No one loves the mailman quite like outback Australians do . It ’s mid - afternoon when the truck pulls into the dusty private road in front of a small ranch family . The doorway bangs open and a lowly light-haired son comes melt down down the walk pushing a big yellow Tonka . He envelop a hearty squeeze around the mailman ’s legs — and receives a pat on the foreland in return — before accepting the delivery of letter into the bed of his truck .
As the male child push his haulage back toward the house , his mother and a few other womanhood step out . They , too , greet this postman with easy familiarity , eager to catch up on local chitchat and news for a few minutes before he continues his route .
If the scene sounds unlikely , it ’s because this is no ordinary chain armor path . Peter Rowe ’s path carves a 372 - mile loop through a landscape painting that looks extraterrestrial : the South Australian outback . Rowe does n’t look like a typical mailman . He ’s in his sixties , with friendly , round feature , and today he ’s fag a polo shirt and jeans . And for that subject , he drives no ordinary mail truck : It ’s a furrowed , caterpillar - comparable four - wheel - drive minibus that can hold a 12 passengers and still leave ample infinite for supplies and deliveries . For a decade , Rowe has been traveling this itinerary twice a week , present mail and sundries to the few human outposts that dot this endless landscape . On an mean day , it ’s a 13 - 60 minutes tripper . To top the time he invites tourists like me to hail with him .
Australia ’s outback holds a special topographic point in the imagination . It ’s a address synonymous in many American judgement with Snake and Scorpion , big rocks , and swashbuckling adventurers . citizenry do to wonder at the arresting desert scene and the diverse wildlife . But there ’s something more mystical than that too . It ’s cliché to say that people go Down Under for a perspective shift , but it does feel like a dissimilar planet . The thing that keeps awing me is the way my sensory faculty of time has change . I do n’t think that things move slower than they do in New York City , where I live , though of course they do . It ’s something deeper .
It ’s classic for Americans visiting Europe for the first time to be stun at the gothic churches : How could anything be that honest-to-god ? In Australia ’s outback , this same mother wit is amplified by 1000 — and it ’s not about the architecture , but the landscape . The outback is a defiant admonisher of how ancient our planet is . Once upon a time — or 100 million years ago , more on the dot — this bone - dry , pancake - flat sprawl was the bed of the Eromanga Sea ; an area nearby is predominant with the fogey of long - necked maritime reptile called plesiosaurs . ( And babe plesiosaurs : Scientists think it was a shallow arena upright for procreation and spawning . ) At still another clip — about 250 million years ago — there were forest here , as evidenced by the glittering patches of gypsum and petrified woodwind that speckle the soft desert sand . It ’s impossible not to feel miniscule standing here .
I ’m from a tiny town in New England , population less than 2000 . There were 37 kids in my high-pitched shoal division . I thought I knew a affair or two about what it ’s like to be in the middle of nowhere . In Australia , I learned I ’d been wrong . So among the many things I was curious to observe out on my daylight with Rowe , headman was this : What is it comparable to subsist here ?
We start Coober Pedy , a small mining town a 90 - minute of arc flight from Adelaide , just after 8 a.m. The desert air is still cool , though it ’ll climb into the XC by twelve noon — that ’s seasonal for October , which is among the more temperate months .
Most people who inhabit in Coober Pedy came to mine opal deposits , and it was opal that brought Rowe here in 1966 from his hometown of Melbourne . “ I guess I ’d go and make a million dollar , ” he says . Some miners do strike it lucky ; others eke out a modest living . Rowe mined for a while , then open a pottery shop . In the early 2000s , he started giving tour of desert attractions , and before long he took over the chain armor livery contract . These twenty-four hour period , his go company combines the two . Today ’s freightage , besides the chain mail and me , includes one retired Australian gentleman , a young Austrian couple , and a tattooed German guy .
It does n’t take long to get out of township , and it ’s just minutes before it feels as though we ’re nautical mile from civilization . Out here it ’s only Baroness Dudevant and sky , one flat reddish plain stitch and one blue one divided by the horizon like a bed . The road is savorless , wide , and unpaved , make four - roulette wheel - parkway essential . before long we pull to a stop at a panoptic gate . On either side is a delicate - looking conducting wire barrier : Australia ’s famous Dingo Fence ( the world ’s longest at 3500 mi ) . erect in the 1880s , it keeps ferocious godforsaken pawl out of the southeastern territories so that farmers can rear sheep there . On the other side of it , where we ’re about to go , nobody raises sheep . Rowe hops out , unlock the logic gate , guides the truck through , and lock in it again behind us . “ receive to cattle country , ” he says .
The ground here is divided into huge cattle stations . The bombastic , Anna Creek , brood almost 10,000 substantial miles — bigger than Israel . Because the desert land is n’t flora wakeless , the cattle universe is n’t dim . They drift free for miles , grazing on desert saltbushes while modern cowboys keep an eye on them with motorcycle and helicopters .
At the first station , there ’s a little clustering of human beings waiting to recognize Rowe and help oneself him unload . They make low talk while we tourists stray and take in the scene . There ’s not a lot to expect at , just a sign and a couplet of building to store farm equipment . The scene is the same at the next station , and the next : just a few people , warmly greeting Rowe .
As we repel , I realize the mailman is the one reliable visitant they ’ll see all week . The neighboring ranches are miles off , and it would take time of day to get to the nearest memory — which is why kinfolk typically get industrial - sized package of groceries deliver every few month and their hebdomadary perishable via Rowe . While it ’s squeamish that Rowe is toting extra goods , you get the sense that it ’s neither the letters nor the produce he ’s carrying that make him so popular , but simply the human link he provides .
“ It ’s a buddy system of rules out here , ” Rowe says . It has to be . citizenry bank on CB radios to pass between ranches , so neighbors can aid when someone has hand truck trouble . Doctors are reachable by radio . multitude call in with symptom and get a diagnosis ; if it ’s serious they ’ll take in a visit from the Royal Flying Doctor Service , the fleet of 63 aircraft that serve the 290,000 people in Australia ’s most distant regions . For many years , even youngster attended schooling by radio . These days they do it on the Internet : Though there are no high - speed lines here , the government has subsidized a planet organization that gets the outback online . try this , I think about my own gamy school and finger downright cosmopolitan .
As we beat back , sometimes with an hour or more between stops , Rowe tells stories . He talks about the landscape , the way every couple of years after a rarified soaking pelting the whole desert will suddenly burst to life with colorful bloom . Desert bloom have a peculiar biology . They can isolate their seeds for foresightful geological period of drought and then short blossom after a good shower .
look out , I think about how what seems so overwhelmingly empty is really full of hidden living . There are the warrigal , of form — the world ’s longest fence is n’t fooling around . There are also intimidate lizards . Late in the afternoon we screech to a arrest when Rowe spots what could be a perentie , the largest lizard native to Australia , renowned for its sharp claw and venom . At an middling length of six fundament , they ’re not the sort of matter you want to meet , in part because they incline to run up the tall matter around when they ’re threatened . ( In a treeless landscape , that might mean you . ) as luck would have it , they ’re also notoriously diffident . We pack out to get a good spirit , but there are no lizards in sight .
Occasionally , we stumble across grounds of masses . We come upon ruination from an empty railway : a rusted wagon train bridge , a trackbed that ’s slow being domesticate by the tip and the sand . There ’s the burnt - out shuck of a mid - century railcar nearby , a startling mass in the centre of nowhere . Rowe , of course , knows the story behind it . One night 10 ago , a local ranch hand made the unwise decision to force back across the train bridgework . A train came along and , unable to outrun it , the human race had to jump off for safety . He was okay ; the car , as we can see , was toast .
At suppertime we pull into a townspeople visit William Creek , which lie in of a eatery / hotel and one parking meter ( the locals ’ approximation of a gag ) . The permanent population here is six . human race are outnumber by a huge good deal of pink and white galahs — a common and very vocal cockatoo — that alight in a tree outside the eatery as gloaming falls and a huge full moon starts to rise . The barroom inside the hotel , though , could almost be in Brooklyn ; it ’s cozy and well stocked with canned beer , craftily paper with license plates and line card and teamster chapeau flow from balk . Not many people authorise through — tonight there are just a pair of college - years cowkids from the nearby station hanging out — but those who do seem compel to leave some evidence of their visit .
By the meter we ’re on the road back to Coober Pedy , it ’s late and dark , utter for some of the best stargazing in the Southern hemisphere . Or it would be , if not for that full moonlight . We pull over to look for constellation anyway . “ Pull over ” is the wrong phrase — there are no other cars , so we stop in the midsection of the route and wander a short way into the silent desert to see what we can see . Rowe points out the Southern Cross , a constellation seeable only in the southern hemisphere , which again gives me , a womb-to-tomb northerly hemisphere – dwelling sky watcher , the mother wit that I ’ve left my habitation planet .
It ’s a little unsettling knowing that the six of us are the only humans for mile in any direction . I ’m not certain I ’ve ever felt so remote . Then , behind us , the CB wireless in Rowe ’s truck crackles to living , a warm greeting cutting through the cool Nox atmosphere . The buddy organization is at employment . We ’re not alone after all .
