The travelers of the narrative find the place they’ve been looking for and begin to make it their home to the worry of its natives. Their world of dinosaurs and unnamed creatures is now being inhabited by others. “Deserted Dunes Welcome Weary Feet” is a song with colonialism at its core though its place in time is vague and without a true historical comparison. As Joey said to SPIN “there’s dinosaurs in Polygondwanaland, right? It just feels evocative to place it not then, not now, not in the future, but everywhere all at once.”
“Deserted Dunes Welcome Weary Feet” was heard by dedicated fans before it was officially released as part of a leak released on April 3rd, 2017. A Facebook user named “Blinky Bill” posted a link to a playlist called “Polygondwanaland” on Soundcloud. Included were a number of demos including “Polygondwanaland I+II+III” at nine minutes and ten seconds. The track was the entire “Polygondwanaland” suite including “Deserted Dunes.” LIke the rest of the suite the song is instrumental and lacking synthesizers but is mostly there. The one major difference is that the outro kicks in sooner and lacks its familiar bassline. The studio version of the song was recorded by Casey Hartnett at Flightless HQ. The song was released on November 17th, 2017 on Polygondwanaland.
The earliest performance on record was on 2018-5-24 at the Theatre Royal in Castlemaine, Victoria alongside “The Castle In The Air” with “Deserted Dunes” trading spaces as part of a medley of late 2017 work: “Crumbling Castle” > “The Fourth Colour” > “Deserted Dunes Welcome Weary Feet” > “The Castle In The Air” > “Muddy Water.” Unlike the studio version, live performances of the track do not feature acoustic guitar. Since May of 2018 the song has not moved from this medley and was last played on 2019-11-21 at the Modern Sky Lab in Shanghai.