Me and my Ai #6: Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel

 

 

Me and my Ai #6: Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel

The big corporates driving generative Ai have a problem. To feed their need for data, to improve their GPT modelling, they’ve all already hoovered up all the easy-to-access data from the internet. That or they’ve taken a shortcut and simply hoovered up the modelling of other GenAi enterprises – as some US firms have suggested of Chinese firms.

It’s a thing, as Jonathan Shapiro highlights in his recent interview of internet analyst Brian Nowak. To survive, to stay competitive and keep eyeballs on sites, firms will have to invest more in gathering “first-party data.”

That data is increasingly unlikely to be found on the internet. What was there was scraped long ago, and the overwhelming majority of what’s new is the product of … generative Ai’s. Of a swathe of studies conducted this year, all conclude well over 50% of internet content is now Ai-generated. Shitting in the nest, pissing in the pool – are there any polite expressions for this sentiment? There’s not a lot of value in sampling the data generated from the data sampled earlier.

Instead, firms will have to invest more in gathering first-party data. A “first party” is corporate-speak for a human. Before they can sell it to us, the corporates need to gather the data. From us.

Having drained the internet swamp (and then pissed in it), they’re looking elsewhere.

I don’t know if it’s happened to you too recently, but my personal machine can no longer open an MS Office document without a yellow banner splashing across it from one side to the other, exhorting me to save all files (including the one just opened) to Microsoft’s cloud product, OneDrive. Where, I presume, in accordance with the tiny writing on page xx of the user agreement, that data will then be scanned to improve the user experience, as legitimate “first party data.”

(In response, I’ve started using Office Libre. Its Writer program informs me of the format of the files I’m opening. This week, as I started editing a document authored by an analyst from a leading consultancy, I was amused to discover it had been written using Word 2007. A version perhaps so old that Microsoft has abandoned it, leaving users banner free.)

Meanwhile, Google is scraping up first party data in video formats. Jess Weatherbed writes that users can have Google’s Gemini Ai summarise videos for them, without having to actually watch all those pesky, boring presentations and seminars themselves. While the text benefits the GPT’s evolution, at the same time, Google’s Ai-generated video avatars will be looking and sounding less like Scarlett Johansson.

If you’ve encountered other innovative (or corny, or even sad) attempts to harvest human (sorry, first party) data, please tack them on in comments.

Me and my Ai #5: A Legitimate Musical Beef

 

 

Me and my Ai #5: A Legitimate Musical Beef

Earlier today a friend sent me a link to a YouTube music file. She knows I like blues and thought I'd enjoy a little aural stimulation. The music itself was fine, but impossible to enjoy.

Because it was Ai-generated.

The guitar sounded good: smooth and slick. But didn’t sound right. Too smooth, too consistent, and those licks … more than a few included identifiable chunks of Stevie Ray Vaughan. Didn’t sound like SRV himself – different tone – but way too familiar.

I searched the musician credited with the performance. Prolific or what! But a picture of the dude? Not one. Videos too, not one with a shot of actual musician playing. Bland scenery and geometrics - probably all Ai-generated too.

The big streaming companies know a lot of us like to have music going on in the background. They know we’re often not paying much attention. So they have Ai generate music for them that ‘sounds like’ the kind of music we’ve asked to listen to. Because when they stream that music, it’s ‘theirs’ and free from obligation to recompense any external music provider. (Though it’s another opportunity for corporate ‘profit shifting’ - arguing that one arm of the company, in a taxation-friendly location, is selling the right to play the music to another part of the company.)

A jazz piano playlist on Spotify did this exactly. It would begin by playing songs I recognised by musicians with familiar names, and I’d leave it on in the background. Over time, it would shift to tunes that occasionally sounded like bits of other tunes, by performers I’d never heard of. Eventually it would grate on my ears. Only now do I realise what was going on.

Of course, the music-generating Ai’s are going to get better – perhaps to the point where my semi-cultured ears no longer discern.

That the streaming companies are doing this makes me sad and angry. The vast majority of musicians are scraping to get by – doing extra work they don’t like, whether that means playing music that leaves them creatively vacant, or peripheral or completely music-unrelated work. And the streaming companies, massive multi-national corporations making massive profits already, are exploiting these creatives. Feeding their best work into the mill, and generating a substitute to on-sell that costs them next to nothing and leaves the original creative bereft.

Tell me please, is there any legal recourse for the world’s musicians? (Or at least for those who’ve released recordings the Ai's have been able to sample.) Could an enterprising legal type act on behalf of musicians everywhere and extract reasonable compensation from the big streamers substituting Ai-generated music for that of the human creatives, given that the substitute is drawn from the well of those human creatives?

Me and my Ai #4

 

A conversation about the Stasi

The Stasi, the East German Communist regime’s secret police force and intelligence agency, operated between 1950 and 1990. A pervasive surveillance operation that infiltrated every aspect of daily life to enforce and maintain the regime’s control over its citizens.

The activities of the Stasi are credited for the 11% decline in East Germany’s population over a period in which Europe’s population grew more than 30% (and the world’s more than 100%).

Approximately one in every 200 East Germans worked for the Stasi. More astounding though are estimates suggesting that as many as one in every 30 East Germans was informing for the agency.

Without going into detail on its operations, which included blackmailing family members into informing on each other, and ‘psychological warfare’ techniques aimed at inducing anxiety, paranoia and a sense of helplessness, the Stasi's long-term effects on trust, social capital, and economic performance include lower interpersonal trust, reduced civic engagement, higher unemployment, and lower incomes. No wonder people wanted to leave.

Today, social media companies gather intelligence on members of society far more effectively than the Stasi ever did. With the aid of massive computing power, they interpret and develop that intelligence far more effectively as well. They are conducting a different kind of psychological warfare on citizens, driving them to huddle under dopamine dependency and extracting incomes through marketing and advertising targeting the individual. They are increasingly implicated in activities supporting the control that various political entities are attempting to exert over their constituencies. Who have no option to go 'over the wall'.

Seriously though. Imagine trying to explain social media to an East German citizen living under the Stasi.

Today I read, given a few years, we’ll all be wearing network-connected glasses which, while augmenting our realities with information, will simultaneously monitor sound and vision of all social interactions. And send it back to the agency for analysis. Every response, every nuance, every offhand remark, contributing to profiles analysed by the world’s most powerful computing assemblages.

I'm inclined to think of the above as alarmist. Nevertheless, it bears consideration, or perhaps simply adds context for those already considering the implications of social media monitoring for the control of society and its citizens. The Stasi lasted 40 years.

Atul's Bridge

 

Novel – Atul’s Bridge

 

Since 2016, I’ve been working on a novel of speculative fiction intended for young audiences.

While publishers and agents have said nice things about it, they’ve also made clear they can’t sell it. It doesn’t fit what the market wants. No-one to blame for that but myself.

Given I can’t sell it and the content is starting to age, I’m sharing Atul’s Bridge with anyone who’d like a look. (Simultaneously drawing a line under the project – nearly nine years is long enough.)

To that end I’ve set up a webpage from which you can download Atul’s Bridge as either a PDF or an EPUB. That seems preferable to putting it on Amazon for $2.50 and having Bezos earns a chunk every time it’s downloaded.

You might like to take a look, or recommend it to a younger friend. It’s very PG – no sex, no violence and fewer applications of four-letter words than there are fingers on a hand.

 

Cheers ric

 

The download link , if you can’t access it above: https://anti-bias.com/atul

 

 

Nigel of the Outback

Nigel of the Outback

 

The Larapinta Trail has a mystical quasi-religious aspect. Merited or not, it’s tangible in the minds of many who make the trip to hike central Australia’s most famous trail. A fervent light burns fiercely in the eyes of many pilgrims, more so as they near the end of their arduous and lengthy ordeal and feel perhaps that some of the veneration owed the Trail is owed to them too. 

It's understandable. The Trail …

On the other hand, there’s the locals. Like the Trail exists within an enclosed cylinder that snakes across the landscape, a rainbow serpent keeping the pilgrim within as a codicil to its act of creation. But holes push through the snakeskin at key locations. Big openings at the trailheads through which locals pass with familiarity. Smaller holes at the campsites, where locals taking a weekend walk rather than the trip of a lifetime might share an interpretation of the Trail and life in its surrounds at odds with that approved and promoted to the long-distance pilgrim. 

And me? 

Years ago, Nick Kostas suggested I walk it. Nick has an adventure travel company with gigs all over the globe and Larapinta is top of his Australian trail list. He’d done it recently, testing his company’s ‘self-guided’ walks at the same time, and expectations were exceeded. He recommended a similar trek for me. 

▶   The way out back 

After two straight years failing to get the family on board for a hike, the third year I simply declare that I’m doing it and ask does anyone want to join me. No-one did. At least, not until it was too late.  

I get a two-week pass and settle on possible dates (in August – at the end of the high season / start of the mid-season – because you probably don’t want to be hiking in Central Australia too far outside the winter respite). Realised I was way too late to book ‘self-guided’ support and furthermore that very few ‘small group’ spots remained available around the time I wanted to travel. 

But before sharing my credit card details with the corporation I had a chat with my old mate Nigel, who’s lived in Alice Springs a long time. I had a mind to spend time with him in the day/s before or after my trek. 

“You know what,” he says after we’ve talked long and meandering about anything and everything – music, bad behaviour, old friends, lovers, Alice Springs, more. “Fuck it! I’ll come with you … on the bits I haven’t done. And I’ll drop you out there and pick you up for the rest. I can put you up as well. You might have to stay in the office but come to the house for a shower and Brigitta won’t be able to stop herself from cooking for you.” 

Uh … okay! No bookings for me. Which also means … no on-Trail support. Apart from Nigel. Makes the trek a little more daunting. Every Larapinta webpage emphasises how tough and isolated it is. But novice or not, I’m not going to pass on an offer like that. 

A week or two prior to departure I prep. The old backpack bought for one of the kids years ago ($69) I fill with stuff until at 15kg its weight approximates that of a full hiking kit. Then with family and a visiting overseas friend in tow, walk 14km to the top of a mountain and back. It mightn’t be as ‘tough’ as the Trail, but that was easy. A big margin for extra exertion if required. Tick. 

There’s a cheap lightweight sleeping bag in a cupboard somewhere, rated down to 8C. Sure, Alice had two entire and consecutive weeks of sub-zero overnight temperatures in June – a record – but that’s obviously not going to last till August (!) and besides I’ll be in a tent ($67 ten plus years ago, erectable only with one splintered pole wrapped in gaffer) and I’ve a cotton inner for the bag (add a degree or two) and if I’m really cold, I can pull on some clothes, right? So all set.

Not quite. I put together a first aid kit and buy and register a PLB (personal locator beacon). The PLB sets me back a little over $300 but it’ll last a minimum of 5 years and even then can be fitted with a new battery for another go round. Though before those first 5 years are up all our phones will be talking to satellites anyway, so probably just one battery cycle. (Since Larapinta I’ve loaned it to friends taking remote hikes and tend to carry it any time I’m going anywhere remote or risky – why not?)

I’ve got good Kathmandu boots, a year or so old. They’ve a softer sole than a lot of boots, which gives me a better feel for the surface underfoot. (The downside of the soft sole is less rigidity when stepping up small ledges.) My hiking clothes are also mostly old Kathmandu gear. Not because I shop there a lot (which relative to other places I do) but because it tends to last. It’s residual. Shorts and tops suited to layering – combining merino long tees with high-tech materials. Plus many non-Kathmandu items: t-shirts, shirt and jacket, socks and undies, water booties, and more.  

A decade ago, one of the kids went to school without a hat or lost the one he had that morning. Not wanting to miss out on lunch (“No hat, no play”) he grabbed one from the lost property box. An over-sized, ugly and trek-practical hat, with a broad brim and a long rear flap to keep the neck sun free. Of material intended to quickly and coolly evaporate sweat away. The boy’s mother disinclined him to ever wear such an ugly thing again so it came to me and stuck. The ugliness which may have contributed to its original abandonment has also contributed to its boomeranging regardless of where I leave it. Shout out to Sofia, whose name still inscribes the rim. 

With departure date approaching and me reading up on the Trail and getting both increasingly excited and increasingly frightened, Nigel goes incommunicado. Growing concerns about his welfare and availability are placated by a message from Brigitta on Nigel’s Facebook profile (?) telling me not to worry, that Nigel will be around to meet and help me out. I’m getting the sense that while Nigel is happy making commitments for some time into the future, he’s not into sorting out the specifics until the event is at hand. 

When I mention to Brigitta Nigel’s plan to join me on the parts of the Trail he hasn’t already walked, she says “He hasn’t done any of it.” 

… 

You know what? Fuck it. If it works for Nigel, it works for me. At this late juncture I’m too excited to care. 

Nigel comes back online a day or so before an early flight out of Canberra takes me to Brisbane, where the flight on to Alice Springs departs only a couple of hours late. He’d been driving a bus through the Western Desert.  

The patterns left by rainfall and run-off on the parts of western Queensland visible from the plane are fascinating – for me if not so much other passengers. More like stains than the coursings of water. Because the land is so flat perhaps. Flat and hard. No deep ravines, no permanent courses gouge the landscape. More splatter and fractals. Different colours, dry but pooling, spread across a fabric, creating an anti-pattern with no base colour nor reference point. A consequence of coincidence in 2 dimensions.  

Water lies on the surface after recent rain, lacking the confidence to run. A course might briefly explore the surface before giving out, no part giving direction to another. Constant variation. Here striations. There ovals and clumps. One combination ceding to another with no compromise and no pattern to the boundary between sets of shapes and colours. With no visible sign of civilisation. No cleared land. No demarcations. An endless everchanging canvas of colour and shape. 

My fringe is stuck to my forehead when I enter the terminal. Consequent of the tendency to push forehead against window to look down. Strongest when the view below is clear of clouds and novel of landscape. 

Nigel is waiting at the baggage conveyor but says nothing about the hair. The tall skinny bloke I last saw, oh, thirty years ago is somewhat larger. I can get my arms around him but won’t be able to if he grows any more.  

“Slight change of plan old chap,” he laughs. “Brigitta threw me out this morning.” 

“Nothing to worry about,” he responds to my expression of concern. “It’s the 25^th time she’s thrown me out in the 18 months we’ve been together. She’s got a temper that girl.” 

Nigel, even more inclined than he used to be to see the funny side of things, will be staying with me at his office. The finer details we’ll get to as we need to. “I needed a break anyhow.”

The 15km drive from airport to Alice crosses the east-west course of the Heavitree Range at The Gap, just south of town. Nigel claims to be the last person to ever fly between the high rock cliffs of the pass, rising several hundred metres on either side. Last because he was sitting behind the pilot taking photographs and because after they pulled their stunt, planes were expressly forbidden to ever again fly through it at low altitude.

that's him!

He’s done (or claims to have done) many things in Alice over the last 25 years, some of them work. Been a photographer (buy a postcard in Alice and there’s a reasonable chance it’s his credit for the image), a graphic artist, a painter and lecturer of fine art, and a video and music producer. He and a mate have long operated a printing business (cum occasional temporary residence). Between other gigs Nige drives a bus for the NPY Womens Council, moving folk between the regional centre at Alice and aboriginal communities upwards of a thousand kilometres away. 

 

The offices of NT Print Management / Recycled printing share an industrial cul-de-sac with a refrigerated products entrepot, a truck repair workshop, a fresh water delivery depot, an air-conditioning maintenance centre, a tyre shop and a wholesale steel supply warehouse. Not Club de Mer then. 

the view

No five-star habitation either. Nige has swept it out and vacuumed and cleaned the parts of the bathroom that can still be cleaned (thank you), but it’s unlikely to pass any standards check.  

Hard to believe but I have not spent a night without a member of my immediate family nearby in more than eleven years. I’m off the leash, freed of all parental and familial obligations for the first time in over a decade. I’m gonna be stoked wherever I’m staying. In fact I’m going to be irrepressibly happy and excited and expect to stay deliriously so for the duration of my holiday. 

Nigel thinks it’s all pretty funny too, but he does that. 

The print stock storeroom on the right will be my abode, the bed a foam mattress Nigel pulls from a shelf and throws onto the floor, one that’s seen better days and is only used for camping. I pull sleeping bag from suitcase and throw it on top. 

Nigel will stay in his private office, where workdesk and a selection of musical instruments share the floor with a regular double bed mattress. 

A cabinet displaying antique cameras and NT Print Management products (including the flagship range of postcards, available at wholesale prices in volumes of 500 or more), a rock-and-succulents garden, some sagging lounge furniture, and a bunch of stuff discarded by other people – PA systems, road cases, various other large outdoor peformance components, and so on – decorate the reception area.

And art. Nigel’s wonderful naïve artworks of central Australia share the walls with works other have gifted him. More artwork leans stacked against the walls. 

The kitchen has a mini-fridge, a hotplate, cold running water and a dubious selection of utensils and foodstuffs. Breakfast cereals, like everything else, are kept either in the fridge or in sealed plastic containers. Because … 

The bathroom … the shower runs pretty much continuously and not out the nozzle. For reasons I don’t understand Nigel can’t fix it and the landlord can’t be bothered. The walls around the outlet are falling away. It’s useless as a shower though the drain still works (all the time in fact). Washing is by means of a bucket of water warmed on the hotplate and brought from the kitchen. The towel racks fall off the wall. I can hang a towel on the fittings if I want to. I don’t. 

Base camp established. Now what about the Trail? 

Section One of the Larapinta Trail begins just three kilometres north of Alice at the Telegraph Station Historical Reserve. We head to the Reserve late in the afternoon. Tomorrow, Wednesday, I’m to attempt Section One as a day walk. Nigel is concerned it might prove tougher than I expect and we head out to the trailhead for a familarisation. Through the Telegraph Station precinct, along the Todd River (there’s a waterhole or two), up Trig Hill where a German backpacker sits cross-legged facing the forthcoming sunset, and back around via the commemorative gravestones of some tough old bastards who died nearby. We pass a woman friend of Nigel’s, the manager of the facility, out for a walk. She’s Covid-positive and keeps us at a good distance. Even at a distance she manages to place a verbal order for a selection of new release postcards. Everywhere we run into people from one or other aspect of Nigel’s life. 

Driving back we pick up a young Israeli, hitchhiking, dehydrated, disoriented and short on accurate information and realistic understanding of the immediate and/or wider world. One of those people who just blank out when confronted with the larger part of reality that doesn’t conform to the Israeli state-approved interpretation of the world. Nigel delivers him to the door of the house he’s staying at, a kind of Israeli outpost in the red centre. 

Given the extent of support I’m getting from Nigel, I endeavour to pay for food, meals and drinks whenever the opportunity arises. The Todd Tavern becomes our regular. The only other patrons in the dining room when we arrive are two more of Nigel’s female friends, workmates from the Women’s Council. 

We’re back at base camp in time for an early night. 

▶   Section One 

Well before dawn I’m dropped as close to the trailhead as Nige can drive. The gate to the reserve is still locked. While I’m pulling on my backpack a ute stops in the middle of the road and its uniformed occupant rushes round the gate and into the darkness beyond without acknowledging our presence. Following her into the black, I’m overtaken by a woman on an electric scooter and cross paths with a jogger making his way back towards town. 

At the trailhead I’m alone. Peak season, early morning, I’d expected small groups gathering in the dark, assembling kit and making final preparations for their epic journey. But I’m alone. 

Wonderful. And apprehensive. Section One is a 25km Grade 4 walk (on a national system that rates walks from 1 to 5) and the guide recommends two days to comfortably complete. To meet Nigel at Simpson’s Gap at 3pm, I need to average over three kilometres an hour including breaks. Better get moving. 

Sunrise is spectacular. The eastern sky covered with low cloud, grey with the oncoming dawn lighting puffy fringes red, slowly turning pink, like the down of a Major Mitchell cockatoo. Silhouetting the furthest ridges of the Macdonnell Ranges across a gentle valley to the east, while the clear sky to the west turns through dark to blue.  

The morning weather is kind. A warm night with the cloud cover and the sun not breaking through until after 11. Early morning chill dissipates as warmer air gently shifts off the surrounding stone. By early afternoon the wind has picked up and is funnelled at high speed through gaps in the landscape. At Hat Hill Saddle some seven hours later, I leaned into a 50+kph wind with arms out and shirt pressed hard against my body. Once the sun emerges the temperature climbs towards 30, well above the forecast 18.

Beautiful and peaceful to be out and walking as dawn breaks. Intermittent spiderwebs wrapped across my face confirm there’s no-one in front of me. Expecting to be overtaken by organised groups of fit young people in fact I see no-one travelling my way all day.  

Initially the landform is of soft hills, small trees, shrubs and grass, and the path is easy. The shifting growing changing early morning light amplifies the constant change of landscape, with diverse rock forms pushing through and jutting out and ground cover varying in response.  

An eagle hovers above for some minutes before flying away, disappointed I’m not yet dead or dying. 

Over the course of the day, 15 people pass going the other way. The first 13 all in a half hour window, suggesting they’d shared a campsite the previous night. A hardcore couple well into their 60s lead them and pause to chat while I take a break at 2 hours in. They’re on their 20^th and final day, having walked unassisted (bar a single food drop) from the far end of the Trail. Amazing. They’re happy to share useful information with the newbie – granting me some cred perhaps for being out early and on my own. They endorse my approach – to work into hiking the Trail by beginning with a long day walk close to town. 

A large group of t-shirts asserting “100% wilderness” are accompanied by a guide with walkie-talkie. After them, three people who look like Nick’s self-guided types. Other members of their group had skipped the last camp night of the hike, opting for an Uber from Simpsons Gap back to town.  

All bar the older couple were brimming with the transport of completing their great penance. Only at the very beginning of mine, I have no intention of staying the course. Nick’s advice had been to pick out the best bits and visit as many as I could. The guide suggests a minimum 16 days to hike all 230km and I only have 12. 

Four hours in, I cross the sheer red quartzite clifftop of Euro ridge – jutting up in opposition to a long line of matching cliff atop the Heavitree Range, five kilometres south across a valley divided into irregular patches of slightly higher ground. Patches delineated by trees following any potential watercourse. I found myself very close to the cliff edge and discover I’d strayed from the Trail. Like hundreds before me, given how worn and obvious the path I followed was. Good view though. 

Down off the Ridge is Wallaby Gap, halfway point of Section One and recommended campsite for the two day walk. The water pooled in the Gap is thick and green and still, and insufficient for swimming or even sitting in. A tank at the campsite is regularly replenished with potable water. Good spot for lunch and reflection. 

I’d headed off in a rush in the early morning dark, nervous about finding the path, not being late, not getting lost. Didn’t even take photos of the spectacular dawn. I took breaks at set km marks (the trail is very well marked in both directions, with each km delineated). By Wallaby I was so far ahead of schedule that I slowed down, took more diversions, more photographs. 

Onto Bloodwood Flat and the rest of the section (bar the final 2-3km) traces the bottom of the West Macdonnell Range ridgeline. Detours lead from the main Trail up towards gully lines below which water cascades into pools in the shadow of the rock. Prettiest amongst them Fairy Springs. Here in the shade were a
couple, 30ish, serious experienced walkers, hiked from the far end in only 12 days. They planned to pass their last night at Wallaby and were disappointed to hear of water insufficient and unsuitable for swimming. 

The final kilometres climb up onto Rungutjirba ridge for views back across the flat and forward to the spectacular country to come in Section Two. 

 Looking down I chanced to surprise a marsupial mouse. Small, tan/grey on top, white/pale underneath, long tail and moving like a kangaroo rather than a rodent. Two hops and it dives into a deep dark cavity between the rocks.  

The terrain is abundant with wildflowers, predominantly crimson and purple flowers on the bushes, and tiny red flowers on creepers spreading across the ground.  

Rounding Hat Hill and there’s Nigel, walking up from Simpsons Gap. In his hand a camera with long lens. Away from town, away from work, and the camera is omnipresent in Nigel’s big maw. Fitted with his favourite lens of the moment, alternates close at hand. 

 He hadn’t expected me so early and planned to walk further up the Trail but when I offer that we do that together a while he declines. In fact has a rest before heading downhill. 

Once a prime central Australian tourist spot, Simpson’s Gap still attracts a slow steady stream of visitors. The opening of an airstrip proximate to Uluru and social problems in town have diverted traffic away from Alice Springs, reducing visitors to nearby and amenable locations like the Gap. 

When it rains, a broad riverbed directs the gathering floodwaters through the Gap. When it’s dry, sand turns white in the sun and the gums, trunks twisted by the torrents, suck deep into the riverbed in search of succour. 

Where the rock cliffs of the Gap come closest together, water is a permanent presence. Deep and cool, the pool is tantalising and inviting. Numerous signs make strenuously clear that swimming is verboten. Small dead fish lie on their sides on the edges of the pool, having succumbed to a completed lifecycle, not some water borne contagion. 

Day One complete. I’ve passed my exam. Caught an amazing sunrise, traversed diverse landscapes and enjoyed large and spectacular views ending with Simpson’s Gap. 

Next a shower (of sorts) and a meal. 

 

▶   Heading West 

‘Slight change of plan old boy,’ says Nigel, on the route back to Alice, the one that hasn’t been closed by a grassfire. Thick plumes of smoke climb the distant sky. 

He’s not going to be around for the next three days. Instead he’s been hired to take a busload of Indigenous women from Alice to their home community and bring back other women from another community. Three days of near constant driving through the western desert, 1400+ km of it on the dirt. But … there’s a but … do I want to come? One night camping out, one night in a government camp, a trip across the APY lands and three Australian states. A visit to Surveyor’s Corner thrown in too. 

Don’t I need a permit to cross the lands? Yes but … another but … Nigel reckons his back is playing up and he might need someone to help out with loading and unloading. And besides, this is the NT, it’s not fucking Canberra. I can live with that. Thanks Nige. 

 

Coming?

 

Thursday morning we head south, toilet break at Ghan, then turn west. One of the women insists on stopping for me to take a photo at the Mt Conner lookout. Nigel agrees because I won’t get an Uluru drive-by on this route and Conner is almost as good. The stop includes a close up look at the salt lake concealed behind red dirt dunes far side of the Lasseter Highway.

A few klicks further and 350+ km from Alice, we turn south off the highway and head for the South Australian border and the lands.

Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) lands occupy a vast semi-arid desert region in the north west of South Australia. Created in the early 1980s as a consequence of the movement to recognise in law aboriginal title to lands occupied since prior to European settlement.

A harsh environment with little capacity for human life. Even with support from outside the population density is only around one person per 44 km². Many communities that sprang up with enthusiasm in the 1980s have since emptied out.

A dingo pup runs out in front of the bus, looking back over its shoulder, curious and alert to our presence. Big enough to be out on its own it cuts back into the long grass as we get close. Still curious, the dog pushes up repeatedly onto hind legs, muzzle head and paws briefly rising above the grass, until flopping ears chase it back into the safety of the surrounds.

Crossing into Western Australia, we drop the women in Wingellina, grab meals from a mining camp and head into the scrub to drag fallen timber into a fire, eat, play guitar and sleep under the stars. Nigel in his swag. I pull out the mattress and bag from base camp. Early morning, a wander through the scrub turns up fresh camel tracks – ships have passed in the night.

I get to be a ‘tourist’ with a visit to ‘Surveyor Generals Corner’ where the boundaries of Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory meet. By draping myself over the marker stone I can be in 3 states at once. Some 30 or so metres from the Surveyor Generals Corner is the other Surveyor Generals Corner – an older marker the location of which was disputed by South Australia, triggering an adjustment. Space is not exactly at a premium out here but there you go.

Without passengers on day two, we stop as often and wherever we please. Wander through a long abandoned stockyard. Every piece of industrial manufacture – metal poles, corrugated iron, whatever – found its way here on a camel’s back. So everything is restricted in length to about two metres – lots of short pieces of metal roofing rather than fewer longer ones.

On my sole day on the Trail, the first several kilometres out of Telegraph Station followed the course of the old telegraph line. The poles of which are telescopic – delivered with the top half concealed in the bottom to be drawn out at installation – to keep them short enough for camelpack. The line was regularly broken by the indigenes, who would knock over poles then remove glass and ceramic insulators to smash for the sharp edges this produced.

Car wrecks festoon the roadsides. Some relatively modern models but seventies and early eighties models are prevalent. Another consequence of land rights. People returning to the lands of their ancestors did so in cars. Out here: no mechanics, no spare parts. Cars stripped down as accidents and age took a toll on doors, windows, panels. When they ran no more, cannibalised. Those still moving show great ingenuity amidst the missing parts and adaptations. Kind of Mad Max without the aggro. As cars break down a final time, they’re abandoned where they stop, often in the middle of a road. Whenever the road is graded, road building machines scoop up the carcasses and toss them ten, twenty, a hundred metres to the roadside, where they’re less likely to be collided with.

The old bodies stand nostalgic, juxtaposed against the scrub, the dust, the red dirt.

Today we’re heading mostly east, towards overnight accommodation at a government site. Only Nigel is authorised to stay but he sneaks me in and I’m back to my mattress and bag, this time on the floor of his onsite. But there’s a shower, an actual shower, not just a bucket of hot water and ladle.

As evening sets in we walk a couple of hours out of the camp through fields of spinifex and over rock formations that shelter other life-forms, giving them the chance to flourish. A couple of wallaby stand well disguised at a considerable distance further up the hillside. Taking no chances with humans.

Early start on Saturday. Possibly too early as few souls are about when we pull into Kaltjiti, and those already ambulant cannot point Nigel towards the parties he is to transport. The nurse at the community health centre sorts things out, locating and prepping the women for their trip to town.

Heading east through the lands and on into cattle country, passing through an odd herd of ferals – a mixture of donkey and horse. Stopping to chat with a large and colourful family on the side of the road, initially to check they’ve not broken down and then to let the women talk and renew connections.

Endless landscape shifting and yet the same – scrubby trees, close to the ground, mix of greens, the red of the sand that passes for earth, dark lines and shadow where the rocks break through. An otherwise straight road twists one way then the other to cross the occasional dry watercourse.

Many old-time cattle station owners established ‘roadhouses’ on these routes, as way stations for travellers, with stores that exploited local populations. Today most are derelict.

The dust, it’s so fine, especially when filtered through the bus’s AC system. Gets into clothes in a way that normal dirt doesn’t, really deep, right into the thread of things. And up my nose, clinging to mucus to form a hard shell that rips off skin as it comes off.

Roadtrains up to 50 metres in length whip it up as they barrel through the landscape, creating their own biomes. Many small outback towns require the trucks to halt at their perimeter and wait there for dust to settle before trundling through.

Late afternoon we hit the asphalt. No-one wants to stop at the Ghan roadhouse or anywhere else for that matter with town only another couple of hours away. The networked world pours in. The radio comes alive with music that pleases the passengers. Days of messages and emails cascade over intermittent network coverage.

▶   Trephina Gorge

Back at base, I’m hankering to get out on the Trail. Sunday will be my fifth day with only one spent hiking. Nigel has other ideas. Surprise. A Sunday hike around Trephina Gorge, an hour east along the Heavitree Range, where he wants to capture images for cards. He has work in town on Monday (I can take a ‘cultural day’) but commits to walk Section 12 of the Trail with me on Tuesday, with Sunday’s hike to serve as practice. Once that’s done, Wednesday morning Nige will drop me at one end of Section Nine and late Thursday pick me up at the other. Come Friday, starts a four-day stretch on the Trail that sees me through to the eve of my departure. That works.

Not far from the gorge grows the largest ghost gum in Australia (and presumably the world ...). A brief diversion, with enough tourists stopping by to make photography difficult. We wait for our moment – between the last of a long series of visitors heading back to their car and the arrival of the next. We fuss about and make professional photographer noises to delay their approach.

At the gorge we climb a track that zig-zags up steeply from the creekbed to panoramic views of both gorge and cattle country to the north. Then amble back down a gentler slope and through scrub recently burned. A camper had thrown bbq embers onto the ground to extinguish them. The fire escaped and spread. Stupid fucking humans.

A second loop takes us up and across the other side. At the bottom of a rocky gully a couple coming from the opposite direction discuss in French how hard the rest of the loop may be and whether or not to turn back. I reassure them that none of it is as hard as this particular gully. They seem stunned that someone might speak French with them out here and I have to extricate myself and push on before the limits of my linguistic skills and local knowledge begin to grate. We also cross paths with yet another couple of local women Nigel is very popular with, workers from a wildlife reserve southwest of Alice.

Everyone but me knows museums are closed on Mondays. Even so there’s plenty to do at the Araluen Cultural Precinct – art and crafts, gifts, and the Central Australian Aviation Museum. The precinct is built on the site of the town’s original airstrip. Given the vast distances of the outback, air travel plays a big role and the mishaps and adventures plentiful.

 

 

 ▶   Section Twelve

Mt Sonder rises up close to 1400m. The return walk to the peak marks the far end of the Trail. After a two hour drive from Alice, we’re later than most to set out. Minutes in and we’re crossing paths with folk already finishing what’s described as a five and a half hour walk. Some ascended in darkness to breakfast on the peak at dawn. Others had run the entire mountain, up and back, in as little as two hours. One amazing woman clad in a camo catsuit springs from rock to rock and still possesses sufficient energy to smile at our self-deprecating witticisms regarding her athletic prowess.

We won’t be up and back in two hours. The first 2.5km are the toughest, steepest, rockiest of the route, going more or less straight up the southern face to the saddle of a ridgeline that runs gently up the mountain, bar one steep section just short of the summit.

With the bright “good mornings” of the breakfast club behind us, we make our way up. We stash excess food and water on the side of the trail to retrieve on the descent. Once on the saddle, spectacular views open both north and south. Thirty km southeast is Tnorala, the remnant of an impact crater rising steeply from the desert floor, formed when a comet 600m wide crashed into the surface 142 million and some years ago. Scientists reckon the rim once stood two km above the surrounding landscape – making it as high above sea level as any contemporary Australian land formation.

The land is green and abundant after two wet winters. With the onset of spring the wildflowers are bursting out, though peak wildflower is still weeks away.

Despite frequent photographic interludes we summit in not much over an hour longer than the advertised duration. Going down should be easier. While we take a long lunchbreak other climbers come and go, including one delightful young woman who lunches with us, a geo-engineer just finished her degree, out to see some country before taking up a graduate position. She reckons a modern geo-engineer is almost entirely working solutions from imagery delivered to the desktop computer. Better a digital nomad, maintaining contact with the land she works.

Sonder is one of the highest peaks in the NT, giving clear views of others including Zeil to the west and Giles to the east. I’m particularly taken by the exposed cliffs of the range to the south – concentric halfcircles of rock as if deliberately placed side by side with vegetation growing into gaps accentuating the curves.

On the way down Nigel simply runs out of gas. I load him up with protein but to limited effect. He’s running through the water too and breaks become more frequent. I’m carrying everything, even the camera. The further we go, the slower he gets. The less he talks. The smile is gone. The long steep section back to the valley floor is torturous. Long drops at every step and many small unstable stones. Back at the car after nine and a half hours, the sun is setting and Nigel silent. I drive.

The famous swimming hole on the Finke River, a few hundred metres from the Glen Helen hotel, is deep and cold but it’s already dark and cold and furthermore a swim at this juncture doesn’t fit with the hotel’s agenda. 

Nigel has history with this institution but it’s recently been incorporated into a national chain and his connections are lost. Instead, under-staffed backpackers service a fully booked facility with overtly rigid adherence to the corporate playbook of an absent boss. It’s service as advertised for as long as you’re the guest as conceived. We get a room with a hot shower – running water that recently departed the premises of the water supply company adjacent to Nigel’s office, transported in a tank on the back of a truck. Bizarre. We’ve come a long way to cross paths, the water and I.

I order dinner for two while Nigel showers else the dinner ordering window will snap closed and he’ll go hungry. We eat, consume a beer, return to room. Nigel instantly asleep on the queen bed of our family room. After prepping my backpack and gear for the morning I fold myself into the lower of two bunks.

▶   Section Nine

Nigel’s not quite back to his normal self by breakfast time but his appetite has returned. Fortunately it’s a buffet. We depart with stomachs full and pockets stuffed with fruit and biscuits. His mood fully restored by the time we get to Ormiston Gorge, starting point of both today’s hike and the Ormiston Pound walk.

The circular Pound walk climbs above the high red-rock walls of the gorge and returns through its deepest part and the water therein. The walls are spectacular and birdlife abundant, drawn in by the permanent presence of water. Water-birds strut on rocks turned grey by exposure to water. Ghost gums cling to the edges, pushing up wherever the sand is deep enough that they can take root. Occasionally finding purchase on the walls above. We pass an hour photographing and talking while Nigel recounts the near disaster he and Brigitta experienced on the Pound: after a late start and further delays, having to ford the gorge in the dark, camera gear aloft, emerging into a mid-winter night, cold and wet with nothing to look forward to but a 90 minute drive home. 

I don’t want my two day hike to begin holding a 20kg pack above my head as I negotiate a water crossing. Assuming I got through without a disaster, then heading waterlogged and cold into what the guide describes as possibly the Trail’s most difficult section. Instead, once Nigel’s has his fill of birdshots and takes his leave, mumbling about a photographic assignment to Kings Canyon, I follow the Trail east as the gorge opens out.

The trail runs parallel to the road in for 1.5km and for a short while serves day trippers on the Pound walk as well. As it curves away from the road and the day trippers veer left up a ridge, I’m alone.

This is it. Finally. More than a week after arriving in Alice Springs I’m out, alone, with a loaded pack and loaded anticipation.

It’s hard work, slogging through creekbed sand along Ormiston Creek or following the undulations of its narrow banks as the gorge cuts through the range. The weight of a two-day water supply in my pack makes its presence known.

 

The Larapinta Trail from its start near Alice Springs to the end at Mt Sonder runs east to west through the Tjoritja or West MacDonnell National Park, mostly within the confines of two ranges – the West MacDonnell Ranges to the north and the Heavitree Range to the south. At Ormiston Gorge the ranges intersect, before running further west to Mt Sonder and beyond. The Trail to the west is mostly south of the combined range along the course of the Finke River, diverting to climb some of its peaks. This morning’s walk east begins immediately south of what becomes the Heavitree Range. The Section then climbs steeply to the range top, before dropping through Waterfall Gorge into a high narrow valley and continuing west until eventually descending the range south through Inarlanga Pass. I plan to stop for the night on top of the range and on Thursday follow the Section to the far side of Inarlanga, then continue further south for an afternoon rendezvous at the Ochre Pits.

At the top of the steep climb I walk alongside another hiker, a schoolteacher from Western Australia taking a year off to hike Australia’s most famous trails. She walks with hiking poles and on the broken rock surface these prove her undoing. One pole jams between rocks, causing her to stumble. The other catches as she tries to rebalance. Short wrist straps prevent her from disconnecting with the poles and, with arms trapped at her sides, she falls straight forward onto the broken surface. It would be funny except it’s not. I help her untangle and pull her pack off. After a few moments face down, she sits up and is basically okay, stunned. Lucky: no major cuts or bruises, just a couple of places on her face where skin has broken.

At the Hermits Hideaway campsite, hidden amongst the trees a kilometre further on, her walking companion, another teacher, administers painkillers and more intimate sympathy.

I’ve brought no tent. Just the fly. Because I wanted to keep weight down. Section Nine requires carriage of two days water supply as there’s none available en route. My new friends find this mysterious and funny. Given my newbie status, they take charge and find me a most protected spot, up against a rock wall. What am I going to do if it rains, they ask. I expect the fly to keep the water off. If it fails, or if it rains so much that water runs under the fly, the worst outcome is I’ll be wet, warm and wet. What about mice? Mice? Apparently some campsites are plagued with them.

Given a while, but I have a while, and a few sticks, of which there are plenty, and my fly forms a satisfactory and slightly sturdy state. It will do. I hope. Next time bring a tent.

As Hermits Hideaway fills with hikers I wander. With steep rocky cliffs north and south, it’s back the way I came or forwards. Forwards takes me by the recommended overnight campsite beneath Mt Giles lookout, where there’s only one camper. Seems like almost everyone’s opted for the smaller more sheltered site. Bizarrely, this lone camper hails from the same small part of WA as my two new friends. I walk back with him to introduce them. WA is only weeks out of Covid isolation, which explains the numbers, but so many from one small place?

Hot food is a funny thing. I have no burner and planned no hot meals – felt no need. But when others around have hot food, it tugs deep inside. Not something I’ve experienced before and not a big deal, but definitely a thing. One of the teachers insists I eat half her hot dinner – she has made a lot, explaining that she’s as new at apportioning home-made dehydrated meals as I am at hiking. I reciprocate with Clif bars, which are very well received. My healthy stock serves as both de facto currency and friendship-sealer on this and other occasions. Above the rock wall behind my construction, clouds darken with the sunset and teacher practices her evening yoga.

A light wind rises overnight, bringing some rain. But my abode stands firm and the only water inside springs from an accidentally punctured bladder. Little water escapes before I grab it and transfer contents to empty bottles.

Early start in the morning to build a buffer against my rendezvous. Which I blow a large part of almost straightaway. I follow the range to the Mt Giles lookout, after which the ground falls away sharply. I take the obvious path until, soon, it becomes less obvious. So backtrack and try another path until it too disappears. No option but to climb back to where I last passed a trail marker and from there find where I’ve gone wrong. Just before the lookout, the actual trail had taken a sharp 150° turn down the rockface.

Each time someone takes a wrong route as I have, they must then backtrack to the trail. In doing so walking twice over the wrong route, which inclines it even more to appear the well-trodden path.

Zig-zagging down the steep incline necessitates big drops from one rock down to another, or worse, to a sloping patch of gravelly dirt. Especially steep whenever zig becomes zag. I can hear the teachers shouting and laughing further up the slope and assume they’ll catch me but in fact never see them again. At the bottom, an exhilarated pause before pushing along a creekbed of rounded stones varying in size and made slippery by rain. My boots’ softer soles excel here, their footprint forming further around the stone for added grip. Sheltered by the gully walls, taller trees grow along the bottom, amongst the shrubs and thin dry grasses familiar from the slopes above.

At the entrance to Waterfall Gorge, an overhanging rock formation sans waterfall shelters a large guided group who’ve been on the move since before dawn, aiming to cover in a single day what most will do in two. Several group members showing signs of fatigue. Minutes later and the guide has them moving west again, onto two kilometres of wet round stones before an hour long climb up to the lookout. The impetus to move: a similar sized group organised by another company pushing up from the rear, the guides using inter-group competition to motivate their charges.

The rustling upper limbs and leaves of the gums sway softly against exposed and perpendicular red stone until the gorge opens into a high and narrow grass-covered valley. Soft grass-covered ridges and slopes made fresh by recent rains slip down from red rock caps to fold across each other for as far as the eye can see. With cloud cover and a mild temperature, a pleasurable few hours ambling through this wonderful unspoiled and uninhabited landscape. Occasional hikers pass in the opposite direction but rising and falling with the folds we see little of each other.

At its end the valley turns sharply right and pours into Inarlunga Pass, dropping hundreds of metres over just one or two kilometres. Spectacular and awesome: sheer red rock walls rising fifty metres on either side define a pass that narrows to ten in places. Scattered across its floor are trees, shrubs, ferns, boulders large and small, pools of water and fallen timber. Perhaps it’s made more vivid than usual by the recent wash but this is one special place and I am beholden to it.

For the Arrente people the Pass marks a boundary and passageway between lands. To traverse it requires the seeking and granting of permission. Even so, it’s no easy passage. There’s no recommended route. Take your pick: leap from boulder to boulder or edge around their bases and wriggle a way through. I tried both methods and was repeatedly forced, when finding myself aloft a boulder with no way to climb down, or trapped in a gap as stone piled up around me, to back up and find another way. But all the while exalted and privileged within and by this great cathedral of nature.

Until I’m tumbled out of the pass and, head still ringing in wonder, abandoned to clamber up the bank of a flat and widening creekbed.

From here, as Section Nine continues another 4km east to finish at Serpentine Chalet Dam, I turn south onto Aranda Walk and head for the Ochre Pits and a rendezvous with Nigel. The Walk meanders through country sprinkled with information boards explaining how tribespeople living a traditional lifestyle would engage with the land. The 4km seems to stretch on and on, an indication of how tired I am after lugging a full pack 30km through some very rugged country and up and down the lofty rangeline. Nigel is in the midst of a coachful of tourists when I arrive, one of whom has fallen over. With a full memory card in his camera, he’s quick to appropriate mine and snaps 70 psychedelic cross-sections of the variously coloured earth from which ochre is traditionally drawn.

 

▶   Sections Six, Five and Four

‘Slight change of plan,’ Nigel says, soon as we’re on our way back to town. He’s leaving early morning Friday (tomorrow) for a photographic assignment in Kings Canyon, returning late Tuesday. Do I want to come? This time no foam mattress but as one of four legit crew members and the hotel will provide room and meals. Upmarket establishment too.

Despite his best sales pitch and eager face, I decline. My plane leaves Tuesday afternoon.

He offers to rearrange schedules to return Tuesday morning. I decline again. I’ve experienced only some of what Larapinta has to offer and I want more. It’s what I came for and if I cut out to Kings Canyon I won’t get a substantial period on the Trail.

Nigel is disappointed. For fully four or five seconds. Then calls and cajoles his mate Steve into dropping me at the starting point for my four-day hike. I can borrow Nigel’s car (because the client is providing him with a LandCruiser) and convoy with Steve to Standley Chasm where my hike will end. Steve will then drop me to Ellery Creek so I can hike back to Nigel’s car.

I’m being so well looked after. I’m also nervous about leaving the car unattended for days but am reassured by Nigel, Steve and anyone local I speak to that it’s nothing to worry about. The carpark is locked at night. Will the folk running Standley Chasm be annoyed? Never happened I’m told. (Ultimately, when I hike into Standley Chasm early Monday afternoon the car is where and as I left it, though hard to find amongst the motorhomes that surround it in the interim.)

Nigel and I grab a pizza, shop for supplies and head to base camp to organise and get an early night. Mostly for Nigel who has an early early start. Not so much for me as Steve is unenthused about anything early. Nigel is gone before I wake. Steve arrives slightly later than expected. Then we detour for fuel (which I’m able to pay for). At Standley Chasm I fuss nervously about the car, to determine where to park that’s least likely to be noticed or cause a problem. We talk at length on the drive to Ellery Creek, discovering countries we’ve lived in at the same time and friends in common. By the time we bid farewell it’s close to ten.

While the Trail officially passes through Ellery Creek North, Steve drops me at Ellery Creek South. The locations are separated by a permanent body of water (‘Big Hole’), impassable to man and machine alike. From Ellery Creek South I walk 3km east, then turn up and over a saddle to join the main Trail a km or two further north.

A runner who has this morning covered the 30km from the far end of the section pauses to ask: how far to the end. Friendly but in a hurry. Minutes later, another runner not stopping, smiling calling waving. An ultra-marathon event is using the Trail for a course. Coming over the saddle I overtake a couple of daywalkers on smoko, en route to Ellery Creek North. Soon after them an older couple already on the way back, who compare for me the relative virtues of Aldi v. Kathmandu merino long-sleeve T’s.

The rest of this section, running ENE through the Alice Valley, is the flattest Trail I will walk. Sparsely vegetated, the slightest rise gives panoramic views over long grass and mallee, through wattle and spinifex to the largest of the trees, the ghost gums that mark dried water courses. Spring is breaking. A cracker for flowers given all the rain this year and the one preceding. Occasionally I spot wallaby poo, and presume that the short lengths of black dog shit dotting the trail are dingo residue.

On one rise, a small woman from Tasmania perches on a rock, grinning in the sun like a Cheshire cat as she consumes a tin of tuna with crackers. She’s a knowledge depository – knows the first names of both runners for example. In my mind she’s the administrative head of a tertiary institution, though I don’t ask. She’s formidable and the first woman I’ve encountered walking the Trail alone. I’d spend the whole day talking but I’ve many km’s to cross and have no doubt she’ll complete her repast efficiently and on-schedule and be gone within moments when she does, with spoon restored to receptacle and garbage stashed correctly in a voluminous pack of clearly and well-defined form. Relaxed, cheerful and in control.

Two hours later it’s my turn for lunch, scattering gear out haphazard across and sitting myself in the soft white sand of a dry riverbed near Rocky Gully. A young couple pass by at pace. We’ll cross paths frequently over the next few days, occasionally walking together and camping in proximity.

The guide suggests another three hours from the section’s midway point at Rocky Gully to Ghost Gum Flat, my intended campsite. Just a klick past the Gully, a large and incongruous rock offers great shelter at an unmarked campsite sized for only a single tent. Tempting but I’m not stopping. Nearly run down by a young guy wearing large white headphones with music up way loud. His companion shrugs and tells me it’s a “Norwegian DJ” before racing off in pursuit of his oblivious mate.

As the afternoon grows long, local fauna emerges to displace the declining incidence of human mega-fauna on the move. Extended families of finch skirt the grass top and dive dramatically into the walked-down thread of the Trail, cutting through it in precise and sychronised aeronautic displays. Quails dash underfoot. What I assume is a brown snake lays across the path, coolly slithering away when I move too suddenly for its liking. White below, green on the sides and copper on top but with a pattern resembling that of a brown snake. Unintimidated by the presence of a larger animal. Brown snakes are deadly venomous but still inclined to avoid the footfall (or hoof-fall) of larger animals.

For the last three klicks I’m stumbling but push on to the deserted Ghost Gum Flat campsite, arriving a half hour before sunset. With efficiency that would earn plaudits from a Tasmanian administrative senior I lay out everything needed between now and tomorrow morning on a raised wooden platform and set about making camp, eating and drinking and prepping to turn in. Despite several newbie mistakes I’m done in good time.

The temperature plummets. Full moon rises into a red and darkening sky. Twenty minutes after sunset and the birds fall mostly silent, stillness broken only by an occasional unanswered screech.

The two nearest alternative campsites, host to the nearest alternative humans, are both eight km away and in opposing directions. I celebrate isolation with an unfettered and unanswered primal scream. Liberating and exciting.

Wake in the dark. Cold. Rolling in my sleep has split the zip on my cheap bag, necessitating a run to the bottom and back for the zipper and the loss of much of the insufficient warmth it offers. Out for a pee: landscape eerie and beautiful under full moonlight but too cold to enjoy for more than a minute.

The zip is seriously broken. I pile on the extra clothes and sleeping bag inner already laid out and cocoon. Lying on a thin mat on the ground, I’d normally roll – side, back, other side – once every 15 minutes or so. To preserve the cocoon I move less often and more carefully, mostly from side to side to preserve foetal position and warmth – it’s seriously cold and I lose more heat on my back. The drawstring for the hood of the bag in my hand at all times, for ease of adjustment.

A wind springs up and dies away again. Is that an animal outside the tent? No, just the rumblings of my stomach. Bird noise returns before daylight.

Waking as first light radiates the fly, dressing for the morning walk and reassembling my pack within the tent’s confines. First time I’ve tried this and it works well. When ready I head out with camera, breakfast, backpack and the few things required to pack up the tent.

Which is covered with frost, a thin but complete layer of ice. Later research suggests overnight temperatures on the exposed Flat were at least -3C. Sun cracks the horizon. Cold fingers shift between frozen tent components and flexing in the full intensity of a warming sun. I flick the fly, sending shards into the air and showering myself with ice, pieces finding their frozen way into my collar and down inside my shirt.

En route soon enough. Yesterday I walked hard to complete in seven hours what the guide suggested would require eight. Today the guide suggests seven hours to my preferred destination and I’m on my way at least three hours earlier, a little stiff after yesterday’s exertions and a cold night on the ground.

“We all live with the voices in our heads,” I remember reading once, “It’s just the credence we give to them that determines whether we’re mad or not.” I’d probably take that assertion a step further – give to the voices when they come whatever credibility or authority you like but be warned: should you go seeking them out, that way lies madness.

Away from society, with no other voices to be heard: no phone calls, no conversations, no podcasts, no Norwegian DJ’s. The voices in my head come on. Let them come. Each alone now, exposed, not jammed between other thoughts, sounds, statements, conversations, narrative. Slapped down on the cutting board of my consciousness like a dead fish or piece of meat, to be pared back, cleaned up. Considered. Each with its own shape, smell, weight.

The quiet and the time to spare give space to think about thinking. What are these ‘voices’, these statements barging in on thought processes? They’re me, all part of me. Perhaps for the Indigenous folk they were, perhaps still are, the spirit of the land and its inhabitants speaking directly to them. Different parts and processes of my mind operating autonomously and occasionally making themselves known to the mainstream. They’re the ‘conscience’ of a Pinocchio but so much more. An opportunity to consider a different point of view, perhaps someone else’s point of view. Different voices cutting through, overlaying each other, meta-takes on the preceding thought. Taking thought processes in different directions and opening alternatives. Their sources varied. Perhaps the voices, the rationales, reflect those of people and philosophies I admire and respect. Perhaps the voices course through ancient parenting and pedagogy, drummed in and residual, hectoring.

Out here, the voices roll on, run down, space out, take their time, get full consideration. Flipped one way then another on the chopping board of mind. Cleaned up, cut to size. Fitted into place in a larger whole or set aside for later application or disposal. Out here, the voices remind me that it’s really just me, walking Larapinta, comfortable with occasional thoughts butting in at cross-purposes.

It’s no epiphany. More a gentle settling over time and space. No revelatory ferment fires up the mind behind my eyes. Just calm and comfort with myself and the world around. As close to the mystic as I’m going to come, and leave again unpossessed.

A warmer day, water consumption climbing. On a warm day I might drink 1.5 litres. On a hot day, at least three. Late morning at the Hugh Gorge trailhead is chance to re-hydrate and replenish before heading into Section Five. Introductions with the fast-moving couple (Jack and Juanita) as they pass by again. When did I pass them?

The walls of Hugh Gorge rise and close in, the ground underfoot turns to rocks of inconsistent size. My walking style has changed this last week, with weight on my back and rough ground underfoot. I tend to throw my foot forward with each step, and spread toes before making contact with the ground. Reduces the likelihood of boot slipping between rocks and of blisters developing, particularly on the outside of toes and heel. ‘Cycling socks’ work well for hiking, fitting snug and tight around my foot. Of course, like everything else they get whiffy. The small pieces of river rock adjusting beneath footfalls emit sound akin to broken ceramic pieces tossed and rubbing against each other within the confines of a cardboard box.

Hugh Gorge comes with a water challenge. A waterhole fills the gorge at a narrow point and unless you’re up for some serious rock-climbing with a large backpack and the potential for injury at error, not much option but to plunge in and swim through. I hang around a few minutes, hoping someone I can cooperate with will come from the opposite direction. Not happening.

Stripping down, I wade several times into the waterhole, ferrying possessions up onto a ledge that leads on beyond the hole. If I swim to the far side of the hole I can wade back to this ledge, collect gear and continue my journey. From below the ledge, anything that won’t break gets thrown the couple of metres above. What remains in my pack is lifted with a long wooden limb that then leans against the rock wall under the ledge. The limb is tall enough (I hope) that I can lie on top and reach down to grasp and pull it up. Wade back to the bank and remove the last of my clothes. Wade out and toss them up too. Swim round (only a few metres but it’s deep – and cold down there) then climb back to the ledge to reunite with scattered possessions. Warm and dry in the midday sun. Re-assemble kit and carry on.

Passes and gorges cutting through the ranges. Ancient waterways that spring to life with the rain and disappear again overnight, running deep beneath the sand and rocks of the river bed. Leaving pools in the deepest and most sheltered spots. The way big stones rest against tree trunks suggests the trees pre-date the great torrents that tumbled stones to their current locations.

On a macro scale – most landscape is flat, spreading wide and open, covered with broad and shallow dry watercourses. Ranges rise above, cut where the pressure of water welling against their walls has sliced its way through. Is the flat the dusty residue of once-greater ranges, or have the ranges pierced the surface and forced their way up? Or both.

Pocket Valley rises slowly to a junction between rock walls. Down an incline to the north, Hugh Gorge waterhole. Tempting, but I turn right, to head east along Linear Valley. It’s an easy walk, alternating between the broken rocks in the watercourse and paths through the scrub along its banks. Walking on rocks is noisy and demands attention. Varied and constant and arhythmic. Dirt is calmer. 

Where the valley opens, the trees spread and the main watercourse is less obvious, I keep a constant eye out for blue triangle Trail markers. Some in this section made extra-large and fixed higher – others too must have found the course difficult to discern through the distraction.

A pair of doves are so engaged in a mating ritual – lying side by side, then beak to tail, then walking circles around each other, rising up, fanning feathers, doing it all again – that they’re oblivious to my presence. I move in close for a few snaps, but not too close. It’s not my special time after all and I don’t want to intrude.

Linear Valley comes to a T junction at Fringe Lilly Creek, where I’ll make camp. It’s only 2pm and the only other campers a three member, three generational party. The camp will fill quickly in the coming hours. I’ve secured a great spot. I worked too hard yesterday and tomorrow will be the most demanding hike I’ve ever undertaken. So taking a few easy hours at Fringe Lilly is all good. The weather far warmer today and with a sheltered site, close to the valley wall and surrounded by vegetation, hopefully not another too-cold night.

Food options are limited. I have protein bars, great trail mix, John West pre-packed tuna meals, fruit (one apple, one mandarin each day), lemon juice to add to water for the occasional ‘special’ drink, and really not a lot else – bread rolls with cheese finished early on day two. The lack of variety reflects my lack of experience. It’s food that will get me through and get me through in good shape, but there’s little in it to look forward to. By the time the four day hike is over I’d be happy to never see trail mix or Clif bars again. (A sentiment that softens with time: scroggin and handy protein/energy boosts will always feature in the food mix.)

Deep in the gorge, the sun is gone from the ground hours before sunset but continues to warm surrounding walls. Colours softly darkening. Cold beginning to bite but nothing like the previous night. My closest neighbours: two women from Alice Springs out for a weekend walk. They’d convinced a boyfriend to drop them at Hugh Gorge on Saturday and pick them up from Birthday Waterhole Sunday afternoon, so they could walk Section Five together with a night away at Fringe Lilly. Nice boyfriend: that’s six plus hours of four wheel driving and another four on the highway. Reflecting on this sends the women into fits of giggles.

As light fades and birdsong gives way to the hum and click of bugs, I turn in, planning for an early start and a lot of ground to cover tomorrow. 

Waking before dawn after a relatively comfortable night on soft ground and thin foam mattress, pulling on extra layers when cold and managing the broken zip. Packing up, breakfast, and outside. A hint of frost about the place but nothing like the previous morning. Pausing only once to warm fingers while dismantling tent.

Jack and Juanita again, heading out a minute or two in front of me. I hadn’t seen them come in the previous afternoon.

The first of the day’s two ascents climbs straight out of camp and up Razorback Ridge. Panoramic views, constantly shifting in shape and shadow as the sun climbs in the sky and angles its light deeper into the steep valleys. The rock here is predominantly granite, dark grey, not red, sharp edges justifying the ‘razorback’ appellation. The trail shifts between tunnelling through vegetation clinging to the ridgeline and clambering over and between the rocky outcrops crowning narrower sections. Because the surface is hard and residue thin, it’s often difficult to discern where the trail goes. But equally hard to get lost on the ridgeline. In places, the trail is no wider than a footprint.

The long climb off the ridge through Windy Saddle is seriously hard work. Clambering over broken and uneven rocks, often scraping, occasionally catching backpack on exposed edges, and having to backtrack more than once. On my way down I cross paths with people and groups struggling to make their way up. Several ask me how much further to the top – a good indicator of how tough they’re finding it. One Japanese woman is climbing with a backpack almost as tall as herself and showing no hesitancy. Amazing determination and resolve.

Passage eases as the trail pivots south into Spencer Gorge. At the end of the gorge, pivots east again and begins a short gentle climb. Towards the end of this climb, I overtake the J’s and suggest we walk together to the trailhead marking the end of Section Five. I’ve tired of saying ‘hello’ over and over.

Jack and Juanita are tour guides on holiday. They’ve worked trails in Tasmania and before that Queensland. And for fun, they’re out walking Larapinta. The trail is narrow and talking is an engaging back and forth process. We share information and discuss options for tonight’s camp (all headed for Brinkley Bluff). At the trailhead they detour to check out the waterhole while I hydrate and replenish and move on.

Fatigue sets in on the long slow climb up through Mintbush Spring towards Stuarts Pass. Pausing to chat with a young woman who’s running (!) in the opposite direction, I dose myself with protein figuring I’ll need extra stamina to complete the day’s second big climb.

Heading into Stuarts Pass the gully gets steeper and tighter until I realise I’ve lost the trail. I can’t see it below me but can see it crossing above and heading to the right, using the low point of the pass to flip from hugging the southern slope of the Chewings Range over onto the ridgeline that climbs east to Brinkleys Bluff. The trail then must be to my left. The gully is too tight to get the pack off, to take a break. Instead I manouevre horizontally left until, once clear of the ditch, the trail and a re-assuring marker are obvious.

I summit mid-afternoon to find an attractive young woman basking herself in the sun. After providing a status update on her somewhat less fit companion (passed earlier) I beg off further conversation to find myself a tentsite.

As the lack of notes from Sunday suggests, by now I am seriously worn out. I throw mat on the ground, swallow Ibuprofen to counter a swelling headache, and take a ninety minute rest and meal in the afternoon sun before making camp. Not dehydrated, I consider the opposite – that I’d over-hydrated at Birthday Waterhole before commencing the climb to Brinkley, making of myself a sloppy floppy water sack. (Looking in a mirror a day later, the over-exposed skin of my face suggests a more obvious cause.)

Brinkley is eyrie for a murder of crows and home to a mischief of mice. Plenty of tent space to stash gear. Little food left anyway, sealed and rattling inside the big plastic lunchbox Nigel insisted on loaning me.

Last night on the Trail and the world throws up a spectacular sunset, book-end to the spectacular dawn of day one.

 

As the sun tumbles towards the western horizon, shadows display the rough detail of slopes, cliffs, gullies and rock formations to the north and south. 

Once below the jagged horizon it unleashes a chiaroscuro of black below and sky above, sinking slowly from blue through yellows and orange to deepest red. 

I grab Jack’s camera and photograph the couple leaning in against each other, silhouette against a reddening sky. One for the pool room.

Despite the bluff’s exposed position, the evening is relatively warm. Tent flap open until the last red light is squeezed from the rocks.

Morning light comes creeping in and I get up to do it again. But this time for the last time. First out of camp, overtaken by the J’s, who I overtake in turn when they stop for a picturesque breakfast. Juanita borrows my powerbank to charge her phone/camera, to be left on the front wheel of Nigel’s car at Standley Chasm – which I describe poorly but she locates anyway.

My camera is also out of battery. It’s a hand-me-down, old enough to lack a USB charging option. I don’t mind. Today is my last day. I want peaceful and reflective. Can live without a camera. Without trail buddies. With only five hours left to walk, head on at an easy gentle pace, wanting to be one with the world.

Descending from the bluff, the trail zig-zags through rocky outcrops, with views opening up to both sides. At Reveal Saddle I cross paths with the first hikers up from the Chasm, all day packs and smiles. At this point the trail tips into the head of a valley that runs on to the end. Soft slopes, grass and brush.

While I pause to drink, a tiny honeyeater, not 8cm beak to tail, rests on a twig within arm’s reach, unconcerned by my presence. White below, black beak, green and black feathers, grey on top. It’s joined by an even smaller fledgling of similar plumage that has displaced all but the last tufts of grey down. The baby perches even closer, pre-occupied with mother and food. Nothing for it but to sit in wonder till they flit away.

The long, easy downhill stroll lulls me into a dream, as I marvel at nature in all its forms: geological, biological, meteorological. The pack weightless.

How differently I perceive the landscape, depending on the thought processes in my mind. As I plan and manage a walk, as I negotiate the landscape and my passage through it, I see the curve of the earth over a rise, along a valley, I presume the land will shift this way or that, I see clues in the treetops, the ridgelines left and right, the lines of erosion, to the landforms ahead that I will have to negotiate. Yet if I imagine the landscape before me as if from the page of a book, the vision flattens out into two dimensions, and the trail I’m following, which only moments earlier I’d anticipated to be leading me here or there, once out of view could go anywhere, lead this narrative on to anything. Like an illustration in a child’s storybook.

Time and experience on the Trail, far from familiar surrounds and obligations, has left me clear-minded about my return to that familiar world and how I will change my own engagement with it. Left me determined to be myself, to follow my own trail through life, to give primacy to doing the things that I want, achieving the things that matter more to me. Not in any selfish kind of way, but with a clarity and freshness of purpose that might have been lacking.

Two hundred metres in front, where the last of the grass slopes on either side narrow the flat valley floor, two unanticipated cars cross the gap at speed.

Turning left at the asphalt, within moments I’ve stopped to chat with a family camped in an overflow carpark by the roadside. They’re as fascinated by someone walking out of the bush as I am by a family travelling exclusively by road, with 4WD, van, tent extension, mobile kitchen and so on. Two teenage kids engrossed in their devices – getting stuck into the day’s distance education as I chat with their parents.

Standley Chasm is supposed to be spectacular but the crowds of tourists paying the entrance fee and shuffling their way in through a turnstile are too much after days of sparse open natural wonder.

The car is more or less where I remember leaving it. A retired couple eating lunch, having erected the extension of their motorhome very close by now have me in their dining room too. I too have food, left in anticipation of my arrival. Nothing special but I’ve arrived and the food is there to prove it.

I fuss around, reorganising things. Leave the powerbank on the roof of the car as I drive off and, going back, find someone has already handed it in at the café.

Jack is outside the café fixing a hole in his self-inflating sleeping mat. I offer him my thin piece of foam, which he sensibly declines. The J’s are very much looking forward to a cooked café lunch – it’s an age since they ate anything that didn’t come from a pack.

I lock hands on the steering wheel and head for base camp, elated. Not quite the full acolyte but I’ve internalised the Larapinta flame. Or vice versa.

▶   Anti-climax

A shower at the Alice Springs tennis club doesn’t quite work as planned – there’s no hot water. Afterwards, my shivering self before the mirror, the extent of over-exposure obvious. The sun is strong here, even in winter.

I eat a lot of pizza (without stuffing myself), consume a large container of orange juice and an entire tub of flavoured yoghurt before passing out for the night. Catching up on a few fats before catching up on some settled sleep.

Tuesday morning, Brigitta drops by in a rush to collect items related to one of their projects. I (kind of) clean the office before heading to the cultural precinct for gifts and time in the Museum of Central Australia, closed on my previous visit.

Not too much time though. Nigel has been driving back from Kings Canyon since before dawn and has just hit the networks south of Alice. Change of plan … He’s got another job with NPY Women and is coming back early. If I’m at the office when he arrives, we can farewell face to face.

No long farewells though. The NPY bus skids to a stop in the dust out front. Nigel exchanges drones and pro-photo kit for bus travelling kit, grabs a pile of food (including my leftover pizza), laughs, smothers me in a big hug, and is gone.

As the next of his endless series of central Australian trips gets underway, mine is over bar the taxi to the airport. Didn’t work out as anticipated. Only far better, far more fulfilling. I’ve grown, experienced and learned. Of myself and the lives of others, of hiking, the magic of Larapinta and the vast beauty of Central Australia.

Choose any one of a thousand different ways to experience Larapinta. From my barebones approach through to the full five-star experience with guides and catering and someone to carry your luggage. The magic is there for everyone and you’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone to tell you it’s not worth the effort or the expense.

Weeks later, halfway through a video chat with Nigel, I notice something different about the office. The shelves of printing materials in what was my bedroom appear ordered on the screen behind Nigel, where previously was only chaos. What could have inspired him to clean and tidy?

‘Brigitta did that,’ he says. ‘She’s staying here. She had a big fight with her landlord and he kicked her out. She’s got a temper that girl.’

Out in the bush late afternoon, not too far from the road, you might catch a glimpse of Nige, on a ridgeline, long-lens at hand. Sniffing out the magic like a dingo pup encountering a world made fresh.

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credits: if it's a classy shot, probably due to Nige then.

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