We used to joke that this land is the world’s best rock farm. Baked under a torturous sun, vegetation is a luxury. And here, that which does thrive, rises twisted and defiant. Only the most stalwart of cattle graziers dare attempt to manage the thousands of hectares that border and traverse the Simpson desert.
For hundreds of kilometres, you can drive without seeing life. The shallow undulations of eroded hills are testament of this geography’s age. Negotiating these unsealed, naked roads is difficult. Teeth loosen as 4wds rattle across their corrugations. Unsettled bulldust masks potholes that bend axles. Tumbleweeds shred wheels with their gnarled thorns.
There is little doubt that anything not made of mineral will be erased if it stands still too long. It reminds me of a poem written by a man who never had the opportunity to experience this hostile region in person. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 1818 ode to mortality is most appropriate:
“I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".
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