If they weren’t so patently dangerous, the political inanities of Texas Governor Rick Perry might be entertaining.  Unfortunately, it’s hard to keep up with the tempo of his pendulum swings in logic.  Perry famously pandered to the marginalized radicals of the GOP right by suggesting to various Texas Tea Parties that our state might still secede.

He started off toward the political precipice exactly a year ago; Perry turned down $556 million in federal funds for extended unemployment benefits for 45,000 Texans still looking for work.  He said there were too many strings attached.  What were these horrible requirements Texas had to abide by in order to bring back to the state some of the hard-earned tax dollars that had already been paid by the employed of Texas?  Horrendous, socialist demands like extending benefits for laid-off workers in retraining programs and increasing benefits for individuals who had lost their jobs and had dependents.

In an almost incomprehensible turn of hypocrisy, a few months later the longest serving governor in Texas history asked the federal government for a loan of $170 million to cover its existing unemployment benefits.  Because that was only a stopgap amount, the total is expected to reach $650 million in federal loans, which is about $100 million more than he rejected in stimulus money.

As they used to say in the Vega-Matic commercials: but wait!  There’s more!

When the stimulus package was passed by congress in January, the man from Paint Rock said he was not going to apply for the money Texas was eligible to receive for improvements in public school performance.  By some accounts, Texas could have gotten up to $700 million.  Our governor said he did not want to tie his great state to federal performance standards.  Of course, when his predecessor became president and forced the fatuousness of No Child Left Behind down America’s education throat, Perry made not a chirp.  And hell, there wasn’t even any money attached to that invasive piece of nonsense.  If Perry were protecting an exemplary education system by turning down stimulus money, his decision might have been logical.  Unfortunately, the Lone Star State is number 50 in our republic in percentage of residents with a high school diploma, and we are near the bottom in SAT scores.  According to the National Education Association, our current expenditures per student rank 44^th among states.  So, yeah, we’re in good shape.  Thanks for the offer of $700 million, Mr. President, but we’ve got no problems.

Peace like a Plane?

The convolutions of Mr. Perry’s gray matter must be a sight to behold because he’s now got another contradiction he is pursuing that is flat dangerous.  On the right side of his mouth, he speaks about secession and keeping Washington out of our lives but on the left side of his barbecue pit he’s now demanding the federal government deploy unmanned aerial drones along the US-Mexico border.  How does one secede while also using federal troops to militarize a border?  The recent killing of US Foreign Service workers in Ciudad Juarez has prompted the new round fear mongering.  Even if the assassinations were not a case of mistaken identities, as has been reported, putting drones into the air is a permutation of a declaration of war.  The war between the drug cartels has resulted in killings north of the Rio Grande but that is not a recent development and it is unclear how having the intrusiveness of big brother’s eye-in-the-sky floating overhead might do anything to prevent that bloodshed.  Perhaps, the governor ought to ask for enough spy planes to patrol the suburbs of Dallas and Houston and San Antonio and Austin and every other major city in America where those Mexican drugs are consumed.  There would be no fighting and dying over the lucrative supply lines in Mexico if there were not a burgeoning demand for narcotics in the land of the free.

The US-Mexico border region is an enchanting and mysterious place.  I lived near the big river for many years and I return on a regular basis.  Building walls and sending drones and radar blimps into the air will continue the transformation of a once-friendly frontier into a kind of war zone.  Nothing will be solved and the stakes will only get higher. I wonder what it will be like to be camping in the splendid Chisos Mountains on the South Rim, looking out at sunset from 8000 feet about the desert floor, and hear the distant drone of a drone.

A friend of mine, who spends most of his time in the ghost town of Terlingua just west of Big Bend National Park, fears the drones will be secretly armed and that one night when he is driving home from the Boat House Bar or Long Draw Pizza in the blackness of a western night, he might get lost on those bladed desert roads, look suspicious, and get lit up by a trigger happy twenty something staring at a remote screen in Dallas.                                  

The Lost Boy

In a way, that has already happened.  In 1997, the US deployed Joint Task Force 6, a military patrol of combined armed services, along the remote stretches of the border east of El Paso.  They wore camouflage and sunglasses and hid in the creosote and cactus.  A Marine saw what he thought was a drug smuggler in the distance and then he convinced himself the criminal had pulled a gun.  He aimed down range, shot, and killed an 18 year-old goat herder named Ezequiel Hernandez, Jr.  The boy was bringing the family’s goats up from the river where they had been drinking water.  He is buried on a lonely mesa with a view of the mountains to the west and Mexico to the south.  The house where he lived his entire life and the spot where he died are all visible standing next to his grave.  His impoverished family had little more than stones and a wooden cross his to mark the place where he lies.

An Unlived Life

And anyone who thinks that drones and guns and walls and soldiers will solve the problems on the border ought to stop by and visit Ezequiel’s grave.

In his book and the various interviews and speeches surrounding publication, Karl Rove has made a point of attacking information Wayne Slater and I reported and published regarding Rove’s background and the formative years of his political belief system.  The topic he has seemed most prickly about deals with his father’s sexual orientation.  As is his practice, Rove ignores facts to practice skilled denial.

Louis Rove’s personal life was nobody’s business until his adopted son decided to make gay rights a wedge issue in the campaigns of George W. Bush.  Rove, who recently pleaded for privacy during the divorce from his wife Darby, pushed policies in campaigns that were designed to interfere in the private lives of gays, lesbians, and transgender people.  Rove has no right to demand privacy when he refuses to respect it in the lives of other individuals and families.  His relationship with his father is context for his politics and interest in his father is a consequence of those politics.

When he was interviewed by Matt Lauer on The Today Show, Rove said he had no idea if his father was gay.  If this is the case, Karl was one of the few people who knew Louis Rove that was not aware of his sexual orientation.  In our book, The Architect: Karl Rove and the Dream of Absolute Power, (I disagreed with the publisher’s hyperbolic subtitle), I interviewed several people in Palm Springs, California about Louis Rove and his politically ambitious son.  Joseph Koons, who was Louis Rove’s best friend for 13 years, told me, “Louie didn’t hide the fact that he was gay. But he didn’t play it up either.  We had lots of gay and straight friends.  I was never the effeminate type and neither was Louie.  We didn’t play it up that way, either.  But he was gay.  And so am I.”

Although Joe Koons, a retired insurance company executive, was the only one of Louis Rove’s gay friends to go on the record for our book, two other neighbors were quoted and confirmed that Rove had lived openly as a gay man.  Koons took Rove to numerous social gatherings with other older gay men but Louis preferred to spend his time at home in his Palm Springs neighborhood.  Koons said he was not romantically involved with Louis but was as “close as a brother” and that Karl was completely aware of his father’s sexual orientation.

During an interview for our first book on Rove, Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, we asked the president’s political guru about the causes for the breakup of his parent’s marriage and what might have driven his mother, Reba Wood Rove, to commit suicide.  At the time, we were not aware of Louis Rove’s sexual orientation and were simply asking Karl to speculate because he remembered so vividly his father coming home on Christmas Eve, an ensuing argument, and then the end of the marriage without any real explanation from his mother.  An astute observer even at 19 when the marriage failed, Rove continues to claim 40 years later that he had no clue then or now that his dad way gay.  When I went to Palm Springs in 2005 prior to the publication of The Architect, one of Louis Rove’s neighbors literally laughed when I told him Karl claimed he didn’t know what happened to his parents’ marriage.

“He [Karl] was obviously hurt by the divorce.  It’s just absurd when he says, ‘I had no idea what the problems were with my parents and their marriage.’  He knew damned good and well what was going on.  His father had decided to come out of the closet.”

In fact, according to Louis Rove’s friend Koons, Rove not only knew his father’s sexual orientation but also was comfortable with it and had accepted his father’s honesty.

“I don’t recall that there was any great tension over it,” Koons told me during the 2005 interview.  “I don’t know how much impact that plays in the family and when they did find out about it.  Karl is certainly not dumb.  I am sure he knows more than anyone about his father’s position.  The times I spent with Karl and Louie were wonderful and Karl was always just very, very nice.”

Karl, in fact, according to Koons and Louie Rove’s neighbors, was a frequent visitor to Palm Springs beginning in the 80s and vacationed almost annually with his father in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  It would have been difficult for Rove to not know this fundamental fact about his father.

Rove does get one thing correct in his book.  He said that we wrote his father, “after living openly as a gay man,” died quietly at home while his son was in the midst of launching the anti-gay issues campaign that was to lead to the re-election of George W. Bush.”  In his TV interviews, Rove twisted this around to make it sound like we were portraying him as a man who had denied his father, which was not the case.  The chapter in our book regarding Louis and Karl Rove repeatedly makes it clear that Bush’s Brain honored and loved Louis.

Lastly, I want to say bluntly I don’t give a damn about Louis or Karl Rove’s personal lives.  But when Karl decided that the private and personal lives of other consenting adults needed to be corrected to suit the moral imperatives of his party’s political desires, well, then Karl turned his family into a part of the narrative.  As he promotes his revisionist paperweight around the country, he is allowed to take an aggrieved stand of someone whose privacy has been invaded by amoral journalists.  What about the lives harmed or ruined by the sexual politics of Rove’s mean-spirited campaigning?  How is that measured?

Originally, I had told friends I did not want to be drawn into discussions about Rove’s book.  I’ve come to resent the poisonous nature of the discourse in our national politics.  The notion, however, that silence is consent is more than a little unsettling.  Rove started his political ascension with lies and he has now published a book that is filled with a new set of lies that attempt to convince the entirety of America that during the Bush administration everybody got everything wrong; except for Karl and President Bush.  This, too, is another Rove lie.  And it’s criminal for myself or anyone else to allow his lies to continue to live.

Tiger Woods is getting more stupid advice.  Instead of easing the scrutiny he has been enduring, the athletic superstar is about to increase public antipathy for his situation.  Sympathy and forgiveness are not likely to be the outcome of his Friday “news conference.”

Man of the Moment

Tiger’s advisers have him convinced that he is different from other fallen public figures.  Maybe they know he doesn’t want to answer questions and because he pays them so well they aren’t going to force the issue.  Who wants to lose a gig working with Tiger Woods? Tiger has done things greater than most mortals and even other astounding athletes and his counselors appear to be testing a notion that he can play by different rules.  He can’t.  Just because he took golf away from the plaid pants and martini crowd and turned it into a disciplined endeavor doesn’t mean he’s going to get a pass on his behavior.

The idea that he only has to read a written statement to a solitary live camera, a room full of friends and colleagues, and a few wire service reporters that have agreed not to ask questions, is certain to anger journalists and the public that has adored Tiger but still wants answers.  Nobody wants to know how many women and how long this went on and whether his wife is considering taking him back into her life.  But Tiger has to respond to reasonable inquiries from practicing journalists before he can expect to get another clean start with the public.  He doesn’t have to provide details but he does need to deliver honesty.  He isn’t likely to be given a second chance unless he gives some answers.

The first question to be asked, however, is about journalism.  What kind of wire service goes to a “news conference” where no questions are allowed?  Are they present simply to write about Tiger’s facial expressions and how much he sweats?  There probably aren’t many reporters at Bloomberg, Reuters, or the Associated Press that want to attend this event and be ridiculed for sitting silently and playing by Tiger’s rules.  And if they don’t ask questions, they are likely to endure a bit of their own ridicule from peers.

This appearance has the potential for Tiger’s friends and colleagues gathered in the room to turn into a bit of a Greek chorus as he reads his statement.  Politicians often try this public relations scam when they are beleaguered.  Dealing with a controversy or a faux pas, the pol doesn’t want to face journalists alone so he or she invites supporters to encircle the podium and populate the audience and applaud at responses and hiss at questions.  It never works and only further angers reporters and they redouble their efforts to do critical reporting on the politician.  Tiger risks cranking up the tabloids and TMZs of the world to go out and find more of his paramours.

Tiger is likely to endure the same treatment as the evasive politician.  If he isn’t going to answer questions, why not just videotape his statement and stream it on his web site?  A cutaway camera could show all of the supporters in the room with him as he read and he wouldn’t risk angering sports reporters.  Regardless of how much contrition is in Tiger’s statement Friday, it will not be enough unless he takes a few questions and provides honest, difficult answers.  Someone ought to ask, first, why do this at the Accenture Match Play Tournament and distract from the golf?  Is it because they were the first major sponsor to drop you?  Are you being petty?  Isn’t there a better time and location?

The statement he will read, unfortunately, is fairly predictable.

“First, I want to apologize to the public and the fans and supporters of golf.  I’ve been dishonest with my fans, myself, and most importantly, my family.  I didn’t know I had an addiction.  I’ve entered treatment and believe I’m recovering.  I am also trying to work things out with my family.  I love my children and I am also working to save my marriage.   This has been, and continues to be, a difficult time for my family and me.  I realize I’ve dishonored all of the things I claimed were important.  But I want to try again.  I deserve a chance to try again.  I ask for your forgiveness and understanding.  But I am also a golfer.  Golf is my life.  It is who I am.  And I cannot fully regain my life unless I am playing golf.  So, I want to announce today that I am returning to the tour.  Thank you.”

Does that cover everything?  Does the public have a right to know more?  Should Tiger Woods answer the question of whether he was having extra-marital sex while his wife was pregnant?  How long has he behaved this way?  Where did he get the idea this way okay?  If he didn’t have that idea, why was he cheating when he knew he was one of the most high profile people on the planet?  Where in the hell does the fan’s right to know end and Tiger’s privacy begin?  He might need to denounce some of the stories about porn stars and having sex with someone other than his wife on the night his dad died. Don’t these issues go to the heart of a man’s character and help golf fans decide whether they can separate the man from his game, his life from his swing?  Who the hell knows?  But a five-minute statement in a completely controlled environment isn’t going to end Tiger’s woes.

And it may even make matters worse.

When a road train approaches in the silence of an Australian night, it sounds like a giant, primeval beast growling with vast power across an open plain.  Non-sentient living things probably turn their heads in the direction of the noise and instinctively react to a potential new predator cast loose upon the land.  I had seen these trucks thundering across the Nullarbor during the day and felt their windy tug as they passed me going the other direction on the motorcycle but I had not yet heard a road train making passage in the dead of night.

A road train at rest

Road trains are Australia’s solution to dealing with unpopulated regions and distant cities in need of life’s essentials.  They are tractor-trailers, (semi-trucks in the U.S.), pulling anywhere from three to six 44 foot trailers.  The larger versions tend to travel the Stuart Highway up through the continent’s empty middle from Melbourne to Alice Springs and Darwin.  They also carry cattle and ore along the Great Northern Highway, which borders the Kimberly, a region known for natural resources and cattle stations.  The trucks are banned from population centers but they thrive like ancient creatures in the open spaces of the Outback, carrying products from the port cities on the coast to inland communities thousands of miles from the contemporary world.

We began to see a few of the road trains entering the highways from mining sites in Western Australia as we made our way eastward across the continent on motorcycles.  I did not get to closely scrutinize one of these rigs until our first stop on the Eyre Highway at Balladonia, a roadhouse that once became an international dateline when a piece of Sky Lab fell to earth not far from where the diesel pumps are located.  Inside the roadhouse, the proprietor has set up a small museum to commemorate the moment obscurity dissipated for his little spot of the universe.  The centerpiece of the exhibition is a mockup of the Sky Lab debris with U.S. and NASA insignia and a satellite dish on the side of the panel that looked like it was placed there by DirectTV.

Fake Sky Lab debris at the Balladonia Road House

“I think the dish looks a little too real to have made it through a burning re-entry,” I told Jack.

“Yeah, probably not real.  But then neither is the camel.”

I went over and looked at a mockup of a camel that used a low-grade carpeting for fake fur.  If the camels roaming the Outback ever stumble into the Balladonia roadhouse to see how they have been caricatured, there will likely be an ocean of humped warriors bound for the nation’s civic centers to seek their revenge.

“So, the Sky Lab chunk’s real, eh?” Jack smirked at the proprietor as I paid for our gas.

“Oh sure it is,” he laughed.  “And if you believe that there’s a bridge in Sydney I’d like to sell you for scrap iron.”

“NASA came and grabbed the real deal, I reckon?”

“You wouldn’t believe how fast they got here,” he said.

As he rang me up, I noticed a sign in front of the register that said, “Yes, we sell bread.”  I thought it was odd that such a proclamation had to be made but my guess is there are issues with freshness as bread is transported thousands of kilometers.  In a later stop that day, I discovered an entire freezer devoted to loaves of white bread.

“Do you sell bread?”  Jack, making another one of his easily misinterpreted attempts at humor, asked the cashier.

“Yes, we do.  You need a loaf?”

“No.  I guess not.  Just wondered.”

Crossing the Outback, however, a question that does not occur to anyone is where can I find a loaf of bread.  I assume, though, if you live in the wide out yonder that does become an issue.

Back out on the highway, I ducked behind the low windscreen every time one of the multi-wheeled monsters peeled past and then kept a wary eye on the tarmac for kangaroo carcasses.  Before renting the BMW 1300, the agent had warned me several times not to ride at early dawn or dusk because the ‘roos are about and hitting one on a motorcycle is inconvenient.  Road trains, however, roll all night with huge bumpers and do not slow down for the animals that are drawn to the warmth of the pavement that is heated by the sun.  Riding during the day, we were compelled to watch for dead ‘roos and the great birds feeding on the carrion.

We fought the summer time easterly wind and ended our ride that day at Nundroo on the eastern edge of the Nullarbor.  We appeared to have found another tough spot where more people passed than stopped and a bit of paint and some updated furniture could have changed the world.  As tired as we were, we asked the proprietress to show us rooms and give us prices.  She grabbed a key and walked us toward a low structure with one car parked in front of a faded door and a broad, window with no drapes.

“This is one of our better rooms,” she said as she opened the door.  “It’s 90 dollars a night.”

I did not want to see one of the “lesser” accommodations.  A bureau with edges scraped bare from years of use was along one wall in front of two sagging single beds.  A portable TV with about a 10 inch screen that appeared to be early 80s technology was poised on the edge of the bureau and was either gray when it left the factory or colored by time.  I did not cast my eyes to the carpeting.

“I think we’ll save our money for dinner in your restaurant and just camp in the caravan park,” I said.

“Yeah, I don’t blame you,” she said.

Rooey II at a roadhouse

We had a decent meal in the restaurant and spoke with a few of the backpackers working at the Nundroo Roadhouse.  Because employees are difficult to keep in the rural parts of Australia, the country offers extended visas to traveling students that agree to remain on a job at a tough location for a longer period of time.  The two working the evening shift were a charming girl with a Scottish brogue and a whip-thin boy of about 6 feet 5 inches, who clearly had a crush on the only girl within a two-day’s drive.  I saw him in the morning as he was opening doors to mop the restroom floors.  He looked crestfallen but there was no way to know if it was because of the task before him in this marginalized existence or if his dreams had been busted during the previous night.

Just before nightfall, we got our tents up and watched the rising cloud tops a hundred miles south along the Southern Ocean.  Darkness highlighted the lightning flashing in the storm as it raged along the Great Australian Bight.  The stars directly above wheeled in a brilliant clarity against the light of a gibbous moon.  Australia’s sky is close and familiar to people living beneath it and at times it can feel almost tangible and within human grasp.  But it is not; it is only more darkly beautiful and mystifying.

The few campers nearby went quiet early, tired from the endless road, and I watched electricity brighten the clouds as the storm drifted closer.  Another band of showers began to illuminate the horizon to the west and I envisioned our little tents being borne off on mighty winds.  When I finally surrendered the night to nature, I fell asleep without effort.  There was utter silence outside in a perfect spot between two storms, until I was awakened by the first of the night’s road trains.

The sound was initially recognizable as being distant and I thought of the stories I had heard through the years about tornadoes.  Australia does not have tornadoes, I am told, and when I stuck my head out the tent door I saw a light glimmering just above the bush line to the east as a road train approached in full throttle.  The noise made an increasing crescendo, a blaring and unhesitating waaaahhhhh with a decibel level that could only leave the dead undisturbed….or Jack.  In about 90 seconds, the Doppler drop off of the rolling thunder was barely audible as the road train moved toward Perth or Kalgoorlie or Port Hedland or Broome or some other distant town in need of 21^st century fundamentals.

I could not keep myself from wishing I was going along for the ride.

The night before we left for the Nullabor, we ran again into Jeff at Cape Le Grand National Park.  He is a landscape photographer from Minnesota, married to an Aussie girl, and travels this continent taking magnificent pictures of the grandeur.  I had introduced myself to Jeff at Cape Leeuwin as he was packing up to leave for another shoot location.  Traveling in a big Range Rover, he appeared to have the gear to survive for a long, long time in the Outback, including pretty good wine.

The Endless Eyre Highway across the Nullarbor

As we sat at a picnic table and ate nuts and bad Aussie jerky, I asked him about the Nullarbor.

“Can’t be quite as intimidating as it’s made out to be, can it?”

“No, but it’s not a minor thing,” he said.  “I can tell you this, there isn’t any cell service for a long, long time.  I carry a satellite phone.”

“Well, I’m looking forward to being out there for Australia Day,” I told him.  “I think it could be a great experience.”

Jeff ran his hand through his dark and graying hair and looked at me with narrowed eyes without speaking.  I ought to have realized he knew better from his years of travel in Oz.

I had romanticized the Nullarbor and timed the motorcycle trip to leave Jack and me in a roadhouse on Australia Day.  In my vision, I figured we’d be drinking beer and singing Waltzing Matilda with “truckies,” wandering backpackers, and a few well heeled travelers out for adventure.

The Nullarbor, geographically, is a limestone shelf that rises up from the bottom of the Australian continent.  Essentially, it is a treeless plain but not quite a desert.  Salt scrub and brush are the predominant forms of plant life.  Snakes, kangaroos, camels, and wombats are the animals in abundance.  Along the coast, where the Nullarbor meets the Southern Ocean, the Great Australian Bight is formed by eons of crustal upthrust and the working of giant waves against the limestone cliffs.  A visitor can look directly down on the sea below from more than a thousand feet above the water.  There are no railings to protect you from your own stupidity.

Where the camel, the wombat, and kangaroo play

Depending on the traveler offering the description, the Nullarbor ranges from 500 to 1200 miles across just below the Great Victorian Desert.  The region is also known for an inordinate number of meteor strikes.  The beginning is in the town of Norseman and, fundamentally, it terminates at Port Augusta.  It is, in either case, a long and dramatic road.  The Eyre Highway, which crosses the arid plain, is named after the first Englishman to traverse the expanse with an aboriginal during the mid-eighteenth century.  The sealed road was not finally and completely paved until 1976.

As we left Cape Le Grand, I regretted again the speed with which we had to make this journey.  The cape is a grand sweep of beach with sugary white sand curving around until it meets the spot where Frenchman’s Peak climbs up out of the aqua sea.  No one was on the beach.  A few campers wandered over and at night in the tent I heard the relentless sounding of the sea.  There is no better way to enter sleep.

Less than an hour onto the Nullarbor, we encounter a roadblock.  Fire fighters are stopping traffic, which is only our two motorcycles at the moment, because they are concerned about a brush fire jumping the Eyre Highway and endangering motorists.  Rescue vehicles and a tractor-trailer with a giant bulldozer are parked on the edge of the tarmac, waiting to be summoned to duty.  A dark gray cloud of smoke wavers a few miles to the east.

The Great Australian Bight

“How are you fixed for water out here?”  The question came from one of the fire fighters.

“I think we’re good,” I answered.  “Got some bottles and not too far to Balladonia if we can get cleared through here.”

“Yep, yep.  We’ll see quick enough.  If the stay gets long, come on back to the truck and we’ve got ice water.  We’ll fix you up.”

“So, what happens next?”

“We’ll hear on the radio in a bit, mate.  If it jumps, I’ll get in the dozer there and cut a line in front of the fire and me mates will follow in the water truck and put out any little fires that might make it across my line.  No worries.  No worries at all.”

Within minutes, though, we were released to ride and rolled through a short smoky patch of air and saw the flames a hundred yards to the south of the road.  The fire did not yet seem contained.  Bush fires are a great danger annually in Australia and have begun to kill people and destroy homes where the wild land meets urban development.

As we motored eastward, I began to think about the mystique attached to the Nullarbor.  Most Australians have not crossed the odd expanse and likely never will even consider such an endeavor.  A kind of mythology manifested itself in association with the locale and people either fear the great plain or they wish not to have the dramatic stories be proven apocryphal.  Oz becomes more interesting if the stories have a germ of truth.

The most compelling one I heard was from Chris and Christina.  Political refugees from Poland and naturalized Aussie citizens, they were traveling from Perth to Melbourne after purchasing a used car.  About 100 kilometers from any phone or gas or humans, the vehicle shut down and would not restart because of electrical problems.

Caiguna - a grim little spot

“We sit there in the dark,” Chris said in his broken English.  “I stop five cars.  Give them my insurance number and ask them to call it for roadside service.  But no one comes.”

The temperature dropped and their only light was the flickering overhead in the cabin of the car.  Unfortunately, Chris, Christina, and their 22 year-old son, who was also traveling, had made the irrational decision of watching a movie called “Wolf Creek” prior to venturing out onto the Nullarbor.

“You see this movie?” the animated Christine kept asking.  “You see this movie?  Oh my god.  I wish we no watch.  But we did.”

“Wolf Creek” is about two lovely backpackers, stranded in the Nullarbor Outback, who are befriended by a man determined to assist travelers on the lonely Eyre Highway.  Unfortunately, he turns out to be a bit of a serial killer that preys the needy and unsuspecting out on the Nullarbor.  Several Aussies mentioned the movie to me, unsolicited, as we crossed the Nullarbor.  There is no doubt it had engaged the audience of three sitting in their broken down 1980 BMW in the dead of an Aussie night.

“I see a ‘fice’,” Chris excitedly tells me.  “Right at the window.  In just a second, it is gone.  But I see a ‘fice.’”

After a second, I realize he is saying “face.”

“But first I see orange ball,” his wife explains.  “I see orange ball move out in sky, very low, come close to us, and then, poof, it go away.”

“And then I see fice,” Chris adds.

“What did it look like?” I ask.

“I don’t know.  Not human.  Big eyes.  Little mouth.  Can’t see nose.  But it gone very fast.”

Oh well.  I realize I have traveled half way around the globe to one of its most remote locales to discover yet another UFO story?

“We were afraid,” Christina told me.  “But nothing happen and 13 hours later Shane come from Caiguna and pick us up.  Nothing bad happen.”

Waiting for the bush fire to cross the road

Shane is the operator of the road house in Caiguna, a grim little spot on the Nullarbor where truckies and motorists stop for fuel and food and a cold, cleansing ale.  Caiguna’s caravan park, which is more like a patch of dirt across from a moldy laundry and rest room, is highlighted by a sign on each door warning that “all snakes in the area are poisonous and should be reported to the ‘mangerment.’ “ You are warned to keep the doors closed so deadly reptiles don’t slither in while you shower or do your laundry.   Inside, there is a dim bar, a few Formica tables surrounded by plastic chairs, faded beer posters, and a plastic poster of the numerous spiders that might be crawling into your tent while you sit inside and drink your 7 dollar bottle of beer.

Sadly, there was no drunken revelry to celebrate Australia Day in Caiguna.  I had a bad steak sandwich on dry toast and a cold beer and I headed for the hard ground beneath my tent.  On the way to the rest room to brush my teeth I ran into a camper from Esperance.  I had been talking to him earlier about the beautiful coastal city where he lived.  He was coming out of the rest room showers, shirtless, and walking to his camper as the cool evening wind rose up.

“Getting a bit nippy,” I said.

He looked quickly at me with some fright and put his hands up to cover his nipples.

Regardless of your problems, always contact the "mangerment."

“Oops.  Sorry.  I’ll just be puttin’ me shirt on then.”

Even in English, things can be lost in translation.

I laughed and headed off to a restive night contemplating spiders and snakes and listening to the great road trains roar past on the lonely Nullarbor.

(Author’s note – Internet service is scattered and weak in most parts of Western Australia.  I’m posting when I can.  I am trying to update the two earlier pieces with some photos. – JM)

In the morning, we rode south to Cape Leeuwin, a long outcropping of rock that separates the Indian from the Southern Ocean.  (Only Aussies call it the Southern; the rest of the world knows it as the Pacific.)  A tall lighthouse stands up on the rock and broad rollers 10 to 15 feet high are breaking far off shore.  I cannot help looking off toward Africa and Asia.

We enter the Karri forests through what appears almost like a tunnel or a gate.  The wall of trees shows darkness in the sunny afternoon and as soon as we move past the first big trunks the road begins to course like a snake through the unusual stands and unrecognizable undergrowth.   The exit we make puts us back out on straight pavement through bright yellow fields and I roll the throttle back with joy.  The wind bounces against me and I am cruising through another countryside that is new to my eyes.

Stirling Ranges at dawn

Camp is made that night along the King River outside Albany after we have dipped and rolled down the Southwestern Highway for several hours.  We find a spot with soft grass, put up our tents, and wander down to a pub where there is abundant drunkenness.  In the Bundaberg Tavern, set below an inexplicable rock mound and hard by a crook made by the highway and the river, we have a few cleansing ales.  On our way back to the tents we pass a broad, stout Aussie who is weaving across the floor.

“How ya doin’?” I ask.

“Better ‘n you, I ‘spec.”  I assumed he was commenting on my sad sobriety.

“You look to be having a good time.”

“I am.”

He walked off but immediately turned around and placed a hand on my shoulder.   His dark beard and flat nose were a bit menacing up close but he was ready to apologize, not confront.

“Sorry, mate.  Didn’t mean offend.  Just havin’ a good time.  Yer a fit lookin’ older fella, anyway.”

He reached down and patted my stomach.  Who does such a thing?

“You boys touring on the bikes?”

“Yeah, yeah, having a great time.”

“Whattre ya ridin’ then?”

“We’ve got hire bikes,” Jack told him.  “A couple of BMWs.”

“You fukkin’ pussies.”

Cape Leeuwin, Southwesternmost Point of Australian Continent, Indian Ocean

His laugh was too loud not to be joined and we shook hands and agreed with him that Harleys were superior in style laden with much more manliness.  Out here, though, I gladly exchanged testosterone for boring German dependability.

By mid-afternoon the next day, we were moving across the Southern, a stretch of the continent that is fairly dry and reminiscent of the American High Plains.  The Aussies call this their wheat belt and attempt to grow cereal grains with only 13 inches of rain a year.  The harvest has already concluded this January and judging by the dryness of the ground, the brutal heat wiggling up off the tarmac, and the brittle stubble left in the fields, the results were not exactly bountiful.

Jack zipped past me with his blinker flashing and pulled over to stop.  My assumption was all was fine mechanically and if it was not we were a 100 plus kilometers from nowhere and it was named Ongerup.  We made it into town and took a couple of rooms while Jack slept away the strength of whatever demon bug had gotten into his food or water.  The accommodations were unusual, a room about 15 feet across and 40 feet long with a small bed, a mini-frig, a plastic stool, and a toilet and shower separated by a mirror.  A plastic stool wobbled underneath a counter that was supposed to pass for a desk.  Oddly, a new Samsung hi-def TV hung high in a corner on the wall and the ever-present cricket match was still unfolding.

“I’ll bring your breakfast trays over a bit later,” said the girl who had checked us in.  “The pub opens at four.”

I did not ask what a breakfast tray might be but it was not anything to prompt great excitement.  Before I went out to explore the little farm town, the young woman knocked on our doors holding a tray with two slices of white, withered bread wrapped in cellophane, a creamer, table service, and a coffee cup.  She opened the door of the min-frig to check that it had been turned on before she carefully put the creamer on a shelf.

“There ya go.”  She smiled and left, having performed her duties with the same élan as the staff at any five star hotel; except this really, really was not one of those.

There was still a lot of daylight so I wandered around the dusty village, hoping to meet people.  The trees in this part of Australia are fascinating and remind me of Africa.  Called Mallee, they have slender trunks that fork into several reedy branches far above the ground and then weave into a kind of feathery series of umbrella canopies.  I learned this at the Mallefowl Center, which, along with the grocery store passing itself off as a roadhouse, were the two most vibrant enterprises in town.  I, however, was the only person visiting the Mallefowl Center.

“How’d ya like our display?”  The question came from a man who had just gotten out of his truck and was walking into the building.

“Pretty interesting.  I have much to learn.”

“Yup, we all do.”

Fred was a wheat farmer, third generation, in the mallee country east of town.  In his mid forties, he had slightly graying blonde hair, wore flip-flops, cargo shorts, and a camp shirt.  A two day’s stubble of facial growth and a thick shock of dark brown hair made him look a bit more like L.A. than W.A.  He told me about the big Mallefowl birds that were diminishing in numbers and described them as large as turkeys.   I shared a different disappointment.

“I’ve been in your country over a week now and I haven’t seen a ‘roo,” I told him.

“Well, we can fix that straight up.  I’ve got some work to do but before sundown I’ll come by and spot you and you can follow me out to the farm on your bike.  We’ve got ‘em all over the place.”

“Man, that would be great.

Riding around Ongerup I saw no evidence that life was anything but challenging.  A modest caravan park sat at the edge of the town next to the open wheat country; the pub looked dim and old and the tables out front were worn and mismatched.  Ashtrays sitting on them were stuffed with weeks of butts.  The community felt like Arizona or West Texas with all that the world had to offer too distant from the lonely dirt playgrounds and fading buildings of this diminutive town.  I am not smart enough to know, however, what makes a life good or bad or one location more enjoyable than another because there are clearly happy people in Ongerup.

A long way there.....

When Fred pulled up next to the pub, he introduced me to Nancy, and two of their children, Abby and Kimberly.  I followed them east of town to a dirt road that led off into dry wheat stubble.  When we got to their wood and brick house, I dismounted the bike and got in the front of Fred’s truck and he took me off for my first view of ‘roos in the lowering darkness.

“We’ve got ‘em all over this place,” he told me.  “They live down here in the paddocks.  They like me.  I keep a part of this farm as a preserve.  They come out and feed on the seed at dark.  There ya go.”

A dozen kangaroo were standing 50 yards in front of the truck, staring at us with defiance.  Two of them looked six feet tall and when Fred edged forward they were gone with a few leaps.

“Look there just, the joeys are off with them.”

Joeys are the babies and they float across the ground with smaller bounds than their mothers but they never greatly lag in speed.  We rolled around the 3000 acres of Fred’s farm and almost every time he wheeled his truck right or left we spotted a “mob” of ‘roos.  These are beautiful creatures even to those who live constantly in their presence.  The small upper arms are deceptively powerful and the claws will rip open the bellies of potential predators, human or dingo.  I watched their arcing leaps through the headlights now and wondered about a land that evolved such a creature but did not bother with the deer.  No deer roam this vast continent but they are raised for the monied folks of Melbourne and Sydney and Perth should they fancy a spot of venison.

“What’s it like being out here, Fred?  I mean, just living, far away, no towns, nothing?”

“Got no boss,” he said, turning in my direction from the driver’s side on the right.  “Well, just me ‘n the bank manager.  And look at all this land.  It feels good.  Just me and the girls.  We do fine.  It’s a good life.”

Fred was educated, a professional photographer, and he chose the farm.  The ground was sloping toward trees in all directions and the lines of wheat stubble were orderly and dusty.  We stopped and looked at the tank he had built for collecting the rare rain waters and then he raised the lights on a corral of alpacas he was raising for an investment before we turned back toward the house.

“So, care to come in and have a chat then?”  Fred had parked the truck and was holding another cold beer in his hand and I saw it in the light being cast from his house out in the emptiness of the Southern wheat belt.

“Yeah, I’d love to….”

Nancy spun the tops off of two beers and Fred sat across from me at the counter and she took a spot at the end.  As we talked, Abby came in frequently to hug her dad.  None of them had ever been to the states and they had questions.

“Texas is flat and a desert, is it?” Nancy asked.

“No, where I live, in Austin, it’s quite hilly.”

Like many women who love their children and their husbands, Nancy has trouble remaining still.  She boiled water on a stove beneath a brick exhaust.  Abby was hungry and Nancy was heating water for spaghetti.  Nancy was tall and dark-haired with a beauty unfettered by makeup and pretense.  She would have fit in well at a Sydney cocktail party with the prime minister or at an organizational meeting of environmentalists out on the Nullarbor or just farm wives planning a birthday party for one of their children.

“So, from Texas?  You know Jerry Jeff Walker?” Fred asked.

“Yep, love his music.”

“What about Lueckenbach?  What was that mayor’s name?  He was a poet.  I can’t remember his name.  But I know all of his poems by heart.”

“Oh yeah, I said.  The ‘imagineer.’”

“Right, that was his business card.”

“I can’t remember.”

“Me neither.  Oh it’s killing me.  I know I’ll remember when you leave.”

Instead, he went into the living room and pulled from his stack of long play albums from the 70s.  He found the recording with Jerry Jeff and Hondo Crouch reading poetry recorded live in Lueckenbach.

“Know the words to all his songs from back then,” Fred told me.  “I loved Jerry Jeff.  Still do, I suppose.”

“Yeah, I enjoy his music, too.  Especially Terlingua Sky and all the stuff he did with the Lost Gonzo Band.  I got to meet Jerry Jeff a couple of months ago.”

“You met him?  Really?”

“Yeah, it was a political event and I was introducing this writer friend of mine.  It was all at Jerry Jeff’s house.  It was pretty enjoyable for me to meet him.”

I thought for a second Fred was looking at me as if I had just landed out front in a space ship.  What I had just related appeared to strike him as unimaginable.  Nancy said nothing.

“You get back, do me a favor, and tell Jerry Jeff there’s a fella out here in Western Australia who loves him and loves his music.”

“I’ll try to do that, Fred.”

Nancy went to the cupboard and pulled out a bottle of scotch and poured herself a drink while Fred and I nursed beers and I told them how much I loved what I had seen of their country.  Australia, the size of the U.S., has only 22 million people.  California has 32 million.

“But California’s quite big, right?” Fred asked.

“Yeah but not that big.”

On the wall in a hallway, there was a map of the world and Fred walked over to space his hands along what he suspected were the borders of California.  His parameters covered much of the Pacific Northwest and from what I saw reached to New Mexico.

“No, it’s not that big.  I’m not sure but maybe 550 to 600 miles from Mexico to the Oregon line and I think it’s 300 to 350 miles across.  Not enough space for 32 million people and most of them live on the coast, almost of third of them in L.A.”

“Oh yeah, L.A.”  Fred strummed an air guitar.  “Tell me about the Santa Anna’s that Steely Dan sings about.  What are the Santa Anna winds?”

I explained about the hot, dry Santa Annas and the fire dangers they bring every season and I mentioned the blue northers that come to Texas and the warm Chinook winds that inexplicably brighten up winters in the Midwest.

“Oh, those are good words,” Nancy said.  “Get me a piece of paper.  I want to write those down.”  I watched her scribble them onto a scrap of note pad.

“Out here we have ‘the doctor’,” Fred told me.  “When it gets real hot and then the wind comes in off the Indian Ocean to cool it down that’s the doctor, lowering the fever, I reckon.”

“Ha, the doctor.  That’s pretty funny.”

After a while they asked me what I did and I told them about how I used to be a reporter and the hurricanes and floods and tornadoes and politicians that I chased and how they all eventually seemed like the same thing to me and they laughed at that idea.  Nancy encouraged me to ride up to the Kimberly, which every Australian speaks of with great pride, and visit her cousin’s cattle station.

“The Chinese have come and found natural resources on his land,” she explained.  “But they don’t want him to shut down the station.  They want it to stay a place for cattle.  They keep asking him how much money he needs for everything and they’ll pay for it all.”

Nancy graciously invited Jack and I to come out to dinner the next night, if we stay in town but I think I have already seen and done much of what Ongerup has to offer by visiting the Mallefowl Center and we have many more miles to cross the Nullarbor.

“We’ll trap some yabbies and have us a yabbie boil,” she said.  “I’ll make up some sauce.  We can put out the traps in the tank in the morning.”

“Yabbies?”

“I don’t know.  I think they are like a lobster, maybe?  But freshwater?”

“Ah, a crawfish or crayfish.”

“Probably that.  You can only eat the tail, not much else to it.  But I make them tasty.”

“Oh man, that’s tempting.  Let me see what my buddy says and how he feels in the morning.  Ya never know.”

Because the dirt road into their house was soft with sand and I felt that big motorcycle squirm as I rode in I ask Fred to guide me back out to the highway in case I dropped the bike and was unable to get it back upright.  At the highway, he jumped out of his truck and ran over to shake my hand.

“Fantastic meeting you,” he said.

“Same here, Fred.  I really enjoyed my time with you all and wish that I could stay longer.”

“Think about tomorrow.  I’m done around here for a while and have no intention to turn a wheel for some time.”

“I will.  So long.”

“Just ten k that way, mate.”

He pointed east toward town and as I rode off I saw the lights of his truck sitting motionless and fading in the great distance behind me.   We did not have the time to stay another day in Ongerup but, eventually, I am going back.

I swear I am going back.

There is not language that I know to describe what it feels like to ride a motorcycle through a countryside you have never seen and every sight is new. The world feels specially made and customized for your personal enjoyment. In King’s Park, up above Perth, you look down across the broad Swann River and onto a glistening skyline of a city that feels urban and sophisticated while also remote and closely connected to the Outback. I wonder who these people are and how they came to make a life here or how their families arrived in Western Australia.

Parrot on a wire, Serpentine River, Western Australia

After we load the bikes with our gear, Jack and I roll southeasterly into the face of a rising sun, squinting as we make our way on the left side of the road toward a pub parking lot where we meet Graeme and Mike. They love motorcycles, too, and even as husbands, fathers, and successful businessmen, they are still thrilled by the twisty roads, a rising hill, and the push of the wind against your leaning frame. Both wanted to ride us out on the first day of our continental crossing. Mike, who might be mistaken for a dispassionate accountant or a man more interested in watching his grandchildren learn to walk, rolls on the throttle and guides us through the golden, rolling hills south of Perth. Graeme is a former motorcycle cop from New Zealand and has probably spent more time on 2 wheels than 4.

There is a good feel to this country, fresh and new and I have the sense I am getting a glimpse of northern California before 32 million people overpopulated the golden state. The vegetation is semi tropical but it is cool enough for grapes and wine and vineyards wheel past us every half hour, the vines growing off through the hills in orderly lines. Along a long flat where the tree canopy hangs out and shades the road a half dozen wild emu cross the tarmac and scramble into the bush. Mike is riding too fast and I can barely keep his bike in sight, a 1986 Motoguzzi with over 200 kilometers. When he twists up the power, Graeme matches his speed and their bikes make a smooth rumble as they lean into turn after turn, accelerating as I do a two-finger touch on my front brake. I am still learning the feel of the big 1200 cc BMW and would never attempt to hold the lines they are marking with ease. Jack stays closer because he has been riding at the track lately but neither of us is willing to ride fast; the country is too pleasing to race through without notice.

Hard Riders - Mike and Graeme

Our initial stop is at a dam along the Serpentine River and a parrot settles on a wire along the riverbank and seemingly poses for my camera. I still manage to not get focus with an autofocus lens. The cool air of Western Australia on this fine morning is filled with birdsong. Dark magpies with their white-trimmed wings squawk in the trees and kookaburras laugh at us from across the water. Back on the bikes, we motor on through the rural roads, climbing, turning, and zipping along the straights. Another early stop is at a pub outside of Jarrahdale called “Ye Olde English Inne,” where we had a “cold, cleansing ale,” and took snaps of the establishment, which looked as out of place on this roadside as a couple of Yanks on motorbikes. Mike and Graeme cannot be convinced of the joy of a more sedate pace and pull out fast again toward the Shire of Donnybrook.

These hills in front of me are California in the summer, yellow waves of soft color adorned with stands of trees I cannot name nor have ever seen. I am reminded of photos I have seen of the African Serengeti. There are few houses out here and when our guides decide to stop for another ale at a roadhouse in Mumby they talk about the land on either side of the road as if it belonged to the public. On the maps and charts, there does not appear to be a stretch of highway too long without a national park or a preserve. Camping, I am told, is a national past time. The tarmac is still coursing left and right and up and down when we come upon Busselton, a town comparable to a vacation spot along the Pacific Coast Highway near Carmel or Big Sur. Shops and cafes line the streets as we putter through roundabouts toward the coastline. I already feel the cooler air and with a few simple turns we are dropping the kickstands in a parking lot next to the Indian Ocean. I have never seen this ocean but I have the same sense of wonder that I feel every time I stand beside any great water.

Mumby Pub, Shire of Donnybrook, W.A.

“That jetty’s the longest in the world, mate,” Graeme says as he points toward the water. “You Texans are always talking about the biggest, so there you are. We got one, too.”

We make one more stop to thank Mike and Graeme for their hospitality and then Jack and I point the Beemers down Caves Road toward Cape Leeuwin, a long spit of rock that separates the Southern and Indian Oceans. In Augusta, just above the cape, we find a “caravan park” (in the US it’s referred to as an RV park or a commercial campground) just before nightfall. As we had been pressing south I kept thinking of the warnings everyone gave us about riding at dusk and dawn. Kangaroos begin to move about frequently cross the roads in front of vehicles. This part of Western Australia is home to the biggest trees on the continent and when we approached the forest of giant Karri trees I became worried because I thought we had been overcome by nightfall almost without warning. The high canopy overhead, however, was so well woven together that the long light from late in the day was kept out of the woods and I was surprised to see the indicator lights come up on the instruments. Karri trees are tall and straight and white with trunks as broad as ponderosa pines in the American West. The look like birch without the peeling bark. The environment is as eerie as a story from a children’s book and I would not have been surprised to see a hobbit toddle out in front of us. Instead, Jack saw his first kangaroo by the roadside, which I did not see. He said it appeared poised to jump in the road but hesitated as I passed.

“Guys, this is a bad, bad time to be riding your bikes.” The voice with the slightly effeminate lilt belonged to Gary, who was the owner of the caravan park. “We have more insurance claims filed for ‘roo accidents in this part of Australia than any other part of the country.”

“Yeah, we were worried,” I said.

2 mile pier, Busselton

Gary elaborately showed us a spot to pitch our tents next to a dry creek, drawing out on the map what he said was a complicated route. The information flyer on Gary’s park mentioned that he played the bagpipes and some times, of a morning, campers could hear him as he played the pipes and strolled the banks of the Blackwood River where it runs to the Southern Ocean. I reminded myself to go easy on any cold, cleansing ales that evening.

The caravan park was filled with families that had hauled boats and tents and supplies for long stays. Tents were elaborate, as if they were lonely Bedouins making their way across the Persian deserts. There were supply trailers with racks for storing fishing poles, kayaks, lanterns, cots, stools, and anything else they might think of for a long stay next to the ocean. As we finished pitching our tents, there was no loud music or obnoxious voices in argument and fires flickered in stone circles. The grounds were quiet by 10 and the last sounds I heard before fading to sleep were the voices of laughing children.

I dreamed of Australia when I was a boy in Michigan.  In one of my elementary classes, we had a book that had color pictures of kangaroos and the sun on the Outback as if it were a light that had no off switch.  When we were freezing in the Lower Peninsula, and as the drifted snow rose to the window box, I wondered about a world where it might also be summer while we were cold.

My first trip to this continent has yet to disappoint.  I’ve not seen a cloud and I’ve thought often of my brother Tim, who is in the snow and gray of the American Midwest.  I wish he were here with my buddy Jack and me and we were all collecting our motorcycles to ride off and be young.  Jack and Tim are both resolute types who are boys on the inside and men as they walk through the world.  Either one of them is good to have at your side in times bright or dark.

Oz has been only sunny, however.  I stopped in Sydney for under 48 hours to assess the city and its transportation so that I might know my way around when I roll back to town out of the Blue Mountains.  My forehead is red with sunburn after walking around Darling Harbour and Hyde Park.  I think there is reason to believe this continent is special but I do not want to indulge just yet in superlatives.  I will say, however, the environs are clean and the population appears young.  Maybe, because I am a man of a certain age I am more acutely aware of youth but I constantly have seen young families and children and very few people gone to gray.  My unscientific assessment would indicate that Australia has a very bright future.

Darling Harbour, Sydney

Sydney, I should mention, is as beautiful as it appeared on television in the Olympics.  The architecture comports with the water and the hills and everything an outsider sees suggests possibilities.  Everyone who lives here has reason to be excited and proud.  This country commands attention.  Nothing, however, is inexpensive and a few things make little sense.  Avoiding a taxi, I took the train into the Central Station from the airport and discovered that the fare was $15.80 AU.  A connection on the light rail was just under $4.00 AU and I was a hundred yard walk from hotel.  I’m wondering if the taxi might be less pricey and I thought about how inexpensive it is to ride the MARC train from Baltimore-Washington International to Union Station in Washington, D.C.  The light rail route stays to one side of Darling Harbour and the bus tours and more expensive rail lines are on the opposite shore.  I was unsurprised to see that the most compelling sites of Sydney require spending more money on the rail lines or buses.

But the endless sun makes everything okay; at least it does to me.  The culture appears to have been established around the out of doors.  Train stations and hotels are open and there is a flow from the outside into each structure.  The streets are full of people and restaurants and cafes line every sidewalk.  People lunch beneath palms and umbrellas and take for granted the comfort of the weather.

I am tonight, though, chasing the sun westward across the continent.  Outside the jet, looking down on the Outback, you can almost see the shadows as they move toward Western Australia.  There are very few lights twinkling 30,000 feet below us as we make a 530 mph beat toward Perth.  I am thinking of what it will be like to sleep out there under those stars and look up and see the Southern Cross and I am wondering about the lives people build in the cattle stations and rail towns and what gives them happiness.

I wonder if it was the wind or the temperature but I noticed in Sydney that there was no brown cloud and the air has seemed almost as clear as it must have been before engines started knocking on the planet.  If this is a romantic notion of mine, I will be disappointed when I look toward the sky while laying in the Outback darkness.  But I expect a clarity in the air that I have only known while camping up along the Continental Divide in the Rockies and while resting in the loving arms of the Chisos Basin in Big Bend National Park in West Texas.

I also need to mention that since arriving in Oz I have had a sense of familiarity.  This may be nothing more than my enthusiasm for a motorcycle trip I’ve dreamed of for too long to remember but there is much about this place that feels like home.  The geography is as splendid as America’s and the country had similar beginnings; criminals cast off from England on ships to this fatal shore founded Oz.  America has in common with Australia the inescapable fact that we have risen to greatness after being considered undesirable.  What finer compliment might history offer?

Still, the empire resonates on this continent.  Prince William is touring the nation this week and spending a bit of the crown’s fortune to meet with the prime minister and show the flag of the United Kingdom.  Australia is only slightly less fascinated with the British royalty than are the taxpayers of the United Kingdom.  January is summer here, though, so a rich prince is not the only royalty down under.  Lance Armstrong and his Team Radio Shack are rolling around the hills of Adelaide in the Santos’ Tour Down Under and Andy Roddick is here with Americans playing in the Australian Open.  One of his biggest fans is Terrell Owens, the U.S. professional football player who knows a thing or two about physical discipline.  Owens seemed taken by the sunlight in Oz and the scenery and the way this place feels like a younger version of America.   He wrote on his Twitter feed, “I can’t frickin’ believe I’m in Australia.  Never even imagined this could be possible.”

Me neither, TO; me neither.

And tomorrow, we ride!!!!!!

(Author’s note – the piece below was commissioned by The Sunday Independent of London.  The piece was the leading article on the section front of the paper’s front page this Sunday, Jan. 17, 2010.)

“I just want to say this.  I want to say it gently but I want to say it firmly:  There is a tendency for the world to say to America, ‘the big problems of the world are yours, you go and sort them out,’ and then to worry when America wants to sort them out.” – Tony Blair

America often has a unique and curious role in the aftermath of any great tragedy. Because nations know the US has abundant resources, the survivors of tsunamis, earthquakes and floods in distant lands tend to raise their weary eyes expecting to see Americans extending a hand. We have always embraced this as a responsibility of our culture and, indeed, consider it central to our character as a people. Further, we expect our presidents to lead and inspire our citizens and the rest of the globe when there is a need to provide relief. If they fail in this regard, they will suffer politically.

In the Haitian crisis, President Barack Obama did not falter when the news made clear that American assistance was critical to saving lives and stabilising the impoverished nation. Immediately, troops from the 82nd Airborne Division were dispatched to secure the airport for incoming flights with food, medicine and water. Five thousand soldiers and $100m were promised and Mr Obama professed a determination to use “every element of our national capacity”. Although the words are easier to say than commitments are to keep, the emotional president told Haitians they will “not be forgotten in their hour of greatest need”. As he spoke, the aircraft carrier the USS Carl Vinson was on station off the coast of Haiti with 20 helicopters onboard for airlifting water and medical supplies to shore.

The President’s actions were only slightly more convincing than the emotional freight of his words. Instead of delegating the co-ordination of bureaucracies, Mr Obama has been chairing inter-agency meetings to convey his vision for expeditious assistance. The Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates, was promptly called back from Australia to manage the military airlift and troop deployment, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was also summoned home from the Pacific Rim to co-ordinate American relief efforts. The president quickly appointed Rajiv Shah as the co-ordinator of the government’s outreach. With his cabinet assembled around him, Mr Obama stood before cameras and told Haiti, “Much, much more help is on the way.”

Many Haitians, however, are claiming there is not yet any meaningful assistance. They hear words but do not see food. Television news programs are showing numerous huge cargo planes being offloaded with hundreds of crates of supplies but they do not appear to be getting out into the city and countryside. Five days after the earthquake there are uncountable people without nutrition, water or medicine, and witnesses describe hearing voices of people still trapped in the rubble. Haitians have begun to wonder if help will ever arrive and now armed gangs are reportedly beginning to roam the ruins in a post-apocalyptic landscape.

The shortage of relief supplies may be a consequence of horrid logistical challenges and not a failure to act. In Port-au-Prince, roads are shown covered with bodies and fallen masonry, and there may be no simple way to quickly get provisions to the hundreds of thousands of victims. There is a possibility the magnitude of what has happened in Haiti is beyond the ability of America and the rest of the world to respond quickly enough to that number of people. There also exists a reasonable probability that good intentions are being bungled through poor co-ordination among relief agencies and the US government. There is not, however, a failure of effort, concern or commitment.

What we can all see, hear and read is that America is trying. In this instance, however, trying without succeeding means more death, and neither destiny nor plate tectonics will get the blame; the President of the United States will. The political complications for Mr Obama in a failed relief project can harm him with a different kind of aftershock. After putting billions more into a Wall Street bailout, struggling to get any kind of meaningful healthcare bill passed, even with a super majority for his party, and committing to the expense of more American treasure and lives in Afghanistan, the President will be politically staggered if his plans to assist Haiti are perceived as a mess. The optimism from his historic election has waned with a record of achievement that has not equalled the hope his candidacy engendered.

Leaders tend to be defined by their grace under pressure and response to crisis, and Mr Obama appears to have learnt much from the failure of his predecessor during Hurricane Katrina. Although the storm that drowned New Orleans was predictable, emergency response was slow and American citizens unnecessarily suffered. The enduring images of that tragedy come from live camera shots of African-Americans stranded on rooftops and at the Superdome sporting arena while President George Bush circled 3,000ft overhead in Air Force One on his way back from a fundraising event.

A force of nature, however, is not what made Mr Bush a lame duck; he was undone by how he reacted to the storm. Historians suggest his effectiveness as a president began to diminish almost as soon as the winds died down in New Orleans and the waters began to recede, and the reason was nothing more than his inadequate leadership in an hour of profound crisis. Mr Obama’s challenge is no different regarding Haiti. If Haitians have nothing to eat or drink and are dying of disease while healthcare is being debated in Washington, America’s young President will endure his own wounds.

Politics just now, however, are irrelevant. Human life is the issue. A well-known Haitian proverb says, “Beyond the mountains, there are mountains.” In this instance, the saying speaks to the endless struggle of the country and its people, and the peaks that have now risen before Haitians cannot be surmounted without great help.

“In youth we learn, in age we understand.” – Marie Van Ebner Eschenbach

In my teens, my younger brother bought a motorcycle.  The bike was nothing remarkable.  I recall a Kawasaki 250 with on outsized tank, gray with some red trim.  Lord, though, it felt fast after I finally learned to ride.  Tim let me take spins when he wasn’t riding.  I found I loved the feel and smell of the world as it whirled past and there was an unbelievable sense of power when I rolled back on the throttle.  I thought every horizon was at my disposal.

In fact, they were.  We wore out that bike and I bought a used Honda 450 during my college years and was convinced I had been given a blank check to finance my travels.  The payments were as small as the engine on that bike but I never missed them for fear that a door might close on adventure.  The 450cc engine took me across the Great Plains, over the Divide, down the Great Basin, through the Arches, down Monument Valley, across the Mojave, up the Pacific Coast Highway, and all the way back down through Dixie.  The engine never missed a stroke and puttered me to every one of the lower 48 states, often in the slipstream of a tractor-trailer chasing after that “long, thin dawn.”

The Bike

I graduated to a Honda 750 café racer and then a Harley Sportster and they both gave good service and delivered the optimism of America’s blue highways.  In my hometown up in Michigan, as I frequently disappeared, people often asked of my whereabouts.

“Nobody’s seen him in a few weeks,” was the general response.

“Ah,” a knowing friend answered.  “He must have managed to scrape together five bucks.  He’s gone.”

This was true.

I’ve never gotten over motorcycles and how it feels to sit on one and roll through the scenery and feel the wind and smell the flowers and the musk of the earth.  Lately, I’ve purchased a big Yamahawg 1700cc and have plans to point it westward across the Chihuahuan Desert in Texas and the Great Sonoran Desert in Arizona and coordainates westward toward the Pacific.  West is the only direction I know.  But I am now about to embark on a ride that excites me with the same rush of blood I felt when I first strapped a sleeping bag to the handle bars of that little Honda back in 1970.

My friend Jack Holt and I are off to Perth, Australia to pick up big BMW sport touring bikes and ride across that continent.  We plan to head south out of Perth, on the west coast of Oz, and run down through Bunburry and the wine country of the Margaret River.  The first night we will be looking for a campsite at Cape Leeuwin on the southwestern most point of Australia.  The route is planned to follow the coast to a small town named Esperance and then turn north toward the Great Victorian Desert and the Nullarbor Plain.  We’ll point eastward across the Nullarbor where day time temperatures are presently running at 120 degrees plus, eventually turn south to Adelaide and Melbourne, roll along the Great Ocean Road, cross the Snowy River and the Snowy Mountains along with the Victorian Alps and drop back down into Sydney.  I still cannot imagine the glories of what will be along every curve of the tarmac.  The charts, paper and digital, put us at just over 4000 miles.  Australia has the longest stretch of straight railroad track on the planet, covering 1200 miles across the Nullarbor along with the ten deadliest snakes and the three nastiest spiders nature has evolved.

Jack and I plan to go old school.  There will be no GPS, just a nice paper map and stops in the Outback towns to ask about the best roads and most compelling sites.   I intend to have an outdoors experience, camp in the endless national parks, and meet strangers in their strange land.  I’ve got a small one-man tent, a sleeping bag, motorcycle helmet, gloves, an armored jacket, and a happy visage of how this is all to transpire.

I’ve been dreaming about Australia since I was a kid and have never made the trip.  My interest is such that I’ve read the nation’s great authors and historians and have stared at the roads and the terrain on Google Earth.  Oz has given rise to Tim Winton, in my estimation, one of the finest writers in English letters.  Read his books Cloudstreet, The Riders, Dirt Music, Blueback, or any other and you will realize he is a writer with a touch of immortality in his work.  Of course, Australia, the Outback, and life on a cattle station cannot be completely understood without reading Colleen McCullough’s majestic The Thorn Birds. Robert Hughes, a great art critic who made the work of the masters accessible to those of us with a public school education, wrote the definitive history of his homeland in The Fatal Shore.

The stories of Australia have engaged me, perhaps, because the continent, which is the size of America, seems to exist in a kind of parallel that lags American history.  Oz has its great shame in the treatment of aboriginals just as we have a distinct cultural humiliation in our racial failings.  Australia is, however, similar to America in that all indications are that the culture is driven by a kind of ethic of independence.  There are 22 million people on a continent the size of United States and a certain self-reliance is critical.  Perhaps, though, I romanticize a bit.  I think, however, the reason I fell in love with Texas was because of the frontier ethic of work hard, make it on your own, and help your neighbor.  There seems to be little hope for Australia without that kind of ideology.  The land is too vast and hard to be a gentle friend.

I intend to learn much and return often to Australia with the people I love and even a few whose company I only enjoy.  We “collect” the big Beemers on January 22^nd, load the panniers, strap down the tents, and make for the starry skies of the southwestern coast.  I will look up and see the Southern Cross for the first time.

And, as always, I will wonder how I got here.