The Outback

The desert is intense. It is at once beautiful and confounding. The days are full of a sun and heat that overwhelm you. The desire to drink water is ever present but not matter how much you drink your thirst is never slaked. All the moisture leaves your skin and lips making, chapstick equal to gold, a melted necessity. The only relief comes when the sun sets, but the ground has been heated for so long that it is only in the early morning that you feel the need to pull a light cover over you. The heat is not the only thing that serves to blanket you in the outback; the flies are an acknowledged way of life. They occur in such mass that it is often maddening to do even the smallest things--cook, eat, breathe, walk. Flies are attracted to wetness and land on your eyes, ears, mouth, the places most hospitable to them and most invasive to you. Dingoes, an indigenous breed of wild dog, circle the van at night, howling and in search of food. Scorpions litter the sidewalk, calmly waiting to strike passersby. Rain rarely falls in this stretch of Australia, leaving the land as thirsty as its inhabitants. The terrain is vast and scorched. At times there is nothing bur dry grass on the side of the road but at other times small mountains and green trees pop up to surprise you with their vitality. As the sun sets each day, kangaroos and wallabies head to the road in search of warmth usually to met their end at the unyielding hands of a novice outback driver. The road is never without carcasses--kangaroos, cows, lizards, and the massive red mounds made by industrious termites determined to build structures that dwarf cows, cars, and even some humans. With all of that taken into account, people live here. Small towns dot the Northern Territory and the top of South Australia, outposts to a lifestyle long passed by. There is some humanity, though--a custom of waving at the oncoming driver exists, a way to acknowledge the only other human for miles.


Days of driving and finally we took the turn south toward Alice Springs. At once, the land betrayed its name, and turned the deep red of clay, offset by a constant and cloudless blue sky.