LIVE THE DREAM

Recently I returned from being away from Glenburn. I travelled by train to Western Australia and spent time with my family there. I bought a second hand campervan and travelled in it along the West Coast from Perth to Broome to Darwin and then south to Alice Springs, Uluru and back to Glenburn. In transit I did a month of voluntary work at each of the Aboriginal communities at Warmun (Turkey Creek) and Balgo (300 km south of Halls Creek). By choice I did all travel by land and on my own.

“What was the highlight of my journey?” people ask. The simple answer is “The whole experience.” However it was not the towns of Broome, Darwin or Alice that are the lasting memories, but more the simple natural activities of :-- spending time at Uluru, walking Kings Canyon, watching the bubbles of oxygen rise through the water from the living Stromatolites at Hamlin Bay, experiencing the eight metres difference between high and low tides at Derby, swimming with the fish at Ningaloo Marine Park, the glorious sunsets of the desert, etc. These are the things that nourished my Spirit and provided food for reflection and insights into the unknown Mystery -- called God.

Travelling the big distances involved in this journey provided me with time to reflect on the stark and eerie beauty of this vast land. A vast land of remarkable contrasts of golden beaches, expansive oceans, continuous open blue bush plains, red dust and tropical forests. As I drove, I often pondered on the fact that for 60 000 years Aboriginal people inhabited this land and I wondered what their life entailed. They left a landscape that is unmarked by human interference and shaped by the natural phenomenon of passing millennia.

This being the year of the Desert I deliberately chose to spend time in the desert at the Aboriginal community at Balgo. These are desert people living in a desert community -- not a sandy desert but a desert of red pebbles and infiltrating red dust. Being with the Aboriginal people has given me a better understanding and appreciation of them and their culture. Rather than being a desert experience my time in the desert at Balgo was a rich and rewarding time that nourished and nurtured my Spirit.

I have dreamed of a journey -- and Emmaus journey -- such as this for many years. The accomplishment of this dream has given me added life and if people do not follow their dreams they die -- or become cabbages. I believe I have lived more in these five months than I did during many years of teaching. Even though one becomes old on the outside, it is possible to remain young on the inside.