The Madura Pass opens like a gate to a flat valley of unimaginable vastness in the lead up to the Nullarbor Plain in Western Australia’s far eastern reaches. The sense of energy flooding across the area is almost tangible and fulfilling of its power even while making the viewer feel utterly insignificant.

I drove across Australia in 2000 from Perth to Sydney, a distance all told of some 4400km. I'd flown over Australia before but it wasn't until I actually drove it that I realised it size and spectrum of vitality and occasionally crushing monotony. Case in point; aside from Kalgoorlie and much later on Port Augusta, there are no big towns between Perth and Adelaide, a trek of some 2500km. Its not empty mind you, but its not people that fill it.