A fellow journalist let me into the secret of his sparkling feature writing: returning from field trips, he read through his notes, cleared his desk, then wrote completely from memory. His reasoning was that what he couldn't remember, his readers wouldn't either.

It worked for him, but it doesn't work for me. I like my scribblings ringing the keyboard -- comforting antidotes to writer's block. If imagination fails, I can always pad out the story with the facts at hand.

And there's the tyranny of time. The Christmas hols have intervened since a four-day Broken Hill Regional Tourist Association press trip for FCA members took myself, Agneta Didrikson, Urs Bucher and Urs Wälterlin to the Silver City and other attractions in the top left hand corner of New South Wales. The experience seems a world away. I need my notes.

We flew into what seemed like a walled city. Broken Hill is compact, previous guardians having had the foresight to disallow the sprawl that has Darwin ousing part of the way to Alice Springs. In minutes you are out of the city, out of mobile phone range, out of your comfort zone. That's it for long blacks and foccacia. Time to get bulldust on your boots and sweat stains on your shirt.

We're on our way to Tibooburra, the Big Smoke of the Corner Country, and to the confluence of three states: New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia. We're off to see the dingo fence, to see if it's real. The fence, which can be seen from space, has always seemed to me like Atlantis -- more science fiction than National Geographic. It's there. Without it, we were told, there wouldn't be a sheep farming industry in these parts.

But first it's a squiz at the abandoned mining town of Milparinka, then a sleep in the tin sheds of the shearers' quarters on Theldarpa sheep station.

It's near here that drought forced on Charles Sturt and his band of early explorers a six-month break on their way to find the inland sea. They camped by the creek at Depot Glen, afraid to go forward, reluctant to turn back. There's a replica in Tibooburrra of the boat they brought along.

The inland sea is a myth. But you could make yourself believe it's not. There are salt lakes ringed with saltbush. A tang in the air. There's even a breeze off the sea of dreams.

Back in Broken Hill it's back to earth with a thump: streetscapes, a hotel with a pool, a Chinese restaurant with a 10-page menu, an RSL fussy about its dress code.

We went to the School of the Air, a classroom-studio where 80 children in places we had just been have their lessons monitored in cyberspace. They have a uniform. They have a Sports Day. They have a school principal in a white shirt and a red tie. It seems as unreal as the inland sea.