Sunset Strip Revisited

This is the beach at Sunset Strip in Central Australia; a very long way from its American namesake. Lake Menindee is dry now and there are swarms of flies wherever you move. I arrive early to avoid the swarms, driving as always long distances in pointless pursuit. There are holiday houses lined along the edge of the beach, selling now for around $80,000. The water has gone. I remember, maybe 15 years ago, first coming here when it was a spectacular sight, the pelicans skimming across the water, birds everywhere, tourists and the lucky few who owned holiday houses along the edge, frolicking along the edge of the lake, having late afternoon barbecues, families from Broken Hill and surrounding farms, tourists drawn to the extraordinary sight in the middle of the outback. None of its there now. Drought and cotton farmers have dried up the water. The houses still look well maintained, most of them, and the occasional retiree stands in their front lawn chatting with their neighbours. A large sign at the turnoff from the main highway declares that the Sunset Strip Progress Association meeting has been deferred until the next month due to illness. All those stories ago, all that time ago, before I had children, before I changed jobs, before the undertow of depression dragged me completely under, when the one skill I had propelled me on to the front page time and time again. And nothing happened. No futune accrued. No serenity arrived. Enlightenment never came. Here, in another country, the future, we stood on the same strip of beach. But now, without water, the lake stretched to the horizon, green, a paradise, no doubt, for snakes. Already he was frightened of them, keeping a wary eye out, as he stopped repeatedly to piss and stare and wonder, what had happened to it all? The empty boats were pulled up on the shore. A dock for the boats spread out into the non-existent water; and the flies buzzed; and when he fantasised that here, here was the place where he could finally retreat from the world at large, he knew it had been a mistake, the feverish dreams of Sunset Strip nothing but that, dreams. There would be another place, another life, but not here, on the beach without a sea, the lake without water, the holiday houses with barely a soul pottering amongst them. The flies buzzed and that was it, gone. He got back in the car and drove on, into diminished circumstance, under the vaulting sky.