Outback highways

Drive a long distance inland on Australian outback roads and you'll know what it feels like to be not much bigger than a speck of dust. Sometimes, if all is going well, it's a beautiful feeling of isolation to feel like you're the only one out there under that beautiful blue sky. But at other times the aloneness and the immensity of it all can get to you. Some love it and never want to leave, others panic. Our two drivers here in these dioramas, oh they just love the place. The country doesn't belong to them, they belong to the country.

This is a Linfox road train crossing a bridge in the North Territory during
the Dry Season in Australia's far north. The model used in this diorama is
made from a plastic toy by an Australian hobbyist. Linfox is Australia's
biggest trucking company, and they produce toy semi-trailers as a marketing
thing for kids. The maker of this road train turns three ordinary toy
Linfox semis into one road train, and as it's the only one I have found
anywhere, I bought it, because I love road trains. It's not perfect, the trailers
aren't exactly in line at the top, but from this distance, and side-on,
it does the job in this diorama well enough for me. As usual, if you click
on this photo (and all the others) it should pop up even bigger.

Over in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, where the soils are always
this rich red colour, a Holden ute whizzes down a long and lonely highway
in this, out our main iron ore producing region. Made by the Australian
company Trax, this nice 1:43 scale Holden HZ ute model comes with its
own layer of authentic Aussie dust, and has big lights mounted in the rear
tray, presumably for a bit of night-time kangaroo hunting.