The Sky Ablaze

Driving to the shops on our second evening in Karratha, I began to understand why people permanently set up home in this remote outpost. We had taken the Balmoral Road, skirting the edge of the town. To our left, stretching far out to the horizon, was nothing but red, flat ground covered intermittently with scrubby vegetation, under a huge, cloudless sky. That in itself was quite spectacular – the very emptiness of it all, the feeling of being somewhere so far away from any major city that most people I know will never set foot here. That sense of isolation is at once frightening and incredibly uplifting – I felt lucky to be even a small, insignificant dot in this landscape. What really made this ordinary drive to the shops so magnificent though, was that the great ball of fire in the sky was beginning its daily descent. Now I have seen the sun set hundreds, probably thousands of times before, in dozens of different countries. Some have promised to be wonderful but have been disappointing, hidden by rain or a grey, cloud-filled sky. Some have been quite spectacular – Bali, Mauritius and Costa Rica have provided some of the most arresting sunsets. However, I can honestly say that the sunsets in the Pilbara are the most stunning that I have ever seen. On this night, my first sunset in Karratha, I sat watching in awe at the spectacle unfolding before my eyes, craning my neck to catch as much of it as I could before we turned towards the centre of the town. As the brilliant burnt orange sun lowered, the cloudless sky gradually filled with layer upon layer of colour. Reds, oranges, pinks, purples and blues stretched across the vast empty sky - with no tall building, mountain or artificial light impeding the view, the scale of the sunset took it from quite spectacular to unbelievably beautiful. This is what living in the Pilbara is all about – it may not be a modern metropolis heaving with upmarket shops, restaurants, bars, theatres and museums, but it makes up for all that by providing the best that Mother Nature can offer.