I had driven from the lush rainforest of Cairns, over a combination of asphalt roads giving way to hard gravel roads, full of potholes, ruts and cement hard corrugations. It’s wild, big blue sky, tough arsed country. Out here the land can be deadly, a wrong turn, a poor decision and lives can be lost in the isolation and heat.  You drive for hours before hitting the flat red plains of the channel country littered with clumps of Mitchell grass.

The landscape is brilliantly hot and empty and as you drive you marvel that there are cattle stations out here bigger than some European countries. The cattle trucks you see are huge are huge. They start out on the distant horizon the size of a tinka truck

but roar at you like some sixty wheeled  angry monster. The road is wide enough to take a four wheel drive with a few inches to spare either side. The monsters show no inclination of moving over so it seems wiser to quit this lopsided game of chicken and pull over.