At Lake Ballard, a huge muddy puddle really, 50 kilometers outside of the small mining town of Menzies, in the Goldfields of Western Australia, there are statues. fifty-one thin, alien like, statues. Installed by artist Antony Gormley in 2003 the statues are apparently made from digital scans of local residents, but I couldn’t see any resemblance. I’d heard about the statues from two Australians I met (Rock and Annie) and I knew I had to see them. I like art that isn’t in a museum, and Lake Ballard is far from a museum.

I arrived in the late afternoon and trudged around in the mud to see the statues. After the sun set I ate a granola bar and an apple and curled up in the back of my Toyota Landcruiser. Her name is Ruth. I woke up before the sun rose and took some more pictures, then headed back to Perth. It was a long way to go (1400 kilometers round trip), but it was worth it.

A few weeks earlier I stayed with a friend of my mother’s, Russel. Russel owns a farm in Newdegate, in the Wheat Belt.

The crops had already been harvested and the new crop was yet to be planted, so there wasn’t much for me to do. One day, though, Russel drove a tractor around his fields to rake up the remaining straw into rows. Then he told me to burn the straw. It was every 12-year-old boy’s fantasy: a man hands you a pitcher full of buring diesel and tells you to frolic about the land starting fires. Hell, it was fun for a 37 year old.

So, about Ruth. I bought her a bit over a month ago so I could drive around the country, particularly north to Broome and Darwin. Ruth is a four-wheel drive vehicle, which allows me to drive down bumpy, rocky tracks and through sand. I’ve only just begun to get the hang of it, but it’s a lot of fun. I actually towed some other tourists out of a sandy road they’d attempted to drive in their rental car. I didn’t feel quite like a super-hero, but I felt pretty manly.

I’ve met up with three backpackers, Anna (Italian), Emily (Taiwanese), and Masako (Japanese). We’ve been working our way up the coast slowly, camping along the way – sometimes in a nice pretty spot, sometimes in a caravan park, or sometimes at a rest-stop by the side of the highway. Near Shark Bay we drove over 100 kilometers on dirt roads and found a deserted beach to camp at. I had bought a 40-buck fishing rod in Denham and I cast it out into the surf with some squid bait. After twenty minutes I caught a fish! A Tailor fish. I know it doesn’t look big in the pictures, but it weighed 5-7 pounds and fed four people (with some sweet potatoes). After we grilled the fish and baked the potatoes I introduced my international companions to S’mores. You know, the marshmallow and chocolate camp treat. There are no Graham-crackers in Australia so I had to improvise with some Arnott’s biscuits. They tasted pretty much the same. Anna loved them but, as usual, I found the gooey marshmallows just too damn sweet.

May 10th, 2009 | Category: In Transit, Music & Arts | Comments (4)