I have been telling the story of my Psychotic incident in 2012, when I decompensated (I think that is the word the Psychs use) while making a spiritual journey across the Nullarbor plain. When did my psychosis end. I can't say for sure. By mid 2012 when I returned to work I was no longer Psychotic, just catastrophically depressed, although I would I have denied it you asked my. In fact I thought I was just weak.
Ten kilometres out of Merredin I had turned east and given up my quest. As soon i turned I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders. But thoughts remained intrusive. I stopped at Coolgardie and stayed at a motel. I rang mum, she was relieved I had given up. I rang my sponsor. He was ok about it. That has been the great thing about twelve steps for me. The people in it accept failure. They just shrug their shoulders, and get on with the next thing. I remained in my room exhausted. I still did not trust anyone. I knew there was something seriously wrong with me ,but I wanted to keep that fact to myself. So I kept my conversations to a bare minimum. I had my camp stove and I used it regularly for coffees. But the Nullarbor was lurking just in front of me, and I knew I was going to have to cross it to get to safety. So early in the morning I packed up and left. I wanted to have the energy to go have look at Kalgoorlie, but I was storing my strength.
Years before, in 1989 to be precise I had stopped at Kmart in Kalgoorlie. I had had a nagging thought in the back of my mind that I may not have a jack. I had driven for four days from Canberra with this thought in my mind, but had resisted the temptation to check. For some reason in Kalgoorlie I checked. Sure enough, I did not have one, so I bought one. I used it the very same day 200 ks north near Wiluna.
I wanted to go to KMart just see that lucky place, but could not face the people, and was worried about the Nullarbor, so I headed due east. A lot more people drove across the Nullarbor in 1989 than in 2012. It had become more deserted. But there were still hardy grey nomads and trucks. I have a mate who travelled Australia as a single grey nomad for years. I do not know how he did it. Psychotic or sane, the interior of Australia frightens the shit out of me. I love the western slopes of NSW, but as soon as go past the last line of hills, say at Temora, or Dubbo, I start to feel uncomfortable. And past Port Augusta every white person becomes Bradley Murdoch and every black one a Kadaicha man.
I must have been stronger, or saner when I was younger. How i survived those two years in Port Hedland I will never know. You cross the railway line heading to South Hedland near the salt piles. The road is raised there to create a bridge to go over the railway. If you squint your eyes and look west you can see a faint bump in the the horizon. That bump is a hill next to water hole in the East Turner River. It is easy to find. You just follow the dirt road next to the railway line for an hour or so and turn left when you get the hill. The water hole is right there. It is a wonderful place. But it is 120 ks from Hedland. How did I survive in that flatness?
My sponsor was right. I did need to go to Hedland. But I ended up flying there. And I felt weird the entire time I was there. It was right at the end of the most recent mining boom. The town is not and never has been, in my experience, set up for tourists. It is there to rape the earth. God bless the salt miners by the way. Their industry is at least sustainable. All the other miners just dig holes and plunder. There were a lot mores holes in the ground than I remembered, and a lot more white and Asian people. And the black people still lived in camps around the back of the shops at South Hedland.
The corrugated iron houses in Port Hedland that the Mutta Mutta's (a Kriol word for half caste) lived in the early 1980s were all gone. Millions of dollars had been spent and Port Hedland looked like a suburb of Perth. Mind you, a suburb of Perth designed by town planners addicted to Methamphetamine. Teddy Allen, rumoured to be a son of Lang Hancock lived in one of the corrugated iron houses. I visited him on a few occasions, he was a charming host, and the house was airconditioned and cool inside.
Hedland's Aboriginal history was complex. Up until the 1960s there was a gate that was closed at night. Only Mutta Muttas were allowed inside that gate after dark. Full bloods had to leave. There was a club called the Aurelian club for Aboriginal people with European blood. When I lived there there was a group called the "Ten Man" who would go round and pick up drunk members of the "Strelley Mob" (who all now lived at Warralong) and take them out to a punishment camp in the Great Sandy Desert called "Punmu". The errant community members lived in water tanks cut in half, in temperatures that regularly approached 50 degrees Celsius.
I was friends with the leader of the Ten Man, I can't sat his name because he is dead now but will call him "Whitey". He was a very old man but was very welcoming to me. He wanted to take my sons out to Warralong (my sons are Aboriginal, albeit Koories, not Mardu), but my wife put her foot down. The Strelley Mob were so called because they had gone on strike in the 1930's from working on pastoral stations, and had bought Strelley station using money they accumulated from mineral prospecting. They still enforced tribal law.
Whitey was the last of the leaders of the Strelley mob. Him and a cranky old deaf Whitefella called Don Macleod. MacLeod was a communist and a former union leader. He had been friends with Lang Hancock back in the day, but their lives ended up completely different. Hancock a billionaire. MacLeod living a monastic life in a shack at Warralong. MacLeod was not well liked but the Old Backfellas trusted him. He seems to have got nothing out of his close relationship with the Strelley Mob, other than the dissatisfaction of watching the life he had tried to help the elders protect, be slowly eroded by the development of the mining industry.
There is so much to say about all this. But I need to stop here and regain my focus on my psychotic incident. It is apparent to me reading back just how important my years at Hedland were and why my journey back was loaded with meaning
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