The Desecration of Billy Goat Hill

Returning to a place for the first time after 36 years away, brings with it much emotion. Trying to dredge up memories from long ago, wanting to relive the past in a sense, we sometimes begin to find perfection in our memories. So this was how it was on my anticipation of returning to the Australian Outback after such a long absence. In hindsight, my memories were quite selective, I'm certain. I remembered the grandeur most of all, and the not so grand was elevated to a much higher stature taking into account that I lived in a place where few of the population will ever have the chance to live and relishing each of those memories, deeply desiring to return to a place that seemed quite out of reach.

My love of rocks and natural wonders had only increased throughout the years, my childlike wonder still in place. So, of course, I would not forget the time my eleven year old eyes did spy great mineral specimens all over the ground, and possibly still waiting for me to collect them, 36 years later! I just couldn't wait to get back to Billy Goat Hill! I couldn't even remember the name of the hill, but found out as soon as I arrived in the Outback.

Being a Girl Guide while living in Alice Springs was much like being a Girl Scout in the U.S. The Girl Guides had a meeting place at the base of Billy Goat Hill and from that building we would learn how to acquire various rewards or badges proving our accomplishments. On the day of my great memory, I had set out to acquire a badge for something the Aussie's called "Stalking". We had to try to find someone and it was like chasing the person up and down and around the great hill until they were found. As I was climbing and looking, there I found beneath my feet what seemed to be giant pieces of flat shiny, sparkling crystals that would easily peel apart in layers. Years later, I learned to identify this mineral as Mica. Mica was everywhere on this hill, how could I forget?

After just one day in town, back after 36 years, I took my son with me to inspect what I soon learned was called Billy Goat Hill by the locals. I even found a short history of the hill on a website: "Billy Goat Hill is a small, rugged outcrop in central Alice Springs. It is too rugged for habitation, but affords a nice view over the town. It takes its name from goats which were once herded there and contained by a fence. In the mid 1970s a pelican took a fancy to the western side of the hill in its migratory travels and was seen there for several months. It could become quite aggressive and noisy if that side of the hill was approached. It disappeared mysteriously one day and the rumour was that someone was enjoying pelican soup. Right or wrong, it was never sighted again."

As I began to climb the hill, after raving to my son about the fine specimens we might find, I instantly became shocked by the deplorable conditions I found there. Expecting to find the 'Garden of Eden of Rocks', I soon found nothing more than discarded trash in just about every foot of space all over the entire hill! I went every which way, hoping to find a piece of that Mica that had become so valuable in my memory bank, a true gem in my mind. No such luck! I only found bottle caps, and bottles and broken glass and papers and every sort of trash imaginable, a true 'dump' of sorts. We climbed to the top, and the view could not be tarnished. Only the beautiful view of the city from the top remained as a reminder of the beauty I found there long ago. What a disappointment I had that day, so much so that I sit here writing about it three years later!

When you think of a country of just 20 million residents loosely spaced throughout the entire country of Australia, one would imagine that everything would be clean and pristine. Certainly this must be so in a small town in the Outback? I've come to the conclusion that no matter where you may go on this Earth, that every type of personality does exist, and so I found this to be true in the remote Outback. Someone once said "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" and this thought comes to my mind now, with my memory of descending Billy Goat Hill. As we descended that hill, we encountered the Grand Finale of desecration, the giant letters "K K K" spray painted on the back of some metal fence. "What?", I thought, in horror and disbelief. "Thousands and thousands of miles away from growing up in the South with its heightened racial prejudice, and I find this here, in the remote Outback of Australia?" We could not believe our eyes, and my photograph above shows the truth.

I have beautiful stories to tell about my travels in the Outback, but unfortunately, the story of Billy Goat Hill is not one of them! With each new experience comes a new lesson, and this lesson taught me that imperfections exist everywhere, even there in the remote Outback of Australia. I also learned that everything changes, don't ever expect it to remain the same, or you might be quite surprised and disappointed!

Apollo 11: The Story Seldom Heard

Forty years ago today, I was sleeping in the Outback of Australia, in a little town called Alice Springs. That same day, Apollo 11 was scheduled to land on the Moon. I was an American child living in the Australian Outback because my Dad was working at a top secret 'space base' called Pine Gap, near Alice Springs, isolated one thousand miles from any major city, a perfect location for something that needs to be kept a secret. According to something I just read on the internet regarding Pine Gap, "It is said that to be selected for a tour of duty there is like being elevated to the priesthood, a comment which may not be as silly as it sounds." Wow... I knew we were lucky to get to move to Australia, but I never knew the great honor it was for my Dad to be chosen to go there! I still have his bronze award from NASA, acknowledging his participation in putting Apollo 11 on the Moon.

My Dad drove us close to what he called "The Space Base" just once. I remember seeing all these giant spot lights at night, feeling like I was going to be arrested, we had to stay out in the car while he delivered something to the gate. It was located 14 miles outside of town, a real hazardous drive at night, as one needs to dodge the kangaroos, you know. That is my only memory of what is now called Pine Gap. I do remember all the men who worked there, my father's comrades. There was Jake Rose and Wally Cohen, Mr. McPheeters, Mr. Hendrickson and Sandra Box's Dad and of course, that one of a kind Aussie, Drury Pyper, and many more names escape me. I knew them all in their 'party mode'. I never saw them in the serious work situation that helped lead to that special day, 40 years ago. I witnessed what I considered to be WILD parties during the entire year of 1969, the Victoria Bitter Beer, the laughter, picnics in the Outback at scenic locations... while I shared good times with all of their children. All I was told about my Dad's job is that he traveled around the world setting up 'space tracking stations' and I knew he worked for Collins Radio.

I'll never forget Daddy waking us up to hear "man land on the Moon" for the first time! I was so groggy, he had to force me out of bed, I didn't want to get up, but he made me. Now, 40 years later, I am so glad he made me get out of bed. I didn't see the Moon walk, but I heard all the details and hearing is believing. There was no television in the Outback, only radio, and my father recorded the entire episode on reel to reel tape, his specialty and joy! Daddy recorded all of our reactions like some news reporter, he was a great comedian. He interviewed each of us; my own reaction, my sister's and my Mother's and we still have that infamous tape from July 20, 1969, somewhere!

So, in just 15 minutes from now, I'm going to watch the historical footage of the Moon landing with Neil Armstrong as the star of the show. While I'm watching this for what may be my first time in its entirety, forty years later, I'll be thinking of another 'star', my own father, Ross Nagel, and all the wonderful memories he helped give to me while I was growing up. Thank you, Daddy...

Beginning in the Australian Outback

I was one of the lucky ones! I got to live in the Australian Outback for an entire year when I was a child of just ten years old. Oh, I do appreciate that experience. YES, I DO . . . It is called the 'Red Centre' where I lived. You have to see it to believe it, not red, but dark orange and extremely exciting to the senses. The beautiful rocks there 'turned me on' forever, it seems. Now I'm talking about the landscape in the vicinity of Alice Springs, almost one thousand miles from any other major city! These rocks are some of the oldest on the Earth, and the native aboriginal inhabitants very primitive in their culture, a perfect match.

You have to understand that not only was I ten years old, but I viewed that year of 1969 from the perspective of a ten and then an eleven year old girl, and all the experiences that go along with that age. I did not share my parents forty five year old eyes and experiences, I somehow viewed them from afar. They were in their world, I was in mine!

Alice Springs wasn't like a small U.S. town of 10,000 inhabitants. This was a town completely surrounded by the Simpson Desert and nothing but the Outback and natural wonders and mountains and rocks and very large lizards, elusive kangaroos and aborigines sitting near ghost gum trees in dry river beds, as far as the eyes could see. There was NO television there in 1969, no modern distractions for children like cartoons, and Thank God no video games, so we took to the road and to the trails, as far as our adventurous minds led us! You wouldn't believe all that I experienced! I think I can remember almost every day! Those were the days when children could be miles and miles away, and their parents wouldn't worry. So with my strong sense of adventure I was off and running with the pack of Aussie kids that led me who knows where, with my borrowed Aussie accent, and oh yes, I led them as well.

But was it really the attraction of those red rocks that kept me interested in ROCKS all these years? Could one influential year of traveling the roads less traveled out in 'the bush' with parents each and every weekend to new and exciting landscapes have given me this sense of needing to always be finding paths less followed? Maybe that bus full of rock hounding tourists I viewed looking for GOLD and GEMS near the ghost town of Arltunga did this to me? Was it my Mother's fault and her rock collecting and buying that Opal ring that did it? Or was it that ride through the Outback in a bumpy pickup truck, laying in the back with my head hanging over the tail gate and watching the gravel go by on the road below me, and KNOWING I spotted my first blood red Garnet, and begging my Daddy to go back so that I could find it, but he wouldn't? I think I've been looking for that Garnet ever since!