A LAYER OF OCHRE-COLOURED DUST has already settled on my hiking boots. We have only been walking for what feels like an hour, following the beaten track that meanders into Wilpena Pound/Ikara in the shade of lofty river red gums. We leave behind two emus fossicking in the undergrowth and stop to watch a pair of Mallee ringneck parrots as they flit through the trees like splatters of technicolour paint.
We reach Hills Homestead, a stone house built in the early 1900s by European pastoralists, where we pause for cups of hot tea. I ask our guide, Bruce, how far we have just walked, curious to gauge how difficult the hike ahead of us is going to be. He doesn’t answer my question; instead, he gently offers this piece of advice.
“As humans, we are always trying to reach a goal, but getting to Arkaba was your goal,” he says. “Now that you’re here, be present, look up, look around. Let me worry about the rest.”
With that in mind, I don’t ask about distance or time again.
COMFORT IN NATURE
It’s the first morning of a
