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.