Dedication

DEDICATION

For Martin

‘Beyond this point, there be dragons . . .’

The advice on the extremities

of ancient maps, signalling the

end of the known world.

They put me into a small, white, still room and that was wrong. One day Rick came and took me outside into air that was vivid with smell and colour and noise. I told him where I had to go. He drove me away with a honk of the horn and at a service station on the rim of the city we stopped and swapped places and I drove on. I turned up the music and wound down the window and held out my hand, butting the breeze. I drove deep into the nights until we came to the desert.

I’m here because Antarctica has given me a taste for deserts. The meanest motherfucking desert of them all has given me an addiction for wide lands and tall skies and air that hums. It’s a furious need; it’s under my skin and it isn’t going to let me go. I lie in my swag in this other desert, sharply awake. The wind has blown all night, blowing away sleep. I’m writing about Antarctica, by torchlight, on my belly. Just like I used to lie on my belly on the ice.

Heat comes ahead of the day. I flick off my torch, flip onto my back and listen to the Central Australian sky.

There’s a hum of stillness. It’s as though there’s a bowl over my head. There’s the last star, the first bird and flies, before six.

I flick them away. Then in thickening heat ants begin a speedy traverse of my skin. I feel like Gulliver. My hand slaps and sweeps at my thighs and hipbones and wrists and I stand up quickly from my swag and the Antarctica pages scatter. It’s almost day.

Rick’s made a fire. Burning sticks crack strongly into the stillness. He hands me a tin mug of milky tea. The liquid’s lifted the soft red dust from the cup’s sides, lifted it like cinnamon to the surface.

I tell Rick I didn’t sleep and he says Antarctica again and I say yeah. He worries the fire with a stick.

There’s a high gathering of clouds. There’s the smell of wet on the wind. A storm rumbles in the wings of the sky; it’s as though a huge table is being dragged across the floor of heaven.

In a controlled rush we clear things away. I scrub our tin plates with water and desert sand. When I’m nearly through, I look up and stop.