The miners were already loading their trucks with tools. Railway workers suited up in their bright orange uniforms. Truck drivers fuelled their road trains. The outback was just beginning to wake up at around 5AM.
"Morning," I'd hear from them in a gravel voice; worn, solid, something between a growl and a command. But there. Always there. A rough melody of men who work with their hands. It wasn't sweet, it wasn't soft. But damn, it resonated at a godly frequency. Made you question why anyone ever bothered with city life. Like, how many good mornings can you cope with before you give up?
I was headed to the BP station, my workplace in Norseman, Western Australia. A town stitched together by dust, diesel, and bad decisions. The kind of place where nightmares don't just happen. They're born and they settle in to never leave. There was something heavy in the air. Some dark ghostly evil presence, I swear it. I felt it. Maybe it was the crows. Those damn crows. Always circling. Even at night, they ruled the skies like harbingers of death from some ancient curse. Black-winged Furies, perpetuating judgment on a land already damned. Their cries weren't natural. Creatures that belonged in myth, not here. But then again, so did this town.
The land looked straight out of a 100-year-old post-apocalyptic movie scene, scorched and brutal. And the people? Half of them were high, drunk, or just off their rockers. Twice I came back to my motel room and found the door wide open. Still locked somehow. Didn't matter. I was (and still am) a broke-ass backpacker. Nothing worth stealing. Thank God.
The nearest real town? 200 kilometres away. Norseman is as isolated as they come. The so-called gateway to the Eyre Highway, the only sealed road cutting across the vast, bone-dry Nullarbor. One of the longest, emptiest stretches of road in the world. Desert on all sides. Silence that screams. One of the loneliest outposts on Earth.
A sweet spot to hide away after a robbery or to forget that you have a son.
You can imagine, this place had character.
And movie-level characters. In a movie-level atmosphere. Breathing movie-level fucking drama.
There was this miner with a deep blond mullet, room spotless, like my Spanish grandma's kitchen. He lived with three others. The first time I walked in, I thought, "Definitely got the wrong room." I saw every room in that place. The miners? Cleanest of all. Wild, right? Always covered in filth, those bastards. But their rooms? Immaculate.
Now, before you ask, "Why the hell was this random Spaniard walking into people's rooms in the middle of nowhere?" Look, something was always broken. Toilets. AC units. Boilers. Fuel pumps. Oil leaks. And bin day… the worst day of the week, which, by the way, was every fucking day. That place was a mess, and I was the maintenance guy. There were no breaks.
One young miner came back every day with a new lizard in hand. "Oi. Check this one out, amigo." Never once saw him sad. Never heard him complain. Not about 14-hour shifts. Not about the heat. Nothing. I felt sad, though, for those poor spiky, blue-tongued, wild-eyed creatures he carried.
In the evenings, they'd head out to a dry lake bed nearby. I'd go for a run, dodging snakes and God-knows-what, while they drifted in a beat-up white pickup, fuel cans on the side, just in case... waving the St George's Cross. The patron saint of England. Out in the middle of nowhere, engines screaming, tires kicking dust, music blasting. A dirt bike leaning against the truck bed. Straight out of Mad Max. Every time I heard them coming, my pace just jumped to Olympic-level fastness.
And in the middle of this chaos there was "Mama," the Indonesian cleaner. She didn't speak a word of English. Worked there for five years. The sweetest soul around. We communicated through looks and sounds, yet somehow I knew about her whole family. I still feel her smile melting my soul. I still have inside me the warmth of her last hug.
There are more stories. So many more. I could write a whole 10-part series (and tell me if you want me to), but for now, let me get to the reason I started all this.
Every morning I woke up. Gladly. Had breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the BP. Not healthy, but free. I'd inhale an oily burrito in seconds. Two coffees: one to lubricate the throat, the other for the road. My days were full of dirt, oil, and mental wanderings while fixing broken pipes, car batteries, cleaning spills, patching fences. My only day off, I spent reading, writing, and watching people pass through. Weird-ass road people.
There was a kid who slept in the gas station. Open 24 hours a day. Story went his dad beat him at home. Sometimes another kid would visit, bringing toy trucks to play. That was the only time he smiled, barely. I gave him milk and sandwiches, but he never smiled at me. Poor kid, man. A year has passed and it still boils my blood.
This place, this station, this space in between-worlds was run by backpackers. Who else would live here? Pay a broke twenty-something $5,000 AUD a month, cover rent and food, and they'll go to the edge of the Earth. Norseman. The end of the world. The end of the fucking world, man.
Anyway, one morning, 6AM. I'm waiting for my 2 large coffees. There's a Dutch backpacker at the counter, her shift about to start too. She's first in line. I'm half-asleep behind her. It's dark. Too early to talk. I glance at her, then at her phone, just a reflex. A little unconscious shoulder-surf.
She catches me.
And just like that, in a matter of seconds: hell breaks loose. Just when I thought I'd had enough with the crows. Now I get more looks. The hisses. Oh and the "this is private!" tirade.
From that day forward. Ghosted.
Sure, I still went to the bar and played pool with the town crackheads. That was always a fun experience. Enjoyed an evening beer with the miners.
There was also this lovely Argentinian guy. Pure soul. We talked about everything.
But it was just never the same.
Still, I felt that I didn't belong anymore.
This kept me thinking.
And here's the thing: if people went half as hard on Big Tech as she did on me for that phone peek, Big Tech wouldn't be so Big anymore.
Her fury could've toppled Zuckerberg.
And the truth? I don't even remember what I saw. I was still waking up, thinking about the book I was reading that morning: Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman. Another Dutch. My guess is he's a bit nicer.
Meanwhile, Big Tech watches you constantly. Over your shoulder. Through your apps. In your pockets. Here are some hard truths:
Google paid $1.4 billion to settle claims for secretly collecting location and biometric data, even in "incognito" mode, only in TEXAS!!! (source)
Amazon treats your voice recordings as biometric data and collects them from anyone who speaks near your devices, not just the owner.
Spotify has patented technology that analyses your speech and background noise to determine your emotional state, gender, age, or accent then manipulates your mood through playlist curation. (source)
TikTok... well, it's probably got a full dossier on you by now.
And companies, governments, and your most beloved stalker can buy all this information in a few clicks.
And yet, one sleep-deprived glance over a shoulder leads to total social exile.
But your phone? It's an open book to a million eyes.
So if a phone peek pisses you off... Good. You care about privacy.
But if that's true, your rage is aimed at the wrong target.
Because these apps? They don't just look. They watch. They record. They sell. They remember and track.
Just think about that the next time you unlock it.
And maybe don't go nuclear on the half-asleep handyman next time.
Also, don't trust them crows. They know too much.
Peace out,
Alejandro xxx
And please, let all the 10 parts of this come!
If one day someone asks me about the end of the world, I'll just show them this, as the prime example of its best portrait ever written.