The Song of the Desert
by Cavan Brown
Zadok Perspectives Issue No. 61
Winter 1998

Part 3

He asks how the stars came about, the same question the children ask in nursery rhymes. Giles knew that the answer is beyond human thought yet the night sky seems to draw from the explorer an admiration of this "over-arching grandeur" under which we live out our human stories: of progress from birth to life then death and then new life, the gift of God to those of faith: "having passed through the portals of the valley of death from this existence, we shall enjoy life after life, in a new body . . . arriving nearer and nearer to the foundation head of all perfection, the divinely great Almighty source of light and life, of hope and love".

The Song of the Desert is about an "over-arching grandeur" created by a vast and awesome God, a grandeur that stills personal anxieties. The night sky is also a contemplation of the power of silence. I looked at all those stars that, on the one hand, are all whirring through space and yet on the other are held in perfect position. It is not the silence of nothingness, but the silence of efficiency and order. Even when God may appear silent, that perceived silence still echoes this "over-arching grandeur".

Next morning, after a few hours driving we came to a series of hills including Mount Everard. We stopped and climbed one of the smaller hills made of sandstone so fragile that it crumbled in our hands. The fragile bones of an old woman holding secrets of her antiquity. It was the first time I had been able to see the Gibson desert in panoramic vision. So much space and us a very small part in its vastness.

The Song of the Desert is about a vastness in which human life is a microscopic part. "When I consider your heavens . . . What is man that you are mindful of him?" (Psalm 8:4). The desert makes us feel that same insignificance and humility. We then either face the reality of insignificance and place our lives in the vastness of God or we flee insignificance by escaping into the city where we build towers "to make a name for ourselves". These towers block out, as 'Banjo' Patterson said, "the vision splendid, of the sunlit plain extended. And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars" (Clancy of the Overflow).

From Mount Everard, I looked west and the view was the same as it had been for the past day: absolutely bone dry. Apart from Mingal Camp, 200 kilometres away, I couldn't imagine any natural water in this landscape, yet men like Carnegie, Giles, Sturt, Stuart, Alexander and John Forrest, pushed ahead looking for the next waterhole. I can appreciate Giles' descriptions of desert scenes as the "weird, hideous, and demoniacal beauty of absolute sterility".

I liked his touch of humour regarding the dryness of the desert: "Water there was none, and if Noah's deluge visited this place it could be conveniently stowed away, and put out of sight in quarter of an hour."

I looked in an ENE direction and wondered if the low lying hills far on the horizon were the Alfred and Marie Range. This range was of profound significance to Giles as it marked the turning point of his east-to-west expedition and the place in his desert explorations when he had to deal with his own human fragility. It had taken me three days travel to get to this point. It took Giles about ten months (from Adelaide), arriving on 22 April 1874. He entered this "ghastly blank" on the map with Alf Gibson, a loyal, physically strong but intellectually inadequate man. When they reached a point 40 kilometres east of that range on the horizon, Giles knew that he could go no further in this dry country where "every drop [of water] seem meted and counted out". He was bitterly disappointed:

"The hills to the west were twenty-five to thirty miles away and it was with extreme regret I was compelled to relinquish a further attempt to reach them. Oh, how ardently I longed for a camel! How ardently I gazed upon this scene! At this moment I would, even my jewel eternal, have sold for power to span the gulf between."

He named the hills after the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh.

To: Part 4

Cavan Brown Cavan Brown is the minister of Geraldton Baptist Church, WA, and is the author of Pilgrim Through Barren Land, Albatross, 1991, and the forthcoming The Blackfellas' Friend: a life of John Gribble (Access Press, 1999).