My ancient, isolated, inscrutable country
The outback is too ancient, too isolated, too harsh, and too inscrutable for a city dweller like me to be granted the right words to tell its story. So here, instead, are snippets - little totems - from the journey.
As dusk gathers, our drive becomes dangerous. This is the hour that kangaroos get lively, and a Big Red leaping onto the road at the precise time that we meet a rare oncoming fellow motorist almost has us. When you're hurtling along the open road at 110, 'roos crossing are a lethal hazard.
After the sun sets, quite spectacularly and blindingly in the red dust and directly in our eyes, the tension builds and we are both on high alert for animals appearing out of the darkness. We turn off the story. Night draws in. From our place directly underneath the Milky Way, the stars appear as big as plums. We encounter more 'roos but manage to avoid catastrophe, and Mr B spots an echidna ambling by the side of the road, going about its private business.
By the time we pull into Bourke, our stopover for the night, we are both wrung out. Pets are not welcome, so the dog sleeps in the car and we sneak the cat into the hotel bathroom in the little fruit box she has slept in all day.
When we stop for fuel in a remote little town, a flock of red-crested black cockatoos lands noisily in the tree above us. With their wings spread, the sun glints through the red underneath and the cockatoos appear otherworldly: dark and fiery and unpredictable.
Fuel and food stops are fascinating. We pass through towns of utter isolation, rotting fence-posts and rusting corrugated iron buildings bowing in the winter wind and sun. There are wildflowers, this time of year, but no pasture. It is a cruel place. We wonder how people survive out here, and why they choose to. I admire but I don't understand them.
At one stop, Mannahill, an abandoned race track sinks back into the desert. We think about the town it must once have been.
Then I put The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie back on, and we drive into another dusk.
Have you ever felt like a foreigner in your own country? Tell me I'm not alone.