“The Mars You Have in Me” by Terry Dowling

Well, we made it safely through the New Year and I’ve got about an hour to burn before the Georgia Bulldogs battle the Michigan State Spartans in the Capital One Bowl. That’s just enough time to read
“The Mars You Have in Me” (1992), a short story by Terry Dowling, one of Australia’s most respected writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror.

Here are the opening lines:

The only habitable area of Mars is situated very close to Latitude
25° 40', Longitude 130° 50', approximately nine hundred kilometres north-west of Adelaide, less than an hour's drive in from the new Stuart Highway.

The soil is red enough there, perfect for Robert J. Enright's purposes, so construction and landscaping costs were kept below
the originally-estimated 8.6 million figure. Old Enright built himself a length of canal straight out of the Martian stories of Bradbury and Burroughs (much of the money went on that slowly-flowing, carefully-reticulated re-cycling system), a sprawling Mars-style bungalow called Anness ...

Pictured above: “The Surface of Mars” (1949) by Chesley Bonestell