Slave of the Flies

I must admit: I am not liking traversing the Australian Outback via the Great Central Road. The flies have made it an exercise in endurance rather than a travel of pleasure.

It is said that the flies were not here over a couple of centuries ago. When the settlers brought in their cattle, seeing that there was open range for beef, they also unintentionally brought in the flies. And the flies have found a welcome breeding ground, multiplying a billionfold.

I always like to enjoy the natural surroundings, often stopping to ride early in the afternoon so that I can set up camp and savor the beauty of the environment. I remember, for instrance, when riding the Great Divide in Idaho, I stopped riding around 2 pm to camp by the cool Warm River; it was a beautiful afternoon. Or I remember delighting in the purple sky in the Anza Borrego Desert. But there is no way to enjoy the natural surroundings here. As beautiful as the Outback sunset may be, I don’t get to enjoy it.

All day I ride with the fly net around my head to keep the flies off my face as I pedal on. I am NOT A WINDSHIELD, BUGS! And when I arrive at the camp site with thousands of flies buzzing around me, I quickly set up the tent, throw all my gear into it, and dart inside as fast as I can. Then the next five minutes is spent trying to get rid of the five or so flies that managed to get into the tent through this whole exercise.
Once everything is calm inside and I can remove the fly net from my head, I breathe easier. Even here, there is no cooking your meal in the warmth of the evening. I set up my stove INSIDE my tent, something you should never do lest the fire from the stove goes errant. I cook my dinner inside and eat it inside. No eating your meals with the natural sky as your canopy.

In the meantime, the flies are not only buzzing outside, but so many thousands of them are landing on the tent that it sounds like raindrops splattering the top of the tent. If Alfred Hitchcock were to make a new movie like “The Birds”, he has a whole new creature for inspiration.

It would seem to me that the existence of the flies poses an ecological disaster of some kind. In the U.S. we are only beginning to understand the havoc we have done by changing the ecological makeup of the American continent. Australia, being as vast, has not, it seems to me, caught up in understanding of the ecological damage, these flies may have done.

In any case, one Australian said that once the temperature drops and becomes cooler, the flies should disappear. I’m not holding my breath for that time to come. In the meantime, even though I can sense that the scenery of the Outback is magnificent in its own way, I somehow can’t sit down in the evening and meditate on the glory of the crimson sky. That experience just hasn’t come yet.