Spirits of the Ghan

by Judy Nunn

  Matthew hadn’t always realised this fact. As a child he had secretly agreed with his grandmother, although of course he hadn’t dared say so.

  ‘You are selfish, Liliana,’ Svetlana declared in her imperious Russian manner, she was an imposing woman. ‘You were a selfish child and you have become a selfish woman.’

  The family, all four, Lilian, Dave, little Matt and Babushka ‘Lana’ were gathered in the main downstairs lounge of their two-storey bluestone house in Wakefield Street not far from Adelaide’s city centre. The house had been built in the late nineteenth century and everything about it was grand as befitted its owner, Svetlana Bircher, nee Morozova, including the antique furniture that filled every room to the point of clutter, courtesy of her late husband, who had been a highly successful antique dealer. In the decade since Frank Bircher’s death, Svetlana, an astute businesswoman, had taken over her husband’s enterprise, building even further upon its success, and the house reflected her passion. Each room bore a different theme and the main lounge was pure Louis XV.

  Now, enthroned upon her Louis Quinze armchair, with her vividly kaftan-clad daughter and gangly son-in-law seated opposite on a matching sofa, both very much at odds with the piece, Svetlana’s steel-grey eyes bored into Lilian’s. ‘You have an eight-year-old son you have not seen for months,’ her eyes flickered to young Matt where he was perched uncomfortably on an ornate hardback, ‘and now you announce you are once more deserting him?’ Svetlana’s voice rose in pitch. ‘Furthermore you insist David go with you to these Godforsaken places that so attract your interest.’ Her angry gaze took in Dave who, accustomed to the family dramas, remained silent. He saw little point in explaining that he was contracted to work in remote locations; Lana would only say, ‘Then why don’t you seek contracts closer to home.’

  ‘What sort of mother are you?’ Svetlana demanded.

  ‘The sort of mother who knows her son’s education must not suffer, Mama.’ Lilian didn’t flinch for one second, coolly meeting her mother’s attack head-on. ‘I would far rather take Mattie with us, but he’s much better off staying here with you and going to school.’

  ‘You could always stay here with him yourself, has that thought not occurred?’ Svetlana was outraged. ‘Where is your shame? Where is your guilt? How can you be so selfish?’

  Lilian felt neither shame nor guilt. ‘It’s an artist’s duty to be selfish,’ she replied – an answer that appeared glib, but was actually made in all seriousness. ‘In fact it’s essential. Artists need to be selfish in order to devote themselves to their art. George Bernard Shaw was very much of that opinion and I agree with him entirely. Besides, in creating works of beauty I’m contributing to the world. I would hardly call that selfish.’ Arrogant as the statement sounded, it was not merely ego speaking. Lilian’s paintings hung in galleries throughout Australia and she had recently received acclaim overseas, but Svetlana refused to accept this as any form of argument.

  ‘God will strike you dead for such a sentiment that excuses the desertion of your child,’ she declared. ‘How could I have given birth to such an unnatural creature? You are a disgrace to womanhood!’

  But Lilian was impervious to both threats and insults. She was an atheist anyway so God was immaterial and, having been born in Adelaide, she considered herself thoroughly Australian, with no time for the Russian melodramatics of her mother. It was why she’d long ago dropped two syllables from her name, transforming herself at the age of fifteen from Liliana Bircher to Lilian Birch, a change which Svetlana had steadfastly refused to acknowledge.

  ‘Come along now, Mama.’ Lilian rose, intending to put an end to the scene, which she considered completely unnecessary, and bending down to kiss her mother’s cheek. ‘You won’t miss us for a minute. You adore having Matthew all to yourself, you know you do.’ She held her arms out to her son, her kaftan becoming the brilliantly coloured wings of a giant bird. ‘Mattie, darling, let’s go for a lovely long walk in the park. You can play on the swings.’

  Matthew glanced uncertainly at his grandmother, who gave a brisk nod and, jumping from his chair, he took his mother’s hand.

  Lilian tossed her silken scarf around her neck and sailed out the door with her son in tow, without a backward glance.

  Dave rose. ‘Shall I have Olga bring you some tea?’ he asked. Such theatrical displays were nothing new to Dave who took it all in his stride. Much as Lilian might deny it, she had a flair for the dramatic that could equal her mother’s.

  ‘Please,’ Svetlana replied tightly.

  David Witherton and Lilian Birch had met in 1966. They swore for ever after that it was the Tea and Sugar Train that had brought them together. He was a twenty-five-year-old surveyor, employed at the time by the Surveyor-General’s Department, and she was a twenty-eight-year-old artist whose work was beginning to attract the attention of Adelaide’s art gallery curators. It was Divine Providence, they both later agreed, somewhat tongue in cheek as neither were true believers, that the Tea and Sugar Train should prove the catalyst for their meeting.

  Initially a supply train for workers constructing the Trans-Australian Railway, the Tea and Sugar Train, as it later became known, had begun regular operation in 1917 after the line was completed. Settlements had quickly grown up all along the route where once there had been only fettlers’ camps, and the delivery of supplies from luxury items to the most basic of requirements was essential. For decades now the Tea and Sugar Train, which ran the sixteen-hundred-kilometre route between Port Augusta and Kalgoorlie, had been a lifeline to the outback residents it served, a welcome sight on its weekly trips along the lonely stretch of track that traversed the vast Nullarbor Plain. The train was not only a travelling shop with a provisions car displaying everything a corner store could offer and a butcher’s van where fresh meat could be expertly cut to order, it also provided medical services and entertainment. A nurse travelled on board once a month to give children their necessary injections and check on the townspeople’s health, and most exciting of all once a month there was a ‘film car’. An outing to the pictures was an eagerly awaited treat. There was even an annual ‘Christmas car’ with a Santa who provided presents for children at every town along the track. Little wonder the Tea and Sugar Train had become such an outback institution, running close to fifty years now and destined to run for many years to come.

  Dave often travelled aboard the Tea and Sugar Train, particularly when contracted by the government to work with the military at a restricted area in the outback regions of South Australia. He loved the outback and always put his hand up for jobs that took him to remote locations, which meant he travelled a great deal. He rarely had competition for the faraway tasks: most of his colleagues preferred the comforts of home.

  He’d first noticed the young woman in Port Augusta when he’d arrived to board the train; he was off to work on the military’s new town-planning development for Woomera village. As he walked towards the railway station, he could hardly fail to notice her. A statuesque figure, focused and confident, multi-coloured full-length skirt billowing about her legs, she strode purposefully down the main street, huge cloth bag slung over one shoulder, auburn hair held back by a bright yellow headband. Not exactly your run-of-the-mill Port Augusta resident, he thought, she’s probably a hippy. He didn’t much care for hippies, they always struck him as poseurs, but he couldn’t help being intrigued.

  He noticed her again a fortnight later upon his return. The timing was nothing short of astonishing. He’d just stepped off the Tea and Sugar Train and out of the station and there she was. But she wasn’t striding down the street this time. This time she was driving right past him in an aging Land Rover that had seen a fair bit of wear and was so covered in red dust you could barely make out the green paint beneath. The vehicle’s windows were down and she was clearly recognisable, the same strong face, the same auburn hair, but this time the headband was orange. Dave decided that despite appearances she must be a local after all.

  Th
e third time he saw her, around six weeks later, was in such unexpected circumstances it appeared somehow surreal. He was actually aboard the Tea and Sugar Train at the time. Once again under contract to work with the military, he was bound for Watson and the restricted site of Maralinga where, after a decade of experimentation, the nuclear testing ground was finally nearing closure. It was one of those jobs Dave referred to as ‘hush-hush’; in fact he’d been required to sign the Official Secrets Act. As was customary he was travelling in the sleeper van at the rear of the train, sharing on this occasion with three railway workers who were joining a track maintenance crew at Hughes near the Western Australian border.

  Since leaving Port Augusta, he’d spent the entire time gazing out the open carriage window at the sea of saltbush plain, shimmering grey-green-silver in the ever-changing play of light between the sun and the clouds; he never tired of the desert panorama. They’d even passed a herd of wild camels. Then, a hundred and eighty kilometres from Adelaide, when the landscape had dramatically changed to a crusty blanket of red earth and the train was travelling directly alongside the saltpan of Lake Hart, he saw her. Or rather, he saw the Land Rover.

  The sight of the vehicle, of any vehicle, flying across the dried face of a salt lake in the middle of nowhere would have been arresting, but the fact that it was this particular vehicle struck Dave as bizarre. Surely he was mistaken.

  But he wasn’t. The Land Rover was barely fifty metres away and once again she was driving with the windows down, so he could see her quite clearly. Her hair was tied up in a bright green scarf and she was looking out through the passenger window at the train as she kept pace with it, the Land Rover kicking up great clouds of white dust in its wake.

  Travelling directly opposite his carriage as she was, Dave could swear she was staring right at him, and he suddenly found himself waving. To his amazement her arm appeared through the driver’s window and she waved back across the roof of the vehicle. Good God, he thought, how extraordinary. They kept waving intermittently to each other until the salt lake ran out and the Land Rover slowed down, finally coming to a halt while the train sped relentlessly on its way.

  Although no longer able to see the woman herself, Dave continued to lean from the window peering back at the receding salt pan until both the lake and the vehicle became lost amid the surrounding wilderness.

  His three sightings seemed so coincidental that he came to associate the woman with the Tea and Sugar Train, as if the two were somehow connected, and each time he travelled to and from Port Augusta he looked out for her.

  Then one day, sure enough, there she was in the flesh. It was a Wednesday, the train always departed on a Wednesday, and he’d arrived at the station early as he normally did. They were still loading, so the platform bustled with activity, teams of men carting furniture and crates of fresh produce, sacks of flour and grain and whole sides of beef slung over shoulders, a colourful sight. The woman was seated on a bench, a large sketchpad in hand; she was busily drawing the whole process, or so it appeared, her eyes, a startling grey-blue, darting about taking everything in.

  He stood to one side barely ten paces from her, watching, fascinated. There was nothing delicate in the way she approached her work. Her glance flickered up and down from the workers to the sketchpad and her strokes were bold, the pencil swooping across the page without hesitation as if her hand was emulating the action her eyes were observing. He longed to see the result and considered creeping up behind her and trying to sneak a peek, but he didn’t want to break her concentration.

  Lilian sensed she was being watched, which was nothing unusual. People always wanted to see what an artist was drawing or painting, but they invariably crept up behind to sneak a peek, which broke her focus in a most irritating way. The tall, gangly young man in the battered Akubra hat whom she could see in her peripheral vision was standing deathly still, which she found most respectful. She lowered the pad and turned to gaze directly at him.

  Dave started guiltily. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘didn’t mean to stare.’

  ‘Come and take a look,’ she offered with a jerk of her head, ‘and tell me if you approve.’

  He crossed to the bench and looked down at the sketchpad she held out before him. ‘That’s amazing,’ he said. It was. With the simplest of strokes she had created the chaos before them, the hustle and the bustle and even the weight of the men’s burdens. He was lost in admiration. ‘That’s truly amazing.’

  ‘No it’s not,’ she gazed critically at the drawing, ‘but it’s got the feel I’m after at this stage and that’s the main thing.’

  ‘It’s got the feel all right.’ He wanted to introduce himself and say that he’d seen her before, but it seemed wrong to interfere with her work. ‘Well I’ll leave you to it, didn’t mean to interrupt.’

  ‘You haven’t,’ she closed the sketch pad, ‘I’ve finished for the day.’ Lillian had been at the station all morning drawing far more detailed images of the train itself and of individual workers. ‘That’s my last sketch for now, just an overall feel and the sort of layout I’m after.’ She’d been planning the painting for some time; The Loading of the Tea and Sugar Train would be a large work, oil on canvas. ‘I’m Lilian Birch by the way.’ She held out her hand.

  ‘Dave Witherton,’ he said, taking off his hat as they shook. She seemed to be inviting him to join her so he dumped his swag on the ground and sat, resting his Akubra on his knees. ‘I’ve seen you before actually.’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘Yes, about a month back. You were racing the Tea and Sugar Train across a salt pan.’ The expression she returned him was rather blank; she must remember surely, he thought. ‘Well you and the Land Rover were on the salt pan,’ he corrected himself, ‘the train wasn’t of course, but we were waving to each other, don’t you remember?’

  ‘Oh I always wave at the Tea and Sugar Train,’ she said airily, ‘and people always wave back.’

  Dave was instantly deflated. Foolish of him to have expected recognition, he supposed, but he felt a stab of disappointment that she found the incident itself inconsequential when to him it had been so significant.

  Lilian, however, did not find the incident at all inconsequential. ‘But you were actually aboard, were you?’ she carried on without drawing breath. ‘You were actually travelling on the Tea and Sugar Train?’

  ‘Yes.’ Why was that remarkable? ‘I quite often do. In fact I’m travelling aboard today; that’s why I’m here.’

  ‘How come?’ She openly appraised him, her sharp eyes taking everything in, from his khaki shorts and open-necked shirt to his well-worn boots and the battered Akubra in his lap. Customary outback garb, she thought, but he doesn’t seem like a farmer and he’s certainly not a labourer. ‘You don’t look like a railway man,’ she said, just a touch critically, ‘and the Tea and Sugar Train doesn’t carry passengers.’

  ‘It does if you work for the government,’ he explained. ‘I’m a surveyor.’

  ‘Ah,’ she nodded, ‘so that’s it. Well I envy you.’ She turned away to gaze at the delivery men loading the last of the provisions. ‘There’s something rather noble about the Tea and Sugar Train, isn’t there?’ she said thoughtfully, ‘something that somehow symbolises this country.’

  ‘Yes, I agree.’

  A moment’s silence followed as they both stared at the train then Lilian looked back at him. ‘So where are you off to today?’

  ‘Watson. It’s a pretty remote spot, just a siding really.’ He was headed back to Maralinga to complete his work with the military there, but he was not at liberty to tell her even that much.

  He didn’t need to. Lilian knew every stop along the route of the Tea and Sugar Train and although Watson was indeed little more than a siding, it was a siding of considerable importance, serving the nuclear testing ground of Maralinga as it did.

  ‘Bloody disgraceful in my opinion,’ she said. ‘We’ll end up paying a price for it, you know.’

  ‘For what?
’

  ‘Maralinga. You can’t blow up atomic bombs in the middle of the desert and expect to get off scot free,’ she said scathingly. ‘What was the government thinking, offering us up to the British like sacrificial lambs to the slaughter, poisoning the people, the animals, the bloody country itself? Downright outrageous!’

  She’s certainly forthright, Dave thought. Once again he agreed with her, but he didn’t say anything.

  ‘So you’re part of the clean-up process, I take it?’ she queried. ‘The government is still trying to decontaminate the area, isn’t it?’

  He shrugged apologetically. ‘Can’t really say, I’m afraid, all a bit hush-hush.’

  ‘Oh.’ She halted in her tirade. ‘I’m sorry. I do go on at the mouth, don’t I? I’m probably not even supposed to know you’re going to Maralinga, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said again.

  ‘No worries. Just between you and me I agree with every word you said.’

  ‘Oh good.’ She smiled and they changed the subject, discovering they both came from Adelaide, a fact that Dave found most encouraging as he certainly wanted to see Lilian again. They discovered also that they shared a passion for the outback and desert regions of Australia.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she agreed fervently, ‘the desert light is so extraordinary, isn’t it, and so variable! The way it creates a sense of movement, you could swear sometimes the land’s actually breathing. And the people! Weathered like the country itself. No wonder Drysdale loves the outback, what an endless source of inspiration …’