Growing up in the country was something that I will always be grateful for. I was very lucky to have a freedom that is still a part of me now.

I was a daydreamer as a child. I would often find myself gazing out the window whilst in class, dreaming of the things that didn't yet exist, taking me out and into another place.

The little asbestos house that I lived in, was near a main road, miles from nowhere. At night time, because there was no traffic on the road, my brother, sister and I would lay down in the middle and look up to the sky.The stars and the moon were so big, that I felt as though I could just reach up and pluck them from the darkess.

After a bumpy ride with my father and mother, through thick malley scrub land in our old Jeep, we would arrive into even more isolation onto the edges of the massive salt lakes, climbing large rocks, searching for rare wildflowers, picking field mushrooms in paddocks, fishing on beaches that rarely saw human beings and prospecting for the elusive mineral deposits.

Standing or laying in the vast space of the salt lake of Lake King, where the land continues as far as the eye can see, in a shimmer of heat waves on a hot summers day, or being engulfed by the spectacular colours of a sunset, that floods over the land created a sense of freedom in my mind that was humbling and grounding. A feeling of belonging to it, and it to me. All one.


Carollyn Rhodes Thompson