Facebook has commissioned research into the benefits, positive or negative, of only surrounding yourself with like minded people. They could have just given me the commission, I've been researching this for 11 years! And honestly, if you want to learn more about yourself and the world, hang out with people's whose interests are totally different from your own!
The research I conducted today was based on myself and Will each choosing a place to visit. I'd shown him a trip you can do with the mailman, you go from Coober Pedy to Oodnadatta, Williams Creek and a number of stations along the way. After showing some interest in it Will declared we could drive this ourselves. I said "Fair enough, but if we are driving ourselves I would skip Williams Creek and do Painted Desert instead."
"No worries," my willing chauffeur said, "let's do it."
After we'd travelled 150 km on the Kempy Road, dirt, dip, dip, dip, grid, floodway, dip signs all the way, I'd thought I'd just check in with why we were going all the way to Oodnadatta, (an extra 50km each way). "Well, we probably won't come this way ever again and seeing as we are so close we may as well travel on the iconic Oodnadatta Road and visit the Pink Roadhouse." Hmm, I thought, the pink roadhouse, like really??!!?? But it seems that my very different thinking traveling companion, being an interstate driver in the past and a 'Read everything you can about Transport in Australia' kind of guy had read and heard about this iconic institution. Some people want to visit the Ettamoga Pub, others the Pink Roadhouse.
Wow, what an eye opener. This Roadhouse had everything, including pink stickers of which we are now the proud owners. If you want toilet paper, frozen meat, a T-bone steak and veggies you need to go to The Pink Roadhouse at Oodnadatta. However, far more importantly if you want a sense of how vast and how differently members of our one country live, go, eat a picnic at Oodnadatta. As you sit, eating your packed lunch, with the crows cawing ominously in the background, and you watch two 9 year olds wander through the park, happily, arm on shoulder, one barefoot and dark skinned, the other shoed and white, you start to appreciate how diverse this country and its people are. The park is laid out with old relics from the gone by era of the Ghan Train. Its modern plastic playground has broken away, quickly, due to the intensity of the Australian Outback sun. The surrounding yards are filled with broken bits and pieces, relics of the gone by era. To me, a mess, to Will, a feast for the eyes. A K series Internatinal truck here, 4 good hub caps on it, a Holden there etc etc. To me, actually to both of us, the town felt lifeless and depressing until we found our way to the Aboriginal school. It seemed to breathe life into its street, it had colour, and a Sturt Desert Pea flowering, and it's motto was Pride - it felt like the only thing in town with pride. Three children wandered happily by, laughing and chatting as children should. Not worried about the strange adults parked in their way - that was refreshing. I would have missed this amazing experience had I been traveling with a like minded person who only wanted to see land features of the outback.
After our time in Oodnadatta Will drove us 90km off the track to view the sites of The Painted Desert. 60km into the track I thought I'd really mucked up, then wow, one more curve, one more climb up a hill and the senses were overwhelmed. The sight was amazing, the colours were beyond belief and the sound, well, it was beautifully quiet. It didn't fill me with the quiet stillness that a gum tree and a creek does, but as my dad told me once, I'm home among the gum trees. However it did impress both me and Will. It's humbling to see how diverse and different our land can be within such a short space of time. After time for me to sit and take many snap shots it was time to leave. Not before I got THE shot of the 'Nissan with the hill in the background', a reminder of how two people can stand in the same place and see such different things. And aren't we lucky when we have someone to tap us on the shoulder to show us how others view the world.
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