The alone trip: four months in the Australian Bush

Decades before New Zealand-born Keith Stewart landed on his 88-acre farm in Orange County, NY, where he would grow organic vegetables and herbs for 34 years and teach up-and-coming farmers, his personal pilgrimage included a Thoreauvian stretch living solo in the sparsely populated Australian outback. Now retired from farming, Stewart has been cleaning up a roughly scribbled journal he kept during that formative stretch in 1972, thinking he might turn it into a book. Meanwhile, his wife, artist Flavia Baccarella, is working on woodcuts to accompany the journal. Below is an excerpt.

The sewing kit

Seven years ago, when I had just turned 22, I left my parents’ home in New Zealand to travel in foreign lands. I was looking for adventure and, though I might not have understood it at the time, I wanted to know more about myself, how I might fare in the larger world, what path or paths to take. I boarded a passenger ship in Auckland, headed for London via the Panama Canal. The cabin was small and shared with three other guys. But the price was right — much less than an airline ticket. The passage took a month and included several exotic port stops along the way. They were a taste of what was to come.

My parents did not endorse my plans to leave home but they knew there was no holding me back. Besides, it was common for young New Zealanders to travel overseas for a year or two before settling down in the land of their birth. New Zealand is a small country — two long, narrow islands, surrounded by ocean, far away from almost everywhere, especially the places we learned about in school and in newspapers. In my parents’ kitchen, with the radio playing, I was enticed by Audrey Hepburn singing Moon River (“Wherever you’re going, I’m going your way”) and, another time, hearing Bob Dylan’s “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.” I had no idea what the answer was but knew I wanted to find it. The distant world beckoned.

Before I left home, my mother gave me a very practical parting gift. She made it herself. It was a sewing kit in the form of a striped draw-string bag. Inside she put an assortment of buttons, sewing threads and needles, a thimble, a tiny pair of scissors, and a few other things she thought I should take with me. On occasion, during my travels, this sewing kit might have brought a skeptical smile to the lips of a young woman who was doubtful that any male could replace a lost button or sew a torn sleeve. But I’ve done both numerous times and feel no less a man for it.

At the time my mother gave me the sewing kit, I thought she had made it unnecessarily large. Now, I understand she was assuming correctly that more stuff would find a way into it. Even so, what I’ve added to the needle pouch might confound her. Along with the initial assortment, there is a heavy triangular bladed needle for sewing leather. There are stout needles for sewing canvas and heavier materials. There are two semi-circular needles that could be used to stitch up flesh wounds, not that I relish the prospect of doing that. And there is a sturdy, long needle that could be lashed to a thin pole to create an effective short and very sharp spear. Accompanying these needles are strong waxed threads and leather thongs, good for repairing heavier stuff.

Also in the kit are things not related to sewing. There are a couple of .22 Magnum bullets and a box of matches I picked up at Hotel Fortune in Hong Kong. There are heavy rubber bands and pieces of rubber inner tubing, and two Ramses condoms, the packets of which are getting frayed around the edges. There are band aids, safety pins, spare fishhooks set into a wine bottle cork, a hair clip I removed from the hair of a beautiful young Ethiopian woman who offered me her body for money. There is a large, round seed I picked up on a Costa Rican beach years ago. It’s called an ojo de buey (eye of ox) and is reputed to shield the bearer from negative influences. I don’t know how well it has worked but have come to value it as a kind of talisman. And there is a woman’s nylon stocking which makes an excellent money belt when tied under a shirt or could be used as a makeshift cosh (bludgeon in British slang) if a rock or two or a few pounds of wet sand were tied off at the bottom of it. Under extreme circumstances, the stocking might even serve as an instrument of strangulation. But that’s letting my imagination run a little too wild.

Best of all, the sewing kit bag contains memories and is always there to help me fix something. This morning, I repaired a tear in a sheet sleeping bag. A few days ago, I was darning a sock. Beyond its practical value, the bag reminds me of my mother and what was going through her mind as her son set out to see the world. Before she gave it to me, she used an indelible pen to inscribe my initials and surname on the outer surface, near the top. Though faded, they are still there.