Fell Into A Hole

Before I was fully drawn into the mystique of the ocean, I was actually always, all the time, thinking about rocks—and can I change the way of saying this? Nothing ever changes. It’s always about a rock. When did it happen? I realized the “seems lifeless” rock sitting in the desert was actually the creator? It was actually used to sink in the ocean, part of the ocean, was the ocean, was the mountain! It dissolves, resolves, erupts, erodes, hardens, flipped over! It went through a millennia journey longer than time itself, with one spirit—neither a start nor an end, just the illusion we saw in front of us. It seems to be a rock, its name Uluru.

I didn’t even know about all of this when I came to Australia in 2019, a city-born kid like me can never imagine myself running into a desert but somehow it happened, bit by bit I was attracted to the feeling of emptiness and ”wow look at this huge piece of land with nothing!” I soon found myself rolling into farms rather staying in the city, working in this immense land, singing under 40-degree heat, everything feels naked, wild and free, no more fast-paced life, no more traffic, no more crowds, no more man-made structures, my best friend was my music and all the empty space remained.

Growing up in a Western-dominated social structure always made me search for tangible success and value—chasing stars instead of realizing that the darkness is the only reason they shine. But this bizarre piece of land has more empty space than anywhere else I have ever seen, and that drives me crazy! I’m completely obsessed with it. It brings me wave after wave of questions about the true meaning of life.

As I completed my farm work days for my visa, I traveled back to the city of Melbourne. Standing at a crossroads, wondering where my next destination would be, I roamed the streets, and the bustling sound of the city only made me wonder deeper: What would it be like if I entered an even emptier space? That curiosity brought a lightning strike of an answer——THE ROCK, sitting right in the middle of the desert. I needed to see it, at all costs, right now! That was March 2020. I sat on a bench in Royal Park alone, wrote in my journal, and determined that all my questions would be answered at Uluru.

Just as COVID hit and the border was about to shut, I took a night bus and fled to Adelaide. I ran into a rental agency first thing in the morning and rented a 4-berth van, only to find out moments later that the border between SA and NT had also shut down—and so did my dream.

Within two weeks, the fear of COVID spread like wildfire through the whole country, the whole world. All of a sudden, a rock that was 1,500 km away from me felt like it was 100,000 km away. There was no way I could get there, and I was stuck in a position with nowhere to stay and no job to sustain myself. Luckily, an Australian lady I met at a rock concert took me in and treated me like family. I even managed to get a free car from her friend’s backyard—a classic sky-blue 1996 Toyota Corolla. Small, compact, nothing fancy, but as long as I stepped on the pedal, it ran. And that was all I needed.

I took the car, left South Australia, and headed back into the Victoria’s countryside. At the time, Victoria was one of the states most heavily affected by COVID, and hardly anyone dared to enter. But I had to take the risk for a chance at farm work, hoping to save enough money to reach Uluru. Up against the winter season, I couldn’t secure a stable income for months. No matter how hard I worked, my earnings were dictated by nature and the weather. The hardship wore me down both mentally and physically. Yet feeling so exposed and defenseless under those conditions slowly hardened something deep within me.

This was one of the most intense puzzles I had to solve in my early 20s——to find a job where I could save money and cross that harsh border. How? I needed a miracle! First, after hundreds of job applications, I finally got a job on an almond farm, holding a huge stick and lifting my head for 8 hours a day, just to knock off the remaining almonds on the trees. Freezing in a tiny single room without a heater, bearing those minus-degree nights, I was far away from all my close friends and alone. The only warmth was the fire that burned within my dream to finally see Uluru.

The job was short-lived, lasting only four weeks, but it was enough to save the money I needed for my next stop. One piece of the puzzle had now come together; now I needed the next piece. I looked into the border restrictions again, crazily trying to find a solution to get myself out of Victoria. I thought I would have a chance to cross whenever there was a temporary border ease, but it was hard to move anywhere when the rules could easily change within hours, and that threw me under a roller coaster of emotions. I could be all of a sudden enlightened with hope by the opportunity to cross the border, and the very next moment, another restriction came down and sent me into complete despair. I felt like I was just floating on an isolated island, never knowing when the rescue raft would come. “I NEEDED TO GET OUT OF THAT SITUATION!” I was badly rolling in the deep mud.

A shortage of labour started to rise, and to travel for farm work was defined as an “essential” reason to cross the border. That was when I received the call—a job offer from the same labor company, offering me a citrus-packing job across the border. At first, I rejected the offer because it was only a two-month job. But once I put down the phone, I suddenly realized that was my golden ticket. Despite all other factors, I knew I had to risk it. Even if I had to do a two-week quarantine somewhere and lose all my money on accommodation, I needed to say yes. I quickly picked up the phone and called them back.

The desire to get to Uluru at all costs was the single strongest force I had ever experienced in my life. You can say that it had tricked my mind into being “not thoughtful enough,” even stupid, but I was there—a 23-year-old Taiwanese girl exiled in the empty land of Australia, having no one, no family or friend to tell her what to do, only her heart.

The moment I packed up my car and drove away from that desolate house I had called home for one and a half months, my world finally began to revive after those grueling months. Hope was back on my side. I successfully crossed the border, found a place for a work exchange where I could quarantine for two weeks, and later worked in a packing shed for two months to save up enough money. By the end of September 2020, the strict border between South Australia and the Northern Territory were finally eased. I didn’t hesitate; even though there was an ongoing job opportunity there, I decided to leave as soon as possible, the final piece of the puzzle finally fell into place.

I drove back to my friend’s place where she and her friend helped me to convert my little car into a one-person sleeper van, an impossible task to be done by myself. I was fortunate enough to have all these amazing people helping me to complete my dream to go to Uluru. I had never thought this little car could be my little home, but then, it was! I was filled with joy. I had worried about whether this car was capable of making this journey, but then eventually decided to put my bet into what I already had rather than something I wanted. at that time who would’ve thought that with this tiny little car, I could reach from a 1500km trip all the way to a 100,000km journey through the whole of Australia?

On September 29th, 2022, I finally set off from Adelaide all the way into the famous Stuart Highway, the center spine of the land. From civilization, to sparse scrub, and finally into the never-ending arid land. The sun that the earth orbits became so viscerally raw, and the colors displayed across the landscape spoke louder than anything I had ever heard before, the truth finally found me. Nothing even felt like I had my own will, really—the immense weight of the land crashed me down into a dark space. In the emptiness of the desert, a life that I had lived for 22 years was now gone into a wander, floating in the sky and scattered along the dry dead branches. Death appeared to me as an absolute silence; my purpose had been wiped out completely…. no sense of direction…. just space…. a whole wide space.

Every time I recalled the feeling of driving from Port Augusta into the land of emptiness, it felt like reviewing a cosmic scope—to see life shift to death, and existence to emptiness. You are reaching a mythic space where dreams and reality align. On that road, you would see the eternity of the swirling cycle and feel the force of creation pumping out of this earth, exposed to the deep knowledge that is hidden in this piece of land. Of course, I didn’t figure all this out on my first trip; instead, it was years of dedication through searching, writing, and examining. The beliefs of the land itself will eventually reveal the story I’m supposed to discover.

First of all, I needed to learn how to let go, and trust what was deep inside me. When Uluru itself finally appeared in front of me for the very first time, I found the spirit—and it was that spirit that unlocked both an inner and outer landscape I had never seen before. For me, that was the entrance to a deeper, unseen world. Once again, instead of reaching for stars, I found myself wondering: What is down there? To create a huge rock like this, the sheer mystique of the world weighed heavily upon me, reminding me of how small we are as human beings, trapped in the illusions of our own egos.

Everything I was accustomed to as a domesticated human was stripped away by that harsh, arid land. Living out of a tiny car and camping in the bush forced me to let go of my excessive needs and desires. Embracing the wilderness within was liberating; for the first time in my life, I truly felt like a part of the Earth, no longer just a cog in the machine of human society.

Just as the three days of straight 40-degree heat almost beat me down, a magical rain fell from the sky. The temperature dropped, and water started to flow down from the top of the rock, played a most beautiful spectacle in front of my eyes, at that very moment, I realized—”If everything in this life could turn into beautiful creation forces just like what I witnesses at Uluru, I would have the courage to explore my darkness, and create another life that I had never dared to dream of.” The fresh scent of the rain delighted my senses, calming me down from the intense heat. I received the rawest life force to rejuvenate and reform my beliefs of the world and myself. The spirit of Uluru, just like the rain, seeped into my heart and held up my soul. I was free… to take a deeper jump, to the very center of myself.

Everything I had experienced fell into a full circle. All the questions, all the losses, and all the pain had reached their first destination. All the dots connected to that single moment, standing in front of the rock. I realized slowly after the journey that every little thing in this life is simply a metaphor for a deeper and wider story behind us all.

The next destination I had yet to reach at that time turned into another journey that Uluru took me through, playing an even deeper story encoded in its spirit—in the endless ocean. I believed that was why I had picked up those two small rocks by mistake in the first place, traveling with them throughout my entire journey across Australia, and finally returned them four years later in 2024.

In the moment I’m in now, I firmly, wildly believe that was only the second stop. Uluru is taking me even further back—all the way to the land of Gondwana, back when Australia was once part of a massive landmass with India, the Middle East, Africa, South America, and Antarctica. I am on this path to collect all the broken fragment scattered along the ancient continent, putting together an story hidden inside the spirit of Uluru, reforming an inner landscape that dreams with it, and finally, rejoining the great big one.

The final destination remains unknown. Perhaps it lies somewhere within another dream, another fragment of memory, another story waiting in the depths of that mystic ocean.

Sunday 21st June 2026 9:36AM Taipei