The familiar roar of the road trains passing, carrying gigantic mining parts - a single wheel as big as a house, engines as big as a bus. Aboriginal kids yelling and laughing up and down the street. The clunk of the ice making machine. Distant booms of thunder and flashes of dry lightning. A lazily-raised "gidday" hand wave and a "toot toot" from the car horn as someone you know drives past. Dogs and people fighting (together?) from the feral house across the laneway.
Flies sucking at your eyes. Tiny frogs hop past the bed on their way to the pool. Sweat drops from your face on to the floor as you work. Squirting saline solution up your nose because it's so dry your nasal passages crack and bleed. Fans creakily wafting air over Smokey who's lying flat on his back like he's been shot. Spiny "double gees" and bindies stab your bare feet, as tough & sharp as steel needles. Red dust in everything. Geckos and jack-tail lizards dart in and out of the house; honeyeaters and kingfishers lurk near the pool, working up the courage to swoop a drink. Dogs follow the shade around the houses, too hot to bark at strangers.
Hopping in the pool or the shower several times a day, feeling your skin desperately sucking up the delicious moisture. Just before sunset you can feel the heat of the day baking up off the ground and it feels as if it will never be cool again. The wind drops. Gunmetal blue storm clouds rise on the horizon. A red sky. A stumbling stream of people drifting home as the pubs close. The cool silence of night, restful after a day of hot wind and dust. Stars.
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