Nasty Brutish Short

That was the phrase that went through my mind while i was ploughing through 4 Lonely Planet books on Australia - a book on the East Coast, one on Victoria, one on Sydney and one on the Great Barrier Reef.

It is past midnight, seven hours before dawn, twelve hours before nightfall, twenty four before the darkest hour, perhaps three hundred and seventy six thousand six hundred and eighty before I die.