Bushwhacked

Our five days camping in the “bush” of Australia’s aptly named Red Center were hard. Very hard. At one particular low point, Dustin turned to me and said, “I’d like to take the Outback out back and shoot it.” We had thoughts like this fairly often. Among the various enemies we were battling were sleep deprivation (a 5:30am wake-up call was considered a “sleep in”); mosquitoes, which were especially annoying at night while we slept under the stars, unprotected in a “swag” (basically a padded sleeping bag); heat (it was summer in the desert after all); and water (thanks to the floods the week before, the ground was super-saturated, resulting in heavy dews at night. We literally woke up one night soaking wet in our swags).

Despite those annoyances, I think we would have happily tolerated them if they were all we had to deal with. We had, after all, purposely chosen to do a five day, small-group 4WD camping tour that promised (warned?) us that we’d get closer to the “true Outback experience” than the traditional three day coach tours do. And it’s not like we’d been living in the lap of luxury on this trip prior to heading into the Outback — our adventures with the Stray bus in NZ had already given us a relatively thick skin when it came to dealing with annoyances like biting sandflies, uncomfortable beds, and puking backpackers. If it were just a matter of dealing with sleep deprivation, mozzies, heat, and damp nights, I think this entry might be very different indeed.

But there was one other enemy we had to battle last week, and it nearly broke us. Actually, to be more accurate, there were billions of them. Gazillions even. They assaulted us from the minute the sun rose (which we witnessed every day) until the last bit of light left the sky in the evening. Residents of a world that typically gets less than 10 inches of rain each year, they crave moisture, which means that they mercilessly invade any moist orifice they can find — ears, eyes, mouth, nose. They are immune to everything (including 100% deet) except a physical barrier between you and them. When they couldn’t get at our eyes and noses, they covered our clothes, our arms and legs, and most disgusting of all, our food – waiting, always waiting, until they could invade and explore the next unguarded eyeball or nostril. They could make a person go totally mad if you let them — and there were a few bleak moments when I thought they might have succeeded in doing so with Lustin. They are the reason I still find myself occasionally swatting at the air, even though we are now over a thousand miles away from them, as though they’re a kind of buzzing, hovering phantom limb. Only in this case, the limb is something you HATE — that you want to DESTROY — that makes you look to the heavens and scream, “WHY, GOD, WHY??”

When they couldn’t get at our faces, they sat silently nearby… waiting

Of course, I’m talking about the bush fly.

This may all come across as hyperbole to the uninitiated, but these little buggers were such a ubiquitous part of our experience in the Outback — so much so, in fact, that our oscillating love and hatred of the Red Center was almost always directly connected to their absence or presence — that to not give them a paragraph or two in our blog would be to deny their incredible power to torture, break down, and ultimately triumph over humans. They are the waterboarding of the insect world. Take note, Dick Cheney.

Fortunately, we did have some luck avoiding them, or at least, in getting temporary relief from having to swat them away. We wore silly fly nets over our hats, which gave us some peace, although unfortunately that peace came at the expense of actually being able to see the beautiful scenery around us. We also really didn’t have to deal with them during the long drives in our 4WD Landcruiser van. They were often in the van, but for reasons still unknown to us, they mostly stayed close to the windows and didn’t attempt to assault us like they did the minute we stepped outside. And of course, once the sun went down, they went to sleep in their little tiny bunk beds in the grass, and we could experience the true nirvana of being bareheaded and fly-free for the first time all day. If there is a bliss greater than that first moment when you realize that the flies are gone for the next 11 hours, I don’t know what it is. I can only hope that the birth of my first child is even half as gratifying.

Despite the flies, we did manage to have a great week in the Red Center. We saw the bush greener than even most locals had seen it in years; we did stunning morning hikes before it got too hot; we met a great group of people, including one unforgettable character from Papua New Guinea; and we had some really unique Aboriginal cultural experiences. More details on all of that in our next entry, but we felt we had to give proper respect to the teeny-tiny tyrant who nearly broke us last week. Swat swat swat

We feared this was the only view of the Outback we’d ever have…

Comments

[Bush Fly...bzz bzz]

Sounds like a close call, Laura -- better or worse than our ankle-spraining, virus-infected, midnight puking, emergency pooping by the side of the trail backpacking trip to 1000 Island Lake?

[Laura Maestrelli]

Ah yes, I remember that special wilderness adventure quite well. At least we had Mateo there to be our slave, ahem, Fire Boy / Dinner Boy / Wood-gathering Boy. We had to do all that stuff ourselves in the Outback! It's not right!