Australia, a wonderful puzzle.

 

Montaña sagrada de Kata-Tjuta

  I committed myself to writing about my trip to Australia for the LAE and SACE blog and I don’t want to let anyone down, but where to start? Apart from seeing sufficient kangaroos and koalas, drawing the Sydney Opera House and the Melbourne skyscrapers or driving on the left along the Great Ocean Road, too many things have happened since I've been here. For example, were it not for the snapshot I have, you’d never believe that during one of my journeys through the Northern Territory of Australia, the Rainbow Serpent, Kngaritja, appeared to me among one of the round rocks of the Devil’s Marbles. Aboriginal people regard those rocks as the eggs that Kngaritja left when he strolled through there during the Dreamtime. They also claim that if someone sees the Rainbow Serpent, it is but the harbinger of rain. And I dare say that Kngaritja didn’t just pose for my sick shot, but he actually made the Sacred Uluru sandstone cry with rainfall in front of me two days later. Quite unusual, seeing that it is in the middle of the desert, in the area known as the Red Center. Why it is considered the largest rock in the world and why has it been the meeting point of all Aboriginal tribes for more than 40,000 years (the history of Australia is not recent, even if some claim it), I have no time and no space to tell. I gather that, sadly, the rest of my stories won’t live up to it, stories such as when I swam alone with a giant turtle in the middle of the sea or when I gave away my sandwich to a wedge-tail eagle that was hovering over me on the brilliant white silica sands of Hill Inlet where Pirates of the Caribbean was filmed.

Hill Inlet

In Australia, I’ve done jaw-dropping things like play with a python snake or sleep under the stars around a bonfire wrapped inside a swag in a camp in the remote wilderness. I have seen endangered species like the red-tailed black cockatoos of Kangoroo Island, and I encountered the devil! (the Tasmanian one). I have also made a wish in the Bay of Fires, and although it has nothing to do with it, I have learned to make Dutch sauce, Eggs Benedict, and chicken wings with sweet vinegar sauce with Tolsten and Fiona, my homestay family. And I have refused to try a tar-like, black and viscous food spread that they pour on toast every morning, the unpronounceable Vegemite that even has its own song. One day I could be wandering entranced by the Busker's music in the streets of Melbourne, and the next, walking along the sea shore on Fraser Island while manta rays slipped and escaped between my legs at every step; another day, I could be drinking beers with Kevin and Tracy in a bar, gazing at the sparkling lights of the skyscrapers reflected in the Yarra River, and then, lost in the middle of the ocean for hours on Juan Pablo and Lalo's boat because the engine had broken, without even knowing if we could return to land or if we would be rescued. I’ve seen infested beaches, not with sharks, but with surfers; I’ve reached deserted beaches in Noosa National Park, I have walked for hours through its forest of casuarinas and eucalyptus; I’ve circumvented the dangers of poisonous jellyfish realizing only after bathing three times that the shore was shining with small and adorable blue bubbles of large tentacles. As luck would have it, we, Basque Country girls are tested for any conditions.

And it all was afoot the day I got lost in Melbourne airport when I was looking for my old, large blue suitcase, which, because it is nothing special, I can’t never differentiate from the other suitcases that run on the belt. Perhaps I was just trying to lose it, so that all the fears that it keeps inside would disappear. Because, wether we call them fears, uncertainties, or desires, that is actually the only baggage we all carry into each new adventure.

In Australia, in Australia, in Australia... I could go on.

But OK, I’ve already decided which of all the stories I’ve lived here I want to tell you about: that of the mermaids who told me their dreams just before a cyclone as large as the whole of Spain ravaged the place where I was and still am living, Airlie Beach. I was going to tell you about one of my raids in the knowledge of the Dreaming Stories during my trip to the sacred mountain of Kata Tjuta. But the one about the mermaids won over. I hope that when I finish, you too do not believe what that Swedish teenager girl is saying on the Internet, that Australia doesn’t exist (a load of bull) and, therefore, that I write to you from the Unreality.

So, I’m going to pass down the secret that the mermaids entrusted me with: the material from which dreams are made. Not any kind of dream, but only those which set us in motion, those that, as Jung would say, summon a destiny. This story is not about “finding one’s self”. Huff, that’s an overly chewed topic that makes me sick. I mean, I found myself long ago, the first time my parents put me in front of a mirror. Creepy encounter. I still bring my hands to my face in the very same gesture when something really amazes me. Either way, the mermaids spoke to me of real, palpable dreams: to study at university with more opportunities for your individual career path or to become the actor you always wanted to be; sell ​​your house, your car and even your clothes (not your dog, please) to come to Australia and move up in the world; bring your children here, your whole family or send them money, money and more money; paddle up and get a business off the ground; flee from the hardships of your country; get the unobtainable IELTS 6.5 whose questions are more misleading than advertising in supermarkets... At this point, I must clarify that none of these was my dream. Mine wasn’t so impressive. In fact, before coming to Australia, when friends asked me why I was going to the other side of the planet, I simply replied: “Just because”. Just because! God, they looked at me as if they were looking at the word “Freedom” itself. How could I not be satisfied with my answer? Why should I seek anything else? Was life no more than a random, will less universe, in which few things are as important as simply being happy?

Well, that’s what I thought until I listened to the mermaids.

I met them on Daydream Island. The’re were three. I wanted to take a picture with them and my friend Aitor asked me to climb on the one on the right. Carved in bronze, the mermaid had the breasts and chest of a Brazilian model, with a greenish patina made of copper salts that mimicked the scales of her tail blended into the rock on which she laid, sunbathing. What I mean by this is that she was NOT real, even if she seemed so. I sat upon her, thinking nothing, and I wasn’t taken aback when she whispered in my ear:

"My name is Infinity, or that's the name which my creator David Joffee bestowed upon me”.

I did not look at her because I was overly focused in my appealing smile for the pic, but then she said something that made me laugh:

"I want to go back to the Ocean."

I leaned back, and reaching her ear, I muttered sympathetically:

“That's impossible”.

And then it seemed to me —because it obviously did not happen— that she raised an eyebrow disdainfully:

“Why?”

I took a deep breath: how should I explain to her what became apparent, that she was not alive, not real, such blunt things? I released the air slowly before making her understand:

"You're made of bronze and your tail, well, what I want to say to you is… You just can’t swim”.

And I sat there for a while, feeling the scales of her tail plastering over my limbs like glue, leaning against her warm chest, avoiding her eyes which bore into me. Because of me, she realized that she could never fulfill her lofty dream.

How foolish I was!

She was sad, yes, but somehow, she must have felt sorry for me.

In the end, when I awkwardly descended from her body, clinging to her curves again, she poked at me enigmatically:

“You are also just a dream trapped in the matter of your body”.

I had heard of the wit of mermaids but, Holy Mary Mother of God, Infinity had it all! I left without looking back, fearful of becoming a stone or who knows what. Anyway, I could not get over her riddle because, as soon as I returned to my nice apartment overlooking the sea in Airlie Beach —off the cuff— I got the news of the cyclone that had not yet been named Debbie. And the next day, when I arrived at SACE, the English school, Sonja greeted us with written prompts: to buy groceries for several weeks, candles; not to go out during the cyclone; to stay homebound... But when I returned to my apartment, the landlady told me: No rush, just buy a flashlight in the supermarket. Heartening. But, yeah, the next day, so early in the morning, she had already packed her luggage and I caught her escaping to a friend's house. “I hope you have a place to stay, dear”, said the very same bitch, “we are evacuating”. Thank God, I could go to the SACE Student House with Alice and Philip.

I do not know if you have been through a cyclone but, for me, the moments before were the worst because you do not know what could happen. We heard the appalling news of the monster getting bigger and bigger –“It’s a CAT5, the maximum”, cheered the news— and as I do not lack imagination, I feared the worst. My only concern was that my father wouldn’t find out. In the end, it finally reached a CAT4, but it was considered the most terrifying one since Cyclone Tracy in 1974 as it lasted for three days. And it landed in the very same place where we were. We were right in the eye of the cyclone. Bearing in mind that, as I said before, the “little bug” covered an area the size of the whole of Spain, you can imagine the irony of the coincidence. All of Queensland was utterly devastated. During those three days thousands of things happened to me that I do not have space to relate, so I will only say that the sensation is like being inside a car-wash tunnel, with the boughs of the trees and the winds of up to 263km /h lashing against windows, roof and walls of the Student house, like the Big Bad Wolf coaxing the three little piglets to come out.

BUT, you know what the most awkward thing was? What the news was that came out in the media after those days, when the city had already become a perfect stage for filming The Walking Dead with its supermarkets devastated and without water and without electricity?

That the sirens of Daydream Island were gone!

The ocean had swallowed them.

Damn Infinity!

That verdigris bronze fussy mermaid had made her wish come true!

I understood then two things: first, as Infinity assured me before conjuring the Universe to her will, that we are all a dream trapped in matter; and secondly, that dreams are stronger than the material from which they are made.

It does not matter who dreams or what their dreams are, as my friend Pablo from Málaga says: if your desire is well placed, it will come true. Indeed, you should be careful about what you dream (the ambition of the sirens swept through the whole of Queensland), and, of course, you must be aware (what a beautiful word) of what you really want and dream because, once you have formulated your desire, the whole universe will be ordered to act in your favor. On the other hand, when you do not have dreams of your own, you are only a tool to fulfill those of others. If this is your case, if you have the feeling that you do not dream for yourself, that you live only to earn money, that you are a default setting, doctored for the expectations of a society that doesn’t satisfy you and with which you do not identify, then, make a key change, just begin to dream again as if you could always be a kid, growing up with the strength of your desires.

And, I tell you one thing: if God invented dreams, it is for something.

Now, I will confess that, maybe yes, I had a dream when I came to Australia, but I was embarrassed to say it, which is the only reason why I shrugged it off saying that I came “just because”. My dream was to write and travel as I do, to tell the stories of the people I met along my way and to understand the world. But I was ashamed to not know how to do it, ashame of, who knows, to fail, or seem too pretentious.

I would still like to tell you something I’ve learned in Australia which is related to the Dreaming stories. In short: my friend Cathy, who has worked with Aboriginal people and knows many of their stories better than anyone else, explained to me that when all Aboriginal tribes come together on the Uluru sacred sandstone, each one brings with it a part of the story of the creation. There is not one single tribe that knows all the stories, so it’s like a puzzle: each one knows a small part of the bigger story and they put all the pieces together in Uluru. But only the wisest come to know the unique and complete story.

And, here in Australia, I have felt like a piece of a puzzle. Most of the friends are not only Australians, but from all walks of life, from all over the world. Each one brings their own dreaming story, those real and palpable dreams I spoke to you about at the beginning; a fragment of a unique and beautiful story that I like to sew while they tell me about the adventures that brought them here.

Each of us is one piece of the puzzle.

But as with all dreams —surely because of the matter from which they are made— there is a time when all those stories of the people you met on the road become unreal, as if they never happened or just belong to far-off days. This is the time to return home. When you go back to your country, you think: “Maybe this was just a dream, as capricious as the Melbourne weather”. Could be. Maybe dreams are nothing more than a mirage, and they do not exist, like Australia, but I, when I close my eyes, I can see Infinity clearly, swimming with her bronze tail in the depths of the Coral Sea, waiting for some mistrust Sailor to find her, so he can dream again.

Ingredients of the Magic Recipe for turning up in the country that doesn’t exist, says "How to Travel Australia":

• A well-cooked dream/wish.

• A person who acts as a magic portal to another world: Olga form LAE. (Yes, there are people who act as portals to other worlds but appear only when you have formulated your desire)

• A school with strategic locations within Australia that allows you to move from one place to another without spending a lot of money: SACE.

• A student visa for, apart from learning English and ending up speaking fluently, being able to work 20 hours a week (what you will live off, crazy fool)

• A half empty suitcase, old, large and blue,  that weighs so much and at the same time as little as the fears you want to get rid of.