Today I got to experience the Outback, or dry country as the Aussies call it. We took a trip to Chillagoe, a small mining town west of the Great Dividing Range. Once a thriving community of 10,000 people, the area now only encompasses 200 individuals with the closing of the smelter in 1943. Yet the environment of the area is pristine and much different than the rainforest I’ve been living in, and I was anxious to see a different part of the country. The area is characterized by eucalypt savannah woodland, very comparable to the long-leaf pine savannah that occurs in the southeastern United States. Jagged limestone outcrops emerge through the woodlands, representative of the coral reef that existed in the ancient Hodgkinson Basin millions of years ago. Agile wallabies dotted the area at near plague levels, hopping around both the woodlands and our campsite. I was also lucky enough to see a dingo along the way, a healthy, rustic brown individual jogging alongside the dirt track. With nightfall came an unbelievable “skyline” of Orion’s Belt, the famous Southern Cross, and hundreds of other southern hemisphere stars that I have literally never seen before. Laying in the dark in an open field staring at the night sky is truly a humbling experience, and most definitely a sight I could become accustomed to.
