Running Man Rock
IT WAS ABOUT SIX YEARS ago that I first discovered him, purely by chance. At an hour and a half out of Sydney, my commercial flight turned north-west towards Darwin. And there he was in all his rampant majesty. Running Man Rock, I call him.
I first took his portrait from 37,000ft, through the double-plastic portal of a jetliner. Like the bloke in the American Express ad, I never leave home without my camera.
Over the years, I’ve taken thousands of photographs from high in the sky and happily gifted one or two prints to friends and family and sold quite a few more. I’ve now snapped Running Man–this extraordinary natural phenomenon of rock, sand and wildflowers–at least a dozen times.
Flying north these days, I recognise all the familiar aerial signposts: from the long lines of dunes that run south-east to north-west, parallel to the prevailing winds, like welts from the crack of a mighty whip; to the filigree rivers of the vast Diamantina Channel Country that spill across the floodplain like a wild woman’s knotted, black tresses; then finally the thin slash of a red dirt runway beside the old Roxborough Downs cattle station homestead, which tells me we’re almost overhead.
