Cutting up carrots

Cutting carrot sticks - the redness seeps into my memory, images begin to solidify. The red earth of the Nullarbor plain, the piercing cold nights, the crystal clear stars so bright in the all-enveloping darkness; millions upon millions of dancing lights. Our forebears gave this landscape its name, a place of ' no trees'. In a way, a dismissive term which ignores the complexity of this vast expanse of saltbush and bluebush with some low shrubs dotted across what was once an ocean floor. In the blazing heat of day, ten metres below this arid earth the coolness is amazing. So too are the fossilised rocks embedded with sea shells and marine creatures of a past epoch.  Having clambered down only a few metres, the sound of dripping water and the smell of dampness becomes a part of another world, a world of underground river systems, hundreds of caves with some blowholes closer to the ocean. Time stretches back millions of years, the idea of eternity takes an almost tangible shape when confronted by these signs of evolutionary history.