'Sepia Me' - Memoir of a Trip Through the Desert - Entry no# 2

Breathing in the bland desert air, hot, dry, tasteless...like bad Irish coffee. The perpetual stinging of unholy temperatures, both boiling under the southern blaze followed by the eerie cold at night; numb your senses in to a dull sense of self awareness. Soon you'll find yourself a drifter, a ghostly mirage upon this terrene Elysium. I am not my body anymore.

I forget where I came form, why I came here. In this hypnotic state I'm on a different time scale. The sun never seems to set, the night never ends and the howling of the age old wind tunnels in red stone caves, play symphonies of time gone by. I'm taking shelter in the caves now, theres a frightened Perentie in my car, a two meter long monitor lizard, the fourth largest lizard on Earth, has crawled in through my window during the night. I was startled to wake up to the sound of breathing, I startled him and ran out naked on to the sand. I look in to his eyes...hes come back from his great journey...its his car now. Who am I to say he cannot rest, this great traveler of the sand, be rested. I am meek and humble.

I cant sleep tonight...even though, its not very cold and the ground is soft with tough grass and red clay. It's this place, the walls of this cave which are patterned with thousand year old hand paintings. So, I sit there all night by the light of a clear moon, wandering my eyes across these naive figures of life and the old ones. I wonder who sat here, thousands of years ago before me and painted these pictures. Perhaps, a traveler like me? Where was he going, where was there to go a thousand years ago, when there were no roads? Theres a white hand print next to a drawing of a lizard, maybe the same one in my car. I place my hand over this print, he's smaller than me. I am his son.

In the morning I see no trace of my friend the lizard, I call him 'Burnu', an Aboriginal word, means warrior. Good by Burnu, maybe I'll see you next time.

- David G. P. Martin, Australia Jan.012