It's only a mirage.

A die cast sculpture of a townsperson of Menzies, western Australia, looks out over Lake Ballard.

150 of these sculptures, of all types of Menzies residents, dot the dried-up lake. To me, in my state of mind, they all seemed to be looking forward, and I took my photos as such.

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You could walk here for hours in the blazing sun never getting closer to the water. It is a mirage.

I understand now how people die in the desert, believing their life-saving gulp of water is "just over .... there."

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I set my alarm for 50 minutes so I could turn around and walk back across the dried-up lake before dark, and all that time later, I was no closer to the water.
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I wanted a photo of one of the townsfolk knee-high in agua.
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Instead, I draped my camera around the neck of a sculpture and took photos of myself posing with him.

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The sculptures are neat, but after a while, I thought, they are all the same. But by the end, I was hollering "hello! sorry I did not make it all the way over to you!" for those that I could see but did not walk over to.

Footprints weaved out, dried from the last pour, whenever that was, in all directions, and I silently nodded that this town was awake all night and all day, an hour down a dirt road from the town where their bodies' owners slept.

For infinity.