When I pulled over to park in the dust and switched off the engine it was the silence that hit me - the heavy, baking summer silence broken only by the buzzing of flies. Way out beyond Sunland, in the foothills, where few people go, there are dirt roads that dead-end at the mountains. These are solitary places where loners might live. The dusty tracks are shaded only by peeling eucalyptus trees and struggling oleanders and it is with surprise that you glimpse, here and there, little one-storey houses, modest wooden cabins really, the paint faded and peeling in the sun.

Not for the first time in my travels did I wonder what I was doing here, and Terry’s house was hard to find. But finally there it was, set way back off the road behind a little dried-up stream, a small bungalow whose once-red paint was long since bleached to a desiccated pink. The path to the front door crossed a precarious wooden bridge over the bed of the stream that hadn’t seen water in years. The day was very hot and everything was still – except for the flies.

The eucalyptus leaves crackled under my feet as I approached the house and called out. There was no reply, so I cautiously peered in through the open front door. Dazzled by the sun my eyes took some time to adjust to the gloom inside, but I finally saw Terry sitting alone deep in an old armchair. He looked up vague and unconcerned as I approached. I knew he had fairly advanced dementia so I didn’t expect much in the way of conversation, which turned out to be limited and sparse. He indicated that he wanted to be helped out to sit on the front porch, an old wooden structure running the length of the front of the small house.

I’m sure he didn’t know who I was or what I was doing there but he let me lead him childlike to two old cane chairs. He asked me to get a drink from the fridge just inside the door and we sat there together and sipped lemonade on the shaded porch. As I looked at him I tried to imagine the young man of around thirty he had once been. Now he was thin, opaque, and seemed to have become as worn, dried and shriveled as his surroundings.

We didn’t say very much. I did my best to ask the questions I was supposed to ask but he really couldn’t follow most of what I said. I managed to gather that he lived with a lover who was at work and would be home at six. But during the day he was usually alone.

We sat in the silent heat and he picked up a small wooden fan that he used to swat away the flies. It was the only emotion he showed, annoyance at the flies, as he pursed his lips and swatted weakly and aimlessly. And there we stayed for a long time sipping lemonade, not saying a word, barely moving, but somehow it didn’t matter. In fact stillness and silence seemed completely appropriate in this far-off, sun-baked corner of the foothills. I don’t remember thinking about anything in particular, and God knows what was going through his mind. There was an odd suspension of time and place as we sat together in silent limbo in that remote and breathless world, the only movement the desultory flicking of the fly swatter.

I finally shook myself free of the almost mesmerizing solitude, and told Terry I had to go. I made sure he had everything he needed, but it seemed he just wanted to stay sitting on the porch until his friend came home. He vaguely acknowledged my goodbye, and I walked back through the eucalyptus leaves and over the little bridge.

My hand jerked back from the burning door-handle of my car. Inside, it was like an oven. But I sat there and slowly worked on my report. As I wrote about Terry something made me look up back toward the porch. There, in the silent midday heat, he still sat numbly, swatting away the flies with his fan.

And in the remote foothills of Sunland, I started to cry.