Out here silence is the dimension in which we float. It billows above us like the vast sails of galleon Earth, ballooning into the outer geography of the Milky Way; it washes below us where the opal runs in luminous veins; it stretches west as far as the shores of the Ice Age, nothing between then and now but rusted and powdering rock. If I strain my eyes and shade them from the terrible glare, and stare east across the silent tongues of fire and the crumbling red elevated plains towards tomorrow, towards the dimly imaginable Queensland coastline, I go on and on and on seeing nothing but a silence so profound that it roars in my ears and pummels me and makes me feel seasick.