myself with the fact that – almost a century after Pauli, Dirac and Bohr – even the famous physicists Richard Feynman admitted that we still did not really understand quantum mechanics. Answering questions about the physics of external storehouses of music might have to wait a while.
After guiding Melanie to the womens entrance, I climbed the wooden steps into the mens changerooms. There were half a dozen open showers and a couple of low wooden benches slung along the sides of the log cabin. I hung my clothes and towel on the wooden pegs and stood in bliss under the shower, the deliciously sweet fresh water running down my back and over my naked loins.
If we accepted that a particular genre of music like Baroque or Romanticism can be emptied out by human minds, did this mean ALL music will one day be mined out, I wondered? Might we, even today, be running out of genres and thereby reaching the ultimate limits of compositional creativity? Would the whole mine site have to be abandoned, leaving only a few worthless waste dumps and tailings dams to recycle through?
Towelling myself dry, I remembered visiting the Tate Modern in London and being fascinated by the gigantic twentieth century timeline of visual art that decorated the concourse of the museum – including Cubism, Constructivism, Surrealism, Minimalism, Post Realism, Neo Expressionism and scores of others. As I began dressing, I wondered whether all these visual art styles had also been mined out and whether we might also be running out of worthwhile new genres in the visual arts.
If this were true, what a dull, colourless and sad kind of existence humanity could look forward to! The world would be doomed to the endlessly recycling of old musical and artistic ideas in an eternal tedium of repetitiveness.
Maybe I was wrong, but I feared that modern art did not have the same level of quality as the more classical, older styles of art.
“What took you so long?” asked Melanie, looking oh so fresh and poised when I emerged from the change cabin. I recounted my thoughts to her, how I was wondering whether all the high quality styles had been mined out and expressing my doubts over the quality of modern art.
“Oh, come on Derra,” she said with a touch of scorn, “Just because you can’t understand or appreciate it, that doesn’t mean modern art isn’t high quality. It takes time to adjust and appreciate, that’s all. It’s the shock of the new. Remember how the populous derided the Impressionist painters at first. Think back to how the audience jeered Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring when it was first performed.”
Hmmm, I thought as we walked along the sandy path together, maybe I was just being a cultural dinosaur – I had to admit that modern art was often clever and edgy.
“What do you mean by high quality anyhow?” she pressed. Here I did have an answer, this issue of quality having been argued in depth in Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
“Well,” I replied, “Quality is not able to be defined – by definition – but nevertheless most people know it when they see it.”
It sounded glib, but this is how I understood Pirsig’s argument, that quality is an intangible embodied goodness that is bound up in every great work of art, Pirsig putting it this way:
“Quality … is recognised by a nonthinking process. Because definitions are a product of rigid, formal thinking, quality cannot be defined.” [4]
In the face of Melanie’s evident skepticism, I hurried on, “I agree with you that sometimes we don’t get the quality at first,” I said, “such as when we see something that is very new and different, like the The Rite of Spring.”
We both looked up as the canopy of trees suddenly came alive to the chattering chaos of a tribe of vervet monkeys passing through on their way to their evening roost. As we watched them disappear into the forest, I continued, “But those are the exceptions that prove the rule, and even then, people’s perceptions do change very quickly. It took only a handful of performances before Stravinsky’s work was being cheered instead of jeered.”
“But we can define the quality in a great work of art,” Melanie countered, “The power and magnificence of Michelangelo’s David – the huge hands, the musculature, the poise, the grace, …”
“Oh, we can certainly analyse and describe a great work of art,” I broke in excitedly, “But can we define it? Can we define it in a precise and methodical way? Can we create a set of written instructions that allows a lesser artist to create a sculpture as great as Michelangelo or a painting as great as Picasso’s Guernica – by simply following the instructions?”
Melanie frowned at my interjection. But Pirsig’s insight that quality seemed to be an ethereal yet unalterable purity that always remained intrinsically bound up with the work seemed to be right. Quality was so deeply entangled with the object, that trying to formally define and separate it was doomed to failure. After making futile attempts to define it, all we could do is to point back to the work itself in order to make ourselves understood.
It’s easy to write the prescription for creating a piece of modern art like a stuffed shark or an inflatable dog turd. And because these works are easy to define and reproduce, they are – by Pirsig’s definition – of lower quality than a Michelangelo, Picasso or Rodin.
I was sad at the thought that we are seeing fewer new works of high quality art. The tap seemed to be turning off. This was despite a burgeoning population of 7 billion people today, compared with just 1 billion and much shorter, unhealthier lives during the earlier two centuries. Our cosmic storehouses of art and music were indeed running out – or so it seemed to me.
My thoughts concluded with four propositions regarding art and music:
1. External – the locus of music and art is external to the human brain and hence the process of composition is more akin to discovery than invention.
2. Genre Limit – there is an externally imposed limit to the amount of music or art of a particular genre. Once depleted, there is no other option, a new genre has to be sought out.
3. Overall Limit – it is reasonable to extrapolate that there might also then be a limit to the number of genres, thereby imposing an overall limit to the amount of music and art that can be discovered.
4. Immediate Threat – if one accepts that there is a distinguishable pattern of diminishing quality in new art and music, it could be argued that we are already today running out of worthwhile genres, i.e. the threat is immediate.
Mathematicians such as Kurt Gödel, Rudy Rucker and Roger Penrose believe that mathematics is even more external and pre-existing than Art. Penrose puts it this way:
“It is a feeling not uncommon amongst artists, that in their greatest works they are revealing eternal truths that have some kind of prior ethereal existence…With mathematics, the case for believing in some kind of ethereal external existence…is a good deal stronger.”[5]
Unlike the case of music and art, however, there is no indication that mathematicians are running short of creative and stimulating ideas. It seems curious that the cosmos is more bountiful in mathematics than in art.
With freshly rinsed skins still tingling, Melanie and I were now out of the littoral forest and passing the Nahoon Café with its noisy pinball machines, ice-creams melting and a large billboard advertising Coppertone sunburn oil, with a little girl in blonde pigtails and her half-naked white bottom revealed to all the world by a black dog pulling down on her bathers. A time of innocence. How long before rebounding prudery bans us from bathing in the sea during daylight hours, like what was in place in Australia from the 1830’s until 1902. It seems inconceivable. But social custom can change more quickly than people realise.
Melanie left me her address and phone number before catching the coach the next morning. That summer day remained deep-etched in my memory. A magical day when my early teen innocence was cracked open by the tectonic shifts and upwellings of molten desire, hitherto hidden deep in the crust of my childhood.
I kept Melanie’s address and phone details for many years – her address details joining various coins, semi-precious stones, a magnifying glass, pocket knife and various other trinkets on a shelf in my cupboard.
But I would never see her again.
I turned the Troopy north along the highway towards Grassy Head Reserve, a little coastal camping area located between Kempsey and Nambucca Heads where I would camp tonight.
A huge expanse of the eastern seaboard of Australia lay before me. Up past Byron Bay where I would call in on my uncle, into the state of Queensland and onto the endless sands and lakes of Fraser Island, then all the way up to the rainforests and tropical reefs of the Daintree.
After diving the Ribbon Reefs off Cooktown, I would then cut inland across the top of the continent, via the dinosaur footprint chase near Mount Isa, into the Northern Territory and thence onto the great Kakadu floodplains which lay drenched with tropical sunshine, crocodiles, lotus birds and aboriginal mystique, the nearby gorge country of Nitmiluk, then towards the alien honeydome landscapes of Purnululu (the Bungle Bungles) in Western Australia – and all the while still hoping to arrive at Ningaloo Reef in time for the Whale Sharks.
CHAPTER 4
Byron and Beyond
120 horses under the bonnet – except there’s no bonnet
Harley Davidson billboard ad, somewhere north of the tropic of capricorn
[1] Beethoven, The Music and the Life by Lewis Lockwood, WW Norton and Company 2003, page 173
[2] Ibid, page 442
[3] “glass: a portrait of Phillip in 12 parts” by Scott Hicks
[4] Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M Pirsig, Random House 1974 (page 210)
[5] As quoted in The Mind of God by Paul Davies, Penguin Books 1993 page 144