drron
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Jul 4, 2002
- Posts
- 36,398
I have a very good friend who has been a great traveller but times have changed and the travel less frenetic. He does document his trips and I have enjoyed reading many of his reports. Like my trip reports they are an aid to memory. His most recent trip was back to his birth place in Woomera with his mother. I though it deserved a wider audience and he agreed to let me post it on AFF. I hope you enjoy it too. T he story -
I was born in Woomera.
Most would never know without a google check of where/what this is. It was a tiny desert outpost in the South Australian desert. Had/has a rocket range, or similar novel things. Secret things you want do in an isolated place. And it is truly isolated.
Despite my birth there, many many years ago, I lost contact. Left there when still a toddler. Years have gone on, new places, new realities. I went from a child in the desert to become, once upon a time, a fearless P1 QF god.
Last week I took my mother back there, before she gets too old to travel. To revisit old times. It was an offer I made, now that my father has died, for her to get a chance to wander again, revisit. And she desired this. A five day tour, flying BNE-ADL, rental car, touring. Staying with both old friends and in near-death old hotels
A cool concept, do a road trip with the mother, visit memories. And it went well. Mostly.
Am back.
Back in my snug garage, at my computer with snug huge chair, place of snug safety for me. Settling back into normal life again, after a five day trip that seems even now, barely hours after it ended, to be something that my mind is going to have a huge task ahead of digesting. For it was not what I expected.
It hurt me to my core.
But not in a “bad” way. Rather, it educated me to some of my real past, some things I never understood, until now.
I cried in the desert.
Background: Until this trip, my version of history was the one that one has when one was too young to remember, yet alone understand, what life really was back when I was born. I knew my parents moved to a remote rocket range/military thing in the middle of the desert in the early 1960’s. I knew that this was pre-internet. So I had some sort of feelings of compassion for perhaps some hardships that my parents went through. That it was remote. That there was not the modern comforts, that there was no supermarket, etc.
Back in those days, it was 500km north of the nearest city of Adelaide. It is still, bizarrely, the same distance, but it is now a sealed road. So a trip now involves 5 hrs of driving, not 20. The place is harsh. I mean, really really harsh. It rains every 5 or so years. A tiny bit. Blazing heat much of the time. The only trees those nurtured in the town with water piped in from the Murray River 700km away. I understood all this, that it must have been very isolated, that “entertainment” consisted of doing barbecues or going camping in the bush. Simple stuff. Hard, but that is what you get when you work/live in a remote area.
I vaguely recalled a story that my mum once told me, that when she was pregnant with my elder sister, my dad and her went for a bit of a drive around the town (? Base?) they popped into the local cemetery for a look. I guess you do whatever in those days of non-bombardment with today’s myriad entertainment options. But my mum had said something about my father suddenly getting distressed, and making my mum leave the cemetery almost as soon as they arrived. He was the first to look at the tombstones.
Anyway, I am used to my dear mother prattling on, so never paid any attention to the story. But on this trip my mum took me back there, to the tiny little cemetery just outside Woomera. She explained again, this time me actually listening, just why my dad suddenly hated that place.
It was because half the graves there are of babies. Not something for a pregnant wife to look at and ponder.
The 1960’s and early 1970’s were Woomera’s heyday – it was the busiest the place ever was. Many rocket programs, and other stuff. So a couple of hundred young couples living there. They had built a hospital, the one I was born in. And young couples tend to have babies.
But my mum explained that in those days they did not have aircon in the accommodation. And when you lack this, and have summers of 40+ degree temps, it is a rather nasty environment for babies. They dehydrate, wither in the arid air, and die ☹.
When we parked in the dusty vacant area that was the “parking lot” for the cemetery, I walked first into the main area. My mum is old and slow, walking stick and all, so, in hindsight thankfully, she was still barely out of the car and ambling in when I was already inside and was looking at all the graves. Bleak, stony paddock, with neat little rows of graves. I started to walk along these, as you do, looking at the little tombstones. I had only walked past a dozen or so when I noticed the pattern. Almost every second one was the grave of an infant. “Died aged six months”. “Died aged 12 days”. “Died aged 8 hours”.
Tears begin to well in my eyes. Again. I stumbled through the graveyard, and realized that half the field was filled by babies.
My mother wandered in and asked me to look for the grave of a person “xyz”. There are only about 150 graves, so took me not long to find this person. “Died aged 3 yrs”. I called my mum over, and she seemed different, not crying, but different. She explained to me that this was one of three children of one of their friends, who succumbed to the heat one year.
My father was a very tough person. A giant guy, hard but in a caring way. My mother explained that when XYZ died, it was the first and only time she ever saw him cry. XYZ was a beautiful little boy. Taken by the desert. My father sat in a chair and quietly wept.
I rarely cry, but I did so then, thankfully hidden by my wearing of deeply coloured sunglasses, and a swift retreat to an isolated corner.
I began to understand the reality it was that what these people, my own family, went through back then.
I was born in Woomera.
Most would never know without a google check of where/what this is. It was a tiny desert outpost in the South Australian desert. Had/has a rocket range, or similar novel things. Secret things you want do in an isolated place. And it is truly isolated.
Despite my birth there, many many years ago, I lost contact. Left there when still a toddler. Years have gone on, new places, new realities. I went from a child in the desert to become, once upon a time, a fearless P1 QF god.
Last week I took my mother back there, before she gets too old to travel. To revisit old times. It was an offer I made, now that my father has died, for her to get a chance to wander again, revisit. And she desired this. A five day tour, flying BNE-ADL, rental car, touring. Staying with both old friends and in near-death old hotels
A cool concept, do a road trip with the mother, visit memories. And it went well. Mostly.
Am back.
Back in my snug garage, at my computer with snug huge chair, place of snug safety for me. Settling back into normal life again, after a five day trip that seems even now, barely hours after it ended, to be something that my mind is going to have a huge task ahead of digesting. For it was not what I expected.
It hurt me to my core.
But not in a “bad” way. Rather, it educated me to some of my real past, some things I never understood, until now.
I cried in the desert.
Background: Until this trip, my version of history was the one that one has when one was too young to remember, yet alone understand, what life really was back when I was born. I knew my parents moved to a remote rocket range/military thing in the middle of the desert in the early 1960’s. I knew that this was pre-internet
. So I had some sort of feelings of compassion for perhaps some hardships that my parents went through. That it was remote. That there was not the modern comforts, that there was no supermarket, etc.Back in those days, it was 500km north of the nearest city of Adelaide. It is still, bizarrely, the same distance, but it is now a sealed road. So a trip now involves 5 hrs of driving, not 20. The place is harsh. I mean, really really harsh. It rains every 5 or so years. A tiny bit. Blazing heat much of the time. The only trees those nurtured in the town with water piped in from the Murray River 700km away. I understood all this, that it must have been very isolated, that “entertainment” consisted of doing barbecues or going camping in the bush. Simple stuff. Hard, but that is what you get when you work/live in a remote area.
I vaguely recalled a story that my mum once told me, that when she was pregnant with my elder sister, my dad and her went for a bit of a drive around the town (? Base?) they popped into the local cemetery for a look. I guess you do whatever in those days of non-bombardment with today’s myriad entertainment options. But my mum had said something about my father suddenly getting distressed, and making my mum leave the cemetery almost as soon as they arrived. He was the first to look at the tombstones.
Post automatically merged:
Anyway, I am used to my dear mother prattling on, so never paid any attention to the story. But on this trip my mum took me back there, to the tiny little cemetery just outside Woomera. She explained again, this time me actually listening, just why my dad suddenly hated that place.
It was because half the graves there are of babies. Not something for a pregnant wife to look at and ponder.
The 1960’s and early 1970’s were Woomera’s heyday – it was the busiest the place ever was. Many rocket programs, and other stuff. So a couple of hundred young couples living there. They had built a hospital, the one I was born in. And young couples tend to have babies.
But my mum explained that in those days they did not have aircon in the accommodation. And when you lack this, and have summers of 40+ degree temps, it is a rather nasty environment for babies. They dehydrate, wither in the arid air, and die ☹.
When we parked in the dusty vacant area that was the “parking lot” for the cemetery, I walked first into the main area. My mum is old and slow, walking stick and all, so, in hindsight thankfully, she was still barely out of the car and ambling in when I was already inside and was looking at all the graves. Bleak, stony paddock, with neat little rows of graves. I started to walk along these, as you do, looking at the little tombstones. I had only walked past a dozen or so when I noticed the pattern. Almost every second one was the grave of an infant. “Died aged six months”. “Died aged 12 days”. “Died aged 8 hours”.
Tears begin to well in my eyes. Again. I stumbled through the graveyard, and realized that half the field was filled by babies.
My mother wandered in and asked me to look for the grave of a person “xyz”. There are only about 150 graves, so took me not long to find this person. “Died aged 3 yrs”. I called my mum over, and she seemed different, not crying, but different. She explained to me that this was one of three children of one of their friends, who succumbed to the heat one year.
My father was a very tough person. A giant guy, hard but in a caring way. My mother explained that when XYZ died, it was the first and only time she ever saw him cry. XYZ was a beautiful little boy. Taken by the desert. My father sat in a chair and quietly wept.
I rarely cry, but I did so then, thankfully hidden by my wearing of deeply coloured sunglasses, and a swift retreat to an isolated corner.
I began to understand the reality it was that what these people, my own family, went through back then.
