The Descent

The road drops steadily from the crest, winding through dry forest. The scent changes first — from eucalyptus and rain to dust and diesel. The air feels thinner, the light harsher. The trees stand further apart, each holding its ground as if rationing shade.

Half an hour down the slope, the landscape opens wide. Rolling hills give way to paddocks cut with precision — square, stripped, and pale. The soil here carries the memory of water but not its presence. A tractor moves along a fence line, its mist of spray hanging briefly in the still air before dissolving into heat.

I pull over beside a cattle grid and kill the engine. The silence is vast, but not empty — more like something waiting. In the distance a farmer’s ute idles beside a pump shed. I walk over, boots crunching through dry stubble.

He’s a middle-aged man, skin worn to leather, eyes squinting from decades in this glare. We talk about rain first — everyone does — and then about yields, prices, and how “you can’t farm without the chemistry these days.” He gestures at the paddock and says, half to himself, “Just keeping the weeds down.”

There’s no judgement in his voice, just fatigue — the sound of someone caught in a system larger than him. I nod, understanding more than I want to admit. The conversation drifts to fuel costs, bank pressures, and neighbours selling up. The wind picks up and the spray drifts closer; he notices and steps back slightly, out of instinct more than concern.

When I drive on, the stench of the spray lingers on my clothes and the landscape stretches endlessly westward, a geometry of fences and furrows. The range now lies behind me, blue in the distance like a half-remembered promise. I feel the weight of the descent — not just in altitude, but in meaning.

It’s here, on this slope between green and brown, that the story of our separation becomes visible. The soil has been disciplined into obedience, and yet beneath that order lies exhaustion — of land, of people, of possibility. Were we really meant o farm here?

I roll down the window. The air tastes of herbicide and sun. Somewhere a crow calls, its voice cracked and ancient.

The Great Divide, I realise, isn’t a single ridge of stone. It’s a slow, silent gradient that runs through us all — from reverence to control, from listening to command. And once you start descending, it’s not that easy to notice how far you’ve gone.