With Chris and Krystal at Serpentine Gorge

Late in the morning I left my walking stick behind again, but this time I only had to go back one kilometer.

We had another relatively short day, walking fourteen kilometers through small hills on the south side of and below the main ridge of the Heavitree Range. The open ground was dark grey-brown, a dolomite formation littered with stones and spinifex grass and small mallee trees. Occasionally the trail climbed to darker and sharper outcroppings of the crumbly dolomite, and offered views far to the south. In the first hour or so, according to the map, we passed though likely habitat for the common brushtail possum, but I saw none of the shy creatures. Apparently predation by cats and foxes, and grazing pressures from cattle, rabbits, and horses in Central Australia have made them quite rare.

We camped downstream from Serpentine Gorge, a smaller, less spectacular gap than most, but attractive to birds. Yellow-throated miners swooped between gum trees up in the gorge, and a willie wagtail hopped along the shore of the small pool. At dusk Rachael spotted a rock wallaby on the far side of a small pool, but I missed it. Down at the brushy and unprepossessing campsite, numerous birds occupied the shrubbery, but few showed themselves long enough for me to make an identification.

The campsite had only water tanks, two small ones, but I found scattered among the bushes several small concrete aprons and a number of metal poles with electric sockets attached, the plastic of the outlets half melted by years of summer heat. It seemed that sometime years past there had been a car and RV campground at the spot.

Chris and Krystal appeared just at dark and put up their tent nearby. We shared a campfire and talked late again. Those two did most of the talking, but I was content to listen, and Rachael encouraged them with questions. Krystal is a tall, thin young woman, with a sharp nose and long thin attractive face, an active mouth, and a distinctive throaty laugh which she resorts to often. She's well spoken and not shy about speaking. Chris is not small, not large, of medium-build but obviously strong; his face is sunburnt though he often wears the Australian version of a cowboy hat, made of thick felt. He's competent, a man with a wide set of technical skills and great curiosity; he's generous and helpful and a bit of a know-it-all. Like Krystal, he's not shy about talking, but he's a little rougher than her, more working class as compared to her apparently bourgeois upbringing. We heard the story of how they met, a not unusual tale: it was at a bar in Alice, he was immediately interested, she was not, he persisted over subsequent days, she changed her mind. There was something too about how he was supposed to have left town, but had stayed for some reason and met her the next day, and then he did go off to Darwin to start a new job, but he quit after four weeks and came back, and soon they were madly in love. My sense is that Chris is someone who usually figures out how to get what he wants.

As a conversational team they were mostly good about letting each other talk, which is not always the case with couples, especially when the two people are both big talkers. But occasionally they couldn't resist correcting each other, usually over small details. Most often Krystal was the one who interrupted. Chris, in the midst of a story, would say, "it was three in the morning," and Krystal would stop him and say, "no it was one." Chris would turn to her (he never ignored her) and insist on his original figure: "it was three." However, Krystal would not back down, saying, "No, Chris, it was one, I remember." Chris would then try (a slight) compromise, saying, "Well, maybe 2:30." But Krystal would have none of it; "I don't think so," she would say, but then, aware that the momentum of the story had been arrested, she would add, "but anyway," willing to let the story go on, despite the inaccuracy.

Occasionally, Krystal would also take exception at a more macro level. Chris would be halfway through a story, or maybe near the end, and Krystal would laugh and say, "well, there was more to it than that." Chris never showed any rancor, never seemed annoyed--they almost always got on quite well--but would only pause briefly, acknowledging her comment, before continuing his anecdote. Krystal, having made her point, was content to let him go ahead and tell his overly simplified version of the episode.

The stars were thick in the night sky again, with the sort of abundance it's hard to look away from. We stayed by the fire late, often standing to warm our freezing backsides (the next morning the water bottles were full of ice). Chris and Krystal talked about their plans to move north to Darwin, but not yet, Alice still held them. I admired the lives they were leading, working only to put together enough money to set off again, always casting about for the next adventure, ready to fall into conversation with almost everyone they met--open to what life in Central Australia could offer them, seeking how to best make for themselves full and interesting days. Krystal talked about how eventually they hoped to settle down and have children, but I imagined that wouldn't slow them down all that much.

(After I got home from Australia, Rachael forwarded me an email from Krystal, describing some of what they'd been doing after the Larapinta: "And we also went to the Harts Range Races and Rodeo, a bush event about two and half hours north east of here [Alice]. How's this for a weekend - Chris won Best 4WD for the Ute ($150 and a $300 tyre voucher) [ute=pick-up], the Station Buckjump which is riding a bucking horse and cracking a whip at the same time ($200 and a buckle), Calf Scruffing ($100) and Calf Undressing ($100).")