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Walking across the dry bed of Lake Lewis, baked hard under the relentlessly hot daytime sun, was much easier. The smooth, white, salt-encrusted surface, unadorned by vegetation or gibber stones, stretched out across the landscape in every direction. The pale light from the moon and stars on the surface of the lake bed made for an image one might imagine in an apocalyptic ‘end-of-the-world’ motion picture. In whatever direction one chose to look, there was nothing. Just an eerie, white expanse as far as the eye could see.
There was no wildlife out here on the salt-pan. Nothing could survive. No tiny insects, no birds, no creatures of any variety. In the heat of the day, the temperature could, and often did, soar above fifty degrees Celsius; hot enough to cook food on the surface of the
