Somewhere beyond our Cessna 172’s windscreen, the world must still exist. Somewhere out there must be a sky, a horizon, stars, and-a few thousand feet below us-an arid landscape dotted with spinifex grass, red sand ridges and dry river beds winding their way across the vast, uninhabited stretches of the Simpson Desert. At the moment, however, I have to take all that on faith, because the only thing I can see beyond the dimly-lit instrument panel is an impenetrable ocean of moonless black, with no lights, depth, color or contrast to differentiate ground from sky, or even give us any sense of movement. It all feels slightly surreal, in fact, as if I’ve suddenly been transported from an actual airplane into a simulator chamber where I could simply push the “pause” button and step outside for a quick break.
Of course, even if I could see the stars here, they wouldn’t be much use to me in terms of navigation. Because the North Star and all the constellations I know are buried far beneath the horizon, along with the rest of the northern hemisphere. And if the night surrounding me is blacker than any sky I’ve ever even imagined, it’s because I’m flying over one of the more remote places in the world-the wild, rugged landscape of the Australian Outback.
