The most numerous occupants of Australia’s vast interior now are feral camels, feral goats, boomers towing…

The most numerous occupants of Australia’s vast interior now are feral camels, feral goats, boomers towing caravans, and jocks in 4WDs ‘conquering’ it. When you can escape the boomers and jocks, and allow the stillness there to encompass you, you feel a little of deep time. /1 https://t.co/2Mc3wgD6qR

Which then opens the door a bit to an experience of place. One that’s been lost in most nations. A phenomenal presence. Time, billions of years of it, and space merge. The landscape isn’t shaped the way most other landscapes we know are, by seasonal or annual activity. /2 https://t.co/c17FeI4xv5

The spaces of central Australia *are* also times. They express millions of years of events that we have little to no knowledge of. Still in many ways untouched by the whole human civilisational experiment, everywhere. The fauna and flora too, and thus so peculiar. /3

Of course touched deeply by our own First Australian culture, that we’re not enough interested in to really understand. No other culture lasts more than a few thousands years. There’s a mystery here that should drive our passionate curiosity. The entire world’s curiosity. /4

Something remarkable happened year, for tens of thousands of years before the other civilisations we know of even existed. It wasn’t ‘hunter-gathering’, that’s a ludicrous, paternalistic idea. It’s the secret to all human survival. But we’re not interested. /5

We are if it feeds into our team sports, especially now on social media. There are plenty who sentimentalise this mystery, who utter solemn pseudo-profundity about it. And plenty more who dismiss it entirely as archaic savagery. There’s your two teams, there are always two. /6

If you can avoid the 4WDs and boomer caravans, and spend time just standing in these spaces, non-judgementally, you can feel something. That merger of time and space, the spaces are times, acting in you. Deep, deep times. /7

There’s no clear meaning to be had from such a short exposure to these wondrous places. But it opens a door. As the french philosopher Michel Serres noted, the Australian interior is a glimpse into a world we’ve forgotten, and which many have never known. It will change you. /end