Dear Sam [former housemate]

Your letter really got me thinking about what I am doing out here: Am I here because it's something I want to do, or am I here because society expects it of me? I genuinely believe I am here because I enjoy it; because, exactly as you and Tim discussed, you never know what a time you've had until you tell somebody about it. While sometimes it may be difficult, there is always a story to tell and laugh at years from now. While some prefer events to run smoothly, I prefer everything to be crazy and difficult and for shit to go wrong. The best travel adventure stories are always about shit going wrong: The time you got the shits, the time a rabid monkey scratched your face, the time you ate magic mushrooms and thought a googly-eyed German was the Devil himself. No-one cares for stories about beautiful sunsets, nice hotels, or friendly locals...

... But back to the question of why I am here - and, perhaps, why you are there. A lot of people, when I say I am finding the fly in-fly out a little bit difficult, will say something like "You'll get used to it", but I have concluded there is a great difference - a huge terrifying chasm - between "getting used" to something and letting it kill your spirit and soul. Do you know what I mean? If I keep doing this work and, after a while, it doesn't bother me, is it because I am "used to it", or because I have let it grab my soul, tear the skin away, and leave it hanging to dry from a meat hook, like a great piece of beef jerky, or "soul jerky", as it were?

Yes, this "soul jerky" is what we have to stop ourselves becoming my dear boy. There's people I work with out here who are definitely in the latter stages of becoming hard, dry soul jerky, and the sight of them causes me to dry-retch. They are career FIFO workers, whose lives have so subtely eroded away that they don't even notice it happening, until one day they find they have nothing left - no friends, no lovers, no passions. They have no reason and no desire to go home because they have no home. This lack of a centre to their lives is like the blazing sun to the meat of their souls. Without a spiritual hub, one is dangerously close to becoming soul jerky.

But enough of this depressing talk of soul jerky, though I do like the term I invented just now by the campfire, after a few beers. Aah beer, the lubricant to the cogs of my brain...

Dear Gerard [former workmate]

... The shame is that after 9000 metres of RC drilling since my last letter I am not quite so excited about geology. I think I mentioned then that I had stopped reading high-brow literature between drillholes, taking to the hills instead, yes? Well guess who is currently sitting on the passenger side of my Landcruiser? Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's official: I am burnt out.

Speaking of books, I have read but two about Africa [Gerard had just got back from a trip there]: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and a biography of Cecil Rhodes. Neither, you will understand, endears me to the continent, but both were thoroughly excellent. The Rhodes biography was read at the tail end of a long period in my mid-late teens when I read only non-fiction, declaring to all that there was no need for escape to fiction - then I became an adult and discovered Aldous Huxley, who could tease the joy out of a dinner party, and Henry Miller, who could make it out to be a fiery pit of terror. So I altered my stance: The only books worth reading are those that find the joy, the terror, and the magic in the everyday world. Hmm, a tangent.

But yes, Rhodes - what a cunt, but what a brilliant cunt. And I mean brilliant, not as good or clever, but as 'shiny'. Yes Cecil Rhodes was a shiny, polished, flawless cunt, and if you don't know his story well then learn it. Cunts like that need to be spotted at an early age and shot. There's heaps of them out there, and all that you and I can do is buy a shotgun and read about the life and times of Cecil Rhodes. Knowledge is power...