Years ago while attending a Trek convention with some friends, I was listening to one of the series actors talk about a moment in his life when he was sitting in a bathtub and watching the water swirl away down the drain. He realized that essentially this was what was happening with his career and his life. It proved to be a turning point for the man and he made a change as a result. For years after hearing about that experience I wondered what I would point to as my personal turning point; the moment I realized some vast truth and was forever changed. I nearly lost my life when I was nine years old and have carried a facial scar ever since, but I was too young for it to have impacted me in an emotionally life altering way; too young to have a truly transformative moment of clarity.
In 2013 I had seen an image of a girl looking off into the outback and wondered if she was having such a moment. It gave me the idea that maybe I could have such a moment myself somewhere on the other side of the world. I had long felt that what I truly needed was to go walkabout, and what better place to do it than Australia. In the Aboriginal tradition, walkabout involves a temporal and spiritual journey, resulting in self-growth, a personal transition, and an affirmation of manhood. In my case it really just involved wandering the Earth and finding a piece of myself that I felt must be missing.
But in fact the very night before (Wednesday) I awoke in the wee small hours feeling very melancholy, realizing that I had not yet had such an experience so far in Oz.
Today was Thursday, and this morning I was hoping that Peter and I would have a chance to drive to the edge of the Outback to a high vantage point called ‘Captain Starlight’s Lookout’ to do some introspection, and hopefully get a memorable picture. This was, after all, as close to the never never as I was going to get on this trip, and so this would effectively be my only chance for a picture like this. But it had rained all night and we wouldn’t know if the road was even open for another couple of hours, so I stayed in my room and tried to use the time and internet connection to update my blog with some long overdue posts.
It was during this interim that I also noticed I had a new email.
The message was from one of my previous English students. Her name was Ludmilla and she was from Brazil. After she had discontinued classes, I would occasionally drop a message to say hello because I knew she had been dealing with some personal issues. As she was no longer a student, I felt more comfortable cautiously offering links to various articles that dealt with the things she was concerned about. She appreciated these and once even went so far as to say that she felt that Jesus was using me to help her. So I had kept in touch to maybe leave the door open to further Bible discussions.
Her email simply said ‘Hello’, but I could tell she was feeling a bit down. I responded with an email before we switched to communicating via Whatsapp. This went on for an hour and a half as articles, songs, and encouraging scriptural thoughts were offered. She then said that she had started reading the Bible again and that a couple of sisters would leave tracts from time to time. The night before, she had been tearfully praying to God and saying that she felt her life was all too much to handle. She hadn’t wanted to bother me by emailing, but I suggested that maybe doing so and getting the response she did wasn’t just coincidence. After all, by rights I should have been elsewhere that morning, but the trip fell through and instead I was available to talk her through everything. She went on to say that she felt that our talking about the Bible was the answer to her prayer from the night before and that she felt like Jesus wanted her to have a relationship with him. (Much more has happened since then, but the good news is that months later she has accepted a study and she is loving the things she is learning. She’s even begun witnessing to her workmates and one of them has actually started going to meetings again! We’re covering the Good News brochure at the moment, but in future Tatiana will hopefully get to go through the Teach Us book with her.)
There are moments when something happens and you realize that Jehovah was unquestionably involved because of how perfectly things worked out. The road to Starlight’s never did dry up that morning, so we never got to go. Here I had been dreaming of standing on a promontory and staring out into an empty land and having one of those imperishable moments that last a lifetime, but without even having to leave my room I had been granted the epiphany I had sought. It felt like Jehovah was reminding me that I had already had my life-defining, life-changing moment years ago. It hadn’t happened in a single instant of realization, but rather it was a series of small realizations that had accumulated over many years at a glacial pace and had brought self discovery and metamorphosis without my actually realizing it.
But then this was Oz. The scarecrow, the lion, and the tin man all went in search of things they didn’t realize they already possessed. Maybe that’s what this land does to people. However I wouldn’t be clicking my metaphorical ruby slippers together and leaving just yet.
That evening Peter and I went to the tiny Kingdom Hall in town, passing the local radio station on the way. For reasons unknown at the time, the fence in front of the Radio 4LG building was adorned with bassieres of various shapes, colors, and sizes. I later discovered that this has actually long been done to raise breast cancer awareness, and that it’s actually a time-honored tradition for visiting ladies who wish to support the cause to leave their very own upper-underthings on the fence in solidarity.
Most of the streets here were named after birds (Bustard, Ibis, Emu, Magpie, etc.). The radio station and Kingdom Hall were both located on Galah Street. It was Peter’s old hall so he knew most of the people there. I met a young brother named Sam Vanderboon who was to be leaving in a week or two to go live in Japan. He hoped to teach online to support himself but wasn’t sure where to start, so we exchanged numbers and I later sent him some info. Carolyn wasn’t with us as she was once again unwell and unfortunately that was to be the case for much of the trip.
After the meeting ended, we pushed through a wall of bugs and beetles, and drove five minutes out of the town and away from the lights to look at the myriads of stars that were out, before stopping by the Drovers to get a few more pictures.
And that was it for Longreach. The next day found us loading the car once again and making the return, four-hour trek to Emerald for our Kingdom Ministry School for Elders. We bade farewell to the Founders Museum as we passed it. At this point I’m actually reminded that I meant to talk briefly about the Qantas rivalry between Winton and Longreach in an earlier post, but instead I’ll quickly tack it on here.
Founded in 1920, QANTAS stands for ‘Queensland And Northern Territory Aerial Service’ and supplied the first aircraft to the Royal Flying Doctor Service in it’s early days. The company was founded in Winton but later moved its headquarters to Longreach, and so a rivalry similar to that between Ohio and North Carolina over the ‘Birthplace of Flight’, was born. In the 1940s a route was opened that would allow travelers to reach Britain via ‘The Kangaroo Route’, which would involve a hop to Karachi where another airline would take guests on to the UK. In 1943 a route was opened between Ceylon, Sri Lanka and Perth, and those who completed this flight were awarded ‘The Rare and Secret Order of the Double Sunrise’ certificate, later changed to ‘The Elevated Order of the Longest Hop’. It was at this point the flying kangaroo logo was first used and in time ‘The Flying Kangaroo’ became a nickname for the airline itself. Unfortunately the Covid-19 pandemic has ravaged the company in 2020 and Qantas has fallen on hard times at the moment, cutting 6000 jobs and reducing flights by 60%. The immediate future for the company certainly looks grim.
And on that note we left town, being ominously warned to be on the lookout for rogue cows and sheep with little respect for traffic laws.
The brothers from Gladstone would be waiting for us in Emerald as well as the Elmers and some of the other friends I had met on the Cania trip, so at least I would know some of the people at the school. I was also eager to see how our new hotel rooms would compare to the ones we had had in Longreach and possibly make friends with a new complimentary room gecko.
