LOOKING FOR KANGAROOS AND FINDING A CENTAURUS

-text Andrei Dorian Gheorghe
photos Andrei Dorian Gheorghe and Felician Ursache
design Florin-Alexandru Stancu-

On the Australian roads
a traffic sign often appears,
suggesting attention and politeness to kangaroos
(I wonder if the reciprocity is available, too).

So in 11 November 2012
we began to become curious to see at least a kangaroo
in free Australian nature
and decided to look for the Kangaroo Valley
(although an Australian citizen had recommended us before
to go rather to the zoo).

After a while,
we arrived in Campbelltown
(named after a great humanist lady in New South Wales,
Elisabeth Campbell,
who had lived in the 19th century)
and stopped a little in the Mawson Park
(named after a famous Australian geologist and explorer,
Douglas Mawson),
where we admired a War Memorial,
the statue of Elisabeth Campbell,
and Saint Peter’s Anglican Church
(the first building in that town, made in the 1820s),
which sent us an astronomical message through its clock:
“It is too late for kangaroos!”

Confused,
we continued to drive to the southwest
through exotic landscapes…

But it seems that a kangaroo-man from the
Dreamtime
(the ancestral totemic spirit sacred era of the Aborigens)
bewitched our road
and changed our destination right to the shore of the Pacific Ocean,
into a dream place,
near a statue of the pioneer of Australian aviation,
Lawrence Hargrave.

Over there
we felt like in the
Dreaming
(the timeless time of creation for Aborigens)
playing with the Sun till his set.

Then, continuing to feel like two Aborigens,
we prepared ourselves for a long night
in which we had to watch more southern astral configurations:
Two Brothers (the constellation Centaurus)
wanting to kill the Emu Bird in the Sky
(Southern Cross plus other close stars),
the Canoe of the Sky
(overturned Orion),
the Eldest Man and the Eldest Woman
connected through Fire
(the Magellanic Clouds)…

Conclusion:

Loving the stars you cannot cry
Roving under another sky.