I am sitting on a log before a crackling fire and ants are crawling up my right ankle. I wonder if there's a snake beneath the log, but focus on shooing off the ants instead. My unwashed hair blows in the barely-there breeze and I sip a Victoria Bitter that would definitely be better if it weren't lukewarm. I look over to see the others: a French couple, two English blokes, a Dane, a German, a Belgian, an Israeli, and me, the lone American. All strangers until a few days ago. Now, we sleep side by side in canvas sleeping sacks called swags and keep a lookout for each other when popping a squat in a hole in the ground somewhere.

It's day three of 10 in the Australian outback, and I'm on a nearly 1,300-mile, four-wheel-drive road trip from Adelaide to Alice Springs. It's also New Year's Eve, so I wonder to myself how long it'll be till we get some sort of party started. But time moves slowly in the bush. Up until now, for so many miles and songs, there was nothing to see but flat, dry land. An occasional emu. Maybe a 'roo. "Look, look!" someone would say. And we'd all turn our heads; the glaring December summer sun depleting our energy with every small shift in neck muscle. Occasionally, we'd pull over for a fully clothed dip in a hole filled with rainwater that we were instructed not to let get in our mouths. If we didn't feel like getting wet, we'd settle for standing in someone else's shadow for a brief bit of respite or drinking warm water made slightly more palatable thanks to a lemon cordial that our guide keeps in his stash.

Then, suddenly, as if plunked down without warning like Dorothy's house in Oz, the Iga Warta Aboriginal camp appeared.

Here, there are showers and tents and a karaoke machine. In about four hours, we'll count down from 10 alongside members of this community — mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, brothers, and sisters — and we'll usher in 2001 together.

"Australia was the land where all men originated," said Terri, the camp leader, as he welcomed us the day before. "Therefore, we are all just ancestors returning home. So, welcome. Welcome home."