Unmapping the Outback: A Sleepless Travel to Australia

Neoli Marcos

When you hear the word Outback, you know you can’t help but think of vast, uninhabited lands, uninterrupted expanse of skies, and untamed wildlife. Notice the un-, as if the Outback has to invoke a sense of contradiction, a sense of refusal. It does. The Outback is Australia’s unself-conscious frontier, also known as the “Back of Beyond”, which just means it could be anywhere in the map. Simply put, it refuses to be mapped.

It’s the old law of motion at work here: people get drawn to the water, the source of life. As such, the majority of Australians have flocked and settled on the outer fringes of the continent, where there are beaches and waves and sunsets and horizons and approaching ships, leaving the rest of the land in the middle intact and unfairly unexplored. That is the Outback. It’s not surprising then that many Australians of today haven’t explored that region themselves.

Honestly speaking, you don't really arrive in Australia. You set foot on it, but then you haven't truly arrived yet. In fact, there's no destination to speak of, since the journey is always starting. Ask the Aborigines, the dreamy and fearless adventurers who 40,000 years ago traveled and meditated on the land. The Outback’s untiring lands, clever rock formations, violent sunsets, unchoreographed kangaroos, solemn savannahs, and uncompromising wetlands, unfazed birds in flight are poetry they write. The Aborigines dreamed this land a long time ago, painted on cave walls aching for tales, and unraveled the connection between humans and nature through “Dreamtime.” In this age of high-falutin skyscrapers, pointless warfare, and scientific egos, it is very humbling to know that there are still people who abide by the virtues of Dreamtime.

Australia’s Outback then is not just some arid region in Australia navigable by a four-wheel drive and ample drinking water supply. The Outback contradicts itself in the maps. You can’t just travel Australia to explore the Outback, much less read about it in an article such as this. It’s in the heart and soul of the traveler who have willed every step of the way. If you go now, you do yourself a favor.

The Outback may be vast, unflinching, and uncompromising, but is never uneventful.

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