The Red Soil of the Outback

The soil of Central Australia is red. Known as the Red Centre, this part of Australia offers rock formations such as Uluru and Kata Juta, backlit by sunsets that highlight their fiery hues. In Alice Springs, the largest town in Central Australia, red dirt is part of the everyday view and locals take it for granted. It stains the earth just as our stories stain our environment.

Fine flecks of soil blow in the wind and end up all over black pants hung on the clothesline to dry. After walking in the surrounding country, upending your boots allows small rivers of sand to pour out. Wildflowers and shrubs ice the red, adding vivid colour and attracting varied fauna.

However, to the over-familiar, the soil can look ordinary. It is trodden underfoot and goes unnoticed by many people as they rush around their day. They forget the first time they came to Alice, or the first time they let red earth run through their fingers. Now it just looks pebbly and commonplace.

Everyday earth at Olive Pink Botanical Gardens, Central Australia

Our stories are like that. We forget that every tale about a human's endeavours carries its own beauty. There is magic in everyone's stories. In a land overlaid by ancient stories meeting new ones, the exterior of this region should never grow old. Likewise, our contributions and futures should never be taken for granted. 

Red Centre soil is millions of years old. The colour is produced by the high level of iron-oxidising within its grains. Even today, this colour is still developing, and scientists believe that beneath their outer layers, many of the red rock formations in Central Australia would be grey.

Look to those around you; do they look as common as the soil does to the already accustomed eye? That soil has outlasted ages and sustains complex networks of life. Take a second look, and you will see the red glowing in the sunrise and sunset, reminding us that we a temporal and it is not. It is distinctive and special.

Nothing is ever as ordinary as it seems.