Kaltukatjara

Landscape - desert and love.

Sense, becomes experience, sets within us as memory, and shapes identity.

Travelling, a landscape imprints itself upon us in this way, like a woodblock, or an etching plate passed through a press; the ink of sight, touch, taste, scent and sound sinking into our soft malleable substance, indelibly.

This poem is the brief story of a long desert journey. I was the only one in the vehicle at the time, so hop aboard and join me, retrospectively. There’s plenty of room, and spare water too. I don’t have a map, and this was way before satnav, but we will get there safely enough, and then we will see what we have found.

Spoiler alert: it’s the one thing that is always with us….

Photo: 420km/250 miles west of Alice Springs - on the road to Walungurru (Kintore).

                Kaltukatjara. 
		
		The name forms on my tongue;
		the houses sprawl in the sun
		like camp dogs
		curled up at the foot of the hills.
		Beneath them
		the land lies still,
		untouched by their presence.
		Are the souls of the people so?
		A stranger here,
		I cannot know.
		
		I came just yesterday,
		following your stories and
		the wandering of my heart
		down the long track
		south from Kintore.
		The track wandered too,
		a fine brown thread
		amongst the dunes
		tangled yet,
		weaving a pattern still,
		sewing sand hill and spinifex
		ever more tightly
		into the tattered fabric
		of my life.

		I looked hard but
		found no message in the sand
		until, at last,
		both driver and driven,
		I arrived at this place.
		Now the face of the hill
		is turned towards me;
		the sun slips away
		at my back and,
		after all of this,
		all that I can see
		is your absence.
		
		And I realise that
		the hills of Kaltukatjara
		became a part of me
		long before I saw them,
		and though those hills
		surround me now
		they are not what I see,
		for what I see now
		is what I saw from the start -
		the wind carved mountains
		of my heart.
		
		Kaltukatjara.

The 1,000 km journey in photos…

Heading west towards Walungurru:

Abandoned playground - Papunya:

Walungurru community (Kintore). Home to the Pintupi Aboriginal/First Nation people:

South, through the sandhill country of the Gibson Desert. A bad place to break down. This was the only vehicle I saw all day. How it got this far is a mystery.

There are small trees, shrubs, spinifex grass… but no surface water - unless you know how to find it.

Natural cistern, in stone country near the track. When it rains (very rarely) water flows down the rock into this deep hole. The capstone rocks are placed over the hole by the Aboriginal custodians, to prevent evaporation. The water inside is cool, drinkable, and will save a life - if you know where to find it. I found this one myself, but left the water there, and replaced the stones carefully on top, exactly as I found them. They will be there still…..

The wind carved mountains…

Kaltukatjara

Self portrait: Poet on water drum - camped in the desert.

“Kaltukatjara” was highly commended in the NT Red Earth Poetry Award, a ridiculously long time ago. It was also published previously in “Spinifex” (2001. Five Islands Press) - my now probably unobtainable collection of poetry from the desert.