So where were you going?
We were going to Giles and the WANT border.
And why were you going there?
We were after the Bidderby tribe.
They were on all Bush Tucker.
I had to get Bush Tucker Aborigines because I wanted their saliva
uncontaminated by white man's food.
So they said you'll have to go on to the WANT border
where there's a mob.
And so why did you need the saliva?
I wanted the bacteria.
I wanted the bacteria.
This is a hell of a long story.
That was just so fascinating.
Were you doing tests on it?
I was doing a contrast between white man's saliva
and black people.
I shouldn't say black.
They said that's the term they like to have.
I was doing a comparison between the two sets of saliva.
And I had a hunch that it would be different.
It's only a hunch.
But Einstein always said act on your hunches.
That's right.
That's where it is.
Right in the WANT border, there's Alice Springs over here.
And I came back this way.
Through the man range is the motor grave.
And then down to Adelaide.
I came back from the desert.
And then about 20 years later,
I painted it all up from memory.
Oh, really?
What's the one that you lost, you mean?
Because that was my native guide
who took me across the desert.
Was this when you were doing the dentistry?
That's why you were out in the desert.
I was out in the desert.
And that's David.
That's David.
And that's David's job.
That's David's job.
When we were on Bob McCauley's Land Rover,
we used to put Dave and Darkie up on the roof.
Oh, to see where you were going.
And then they'd have their feet.
There were two black legs hung in front of the windscreens.
And if the four legs went that way,
Bob would turn his head off.
And if they went that way, he'd turn his head off.
But if they did that, he said,
I'll knock them off.
And he'd go under a low branch of a tree
and he'd knock them off the back of the land.
Because they were telling you together.
He'd knocked them off the back of the land for them.
They were two first class blacks.
Two first class blacks.
They warned me about this.
They warned me about that.
The spirits did get him.
The spirits did get David.
Really?
We were camped near Ernest Giles Waterhole.
Really?
The old explorer, Ernest Giles.
And this is David.
And the car broke down.
And we were having supper.
And the moon came up over the spin effects.
And David realized that the car wasn't in too good a condition.
And he had a nightmare.
I'll show you that painting in a moment.
But he was a mission-bred boy.
And he said, Boss, do you mind if I pray?
So he got down on his knees.
And he stood up after about half an hour
and said, I'm all right now, Boss.
It's all right.
The spirits are gone.
We can camp here.
He said the spirits got him.
Because he saw his grandmother spared to death.
And that was the spirit world.
That was the spirit world.
But did he literally see his grandmother spared to death?
Did he what?
In actual, in real life, did he see her spared?
Did he see her being spared when he was younger?
Oh, when he was four.
Yes.
When he was four, he said, Boss,
I saw my grandmother spared to death.
Really?
She had so many gums, so many spears through her.
She looked like a gum tree.
And of course, this was where the spirits were telling him to stop.
I lit a fire because I was a bit frightened myself.
David's nightmare all came back to him.
Then he had the prayer.
And he was all right.
He says, I'm all right now, Boss.
I'm all right now, Boss.
We can camp here.
And the next morning, he had to push the, we had a BW beetle.
Oh, my God, yes.
And wouldn't start.
So we got, we were on the top of the sand hill,
and David's pushing this box wagon to make it start.
I can just see it.
And David surprised me.
He said straight away, oh, Boss, you got a fuel blockage.
Fuel blockage.
Me walk on, me get help.
Me take rifle.
He took a kangaroo's leg out of the bonnet.
And he took the rifle.
And he walked about 20 yards.
He turned around and came back to me and said,
I just want to say this, Boss, be strong.
What a wonderful message.
Be strong.
And off he disappeared.
And did you know how far away you were from anybody or other people?
Oh, we were about 100 km from everywhere.
Oh, God.
And so for two days, I was on my own fixing up the fuel blockage.
The box wagon, the petrol tanks in the front,
and the engine in the back.
So I undid all that fuel line and then blew down it
and then ran around the back of the box
to see if the petrol's coming out the back.
And eventually it did.
It was a fuel blockage.
So I put the whole thing together again.
The night there and the next morning,
it suddenly occurred to me, I didn't have my guide.
That's right.
I didn't have my guide.
So I noticed his footsteps in the sand.
So I steered, kept driving towards a bit of a track
and then that had petered out and I'd see his footsteps.
And then about a couple of hours later
when we were going over the sandhills,
I was sliding down a dune
and I saw a big black stump like this,
like Natasha, in the way.
In the way.
So I thought, well, I'll have to steer around it.
It was David.
It was him.
It was David.
Watching you coming towards him.
And I stopped the voxie.
I stopped the voxie
and he came running up to me
and he threw his arms around me and said,
Boss, am I pleased to see you?
Am I pleased to see you?
He said, I'm very thirsty.
I am very thirsty.
So I did a painting of him.
I did a painting of him
called David's Thirst.
David's Thirst.
He hadn't found any water.
As he found anybody, he hadn't found any.
He hadn't found a soul.
And you knew that if you'd followed his tracks
that he would come back on the same track.
Well, hopefully he'd come back the same way.
He'd say, Boss, do you see that little gap there?
Drive the voxie towards that.
Drive the voxie towards that.
There's no track and you just keep it
about 25 miles away.
And had he been in this country before?
No, not me.
Oh, yes, that was his country.
Perfect love cast us out of fear.
So I love the vehicle.
I love the trees, the desert, the moon,
the spin effects.
I made everything live.
I love everything.
And the fear just seemed to go away.
It cast out all fear.
And I kept repeating myself over and over
and over on that nightmare trip.
And it worked.
But I was frightened at first.
I was terrified.
But it does.
When I saw this desert oak in the moonlight
and I thought, oh, I love that tree.
I love that tree.
And what I loved the most
was a little marsupial rat kangaroos.
They're only that big.
And they jump up.
And I was on the orbit and track in the daylight.
And I suddenly looked up.
I saw this marsupial rat coming down.
Bounding down.
I thought, what the hell is that?
Two daddies, a little rat.
And he was jumping about 20 feet into the air.
And as he came towards me, he saw me
and he veered off into the spin effects.
And he just stopped.
And then he had a look at me and said,
welcome to the desert, Jack.
And I thought, I love you. I love you marsupial rat.
