The Outback, Australia. From Alice Springs to Ayers Rock, hundreds of miles of scrub and desert and rocks, more space than I ever truly imagined existed.

I think about Aesop’s fables, the stories of the land told by the creatures that live there, and like to add a more human element. The dingo who likes to trick weary travelers into feeding it, only to discover that they’ve swapped places with it and can only watch helplessly as it drives away in their car (in jumps and starts of course, whoever heard of a dingo that could use a clutch? That’s just daft…) Then you have the Aboriginal Dreamtime, a vein of folklore stretching back longer than any other constant civilization. They use the magic of stories to explain the world around them. Finally, you have the inevitable horror that comes as the imagination ticks over on what you’d do if your car broke down, and the nearby farm seems to have some weird looking carcasses hanging in the front yard, but hey, what choice is there and it’s getting dark, and there are spiders out here anyway…

I loved Australia, just loved it. Wifey was particularly fond of the spiders 🙂