To the west, a series of abrupt, flat-topped hills cut into the horizon, iron-hard and about a billion years old. This morning they were deep blue against the horizon. Between the hills and the road and from the road eastward lay a broad scrubby plain of saltbush and mallee, the trunks of the mallee dark, the saltbush grey. Salt pans lay in the low points of the plain, gleaming and flat and white as bones. The dirt changed colour occasionally as we drove across the plain, from red, to red-brown, to brown, to salmon pink. It was about the only thing that changed for eighty kilometres. I didn’t even change gear. Kara sat silently in the passenger seat, staring out the side window. I played Dave Graney’s Heroic Blues. ‘Don’t you have anything more cheerful?’ she asked. ‘What like? I don’t have any Wiggles.’ ‘The Wiggles would be better than this. It’s like we’re driving to a funeral.’ As we approached Port Augusta the Flinders Ranges manifested to the east through the gathering heat haze, flanks shapely and elegant despite their age.
