DOWN THE LINE

KALGOORLIE TO RAWLINNA

WHEN I arrived, the air was so still I could hear the distant call of crows from kilometres away, and there was no one around as I wandered about the deserted railway station in the late afternoon light, feeling like the last man on earth.

As day turned to dusk, and then twilight, I saw a light in the distance. A train was coming, the intensity of its headlight growing and the high-pitched hum of the loco on the tracks becoming a roar before the heavily loaded freight thundered through the station at close to 100km/h, leaving a rush of air in its wake before silence eventually resumed.

With a new moon, the starlight was brilliant, so I set up my camera for a time-lapse, retired to my swag and fell asleep under the spectacular star show above me. At midnight, I was stirred by a wind that had come up. Rawlinna is in a basin on the edge of the Nullarbor Plain and as the wind blew over the flat land it quickly increased to a gale, becoming so