One of my passions is travelling the Australian Outback, the rich red soil kissing a vast blue sky in the far off distance, in the never-never…

Rest assured the never-never is a real place and the term was often used to describe the vast uninhabited inland region of Australian. But in reality, Australia’s first people, Australian Aboriginals, inhabited much of this vast land, the never-never…

The term never-never has appeared in many poems, writings, there is even a novel, “We of the Never-Never”, authored by Aenas Gunn. The book is really an autobiographical account of her time on Elsey Cattle Station in Australia’s Northern Territory.

I’ve visited Cordillo Downs many times over the years and it is truly big-sky country out there.  Standing in its shadows I try and picture in my mind’s eye the people who worked here, how they arrived, where they went.

For you see, Cordillo Downs is in the middle of no-where and there is something very appealing about that.

And you’ll be hard pressed to find a tree in the “gibber country”.

Stores were transported from a town approximately 600 kilometres to the south by Afghan Camel Trains and workers frequently rode bicycles across an arid desert landscape to seek work in the shearing shed.

Hey TomO, there’s an adventure for us, riding our mountain bikes up the Strezlecki Track to Cordillo Downs…

 Outback Australia, truly full of surprises and if you aren’t carried away by the magnificent landscape, you’ll be carried away by the flies, that’s for sure!