A day between highs and lows
Day: 06
Sunrise:
06:56
Sunset:
17:24
As the crow flies:
06,97
Daily kilometers:
07
Second camp – 17.05.2000
I leave our tent feeling exhausted. Again I dismantle our camp and again we haul the equipment to the loading area. Thank goodness we have already weighed most of the equipment and placed it next to the saddles yesterday. We are decidedly faster, but it still takes us 7 hours to load all our camels and it looks like we can set off. Jo, Tanja and I only want one thing now and that is to leave this campsite. “Should we untie the leg ropes?” asks Jo. “Yes!” I reply excitedly as always. Kadesch, who Jo is now increasingly calling “Goola Badoola”, has once again placed a large portion of his precious food behind him and scatters it over our heads with his tail flinging upwards. Normally the leg ropes are opened from the last to the first camel, but we make an exception in the early stages. As a result, all the camels apart from Kadesh are now sitting there without leg ropes. Finally it’s Kadesh’s turn. Jo talks to him incessantly again while she carries out the highly dangerous work of undoing his leg ropes. I hold Sebastian again and for safety reasons I have my foot on his thigh to show him, at least symbolically, that he can’t get up. We wait excitedly for the moment and for Kadesch’s reaction when his leg ropes are open. “Now!” Jo shouts, ordering me to let Sebastian stand up. Kadesch jumps up again explosively and everyone else follows his example. Within a barely perceptible moment, all the camels are on their feet and begin to walk nervously forward. Istan, the last in the line, is overcome with fear and makes some wild leaps. “Quick Denis, lead them in a circle!” Jo calls out and I immediately follow her instructions. There is a crash and Istan has blown up his hobbles. Jo immediately runs to me and takes over the nervous camel train. Istan calms down again, but he no longer has any hobbles and is therefore faster than the others. Kadesh remains more or less in the limb. It seems that he has indeed learned a lesson from the recent accident, which is a load off our minds. “Quick Denis, run ahead and show me a way through the bushes!” calls Jo. I sprint forward and clear the branches and small trunks lying on the ground so that none of the camels trip over them. The hobbles make them look like a group of convicts to me. They quickly move their front legs back and forth to run through the undergrowth.
As Jo and I are busy with the caravan, Tanja has to film again. She protests, but without film and pictures we cannot document this expedition with its initial difficulties and without documentation we cannot finance such projects. Thank God Jo is with us, it’s the only way we can capture part of the journey. We zigzag and circle through the eucalyptus forest for about 10 minutes until we venture back onto the heritage trail. The camel train calms down a little on the historic path, which is bordered by bushes to the right and left, but the desert animals are still under high tension. They turn their heads in all directions, tug at the nose lines and try to overtake each other, but despite the enormous strain, we are proud of ourselves for having mastered all the difficulties we have encountered so far. Tanja and I walk backwards more than forwards, always keeping an eye on the caravan.
“Don’t walk to the left of me!” Jo warns me, whereupon she explains that she has to lead the camels into a left-hand circle if they go through and that they could easily run me over. So we hurry along the path at a speed of between 6 and 7 kilometers per hour. Jo has trouble slowing Sebastian down because Kadesch is following him closely. Hardie also gives his all to overtake Kadesch on the left, whereby his nose line stretches to its full length. During the preparation time, Jo and Tanja cut strips about 15 centimeters long and one centimeter wide from a tube. This rubber strip now forms the center of the nose line and can tear in an emergency. This ensures that the nose peg is not torn out of the camel’s nose during an emergency and causes a terrible wound.
As the Heritage Trail is also used by some farm cars, I now run after the camel train to stop them in time. Tanja rushes ahead to stop everything that comes from the front. This gives us the opportunity to defuse one or two dangers in advance. After about a quarter of an hour, we dare to take the camels’ hobbles off. Of course there is a danger that they will all race off together like an avalanche, but at some point the time will come to let them go under normal conditions. Now that we think the camels have their fear under control, we free them from it and are happy that everything is going well.
In the next 20 minutes we have to cross two asphalt roads, which is also fine, because at this very moment none of the cars are speeding around the bend to frighten our animals. Our feelings fluctuate between euphoria and fear. Suddenly a jeep comes towards us on the narrow path. Tanja stops him and talks to the obviously drunk driver. He is friendly and waits until Jo leads the caravan next to the path into the bush. However, she has to cross a small ditch. Sebastian, who is not yet used to his new load, slips. To keep his balance, he steps far forward with his left front leg and accidentally kicks Jo in the calf, slips his toes on her and comes to a halt. Jo makes no sound and continues walking.
At around 4.30 pm, just 1 ½ hours after we set off, we find a campsite between the Great Eastern Highway and a fence. We unload the camels and while I set up the tents and collect wood for the fireplace, Jo and Tanja look after the camels. As the fire burns, the two return. Jo is now complaining a little about the pain in her leg. I look at it and am startled by the relatively severe swelling on my ankle. I treat the swelling with an anti-inflammatory ointment, apply a bandage and hope that the ligaments on my ankle haven’t been damaged. Tanja and Jo go to their tents at 9 pm. The cold of the night settles over our Camp 2. I put a few dry branches on the fire and start writing down my daily navigation notes in a notebook. The full moon casts its cold rays through the branches of a dead tree. I enjoy sitting out here and listening to the roaring engines of the road trains thundering past, connecting Western and Eastern Australia like an ant armada, and although we only made 7 kilometers today, apart from Jo’s injury, it was a very successful day for us. Satisfied with us and the camels, I write these entries. At 10 pm I crawl into my sleeping bag, shivering and dead tired.
