Silence is Golden

Have you ever been in places that become so quiet that you can hear yourself thinking?

The Outback is like that. You don't notice it much through the day when your eyes are taking in activity, and your brain is interpreting what you have seen, but when night falls, and you have finished with the chores of say, feeding yourself, hobbling out the horse, rolling out your swag and rolling your last cigarette for the night, then the silence descends upon you.

No matter how hard you listen, and I do not think that a man can listen hard or soft, regardless of what his wife may think. No matter what you do, you do not hear anything. It is confusing to say you hear nothing, as that means that you hear something, but I am telling you that you do not hear anything at all in the Outback, nuffin'.

This only happens in certain places. It won't happen near a busy highway, it won't happen near a river or a creek, it won't happen if a pocket of trees are near, and it won't happen if you have the 'trannie' turned on. It will only happen in the middle of a vast paddock that has nothing but a sparse covering of grass, and the black soil plains to try to catch your attention, and the catch is that if it catches your attention, you need some help.

The silence is such that you will be drawn to putting your finger in your ear to try to remove the “plug” that has stopped you from hearing. You will hear the squish, squish of the finger as you rattle it around in your lug, and that will only confuse you, as you now consider how you can hear the finger but nothing else.

Married men can understand this phenomenon, as they relate it to the “Silent Treatment” often encountered in the marital home; however that is a pleasant occurrence, whereas the silence of the plains is a little strange, or should I say, stranger.

This massive silence, if silence has size, will be the overriding thought of the night. You will see a shadow, you think, and then you will realise that to see a shadow you have to have light, so whilst you are discounting that one a light will appear, or seem to appear, on what you would consider the horizon, or seem to be the horizon.

“Ah! Company,” you will say and frighten the dickens out of your self at the loudness in this dead silence, so you whisper “ah! Comapny”

However, it is not company, you know what it is but you will not admit it to yourself, so your mind takes over and admits it for you, "It is the Min-Min my scary little friend.” Only your own mind can insult you like this and get away with it.

You open the secondary part of your mind, the contradictory side, some say the female side – why, I don't know, but this side says, "Don't be silly, I do not believe in the Min-Min."

"Well why is it getting closer?"

"I don't know, I don't believe in the Min-Min."

"Why is it getting bigger?"

"I told you, I don't know."

Another part of your mind says, no wonder they call it the female side, but has to admit that the light is getting bigger and coming closer.

Then the Min-Min is gone, and you do what any sensible, well controlled and well balanced male would do, you jump to your feet and let out a roar and go running up to catch the horse so the two of you can go and stick your heads in some noise.

“Silence is Golden,” some fool said. All I can say is that whoever that was never sat out on the black soil plains in the dark of night and listened to........