Like a moth to the flame, that alien world of drought and indifference, where days are so bleached by light, the land is screen-burnt in my eyes when I close them. An abrasive scrubland of UV radiation and ghostly gales that dehydrate. A tinderbox of accelerants where even gum trees, birthed by fire, shy their leaves from midday's sun.
There in the badlands the Eastern Brown and the red-striped snake and spider be; There meat ants smell a pungent eucalypt underfoot but will strip a carcass to the bone; There swarms of flies buzz the shade and cicadas sound like sirens.
Summer in the badlands might well be hell, but there is peace in the isolation of a place people do not go.
TAGS
Photo, Collage, Australia, Antipodes, Worlds
LINKS
My country poem, D.Mackellar 1908
"Out on the wastes of the Never Never - That's where the dead men lie!", Where the Dead Men Lie, poem by Barcroft Boake 1891
The Never Never - Australian outback (Wikipedia)
Picnic at hanging rock movie scene of Edith screaming
Picnic at hanging rock theme. Music from 1975
Chronicles of Riddick movie scene where Purifier walks out to Crematoria
judas1.com/badlands