April 2016 on the Great Barrier Reef
The Pacific Awaits
Captain Trevor Jackson
Time is a funny thing. It simply marches on no matter what you think say or do…eventually, whatever it is you’re waiting for will come to pass. I remember years ago my friend Nat and I decided it would be a good idea to ride our pushbikes across the Nullarbor from Perth to Brisbane, or as we thought of it then, from the Indian to the Pacific. The theory was wonderful and romantic in its nature but once we got on the road it was a slogfest. Despite having been told it was flat all the way across, the reality of it was that it was 1000s of kilometres of gently up and gently down. There is no such thing as a truly flat road in Australia.
Whenever things got tough on the road we would remind ourselves that eventually, if we just kept putting one foot in front of the other, the laws of nature would conspire to see us dipping out tootsies in the Pacific and the whole thing would instantly draw to an end. But out there in that desert, under the vast cloak of black and stars, with feet and backsides longing for salvation, the glistening Pacific was a pipe dream that lay beyond an entire continent of dust, flies and head drilling sun. Each morning we would wake up and slowly walk the hundred or so yards back to the road and begin again….day after day…legs and feet up and down, up and down.
Soon enough the terrain began to change. Low native scrub transformed at the top of a rise one day and suddenly it was fenced in and cleared; sheep and cattle; wheat and corn. Further still to the coastal hills; and fair dinkum Aussie bushland that heralded the final days of our journey eastward. When we eventually stood there on that beach, there wasn’t a lot said. The beauty of the blue stretched out ahead and our pain was washed away underfoot like it never existed. The Pacific is like that, the great healer, the transformer of darkened thoughts, an elixir that floods the mind with peace, and reminds you that we’re only here for the briefest of time, and like I said earlier, time marches on. What are you waiting for? Beyond your desert……. the Pacific awaits.
