Memories of Mars

The In-Laws have now left, onto their next adventure in Singapore – at least I assume that’s where they are now. I dropped them off at the airport so presumably they caught their flight to Perth and are not still sitting in the tiny departures lounge with only the airport’s one terrible cafe to sustain them with crisps and toasted sandwiches. They picked a hot time to visit which, considering The Father-In-Law is a staunch cold weather person who doesn’t cope well with any kind of heat (his favourite pastimes are climbing the snowy peaks of north England and Wales and cycling in any weather, which in England usually means rain and cold), could have been disastrous. Even The Mother-In-Law was taken aback by the fierce heat, which hits you like a brick wall when you leave the cool air-conditioned interior of the house or the car. Having said that, they seemed to enjoy themselves in outback North Western Australia. Of course, having the air-con turned up to refrigerator levels probably helped but they coped admirably when outside under the blazing Pilbara sun too. The Father-In-Law did at one point adopt a granddad pose on the beach by sitting on a deckchair with his hat pulled down low over his face, his shirt on and a towel wrapped over his legs but I suppose he was being sun-safe which, when you have delicate English skin that hardly sees the sun, is a good thing when suddenly faced with intense Aussie rays beating down on you.


It’s easy to forget how alien a place like this seems to newcomers, especially those from somewhere thousands of miles away both geographically and figuratively. The heat, the barrenness, the remoteness, the lack of greenery and rain. We at least had come from Thailand which was both hot, which helped us to acclimatise to the higher temperatures out here, and another world to the UK, which meant that we were used to living somewhere totally alien to us. It’s when people come to visit and you see the place through their eyes that you remember how different to home the Pilbara is. When viewed from above from the plane it looks like Mars, all reds and oranges, rocky, barren and unpopulated. It really is like living on another planet – the In-Laws will soon be coming to back down to Earth with a bang, back to England and reality, where Karratha really will feel like a rocket ride away.