Before I get on to Alice and the desert journey I just want to say how good is this weather. I am writing this post on my front veranda. I am in jeans and a T.Shirt and I am so warm. The sky is so blue and through the green leaves of the big tree just out the front it looks so beautiful. This is what the weather was like in Alice in fact. Perhaps we brought it back with us.

So, we had an amazing time in Alice and on our desert journey. Quite profound really. I love mum and Keith house. It is just so beautiful sitting on their veranda and looking out over the white gums and the blue skies and red rocks. Even though I have only been there twice it feels so homely and makes me feel so relaxed. I think being beside mountain ranges that are millions of years old helps get one’s life in perspective.

However most of our time was spent on a journey through the desert. There was twelve of us, mum and Keith; Steve and Miriam; my mum and Keith’s friend’s Anne, John and Jeremy (who lives in Alice as well); two people we didn’t know at first Yvonne and Cam; Martin and I and John. They were all wonderful people, very different people but all really open to everything and cruisy with whatever happened (which was very important because we never really knew what was going to happen).

John was our guide. He is an indigenous elder, and it was his country we journeyed through. I think it was John who really made the trip for all us. He certainly was what made it for me. He took us to pretty remote places that we just never would have gone had he not been there. We went to the most majestic gaps as well as across never ending flat plains. He found us wild honey in the trees and water in the most unbelievable places. Most memorably inside some rocks we would have just walked past never knowing it was there. It really makes you realise how his people survived. He also always found us great camping spots, in river beds (not flowing obviously) and under the most magnificant ranges. It is such special experience waking up and emerging from a tent to just look up at a burning red rock on a crystal blue sky.

Sometimes it was really easy, cool, shady, still and stunning. Other times it was really hard, hot, windy, dusty, flies everywhere (not to mention we were filthy and my skin was coming up with eczema). However, it was good to have the hard times to make the easy times more special. I think that really is one of the lessons that desert teaches us. And as I have been reflecting a lot on Sabbath Economics ever since the TEAR conference I began thinking about how the desert does provide for the needs of the people but it does not provide in excess. To survive one needs to take care with what is there and use it wisely. It needs to be shared. It was in a place like this that God taught his people how they were to live in times when there would be abundance. For thousands of years indigenous people did do this and many still do. We don’t, I certainly don’t.