the amazing rocks of ellery creek bighole - about 90 kms west of alice springs.

i felt a deep but elusive connection to the country around alice. i puzzled over it for a day or two and strained to work out what i was feeling.


i wrote this on thursday night:

"there is something so compelling and mystical about this place - i feel drawn, mesmerised by the rocks and red dust - i want to sink into it and lose myself in its red antiquity.

i long to take off into the desert and feel annihilated by the space, clear air and luminosity. i begin to understand the desert fathers. i think you could spend your life wandering, yearning, searching for the spirit of this place.

although i am a whitefella i can feel that there is another way of reading this landscape but it is out of my reach. whitefella maps and language and way of understanding the world are pitifully insufficient to grasp the spirituality of this landscape that quivers massively, just out of our reach.

like an unlettered animal we can intuit a skeleton of meaning and realise that there is a body of symbolism and that the earth is alive in a completely different way, but it is not ours. and i think this leaves the whitefella with a profound grief - so profound that he cannot grasp this either and is left bemused and pained by something he can't understand.

the red earth, the convulsed rocks reach out, yearning for connection. the whitefella can dimly feel and reflect the yearning but cannot work out how to connect, how to be with the earth and is condemned to bereftness."

on a happier note....

i just spent four days in alice springs for an indigenous service delivery and community engagement conference. it was my first trip to central australia and i can't wait to go back. this is a very photo heavy post so i will do words separately - but the light and colours were amazing and i feel much restored :)

the view from the plane coming into alice springs:

sunset from anzac hill in the middle of alice springs:

the road west -


ellery creek bighole - a freezing cold water hole in a cleft of the mcdonnell ranges about 90 kms west of alice springs

sad...

i have put off writing this post for a long time. my blog is not supposed to be personal, you see - it's supposed to be a sort of craft journal. but there hasn't been any real crafting for a long time and my creative spark seems to have gone out.

this has been the hardest 8 months of my life, culminating in my husband of 17 years, partner of 20 years, father of my 3 beautiful children and my best friend moving out last weekend. to live with someone else. we are still friends, we still care for each other and i think in the long run it will be for the best. but it hurts.

i was sort of ok during the week - things weren't much different. he was here taking care of the 2 older kids during the school holidays for a couple of days; it was a bit like when he went away for uni or work.

but this weekend has been hellishly lonely and i feel so sad and i can't imagine that it will be any better.

and this is why i wanted my blog to be not about me - because i don't want to cry into the keyboard. but there's no one else to talk to.