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

Part 4

In arriving at this point, their supplies had been depleted to one horse, a few pints of water and 55 kilometres to a five gallon keg of water they had cached for the return journey. Giles told Gibson to take the horse to the keg and then, after watering both himself and the horse, to ride to the base camp to organise help. He would walk out to where the keg was and wait. It was a rare unwise decision because Gibson was not a good bushman and could not even read a compass. Gibson rode off, not on a saving mission but to a lonely death where "man and horse were swallowed in this remorseless desert".

When Giles realised that Gibson had not succeeded, he loaded the half-filled keg on his back and walked back to his base camp, completing, in total, a 145 kilometres walk. He later wrote: "I called this terrible region that lies between the Rawlinson Range and the next permanent water that may eventually be found to the west, Gibson's Desert, after the first white victim to its horrors."

The Song of the Desert is about the fragility of human life. Life is like the "grass that grows in the morning and is withered by night". In the city, we assume a right to our 70 years and spend most of our lives planning what to do. "Today or tomorrow we will go to this city, carry on business and make money." The "voice crying in the wilderness" asks, "What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes" (James 4:13, 14) And that is exactly what makes desert landscapes so spiritual. In the desert, faced with our fragility, our spirits seek for a wider horizon beyond the 70 years.

We came down from the hill and back into the Land Rover and travelled southwards. On this leg the road deteriorated into long sections of the biggest corrugations I have ever seen. After four hours of driving a jack hammer or wallowing like a whale on side tracks, we pulled up for a break and I noted that my gear selectors were misbehaving. If I could get first I couldn't get third and vice versa. 'Sins of transmission' is, I think, the technical term. However, we arrived at the Warburton Community without further drama.

Did I find the "fields of heaven"? No. I think that may take a little longer. However, I came to understand something more about silence. The Song of the Desert is listening to what George Eliot describes as the "roar that lives on the other side of silence" (Middlemarch). I no longer fear the silence of God because he has illustrated from the desert land and sky that awesome power is accompanied by perfect silence. He is a God who chooses to speak in a still, small voice. Or as Mother Teresa said, "God is a friend of silence."

These days, I am talking about doing part of the Canning Stock Route in my Land Cruiser (yes, I have changed my form of camel) but I may need to find some new fellow explorers. My wife, Lynn, has worked out that she can still be nice without camping on the Canning Stock Route and my daughter, now 17, just wants to go shopping.

To: Perspectives Issue 61

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).