Big empty spaces

"A whole lot fuckin' nothin'," Joel says stretching his arms behind his head, grateful for the opportunity to be outside of the van, doing anything besides sitting. "A whole lot of sweet fuck all"

The surfboard clad van, parked alone on the empty roadside, is the only landmark in our entire field of view. Around it, only dry desert shrubs scatter the red earth,  stretching endlessly into the horizon which looks to be an entire world away.

The vastness of it all is uniquely Australian and I can see the charm. You get sucked into the enormous open spaces in a vacuum. No land or plants rise above my hips, but still I am shrunk by the expanse of land.

The length of my trip is starting to dawn on me more and more. We've been driving for hours. And then we've been driving for days. Nothing has really changed except the wine bottles on the floors emptied.
We really would arrive faster if we drove for more than a few hours each day before pulling into the rest areas for a cheeky bottle of red, but we wouldn't have half as much fun.
Besides, driving at night is a mental game I can't keep up with.

Happy to be behind a steering wheel again while the others rest, I watch as the white line after white line illuminates and then disappears under the car. I watch headlights in the distance, a blinding pair lights in the dark expanse that never approaches. We place bets on when the oncoming car will finally pass. 15 minutes. None of us expected the horizon to be that far away. Another 15 minutes, and another, and another, and finally we decide this game is too much of a mindgame and pull into the next rest stop.

I sleep one night in a hammock on the last trees before the nullabor, literally translating to the treeless plain, and another in the van at the edge of giant cliffs overlooking rough seas. Wrapped in heavy blankets to protect from powerful winds I can't pretend I'm not starting to feel impatient to finally be home. But despite that, I'm loving this land. The vastness and enormity of this country that slows my journey is the same reason I love it - never-ending plains of not much at all, but they're captivating and magnetic in their own way. And besides, I could use a lesson in patience.