Plains

We leave Deniliquin behind us in a cloud of red dust. It has been a long hot ride through the arid country; no rain for seven years now and even the saltbush looks parched and dusty. Dust is everywhere, finer than talcum, and getting into everything. All our gear is packed in plastic garbage bags that have been sealed, but still the dust gets in, coating everything in fine powder. I feel the pressure of your legs gripping the seat as I taught you and your feet on the pegs. The evening is drawing on and the sun sits low to the west, throwing long shadows off to our right. You watch the shadow as it bounces across the tops of the saltbush, dancing as it keeps up with us.
We ride north, into the cooler part of the evening and the drop in temperature is welcome for the day has been hot around the 105 mark. The dry desert seems to suck the moisture out of us, leaving our mouths sticky, as if we had swallowed a bottle of flour paste.
Pretty Pine comes up to meet us, population is 84 people and several million sheep; for this is sheep country, the land of the grazier where the farms are called stations and they are measured not in acres but in square miles. It comes up, is there for a brief second and then is behind us, a settlement where nothing ever happens and nothing is ever done. A nothing town where the nothing people live. Nobody knows why it’s called Pretty Pine, there are no pine trees there and even if there were, they’d all be dead. The only reason it exists is because it’s a road junction. The road leads of to an even more nothing town, Morago, with it’s population of 22.
On through the evening cool we ride, through Wanganella with its dust, another sheep town, another sleep town. We’re about sixty miles out of Deniliquin now just coming into Booraban and I pull the bike over to the side of the road. We stop and get off, stretching our legs after the long ride. We are not sore, for the bike is meant for cruising, but it has been a long day and our legs are cramped. There’s not much room for movement on a bike. You look around you and see the countryside, the same countryside we have been riding through for the last hundred and twenty miles. Flat, absolutely flat, not as much as a bump anywhere to be seen. And complete silence, a silence that is almost deafening in it’s totality. Not a breath of wind, not a bird, not even a crow going caw caw. There are no trees here for a bird to roost in. No telephone wires to whistle and hum. No evening noises from the houses, for there are no houses. Booraban in a road junction and from this point within three miles live a total of seven people.
I unpack the topbox and the panniers from the bike and get out the cooking gear and a ground sheet. Clearing a space in the saltbush, I set a small cooking fire and soon have the pans hot on the griddle. The fire burns with a crackling sound and the noise of the steaks sizzling and the vegies boiling seems to be too loud in our ears. It seems intrusive and rude to disturb the silence of the place. After a cuppa, we unroll the sleeping bags and we shall need them once the sun goes down. It is very hot during the day, but the nights can be bitterly cold, going down to the minus range quite often
We lay on our backs on the bags, looking at the sky, watching the clouds reflecting the setting sun. Red and gold, with shafts of sunlight piercing the evening. We talk together, but we talk in quiet tones, softly so as not to disturb the spirit of the plains. I explain to you how this used to be part of the great inland sea millions of years ago and when the land rose up, the ocean was landlocked into a huge lake millions of square miles in area. The water evaporated under the sun, but the salt stayed and the only thing that would grow there was the saltbush. Actually a tree, but only a few inches high, maybe 12 inches or so. There were some animals that lived there, but they were nocturnal, the day was too hot for them to come out. There were Biltongs, that looked like large mice, but were actually a type of wallaby, nocturnal mice of course, sometimes a dingo or two might investigate the camp looking for food, perhaps an emu for the same reason. There was also the possibility of a potoroo, a small ground dwelling rodent. But there were no dangerous beasts, the few snakes that lived there were not interested in us.
So we were together, sometimes talking, sometimes silent. Watching the sky darken and the stars come slowly out of hiding. There were no clouds, the sky was completely clear and the waning moon had gone last night. Just our fire and the stars in the heavens. The sky was so huge; the stars so clear, the night so dark that we were made to feel small and insignificant in the presence of such glory. A sky so deep we could drown in it and yet every star shone clear and bright, as if it were a priceless diamond. Yet no jeweller could have invented this setting. And we slept, safe and snug in the warmth of our sleeping bags. I woke next morning, stirred the fire and soon boiled the billy. A good cuppa to start the day and bacon and eggs to follow. Wipe the pan clean with sand, repack the bags and stow them on the bike. Nothing left to show where we had been, two quiet travellers in a quiet land. Even the circle of cleared saltbush would regenerate. We were gone from there and the plains gathered the land to itself once more.