Port Augusta quickly gives way to the Outback. An oncoming car waited for a herd of sheep to cross the road and I slowed in response. As we passed, the driver of the car gave me a thumbs up and I waved. Made sense to me.
After a couple more cars had passed me going the opposite direction, I realized that other drivers were acknowledging me, often with just a single finger raised from their steering wheel. Intuitively, I started doing it in response. Then I started initiating it, raising my finger from the wheel with drivers passing me doing the same.
It was sort of beautiful. A human connection in the middle of vast emptiness.
Apparently this is such a well-known phenomenon in the Outback that anthropologists have even come up with a name for it! They call it the “phatic finger“.