The Journey

8:40am: The weight of what’s just happened is only just starting to press against my mind. A small headache is developing above my right temple as I consider the current consequences of this mornings events. It’s the same kind of headache you get as a small child when you struggle to comprehend the expanse of the universe or the concept of infinite. I’ve been awake for two and a half hours now and covered a lot of ground searching for our stolen items. Still no sign of the scum of the universe that robbed us of our things.

It was only last night, we sat in the lounge room of Steve and Leoni, two complete strangers, discussing the rationality behind rampant consumerism and our materialistic existence. There’s a false belief that we need ‘things’ to be happy. Live out of the back of a bike trailer and small car for a year and you’ll realise how far from the truth this is. Sure our support car’s back window is now shattered and we are no longer in possession of a guitar plastered in stickers from quirky locations around Australia. And sure we are no longer do we own our speaker, which we need to play school children our the MyPOWER DVD. Nor do we have our professional tripod for filming our sustainable living documentaries for UNSW. Oh, and my backpack, with Cocanee the Kookaburra, named by the first girl I fell flat on my face for, filled with expensive Polaroid film and sentimental objects from my travels, is now lost to the Gods of Yin and Yang.

These are material things. Unlike our health and wellbeing, they can be replaced. My Polaroid case however, is a slightly different story. It means more to me than most things. Hours upon hours of mental energy exhausted on the dream of a coffee table book of sentimental images, destroyed in the blink of an eye. The project was simple. One Polaroid photo a day for a year. One shot, one chance. A kind of antithesis to our throw away society. Why take fifty photos of a waterfall when the colour and life can be captured in one image that can trigger the intricacies of our memory? That’s all I needed. I didn’t need pages of words describing the waterfalls majestic power. The Polaroid was my diary, my words, my memories. Since Normanton in the Gulf, that’s over 60,000 words for anyone who believes in the story telling ability of a picture.

I guess in a bizarre way I’m okay with the fact some sub-par human rat is flicking those photos into a dumpster somewhere. Such is life, as Mr. Kelly put it. It’s almost the perfect poetic end to a project centered around the concept of life existing as individual, never to be repeated moments. I’ve taken photographs of the night sky for example, hoping to capture the beauty of rising moon and the picture has turned out jet black. I didn’t care. That was what happened in that moment and so be it. That black square with its quaint white border, says more to me about that big orange moon than any pathetic diary entry ever could. But now my pictures are lost to the strange Shakespearean twist orchestrated by some equivalent form of Yin and Yang. Maybe it was the only way the project could have ended. It’s reality that a camera from the 1980’s can’t capture detail in the cover of darkness. Much the same as the harsh reality there are some human beings that are allowed to crawl across this earth as useless scavengers.

Welcome to humanity, Meri points out over our second strong coffee. Humanity, ruled by the Gods of Yin and Yang. A random rollercoaster of yo yo like oscillation. Take the group of young men, in their loud car with shiny wheels that drove past us yesterday as we climbed a long steep hill in the heat of the day, for example. They were kind enough to throw KFC garbage at us. Mmm. The east coast, so full of cars with shiny wheels, fast food chains and all the others things we can’t live without. Maybe it was those guys way of saying, “Hey keep pedaling guys, you’re doing a great job. Keep trying to protect the same one earth we care nothing about. Hey I see you’re a not for profit without a cent to your name. Have some KFC, you need it more than we do. Whack!” Maybe they just belonged to Yin and were yet to grow up and spend time with Yang. Maybe they belonged to the same Yin that the people at the caravan park did, that refused to give us a patch of grass to sleep or any advice whatsoever, for no other reason but sheer laziness.

Late last night, as the blue sky faded to black, I was really beginning to wonder when we’d come across Mr. Yang, with his positive fortune. Surely our pedaling ridiculously long distances to reach Brisbane in time to inspire some school children would be enough to grab his attention. As it turns out, Mr. Yang was down the road by the beach under the alias as Steve. A complete stranger and amazing human being who took us into his home, gave us a roof over our heads and some hot water to wash the sweat and KFC from our weathered skin. Under the shining light of Yang we sat with Steve and Leoni last night and watched the football, clean and happy appreciating for a moment the brighter side to the yo yo like oscillation of life.

The only outcome to this story, as Mereki pointed out over our third coffee, is this. We slog it out another 120kms today to Brisbane with plenty of time and energy to spend the day visiting schools tomorrow. I find my future wife wandering the streets of Brisbane barefoot, murmuring sweet nothings in French. And the scum of the Universe that broke into the support vehicle of a not for profit last night, comes forward and gives me my memories back.