{"id":413,"date":"2015-05-21T15:08:41","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T22:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/?p=413"},"modified":"2015-05-22T09:45:30","modified_gmt":"2015-05-22T16:45:30","slug":"entering-the-red-centre-beyond-color","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/entering-the-red-centre-beyond-color\/","title":{"rendered":"Entering the Red Centre: Beyond Color"},"content":{"rendered":"

When writing\u00a0about our travels and experiences on our way to visit the Red Centre of Australia, I\u2019ve referred to our arrival in our \u00a0jumping off point of Adelaide as a soft landing, at least in reference to the beginning of production for the documentary. As we prepared to depart for the heart of the Red Centre, I can\u2019t say my opinion changed much. For a city of more than a million people, Adelaide seemed surprisingly\u2026 cozy. Dropping off the rental car on the way to the train station, we couldn\u2019t help noticing that the car had remained parked at the hotel for almost the entirety of our stay. Between the public trams and the easily accessible markets and commercial areas, most of the essentials for the itinerant traveler are well within reach. I can\u2019t say with complete authority a car is unnecessary for an extended stay, but for what was essentially a layover, a repeat trip would have us forego the rental car.<\/p>\n

With that, the heart of the trip was looming. This was the onset of what The Palette Project is all about – exploring the world through color – and the Great Southern Rail<\/a> was getting us there. We had reserved overnight seats on the Ghan – the north\/south rail line from Adelaide to Darwin. Our journey was only taking us as far as Alice Springs, but twenty-five hours seemed like more than enough time to experience Australia from the rails.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
Almost an entire kilometer of rail cars make up the Ghan rail line on the way to Darwin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s always a shock to board a train and sit down for the first time. The cabins were designed in airliner fashion rather than the four seat cabins that would have had us staring at our rail mates for more than a day. Still, even though you\u2019re looking at a layout familiar to any airline passenger, the amount of space and the comfort of the seats seemed luxurious\u2026 as did the ability to stow practically all our camera gear overhead.<\/p>\n

As the train pulled away from the station and reached its cruising speed, it became clear this was going to be a rather sedate trip, whether we wanted it or not. The Ghan is not designed for speed.\u00a0 This is not necessarily a bad thing, but you should know going in that you will not set land speed records via Great southern Rail.<\/p>\n

I can also report \u00a0if you are\u00a0 in a mood to reacquaint yourself with not only the greatest hits of not only the 1950\u2019s, but the 1940\u2019s and\u2026 I\u2019m pretty sure\u2026 the 1930\u2019s, then the Ghan is happy to welcome you with a big musical hug. Over the course of the twenty-five hour trip to Alice Springs, I heard \u201cThe Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy From Company B\u201d not once but three times, which effectively doubled the total number of times I had ever heard it before now. Dean Martin, Ethel Merman and Frank Sinatra are vey big deals on theGhan. I\u2019m not judging. I\u2019m just saying you may want o load your iPhone before you go, because there is no cell service and your free Spotify account won\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it was the intent of the route planners that the music be of a more deliberate styling, because the route certainly was. This is not necessarily bad. I was very taken with the concept of being submerged into the Australian outback. If that meant stopping overnight to park the train for more than five hours so that some of the more interesting sights railside could be observed in the daylight, so be it. There are, I note, flights to every major destination on the Ghan\u2019s route. You take the train to see this landscape at ground level. Why cheat yourself by sleeping through it?<\/p>\n

\"View<\/a>
An example of what you do *not* want to sleep through on a crossing through the Australian outback<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The dip into the Red Centre was so subtle that the better way to describe it is by referring to other senses\u2026 which in my life has been becoming more useful, anyway. I would compare it to one of my favorite homebody activities. I love making stock –\u00a0 almost more than I like preparing the original dishes themselves. That powerful mixture of chicken bones, carrots, celery, onions, leeks et al that results in an intoxication alchemy, but the aroma of the simmering stock as it gains potency and flavor is hard to track while you\u2019re making it\u2026 but then you step outside to grab the mail and you come back in the house and\u2026 voila! The smell of the concoction hits you, and it\u2019s wonderful.<\/p>\n

The Red Centre is like that. I had been gathering clips of the view outside our window every few hours, and had been largely nonplussed. It seemed we weren\u2019t making any progress at all. Was Uluru itself going to be my only glimpse of the deep red tinge of the outback? I knew we had been in that amorphous area known as \u201cthe outback\u201d for hours, and the area was definitely sparse, but I wasn\u2019t seeing it, and I wasn\u2019t blaming the visual impairment for it either. Cueing up an audiobook to drown out the overhead speakers and the dulcet tones of Ella Fitzgerald, I ended up nodding off for a bit.<\/p>\n

Of course, that\u2019s when it happened. Returning to consciousness about half an hour later,\u00a0 I twisted the blinds to look out the window, and there it was. The most barren, amazing and red<\/i> landscape I had ever seen. I know other people have made this observation before, but it was like our train had been transported fifty seven million miles to the surface of Mars. When on earth had that<\/i> happened. We had been traveling through this landscape for hours and hours, but now my eyes had reset after finally stopping trying to notice the change in the environment, and now I was seeing it. Really seeing it. The Red Centre.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
Hanging out the window of the Ghan for our first foray into the Red Centre<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But not just seeing it. I am here to tell you the Australian outback has to be felt, has to be smelled, has to be tasted\u2026 yes, tasted\u2026 to be believed. It\u2019s a flat, hanging heat that presses against your skin. You know when you\u2019re in the outback because nothing else hits every sense you have in quite the same way.<\/p>\n

We had been granted the privilege of access to the only car on the train with an open window in order to shoot video of the side of the train, and it afforded us an unparalleled sensory introduction to the desert. I realize how unusual it is to romanticize something as simple as dust, but the red dust of the outback has to be experienced to be believed. The dust hanging in the air found root on our clothes and under our nails,on our cheeks and on our tongues. The idea I was literally tasting Australia was big. That\u2019s how it felt. It felt big.<\/p>\n

Yes, Adelaide had been a soft landing. The outback was an adrenaline hypodermic. At one point, the train stopped so passengers could snap pictures of the relics left over by explorers and settlers past, and from our vantage point, our cameras and our bodies hanging out the window, the vast emptiness of the desert felt almost primal.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve trekked across the Alkali flats in Death Valley and I\u2019ve wandered the outlands in Sedona, but I\u2019ve never experienced anything this silent and empty. Yet the incongruity of it was that this emptiness was so full.This<\/i> is what they mean when they use the seemingly contradictory phrase that the silence is deafening.<\/p>\n

We were only one day into experiencing red, but I already knew that this was an experience I would take with me for the rest of my life. If anyone asks, I can describe exactly what red is, whether I can see it or not. Red is big. Red is power. Red is\u2026 solidity, stability and depth.<\/p>\n

And we were only getting started.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When writing\u00a0about our travels and experiences on our way to visit the Red Centre of Australia, I\u2019ve referred to our arrival in our \u00a0jumping off point of Adelaide as a soft landing, at least in reference to the beginning of production for the documentary. As we prepared to depart for the heart of the Red […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Entering the Red Centre: Beyond Color http:\/\/wp.me\/p5Rim5-6F","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,15],"tags":[3,12,39,8,9],"class_list":["post-413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-palette-project","category-travel","tag-australia","tag-documentary","tag-red-centre","tag-the-palette-project","tag-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Rim5-6F","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":428,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions\/428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}