Far From Home

Alice Springs is one of the most far away, hard to get to places on earth.  It’s a place I’ve dreamed about visiting since first reading Bruce Chatwin’s book The Songlines twenty years ago.

When Dani and I started planning this trip she reminded me her childhood friend Kara now lived in Alice.  It became one of the “absolutely must visit” places on our itinerary.

Conor was sitting in the window seat on our flight into Alice from Melbourne.  As the plane descended through the clouds, he shouted: “Dad, look down there – everything’s red!”  And so it was.

Kara and her husband Rob picked us up at the airport.  We had arrived in time to attend Kara’s company Christmas party on a cattle station two hours from Alice in the central Australian Outback.

We made our way through the other-worldly landscape, putting Rob’s new four-wheel drive Toyota through its paces.

Once at Tilmouth Well, Roy and Janet, our hosts for the evening, welcomed us like family.

The station employees began to arrive, including a couple who managed the bar and restaurant, a German backpacker doing temporary work as a nanny, the woman who coordinated school lessons with the Outback’s School of the Air program and a handsome cowboy described to me as a Drover.

As the party went on into the night, it struck me how similar it was to many Christmas parties I had attended the Eastern Shore of Maryland.  The buffet dinner.  The fifties and sixties music.  The stories, and the characters telling them.

We were far from home, but at Tilmouth Well, I felt something familiar.

The next day, Kara and Rob took us on a dramatic ride across a small portion of the station property.  It was a unique opportunity to experience the true Outback.

We have been very fortunate in our travels in Australia, and have been extended many kindnesses along the way — by the Utting Family in Sydney, Wayne Swan in Canberra and now Kara and Rob in Alice Springs.

It reminds us once again that the heart of any journey lies not in the places you visit, but in the people you meet along the way.

More pictures from Alice Springs are posted here.