Guest blog with Humble Dumpling

Salutations unto ye faithful reader. I'm Humble Dumpling and i'm delighted to be manning the BurntFeather reins for today! Your regular blog mistress shall return next post, but for now....let's you and I go on a journey, someplace dry together.

all around is the desert; a corner of the mournful kingdom of sand. - Pierre Loti

The desert, it must be said, often gets a pretty bad rap. The total lack of moisture is, even by itself a pretty good reason not to visit, but when you factor in the abundence of stabbing weeds and prickles, the driving, relentless assults of the sun and the sheer maddening isolation, you start to think that perhaps this is god's little way of saying "Just don't go there!" And indeed you might be right. Having spent a few months working and living on these dessicated plains, I came quickly to the profound conclusion that deserts suck! They're just not very nice places. But eventually (And perhaps this is true of everywhere) the arid expanses began to show a kinder face. I first became fascinated by the many different wild flowers I would see scattered about, small and unassuming but painfully vivid in such a harsh and barren landscape, and completely at odds with my preconceived notions of deserts in general.

There was life! Despite all expectations!

And beauty too, of a sort not commonly experienced. Ultimately, i realized that how I looked at the world around me was just a matter of perspective, a personal choice, and I honestly feel that as long as you look for it too, you'll find beauty even in the vilest sewer, so with that in mind my friends, enjoy......The Desert

The Carp!  This guy seems to be taking urban art rural! Stickers and stencils belonging to The Carp have been spotted all the way from Erromanga in northern Queensland to Williams Creek in central South Australia.

Arty sky shot at Finke in South Australia

Camouflage

Wedge tailed eagle chick

Historic ruins

Just one in an endless parade of beautiful sunsets

No idea what this plant is really called but I dubbed it desert cotton.

Ferdinand the Gecko!

These guys were super cute! I picked up a can and two of their friends ran away, but these two were too sleepy to bother moving, so i let them snooze :)

Small stash of Gypsum Selenite crystal formations, which seem to occur pretty regularly out in the middle of nowhere and can sometimes get quite massive.  Those with an interest in crystals and their attributed metaphysical properties, should note that Selenite crystals are said to be the only crystals capable of cleansing other types of crystals, and are also valued as an aid in astral travelling.

Waking up before the sun is rough, but sights like this ensure a pretty soulful start to a day in the desert

Different nest, this time with two wedge tailed babies, though the second is a tad obscured

Just to remind you how far you really are from anything

 Dawn

And fittingly for the last shot, dusk