Sanguine Humour

The respite of Singapore is short. Within an hour I am back on the plane. It is the first time in my life I have not been eager to leave an airport.

Over the Java Sea, blood begins to trickle from my left nostril. Quickly soaking all available tissues, it keeps on flowing, falling onto my jacket with Pollockian intent. Great, just great. I will have to face Australian immigration looking like I have been in a street brawl.

The pain begins to build again till I am exporting a gloopy claret that would turn even the stomach of Clive Barker film fan. Somewhere in the back of my mind I see an image of myself being bled by a medieval surgeon, trying to relieve the sanguine humour – the classical element of air. Turbulence shakes the plane and I phase exhausted into my seat.

After hours of dark, I eventually see a band of orange. It expands to define the horizon before giving in to the inevitability of blue. Dead Can Dance fills my ears as I try to grasp the alien landscape below.

At first the lack of roads is breathtakingly strange, the miles and miles of earth unscarred by man a novel sight for European. I take in twinkling encampments of clustered light, separated from each other by three days harsh walk across scrub, sunburnt hills and red dirt. Pools of water, as rare and precious in the hard-baked back of Bourke as the smooth silver metal surface they show to the sky. The world speeding outside the window is one of bleak and dangerous beauty.

Clearly, I am not in Kansas.