Utterly weary of heat, of the intense Australian sun, and of – dare I say it! – birding, I holed up in our shaded rental house with the air conditioning on and finished reading a novel before recording my natural history notes from our Alice Springs excursion. Only in late afternoon, an hour before sunset, did I venture outdoors and was immediately swamped by thick heat infused with the cloying scents of flowering trees. After a week in arid environs with refreshingly cool nights, I felt as though I had stepped out my door into a completely foreign country, rather than the coastal fringe of the same continent, in a city I’d already inhabited for months.

Overwhelmed by the moist heat, which, as on Vilis’s and my arrival in this country in late December, embraced me like a sultry lover clasping me to a steamy, perfumed chest, I quickly retreated back to the house and its air conditioning. I know it sounds old, but the heat we experienced in the desert was dry heat that was so much easier to move in, to breathe in than this steamy North Queensland sauna. I think I lost my heart again, this time to the Red Centre.