My tenth coffee table book is soon to go to print. I work with a great publisher and designer in The Netherlands. Sometimes, for the unity and impact of the book, one forfeits some images and texts. In this book, due to page number constraints,we lost a chapter on Australia, titled: ‘Walkabout up Injalak Hill’. Here then are those lost images and stories. No worries, Mate.
So here it is; The Great Inland Way. Australia.
I passed through towns like Mount Garnet, Greenvale and Charters Towers, their well kept facades a reminder of the frontier days; dusty tales of the first explorers, fortune seekers, swagmen, prospectors, hunters and cowboys. At times I could see the pastel blue mountains of the Great Dividing Range, an ancient belt of sandstone outcrops. Travelling into the late afternoon, millions of Eucalyptus trees throw blue shadows across the road, till distance recedes into a pale warm twilight. Road signs exclaim, in no uncertain graphics, the dangers lying ahead: flooded creeks, Kangaroos, unfenced cattle stations and road trains. We passed Turnaround Creek, Bowlegged Creek, Ten Mile Creek, Billabong Creek, Cattle Crossing Creek, Black Fella Creek and perhaps the best of all, One Arm Man Creek. The greatest freedom along the Great Inland Way, with the sound of rubber riding tar, is the feeling that you are never going to arrive, with the vastness stretching endlessly ahead of you. Freedom, is travelling the blur of Eucalyptus ad infinitum.