“I wish you wouldn’t just blow through like this,” Mrs. Barnes said. “I hardly get used to seeing Ollie and then he’s gone again.” She swatted his backside and grinned with gold-rimmed molars. Ned watched her, amused. There was a bit of the pirate about her, and it wouldn’t have surprised him to learn that Ollie was descended from the late Captain Cook’s privateering stock.
Suzanne handed Mrs. Barnes a blue aerogramme. “Would you mind posting this for me? It’s to my brother Hal back in the States.”
“No problem, luv.” Mrs. Barnes gave Suzanne a final hug and pocketed the letter. Ned let his breath out. He truly hoped they would all be standing here like this in the sunlit garden with Ollie’s mum sometime next week.
* * *
By ten o’clock, they were rumbling along a fairly well-traveled road toward a town called Lakeland that Ollie described as a service town, which meant a place where they could buy petrol, tinned food, and ice, and replenish their water supply. It would be their last stop along the Peninsular Development Road, which led toward an even smaller service townlet called Laura, but Ollie planned to drive them off into the bush before they got that far.
When they pulled into Lakeland, Ollie parked the Land Rover in the shade of a large mango tree just off the road.
“Alrighty, mate, let’s have a look at that drawing of yours again.”
Ned rummaged in the zippered side pocket of his backpack and pulled out a folded sheet and gave it to Ollie, who flattened it out and studied it silently for a moment.
“You got me up a gum tree on this one,” he said, fingering Ned’s pencil sketch of the cleft in the side of a bluff with a unique grouping of boulders beside it and pooling water at its base. “I’ve never seen this particular formation in my rambles, but that’s not to say it ain’t there, ‘course. You’re certain it’s in this area, are you?”
Ned nodded. “The guy I was telling you about at the Foundation told me it looked like a bluff in the Outback where Aboriginal people once lived. He said the closest town was a place called Laura.”
Ollie scratched his head and replaced his hat. “Well, who am I to second-guess an old doctor-man, hey? Let’s see those two color ones.”
Ned unfolded the two watercolor paintings.
“Obviously, it’s a plateau at the top of a gorge, but which one I dunno. And where’d you say you got these directions?”
Ned hesitated. “From the person who wants the book illustrations. Sorry, he couldn’t give me names.”
“Tell you what,” said Ollie, handing the pages back to Ned. “I know where the major site clusters are, so I’ll take you to the closest one. It’s a couple of hours walk from a campsite I know about. If you’re lucky, we might even stumble onto your spot somewhere down river where there’s some high sandstone bluffs I haven’t explored yet. Understand, this area is riddled with sacred sites and ceremonial caves. Not too many people know about ‘em yet, far as I can tell, ‘cept for locals like the old stringybark fellas who showed me where to find them. The people who made those places have been gone so long nobody remembers who they were.”
“I’m sure this is the right area,” said Ned.
“And how d’yeh know that?” Ollie was looking at him through narrowed eyes from underneath the brim of his hat.
“It … feels right.”
“Well, yer the bloke’s paying the money, so if it feels right to you, we’re off.”
Ned shot a look at Suzanne in the back seat, but her mouth was set in a tight line and her eyes revealed nothing. He knew she was resigned to go along with him wherever this wild goose chase took them.
Ollie’s short-bodied Land Rover was loud and hot, and its stiff shocks registered every pothole and ripple in the dirt and gravel road heading away from Lakeland. It was a jolting, bumping ride that took some getting used to. Sitting in the front passenger seat, Ned gritted his teeth and endured it; he hoped that Suzanne, strapped in behind them, wasn’t too miserable.
In fact, she turned out to be a real trooper, as Ollie observed when they’d left the main road and turned onto a deeply rutted track that climbed up and down through rain-forest ferns that covered the steep embankments of the trail. Occasionally the narrow road opened out into stands of native bamboo higher than a man's head. Melaleuca filled the banks of creeks, their twisted misshapen trunks hemming in the Rover and scraping against its roof as it splashed through shallow watercourses. Often one side of the track would be washed out lower than the other so that the Rover leaned precariously, its tires chewing rocks and damp earth before righting itself again.
They crossed their first seriously flooded section of road by early afternoon.
With his wide-brimmed felt hat crammed tightly down on his head, Ollie charged cheerfully into the narrow stretch of tea-colored water. It crossed the rough track that had been wandering through eucalyptus trees and a vine thicket understory.
“Hullo,” he said, “bit deeper than it looks,” as water curled past the tops of the wheel wells. The Rover climbed out of the pool none the worse for wear and lumbered forward, its oversized tires grabbing at the rocks and sand of the makeshift road.
“That was fun,” he said, grinning at Ned. “Maybe we won’t have to run a banker.”
“Do what?” Suzanne yelped from the back seat.
“Ford a flooded river. Still a bit early into the Wet, not too much rainwater fillin’ the rivers yet. We could get lucky.”
“I thought you said these sites you wanted to show us were accessible,” Ned said, between jolts.
“They are, mate, but you gotta be willing to do a bit of work to get there. It’s not like it’s a national park or anything.”
“Who exactly owns this land where the sites are?” Ned asked. “Are we going to be trespassing?”
“Old cattle station,” Ollie responded. “Nobody on it nowadays that I know of. Dunno who owns it, on paper. The Aboriginals who had it first got killed off and driven away during the gold rush back in the last century. I got some bushie friends who showed me a couple of sites, and then I found more on my own. Fulla sandstone shelters and caves with rock art like you’re looking for—sorcery stuff,” he said, taking his eyes off the narrow track and looking at Ned with an unreadable expression.
“Good.” Ned stared back at him. “That’s what I’m after. Getting us there is up to you.”
“Righto!” Ollie gunned the engine, propelling the Rover with a leap forward and careening around a sharp bend in the track.
They drove in much the same manner for over an hour, while Ollie kept his eye on the Rover’s odometer and a large compass affixed to the dashboard.
“Should be coming up on a river crossing soon,” he said, breaking the silence. “Let’s see what we get.”
He navigated the Rover up a slight rise thick with myrtles, then lurched sharply down and skidded to a stop. A narrow log bridge slightly wider than a four-wheel-drive vehicle stretched over the swollen river, but most of its planks and support trestles were below the surface of the water. As Ollie got out and walked down to the pebble-strewn waterline, Ned reached back to take Suzanne’s hand.
“He’ll figure something out, don’t worry.”
“I just hope we don’t have to swim across,” she said, giving him a half-smile. “Isn’t Australia supposed to be croc-infested?”
“Yeah,” said Ned, looking back at the river. He was reminded of rivers and ponds near his mother’s homestead that you wouldn’t go swimming in on a bet. He’d actually confronted a small gator crossing a trail in the river floodplain when he was a child. It had taken one look at him and galloped off into the titi as fast as its stubby bent legs would carry it. He’d laughed at the time about how it had been more frightened of him than the reverse, but remembering that event now, he wondered what it had really seen when it looked at him with those yellow eyes.
They watched as Ollie sat down on a nearby boulder and took off his boots and socks. Then he stepped onto the first couple o
f logs where the water was even with the bridge mounts. The further out he walked, the deeper the water rose as the bridge sloped downward, up to his ankles and then to mid-calf. He waded out to the middle of the river and turned around. The water was nearly knee-high and the bridge itself was completely invisible. Ned watched him coming back toward them, trying to read the expression on his face.
“I think we can have a go,” he said, picking up his socks and boots, and sitting sideways on the driver’s seat to put them back on. “But I need one of you to walk out ahead of me so I don’t run off the edge. If you look down, you can see the bridge under the water. All you have to do is walk backwards down the center of the span and keep a watch on my tires. Are you game?”
“I’ll do it,” Ned said, unlacing his desert boots.
“Are there crocs in the water?” Suzanne asked.
“Could be, and snakes, too, so look sharp,” Ollie said.
Ned put his shoes in the passenger seat and walked down to the river. He stopped for a moment and considered the dark water swirling under and over the structure, then waded out onto the bridge. The sodden logs were slippery, and not as close together as he’d like, but he forced himself to look down. Indeed, like a ghostly image, the bridge was visible under his feet. He walked out a bit further and then turned to face the Land Rover. Ollie engaged the clutch and eased forward, tires slipping a little on the muddy incline of the bank. Ned held his breath until the front wheels were firmly on the bridge. Ollie gave him a thumbs-up and began inching forward. Ned began to back up slowly, keeping his footing dead-center of the track so Ollie could line the Rover up in a straight shot across.
The seconds ticked away in slow motion as Ned backed carefully over the bridge. Flies swarmed his sweating face, but he ignored them. At the midpoint, water was licking the Rover’s undercarriage, but it was clear Ollie’s nerves were made of stainless steel as he kept the vehicle moving at a steady crawl. Ned gripped the bridge with his toes and felt a flood of relief as the water level against his legs began to drop. Then he saw an undulating shape below, darker than the blue-brown water, and knew at once that it wasn’t a crocodile.
The shock was so sudden that he nearly lost his footing. Slipping to his knees, he grabbed the edge of the bridge and hung there a moment, not daring to breathe. He could see the serpent’s head angled up toward him and saw immediately that it wasn’t his taipan guardian. It whipped the water just below his feet and sank out of sight.
Ned’s heart was beating so hard his chest was in pain, but he stood up, regained his footing, and continued to walk backwards, feeling the water drop to his ankles, and then at last he was on the solid bank. The Rover followed on, and Ned stepped out of the way as it clawed at the bank, digging in for a heartstopping moment, and then catching on rock beneath the sand and jumping forward a few yards. Soon they were all standing at the top of the bank, gasping and soaked in sweat, looking back at the submerged crossing.
“Good onya, mate!” Ollie exclaimed in a flash of teeth, white against his flushed face. He slapped Ned on the back and went to inspect the Rover.
Suzanne clung to Ned, smiling, but visibly shaken. He put his arm around her shoulders. “You all right?”
She nodded, mute.
“Snake under the water, right by my foot,” he said.
Suzanne tightened her grip on his arm. “So that’s why you nearly fell,” she said. “We thought you’d tripped.”
“It showed itself to me, deliberately.”
“A dangerous place …” said Suzanne. “What’ll we do if we can’t find it?”
He held her close, in spite of the heat. “I honestly don’t know.”
* * *
They were driving through a low open woodland area toward dryer territory now, the uneven ground covered in waves of prickly spinifex and saltbrush. Stands of a type of gum tree Ollie identified as eucalyptus bloodwood were thick amid patches of kangaroo grass.
“Campsite’s not far off now,” he said jovially, the river crossing long forgotten. “Soon as we get the tents set up, I’ll get a fire going and we’ll be feasting like kings, thanks to me mum. Reach back there and grab me a can, would you, luv?” he said over his shoulder to Suzanne. She opened the cooler and handed a beer to Ned, who popped the top and gave it to Ollie.
“You want one, too?” she asked.
Ned shook his head. He smiled to let her know everything was cool, but in truth he was feeling dicey. The skin on his arms and chest was stinging miserably, and it was impossible not to notice that the scale pattern had darkened. His vision went blurry and then cleared up a couple of times, and he was shivering slightly, not enough that anyone else would notice, but he could feel the tremors running along his synapses, vibrating in fast-forward.
They were climbing slightly now, leaving the grassy woodlands behind. Eventually they drove out from under the trees onto a broad savannah of waist-high grasses dotted with conical termite mounds, some nearly as tall as the Rover. It was then that Ned recognized in the spectacular vista overhead those eye-popping colors he’d painted in the surreal skies of his visions. A panorama of dark magentas and oranges and ultramarines filled his field of view from high overhead down to the horizon. He stared at it with a lump in his throat, understanding now that those outrageous skies he thought he’d made up were real.
“Found it!” Ollie announced, aiming the Rover at a copse of trees off to the left, their darker green promising a water source. It was a windswept canopy of myrtles, some up to thirty feet high with trunks two or three feet in diameter. An ancient sprawling fig with smooth light brown bark and round speckled fruit hanging in thick tags marked the entrance to the campsite.
Ollie maneuvered between gnarled trees so close together Ned was certain the door handles would catch on their knotty trunks. After a bit of twisting and turning along a barely visible path, they pulled out into a clearing big enough for the Rover and several good-sized tents. Ollie hopped out and stretched tall with a loud “Aaahh!”
Ned climbed down from the passenger seat and helped Suzanne unload their camping gear. With Ollie’s help, the tents were soon pitched, and he’d found the charcoal remains of a long-dead campfire. They all helped in gathering wood and brush, and Ollie had a fire blazing just as the sun was going down.
“Look,” he said, pointing toward the south. Flocks of bats were rising in spiraling drifts from the treetops, heading off to find food. The distant whumping of their wings came back over the glade.
“They’re huge,” Suzanne said, her head craned up to watch them flying in rough formation and then darting away on separate trajectories. “I’ve never seen bats that size.”
“Those are flying foxes. Fruit bats to you,” said Ollie. “They’re harmless to the likes of us. If you’re awake around sunup, you can catch ‘em comin’ back. There’s a nice little creek just beyond this rise that we can take a dip in, but I’d advise waiting until morning. Don’t want to step on something unpleasant in the dark.”
Ned flopped down on the ground beside the fire, tired to the bone. He lay on his back for a moment, and then propped himself up on one elbow, looking for Suzanne. She was unpacking their food and spreading Mrs. Barnes’s leftovers out on a plastic tablecloth. Ned had no appetite, but a great thirst invaded his throat.
“I’ll just brew us up some tea in the billy, and we’ll be all set,” said Ollie. He plonked what looked to Ned like an old bucket with a bent handle and blackened base down on the coals and filled it with water. Once the water was boiling, he opened a bag of loose black tea, reached in and grabbed a good handful, and tossed it into the bucket. Then he brought out another pouch and selected a sizeable gum leaf, which he threw into the brew. Finally, he lifted the bucket, swilled the leaves around, and put it back on the fire. Then he set out three tin cups on a flat rock near the fire and poured what Ned hoped was sugar into each one.
As soon as the tea leaves had settled to the bottom, he took the bucket off the fire and with a
mazing finesse poured the clear dark tea into each cup. He set the billy back on the coals and gave both Ned and Suzanne each a cup. Taking the last one for himself, he unfolded a campstool, sat down near the fire, and took a loud slurp.
Ned sipped at the sweet aromatic liquid and felt better. It had a calming effect that settled his stomach and relaxed his muscles. He felt as if he’d been riding the last dozen or so kilometers with clenched teeth and fists.
“It’s really good,” Suzanne said, holding her cup in both hands.
Ned stared into the fire, letting his eyes go out of focus. He was suddenly so tired he would have fallen over onto his face if he hadn’t been holding a cup of tea.
In the distance, a thin, high wailing howl filled the night air and subsided. Ned and Suzanne both jerked alert, but Ollie just grinned with his white teeth.
“Dingoes,” he said. “They don’t bark, y’know. But they sure do sing.”
“Is that true,” asked Suzanne, “they really don’t bark? I thought they were canines.”
Ned looked at the black wall of gum trees ringing them in. “Should we be on guard?”
Ollie slurped his tea with satisfaction. “No worries, mate. One or two might tiptoe into camp while we’re asleep, but as long as we don’t leave any food out for them to steal, they shouldn’t bother us.”
“What else do you know about dingoes, Ollie?” Ned felt somewhat revived from the tea, and thought he might actually be able to eat something. He sat up and reached for one of the cheese sandwiches Mrs. Barnes had packed.
“Depends on what yer asking … d’you mean their anatomy or their mythology?”
“The myths, I think.”
“In that case, you’ll be happy to know the sites along those river bluffs I’m gonna take you to are chock-a-block with ‘em. Lots of dingo dreaming went on here, by which you might assume some of the long-gone Aboriginals who used these places were Dingo clans, right? Want me to tell you a Dingo Dreaming story?”
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