Just Visiting

by Graham Wilson

  Chapter 9 – The Big Waterhole – Day 22

  An hour later Mark was off to shower and shave. They ate breakfast together, this time steak and eggs at the hotel bar. Mark left her there, saying he was off to top up the fuel tanks and give the vehicle another careful check over. They were cutting though some rough country to the east, where they would camp a night at a big waterhole, before heading up into the Gulf, leaving the desert behind for tropical scenery, weather and fishing. It was now mid-August, the end of Australia’s winter, but it was still cold here; Mark said the weather would warm up fast as they travelled north.

  Susan sat at the bar and looked at the 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 looked like tourists and also many aboriginal people.

  Susan’s attention was drawn to an old newspaper story that someone had put up: “Revisiting the site of the Conniston Massacre.”

  As she read she realised that, only fifty miles west was a place called Brooks Soak, site of the last big aboriginal massacre in Australia, led by the policeman who had lived here at Barrow Creek. She had heard of aboriginal massacres in the 1800s, but this wasn’t back then; this was after the First World War. It was at a time when she thought countries like Australia had moved past that frontier mentality, to places with laws and consequences. It was within the lifetime of her own extended family, her grandparents and other people she had known were alive then.

  As she read the journalist’s story of two decades prior, she realised that this journalist had 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 the Conniston 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 had stolen from his killer. Estimates were that at least sixty, and probably more than a hundred, men, women and children had been 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 ring-leaders were taken to Darwin for trial, only to be acquitted. The local jury considered that the actions taken by these ‘upstanding citizens’ were justified.

  Susan felt shock for this callous event so close to here, a dark underbelly of the country; beautiful outside in its rugged remoteness; this brutality lay just below the sunlit surface. Susan shivered; glad that this happened in another time and was now passing from human experience, or at least from the places and experiences she knew.

  As she stood, musing, in this black mind space, Mark came and stood alongside her. She pointed to the newspaper article, saying, “Did you know about this?”

  “Of course, I have 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?” she said.

  He shrugged, 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 and 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, instead of sending them away and hoping for justice. It is better to kill bad bastards than pretend justice can be done by others.”

  There was something ruthless in his voice. Susan felt sure this wasn’t idle talk; she sensed Mark really would have done the killing himself, if he thought it was needed, with no compunction and no questions asked. Still, Susan couldn’t disagree that his way would have served justice better for these people.

  Now she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. She didn’t want her image of Mark, so kind and gentle to her, mixed with such brutality. All those days Susan had spent with him out here had been filled with a bright sunlight. She didn’t want darkness intruding and spoiling it.

  “You’re probably right, better not to think of it anymore,” she said, flashing a smile and walking away.

  It was mid-morning before they were away, and the sun was well up. Leaving with them were many other late risers from the previous night of revelry, now much subdued.

  They travelled a few miles further north before turning off to the east side of the highway, taking a medium sized gravel road. It had old signs for some places that Susan assumed were stations or aboriginal communities; Murray Downs, Elkedra, Epenarra, Erelola Rockhole and Frew River, their distances ranging from one hundred to three hundred kilometres away. Alongside these old signs was a much shinier, new looking sign that bore the names of Davenport Range National Park and Old Police Station Waterhole, with symbols for camping and rough roads.

  The first hour was smooth dirt road, but this ended with a turnoff to Murray Downs. After this the road deteriorated rapidly, with many areas of sand and corrugations along with broken stony ground. They often followed dried up creeks, their rock littered beds running between stony ridges, flanked by coarse spinifex sand plains. They drove through lots of small broken hills, the bright orange-red stony sides beautiful as the sun flashed off them. The wealth of wildlife was astonishing in and around these hills, the innumerable bright colours of birds, large goannas sunning themselves on rocks, snakes that slithered across the road. On the hillsides they watched large solid-bodied wallabies hop away on their approach.

  They passed a sign for the Erelola Rockhole. Two rusted-out car bodies were visible in the bush nearby.

  Mark explained, “There’s an aboriginal camp near here. They buy old cars. With little maintenance, they don’t last long on the rough roads. As they break down they’re abandoned where they stop. Then the occupants return to time-honoured foot travel, like they did before for tens of thousands of years.”

  After they left this turnoff behind the road improved, with less traffic wear and tear, but the country got steadily rougher. Susan’s bottom was aching from all the bouncing over the rocky road.

  Finally they came to a sign to the left that read “Frew River 4WD Loop Track” and below it “Old Police Waterhole 8.” An additional sign read, “Rough Road – Only for experienced 4WD.”

  Mark stopped at the corner. He got out and stretched. Susan climbed out of her side. She asked, “Is something the matter?”

  “No, just a bad road from here; it’s only eight kilometres but it’ll take an hour. There are lots of parts where walking is faster.”

  After five minutes of walking and stretching they climbed back in. Mark put the car into low range four-wheel drive and they headed off.

  He had not exaggerated. It was slow and it was really rough. She had thought yesterday’s drive through the mountains was rough but this was at another level, not big hills but endless ups and downs as they crossed small broken ridges and followed, crossed and recrossed the same rocky creeks endlessly. There were times where they practically crawled up hills covered with loose stones, with all four wheels spinning in the rock scree, gradually inching their way forward, as one wheel found temporary grip, then another.

  Finally they crested a ridge, and there lying before them, was a vast waterhole, broad and clear in the midday sun, lying alongside a broken red range. It was isolated yet beautiful, a sparkling jewel in a desolate landscape of rocky spinifex hills. They had not passed any other car since the Rockhole turnoff. Now it looked like their own private paradise had opened up before them, it felt as if Mark and Susan were the country’s sole inhabitants.

  They parked just back from the water, on a flat green grassy foreshore, interspersed with large shady trees. They were both starving, so lunch was quickly made; slabs
of cold beef, sliced off a piece of cooked meat, were laid over bread slices and topped with tomato relish and a liberal sprinkling of salt, washed down by two cold beers each.

  The water beckoned. The afternoon was warm with a cloud-free sky. A sandy beach in front of their campsite led to water so clear it sparkled like a shiny glass, freshly washed. The air was still. Opposite, red hills made almost perfect reflections on smooth water. Occasional light wind puffs and fish splashes made tiny ripples, fractures through this mirror. As they died glassy perfection reformed.

  Susan walked down onto the sand. She stood, toes just sinking into the wet sand of the edge, absorbing the atmosphere.

  Mark suddenly rushed at her, pushing her into the deep. She ducked under his arm and, as she did, scooped a handful of water, and splashed the length of his back, still covered by his shirt. The water was freezing, and Mark yelped and spun, two hands flinging water to drench her. She responded in kind. They were both laughing and splashing until soon completely saturated.

  It brought to mind their first day of the little beach. She felt her desire for him welling up. Turned away from Mark, Susan grasped the hem of her shirt and lifted it over her head. Her bra had disappeared in their morning passion. Spinning round, Mark could see that her nipples were erect, as her breasts pushed into in his face.

  She challenged, “Well, what will you splash now?” Mark simply picked her up, carried her into deep water, his mouth on her breast, and fell over, pulling them both below. They surfaced together, spluttering. They looked at each other and laughed, both knowing what they wanted now.

  After their lust was satiated they lay together, side by side in the warm shallows, sharing stories and memories of other bush and camping trips, he telling her of safaris in Africa and she telling him of hunting with her Dad in Scotland.

  She finally plucked up the courage to ask him about his early life, asking where he had learned his bush and shooting skills.

  “I wish you could meet my father, I am sure he’d like you. He thought Edward, my last boyfriend, wasn’t quite man enough. I know he wouldn’t think that of you. Did your father take you bush or teach you to shoot like mine did for me?”

  Mark was silent. It was as if he was weighing what to reveal, a brief flash of openness showed in his face, then the shutters came down.

  “What does it matter? I don’t want to talk about my father. He was a dick—lazy, useless, a drunk and a bully.”

  Susan knew she should leave it but a little voice inside her head would not let go. “Surely someone in your family was good to you, what about your mother?”

  Mark winced and turned away. “I really don’t want to talk about it, but seeing as you are determined to know, my mother died when I was little. I can barely remember her. I suppose she was OK, but she was scared of my father. Then, one day she just wasn’t there anymore. A long time later my father said she was dead, had died in an accident. There was no funeral. It was like she was written out of our lives. Later I found out she had committed suicide, but I don’t think anyone cared or missed her.

  She never did anything for me. As soon as I was old enough I went bush. Since then I have worked all over, doing anything that paid and getting on with my own life. I haven’t seen my father since; perhaps he died one time when he was drunk, perhaps he’s a bum who sleeps on the street, but I don’t think he even noticed I was gone.”

  Mark stood, brushed himself off and said, “If it’s OK with you I’ll go off on my own for a couple hours and do some hunting?”

  While it sounded like a question, Susan knew it was a statement of fact. This is what he would do and she was not invited. She felt a stab of hurt at the rejection. But she smiled back and said, “Sure, I’m happy to rest for a couple hours and read a book.”

  As she backed off it was like Mark relented a bit too. He said. “If you feel like trying you might catch a fish on a line. You get yellow bellies in here and you can sometimes catch one on a piece of meat.”

  He returned with a hand line, fitted with a hook and sinker along, along with an off-cut of beef, which he placed on a rock beside her.

  Turning from her, Mark took out a medium sized rifle and a box of ammunition, which he dropped in a backpack, along with a water bottle. With a wave he was gone. Susan watched his retreating form until he was out of sight.

  He didn’t turn back or wave.

  It was like he had suddenly cut her out of his life, the tenderness of their lovemaking together, only a few minutes before, now vanished.

  Susan felt deflated and alone. She wished she could telephone her Mum, or Maggie from Cairns, just to have someone else to chat with.

  It struck her that she hadn’t spoken to anyone or told people of her movements since she was in Melbourne a week ago.

  Mark had totally consumed her life, from the minute she had touched down in Alice Springs, five days before. Susan realised that no one she knew even knew his name, let alone that she was travelling with him in the far away Northern Territory.

  Come to think of it, she had barely been anywhere in mobile phone range since she met him. She had charged her phone at Arltunga, two days back. Since Uluru she not noticed anywhere with a signal, though to be truthful, she had rarely looked at the phone or thought of contact with others. Deciding she didn’t want to waste the remaining 30% charge in the battery, she turned it off completely—just in case.

  The afternoon sun was hot on her skin, and Susan was starting to turn pink. She became aware that she needed to put on sunscreen or go into the shade. Otherwise she would be red raw tonight. She had seen Mark with sun cream at some point, it must be somewhere in the cabin.

  Susan climbed into the car and opened the glove box—nothing there. She tried the door compartments—still nothing there. Perhaps it was behind the seats? She slid the driver’s seat forward to look behind it; then she did the same on the passenger side, still nothing.

  Then she noticed a first aid kit strapped to the back cabin wall, behind her seat. She thought that perhaps there would be something in the first aid box. She unclipped it and sat it on her seat. The kit had three slide-out drawers and a flip top. She started systematically at the top, lots of little things, bandaids, tablet blister packs, small tubes, sewing needles and some syringes—nothing helpful right now. On the next level were bandages and dressings, plasters and tapes; still no sign of any sun cream. The third level looked more promising: bottles and larger tubes of various liniments, alcohol, disinfectant, cough medicine; but still no sun cream.

  There was one more drawer at the bottom. It was tightly packed full of things in cloth packages. It was hard to open, but she wiggled and it came out. It didn’t look promising but she thought, I have come this far; I might as well look properly.

  The first package was full of surgical instruments, obviously for more major accidents requiring stitching. She thought the second cloth wrapped package would be the same and was mildly surprised when, instead, she found 3 number plates sets, each held together with a plastic band and all wrapped together in an old calico bag.

  She lifted one out, separated the two plates and found a tiny sticky label on the back of one plate which read “Butler.” Curious, she separated the next set, a similar sticker with the word “Brown,” then the final one, and sure enough a tiny label, “Brooks.”

  This seemed strange. But, after Mark’s negative reaction to her past questions, this was not something to ask about on his return, no doubt there was a good explanation.

  Susan carefully wrapped up all the bits, just the way she had found them, and put them back in place. Then she returned the first aid box to its exact place. Something to muse over for a day or two she thought, wondering about the three extra sets of number plates.

  She sat on her passenger seat for a second, thinking about her afternoon. Would she fish or read? Glancing up, looking over to the driver’s corner of the dash, Susan smacked her hand to her forehead. There it was, a somewhat batter
ed bottle of sun cream sat on the dashboard, clearly visible. She wondered how she had missed it there in the first place.

  That decided her; with sun cream on she would fish and read, sitting on the edge of the water in the afternoon sun. Susan carefully covered her face, hands and legs with cream, found a long sleeved shirt and floppy hat for her head, and took a novel from her pack.

  She threaded the meat on the hook and cast it out a few yards into the deep. Sitting on a rock with her toes in the water, line loosely wrapped around a finger, Susan opened her book and enjoyed the warmth of the afternoon sun.

  She had read one chapter and was just starting the next, fishing forgotten, when the line twitched—a definite bite. Susan felt butterflies of excitement. Imagine that, catching her own fish, all by herself, here in the middle of Australia!

  Book cast aside, she turned her attention to the fish. She had fished in England, also with her father, and had a sense of how to do it. Patience, let the fish explore and try the bait, no hasty pullbacks. She settled her nerves and waited.

  The gentle tugging came back. Let the fish investigate and pick up the bait, she thought, imagining it feeling and tasting the bait with its mouth. She hoped it would pick it up properly, taking it right into its mouth.

  Suddenly it all changed, now the fish had clearly taken the bait and began to swim off, giving the line a powerful pull. Her heart skipped a beat, but she calmed herself. Applying steady pressure back through the line with soft hands, Susan worked the fish towards her. There was a sudden violent surge of tugging as it realised it was trapped, but she held steady and tried to smooth out the more severe jerks with her hands. The jerking stopped, she pulled in line, hoping it had not got off; but no, it had just swum towards her. There it was again, a desperate attempt to get free; however, the hook held and the fish stayed attached. Soon Susan had it in the shallows, and then it was over, the fish on the sand next to her. It seemed huge, perhaps one or two kilos, with glistening golden scales on its sides and belly.

  It looked something like the perch she knew from England, but without the stripes on it sides, and a much more golden colour. Part of her felt sorry to bring death to this creature, now helpless at the water edge. Another part felt proud of her own success, without help, catching this fish for dinner. She couldn’t wait to show it to Mark, he would be impressed.

  Susan found a knife in a box on the back of the car which she had seen Mark use. She dispatched the fish, the way her father had shown her. Then, feeling slightly squeamish, she opened its belly and removed its innards. She cast them out into the water. First there was splashing as small fish nibbled, then a sudden swoop. Out of the sky came a large bird, like a hawk or falcon. It swooped down, plucked the remnants up with a talon and, with a screech of success, flew across the water to a dead tree where it sat and ate.

  Susan felt a continued excitement, as if she had mastered a part of this remote place. Reading was forgotten. She covered the fish to protect it from other hungry animals and decided to do her own exploring, walking along the water’s edge to where it ended in a dry riverbed.

  At its edge she found a path of sorts, where animals appeared to use a gully to come down to the water. She worked her way up this for perhaps a hundred yards until she came to a place where she could reach the top of the red rock hillside.

  Here she sat, at the cliff edge, gazing out across the hill to the river bed and water below; Susan’s view extending to the far horizon where endless yellow, spinifex covered hills met blue sky. Something in this harsh stone country was eating its way into her soul, a different but kindred desolation to that of the sand desert of days just past.

  She watched the coming and going of the desert animals that relied on this oasis. Three kangaroos: mother, large offspring and a small joey, head out of pouch, approached cautiously. They drank in quick sips, alert to any other visitors, then hopped a short distance away. Here, mother and large offspring nibbled on some green riverbed grass. The baby came out to explore before a noise caused it to startle and, a quick, headfirst tumble later, the baby was back inside the mother’s pouch of safety. They moved out of sight.

  Minutes later a tan coloured dog emerged from the river’s edge and came down to the water. It lapped noisily. Then it too vanished, that was the first time she had seen a wild dingo. Now it was only birds, lizards scurrying over rocks, and herself, left in this place.

  Perhaps half an hour passed in solitude. Then she spotted movement. It was Mark, walking down the riverbed, carrying something over his shoulder. She clambered down and ran to meet him.

  “What have you got?” she asked.

  “Just a couple ducks, thought we might have them for dinner,” he replied, indicating the two birds tied together to a stick over his shoulder.

  Susan shuffled her feet awkwardly and said, “Sorry about before, I know it’s not my business.”

  Mark’s hard expression softened; Susan moved in close and hugged herself to him. “Thank you for bringing me here; this is something really special, every bit as special as the sandy desert in its own way.”

  Susan could feel something struggling to come out of Mark. She thought he might show or say something—anything—that would tell her more about who he really was or what was going on inside him.

  But Mark just hugged her close and held her against him, saying nothing. After a minute, he pulled an arm’s length away, gripping Susan’s shoulders tightly in his hands, “I’m not the best person for you. We should just enjoy our trip together then get you to your Darwin plane. After that, who knows?”

  It wasn’t quite a statement of commitment, but it was something more than nothing.

  She had almost forgotten about her fishing success but, as they were walking back, Susan glimpsed the fish’s tail from beneath its covering.

  Almost bursting with pride, Susan pointed to the fish, “Mark, I caught a fish! A big one, a golden yellow colour.”

  “A big one eh,” Mark reached for her hands and held them a couple of feet apart, “This big?” he asked, gesturing to the distance between her hands.

  She laughed with bubbling excitement, “Well, not quite, perhaps half that, but really big for me.”

  Walking towards the fish, Susan raced ahead; she uncovered her fish and presented it to Mark.

  “Well,” he said, with a smile, “it is pretty big, actually it is just the right size for our dinner.”

  They lit a huge fire, and while the coals formed Mark dug a pit with a shovel off to the side. He half-filled it with hot coals from the fire, lay leaves over and placed the ducks and fish, with salt and bush herbs in their bellies over this. He covered them with more leaves and then another layer of coals. Mark’s final step was to cover it all with some bigger branches and earth.

  Mark dusted off his hands and reached for a large cast iron pot—a camp oven he called it—and showed Susan how to make a damper and brownie for their dinner and breakfast. These roasted side by side as their fish and ducks cooked.

  After an hour and a half Mark pronounced their dinner ready and uncovered the pit. Susan’s mouth watered as he peeled the burnt skins and revealed the succulent flesh of the ducks and the fish. A final sprinkle of salt and it was ready to eat.

  They feasted with their fingers, eating morsels of meat on pieces of fresh-cooked damper. Dinner was accompanied by a cold bottle of champagne, a Moët no less, that Mark had found in the fridge. After they had eaten their fill of the meats they leaned back against the swag and ate brownie and butter, washed down with large mugs of tea. They watched in quiet stillness, as the light faded from the western sky and the first stars came into the clear night.

  Susan would remember this later, as the best night of their time together; it was their magic place. Like the night in the desert, but now they had become even closer, and she still saw no shadows on their horizon.

  She sometimes wondered, in the months that followed, if she could have stopped the trip there, and
looked no further, would she have? Then her memory of the magic could have remained untouched without the awful madness to come.