Freya Scott

Rust Red

Red. A dirty, rust-red stretching as far as the eye can see, the jarring intensity of the sunset deepening its vivid hue. I always likened this earth to dried blood, the sand beneath my boots an open wound. Broome was always an arid place but now the analogy I used for her soil holds a deeper resonance. I still remember the life of this land, the prevailing gums that seemingly survived anything, no drought too long. The dingo and wild dogs that preyed upon my livestock. The silhouette of the eagles marring the sky, their slow circling a reminder that the land took life as much as it gave it. Now it just takes, no giving. With the colours of the bush gone, and the sounds of its inhabitants just as absent, the life I once knew is just that; a memory, and the open wound now a scar.