my eyes are small, but they have seen

OUTBACK.

No seriously. Think about it. The Australian Outback.

I can’t even begin to comprehend that I went there last week. It’s like one of those places I never really believed existed. When you talk about it at home, or see it in movies, it’s in the same category as Narnia or Middle Earth or something. It’s a place you’ve heard so much about, but will never get to see.

We drove for about a day and a half, which sounds intense until you find out we stopped about every hour and a half for morning tea/lunch/afternoon tea/dinner. The bus rides were actually pretty great. We watched Australian classics like Strictly Ballroom, Bran Nue Dae, The Dish, and Australia, had good conversations and bounced along the red dirt roads until we reached our final destination of Trilby Station.

TRILBY STATION FACTS
1. Liz and Gary are the only 2 permanent residents
2. They’ve been on Trilby for about 30 years
3. They have around 20,000 sheep
4. They live on 500 sq mi of land. That’s the size of Rhode Island.
5. The closest town has a population of 36
6. If Liz wants to go into town, she has to plan it months in advance
7. 2,000 tourists visit Trilby Station every year

It was so crazy to hear about their life. They talk about flying the plane to round up sheep, being trapped on their property when the river floods, teaching their kids to drive at age 6 like it’s normal to them. And the crazy thing about it is that it IS normal to them. I can’t comprehend what it would be to live like that. Gary said that his job required working 8 days a week. But he and Liz love their life. We asked what the worst part of living in the definition of the middle of nowhere was, and he said, “There is no worst part.” And when we asked him how hard it would be for him to take a vacation he said, “Why would I ever want to do that?” It takes a certain kind of person to live like that, to say the least. But Gary and Liz were (surprisingly) totally normal. They were really down to earth and funny. If you ran into them on the sidewalk (not that you would, seeing how they rarely leave their own property) you’d never guess they live so incredibly different than you.

Our time at Trilby was so great; there really was a ton to do. In our free time we went canoeing, played in the mud, walked, climbed trees, threw boomerangs, and fished for yabbies, which are the Australian version of crawdads. But the best times were when we just sat around the campfire and talked.

As a group, we took a couple tours of the property. We drove where the iconic red dirt was and had a time of reflection where we were supposed to write letters to ourselves and I may or may not have drawn a picture instead. We walked around the buildings with Liz and she told us what it was like to shear 20,000 sheep. We drove out for photo ops, and abandoned cars, busses and houses.

One night we were there, we met a real live kangaroo hunter. Wayne. He was total Aussie, through and through. We pretty much bombarded him with questions, saw his ‘roo huntin’ truck and gun, and then talked him into going out and shooting a kangaroo and bringing it back to show us. And he did.

KANGAROO HUNTING FACTS
1. You have to be qualified/licensed/something to kill kangaroos.
2. You get so many tags, and that's how many you’re allowed.
3. You have to shoot them in the head, or you can’t sell them.
4. You can shoot for human consumption or pet food.
5. Once you shoot a kangaroo, you have to cut its head off, cut its feet off, take out some organs and then hang it up on your truck.
6. If you shoot a kangaroo with a Joey, you have to kill it, too.

The dead kangaroo was, not surprisingly, gross. It was kind of cool, and we got to see inside it and touch it and stuff. But in the end, it was just another dead rat in a dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant. Name that movie.

Probably my favorite part of the trip was every night, we all got around the campfire and took turns telling each other our life stories. It wasn’t like a long, detailed story. Mostly we mentioned defining moments, or turning points, or themes in our lives. I just loved hearing about everyone’s life. We have a lot of discussions in class, and you get to know people’s opinions, but this is all the stuff that really matters. Hearing about everyone’s joys and pains really made me look at everyone differently, like I never really knew them at all. One of my favorite things was when one girl looked around at all of us and said, “We’re all just a bunch of broken vessels.” I think that’s beautiful. And for one of the first times on this trip I thought, “It’s going to kill me to leave these people.”

I feel like this whole experience was about things too big for me to understand. I can’t imagine what 20,000 sheep look like or how big 500 square miles is. I can’t imagine what it would be like to walk for weeks and never see another human being. I can’t count how many stars I saw in the sky and I can’t describe the feeling of being swallowed up by empty space.

God is so big, you guys. I don’t even know. But when I was there, I could see for miles in every direction. And I could see the whole sky at once. And I was overwhelmed with the vastness. You can’t measure how deep or how high or how wide it is. You’re just totally swallowed up in space. And it’s so hard to articulate how it makes you feel or what you’re thinking then. So just go there and find out for yourself.




current song: Everything Glorious by David Crowder Band