“I think this might be our campsite for tonight, what do you think?” he said.
“Love it,” said Susan.
He pulled his swag off the car and placed it on the top of the ridge, looking down and out, across the river.
“Why don’t you sit there and enjoy the view while I get a fire going,” he said.
So Susan sat, alone and quiet, while Mark foraged for branches.
In the gathering dusk, an endless succession of brightly coloured birds were coming to the water to drink, small finches with a zebra stripes on the tail, others with red and diamond patterns on their plumage, beautiful blue wrens, and turquoise coloured parrots.
Susan heard a twittering noise and looked up. Perhaps a thousand, maybe more, iridescent green-yellow birds, silhouetted in the last sunlight came swooping in to drink. She realised these were the real wild budgerigars, ancestors of those seen in a cage. Thump, thump; a blue-furred mother kangaroo and her joey came cautiously across the sand.
Mark returned and soon a roaring fire of mulga wood was burning. He left again, but was quick to come back with a medium sized log—incredibly heavy and twisted. He put one end in the fire. “Best wood for cooking coals, gidgee. It will keep our fire going all night”
He opened a metal tucker box and inside was a cast-iron pan and pot, a selection of food tins and jars, and tucked in a corner, wrapped in a tea towel, was a square glass bottle. Mark pulled out two tin cups, pannikins he called them, dusted off the bottle and handed it to Susan. “Would you like to try some Bundaberg Overproof Rum—OP for short? There’s ice and Coke in the Esky if you prefer it that way.” He poured half an inch into a pannikin and handed it to her. The fire almost took her breath away.
“Think I will try the ice and coke with it,” she said, taking the cup.
Mark nodded, and fetched a Coke and a handful of ice from the car, which he then added to her drink. He splashed a liberal half-inch of the rum into his own cup and took a deep sip.
“Just the thing for a cold night! When I started in the country, I had a week out northwest of Alice, out towards the Georgina with an old-timer. I asked him what to bring, and he said a carton. So I went to the pub and bought a carton of beer. Next morning, when he picked me up, he pointed to my carton and said, ‘What’s that rubbish? That won’t last us a night, I meant a carton of OP Rum.’ So we stopped at a pub on the way out of town and I bought a carton of OP Bundy Rum. We almost finished it in that one week. My liver never recovered, but I got a taste for it,” Mark recounted laughing.
Susan laughed too, “Sounds like I‘ll need a lot of practice to catch up”
Dinner was steak and jacket potatoes, cooked in the coals and washed down with some more rum.
As Mark and Susan sat staring into the fire, an eerie howl reverberated through the stillness. A few seconds later another howl came from a different location.
“The dingoes are hunting,” explained Mark.
They retold the Azaria story to each other, each contributing parts and emotions, she from reading, he from seeing. Neither doubted the role of the dingo, but it had a chilling poignancy, spoken to the sound of hunting dingos calling into the night.
And then the talking was over. For a moment they just looked at the fire in silence. But quickly they rolled out the swag and lay in it together, not moving for a long time. Susan felt incredibly dreamy and content, and drifted to sleep. She woke just as the fire was dying down.
Mark was looking down at her with an electric smile. “You didn’t think I was going to let you sleep the whole night through without something more, after my promise of this morning did you?”
In her half-asleep state, Susan simply replied, “Sleepy.”
But Mark was insistent, “All the more fun to wake you.” He turned her face towards him and kissed it with a ferocity that Susan was almost unprepared for. Then he was on top of her, forcing her legs apart and her body open, as he sought to push himself inside her. Susan’s first inclination was to clamp her legs shut and push him away, but he was way too strong. She was pinioned and powerless, with just a pimple of fear at how unrelenting he was.
But she really wanted this just as much as he did. Her body opened and responded to his thrusts. Soon she was as insatiable as he, a tigress, uninhibited, crying out with pleasure and pain as she climaxed. They took each other three times more before the dawn lit the sky. There wasn’t an inch of her body or soul that had not been touched, entered and pleasured. She felt like a hussy but loved this newly discovered wild sexual being within her.
In the early dawn Susan fell into a deep sleep. She woke a couple hours later with the sun well up. Of Mark there was no trace, but the fire had been stoked and a billy sat at the edge with hot water, and a basin of cold water, soap, and a towel sat nearby.
She realised this was for her and added hot water to the cold, until it was pleasantly warm. She washed her face and sponged off her body. She dressed in a tracksuit to push back the morning chill. She saw a pan with rashers and eggs sitting in it. She placed the pan with rashers on the fire. When it was sizzling she cracked the eggs and dropped them in.
As the eggs were finishing, Mark emerged from the trees fifty yards away, carrying a rifle, on webbing over his shoulder. He waved to her and she waved back. “Breakfast’s ready, what did you get?”
“Nothing today, just scouting. You were sleeping so peacefully that I didn’t want to wake you. I often go for an early morning walk. Sometimes I bag breakfast, like a rabbit or wood-duck, but not today,” said Mark, but then added, “That smells real good.”
He dropped two pieces of bread on the dull coals and, after a few seconds, flipped them over. After another ten seconds there were two perfectly cooked pieces of toast. He passed her one and put a handful of tea in the simmering, half-full billy. He found two camp chairs tucked away on the truck, set them up and poured two cups of tea. They ate side by side.
“How would you like to see the real desert?” Mark asked Susan, “We could cut across to the east, around the edge of the Simpson Desert today and tomorrow, before heading up to the Gulf. You said you need to be in Darwin on Sunday week to catch your plane didn’t you?”
Susan nodded, more than a week seemed an eternity away.
Chapter 7 – Simpson Desert to Barrow Creek – Day 19-21
Susan and Mark packed their things. Before they got on the road he checked the two spare tyres, the water and fuel tanks, then the engine oil. “I fuelled up in Yulara so we have enough fuel to go about 1000 kilometres yet. But you still need to check. Doesn’t do to run dry in the middle of nowhere.” explained Mark.
Then they were on their way, turning back onto a main dirt road going east. They did a detour to the Henbury Craters and admired at the way a meteorite had scooped such a large hole out of the dry stony hillside. Mark and Susan walked briskly in the still and chill morning air, doing a circuit of the craters. No one else was in sight.
“Bit early for tourists, if we come back in a couple hours there’ll be plenty,” said Mark.
They drove north onto Stuart Highway, and as they swept down into a valley, with the green line of the Finke River ahead, they turned to the east, following a sandy dirt road heading towards the morning sun. Another hour and a half of driving followed, on a series of back roads, which crossed a succession of sand dunes interspersed with flat areas of open grass and scrub and small clay pans. They came to a solitary rock outcrop called Chambers Pillar for late morning tea. It stood alone, a silent pale yellow and ochre sentinel, surveying its empty desert kingdom of two lonely crows.
It was a tourist site and several visitors arrived as they were drinking their tea, walking around and climbing up to the base to witness the great views into the distance. They waved and called out distant hellos but otherwise remained separate.
Mark and Susan continued east and began to swing south, running alongside ever-bigger dunes that marked the west of the Simpson Desert.
Mark seemed to have an
encyclopaedic knowledge of all these back roads, turning this way and that, cutting his way across the country, while maintaining a broad direction. He explained that creeks and rivers ran out from the ranges to the western edge of the desert where they ended in a series of swamps which he called flood-outs. These became massive pools of water after rain.
Now, with the heaviest rain of the year a past memory, these flood-outs were drying, but still lush. The roads that a year earlier laid underwater were now becoming trafficable. Mark told her that in remnant swamps lush vegetation grew to the height of a vehicle roof.
The swamps were populated by fat cattle, mostly enormous bullocks. They seemed to do little but eat. Many had grown so fat they waddled. A vast profusion of waterbirds, ducks, pelicans, swans, and waders, lived here too. As they passed these flew off in dense white clouds.
Then the swamps were left behind, and they passed alongside vast sand dunes, bank behind bank. As they drove they saw cattle and the occasional camel, sometimes they glimpsed distant buildings, which Mark told her were cattle station homesteads. They kept heading east and south along a mix of roads and tracks.
Now they were into the desert proper heading to the southeast, running between massive sand hills along a set of faint wheel tracks. All signs of human habitation had dropped away.
Mark told her they were heading for flood-out country at the very end of the Finke River where it ended in the desert at the border of South Australia and the Northern Territory, beyond that was a flowing bore where they would camp for the night. Mark said that it formed an oasis in the desert.
In the afternoon Mark and Susan stopped at a clay-pan, where water had pooled between a two mighty sand dunes. They lit a fire and had a cup of tea along with bread, cheese and cracker biscuits. It was followed by a mug of cool water that Mark poured from a waterbag, which Susan had noticed, hanging just behind the vehicle cabin. It had a slight canvas taste, but was cool and refreshing.
They had seen no one else for hours. Susan had never experienced such a total sense of solitude. She thought she should feel scared and isolated in this remote place, with this man she barely knew. Yet, instead, she felt contentment and elation. It was a place of perfection; the two of them, the desert, endless red hues of sand, splashes of purple, yellow, and white desert flowers and a rich blue sky that stretched away into infinity. It gave rest for her soul. She felt joy to be in the company of someone who drew sustenance from it as she did.
After eating Susan and Mark sat silent and peaceful, absorbing their quite solitude and the land around them. Here was something beyond words. People had come to deserts for millennia to find this, man lost in vastness, on a scale that exceeded imagination.
Susan must have dozed off, sitting on the sand with her back against the swag, because the movement of Mark was packing to go snapped her from her daze. Reluctantly she rose and they drove on.
Susan lost all concept of time, distance, and direction—other than an awareness of the sun and where it sat in the sky. With the glowing disc behind them starting to cast long shadows, the colours of the sand grew bright as it reflected the light.
An unknown time later, having passed yet more sand dunes and flood-outs, they came to their destination, the flowing bore.
Mark explained that, decades earlier, a drilling crew had sunk this bore. As they reached the water a huge blast of pressure had blown out the wellhead. For fifty years it had flowed, inestimable amounts of water, rising from far below the earth in the Great Artesian Basin, the aquifer that covered half of inland Australia, and which lay under this entire desert.
Some said the water started its journey in the New Guinea highlands, where hundreds of inches of rain fell each year. Slowly, over hundreds or thousands of years, it oozed through rocks far underground until it filled the ground below this place. It was like the immensity of the desert, unseen, yet at a scale beyond human comprehension.
When the flow first began it had risen thirty feet into the air, a massive geyser. Now it was a steady bubbling flow, rising to her chest height as it came out. Trapped between low hills it flowed out into a green space, drinking place of desert animals, place of green grass. After a few hundred yards all sign of water was gone, returned to sky or its underground source and there was only desert again.
They made their camp on a dry clay-pan within sight of the bore flow. Mark found a pair of binoculars that he passed to Susan, along with a “What Bird Is That” book.
He encouraged her to try and identify some of the innumerable birds that came in to drink. He also suggested that she also keep a lookout for other animals that may come to drink, perhaps a camel or an old bullock.
Mark was seeking a big fat bullock for his larder. He explained that sometimes they came here to drink in the evening dusk or full dark. These were the escapees from stations, way up north, coming from hundreds of miles away. Some found their way into the desert after floods or storms broke down fences and lived on years later, in the farthest reaches of the desert, walking between sand dunes running southeast until they emerged here.
Mark pointed to a low succulent bush with bright pink flowers that grew in clumps around their camp. He broke off a piece and crushed it between his fingers, so the juice ran out and dripped to the ground, “This is parakeelya,” he told her, “After rain it grows between the dunes. Where there is parakeelya cattle do not need to drink, this gives both food and water. So they walk hundreds of miles, living on this. When a long dry comes, it dies away. Then they must come here to drink in the summer heat. But now it is growing across the desert and they do not need to come.
“But cattle are creatures of habit, so still some come, perhaps there will be one tonight. If there is, I will take its meat, either as it drinks, or by following its tracks in the early morning. Usually, after a big drink, they don’t walk far before they stop to rest. Meat is good for trading with mines and aboriginal communities where we’ll be going.
“What lives out here no one else can lay claim to. So they’re free for the taking; that is, if you are smart enough to find them. But it’s easier said than done, they’re incredibly clever animals, they only survive if they can avoid people. But, I like to try—I enjoy the challenge. Sometimes I succeed.”
It was an hour until dark, so Mark suggested they climb up a nearby sand dune that provided a wide view of the surrounding countryside. The dune was surprisingly high and it was hard to climb. But they worked their way up, puffing as they went. At the summit they gained a panorama of the desert as evening settled. They sat in the lee of the dune, just below the top, where they could look back towards their camp. It was silent in the evening stillness, and they sat in this silence. After a few minutes Mark pointed out a huge eagle, circling above them.
“A wedge-tail, it must have a nest somewhere around. It’s looking for something, perhaps a rabbit, for its dinner.” As he spoke the eagle folded its wings and plummeted down to where the grass grew green on the edge of the soak. As it soared aloft again, Susan saw it was carrying a brown furry object in its talons, an unfortunate rabbit, now dinner.
A little time later they saw movement to the west, perhaps a kilometre away. Susan’s eyes tried to pinpoint where it came from, but it was indistinct in the evening haze. She picked up the binoculars and zoomed to where she had sensed movement. Now it came sharp in her focus, a group of camels were walking through the mixed trees, browsing as they went. There were six large ones and three smaller ones, females with some calves. About a hundred yards behind was an even larger animal, a bull camel tracking along behind the female group. Despite feeding, they moved along rapidly. Before long they reached the edge of the soak. There one raised its nose in the air, tasting the breeze. Without an obvious signal they formed into a file and drifted away, fading into desert at a steady trot.
“They’re like ships of the desert, the way they silently come and go,” noted Susan, “Why did they change direction before they ate or drank, and headed away?”
> “Out here they see little of people, but on the stations, back towards Alice, people shoot them because they break fences. Others round them up and catch them. So camels like to keep away from people. They probably caught our smell, wafting in the evening breeze and decided they would rather be some place else.”
There was a scurrying noise, in a clump of spinifex, near where they sat. Mark put his finger to his lips. Seconds later a small mouse-like, furry creature, ran out. With a springy step, it sniffed here and there, making little darting movements as it scurried this way and that. Suddenly it sprung high into the air and caught in its paws a large beetle, almost half the size of the creature. Mark and Susan watched, as it proceeded to eat it with apparent relish, crunching every last morsel then licking its lips. A few seconds later it was joined by a second, identical creature. The sniffed each other warily, then, as if frightened, they sprung back into the spinifex together. The shadow of a hawk passed a few feet above them.
Susan looked to her other side, hearing a faint chirp. In a bush, so close she could almost touch it, was a mother blue wren with a nest of chicks. The mother made little cheeps as she dipped her beak towards each open mouth, transferring food to each in turn. She moved so fast it was like little flashes of light as she darted hither and thither amongst the low branches alongside the nest. Then another of her kind was sitting next to her—a male, the female’s mate, with even more brilliant plumage, returned to contribute his share. He repeated the feeding of the chicks. Then, for a brief second, the two birds sat side by side on a small twig, making a ritual of re-acquaintance before flitting away.
Now a chill was falling in the still evening; Susan gave a shiver.
Mark noticed, “Time to return for dinner. It gets really cold out here at night, so you will want warm clothes.”
Crocodile Spirit Dreaming - Possession - Books 1 - 3 Page 7
