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| 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.
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| 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.
