It’s funny the things you learn after a book comes out. When I arrived in Broome—late at night after 21 hours on a bus—Stuart had said that “we put up your tent for you, as we reckoned you’d be tired after your trip.” I assumed “we” was him, and that’s what I wrote in the book—that he had thoughtfully put up the tent for me. As soon as she’d read this in the book, Nikki e-mailed me from Australia to say that it was, in fact, she and Jo who had put up the tent for me. Nikki and Jo, who I would not meet until the morning after my arrival, were the two people on this trip with whom I would maintain long-standing friendships—with whom I am in fact still friends. Nikki thought it seemed we were fated to be friends, since we had in a way connected even before we’d met. And thanks, Nikki and Jo—I was tired, and I did appreciate having the tent ready for me.
As I noted in the book, my first view of the camp was through the tent flap just before dawn, the next morning. The hint of silver in the sky didn’t lend itself to natural light photography, but I took the shot anyway. So below, my first view of the campsite near Broome, upon awakening that first morning in Western Australia.
Waltzing Australia 