The past two days were spent watching the scorched landscape of Western Australia whir by. It has been over 110F here every day this week and has felt like a blast furnace when you step out of the car or whatever air conditioned building you’re leaving. The mercury has climbed relentlessly as I’ve traveled further northward, closer to the equator, and there’s a distinct feeling that if you’re not in the shade with lots of water, it won’t be a good day. There are innumerable ways to get snuffed out up here, and nature doesn’t care. Definitely not for the meek of heart.

A word about the Outback and the Aborigines who live there. Australia did to its natives what the U.S. did to its – destroyed their culture, moved them from beautiful places where they’d lived in complete harmony with nature for eons and corralled and condemned them into completely worthless and desolate places where no one else would ever want to be. It was really sad to see the level of poverty in the Outback settlements and road houses where I stopped for fuel and food – people dressed in filthy, tattered clothes, with no shoes, looking completely forlorn but, like in the States, clutching cell phones. They – the original inhabitants and stewards of this great continent – were clearly not happy campers. It’s such a strange juxtaposition, and suggests that after performing cultural lobotomies on these poor folks, they’ve been given the drug of connectivity to make them forget about just how horrible their lives actually are.

Australia is a land of immense contrasts – cool and mountainous with precipitation on the east and southern coasts, scorched and barren in the Outback and western half, together with incredibly pristine beaches set against deep cobalt seas on every coast. The difference between east and west is that you can get to all the stunning beaches on the eastern and southern coasts. In the west, they’re almost completely inaccessible because of the lack of roads and population centers. Exploring the west coast by boat would be an amazing experience. Sir Francis Drake must have had a blast.

Here’s my path since landing in Perth and heading south to Margaret River before turning north. I’m glad I took this drive even though it was not very scenic, because the Great Northern Highway is rarely close to the coast (although it looks otherwise on maps, which distort because of distance and scale) and despite the fact that the temperatures and fierceness of the landscape were mind blowing. It’s a fascinating, otherworldly spot on the planet and its scale is, in a word, immense. Overall, very cool but if you come to Oz, I highly recommend the east coast all the way from Cains in the north to Adelaide in the south. There’s so much to see there, together with incredible culture, and the grandeur and beauty of those places is truly extraordinary.

Some photos of Darwin last evening. This is a really nice town / city. I was here three years ago and enjoy being back. What’s fascinating is that 140,000 people live here now and it’s literally thousands of miles from everywhere else in Australia – just a lone outpost that the Aussies decided to build and expand for commerce and which the Japanese bombed and invaded in World War II. You’d never know you’re in the absolute middle of nowhere if you flew in. It’s lush and green, being in the sub-tropical zone, and the vibe is very laid back. The end of the road, so to speak. Here are some shots taken down on the harbor yesterday afternoon.

Well, it’s time to bid Australia adieu for now. I’m off to Bali later today. Looking forward very much to seeing that jewel.