Big red desert

After a few epic days in the Mackenzie Country, I drove to Christchurch and arrived there without delay. My plane left on the day after, bound to Singapore, where another flight would take me to Delhi.

For this 11-hour flight, I had selected an aisle seat, to be free to move however I pleased. Fortunately, on this Christmas Day, I had no neighbour to my right, and could enjoy 3 seats for myself. After flying over the Southern Alps of New Zealand, we crossed the Tasman Sea, and I got hooked by the book I was reading at the time.

The next thing I saw was an ocean of red dust far below – we were crossing Australia!

I know it’s not obvious when you look at the map, but really, the shortest way from Christchurch to Singapore goes through the middle of Australia, from Sydney to Alice Springs, and then on towards the north-western shore and its crystal-clear waters.

Below are a few snapshots I made with my phone, roughly edited with it as well. I loved seeing this topology from above, trying to imagine what it looked like on the ground – is that river dry at the moment? How tall are these dunes?

Header image: Colors of the desert, Jurek Durczak. Under a Creative Commons license.

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