One evening in early 1999 I receive an intriguing email. It is from Mariko, a Japanese woman from Osaka who, after introducing herself and saying that she found my web pages interesting, says she wants to visit Ayers Rock. She asks me for travel advice. Already I sense something more is coming. Later in the exchange of email she tentatively asks if I would be prepared to take her there. She knows I am familiar with the area and how to get there overland, and also knows that I have visited Japan and loved it.

I think about her suggestion for a few days. Frankly, there are problems. First, I do not want to go to Ayers Rock again, I do not want to drive those same empty roads - but her idea excites me, and just now I have the time to do it. Is there a way to give Mariko what she wants, and for me to enjoy something new of Australia too? I like the idea of travelling with a Japanese woman, for many reasons. I find them playful and charming company, I can learn and practice my Japanese, and I can vicariously enjoy another person's first encounter with the Australian outback, harsh and beautiful.

So I find a way to make the trip suit us both. We can head northwest through New South Wales, to Cameron Corner, where the state meets South Australia and Queensland at the point 29 S 141 E. From there through Innamincka, Birdsville, Boulia and the Plenty Highway to Alice Springs and Ayers Rock, thence back to Birdsville and down the Birdsville track, east then though Broken Hill and back to Sydney. This way combines enough new challenging roads for me, with Mariko's dream destination. I tell her the plan and within hours she accepts it. I then use further email to tell her what clothes are required and to prepare her for some of the privations of the bush (bulldust in your nose, ears, underwear, and everywhere else, insects, sunburn, sleeping out of doors).

A few days later I meet her at Sydney airport. Her English is very good, and she is knowledgeable, intelligent, and appreciative. However, the list of relevant things that Mariko has not experienced is quite extensive: camping, dirt roads, manual transmission, dangerous animals, remoteness, desolation, high temperatures, Australia in general, the southern sky, complete independence, self-sufficiency. I can see this trip is going to be very different from anything she has ever done before.

We combine trip preparation with some sightseeing for two days. Mariko is impressed by Sydney's food, the beaches, the architectural beauty of the city and is overjoyed at my suggestion that we have a look at the Opera House. We look through the forthcoming events and her eyes settle on Carmen, to be performed two weeks hence. She almost dances with excitement at the idea of being able to see a performance, and asks if I will go with her. I agree. Only the best and worst seats are left. She insists on paying for me, saying that I am making all this possible for her, and buys us the best seats in the house, in the centre of the circle. We go to the Bennelong restaurant to make pre-performance dinner reservations for the same night. This gives us a deadline; we have to be back in Sydney in time for the performance. I love the idea of emerging from the bush, dirty and travel-worn, showering and transforming ourselves butterfly-like into refined culture lovers. As we walk down the forecourt steps Mariko happily hums the toreador's theme.

We buy Mariko some personal camping gear, stuff that I don't already have to lend her. And I succumb to the desire to have a GPS unit. I've watched the prices coming down over the last few years, and finding the Magellan GPS 300 for $299 in Paddy Pallin's is enough to make me buy. It is about the size and shape of a mobile phone. I read the book the evening before we leave, hoping to get a position for the house to use as a reference as we travel. The literature says units will give a position accurate to within 100 metres. So, one should not be misled by the spurious accuracy of the display, which can be set to display positions in either seconds or arc, or minutes of arc to two decimal places (longitude units equivalent to 29 metres or 18 metres). The position I get for the deck at the back of the house is in the range 33 53 44-46 S 151 14 43-49 E, a variation of 58 metres N-S, 97 metres E-W. It gives elevation above sea level too, though this is even less accurate due to the way the satellite signals are computed. Before leaving I enter the latitude and longitude of the main places we will be passing through so that we can get constant distances and bearings to all our destinations. When one moves the unit it computes one's heading as well, and from this can tell one how many degrees to turn left or right. It also acts as a compass and has a clock too. Travelling due West in the car the seconds of arc click over nicely five times roughly every 100 metres (just right for our latitude), updating two or three times a second, and the computation of speed agrees perfectly with my car's speedometer. Using the unit in the car is no problem, but using it near buildings that obscure the sky either slows down the finding of a position or makes it impossible, so it is unlikely it can be used at the bottom of cliffs, under overhangs, et cetera. Nevertheless, as a way of marking the location of good climbing spots, swimming holes and so on, it is unbeatable. If any of my friends are reading this, my GPS is not for loan!

We stay up late the night before leaving, talking about many things, and finally going to our beds at about 3 am. This makes our planned early morning start improbable, and we eventually leave at noon. I'd hoped to get as far as Bourke on the first day, but we will have to be satisfied with less than that now. The weather in Sydney is dreadful, heavy driving rain caused by a large depression passing east over the state. I've been using the Internet to get satellite weather maps over the last couple of days to see how the weather is progressing out west. It looks like it will be clear whenever we decide to camp even if we are only halfway to Bourke, and the ground may even have had time to dry out. I've also been using the Internet to get sunrise-sunset, moonrise-moonset times too. With this information I can tell when we should be stopping to camp if we want to do everything in the daylight, and what are the best times for looking at the stars. Mariko has mentioned several times that she is looking forward to seeing the Southern Cross for the first time. I tell her she will be able to see a lot more than that in the Southern skies. The moon will not be visible for most of the trip, excellent news for astronomers. And I've packed my Southern Hemisphere planisphere on this trip, so we can identify all the stars and constellations.

The trip out of Sydney, via Singleton and Muswellbrook is not very interesting, although we take the Putty Road  to Singleton. We get as far as Gunnedah before deciding to stop. Just a few kilometres before the town we find both sides of the road fenced, so it is not easy to get off the road to camp. Instead, I turn down a side road, which soon turns into a landing strip for the State Emergency Services, which then turns into a dirt road that looks quiet. The only flat area we can find is in a shallow causeway, so we take the risk and pitch the tent there. Mariko's first lesson on tent pitching goes well, and I then show her the camping stove, how it works, and my technique of boiling lots of water to keep in thermos flasks for later use in coffee or tea. We cook, and then sit back to watch the stars appear. Mariko is very surprised when I matter-of-factly point out the Southern Cross. Maybe she expected it to be harder to see, or identify. She is very pleased to see it anyway. Then I show her the Magellan clouds. She correctly identifies a couple of planets, Orion, and the Milky Way. We then go through the method for finding the southern celestial pole, using the Southern Cross. When twilight has passed and the stars have really intensified Mariko is seeing the sky as she has never seen it before, undimmed by terrestrial lights. She is deeply affected by this and says something that strikes me as odd, 'I will remember this night when I die'. We see many satellites, maybe eight or nine, and several shooting stars.

Mariko gets into her sleeping bag fully clothed, and demurely looks the other way as I get into mine. I feel hot, so I unzip the bag from the bottom and go to sleep. Mariko wakes me up an hour later to say she is too cold to sleep. I'm still hot so we swap sleeping bags and both sleep, though I don't feel any cooler in hers than I did in my thicker one.

Camp 1 11-2-99 31 03 26  S 150 19 07 E

The sun beats into the tent right after dawn and I sweat as I pack up camp. I hate wasting the first cool hour of the day by sleeping through it. Getting up in a sweat and dealing with flies during breakfast is a poor start to the day. Better to be on the road while it is still cool. You see more animals that way too. Mariko has a little driving practice on the empty road. We continue west.

We pass through towns with aboriginal names that twist Mariko's tongue mercilessly: Boggabri, Narrabri, Wee Waa. Mariko knows nothing about aborigines other than that they live in Australia. She is astonished to learn they are black and look so different to European descendants, and that they had so many of their own languages. I am astonished that a well-educated and travelled person could not know this. When I see her guidebook, I am not so surprised. It has a section on 'Kangaloo Island', and another on 'Abolignland'.

My brother had warned me that Walgett is an unpleasant town, having an air of menace and racial tension. I don't feel anything like this myself, but notice the police on the street, and signs warning people that the town is under video surveillance. Between here and Bourke I expect a lot of dirt road, but much of it has been sealed since my map was printed. We pass through Brewarrina (another verbal test for Mariko) on the way to Bourke, where we stop for a late lunch. On this stretch Mariko gets more practice driving the car, I even let her do a few short dirt sections. Her driving is a bit hard on the car, and not cautious enough for temporary road surfaces, so I can't really relax. Instead, I have to keep watch and make clear instructions to Mariko as we pass from one surface to another. Many city driving habits are dangerous when transferred to the bush: braking on the verge, entering a corner too fast, assuming a flat uniform surface instead of actually verifying it, and so on. Until I try to alert someone to all these things I do not realise just how much there is to take into consideration. I get tired of having to keep correcting Mariko's driving, and she gets tired of being corrected.

At Bourke I make a really stupid mistake. I fail to refuel. I do it consciously too. I am trying to calibrate my petrol tank so that I can tell how many kilometres per litre the car is getting, and how far I can drive when the fuel needle is on each of the marks on the gauge. My idea is that I only want to fill the car's jerry cans when necessary, to avoid having to transport quantities of petrol in the car as much as possible. We start out of Bourke and head west, into the 'back o' Bourke', the area traditionally associated with distance and emptiness. The road is awfully corrugated and covered for miles in broken glass. We see a car that has stopped to fix a flat tyre, and pray it doesn't happen to us too. Why so much glass should be here mystifies me. Is there a local Monkeywrench Gang, or are there a lot of wild parties out here, or do the pubs just dump their empties here? About 50 kilometres out of Bourke we stop for the night, with plenty of sunlight left. Both sides of the road are fenced, but there are enough bushes to hide the car only 10 metres from the road.

We pitch the tent, I dig a toilet, put out the chairs and cooking things and decide the time has come for some breaking down of personal inhibitions. I've noticed that mixed camping trips usually start off with great propriety, respect for each other's privacy and so on, but this entails work and slows everything down. Towards the end of a camping trip the taboos become less important and people are freer about nudity. Not only is this freedom from inhibition enjoyable in its own right, it also cuts out a lot of the messing about, like having to get into the tent and zip it up to change clothes, or tramp off behind bushes to get washed. It is better to simply start the trip as one usually ends it. I am dying for a shower; we have been feeling dusty and sweaty since we got up this morning. I tell Mariko I am going to set up the shower and she, being Japanese, is very keen to have one too, but at this stage can't see how it is going to work. I put the 20 litre water container up on the car's roof and attach a short shower hose to the spout. Then I help Mariko climb up onto the roof and ask her to hold the shower head out and turn the water on and off when I tell her. I get out of my clothes and use the first minute of water to wet myself all over. The water is lovely because it is well over 30 degrees Celsius. Mariko doesn't bother to look away as I wash myself. I soap down and tell her how wonderful it feels under the water. I wash off, dry off, put on clean clothes and feel great. The evening is cooling down to more reasonable temperatures. I ask Mariko if she wants a shower too, and she cannot resist. As I hold the shower head she relaxes and enjoys the sensation of warm clean water washing away the grime and dust. I note that we use about 5 litres each. That's quite economical, but still a whole day's supply for one person in the outback.

Our meal that evening is concocted out of the strange mixture of supplies we have with us: dehydrated camping food, snack food, and Japanese snack food. Miso soup becomes one of my favourites. The milk we bought in Bourke is used for coffee. Everything feels great, the flies disappear soon after the sun goes down, we are fed and clean. I have a couple of cups of Japanese green tea, which is very refreshing. We watch the stars again. This time Mariko identifies the Southern Cross without help.

In the tent we both feel hot - too hot for sleeping bags. We talk about what fun the showers have been, how great it is to be able, out here where no-one else has a say in what you do, to do just as you please. The subject of escaping taboos is very dear to Mariko's heart. She has had to make a career out of simultaneously conforming to some while gently applying pressure to have others lifted. A strange thundering sound gets us up to the tent's window. It builds in volume and we realise it is a road train heading towards us. As it passes I see that it has four sections. Is that legal, I wonder? I have only ever seen them three long. Later in the trip, at Three Ways, I see a photo of a six-part road train, so perhaps it is a legal size.

Camp 2 12-2-99 29 59 48 S 145 26 28 E

Eventually we do sleep but I have been plagued with misgiving about the petrol. In the morning, with a clearer head I realise that Wanaaring, our next fuel stop, at 130 kilometres distant, is just within reach, but there is no margin of error. If we run out of fuel only 10 kilometres short of the town it could mean a lot of trouble and delay. I decide the best thing to do is make a 27 kilometre side trip to Ford's Bridge. Arriving at Ford's Bridge brings disappointment; though it has a pub (number one priority), it has no petrol station. We are now further from Wanaaring and have even less fuel. There is nothing for us to do now but head back to Bourke, 70 kilometres in the wrong direction. After refuelling at Bourke I don't want to travel the glass-strewn Wanaaring road again, so we head back to Ford's Bridge and then use tracks to rejoin the Wanaaring road as far west as possible, hoping to bypass the corrugations and glass. The tracks become less clear. The GPS tells us which way to go (west), but now the track seems to be heading too far north, in contradiction to what is shown on the map. I drive up to the homestead at Wampra to ask directions. An old lady comes out at the sound of her dogs' frenzied barking at my car. She confirms that we are on the right road, and that we should just keep going. She is obviously a little curious about the small Japanese woman beside me. Mariko smiles at her and she smiles back and they both feel a little more comfortable. We thank her, follow her directions, and eventually find ourselves back where we expected to be.

Refuelling at Wanaaring we press on towards Milparinka. On the way we decide that we may as well go via Tibooburra instead, as this route seems more direct. Before we get to the fork in the road however, we decide to camp again. This time there are no fences so I turn the car off the road and we wander through the bush for about two kilometres until we find a red clay pan area perfectly flat and smooth, and clean enough to walk on in bare feet. We camp and watch the kangaroos appear in the grasses around us, a galah swoops very close to get a look at us, and would probably have landed if Mariko hadn't hooted with delight, hundreds of budgies whirl around overhead, as well as other birds out to catch the evening insects. Today we have also seen emu and ostriches. Yes, African ostriches trotting wild through the Australian outback - yet another unwanted introduced species probably set loose by a bankrupt farmer who couldn't care less about ecological preservation. Later bats fly around us and invisible birds fly overhead, making calls to each other. We saw a snake today too, in two pieces on the road, probably dead, but one can never be sure with snakes. Later in the trip I see another snake that had been run over, squashed into the tarmac, dried out, then lifted like a broken roof tile - probably dead too.

Here we have no sign of civilisation except the satellites. We enjoy each other's company, the animals, the space and privacy, the cleanliness of everything here on the clay pan. We wash and sit cool in the very slight breeze and drink tea and coffee. Then later, we sprawl on the floor of the tent and in the darkness talk about our enjoyment of all these things. I don't know how to improve on this for camping experience. This is by far the best camp of the trip.

Camp 3 13-2-99 29 43 32 S 142 52 41 E

Our progress across the country has been slower than I expected. We had a late start, backtracked a fair bit, started late each day and finished early. We are still in NSW. Our plans may have to change because of this. At least the car has been performing very well, getting about eight kilometres to the litre whether on tarmac or dirt.

We stop for a break at Tibooburra. Caroline Betts, who runs the roadhouse, tells us we are the first travellers through there in a week. She makes excellent cappuccinos for us, and we buy a few supplies. Mariko also buys a few shirts and other things, I get a couple of maps, and Desert Tracks by John Johnson and Catherine de Courcy, which seems excellent. The book is quite informative about this area and tells me what to expect on the next section. It sounds like it is going to be interesting.

The road west of Tibooburra is winding and undulating, not a road train route at all. It passes over numerous sand ridges. 'Sandwiches?' asks Mariko. 'No, sand ridges' I repeat. I keep far left in case a car coming the other way is in the centre of the road. We come at one stage to a wide water-filled clay pan. The road cuts straight across it, but I cautiously take the detour around the shore, remembering the site I once found where a car had sunk deep into such a pan just metres from the edge.

We overtake a conventional car crawling along very carefully with sand flag aloft, and come to the dog fence separating eastern and western Australia. The fence was designed to simultaneously keep rabbits from spreading into the west, and to stop dingos from getting to the sheep in the east. Nobody informed the animals concerned about this and they failed to observe the ruling. Consequently, the fence has fallen into disrepair. Nevertheless, we make sure to close the gate behind us, leaving it as we found it, and enter South Australia. In less than a minute we are already out of South Australia and into Queensland. After being in New South Wales for four days this is dizzying stuff. We stop the car and go into the lonely isolated pub at Cameron Corner. It is full, as today is Sunday. The people in the bar tell us that another Japanese passed through just the day before, a lone motorcyclist heading north. We have a drink and then wander over to the surveyor's stone that marks the exact corner of the three states. I take a GPS reading which seems to indicate quite consistently that the stone is actually erected at 28 59 58 S 140 59 57 E. At the time I assumed my GPS was spot-on, so the stone was slightly out of position and that therefore the surveying methods of 1969 were inaccurate. I could be right about the old surveying methods, though the GPS reading is not sufficient evidence for this. The GPS tells me that from this point my house is 1113 kilometres away across New South Wales. This seems like a long way, but NSW is actually one of the smaller states of Australia, and it should not have taken us three and a half day's to get here.

Our next destination is Innamincka. Continuing west we pass a derelict double-decker bus standing in the middle of a flat plain, a lone cow enjoying its shade. This stretch of road goes through the Strzelecki Desert, a hard and stony place. Mariko keeps asking if she can drive and I keep on refusing to let her. She doesn't really know enough to drive safely yet, and the car is something we cannot afford to treat casually. If we break down in this section, we may have to wait several days and if one of us is injured in a roll it could be very serious indeed. The road slowly curves round to the north and soon we find ourselves at Merti Merti, which is famous for its deep red sand dunes, featured in many an advertising campaign as an archetypal outback scene. Although they are only a few metres away from the road we don't see them, and don't find out about them until too late. I am frustrated by this, as they sound very interesting. Normally I would use my stop time to read about the road ahead, but now I use most of it to talk to Mariko and explain things to her.

I tell Mariko what I would like from a navigator, and she delivers it. This is great. Instead of just driving along waiting for the next landmark, I get a stream of news from Mariko, telling me what is up ahead, what to expect, how far away it is, and which direction the road is going to veer to. I can then be on the lookout for confirmation we are on the right route, which makes it easier to catch mistakes early. This is the way I like to navigate for other drivers, but I find few people who can do it well.

At Merti Merti we have a choice, go directly north along part of the old Strzelecki Track, or detour west and use the new oil field roads. This second route is longer, but faster, as the roads are maintained to a standard suitable for large road trains travelling to and from the oil works at Moomba. We go west and soon reach high speeds on the straight, level, hard, smooth dirt road. Up ahead we can see the smoke from the burn-off at the oil field. It gets bigger as we approach. Finally we make the last crest and see the huge installation spread out before us. It looks like a secret weapons factory that only James Bond could deal with. From here gas is piped overland to Australian coastal cities, including Sydney. At Moomba we turn east to rejoin the old route to Innamincka, still 80-90 kilometres away. I let Mariko drive for a while, as the roads are good. I even try to nod off a little. Outback driving can be so very tiring, particularly when it is as hot as this. At Cameron Corner earlier today it was 38 degrees celsius. It feels hotter out here in the desert, with the sun higher in the sky.

The approach to Innamincka is interesting after the gibber and sand ridges of the desert to the south. We drive across a plain and see a low escarpment at the foot of which are many large trees. Dropping down off the escarpment we reach Innamincka almost immediately. We are a little late. The shop has shut and no-one is in sight. That is not crucial though as I know where to find the creek, and notice that there are public showers and toilets nearby. The town is very small. I think the population is 13 or 14. This is the scene of the end of the explorers Burke and Wills, a story as tragic as that of Romeo and Juliet. I drive down to Cooper Creek and see one of the most enjoyable sights in the desert: a wide full creek shaded by huge Eucalyptus trees and bordered by cool green banks. As usual, the birds have already found the place and are here in numbers. My first priority is a swim so I strip and descend the mud bank using my hands and feet. The current is very strong and I have to swim hard just to stay near the car. In the middle I find a sand bar only about a metre underwater, so I kneel on it and let the cool seep into my skin. Mariko watches me from the bank.

'You ought to do this too', I suggest. She makes indecisive Japanese noises. I keep on trying to get her into the water. 'What about crocodile?', she asks. I tell her we are too far south to worry about crocodiles. Next she says that the colour of the water doesn't look good. I agree it has a lot of suspended clay in it, but offer the suggestion that we are probably dirtier than the water is. She agrees, and starts to undress. She slips in the mud and slides into the water. She is embarrassed to have made a mess of one more thing. A feeling has been mounting in her over these few days. She feels she is incompetent in the outback, that everything she does is wrong. She has found operating the equipment and handling the food difficult. I haven't helped in this respect, because I have been constantly pointing such things out to her. My reason for doing this is that one can't afford to make mistakes in the outback, so I can't just let things slide. She must know the right way, or things we need will be lost, broken, or wasted.

I swim over and help her back to the sand bar. We rest there and watch the birds playing in the trees overhead. After fifteen minutes we head back to the bank and crawl out. I offer Mariko a hand to help her up the bank and she nearly pulls me in on top of her! I see a turtle in the creek. There are many fish jumping too. We get dressed and make drinks. We have not eaten very much in two days, all we want to do is drink. In the car I go through many litres of water daily, or should I say, it goes through me. After drinks and a small snack we drive back to the showers and clean up. How delicious this is! Feeling cool and clean, shampooed and happy, we return to the campsite and sit among the citronella candles. A couple more cars come down to the creek and park about 500 metres away, far enough.

Camp 4 14-2-99 27 45 08 S 140 43 39 E

As usual, we fail to get moving as early as we had hoped, but today this doesn't matter. We are in South Australia now, and the time difference means that we are up, fed and showered well before the shop opens. We buy fuel, drinks and fill our water can. The woman who owns the shop says they have had no rain since October, so the only water they can give us is a mixture of creek and rainwater. She also advises that I call ahead to the Birdsville Police and tell them my plans to drive through. This is because the roads are so empty at this time of year that we could be stranded for days if we break down and no-one knows we are out there. It happened recently to some people who had had to wait for three days for another car to pass. She also says the temperatures have reached the 50s recently.

After speaking to the police we set off, north to Birdsville just over the Queensland border. This is going to be the hardest driving of the whole trip. The day is hot and windless. Some way into the trip I stop the car on a crest and switch off the engine. We open the car doors and drink from our bottles, looking out over the desert that stretches for many miles into the haze of mirage. I say to Mariko, 'Listen'. She listens but can't hear anything. 'To what?', she asks. 'Silence', I answer. Then she listens properly. No wind, no insects, no ticking of a cooling car engine, because the air is so hot the engine isn't cooling that much. Nothing moves. We put on our hats and get out of the car. For a joke I drop my pants and tell Mariko this is the standard Australian way of letting the sweat around your backside evaporate before sitting down again. She drops her pants too. Then I tell her I was only joking but she leaves her pants down and says it is a good idea anyway. She seems mesmerised by the emptiness and vastness. I stand back and let her look out into it alone. Before we get back into the car she picks up a stone and tosses it some way down the slope. Later in the trip she tells me she wanted to lose herself in all that space (so unlike the close confines of Japanese society and Japanese countryside). Tossing the stone, she felt she was tossing herself into the wide space.

Mariko loves the flat horizons, the nothingness. It has a Japanese aesthetic in its minimalism, Zen in its emptiness. Whatever your problems were before, they are something different here. She feels constrained by her profession, and is hemmed in in other ways too. But none of that applies here, it is all meaningless. She is seeking things that rely on no justification for their existence, things of a primary nature, things that just are. Our symbolic goal, Ayers Rock, is important to Mariko for these reasons.

The driving is tough. I have to stop for a nap, and luckily find a small creek at just the right time. I use the water to wash the windscreen then fall asleep in my seat. Mariko puts on her hat, goes for a short walk down the creek, standing very still watching the birds and insects, and is rewarded by the sight of frogs in the water. How do they survive out here? It can only be by burying themselves deep in the mud when the water starts to dry up.

Soon after starting we see a young dingo happily trotting along the road, apparently unconcerned about the heat and lack of shade. He stops to look at us and we reciprocate. By this stage we have seen quite a few of the outback animals: goannas, emu, red and grey kangaroos, falcons, wedge-tailed eagles, a wombat, galahs, budgerigars, black swans, pelicans. We have also seen the visitors who came to stay: ostriches, wild horses, rabbits, goats, pigs (small and striped, they looked like piglets, but I could see no adults nearby), as well as many sheep and cattle. Later in the trip we see foxes, another strange dog-like animal on the Stuart Highway north of Alice Springs, and what looked like a feral cat, but was moving too fast for positive identification. We see no camels on this trip, however. Mariko is beside herself with delight whenever we see animals, so much so that when she is driving I sometimes have to refrain from pointing them out if the road requires too much attention. She nearly always exclaims 'kawaii!' (cute!), or 'okashii!' (funny!).

We pass by Cordillo Downs cattle station, home of Australia's largest shearing shed (it used to be a sheep station), without going in. We have plenty of fuel and may as well press on. Later we make a little detour to see the ruins of the homestead at Cadelga. Apparently the place suffered terrible drought, but there is plenty of water in the creek today. The road improves as we near Birdsville, so Mariko gets another chance at driving. Birdsville is the starting point of the Simpson Desert crossing. Over a thousand sand ridges have to be crossed as one travels west to the other side. As we approach Birdsville we start to cross outlying sand ridges with the same NNW orientation of those in the Simpson, not too far away. Cresting one with Mariko at the wheel, we look down at the space between us and the next ridge and see a lot of water lying about. I trust Mariko enough now to say 'drive slowly and straight and don't stop'. We reach the bottom of the sand ridge and start to travel out on the level. The ground softens and the car squirms. Mariko stops the car. I can see that we are only just managing to stay supported on a fairly thin hard crust that covers deep mud underneath - mud I don't want to fall into. I jump out of the car and race around to the driver's side, jump in, shout at Mariko to hurry up, and start moving forward as soon as she is in the car. The car had been sinking, and the first foot of travel is a distinct uphill! Moving now over the crust the going is good except that other vehicles have carved great deep criss-crossing ruts through the mud. I try to avoid going into them as long as possible but it is just a matter of time. We slam down into one and the mud splashes right over the top of the car, the windscreen is a total brown-out. I drive on blindly. The car squirms some more, driving its wheels hard against the mud, carving its own ruts now, it is like perpetually driving uphill. More soft patches, and more big splashes as we go down, but we never get stuck, and soon the car is hauling itself out of the mire and up the next sand ridge. I stop on top and let the wipers do their work. That was exciting stuff!

We are so close to Birdsville we can see the racetrack, and in only a few minutes we have pulled into town looking much worse that we feel. The car is a solid brown mess, caked inches deep in mud in places. We refuel, buy some milk, stop off at the police station to report all present and correct, safe and sound. The officer tells us the Birdsville track, which I had always thought of as terribly hard, is actually a much better road than the one we came in on. Interesting! If we have the time, our plan calls for taking this road south on the way home. Next we report to the pub. There are few pubs more famous than the Birdsville Hotel. We want to keep driving, so alcohol is out of the question at the moment, and we both order cokes. We chat to the barman and mention the Japanese motorcyclist we heard about at Cameron Corner, we had seen his track in the dirt as we drove to Birdsville. It turns out he is still there at the hotel, having decided to stay another night. Mariko finds the memorabilia and photographs of Aussie revelry all very interesting and amusing. I suggest she buy a Birdsville Hotel tee shirt, as the place is so famous but few can say they have actually been there. She picks out a blue one. The barman suggests we visit the museum before we leave town, so we do.

The museum is run by John Menzies, a manic raconteur, long-haired and cowboy-hatted, who leaps around the exhibits, cranking handles and winding levers while keeping up a continuous stream of fascinating information. He has collected and restored items from everyday life in the outback since first discovery, as well as many other weird, unusual, rare, clever, beautiful and amusing things. The place is a treasure trove of Australiana and early colonial artefacts. He alters his routine to focus on many things with Japanese connections, for Mariko's benefit. I feel I get a good idea of what life out here must have been like over the years. I thoroughly recommend the museum to anyone in the area (within 500 kilometres, that is).

Another guest at the museum, Norm, has just driven down from Boulia, which is our next destination. He gives me valuable information about the state of the road. It is boggy, closed in part, has lots of bulldust, and the detour around the closed section is not clear. He tells me where to take turns, and to trust the road, even when it appears to degenerate into a series of divergent tracks.

We leave Birdsville late in the afternoon, hoping to make some distance up the road before making camp. Norm and John tell us to ‘look out for the lookout’, where we will find some dingo caves, and further on, another ruined homestead that may give us shelter from the wind. We drive the car up to the top of the lookout and look out over the plains to the north. It is hard to judge how far we can see. Around the rim of the lookout the dingoes have excavated shallow caves. How long have they been living here, 10,000 years? More than that? There are signs of recent digging at the back of the caves. I can imagine the dogs curled up here, looking out over this vast flat land for thousands of years.

I slow down and drive wide to the left for a road train coming the other way. He is going slowly because the road is so bad. He flashes his lights, so I stop. Odd I think, because truck drivers never need help from tourists like us. He pulls up alongside and his air brakes squeal as he comes to a standstill. Huge impacted loads of bulldust flop out of all his many wheels and fill the air with dust clouds. He climbs down out of his cab and walks over to my window. 'Didn't mean to make ya stop, mate,' he says. 'I was just flashin' to tell ya ya had a clear run down the other side.' 'No worries,' I say. And we wave and go our separate ways. I think it is a little odd, I would never have interpreted his flashing lights as an invitation to cross in front of him and drive down the wrong side of the road, but it was very decent of him to stop and apologise.

Later we see the ruins of Cacoony station off to the right, and head that way to investigate. They look clean enough to sleep in, but we stop to eat at a picnic table set up a little nearer the road. We are on a slight rise, and can see the road for a long way in both directions, north and south. It is relatively busy, four or five trucks pass by before we fall asleep. We pitch the tent right next to the table, rather than returning to the ruins.

Camp 5 15-2-99 25 14 42 S 139 33 30 E

Soon after starting north again in the morning we see barriers across the road, and signs pointing us to the right. This is the flood detour that adds about 50 kilometres to the journey, but will take us through Lake Machattie, which may be interesting. The detour road is good in parts, but very variable. Huge bogs of bulldust, finely powdered clay, pull hard at the car's wheels and feel like treacle to drive through. I take the left fork at the spot Norm mentioned (if he hadn't have told me, it would have been a toss-up). Just as he warned us, the road degenerates into disorganised wheel tracks running off into the grass, but we keep on. The lake comes into sight. It is very large, dry, dead flat, and covered in new grass of the palest delicate green, almost white. It looks perfect, unblemished and tranquil. We stop to spend some time here. Mariko leaves the car and wanders into the lake, feeling a strong urge to just walk off into the wide distance and never come back. The song 'Somewhere over the rainbow' runs through her head. I hang back and look at her tiny form set against the huge emptiness. The lake is almost white and the clouds are almost black. The scene is very impressive. We don't speak, we just look.

As we are about to rejoin the road north we begin to feel lost. We seem to be heading south again. The GPS confirms this. Now the doubts start. We thought we would turn left from the detour we were following, onto the Diamantina Developmental Road, head west for a few kilometres, then turn right, north, onto the road to Boulia. There was no indication that we would be going south at any stage. Did we perhaps miss the junction with the Diamantina Developmental Road, and then, when we made our left turn, start to head south, on the Boulia Road? Missing junctions is not so difficult in the outback, after all. We use the GPS to track our progress and assume we have not made a mistake. Sure enough, just over a sand ridge we find the Boulia Road junction and turn north.

At Bedourie Roadhouse I see a newspaper headline saying record floods are expected north of here. That is just what we don't need. I try to make the best speed possible as we head for Boulia. There are many creek crossings on the way, and I don't want to get caught between two creeks in flood. I tell Mariko that we may have to climb up on the roof of the car if the water gets high enough. She likes this idea. I tell her that snakes will also want to climb onto the car. This idea she doesn't like. All the creeks seem quite full. At Boulia I call the Road Information number and get bad news. The Donohue Highway, our route west into the Northern Territory, has been closed to all traffic (including four-wheel drives). I also learn that the road from Innamincka to Birdsville, which we travelled yesterday, is also now closed. Has it worsened since we passed, or are the closures perhaps a little over-cautious and, if so, could we risk crossing the Donohue Highway anyway? I decide not to risk it. Besides, at this stage I have had enough of the dirt roads. We have been covered in dust, shaken to numbness, and drained by constantly fixing our attention on the road surfaces, and it has all added up to a lot of hard work. I break the news to Mariko that the dirt road driving has come to an end and we must make a huge detour north, to the Barkly Highway. She doesn't mind.

In fact, as we press on north she is happy to see trees and hills again. 'I feel like I am entering paradise', she says. As we continue I see the turnoffs to Urandangi, dirt roads that bypass the Donohue Highway and link to the Plenty Highway at Tobermorey. I figure if the Donohue Highway is closed the Urandangi road will be too. There is the Sandover Highway option too, Mariko asks about going this way. It goes from Camooweal in the north to the Plenty Highway further west, but is also likely to be bad. I stick to the safe policy of driving the Barkly Highway, bland and dull though it will be.

At Mount Isa we shower, refuel, and eat pizza (Mariko is worried that she will be too scruffy for Pizza Hut, but she turns out to be the best-dressed woman in the place). On the way into the restaurant we have to pass through a gang of local toughs lounging around their cars. They give us challenging looks, especially Mariko. I'm not impressed. I walk through them feeling prepared for trouble but confident they can see I'm not intimidated. Mariko is very impressed by this and says it makes her feel very safe with me. She thinks about this episode for days.

I fit brighter lights to the car in anticipation of some night driving tonight, and we head for Camooweal. We stop at about 11 pm, still east of Camooweal on Route 66. I pull off the road and my headlights capture a small hopping animal. Is it a frog or a bird or a marsupial? We can't tell. We pitch the tent and flop onto the mattresses on the floor. It is hot, but also humid tonight. We entered the tropics today.

Camp 6 16-2-99 20 01 44 S 138 40 06 E

Soon after restarting we get pulled over by the police, for a random breath test, they say, though one of them takes lots of notes as we talk. In the middle of nowhere, on an empty road, this is quite amusing, and I joke with the officers about them dying of boredom out here. I suspect they are looking for more than traces of alcohol. When we stop later for breakfast at Camooweal I hear on the radio that there was an attack recently, and a number of men fled in a four-wheel drive. I assume this is the reason for the police being out there on the highway.

When we stop to swap places later in the morning at Soudan I take the opportunity to show Mariko a termite mound close up. She assumes they are soft powdery things, and is surprised when I show her you can stand on them. Casually I grab the top of one mound and it is my turn to be surprised when it comes off in my hand. We look inside at the maze of polished tunnels. There are no termites to be seen, but this section appears to be a food store, as it is packed with fragments of grass. I wonder if this is a kind of insulation, or whether termites store food against the possibility of bush fires. I tap the fragment against the mound to shake out the grass and see if anyone is home. A few soldiers come running out round the base and one runs right up to my hand. Mariko is really impressed by this samurai bravery. As we watch the soldiers in their attempts to identify the problem we notice that tiny blind termite faces have started to appear at the openings we created at the top of their mound. They arrange their little heads around the edges of the holes and look as if they are starting the task of cementing them shut, though they are so small we cannot really tell. They are so appealing I decide to replace the section I broke off, to aid their repair work and give them some shade. Mariko is fascinated by all this and talks about it for long afterwards. The obvious intelligence of the termites to initiate repair and defence is impressive, and it is a different kind of intelligence to our own.

Many hours later we arrive at the Devil's Marbles, after passing through a few refreshing rain showers that helped to wash off the Birdsville mud. This is one of the stops we can allow ourselves. Detours to the Henbury Meteorite Craters, Gosse Bluff, the Finke River and King's Canyon are all unlikely now, as we have spent too much time getting here. We have to focus on getting to Ayers Rock and the Olgas, and then have to return to Sydney as fast as possible via the sealed roads to the south, to save more time. However, this change of route has the benefit of adding Coober Pedy to the tour, and I'm sure Mariko will enjoy that.

Tonight we stop at Ti Tree. I guessed that Mariko would like seeing the animals they have there, and we've both looked forward to the pool and showers. Mariko is curious about the aborigine people that come into the shop, but sad that they seem to have lost so much of their culture and come into the western culture on the lowest rung. She finds it hard to tell when they are speaking English and when they are speaking their native languages. Actually Mariko finds a lot of the broad country accents hard to understand too. She feels self-conscious, often saying that she thinks people are looking disapprovingly at her. I am not convinced. I think she may be misreading frank curiosity, as people here don't see many Japanese travelling alone with an Australian, and certainly none of them have that dusty look Mariko and I carry with us ever since we started sleeping in the sand nearly a week ago. What I notice is that people tend to assume that if Mariko has not understood them, it is because she doesn't know what they are talking about, rather than that she has just not heard the words properly. People respond by explaining things in a slightly patronising way rather than just speaking more clearly, but often the explanations have the same pronunciation drawbacks. Actually, Mariko is one of the most intelligent people I've met and her comprehension of English is quite exceptional (when I talked about a sommelier she knew what I meant, not many native English speakers would have), her only difficulty is dealing with the strine drawl.

Sitting in the dark looking at the sky again I see a sudden flash among the stars, then another. I tell Mariko about them, and point out the general area. Then we see a third one together. I have no idea what these could be, they certainly don't have the direction of shooting stars, they are simply sudden bright points of light, about magnitude -1.

Ti Tree 17-2-99 22 07 54 S 133 24 58 E

Next morning things go wrong. Once more we are late. Mariko loses a contact lens and the driver's seat won't adjust any more, which means I can't fit behind the wheel. We give up looking for the lens after about half an hour. I find out that the adjustment mechanism of my seat depends on small bits of twisted wire, which have fallen off. Mitsubishi should be ashamed of themselves, as this is a really crummy way to build a car. In other respects the car has been magnificent, unruffled at 140 kph on the Northern Territory highways, or churning through deep mud in second gear in 40+ temperatures. I manage to make a temporary repair to the seat and then we drive to Alice Springs.

On the way we pass through the tropic of Capricorn again. Trying to explain to Mariko the reasons for the name gets very complicated, but eventually she understands. The site at the side of the road gives the position as

lat 23-442028
long 133-833111

After a couple of minutes my GPS gives 23 26 36 S 133 49 52 E, the equivalent of

lat 23-4433
long 133-8321

At Alice Springs, while Mariko gets a replacement lens I head off to buy better maps, showing latitude and longitude as well as grid references. We meet up later, buy coffee and a sandwich and make a booking at a hotel in Yulara, a return to civilisation tonight. We can't get into the Sails in the Desert, or the Desert Gardens, so settle for the Outback Pioneer, though they can only take us for one night.

On the Lasseter Highway I tell Mariko the story of Lasseter's Reef, and mention that I know his granddaughter Patty, who is a climbing friend of mine. History is all so recent in Australia.

Mariko is driving and I am snoozing when a mountain comes into view. 'Are wa nan desu ka', what is that, asks Mariko. We have been speaking more Japanese as time goes by. I tell her it is Mount Conner, then having been woken up, notice a number of new signs offering tours of the mountain. Now this is something new. It seems that Mount Conner is now on the tourist agenda. It wasn't before. At Curtin Springs we ask about tours and are told they will have to be arranged at Yulara. We press on and get to the tourist office just before closing. Due to time conflicts and so on we settle for a helicopter ride over Ayers Rock and the Olgas at 7:30 the next morning. We head off to the hotel, check in, and start cleaning all our clothes (except the swimming costumes we are wearing) and all our eating and cooking items. When our clothes are dry we get dressed and go to Gecko's for dinner. The service is appallingly shoddy, and we are both disgusted that chairs are stood on the table around us, not just because it is so inhospitable, but it is also so unhygienic. We leave feeling cheated and irritated, but the next step in the trip has already begun to focus our minds: a night-time ascent of Ayers Rock.

It is near midnight as we drive slowly into the National Park and towards the mountain. I tell Mariko that there are rules against climbing at night. She is surprised. 'Then how are we going to climb it?', she asks. 'Break the rules!', I reply and she giggles at the naughtiness of it. It's such an unjapanese thing to do. The darkness is solid. I park the car near the foot of the climb, remembering its location well. We sit in the silent blackness for a while and verify that no other cars are approaching. We approach the rock and climb over the fence. The car is only a few metres away, but it is already lost in the deep gloom. With my headlamp I see a sign threatening a $1,000 fine for doing what we are doing. Mariko doesn't see it. It is so dark I have to scout around for the chain for several minutes, and begin to think it has been removed. Then I find it and position Mariko ahead of me and tell her to follow it up. We climb without light. First, it spoils night-vision, second, it would give our position away, third, we need to save batteries in case of emergency anyway. We both have small backpacks containing water, some food, torches, and a waterproof jacket. I also have the GPS, mobile phone and first aid kit.

The ascent is relatively easy and Mariko is completely fearless. I have to ask her to slow down. After about half an hour we are at the top and survey the strange scene before us. The surface of the rock is black like a void, its rounded outline filling the space below us. Above, the sky is full of burning bright stars, and the horizon is a dead flat fuzzy line. We lie together on our backs and watch the sky. Mariko keeps saying how happy she is. I point out that we are probably the highest people for a thousand kilometres in any direction. It feels good, and I feel very fortunate to experience this. Afterwards we sit and look out at the lower stars. To the northeast I see a collection of very bright stars I cannot identify. Then with a sudden realisation I am very excited. What I am looking at is Ursa Major, the Great Bear, the Plough, the Big Dipper! I've never seen it in full from Australia before. Here the conditions combine in the most perfect way, clear air, high vantage point, and the right time (of both the night and the year) so that the whole constellation is lying flat, upside-down above the horizon, with its pointers positioned vertically, pointing straight down to the north point on our horizon. This for me is the most memorable sight of the trip.

The wind is cool and it is getting late. Remembering we have a 7:30 am helicopter flight in a few hours we decide to descend and get a couple of hours sleep. I go first, backwards, so I can keep an eye on Mariko as she descends just above me. I show her how to crouch low and take long steps backwards, so we descend at about four times the speed we ascended. We cannot see each others faces in the dark. I stop every now and again to look for my car, but the darkness is so thorough that even its white paint doesn't show up until we are almost beside it. What a sense of achievement when we get down safely!

Mariko is compiling an impressive list of experiences in a few short days, things that many Australians have never done.

Yulara 18-2-99 25 14 33 S 130 59 22 E

We drag ourselves out of the comfort of bed and shower, still half asleep. We act like passive tourists now, being picked up outside the hotel and driven to the airport. The helicopter ride above the rock and the Olgas is exciting and fun, but not the deep experience we shared just a few hours ago. Seeing the land from the air was the one thing I felt I hadn't done here. I would like to see Gosse Bluff, Lake Amadeus and Mount Conner from the air too, but the cost is far too high.

We check out of the Outback Pioneer and check into the Desert Gardens hotel. We walk past the corpulent Teutonic forms surrounding the swimming pool like a colony of seals and take a nap in our new room. The place seems to be for the exclusive use of Germans and Japanese. Mariko is ashamed of the way the Japanese behave, obediently following their tour guides in groups, so lacking in individuality and adventure, she says. I point out that she also has a guide, and so do all the other people here. She acknowledges this, but still feels bad about the image her compatriots have created. We have a drink in the room, study our books and maps and relax for a while. In the afternoon we go to the Olgas and walk into the Valley of the Winds. A crucial moment has come.

Mariko and I sit in the shade for a moment. 'I feel like everything I do is wrong. It is making it impossible for me to be happy', she says. On the way here I had asked her to help me with something, she hadn't done it very well, and something valuable had nearly been broken. I'd been annoyed for a couple of minutes, then forgotten about it. She hadn't. She says she feels unable to handle being in the outback, she is not any good at it. I counter that nobody is born to it, it is something everyone has to learn, and tell her I made some big mistakes when I first started doing outdoor things. But she has gradually grown to dislike it every time I have asked her to do something differently, or pointed out that something she had done was a mistake. Example: a simple thing like putting the tops back on things as soon as you are finished with them. Forget to do it with food and the ants get in. Forget to do it with the soap and it leaks all over the inside of the car. There is this, and other things of the same kind. I get tired of having to check up after her and having to bring it up so many times. In the end it wears out my patience, and exasperation shows in my voice. I know she is a very clever woman, but her inability to get to grips with things is driving a wedge between us. We've joked about Japanese ineptness with mechanical objects but it hasn't helped. At this stage, I almost feel we should split up, I'll drive home and she can catch a plane back later. Instead we manage to make a constructive agreement. She agrees she must be more careful. I agree I must be more patient. She says 'But I'm not confident I really can be more careful', and I respond, 'I'm not really confident I can be more patient', but we agree to give it a try. The air is cleared, and we both manage to do better.

Next stop is Ayers Rock to watch the sunset, like everyone else. We pick a quiet spot and laugh at the people who drive up and sit in their cars with the engine running, preferring their air conditioning to the beautiful cool desert evening. Others rock up and shout and bustle, spoiling the peace for the rest of us. A glorious sensory experience unfolds before them and all they have to do is watch, but it seems to elude them. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. We tune them out of our consciousness and watch the colours change. All mountains change colour with the time of day, or turns in the weather. Ayers Rock is not unique in this respect, as you are sometimes led to believe, but this doesn’t diminish the aesthetic enjoyment of the sunset.

Later we enjoy a very indulgent dinner in the hotel and then fall into a deep sleep, it has been a long, long tiring day.

Yulara 19-2-99

A big breakfast, then back on the tarmac for the long drive to Coober Pedy. Mariko leaves Ayers Rock with a feeling of completion and satisfaction, an ambition accomplished. It is a feeling I know, and I'm delighted to have helped her achieve this. The trip south is quite uneventful, and we approach the eerie lunar Coober Pedy region late in the afternoon, with the slanting sun illuminating all the tailings piles dramatically. We check into the Desert Cave Hotel and ask for an underground room. It is wonderful. The ceiling and walls are bare rock, but otherwise everything is just as one would find in an ordinary hotel. All we are missing is the dubious benefit of a view over dusty Coober Pedy. We have a drink in the underground bar, then walk up the stairs to the restaurant at the top of the hotel. The food is deliciously fresh, it must have come up from Adelaide this morning.

Coober Pedy 20-2-99 29 00 37 S 134 45 14 E

It being Sunday, the Swiss Cafe and bookshop are closed, which is a disappointment. I'd been looking forward to my muesli and browse. Before leaving we drive around the dusty chaotic town and visit the underground church. Alas, a service is in progress, so we can't go in. We visit an underground house for sale and though intrigued, we're not tempted to make a bid. We rejoin the Stuart Highway and make progress south, and then at Port Augusta turn east towards Sydney again. We make it into NSW at about 9 pm, but try to press on to Wilcannia before stopping, because I know that from there we can reach Sydney the following day. Stop any further west and we will cut down our chances of getting home on time. We press on against the tiredness and pass Broken Hill, then Little Topar, but can go no further. Just as we slow to look for a campsite we see a huge snake moving slowly across the road. It is about 2 meters long, as thick as my wrist, and a reddish brown colour. A couple of kilometres further on we stop, thinking we ought to be safe here. I make a special effort to do a good job of checking the campsite for holes in the ground. Pitching one's tent over a snake's hole is silly.

We just make drinks and get into the tent, very tired from the long distance covered today.

Camp 11 21-2-99 31 48 00 S 142 15 00 E

Keen to move fast now, we drive into Wilcannia for breakfast and then on through Cobar and Nyngan. Over this stretch of road we see a lot of recently killed kangaroos and emus. It is very depressing, and so avoidable. if you drive fast in the darker hours you are asking to hit a kangaroo. If you are visiting Australia, drive during the day or slow down! There is nothing special about killing a kangaroo, it takes no skill and it is not unusual. Five thousand are killed by cars every night in Australia. Don't ever let me hear you entertaining your friends with such a story. And truck drivers, I know there's no point asking you to slow down, but why don't you get ultrasonic signals fitted so you scare the animals away as you approach them? Suffering is suffering, it doesn't matter who, or what, is experiencing it.

I wonder what I will do if I see an injured animal lying in the road. I think of stabbing it through the skull, or trying to sever the spine at the base of the skull with my diving knife, but this could be messy and take too long. I decide running a wheel over its head is the best way. It's gruesome, but better than the agony some animals endure, left able to drag themselves 20 metres or more into the bush before eventually dying slowly, watched by impatient carnivorous birds.

It hurts Mariko to see so many dead animals thrown across the road. She has been thinking that she wants to start making donations to one of the wildlife charities. I'm very pleased about this. She also raises the idea of changing her will: leaving her money to the purchase of land for an animal reserve. She has really enjoyed all the animals she has seen here, even the tiny unspectacular ones like insects, small birds, lizards, the termites.

She says repeatedly how grateful she is to me for helping her experience all this. Yet she has been so generous - with her thoughts, her patience, humour and grace, her careful Japanese lessons, which have improved my Japanese noticeably, her insistence on paying for everything. I even joke that I should start a new company 'Outback Gigolo Services'. That is not all. She is serious about taking me anywhere I want to go in Japan. All I need to do is think about what it is I want to do there, something for which her help is necessary, something I can't do on my own. I too, am very grateful for all of this.

Sydney welcomes us the way it sent us off - with heavy rain. Mariko gasps as we break through the Blue Mountains and see the lights of the city spread out wide before us, as far as we can see both north and south. Sydney rivals Tokyo for sheer area. We arrive home at 11:30 pm. Unpacking can wait until tomorrow, of course. We pour ourselves some ume shu on ice, draw a deep hot bath and finally go to bed in the early hours of the morning, a long eventful enjoyable trip behind us, and the opera tomorrow to look forward to.

Finally, Mariko wrote the words that follow, knowing that I would be writing this story, and suggested I include them at the end:

When I was younger, a professor of mine said: there is a moment when you have to choose which way to go in life. Choose it carefully, but know that when you make the right choice, you will find that you lose what you have gained in your past, and that to have the courage to lose something is much more difficult than to make a choice.

Standing at a fork of the road, I had to make a choice. I did not know what I was losing, and that was what made me most frightened.

I was caught by the urge to see something noble and independent, which I hoped would make me see myself from a distance. Since I was a child, I wanted to see Ayers Rock - one of the oldest rocks that has stood an infinite flow of time.

When Mark heard my request to take me to Ayers Rock, he had to think about it for a few days, since he did not want to make the third trip to there. But he sent me a message: OK, let's go.

Our trip, from the two quite different cultures, started with this background. One from the land of vastness, where you can feel free, and the other from the land where you are constantly having your behaviour monitored.

I found soon that his company in the outback was very enjoyable and trustworthy with his excellent knowledge of outdoor life. He was very careful about not destroying wilderness, with warmth to wild animals. This made my trip wonderful.

As for me, I had to scream, when driving, every time birds flew at the car or stood in the middle of the road. I, an intruder into the outback, would have killed animals, if I hadn’t had Mark’s advice on how to drive properly.

It was wonderful to watch animals in wilderness. When we saw wild piglets running into the field, our car was filled with laughter. A big lizard was looking up the sky, opening its mouth and making me feel like saying ‘enough, shut up your mouth’. Cows were everywhere and looked as if they were saying ‘so what?' Birds were beautiful, adding fantastic colour to the blue sky.

I was fascinated with termite hills. They looked fragile from a distance, but they were very hard, probably with termites' saliva. When Mark took off the top of a hill, making a sound with it, soldiers appeared from somewhere and tried to attack his hand. How brave they were! I cannot describe how much I was excited to see them. Then, tiny blind termites climbed up from inside, probably to repair it. Lovely and diligent small heads made me smile. Then, Mark put the top of the hill back.

Numbers of dead kangaroos and other animals on the road made me depressed, though Mark had warned me about it in advance. On the last day of our trip, he found a machine that makes kangaroos get out of the road with some electronic waves and bought it.

The trip was cursed by my endless failure to deal with outdoor life. Mark's patience was tried, of course. And I became impatient with his warnings and instructions. He warned me when necessary, and harboured no unpleasant feeling, forgetting it soon. He even tried to comfort me, telling that he had made mistakes on his first trip. But with the severe heat and my successive failures, I lost my rational reasoning, I admit. Travelling with someone multiplies your joy, and an emotional rift should be fixed if you are wise. That was what I thought. Anyway, Mark forgot the rift immediately. And after the trip, I found that his training made me feel a little confident about the outdoor life.

To avoid mistakes in a different culture is very difficult indeed. When I was absent-minded, I made a mistake. I recall when I stayed with an American woman at a Japanese inn. She tried to observe our customs, and it was kind of successful, but on the last day I saw her standing in her shoes on tatami mats, saying, 'let's go'.

The highlight of this trip was of course Ayers Rock. The beauty of Ayers Rock was more than I had imagined. The noble figure overwhelmed me. I had imagined before leaving Japan that when I stood in front of it, I would think a lot. But I was wrong. My mind was empty. I felt that an ancient wind flew into my soul.

If I arrived there with a plane, I could not have such a strong impression about the nobility and beauty of Ayers Rock. Driving through dust and struggle with wilderness, I think I could inhale a wonderful air of Australia.

I am looking forward to Mark's visiting Japan. He will visit places where a Japanese guide is needed. And I am waiting for him, sharpening my knife to tease his cultural mistakes, of course.

I feel there is no need to say here how much I thank Mark. In a modern society where people are busy satisfying their own interests, it is very hard to receive someone's real commitment. Life is fleeting, but there are moments when we find a jewel in someone's mind. How busy we are, easily losing something valuable.

It was a twelve-day trip. We travelled 7610 kilometres in eleven days. 2053 kilometres were on dirt roads. We covered 21 degrees of longitude and 24 degrees of latitude. The car, a short wheelbase Mitsubishi Pajero Sport 4WD, averaged eight kilometres per litre, and fuel costs varied between 76c and 97c per litre. The tank holds nearly 60 litres, and we had capacity for another 40 litres in the car. We carried about 25 litres of water with us, this was probably not enough, and five litres of engine oil. The car required no extra oil or water, but there is a new transmission noise that needs looking into, a new chip in the windscreen from a flying stone, and the driver's seat adjustment mechanism fell apart. For a 1984 vehicle with nearly 200,000 kilometres on the clock it performed very well.

Outback temperatures were in the high 30s and low 40s. Driving during summer is probably not ideal. The car handled it better than we did. In winter we could expect the temperatures to be 10 degrees cooler. The mobile phone worked hardly anywhere, but the GPS had no such problems, of course. We often saw only one or two other cars during the day on the dirt roads, though usually a few trucks would go through at night. Big spotlights are helpful when on the lookout for animals at night, but tend to get stolen in the cities. I used stronger bulbs in both headlights, but they don't last long, so I keep the ordinary bulbs as spares. On the last day I bought ultrasonic whistles that use the car's airflow to produce their sound. I haven't tried them yet. There are electronic things that do the same job, and I'm told they really work.