The third landscape is not one I have seen myself, but seen through the eyes of someone who knew it. I saw it in 1999 in a collection of a children’s coloured pencil drawings of contemporary Central Australian cattle station life and the image continues to haunt me.

In the drawing, the viewer looks across the surface of a water tank full to overflowing. Beyond the tank is a dead tree and beside the tree a cow, (her station brand drawn large and clear), which has just finished drinking from a trough. Her head is turned towards the viewer and water drips from her mouth. The water in the trough comes from the pipe leading from the tank; on the left of that is the windmill, with its feeder pipe spilling water into the tank. On the right, water runs from the overflow pipe onto the ground, where a small circle of deep green grass has formed. Otherwise the red earth is completely bare. The sky is cloudless. The colours are blue, red, metallic grey and brown, with one touch of dark green.

There are only two living things in the picture – the cow and the circle of grass.

The windmill is very carefully drawn, with its pattern of struts and the name Southern Cross on the vane. The mechanics of the water-machinery – the connections between the various parts – are also carefully presented.