There was no Wet Season here in northwestern Australia last year. The rain never came. Last night a cyclone (or hurricane) formed at sea to the north of us. It’s over 600km away and the sky is clear blue this morning.

She felt in miserable communion, then, with all of her patients afflicted by toothache. She understood why they knocked on her door at night or woke up the nurses.

After ten days of phone calls not returned and emails unanswered, we realised that some of the people involved in letting the house might dislike gay people.

I was ambivalent, but curious, about the UN. It accommodates a bunch of scoundrels, kept in dull sinecure. And there are also terribly earnest people, sincerely looking to make things better.

What was it like to say goodbye to all the material world you knew, even the land you walked on?

The damaged shopping trolley was full of the worldly possessions of the house-less person who had been sheltering there.

On the third day without showers, locals reminded me that desert people lived without them for longer periods. Water was kept for drinking.

Watching the lights of a thousand cars, I’m musing about the dreams of the people on this island.