I wrote this in the summertime. Ask me again in the winter and this will likely read very differently. However one thing will never change: if I was an employer in town, I wouldn’t dare hire a surfer.
It's February and, yet again, more than 40 degrees. It’s not a single day, but rather, the nine months of extremely hot and dry weather that breaks the spirit. It's a deep yearning for rain despite knowing that it hasn’t rained for months and that it likely won't for a few more months to come.
There are few places left in the world where you can walk in any direction and see no more than a handful of people for well over a thousand kilometres in any direction. The freedom is as big as the sky. The intensity of sunlight is equally addictive; it flows through your veins like early morning espresso before work. Between the big heat, little water, and the sharp-edged, hard shadows, softness can be hard to find. Some days here I feel like I am on the edge of the human experience. Welcome to the Central Desert.
Not to say there has never been the sea and abundant water here, I’m just some 100 million years too late to go swimming in the great inland sea. Fast forward to the present, it's thanks to that leftover water from the sea that gives us the water we have today. It's what keeps the gardens green in the plush suburbs across the river around the casino, after all.
Today the nearest place to the sea is a two-day drive past worn-down roadhouses and exotic, looming termite mounds. Don’t stop too long if the car doesn’t start again. Still, on arrival, this water isn’t even for swimming. If the saltwater crocodiles don't get you, chances are the box jellies might just, or worse, a sting from the Irukandji making you wish you were dead anyway. The Central Desert is no place for a water lover, let alone a surfer. Despite the lack of water, there are still a few surfers in this town, me being one.
Surfers are used to a background hum. “What are the waves doing and what are they going to do next?” cycles through the mind just like the low-pressure systems the surfers study daily. In the desert, there is no background noise, no part of the brain wondering if the winds suddenly swung whilst the tide went high for a particular headland. Nothing changes fast here; for some, it's freeing, for others, it’s confining.
Surfers seem to carry themselves heavier inland than most. For the odd surfer I see out here, there is a clear pain behind their eyes. Months away from something that you love isn’t easy, after all. The desert can be like a carousel of people coming and going. Surfers typically leave not long after they arrive even with the best intentions of staying for a while. Year-long contracts quickly become six months. They seem to pass through even faster than the usual ‘newcomer’ from the south. They’re no ‘desert rats’.
There is rarely wind here in the desert, and when there is you know ‘weather’ is finally coming. It's an almost ominous feeling after still air for sometimes weeks on end. The storm clouds build on the horizon, the light and colours over the hills change for the first time in weeks, and shadows become temporarily soft. When the rains finally arrive it's elation; the hills look as though they’re dancing. I’ve stopped lessons to go outside and embrace the first rain after many endlessly hot months. I’ve heard children squealing in joy whilst doing ‘snow angels’ in the rain. I’ve cried countless times. Deprivation of water plays on the mind.
It can be easy to forget as surfers that we are playing in the water. Surfing a wave is no different from a two-year-old playing in the bathtub. When you ‘kick out’ or exit the wave, you’ve got nothing to show for it. No game is won, no medal is earned nor rule book to follow or umpire. This sense of play is a childlike state of joy to return to, keeping surfers from taking life too seriously. A beautiful softness anchoring life. All is well and good until my identity and self-regulation are 1,600km away down a near perfectly straight, saltbush-lined highway.
As a young surfer, there were of course the ‘locals' to watch out for. These people knew the spot and the place for years at a time and weren’t shy to remind me. To the locals, certain spots were long waits to break finally, and then, it's a finite resource: more people means fewer waves for them. Any wave that approached that a local looked at was, of course, not mine. As a kid or ‘grommet’, I had been chased down by locals in the water as they tried to run me over with their sharp fins, and been told to go home “as there are not enough waves out there for all of us”. Meanwhile, there were only two of us in the carpark and no one in the water.
The locals are a little different here and have been here for more than 70,000 years. The Aboriginal people of the Central Desert include the Arrernte People; easily the strongest, most resilient people I have ever met. The Aboriginal People of the desert have endured so much so recently. The suffering, pain and grieving in the streets are palpable as you walk through the town, even to a tourist. In the desert, people and places are inextricably connected and history is raw and recent.
The locals here don’t live in houses with ‘live, love, laugh’ posters hanging in the living room whilst wetsuits hang from a hills hoist in the backyard. A much harsher reality, instead sometimes in tin sheds like Town Camps or living in the river red gum-lined ephemeral river that weaves north to south through town. There is a strong obligation to the land here. Better described by the locals as ‘apmere’ in the Eastern Arrernte language. Every part of apmere is rich with stories, from big hills to small rocks. This is the land of the Caterpillar Dreaming.
This town is essentially two worlds, white fella and Aboriginal, whilst operating in the same space. Surfing is not the pastime, instead footy (AFL) with its deep Aboriginal roots. Along with the local butcher shop and the town pool, the footy field is the only place where I see the two worlds come together. The game is often played over red sand in the orange glow of sunsets with people travelling hundreds of kilometres for a game without thinking twice about the distance. I needed to join a footy team to be a part of this place.
I grew up looking down from pale white cracked limestone cliffs with knees shaking as big swells came marching in with icy wind blowing strongly into my back and ears. There were only so many excuses you can use over the years for when the waves got big, “I forgot my wax” and “My back is a little sore today” are two of the well-tried classics. Now I’m more likely to find my knees shaking as the siren goes. The game is played differently here, people are representing who they are and where they're from – it's physical. I still feel the strange need for a wetsuit. In time it comes to feel like armour, but no armour is here. The concussion rate plays on my mind as I see players drop to the ground and then quickly pull up to go again. The game is much faster and harder than in the South: ‘‘Bush Rules”.
It's now finally raining. It's been the talk of the town all week. The desert petrichor smells so vivid it feels as though apmere is finally coming alive again after months of cloudless stillness. All the windows and louvres are open. With no need for gutters, the rain just pours off the roof creating rare pools of water on the ground. The sounds of the rain and the cool gusts that follow bring ease and relief. Rain is not taken for granted here. In a matter of days, the desert will turn from red to a rare fluorescent green, bush foods will ripen and the town will temporarily become a rare calm.
After four years in the desert, I see myself becoming harder, stronger, and more resilient. Sometimes in ways I’m not always sure are good. In the school holidays, I race back to the water surfing different spots, some familiar, others remote and rarely unknown. Yet while I’m here, day after day my softness slowly fades away like clothes on the line in the desert sun.
There is a subtle yet profound gift the desert can offer a patient surfer. The desert has answered questions I didn’t realise I was asking. Here, I've been taught what apmere is for the first time and what it means to know it. The land is more than just something you have to cross to get to the wave. It’s more than a section of beach or reef but the connection to the Dreaming, linking intersecting Song Lines weaving through place in language. I’ve learnt to see apmere not just as a physical landscape for the taking but coming with strong obligations, as a cultural landscape, a Caterpillar landscape. The sacredness of this place draws you in and holds you tightly, carrying deep inside of you. Now, when I do make it back to the coast, no longer is there such concern about catching the wave of the day. It is about the immense privilege of being ‘On Country’, as the locals call it.
