Four cylinders
Four windows
All rolled down
At eighty
Kilometers per hour
4-80 air conditioning
For Seven thousand kilometers
From Airlie
To Adelaide
Via Alice
On asphalt
On bitumen
On gravel
On corrugated
Through bull dust
Into The Red Centre
And beyond
Dust and heat
Red and blue
Four liters each
Every day thirst
Centre lines and spinifex
Mulga and ghost gums
Kangaroos and emu
Wallabies and cattle
Roadkill and crows
In The Red Center
For hundreds
Then thousands
Kilometers
Reel by
Enthralled
By the expanse
By the beauty
By the tenacity
By the rock
By the road
By the red earth
Heat
Dust
Red
Gold
Death
Life
Existence
This vast meteor crater is Tnorala, or as the continent’s European conquerors refer to it, Gosse Bluff, named after a bloke on the expedition which ‘discovered’ it… My post, Tnorala Dreaming, describes the Australian Aboriginal story of this crater’s creation.
On the map, it is a bit past Watarka on The Mereenie Loop, heading toward Alice.