Red Road, near Cunnamulla, Australian Outback. April 2008. AjrMy previous posting about the Australian outback's red dirt roads (Tuesday) has received a surprising amount of comment. It seems I'm not the only one who finds them intriguing. I liked this response - from my brother in Los Angeles (previously Australia & NZ) - so much I am adding it here for all to read.
"Those are roads that none of us will ever see – unless we inhabit the outback. I think we have certain expectations of a road and those challenge everything we know about roads. We expect a road to go somewhere - we expect there will be a destination that we can reach for example. We expect to be entertained by variety. But those roads defy us to even initiate a journey. We realise that there may be no curves, dips, hills, or changes of scenery for a greater distance than our minds can accept. There might be no possibility of reaching a terminal point or a definable destination within a time frame that our conscious expectation demands. Indeed, there is a definite understanding that one might not reach a destination ever– an understanding that one could - and some do – die in the journey. Roads like those will not be dominated. They mock our puny belief system and expectations. They are roads we have never known and at a subconscious level they pose a threat to our belief systems. Do we really want to travel to ‘nowhere’ or to somewhere where there is nothing? Will we, at some distant point, find ourselves too far from our point of origin to return and yet still much too far from our destination? Could we become lost on such a road? Would it matter if nobody knew we were there, that we had not seen another single person on our travels, that we didn’t know where there was? Could it be that these roads might go to a place where there is no there?Are we comfortable and confident about such roads? Probably not."
Near Cunnamulla, SW>Queensland. April 2008.Ajr
