Lesbos is one of the biggest islands in the Aegean. It has a permanent population, a private life, and its citizens produce excellent ouzo and olive oil, away from the insatiable eyes of the tourist. Mytilini itself is crowded, grimy and car-choked; an ugly incongruity on an otherwise lovely island, and one that is typically Greek. I wondered if the noise and chaos was an inevitable part of any Greek city because it represented an unconscious Greek ideal (the clamour, the sense of unforseen possibilities), just as Australians can be relied upon to build towns permeated by a lonely, tree-lined hush. Once I had left Mytilini, I drove through a rolling landscape of densely planted olive trees. The topography of Lesbos lacks the drama of other islands: the steep peaks have the space to stretch out, to undulate and create more subtle allurements.
		Skala Eresou was a ninety-kilometre drive away, to the west. The further I drove, the flintier the landscape became, as the dark olive groves slowly gave way to spare, stony hills crowned with thorny-flowered oak trees; boulders occasionally thrust their way through the topsoil. The landscape took on an expansiveness, a mythic quality. I could imagine medieval pilgrims with their cloaks and long staffs walking over the rocky hillocks, under an immense sky.