⛵ Voyage #16 — Everywhere on the road is somewhere

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Driving towards Lesotho and Mozambique after months of preparation, my ears were bleeding from the roar of both the engine and the road. The thin protection of canvas canopy covering the drivers cab only offered an illusion of protection: it flapped like a flannel shirt hung in a gale and leaked immeasurably along the door and window sills. The rust coloured water found its way along the dash and eventually to my feet, not before dripping through the fusebox - electrical gremlins for another time. 

This was the first significant rainfall I'd experienced in over six months. It seemed like just yesterday we were driving the deserts of the Australian outback - for the ochre waters now filling my footwell on the R43 to Hermanus, were actually the result of outback sands, collected somewhere east of Port Headland in Western Australia, now rinsed free by a South African squall. 

Positively hurtling along in fourth gear at 80kmh (the most economical speed) in my cotton-clad matt black Land Rover (painted with rattle cans, no less), a sign read: Southernmost tip of Africa (Cape Agulhas). 

I was in no mood for tourist stops. I had waves to ride in Tofinho and fermented sorghum porridge to taste in Mafeteng. Without touching the brakes, I roared past the sign for another 10km, before the guilt of not taking an hour out of my busy schedule to see the most southern tip of Africa finally forced me into a u-turn. I had experienced many such u-turns of guilt during my travels. For example, the dead centre of Australia (signed Lambert Gravitational Centre, riddled with beer cans and a sun bleached Australian flag), a dusty detour I took for no other reason than to say I'd been there. Etc.

On the 10km return to Cape Agulhas, I came to the embarrassing conclusion that I had forgotten this was one of the three great capes in sailing. Truth be told, I was so involved with my wet feet and the idea of covering hot chips with Mozambican Piri-Piri sauce, I'd forgotten I was a sailor. 

Overlanding is the art of long distance travel by road, an artform which sometimes seems more about what to miss than what to see - it's a visual overload. By turn, sailing is a method of travel whereby you might ruminate on rounding a cape or making landfall for days or weeks beforehand, counting down each hour while taking log of anything at all: a bird, a ship, a feeling. The log book has a way of making observations at sea become real, for so much of sailing is unreal. 

Cape Leeuwin in Western Australia is another great cape I intentionally visited by following roadside arrows while rounding Australia by tarmac - I have now seen two of the three great capes, the most infamous of the three remaining mythologised: Cape Horn. 

To sail these three capes without stopping is the sailing equivalent of summiting Everest, however navigating the capes by road barely rates a mention. In retrospect, the gloss of overlanding can be summarised as: following signs, sitting in gas stations, eating meat pies and having an intimate knowledge of Land Rover repair shops in all corners of the globe. My search for adventure by vehicle ultimately led me to conclude that everywhere on the road is somewhere.

In contemplating this further, it might also be considered that all roads lead to the sea... And conversely that all seas lead to a road... Perhaps the only thing left to explore is the tiny sliver of something wedged between the road and the sea? 

When Dr. Lambert took his measurements to calculate the gravitational centre of Australia, he required data on 24,500 high-water marks surrounding the perimeter of the continent. I enjoy Lambert's work on this, because it's utterly useless. In truth, it's more an act of art than it is an act of science, for lack of utility. Or better yet, perhaps it's the Big Banana of surveying. 

After visiting Lambert's Big Banana in the middle of the desert (which I suppose is also technically as faraway as possible from any kind of tidal waters), I couldn't help but think deeply about those binary territories at the edge of every continent: A fraction of the earth covered and uncovered each day - sometimes water, sometimes earth. A territory which changes its physical form by elemental rhythms, invisibly strung to the moon - primarily occupied by oysters and Plovers and mud.

In 1835, Governor Bourke declared Australia terra nullius - Latin phraseology for nobody's land. This statement famously denied all previous recognition of indigenous peoples, claiming occupation and ownership by virtue of The Crown. In effect, aboriginal peoples were therefore classified as no different than the newly discovered and quaint fauna of Terra Australis - for obviously Kangaroos held no claim to ownership - why were these unrecognised Homo sapiens any different? 

When I think about where a true terra nullius might exist, I can only think of regions in space, planets, oceans (outside of the EEZ) and possibly Antarctica. From a cultural perspective, all the divvying up of Antarctica for "research purposes" is a relatively guilt-free endeavour I suppose - it's the only continent where there are no prior peoples to disrupt. Anyway, I digress.

Walking along the foreshore at low tide, I know my footsteps will vanish on the next cycle. In this knowledge, I can return the following day and lay the first steps again, the tide having performed its daily renewal - a chalkboard eraser for the edges of a continent. 

As a sailboat has its wake erased by the impermeability of the sea, tracks inside the Strzelecki Desert soon vanish by rush of the wind. 

Wilderness, it seems, is not necessarily gauged by distance, but rather by how quickly our presence is erased.