​I love a sunburnt country! June or any other time.

Dorothea Mackellar - she was 19 in England and homesick fro Australia when she wrote 'My Country'

'My country' (posted below) - how right you were, Dorothea (it's worth going back to that poem we learnt at school so you might see what I'm talking about). We've been travelling in the Savannah for what seems like weeks and still it pulls at my heart strings. Grasses short and clustered and feather-topped spindly, towering higher than an elephant's eye, shaded in places by stunted eucalypts and other trees, even the strychnine tree, and bushes. Colours like you couldn't imagine. How many shades of green can you describe? They seem to be endless forming a continuum from pale-yellow/buff green through ever darkening shades to almost black and fading then to soft blues and greys - and yes still green!
Still the chlorophyll works its magic in even the palest of silver grey green to allow the plants to absorb energy from the sun. Amazing isn't it!? And water!

Some water crossings were cool and shaded and quite lovely.

Other crossings? well you took a guess and aimed at the middle ..... or the side or .......
but here we are and the van was clean underneath for 5 mins

Some crossings were watery and we felt a bit like an army duck.

I don't recall the name of this river but the causeway was 3-400 m across and I could imagine how wild it would be when the water was coursing through after the wet. Warning signs say not to swim, not to walk across, not to stop. Must be a huge torrent when it is flowing!

This is taken from the other side of the causeway

Over the last week or more, we have crossed so many creeks - I think I have to call them waterways as labels like creek conjures up something sweet and bubbling somehow and not at all like what we have been encounter - some dry, some steep narrow gullies which challenge the caravan, wide stretches of water, rocky outcrops, bearing evidence of floods with flattened trees. Some which were 300-400m wide with warnings not to walk across! I can't help but wish I could see it all in the wet. Of course access would be somewhat difficult! and that's the time when crocs wander the 'roads'. Did I mention that during a recent big wet in Katherine, they found a croc in the supermarket when the water subsided! Eek!!!!

Some were sandy and we kept the revs up to avoid getting bogged. We both remembered very vividly having to dig ourselves out of the Simpson desert. Shudder!

Many crossings were shallow expanses of water and sand shaded by pandanus and trees.

This one was a Big Dipper. We had to keep check on our eager beast lest she take the crossing at a
gallop and rip the bottom out of the van. It was a bit 'whoa neddie but keep her going' all at the same time.

People visit WA for the wild flowers in spring but here we daily experience a parade of colour. Perhaps more subtle but glorious nevertheless. The soft pale puce of the Turkey bush flowers, the vivid yellows, orange, reds and green of the eucalypts and grevillea, and the subtle colours of clumping roadside flowers. Amongst which ant and termite mounds protrude in colours from dark red through orange to browns the shades of which match the hew of surrounding land.

Poor shot but this is turkey bush. The flowers are very pretty feathery stars.
One could not always stop where we would have liked. But you'll get the idea.

I know that I tend to the romantic and rather fey, but as Julia said, 'the devil is in the detail' or in my case, the beauty is in the detail. It is quite magical if only you look!
And then we arrived at Hell's Gate - the Roadhouse! It was a veritable oasis; what a delightful surprise it was.

An airport, an international one at that and in the middle of nowhere.
Look up Hells Gate on the map and you'll understand what I mean.

Cool shady lawns and huge spreading trees - and masses of birds.

My Country
The love of field and coppice
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies
I know, but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!

The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze ...

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

**
Dorothea Mackeller