As the storm had moved on and the hot wind had dwindled, he began to hear the birds begin their dawn chorus. He smiled at the kookaburras’ squabbling, their cackles echoing through the trees as a bellbird chimed her single note and the currawongs piped their melodies. Darting zebra finches flitted back and forth as brightly coloured parakeets squawked, wagtails hopped through the undergrowth in search of a juicy worm and the tiny blue wren watched with sharp eyes as he passed by.

There were glimpses of a pearl-grey sky above the trees now and, as he reached the forest boundary and looked out at the great sweep of open country before him, he saw the first glimmer of the sun as it breached the horizon in a blaze of orange and red.

He gazed in awe at the magnificent sight of that giant, glowing orb slowly gilding the empty miles of pale grass and isolated stands of trees. The enormous sky was shot with streaks of pink and peach as the sun rose majestically, shimmering as if it was molten lava. It took his breath away, and brought tears to his eyes as he experienced a deep and abiding affinity with the scene before him – for this was what he’d fought for, this was Australia, his country and his home.

He stood there in the calm silence of dawn and let the peace wash over him before he hitched the kitbag over his shoulder again, left the shelter of the trees and continued on his way. There was grandeur out here, a timeless beauty that probably hadn’t changed since the first men walked across it, a silence and sense of antiquity and spiritual presence that had never failed to awe and inspire him.

But it was a harsh life for those who dared to live here and, for the greater part of his life, he’d been a witness to the struggle to survive the heat, dust, fires, droughts and floods that were endemic to this remote part of this vast island. And yet it was in his heart and in his blood, and as he tramped along he drew strength from it.

*

The single railway track ran through the sweeping ochre plains to disappear in a mirage of shifting haze on both horizons. There was precious little shade now, and the foraging kangaroos had fled for cover as the sun climbed higher and the heat intensified. The sky was bleached of colour, the silence almost absolute but for the caw of a single crow and the sibilant hiss of the innumerable insects that lived among the rocks and termite mounds that were dotted amid the clumps of spinifex and wilting gum trees.