* Astronomy

There is a great quiet in the Kalahari Desert of Botswana. Being left to your own devices here means communing with meerkats amid 360 degrees of nothingness, star-gazing into seemingly limitless skies or following faint animal tracks across crusty saltpans.
The expression doesn't suggest communicating with an iPhone, iPad or, indeed, any wireless-enabled device. Out there, nothing works, a factor attracting stressed urbanites who will pay well to be cut off temporarily. Author Paul Theroux has dubbed this trend "disappearance tourism" and, while most of us may not want to drop out altogether, a stress-free release from the constant scrutiny of 21st-century life is what many Australians now crave.
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