Southern New South Wales

The week after travelling in North Queensland I drove south, deep into New South Wales, over 800 klm, so more than 2500 klm south of where I was in the Gulf. The countryside is noticeably different, the light is softer with the southern latitude and cooler climate. The imprint of "civilisation" is everywhere, country is cleared of trees, planted to crops and pastures, there are more towns, more houses, tractors,silos and sheds and many more visible people. There are quiet places but the country does not have the stillness that infuses everything in the north. The trees are different and the colours are more muted - greys and greenish greys, straw colour of winter grass and more clouds in the skies. The country in the south has a softer feel, less elemental, less wild, still dry - at this time in the south the land is waiting for rain after a dry summer, in the north, the summer rain is finished and the dry season is beginning.

Cattle North Queensland

This is big country here in Far North Queensland, the cattle are tall, lean Brahmans and they are here in big numbers, the properties are huge, the trucks are big (130 head in each truck) and there is a lot of money involved. The Gulf has had a good season and the cattle look wonderful, this is not the case all through the north, however. The largest breeding area in Northern Australia - the Barkly Tableland is disastrously dry after missing a wet season, so the big cattle companies are moving huge numbers of cattle - The Australian Agricultural Company (AACo) have supposedly moved 80,000 cows and the Acton family over 70,000. With fuel prices like they are - that is a major expense and they will all go back when (if ?) it rains. The roads in North Queensland are full of cattle trucks heading east with cattle and returning west empty. Apparently it is impossible to hire drovers - the few that are left in the business are flat out. It will be interesting to watch the changes to the industry as fuel prices continue to climb and the climate changes.

Downs Country - Far North Queensland

Driving across the downs in Far North Queensland - open flat country with the horizon running forever. A pure, blue enormous sky above the pink of Flinders grass, straw of Mitchell grass, the occasional Yellow wood, Whitewood and clump of Gidgee against the skyline. In the sky, like swarms of insects are the flocks of budgerigars, flashes of green when the light catches them, they move through the sky like schools of fish, turning together on an invisible signal, alighting all along a fence then in the air wheeling, circling, chattering, then on the ground, in the air again. I stop the car and walk amongst them entranced by the colour, the spontaneous movement, the surprising sound of frantically beating wings as the whole flock turns above me. I have a flock of hundreds, maybe thousands above and around me and in the distance I can see three, four, five more smudges of other flocks, turning and moving through the clear air, above the flat, flat land. It has been a good season in the Gulf, the grasses are seeding prolifically and the birds are multiplying and moving constantly. There are Plain Turkeys, Wedge Tail Eagles, Hawks, Pigeons, Galahs, Corellas and the occasional stately Brolga. Mostly, however, I am left with the impression of the budgerigars, green and swirling above the pink and straw of the grasses, the stillness, quietness and sheer vastness of the timeless landscape - flat and forever.

Far North Queensland - Dry Season

Arriving in Mt. Isa, a two and a half hour flight from Brisbane, I find my hire car and head out of the dusty, mining town and into the magnificent landscape of far north Queensland.
It is the colours that strike me first, then the stillness - on a grand scale, then the movement - on a small scale.
The colours, the stillness, the movement are all sublimated, dominated by the sky - the vast expanse of blue, shades of blue, but nothing else, no clouds, no mountains, no jet trails or buildings, just endless blue ! Against this is the red of the rock and the dirt, clean white trunks of the gums, straw coloured grass and spinifex and the grey green of the eucalypt leaves. At first the stillness is so powerful and complete it is awe inspiring, no apparent movement in the sky and none on the ground. After a time I sense and see little birds move amongst the trees and shrubs, ants and lizards on the ground, in the distance cattle and kangaroos.
Later, on the downs, a full moon setting in the west and in the eastern sky, yellow and red on the skyline as the sun rises above a dead straight horizon. The moon is white and clear against a deep blue line of sky on the horizon, above that pink then the grey of early morning, cloudless sky. Below the blue a line of grey green foliage, straw coloured grass then the magic pink of ripe Flinders grass, black dirt of the downs. I gaze and gaze.