After my first taste of the Queensland outback a year ago I was interested to see if other parts of this vast expanse would have a similar effect on me. On this leg I spent time in central Australia, 200 km west of Alice Springs, the Kimberley, the Pilbara and on the Nullarbor Plain, and while each of these places seemed to have their own character they all resonated with me in the same way.

In each there seemed to be a blurring of the boundary between time and space – not so much in the here and now, but in the context of all that has gone before. The scale, the emptiness and the silence of the outback seem to bend time to the extent that our time, our life, our moment seems infinitesimally small, irrelevant and meaningless, and this nihilistic feeling of being reduced to almost zero can be both sobering and exhilarating.

Sobering in the sense of how fleeting our time seems, both as individuals and even as a species, which is quite a shock to ones ego, and exhilarating at the same time, in that it makes you realise how an infinite number of coincidences have conspired to create this moment and how unique it is to be sharing this instant with every other living thing!

For me at least, coming to the outback and escaping the artificial simulation that we have created for ourselves feels real, honest and invigorating. To be alone with the stars at night and immersed in the silence of an ancient landscape during the day is profoundly powerful and stimulating. It brought to mind something I’d vaguely heard of but didn’t really know anything about, the “time / space continuum” !

I thought that perhaps this concept might be relevant and speak to this thing I was feeling but like quantum physics it’s above my pay scale and more evidence of our predilection to try and quantify feelings. Apparently it’s got something to do with a fourth dimension, and maybe there is another angle to the way we perceive space. It seems obvious that “time” is an essential element in defining the bubble in which we live, and being in the outback, away from all the noise and hustle tends to give one the opportunity to ponder the bigger questions.

Maybe that’s what it is, the blending of the physical landscape with a more ethereal timescale, of place and time, of here and now.

It also seems to challenge our way of thinking about the world most of us choose to live in which is largely man made and where we tend to define everything by what we’ve created, what we own and where time is of the essence, everything has to have a form, a value and we’re always racing the clock. In the outback none of these constructs seem to apply, this is a place where we don’t matter and where we have to learn to live by a different value system.

Out here, nothing changes, not in a hurry anyway… “Goanna – Spirit of a Place”

In so many ways it a contrast: of power v’s powerlessness: the power of nature v’s the human desire to place us at the centre of the universe.

The power of natural forces is starkly revealed in the twists and folds of the tortured but fragile earth, where water has cut through mountains and created gorges then disappears, of the night sky where you can peer into infinity and the distant horizon that always seems to be a step ahead of you. Where you can find ancient relics scattered about with their stories untold, the mystery of 275 million year old fossils of ancient sea creatures that now lie strewn about the desert, of the craters left by asteroids that fell to earth 150 million years ago or of the footprints left by dinosaurs who walked our land 130 million years before it was our turn, and of more recent apparitions like the min min lights and other stories of the dreamtime and of a culture that has been in residence for thousands of generations but leaves little trace of its existence except for the lost souls of so many of its children.

If you’re brave enough, and I’m not sure I am, I think the real lesson the outback can teach us is to liberate our ego and allow us to live an authentic life, without fear or favour.

Which leads me to my next blog, which like this one has taken me six months to consider, write, edit and rewrite… I don’t have any answers yet but at least I think I’m getting closer to asking the right questions.