Learning from Out Back

Good Morning Fellow Sojourners, 

When we checked in with you last week, we were on our way to Darwin, hopefully to pick up a modest-sized motor home to begin our trek through the Northern Territory Outback. Just before we boarded the plane in Brisbane, we got a call, saying that the rig we had booked had been in “an accident”, and they might have to cancel our booking. We arrived in great trepidation, only slightly alleviated by the news that, no, they didn’t have to cancel us, but woohoo! they were assigning us the biggest rig on the lot. We’d have to come back two days early, but we were getting a huge discount for our trouble. It was a behemoth that left us speechless and Tony with one foot on the sidewalk, ready to make a run for it. He manned up though, and after a few near-death experiences, he actually began enjoying being the biggest kid on the block. It was a little embarrassing whenever we pulled into a campsite and people would look it over ask, “So… it’s just the TWO of you?” But after a week, we really love it, and are wondering how many kidneys we’d have to sell to own one.  We LOVE the cruising life!  Here in Australia, folks like us are called “the Grey Nomads” and we’ve met some really interesting ones along the way. 

Anyway, we’ve ticked off everything on our list of ‘must sees’ and are now sad that we have to say goodbye to such opulence tomorrow. 

Like the proverb about crossing a river, we’re not the same people who set foot in the water last Monday.  We’ve relaxed in ways we never thought imaginable, worshiped God in His amazing creation and feel like we’ve truly seen a part of Australia known only to a few. 

The highlight had to be visiting the homestead of Aeneas and Jeannie Gunn, the sweet little preacher’s kids that I wrote about recently.  The Elsey homestead is  more desolate and yet more beautiful than I could imagine and I had the “pleasure”(?) of experiencing even more hardship by stepping in a fire ant hill in my enthusiasm to read the lonely gravestone. Thankfully, I was able to be free to discard any and all ant-infested clothing right there on the spot, knowing that there wasn’t another soul except for my husband for at least two hours in any direction. It was there that I realized the significance of the hardships of being so far away from everything in an emergency. Fortunately I was able to get the situation under control (thanks to Tony) and didn’t suffer more than a few adrenaline fueled welts. It really made us really appreciate the Royal Flying Doctor Service that serves this huge area.

Let me close this blog by quoting from the poignant ending of a book by Jeannie Gunn, author of  “We of the Never Never”. Her husband was the head of the Elsey Station, and his name was Aeneas Gunn, known as “The Meluka” to all. Sadly, he died just a year and a bit after arriving about 1901, a victim of Cerebral Malaria, known locally as Black Water Fever. I hope it speaks to you as it did to me: not only that life is hard and sometimes short,  but that God is faithful.

Here are her words:

All unaware, that scourge of the Wet crept back to the homestead, and the Great Shadow, closing in on us, flung wide those gates of Death once more, and turning, before passing through, beckoned to our Maluka to follow.  But at those open gates the Maluka lingered a little while, while those who were fighting so fiercely and impotently to close them, lingering to teach us out of his own great faith that “Behind all shadows standeth God”.  And then the gates gently closing, a woman stood alone in that little home that had been wrested, so merrily, out of the very heart of Nature. 

That is all the world need know.  All else lies dead in the silent hearts of the Men of the Never Never, in those great, silent hearts that came in to the woman in her need; came in at the Dandy’s call, and went out to her, and shut her in from all the dangers and terror that beset her, quietly mourning their own loss the while.  And as those great hearts mourned, ever and anon a long drawn out sobbing cry went up from the camp, as the tribe mourned for their beloved dead….their dead and ours, our Maluka, “The Best Boss that ever a man struck”.

Another of her quotes from the book pretty much sums up our time here in “the Territories” as the locals call the Northern Territory,

“We had so much happiness we forgot to get old.”

Cya next week!

Marsha