by Karen Manton
She pulled on jeans and a singlet top, and found her boots. The screen door opened with a little squeak. She crept over the planks and down the wooden steps which wobbled under her feet, soft with hidden rot. Joel’s friend Gabe had lit a clearing fire around the shack the month before. You’d need a compass to find the shack otherwise, Joel said, the gamba was that thick.
She walked to the edge of the hill. On her right four ghost gums stood quiet. Below her was a rocky amphitheatre where cycads waited like actors cast under a spell. Their trunks were black, their hair a spill of green fronds. She stepped down among them. From there the land fell steeply to an outcrop of boulders. They were gentle shadows obscuring the world below. She could hear the creek running through that hidden valley. Above it wisps of mist trailed where cool and warm air mingled. On the other side of the valley hills rose in shadow curves lined with trees. There was a dim light between their trunks. They stood slightly apart, like people. Everything ended with the giant arm of an escarpment. Pale blue light spread up in an arc above it, pushing back the night.
The place she’d come from felt so far off it mightn’t exist, with its pale dune grasses, the green-purple melt of waves, the wind’s icy sting.
‘We’re going north,’ she’d told the children. ‘For an adventure.’
They’d paused in their game to stare at her, eyes bright under their beanies.
Greta heard a faint rustle, a throaty grunt. Her eyes darted to the noise. A wild pig was just a few metres from her, beside a boulder. She froze. Those curved tusks could cleave her in two. The pig snorted, and then a skid in the dirt, a clatter of stones and it charged downhill through the gamba. Greta stayed rooted to the ground, unable to move.
Two black cockatoos glided past. Their wing beat was slow, and slow too their raucous screech, Why, why have you come here?
They took the mist with them. A fierce line of orange seared the top of the ridge.
The hot eye of the sun appeared. The shack and the water tank flared with light. Griffin flung open the front screen door, binoculars around his neck, and balanced his way across the plank to the steps. Raffy came after him. They paused at a dome-shaped pizza oven to the side of the shack. Greta watched them go to the open shed behind, where a red ute and a quad bike were parked, and a rusted bedframe leaned against a stack of tyres. Nearby they found an old rail freight van, red with small rectangular windows up high. The four palm trees behind it gave a tropical postcard look. Griffin tried the door but it wouldn’t open. A stately banyan tree caught their attention next. It was further away from the shack, and closer to the slope downhill, with a sprawling network of branches and aerial roots. A shout went up about the platform above them and a ladder nailed to the trunk.
A couple of thumps on the water tank made her turn to see Joel. He smiled and came over, settling his hat with one hand.
‘Toby and I’ll start up the bore and go for a drive, check out which fences are left.’
‘I don’t know how you’ll find the fences,’ Greta murmured, ‘with all this grass.’
‘Gabe could only do so much.’
A firebreak had been burned around the shack, up to the homestead on one side and as far as the banyan tree on the other, and from there down to the creek. Patches either side of the track out to the road had also been burned, she remembered from last night. But the slope down to the outcrop and the lake was a sea of grass, as was the paddock behind the homestead, and the land beyond. They were hemmed in. One live match was all it would take.
‘Gabe’s lent us a generator for now.’ His fingers lifted a damp strand of hair from her cheek. ‘I’ll start it up later, for the fan in the afternoon.’
She’d noticed a pedestal fan in the pantry alcove and wondered if it worked.
Two sharp points jabbed her back. Toby laughed when she turned, and held out a forked stick.
‘Your mother was just looking for that,’ said Joel. ‘For her water-divining. In case we have to sink a new bore.’
‘You need two pieces of wire for that.’ Toby had all the facts.
‘Yes, but your mother’s magic. She finds water with a two-pronged stick.’
Toby solemnly passed the stick to her. He wore the same style leather boots and long-sleeved work shirt as Joel, and a new broadbrimmed hat.
Joel gave Greta’s black plait a tug and called Toby to help unhook the trailer from the four-wheel drive. They then drove away with a toot of the horn.
‘Muuuuum!’ shouted Raffy from the banyan tree.
She turned to see his hopping figure on the platform.
‘Griffin’s gone off down that hill!’ He pointed.
Griffin. The child who must be followed.
They went down from the banyan tree into a valley of cycads, punctuated with rocks. The males had cone-shaped heads pointing fierce to the sun, the females wore necklaces of shining green and bronze baubles. They fascinated Greta, these ancient plants. She’d been reading about them. Raffy called her over to one of the rough, woody trunks with its crosshatch pattern.
‘It’s like fossilised reptile skin.’ He put her hand against it.
Rings scarred the bark at intervals, leaf scars where a new head of fronds had sprouted after fire. Her finger traced one of the memory lines.
Raffy crouched to pick up burned cycad nuts, then hurried off again, faster now, boots skidding on little stones. Greta tried to keep up. The harsh sunlight made her squint. She wished she’d grabbed her hat and a sensible shirt. The woolly butt trees gave no shade. Their leaf shadows dappled the ground, shoals of fish flickering. Everywhere was a repetition of the same plants and rocks. There were no landmarks, no reference points. No escape from the sun.
She picked up her pace after that vagrant Griffin. He was a notorious wanderer, disappearing to chase a lizard or spy on a bird.
The sound of the creek grew louder, she glimpsed it between trees below.
‘He’s gone,’ panted Raffy.
‘Not to worry.’ Greta held out her forked stick. ‘I have my diviner. It’s multipurpose, for water and for children.’ She closed her eyes and pointed it downhill.
A shout answered.
‘It works!’ Raffy exclaimed.
Griffin was below them, up to his knees in bright green grass. He had no feet, only legs. Behind him loomed seven black, curvacious boulders. Raffy ran to his brother and they both disappeared.
Greta hurried after them. The rocks were wise, ancient souls, weathering the eons. Among them pandanus palms stood guard, with their heads of spiky, double-edged sword fronds and bright orange fruits. Their trunks were whipped with black scorch marks.
‘There’s a spring under me,’ Griffin announced, feet prodding the damp earth.
A whistling kite passed over them and trilled.
Raffy was wide-eyed, taking in the boulders, the bird above, the pandanus. He’d woken up in a strange chamber, in a fairytale he’d never read. He tiptoed away to avoid disturbing a sleeping giant. Griffin followed him, leaving Greta alone.
She too felt unsure of this place; these bodies of stone that might not want visitors. She could almost hear them breathing. They knew something.
There was a shuffling behind one of the boulders, footsteps. She edged around to see what was there. Nothing. Just a fallen branch with grey twigs as slender as birds’ necks and knots in the wood for eyes.
The kite whistled again.
Greta left the silence of the boulders and walked towards her children’s voices. They were following the creek where the water tumbled between copper-coloured rocks and over skinny tree roots. On either side great swathes of grass had been flattened by wet season waters and dried all facing one direction.
‘What’s this?’ Griffin shouted from up ahead.
He was standing on a rock mid-stream, tugging at dreadlocks of dead fronds and grass twisted around the forked branch of a young paperbark tree.
‘Careful,’ warned Greta, uncertain of what he might pull loose. Raffy tr
ied to join his brother, but Griffin elbowed him away. ‘I’ve nearly got it!’
He dragged it free at last, a triangle of twigs with five wire strings dangling down, each one knotted with slivers of bone and fine twists of metal.
‘Chimes!’ He held out his find, triumphant.
‘Someone’s made them,’ Raffy said.
‘Someone has,’ Greta agreed.
The bones were tiny, as from a little bird. Likewise, the metallic objects were petite, crafted from thin nails, screws, the miniature spring of a discarded toy. They made no recognisable shape, sign or animal, though Raffy searched for one.
‘It’s a secret code.’ Griffin passed the chimes to his mother and moved on.
‘The mother carries everything,’ Raffy comforted her, and hurried after his brother.
They couldn’t go far, stopped by a fence that continued across the creek. A metal flap hung from the lowest wire, above the water, to stop debris dragging on the fence in the wet season, and animals crawling underneath in the dry. On the bank opposite, wild dog skins stretched along the neighbour’s barbed-wire fence with a sign: Keep Out! Trespassers will be Shot!
Rusted forty-four-gallon drums were lined up beside the sign, each painted with white letters. Griffin sounded out the message. This—is—my—land—fucker!
‘Look at those strange cows,’ pointed Raffy as skinny Brahmin cattle walked in a weary line behind the fence.
‘Not as strange as these stone igloos.’
Griffin passed Greta the binoculars and pointed up the slope behind the cows. A stone, domed structure sharpened into view. Two more were nearby. The stones were painted white. The next one she found had chicken wire across the front.
‘I think they’re cages,’ she said.
‘There’s a bridge here!’ Raffy called them back to the fence on their bank.
He’d found an inviting gap in the barbed wire. Beyond it was a wooden footbridge across a pool of dark water fed by the creek. Both the bridge and the water disappeared into a rainforest of paperbarks, fig trees, pandanus and vines.
‘Can we cross it?’ asked Raffy.
‘Not today,’ said Greta, noting rotten, sagging planks.
A ta-ta lizard waved, as if beckoning them across.
‘Whose land is it, anyway?’ Griffin asked.
‘It’s part of this property,’ she told him, and then wondered. It was a question, after the sign over the creek.
‘No-man’s-land,’ piped up Raffy.
‘There’s no such thing as no-man’s-land,’ said Griffin. ‘Aboriginal people lived here, didn’t they, Mum?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
Her fingers held the wire between the barbs.
‘White people took it,’ Griffin announced.
‘We’re white,’ said Raffy.
No escaping it, thought Greta.
Griffin kicked a stone under the last rung of wire, forcing it from the stubborn earth. ‘Well, I wish we weren’t.’
‘Me too,’ added Raffy, with a quick glance to his mother.
She had no words for them. Her fingers tapped the wire. ‘Come on, let’s go back to the house.’ She cast a look across to the fence with the dog skins and the warning.
As the boys charged ahead, Greta hung back at the gap in the fence. If she were alone, she’d duck through and cross that little bridge into the dark thicket of vine and paperbarks to snatch a glimpse at whatever lay beyond. The footbridge glowed in the sunlight. Everything was very still. Only the creek moved, flowing on, on, into the next world.
As they came over the brow of the hill towards the shack, Greta saw Joel standing where she’d been at sunrise. She wasn’t sure if he was looking out over the unkempt property with apprehension or resignation. Something had shifted since their arrival in the dark. He was not at ease.
In the distance, the escarpment was the burnished answer to his gaze. She drew near to him, but he pulled away.
‘I want to show you something.’
He called the children to the four-wheel drive. Greta hung the chimes from a tap at the side of the verandah. Toby leaned out the car window and yelled for her to hurry.
The boys’ voices and bodies were all song and scruffy pushing and pulling as Joel drove out to the road. The mystery they had entered the night before under that swollen moon was gone. Dust from the track rose up and dulled the landscape in a brown-grey light.
Out on the sealed road Joel picked up speed. Trees rushed past backwards. The children yelled to feel the wind through their hair. The car rattled over the bridge. In daylight Greta could see the dwindling creek, the shrunken waterhole shaded by paperbarks.
‘We saw the neighbour’s fence down at the creek, seems he won’t want us visiting.’
‘Trapper,’ said Joel. ‘Been there forever. His father and mine hated each other.’
They went over the floodwater crossing. Not far on, Joel braked and turned onto an unmarked track. A rock flicked up under the chassis and made a bang loud enough to silence the children.
‘We’re at the bottom of the hill in front of the homestead now,’ Joel said, driving carefully through the bush until he came to a clearing and a dam.
The water shimmered. The sides were steep, stony red earth for the most part, except for one spot where a cluster of boulders led up from the water to the bank. They’d be the only way out if you fell in, thought Greta.
Joel turned to face the three in the back seat.
‘See this water?’
The children nodded.
‘This is the lake. It’s poison.’
They stared back at him, quiet.
‘Don’t ever swim in it or drink it.’
The children dared to look at the lake again.
‘I’m showing it to you so you know.’
He turned from them to gaze out across the still expanse of water.
‘Pretty small for a lake,’ Toby observed.
‘It was a small quarry once,’ said Joel. ‘And then a dump for mining equipment. Machinery, rubbish. Those forty-four-gallon drums are leaking chemicals. That’s where the poison comes from.’
‘Why’d you call it the lake?’
Joel shrugged. ‘We just did. Used to punt around it on our raft.’
The children looked across the water and then back at Joel with new respect—their father, who’d grown up near a poison lake.
‘You’re never to come here alone,’ Joel continued. ‘Not through our land, not any other way. Always with an adult. Never only kids. Got it?’
They nodded.
‘You can see all the way to the bottom of this water because of those toxins,’ he said. ‘And what you’ll see is a whole lot of bones. In the wet season the water level rises enough for an animal to drink from it. Most seem to know it’s poison and leave it alone, but every now and then one makes a mistake.’
Joel shifted to point in the opposite direction, to a long unused track. The grasses almost hid it. ‘The old meatworks is down that way. And you don’t go there either, you understand?’
The children nodded again. They were thinking of the bones, Greta knew.
A gentle breeze ruffled the water’s surface. The silver arms of a drowned tree begged the sky for mercy.
‘There it is then,’ said Joel. ‘That’s the lake.’
3
It followed Greta, the poison water. Now she’d seen it, she couldn’t shake the image. It lingered with her through the night and was there in the morning, waiting. It mixed with the humid air and pressed in on her. Like the clouds rising behind the escarpment and travelling towards the shack, giant messengers with pending news.
To distract herself she focused on arranging the shack. Home is where the heart is, she always told her boys. Home is anywhere you make it.
She whispered it now as she rolled up the swags and stood them by the couch, fat and upright; and while she set up the cast-iron stove, with the coffee pot sitting on top, sporting its slightly melted handle. The she
lves under the bench and in the pantry were covered in dust and termite wings and gecko dirt. She wiped them all down. Raffy followed her to line up enamel cups and plates. Joel and the other two boys brought in boxes of gear and clothing from the trailer, and then they all looked for besser blocks and planks by the open shed to make shelves.
‘One shelf each,’ Greta told them.
Raffy claimed the top one with his T-rex. Toby put his juggling balls, magic tricks and diabolo underneath. Next was Griffin’s world, with his bird book, binoculars and a copy of Journey to the Centre of the Earth, which Joel was reading to them. She and Joel would share the last shelf. She took up half with her jewellery-making and bead boxes. A couple of shops on the east coast sold her necklaces, earrings and bracelets on consignment, and she sometimes took a stall at a local market. Keep the boat afloat, that’s what the beads were about.
On either side of the shelves she stacked milk crates, one for each person’s clothing.
‘This room has shrunk,’ Raffy noted.
She laughed. ‘It’ll be smaller again when we pick up the fridge and some furniture.’ They would be driving up to Darwin the next day to pick up the second-hand deals she’d found online, and shop for food and building supplies. ‘We’ll have to hurry up and finish that verandah.’
Raffy sang to himself as he arranged new treasures on the louvres by the front door. A bright green feather, stones glinting mica, a kapok pod oozing white fluff.
‘I know what you might like,’ she said, and slit open the masking tape across a box.
‘What did it say?’ asked Raffy, pointing to the black texta letters she’d sliced through.
‘Fishermans Creek.’
‘A box from where you grew up.’ He kneeled beside her, ready to be fascinated.
She took out a rolled kilim and three embroidered stockings in unopened cellophane packets. Her aunt had sent them one Christmas when she was a child. They’d been put in a cupboard and forgotten.
‘Here.’ She handed him a jar of shells. ‘You could put these on the louvres too.’
