Anthony W. Pahl

MY GOD’S COUNTRY

Renmark, South Australia: October 2007
The River Murray near Renmark, South Australia
Photograph ©Copyright October 2007 by Anthony W. PahlPicture if you will – sitting in the outback around a campfire beneath a river red gum tree on the banks of a lazy creek.

The rabbit stew is boiling and the aroma wafts through the night sky, a sky that is incandescent with the enormity of the Milky Way and highlighted by the Southern Cross. The damper is baking beneath the embers of the cooking fire and a cold VB hisses as the tab is lifted to open the can.

The bush refrigerator, a wire basket covered with a wet hessian bag, hangs suspended by a length of binder-twine from the red gum and gently sways in the breeze that evaporates the water from the bag and chills the contents of the fridge.

And the crackling of the fire, the murmur of the stream, and the beating of the heart of this great land are all that interrupt the silence!

This is God’s country – My Country!
This is Australia.