Friday, May 20, 2011

The End of the Road

What do you do after you have driven 5000 kilometers across the hot, dusty, often rough and difficult, but also spectacular, rewarding, unique and unforgettable Outback, and you have arrived at the world famous 22km long Cable Beach on the Indian Ocean in the Western Australia tropical resort town of Broome?



The answer for me was simple - you run into the Ocean fully dressed (minus my well worn hiking boots) and luxuriate in the satisfaction of completed journey and the warm tropical water.








After a 700 km final day drive from Halls Spring to Broome, our journey is over - it was indeed a voyage of adventure and discovery, full of interesting, wonderful and in many cases unique places, great people, and also challeges - the challenges of the heat and hikes and rough roads (expertly driven by Andrew), long days on the road, and less than ideal places. There were wonders of our world, Uluru, the West McDonnell Range, Kakadu National Park, the tropical charm of Darwin and the Kimberly to name a few. Most of all, there was the vastness of the Outback, the majesty of the wide open spaces, big country and big sky.









I leave you today with the words of Robert Frost:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

1 comment:

  1. Good stuff, Bill. It's going to be hard to settle down back in the office.
    The words of Banjo Paterson:
    "...I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
    Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
    And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
    Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all

    And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
    Of the tramways and the 'buses making hurry down the street,
    And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
    Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

    And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me
    As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
    With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
    For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

    And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,
    Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
    While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal --
    But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of `The Overflow'."

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