042025

Australia

Flat, red, and burning — the outback undid my sense of scale. You can drive an hour and change nothing but the time.

A red outback plain at dawn with a flat-topped mesa under an enormous pale sky
The Red Centre, morning

From the notebook

The outback undid my sense of scale. You can drive an hour and change nothing but the time.

Dawn is the only honest hour in the desert. By nine the light has gone hard and the flies have found you.

The coast felt like another country entirely — salt, wind, and towns that end where the beach begins.