I recorded this way back in March when I flew out to Australia to visit a friend in Orange. I didn't realize how far Orange was from Sydney, so I ended up spending most of my time at an airbnb in Sydney, but then taking two trains and a bus over the course of 8 hours out to where by buddy lived in Orange. From there we drove a total of 12 hours North to the small Outback town of White Cliffs (stopping at a number of other small towns along the way.

I've long been interested in Australia--the band TISM and the radio play What's Rangoon to You is Grafton to Me. A concert Tom Waits did there in 1978, the bootleg of which was often regarded the best of the era in the cyber circles I ran in. Radio shows like The Night Air and Soundproof. Movies like Walkabout, Road Games, etc. And then there was a pen pal I had, who I last heard from during the pandemic, and my buddy Zech, who I met on Twitter via podcasting.

In White Cliffs, a lot of the people live in dugouts, or houses built agains the mountain which is they then dig the remainder of their residence into. We stayed in one of these houses which was being rented on airbnb. It is, so far, the most interesting place I've watched Frasier.

We got there late at night and couldn't find the place because the numbers on the houses are not chronological. They build their house and choose a number that isn't taken, which generally has no relation to the houses on either side. We missed out on our first day, only really getting the second day to explore, so we didn't really leave the town.

We ate breakfast and that night went back to the one bush bar in town, connected (I think) to a motel. We learned that night that of the people drinking there, most of them were working on natural gas pipelines. There was one woman, either between our ages or a little younger, who had moved there to be with her boyfriend. The rest of the town skewed much older.

There was one yard with a lot of welded sculptures, which was fun. There was a school, a small hospital, a couple of stores, a house made out of bottles that was no longer entertaining guests but still had a donkey tied up outside. The donkey walked over to me, then backed up, made eye contact with me, and squatted down to pee.

This recording is from the second night after my friend had gone to sleep. He had told me we were too far from the town to walk to it, but I think I made it there within 10 minutes. You can still hear the dogs barking from next to our airbnb throughout the recording. It's the desert, so I guess sound travels.

I believe this was around 11pm and the entire town had gone dark. Everyone had left the bar, the stores were all long closed, and there was no one else outside. I walked around for about an hour or so, stopping to take pictures and record videos of all of the vacant streets and buildings.

I realized I hadn't posted this after a woman visiting me from Sydney flew back there last week. She had super liked me on a dating app, but didn't appear until I was in White Cliffs. Then she disappeared and reappeared, but I couldn't like her back. When I was back in the States I saw her pop up again and tried to like her again but no luck. I finally contacted support and they fixed it, but I learned she was in Sydney. She was interested in making our relationship romantic, despite the distance, but when she got here she quickly changed her mind again. So it goes.

It's nice to listen back to this and put myself back in my literal headspace from a period when I was more content.

The recording ends when my batteries died.