Soon the swamps are left behind and they drive alongside vast sand dunes, bank behind bank. Here she sees occasional cattle, camels, fences and windmills in the distance. She points towards a distant building. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a cattle station homestead, the last one before the real desert begins.”

  Now they drive between massive sand hills along a set of faint wheel tracks. All signs of human habitation drop away.

  Susan follows their progress along a squiggly dotted line on the map. She looks up the map legend and sees a symbol that refers to a local road of unknown condition only suitable for four-wheel drive vehicles. She follows this road with her finger for a long way until it seems to vanish into nothingness at a green patch in the middle of the desert.

  She points to the place. “Is that place our destination? What’s there?”

  Mark nods. “We’re heading for the very end of the Finke River in the desert at the border of South Australia and the Northern Territory. That’s what that green place is. It’s where its final floodwaters vanish into sand. Beyond that is a flowing bore where we’ll camp for the night. It forms an oasis in the desert.”

  “That sounds amazing. I can’t wait to see the oasis.”

  In the mid-afternoon they stop at a claypan where water has pooled between two mighty sand dunes. They light a fire, drink tea and eat bread and cheese. This is followed by a mug of cool water that Mark pours from a waterbag hanging behind the vehicle cabin. It had a slight canvas taste but is deliciously cold and refreshing.

  They haven’t seen another person for hours. Susan’s never experienced such a sense of total solitude. Should she feel scared, being isolated in this remote place with a man she barely knows? She doesn’t though. Instead, she feels content and elated. With just the two of them this is a place of perfection: the desert’s endless red hues of sand, splashed with purple, yellow and white desert flowers and an intense blue sky stretching out to infinity. It gives rest to her soul. It’s pure joy to be in the company of someone who draws sustenance from this peace and beauty as she does.

  After eating, Susan and Mark sit silent and peaceful, absorbing their own quiet solitude and the land around them. This moment is something beyond words. People have come to deserts for millennia to find this, man lost in vastness, on a scale that exceeds the imagination.

  She must doze off, sitting on the sand with her back against the swag. The movement of Mark packing to go snaps her from her daze. With reluctance she rises and they drive on.

  Susan loses all sense of time, distance, and direction—other than an awareness of the sun and where it sits in the sky. The glowing disc, now behind them, casts long shadows, and the colours of the sand grow ever brighter in reflected light.

  An unknown time later, having passed yet more sand dunes and flood-outs, they come to their destination, the flowing bore.

  Susan looks out as they stop and sees an area of green grass and dense bushes which runs alongside a series of pools of water. It runs off into the distance, vanishing behind a low sand ridge as it curves around.

  “Decades ago, a drilling rig sunk a bore here,” Mark says. “As they reached the water a huge blast of pressure blew out the wellhead, and for fifty years it has flowed, huge amounts of water, rising from far below the earth in a thing called the Great Artesian Basin. It’s an aquifer that covers half of inland Australia. It lies under this entire desert and extends a thousand miles beyond.”

  “Everything is so big out here; it’s hard to comprehend.”

  They get out of the car and walk along the edge of the water heading towards its source. A couple hundred yards along they come to a place where water is bubbling out of the ground, rising to the height of Susan’s chest. She looks at this vast flow. “So much water in the desert. Does this flow ever stop?”

  “It’s been like this as long as I’ve been coming here, at least ten years. They say it’s been flowing non-stop for fifty years, and when it began it shot thirty feet into the air, like a massive geyser, before it slowly died back to this. A professor guy I knew once wrote down a number for how much water he reckoned had come out. The number was too big to make sense, but he said it would fill Sydney Harbour. Now they’re talking about capping bores to stop the waste of water. There are others like this scattered around. I suppose it makes sense, but it’s a pity about all the birds and animals that have made it their home.”

  Susan contemplates then says, “Australia is supposed to be mainly dry, so where could so much water come from?”

  “Some say the water starts its journey in the New Guinea highlands, where hundreds of inches of rain fall each year. I’ve been told that slowly, over hundreds or thousands of years, it oozes through rocks far underground until it fills the ground below this place. I picture a vast ocean flowing beneath our feet which brings life but remains unseen.”

  “I like that image, like a second Pacific Ocean under the sand. I wonder what creatures live down there?”

  She walks alongside Mark as they follow the water. Trapped between low hills it runs through shallow pools. At first it trickles steadily along, then it slows until it barely oozes. At its edges she sees drinking places of desert animals, muddy footprints marking their comings and goings, patches of green grass, trees and bushes with many birds dotted through them. After a few hundred yards the pools shrink and vanish until only green grass remains. Soon all sign of water is gone, returned to the sky or its underground source, and there is only desert again.

  They make their camp on a dry claypan within sight of the bore flow. Mark finds a pair of binoculars that he passes to Susan, along with a ‘What Bird Is That’ book. He encourages her to try to identify some of the innumerable birds that come here to drink and suggests she keeps a lookout for other animals that may come to seek out water, perhaps a camel or an old bullock.

  In the late afternoon they sip a rum sitting on Mark’s swag. “Apart from showing me, what brings you here?” Susan asks.

  He takes her hand and leads her to a muddy place at the edge of the water and scours the ground with his eyes. Where the mud has dried he points something out. It is a big footprint made by what looks like a cow, two distinct half moon hoof indents joined together, nearly the size of a dinner plate. “Do you know what made that?”

  “A cow, a very big cow. I know what their footprints look like from our farm in Scotland, but this one must have been huge,” she replies.

  “Actually, a huge fat bullock. It’s a footprint made months ago, but you get the idea. Sometimes at night they come here to drink, and I want to find one. They’re very wary and rarely come before the evening dusk or full dark. Tonight we wait and see.

  “Most are escapees from stations way up north, many hundreds of miles away. Floods or storms break down fences, opening paths into the empty desert. They live there for years and years, out in its farthest reaches, walking ever onward between the huge sand dunes running southeast until they emerge here.”

  “It sounds huge and a bit scary, but I’d still love to see one in the middle of the night. How do they survive out here?”

  Mark walks to a low succulent bush with bright pink flowers that grows in clumps around their camp. He breaks off a piece and crushes it between his fingers, so the juice runs out and drips to the ground. “This is parakeelya. After rain it grows between the dunes. Where it is cattle don’t need to drink. This plant gives both food and water. They can walk hundreds of miles, living only on it. But, when a long dry comes, it dies away and then they must come here to drink in the summer heat.

  “Right now, it’s growing across the desert, so they don’t need to come here. But cattle are creatures of habit, so perhaps there’ll be one tonight. If there is I’ll take its meat, either as it drinks, or by following its tracks in the early morning. They don’t usually walk far before they stop to rest after they’ve had a big drink. Their meat is good for trading with the mines and aboriginal communities where we’ll be going.”

  “And you’re allowed to shoot them without a licence?”

  “What lives out here no one else can lay claim to, so they’re free for the taking, that’s if you’re smart enough to find them. But it’s easier said than done. They’re clever animals. They only survive if they can avoid people. I like to try; I enjoy the challenge. Sometimes I succeed.”

  It’s an hour until dark, so Mark suggests they climb up a nearby sand dune for a wide view of the surrounding countryside. The dune is surprisingly high and hard to climb. But they work their way up, puffing as they go. At the summit they gain a panorama of the desert as evening settles. They sit in the lee of the dune, just below the top, where they can look back towards their camp. It’s silent in the evening stillness, and they sit in this silence. After a long minute Mark points out a huge eagle, circling above them.

  “A wedge-tailed eagle. It must have a nest somewhere around. It’s looking for something, perhaps a rabbit, for its dinner.” As he speaks the eagle folds its wings and plummets down to where the grass grows green on the edge of the soak. As it soars again, Susan sees it’s carrying a brown furry object in its talons, an unfortunate rabbit, now dinner.

  A little later they see movement perhaps a kilometre away. Susan’s eyes try to pinpoint where it comes from, but it’s indistinct in the evening haze. She picks up the binoculars and zooms to where she sensed motion. Now it comes sharp in her focus, a group of camels walking through the mixed trees, browsing as they go. There are six large ones and three smaller ones, females with some calves. About a hundred yards behind is an even larger animal, a bull camel tracking along behind the female group. Despite feeding, they move along rapidly. Before long they reach the edge of the soak. There one raises its nose in the air, tasting the breeze. Without an obvious signal they form into a file and drift away, fading into desert and vanishing from sight at a steady trot.

  “Like ships of the desert, the way they silently come and go,” Susan says. “But why head away before they drank?”

  “Out on the stations, back towards Alice, people shoot them because they break fences. Others round them up and catch them. To survive, most camels try to keep away from people. They probably caught our smell, wafting in the evening breeze, and decided they’d rather leave drinking to another day.”

  There’s a scurrying noise in a clump of spinifex near where they sit. Mark puts his finger to his lips. Seconds later a small, furry, mouse-like creature runs out. With a springy step it sniffs here and there, making little darting movements as it scurries this way and that. Suddenly it springs high in the air and catches a large beetle, almost half its size, in its paws. They watch as it proceeds to eat it with apparent relish, crunching every last morsel then licking its lips. A few seconds later it’s joined by a second, identical creature. The sniff each other warily, then, as if frightened, spring back into the spinifex together. The shadow of a hawk passes a few feet above.

  Susan hears a faint chirp and looks to her other side. In a bush, so close she might touch it, is a mother blue wren with a nest of chicks. The mother makes little cheeps as she dips her beak towards each open mouth, transferring food to each in turn. She moves so fast it’s like little flashes of light as she darts amongst the low branches alongside the nest. The female’s mate appears, his plumage even more brilliant than hers, and he repeats the feeding of the chicks. For a brief second, the birds sit side by side on a small twig, making a ritual of reacquaintance before flitting away.

  Susan shivers as a chill falls in the still evening.

  Mark notices. “Time for dinner. It gets really cold out here at night, so you’ll want to wear warm clothes.”

  “I expect you to keep me warm tonight. That’s what you’re here for,” she says in a cheeky tone.

  As they reach the bottom of the dune, coming alongside the soak, there’s a whirring sound in the sky above. They look up. Framed in the last rays of the sun is a vast cloud of iridescent budgerigars, tens on tens of thousands, a number far beyond counting. They circle in a tight spiral whorl then settle in a huge mass to drink. With another whir they’re away, vanishing into the sky. Susan’s never imagined the wealth of wildlife that lives here in this remote desert place.

  She and Mark settle in next to a fire, with sizzling sausages and another pannikin of rum. There are no signs of old bullocks. They’ll probably arrive like phantoms, coming only when they’re not expected or when she’s looking another way.

  Susan sleeps soundly, cuddled together with Mark for warmth. Lovemaking is forgotten until the call of a bird brings them awake in the early dawn light. Then, well refreshed, they pleasure each other and sleep again.

  When Mark gets up to stoke the fire, Susan thinks about joining him, but it’s too cold out of the swag, so she burrows deep under the covers.

  Later, hidden in her cocoon of comfort, she hears a noise above her. She pokes her nose out. Mark holds out a steaming mug of tea and a plate of toast, bacon and eggs. “Something for her ladyship, made while she slumbered. It’s so cold out here there’s ice at the edge of the soak, and the car cabin thermometer reads minus six, so I thought you’d enjoy breakfast in bed before you emerge to face the day.”

  Susan puts down the plate and cup and takes his hand. “While this looks and smells fantastic, what I most want is for you to come in here and warm me against your body.”

  Mark begins to climb in, food forgotten, body aroused. Susan puts up her hand. “First we must eat. We’re going to need the energy.” She makes space beside her, and Mark lays his body there as she climbs astride him. She places pillows under his head and feeds them each alternating mouthfuls of food.

  Mark hardens against her belly. Still feeding him, Susan aligns her body and pushes him within her. Sex merges with breakfast. They devour food; they devour each other, alternating steps, increasing gusto, until all control is gone.

  Afterwards, she lies in his arms. “You’re the sexiest, most precious man I’ve met. I don’t want this to end. Do you think we could stay here in the desert forever?”

  Mark tightens his arms around her and pushes his face into her hair. No words are said, but his actions feel like an emotion that mirrors hers. His body shakes slightly; it’s like he’s crying inside but hiding his face.

  She runs fingers through his hair. She loves this man.

  Later, Susan will remember this moment as their most perfect place of existence, simply being together in this place before any shadow darkened their sky.

  After breakfast Mark scouts the water’s edges. “Nothing came last night, no tracks. Still, I’m glad you came here. Very few do.”

  Susan nods. “Amen to that.”

  They walk for an hour along the soak and amongst the dunes. Sometimes she skips, her joy outpouring into physical exuberance. Sometimes they hold hands, or she hugs herself to him as he walks along. Once she climbs a dune high above his head and, rushing down, flings herself into his arms. He catches her and swings her through the air with effortless strength. It’s an aimless rambling walk, more about each other and their delight of togetherness than about a place in the desert. But the desert is their playground, and the warming sun gives a sense of immortal delight. For a short time, she allows herself an image of their life going on together, forever, just like this.

  It’s mid-morning when they pack and head off in the car. They return the way they came from, following yesterday’s tracks for the first couple hours. Then they take a different road, which travels further along the desert edge. The trip rolls along, not unlike yesterday, but with a sense of kinship between them that Susan has never experienced with anyone else. She’s sure Mark feels something similar. A couple times they stop the car on a high desert ridge and gaze away into the endless space. They make occasional aimless conversation, but these are like punctuation marks between empty spaces, spaces without need of filling, which is befitting in this land of emptiness.

  As they drive between two large sand dunes, in the mid-afternoon, Mark sights a big bullock trotting east towards a ridge of sand a couple of hundred metres away. He pulls the car to a halt. “I’ve been looking for a big fat one just like this.” They get out and he opens a long steel box on the vehicle tray behind, sealed with a lock. He slides out a heavy hunting rifle with a gleaming polished scope. He cracks the bolt open and feeds a round into the breach from the magazine, then clicks on the safety catch. From his confident handling, it’s clear he’s often used guns before.

  Mark walks to where a bent tree forms a natural rest at shoulder height. The bullock has stopped with its head poking into a bush at the foot of a big dune.

  Susan estimates it’s now a good 300 metres away. It’s barely visible, its head little more than a black dot as it eats some succulent foliage. She watches Mark ease off the safety catch and steady himself. There’s a pause for maybe two seconds, then crack. A bare second later the bullock falls down as if poleaxed.

  Mark drives them to near where the animal lies, then they both pick a path over the broken ground with care.

  Susan looks at the body of this massive animal, at least a ton, with rolls of fat flesh bulging around its hips and tail. She can’t see where the bullet has hit; it must have been a head or spine shot to fall the way it did. She finally finds a small red dot in the skin, just below and behind the ear. Under this mark she can feel smashed bone. She’s is a fair shot herself, and her father is good, but Mark has real skill to pull off a shot like that, accurate to an inch over 300 yards.

  In half an hour Mark has boned out the carcass, and loaded the meat into clear plastic bags, which he puts into the cooler on large blocks of ice. Susan helps carry the smaller cuts and clean up. The large pieces are very heavy, completely beyond her to lift. Mark carries them with apparent ease. They pack up and head on again.

  It feels like a movie set from Out of Africa or The English Patient, with panorama after panorama opening before their eyes. Over each ridge new rows of dunes emerge. Gradually, to the north, blue in the distance, mountains ranges grow out of the horizon, the East MacDonnell Ranges, with Arltunga, their evening destination.