When musician Dingo pulls up on a patch of red dirt, he immediately unfolds a camp table and gathers with his family under the vast desert sky.
While touring with his partner, singer-songwriter Kasey Chambers, their family and friends connect around the table.
It's something that happens whether they're at home, staying in coastal camp grounds or visiting the outback.
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"It's where the deepest conversations come out," Dingo, aka Brandon Dodd, told AAP, fresh from an Alice Springs trip with Chambers.
"A friend of mine was telling me about ... always setting an extra seat at the table just in case there's a visitor.
"It's a great sentiment, to be so welcoming, so for years that's what we've been doing."
It is the subject of Dingo's ballad The Dining Table, from his second studio album Nightwire, set for release on October 9.
Dingo, sings: "There's nothing you need to bring, you are your only offering."
The stand-out track is a duet with Chambers, their soaring vocals intertwining.
Dingo grew up on the NSW Central Coast, raised on The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Creedence Clearwater Revival.
The dining table was also the heart of his childhood home, a place for easy conversation with his parents and older brother, a drummer.
He watched as his father, a butcher who injured himself at work, re-learnt how to play guitar using his right hand rather than his left.
"We had a right-handed guitar in the house because of that and that was the first guitar I picked up," he said.
He joined Chambers' band in his late teens, plucked from blues-roots-rock duo Grizzlee Train and flung into the wilds of touring, including opening for The Eagles in 2015.
Being part of the opening act for the American rockers was intense, something he didn't fully appreciate until later.
"I was only just coming out of high school and finding my feet as a human being in the world.
"I would do things differently (now) and take more time to appreciate things."
Being present and finding freedom in his life on the road is the enduring theme of Nightwire.
Chambers stopped travelling on planes to tour Australia years ago, opting to take things slowly in a Chevy ute and a caravan.
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It is the couple's joint effort to appreciate the places they go and the stories they collect along the way.
"Sometimes you go through your own changes and nobody else around you really knows," Dingo said.
"I've done so much travelling and Kasey's now my partner and we love the way we tour.
"We drive around Australia and we take our time - that has changed the way I see my own life."
Dingo will tour his new album from October 8, while also opening for some of Troy Cassar-Daley and Ian Moss's Together Alone regional shows.
