Visitor, p.10
Visitor, page 10
Finally, in late evening light, the hillsides glowing an intense blue, they arrive at the Arltunga Bush Hotel. A booked cabin with a hot shower awaits them.
Mark carries a large slab of meat to the hotel manager, a good friend. He’s back in a minute. “We’re expected for dinner and drinks on them, in return for the meat.”
They shower, dress and go into the bar. Dinner is homemade bush tomato flavoured sausages along with a slab of roast meat, said to be camel, and vegetables. Their glasses are endlessly full, and the cheer flows.
This is the first time she’s seen Mark among friends; these people greet him as someone they know. He greets them back, and they all laugh and joke together, always making Susan feel welcomed and included too.
After dinner a guitar is found and country songs are sung: mining songs, stockman songs, songs about the country and its people. Songs by people called Slim Whitman and Slim Dusty. ‘A pub with no beer’, ‘Leave him in the long yard’. Susan tries her best to sing along. This is the Australian bush of legend. She loves seeing Mark fully in his element, amongst his friends.
Sometime after midnight, last drinks then stumps are called. She and Mark walk, arm in arm, to their cabin. Their lovemaking is perfunctory, both full of drink, and they’re soon asleep. She lies cuddled into him and feels even closer than before.
In the morning they eat a cooked breakfast served in the pub. After many backslapping farewells, they’re on their way, heading across some of the biggest mountains she’s seen so far.
They stop for a cup of tea at a little mine that ekes out a living from the rocky hills and their minerals. As they pull up two burly blokes come out of a tin shed that seems to serve as a house. One calls out to Mark. “Hey, stranger, long time, no see, where you been?”
“Off travelling, a trip to another desert on the other side of the ocean. It’s good to be back. Let me introduce you to my friend, Susan. She’s out from England to see this God forsaken place. God only knows why.
“Susan, I’d like you to meet Vladimir and Goran, Serbian brothers, my long-standing friends. They hope to get rich here someday.”
Susan puts her own hand into each man’s battle scarred one. She smiles and says, “Hello,” to each in turn.
“I’ve got something for you,” Mark continues. “I hope you’ve got something for me.” He passes a slab of beef to the grateful miners.
They hang the meat in a nearby scrawny mulga tree.
Mark points at the slab. “It will hang and dry over several days, up to a week. With a dry outside crust, it will keep and not spoil. The flavour and tenderness will improve, day after day, until it melts in your mouth.”
They all sit around a battered table under the shade of the tin roof, which extends out from the side of the house, sipping tea. Slices of a honeyed cake, not unlike baklava, are passed around.
It seems that Vlad is the business man, as, after a while, he says to Mark, “I have something to show you. I think you will really like it.”
Mark looks to Goran. “How about you take Susan for a tour into the workings while Vlad and I do business.”
Goran leads Susan to a shaft cut into the side of the hill. He’s a grizzled bull of a man, with little English, but a friendly manner. He shows her how they prop the walls and chip into the shiny seams. He brings her to a seam that holds possible gemstones. Pointing his torch, to capture glints and reflections, he shows her how to look for the colour.
Susan looks back to the outside and sees Mark deep in conversation with Vladimir. She sees him open a case to show Mark something. It seems to interest him greatly. He’s totally absorbed. Goran notices her looking back. “Maybe they trade. Mark only buys the best.”
Susan finds the tour interesting, but now appreciates what backbreaking work it must be. They have some mechanical equipment, but a lot seems to depend on a pick and a shovel in a dark dusty hole, working in strange shadows cast from the electric bulbs. Still, she can sense Goran’s excitement as he tells her how, on rare occasions, they find fantastic stones hidden amongst all the muck.
When they return Mark and Vladamir are drinking another cup of tea, having concluded whatever their business transactions were.
Mark and Susan wish them goodbye and drive on. The roads are rough and stony, and the mountains are steep. In places the road is little more than wheel tracks over the rocks creeping around the sides of huge hills. The side slope makes Susan nervous, knowing where they’ll end up if they lose control, but Mark is concentrating hard and seems in his element, fully confident. His great confidence allows her to relax and trust herself to his care.
Sometimes he drives in low gear creeping over broken ground as the engine chugs, other times they come across flat valley floors, where he accelerates and goes up through the gears. They traverse broken-up sections of washed-out creek crossings, picking their way around rocks, holes and obstacles. It seems very few people ever come this way.
Mark is knowledgeable about the country and its geology, giving her a running commentary as they go. Thanks to him she’s gaining a unique view of this country of childhood stories and imagination; it’s becoming ever more real and fascinating as they drive on.
They see plenty of huge bullocks, along with scrub bulls. Mark explains that these are owned by the station they’re driving through. The cattle are like a piggy bank full of thousand-dollar notes. It can be opened when money is needed. Now, when times and seasons are good, these backcountry cattle are left alone to grow big and fat. When dry times come again this four-footed gold will be turned into cash.
There are also lots of brumbies, proud stallions. With their necks arched and ears laid back, they herd and harass their broods of mares. They spy two brumby groups meeting near a waterhole. The stallions’ rear and bare their teeth in threat. One backs away, herding his mares. The victor gallops behind him for a few seconds biting at his rump. But he quickly returns to his own harem, perhaps fearful that another will steal them away.
Around lunchtime they come to a place where a soak runs out of the side of a hill. Hoof marks indicate recent cattle and horse use, but just now they share the place with multitudes of little zebra finches and an occasional iridescent parrot.
Mark lights another fire of dried mulga, which burns fiercely. As it burns down he takes a heavy, black metal plate, about a foot long, from beside a spare wheel. “It’s my mobile barbeque,” he explains. He slices two, inch thick slabs from yesterday’s bullock meat, and puts them on the grill, along with half a kidney and a liberal sprinkling of salt.
The scent of the meat is delicious. Marks serves it on a slice of bread with pickles. The meat is rich flavoured, tender, best restaurant quality.
“Not bad, but it would improve more if hung it for at least three more days.”
Susan laughs. “You’re getting way too fussy.”
In the mid-afternoon they emerge from the mountains onto a wide, open grass plain.
“Yambah Station. It’s one of the best blocks in the Alice,” Mark says.
They’re heading for Barrow Creek pub where, that night, a bush band is supposed to be playing. It’s over 200 kilometres away, so they have a quick drink from the waterbag then go on.
Two and a half hours later, with late afternoon drifting towards dusk, they come around a bend and, alongside low rocky hills, see a sign pointing to Barrow Creek Hotel.
The rooms are booked out, but many people are camped out on the flat ground nearby, come from the stations and aboriginal camps to enjoy the night. Mark drives to one side and rolls out their swag. Half the population is aboriginal. This is Susan’s first introduction to these people who all seem to know Mark well.
Mark explains he has done a lot of work around here over the last decade, mining work, station work, building work in these aboriginal communities: sinking bores, putting up windmills, fixing houses and anything else needed. These people have become his friends.
He calls to an older man named Johnnie, who he tells Susan is a tribal elder. “Hey, Johnnie, I’ve got something for you.”
Johnnie walks over and shakes Mark’s hand. Mark turns to Susan and says, “Allow me to introduce you to an elder from the Kaytetye people; they are the people who belong to this place. And Johnnie is their best hunter, better than anyone I know at tracking a kangaroo.”
Susan shakes his hand and smiles. “Hello, Johnnie. Pleased to meet you. I’m Susan.”
“Very nice to meet you, Missus Susan.”
Mark goes to the back of the truck. Lifting out a piece of meat he offers it to Johnnie. “This one good bullock, Johnnie. Him eating parakeelya, out on edge of desert country. You know, that other side Arltunga. You take this one for your dinner. Pay back for that kangaroo you gave me last year.”
With a broad smile and gesticulating thanks Johnnie carries it off. He shows it to others in his camp who wave their thanks.
Over near the pub the band is warming up, playing reels and jigs. A few bare-footed aboriginal girls dance in the dust. Alongside are several cut down metal drums, like the ones used on the farm for fuel, with roaring fires burning inside them to ward off the evening chill. Most people are drinking beer, though a few old-timers can be seen with their rum bottles and pannikins. A barbeque, with steak, sausages and onions, along with piles of buttered bread, coleslaw and tomato sauce is being cooked up. Someone says the price is a donation to The Flying Doctor Service.
Groups are mingling, coming and going, warming up for the evening dancing. All at once the band strikes up a jig, and the caller tells everyone to put down their drinks and join in for the first dance. He leads them slowly through their moves at first, and then they’re on their own. The music gets faster and faster and most people join in and keep up. When the song is over there are cheers and calls of, “More! More!”
Susan dances with Mark, but sometimes other men seek her out. Eventually a supper break is called, and weary legs rested, before the band resumes for their final bracket. It’s a great night, carried along by the music and the dancing in the dust.
In the late-late night only a few remain, hunched around the fires. Mark, deep in tales with a couple old-timers over a bottle of rum, sits amongst them around a fire.
Susan stays on a while, but finally signals to Mark that she’s off to bed. She yawns as she walks to their campsite and crawls into their swag. This is the first time she’s gone to bed alone. While part of her misses Mark’s strong, warm body, she’s also content lying out in the incredible star filled night, as the fires slowly gutter and die away. The only noise is a distant hum of a diesel generator and a mutter of soft conversation. A bright shooting star flashes across her vision. She’s happy in this remote but amazing place.
She wakes in the early dawn. Mark is lying beside her, fully dressed and snoring quietly. As the dawn lights the sky she goes to the temporary shower block and washes herself, shivering in the cold. She walks back, gazing at the eastern sky. It is just another desert sunrise, but the light captivates her, golden lance shafts spearing up from the horizon. Far above, at the outer edges of the world, they light fine filaments of clouds in endless hues of shifting pastel pinks. Extraordinary light, extraordinary colour, everyday desert ordinariness.
Mark sleeps on; she can smell rum on him now she’s washed. She cuddles into him in the bed, content to be with him, enjoying their small window of time together. The sun is a hand width above the horizon when Mark stirs. As he opens bleary eyes he becomes aware of her.
“You look so fresh and pretty,” he says sleepily, as he admires her freshly washed face. “Must be time now to give a man his pleasure.”
“But, Mark, I’m dressed; it’s daylight. All these people will see us.”
He reaches out and pulls the canvas swag flap over their heads. “Not now, they won’t.” He directs her hand to his hardness.
This lovemaking has an illicit thrill, with the noises of people waking up and moving around them. This is their cave of delight, under the shelter of the canvass. She knows this strange man is taking over and consuming her life. It is beyond any power she has to stop it.
Chapter 8 – The Big Waterhole – Day 22
An hour later Mark goes off to shower and shave. They eat breakfast together, this time steak and eggs at the hotel bar. Mark leaves her there, saying he’s off to top up the fuel tanks and give the vehicle another careful check over. They’ll be cutting though some rough country to the east, where they’ll camp overnight at a big waterhole, before heading up into the Gulf, leaving the desert behind for tropical scenery, weather and fishing. It is now mid-August, the end of Australia’s winter, but it’s still cold here. Mark says the weather will warm up fast as they travel north.
Susan sits at the bar and looks around. There is a collection of curios spread over the walls. Lots of photos of people, some recent, some decades old—mostly station people and truckies, but some who look like tourists and also many aboriginal people.
Susan’s attention is drawn to an old newspaper story that someone has pinned up titled: ‘Revisiting the site of the Coniston Massacre’.
Fifty miles from here is a place called Brooks Soak, which it says is the site of the last big aboriginal massacre in Australia. It was led by the policeman who lived here at Barrow Creek. She’s heard of aboriginal massacres in the 1800s, but this wasn’t back then; it was after the First World War. By that time, she thought countries like Australia had moved past a frontier mentality to become places with laws and consequences. But this happened within the lifetime of her own extended family; her grandparents and many other people she has known were alive then.
As she reads the journalist’s story of two decades prior, she realises this journalist actually talked to people who had lived through this time, both children from the stations around who had known the perpetrators, and relatives of the aboriginal victims—old people now. These were survivors from Coniston’s community who had been there, felt the terror and seen what happened as dozens of their brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, uncles and aunts were rounded up and butchered like cattle.
It was payback for the death of one white dingo trapper, who’d stolen from his killer. Estimates were that at least sixty, and probably over a hundred, men, women and children were butchered. What followed was a travesty of justice. At first no action was taken but, following heated demands from other parts of Australia and around the world, the ringleaders were taken to Darwin for trial, only to be acquitted. The local jury considered that the actions taken by these ‘upstanding citizens’ were justified.
It’s shocking to discover this callous event so close to here, a dark underbelly of the country, beautiful outside in its rugged remoteness; this brutality lies just below the sunlit surface. Susan shivers, glad this happened in another time and is now passing from human experience, or at least from the places and experiences she knows.
Susan walks to the other side of the room to read more clippings. Here she see’s something more recent, a story of a girl who went missing almost a year ago, last seen in Adelaide, but believed to be heading for Alice Springs and perhaps further north. It’s a copy of a standard missing person’s photo with contact details for the Northern Territory Police. The quality is poor, like a faded photocopy on which somebody has spilled a beer, making the ink run, and gathering dirt and other muck. The woman’s name is almost illegible. It ends in a smudged ‘o’ or ‘e’ then an ‘na’ –that’s all she can read, perhaps Lena or Shona or something like that. But the image of the woman’s face is still quite clear.
As she looks she gets a shock. The woman has dark hair and an expression which could be herself from a few years ago, an enigmatic half smile. For an instant she feels like she’s looking at her vanished self, but it can’t be real. It scares her. She walks over to the bar to get a drink, something to calm her nerves.
As she stands, musing, in this black mind space, Mark appears alongside her. She points to the first newspaper article, just to her side, the one of Coniston Massacre. “Did you know about this?”
“Of course. I’ve worked there. Some of those who lived it told me.”
“Isn’t it awful that it could still happen within the lifetime of these people?”
He shrugs, looking a bit perplexed, “Why do you find it surprising? Out here life is cheap, death is easy, and the pretence of civilisation is thin. It’s how it is in most places around the world and always will be. For the dead it’s no big deal: one minute alive, the next gone. But the living must protect themselves, take their own retribution. I would have put my own bullet into that policeman and each of his mates, then dumped their bodies in the far out desert where no one would find them. I wouldn’t have sent them away hoping for justice. Better to kill bad bastards than pretend justice can be done by others.”
There is something ruthless in his voice. His words don’t sound like idle talk; she senses Mark really would have done the killing himself if he thought it was needed. It would have been done with no compunction and no questions asked. Still, Susan can’t disagree that his way would have served justice better for these people.
She thinks of pointing out the picture of the missing person, asking him if he thinks it looks like her. But there is something dark and ugly in his manner which scares her. She pushes it out of her mind.
Now she doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. She doesn’t want her image of Mark, so kind and gentle to her, being mixed with such brutality. All those days Susan has spent with him out here have been filled with a bright sunlight. She doesn’t want darkness intruding and spoiling it.
“You’re probably right, better not to think of it anymore,” she says, flashing him a smile and walking away.
It’s mid-morning before they’re away, and the sun is well up. Leaving with them are many other late risers from the previous night of revelry, now much subdued.
