Spirits of the Ghan

by Judy Nunn

  Given his current mood Jess knew her reply would not meet with a favourable response, but in the firm belief she was right she decided to get straight to the point.

  ‘They’re deliberately making you sick in order to get your attention,’ she said bluntly. ‘You haven’t been listening to them so they’re taking drastic action.’

  He found the use of ‘they’ and ‘them’ far more than irritating; he found it intensely annoying. ‘I presume you’re referring to the ancestors,’ he sneered, ‘good old Charlie and Brian, am I right?’

  ‘Spot on,’ she replied, undeterred by his sarcasm, which was exactly what she’d expected. ‘Look, Matt,’ she said reasonably, ‘whether you choose to believe or not is immaterial at this stage. The truth of the matter is your dreams are becoming more persistent, more aggressive, and they’re taking over your life to the point where they’re making you ill. You have to start paying attention to what they may mean. I’m not being unrealistic. Any psychiatrist would tell you the same thing. Call it your subconscious if you prefer, call it what you like, but you’re receiving messages from somewhere – you can’t deny it.’

  She was gratified to note the look of annoyance had gone to be replaced by an expression she found oddly defenceless, as if with nowhere else to turn he’d finally surrendered, and she realised that, despite his disbelief, he had decided to place his trust in her. Well he has little other choice really has he, she thought, but she couldn’t help feeling touched nonetheless.

  ‘I know you’re determined to seek a logical explanation and I can understand why,’ she continued, ‘but try to accept the fact that something or someone might be trying to tell you something and that the situation itself is becoming more urgent. Perhaps time is running out. Perhaps they want to warn you of something that’s about to happen – I have no idea. But be receptive,’ she urged. ‘Make yourself accessible. It’s the only way you’ll find out.’

  He was silent for a moment. Then, ‘What do I do?’ he asked, ‘tell me.’

  She gazed out the window at the passers-by in Todd Street and those seated at the tavern’s tables on the pavement, but she wasn’t seeing the people at all. What do we do? She asked the question of herself and also of the ancestors hoping wishfully that they might perhaps make themselves known to her and offer up some mystical answer. They didn’t. But then she hadn’t really expected them to, after all Charlie and Brian weren’t her ancestors. With nothing forthcoming, she decided to adopt a practical approach in the hope he’d believe she knew what she was doing. It was essential she maintain his trust, even though she was forced to admit to herself she had no idea what the next step should be.

  ‘Let’s take a drive up to where you had your blackout the other day,’ she said firmly, ‘where you nearly got run over by the bulldozer.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then we’ll see what happens.’

  They headed out of town in his Land Rover along the Stuart Highway, which was ever-busy these days with the constant transport of men and materials and machinery required for the construction of The Ghan. When they were far enough north they would take one of the many tracks that had been created to provide access to the rail corridor, which although roughly paralleling the main road was some distance to the east.

  As Matt drove, Jess encouraged conversation in a deliberate ploy to distract him. The time for introspection lay ahead, for now it was important he should relax.

  ‘How are Lilian and Dave?’ she asked. ‘Have you spoken to them recently?’

  ‘I most certainly have,’ he replied, only too happy to be distracted and discuss something ‘normal’. ‘Before we left Adelaide Lilian made me promise faithfully I’d ring every week from now on. She said our visit had served as a shocking reminder of how shamefully I’d neglected her and Dave for the past six months.’

  Jess laughed. Without actually mimicking his mother, the over-emphasis had been spot on. ‘Yes, I can just hear Lilian saying that.’

  ‘She puts Dad on the phone and we chat for five minutes – of course Dave doesn’t care whether I ring or not – and then I cop Lilian for another half hour at least, usually longer.’

  ‘They’re a great couple, your parents,’ she said, ‘I liked them a lot.’

  ‘They liked you too. You made a huge impression, particularly with Lilian – she’s always asking after you.’ A little too much, Matt thought. He strongly suspected his mother was bent on matchmaking, although in Lilian’s defence she did appear interested in Jess’s beliefs, to the point where at times she even sounded like a convert.

  ‘Such an interesting young woman,’ he recalled his mother saying the first time he’d made his obligatory call, ‘such a mixture of the practical and the spiritual, and frightfully intelligent. I find that so attractive, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, yes, Mum.’ He’d been instantly dismissive. It was clear she wanted to pair them up as he’d suspected she might, and he wasn’t having any of it.

  But Lilian would not be dismissed. ‘No, no, dear,’ she’d insisted, ‘I’m serious. A girl like Jess renders the concept of spiritualism eminently believable. At least she does to me. I’m most fascinated to learn of the outcome of her investigations. Has she told you what she gleaned during her Adelaide visit? I’m dying to know. I didn’t push when she hinted at the fact,’ Lilian’s rich laugh had echoed down the line, ‘kept my big mouth shut for once. Rather admirable on my part I thought, but I can’t wait to hear exactly what it was that she gleaned during her time with us. Has she said anything to you yet?’

  ‘I wasn’t aware she’d gleaned anything at all in Adelaide,’ Matt had replied. Only my mother would use that word with such abandon, he thought.

  ‘Oh yes, she definitely learnt something. In fact she hinted she might be “on the verge of discovery”!’ Even while lending the phrase dramatic emphasis, Lilian had forgotten that the words were actually her own and that Jess had said no such thing. ‘I found that tremendously exciting, I must say.’

  Accustomed as he was to his mother’s flair for the theatrical, Matt hadn’t paid much attention to the conversation. And during the two further obligatory phone calls he’d made over the ensuing fortnight when Lilian had continued to plague him about Jess and her investigations and whatever it was she had learnt in Adelaide, he’d paid even less attention. ‘I haven’t seen Jess, Mum,’ he’d said, much to Lilian’s disappointment. ‘Oh what a pity,’ she’d replied, and then chatted away animatedly about any number of things that could quite possibly have been fascinating, but he’d clocked off altogether. He was tired by then, the dreams were getting to him and he didn’t have the energy to take an interest in anything his mother had to say, or anyone else for that matter.

  Now as he drove and as the two of them talked of her, Matt recalled his initial phone conversation with Lilian and his curiosity was distinctly aroused.

  ‘Mum told me you’d discovered something in Adelaide,’ he said.

  ‘Did she?’ Jess responded blandly, giving away nothing.

  ‘Well, “gleaned” was the word she used, actually, which I found just a touch mysterious. Then she said you felt you were “on the verge of discovery”.’

  ‘Hardly. They were Lilian’s words, every one of them. Including “gleaned”,’ Jess added with a smile.

  ‘Yes, I thought the whole thing sounded rather like her, but she was very insistent.’ Matt’s eyes left the road for a moment to study her keenly. Melodramatic his mother might be, but Lilian never lied. ‘Did you really feel that you’d learned something?’

  ‘Oh probably not,’ Jess said with a shrug. Now is certainly not the time to tell him, she thought. ‘Just a gut feeling, a sort of hunch: I’m probably completely wrong.’

  He wasn’t prepared to buy that. ‘Gut feelings and hunches,’ he said, eyes once more on the road. ‘Aren’t they more or less what we’re following right now?’

  There was a brief pause then, ‘Yes,’ she admitted, ‘yes they are. I’m
sorry. I didn’t mean to fob you off.’

  ‘Oh yes you did.’ Another glance and in his eyes was accusation, but his tone was not unkind. ‘You most certainly did.’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I know, Matt,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you when I feel really sure that I’m right. I promise.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he agreed.

  They continued to chat about inconsequential things, just two good friends out for a drive, while Matt kept a sharp lookout for the track that would lead off to the right.

  ‘That’s where we turn,’ he said eventually, pointing up ahead to a bush track that was all but invisible to Jess.

  They turned off the main road and followed the track for about twenty kilometres. They were quiet now, free of the traffic and the busyness of the highway, both enjoying the tranquillity and surrounding scenery.

  Beautiful country, Jess thought, as she always did. Without the dramatic grandeur of the towering rock edifices and gorges and rock pools that attracted the tourists, some might consider it repetitive, some perhaps even boring, but she loved the flood plains. The endless stretch of red earth, the mulgas and acacias and elegant coolabahs, the healthy growth of grasses and vegetation that sprang from underground water sources, here was yet another face of the ever-changing desert.

  They reached a T-junction with another rough bush track and Matt took a further right turn.

  ‘We’re on the original surveyors’ track now,’ he said, ‘the one my team’s been following as we chart the course. ‘You can see our pegs over there marking the path of the rail corridor.’

  She looked where he was pointing and could see the centreline pegs and the boundary posts defining the allowances for firebreaks and service roads. The course was clearly delineated for the contractors who would mark out the final rail construction path that the teams of workers and heavy earth-moving equipment would follow.

  ‘We need to head back south a few Ks,’ he explained, ‘that’ll get us to where we were working on the day of the bulldozer incident.’

  They drove along the track beside the marked-out route of the rail corridor and five minutes or so later Matt pulled the vehicle up.

  ‘Here we are.’ He indicated the spot. ‘It happened over there.’

  Jess looked towards the clump of felled mulga. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘that’s where we start,’ and they climbed from the vehicle.

  ‘What do I do?’ he asked when they’d crossed to the fallen timber and he stood near the spot where he’d had his blackout.

  Jess pondered the matter momentarily, not sure of the right answer. She recalled her first spiritual encounter that day at Emily Gap, when she had felt the ancestors of Mparntwe welcome her. The experience had changed her life. Since then the contacts she’d had with the spirit world, brief as they’d been, had occurred automatically, she’d never had to analyse how or why she was receptive. What instruction could she possibly offer a confirmed non-believer, and a white man at that? How did one teach a person like Matt to open his heart and his mind to another plane of existence?

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever given meditation a go?’ she asked hopefully. The response was nothing more than the whimsical raise of an eyebrow. ‘No, I thought not,’ she said. ‘Well, why don’t you close your eyes and breathe deeply …’ she suggested in a suitably assertive manner ‘and you might want to start by slowly counting –’

  ‘I know what meditation is, Jess.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ She was relieved to note that her school-teacher antics had amused more than anything, and he certainly seemed relaxed, which was a very good sign.

  ‘I’m quite prepared to make myself accessible, as you put it,’ he went on, ‘but shouldn’t I focus upon something, and if so, what? Seriously, I mean it. Charlie? Brian? I don’t even know what Brian looks like.’

  She wondered if he was being facetious then realised that he was in deadly earnest. Good question too, she thought, but the answer’s much simpler. ‘Focus upon the images in your dreams, Matt,’ she said. ‘You’ve been sent pictures of the land for a reason. Think of the dreams and give yourself up to them.’

  He nodded obediently, although he didn’t relish the dizziness and the headache that were likely to result. Best to get it over and done with, he thought, but he determined nonetheless to give it his best shot. Without another word he turned from her, stood very still and closed his eyes.

  ‘I’ll go and wait in the car,’ she said, feeling suddenly superfluous. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

  She walked away and Matt relaxed, the rays of the mild mid-afternoon sun pleasant on his face. Then, after taking several deep breaths, he willed the images he’d been so assiduously avoiding back into his mind.

  From thirty metres away Jess watched through the car’s open passenger window. He was utterly motionless, a lone figure in the desert, just Matt surrounded by the wilderness. What was happening? she wondered. Were they making themselves known to him, his ancestors? Was he seeing them, Charlie and Brian, was he hearing their voices, was he feeling their touch? She longed to know.

  She didn’t take her eyes from him for a full half hour, during which time there remained no movement at all, a passing breeze ruffling the sleeve of his khaki shirt, nothing more.

  Then even as she remained watching, he turned to her. Or rather he turned to the car. And then he was striding purposefully towards the vehicle, opening the door, climbing in, turning on the ignition.

  She didn’t say a word as they drove off, although she ached for answers. Instead she waited for him to offer information, which he did, to a certain extent anyway.

  ‘We need to head further south along the old surveyor’s track,’ he said.

  ‘Right you are.’ She tried not to scrutinise him too obviously, but in her peripheral vision she searched for changes. Had he had a life-changing experience? It didn’t seem so. He appeared purposeful, certainly, but apart from that he was absolutely normal.

  ‘Just on the border of the flood-plain territory,’ he said. ‘Two granite outcrops: I’ll know them when I see them.’

  Jess’s mind was teeming with questions. How will you know them? Who told you? What happened back there? She longed for the answers, but didn’t dare enquire. There appeared nothing at all mysterious in his manner, he was simply following instructions. But whose instructions was he following?

  Had she asked, she would have been disappointed in the answer. Matt had experienced no epiphany, no life-changing moment. In calling up the images of his dreams and focusing upon them, they had simply become clarified. A course had been set out before him as clearly as any surveyor’s map and he was following it without hesitation. Perhaps later he might question who or what was guiding him, but for now he was simply noting each of the passing landmarks that had been presented to him, in the knowledge they were getting closer to their destination with every passing minute.

  He described the site to her, vivid as it was in his mind’s eye. ‘The rocky hillocks are about ten metres apart,’ he said, ‘surrounded by spinifex grasses and a few trees with a natural clearing in the middle. There’s a creek about fifty metres out. One of the outcrops is a lot bigger than the other and has a sign carved on a rock about halfway up. I can’t see exactly what the sign is, but we’ll find out when we get there.’

  ‘Great.’ Jess’s reply was suitably laid-back, but she was astounded. He can see the rocks, he can see the sign, he can see the creek, but he’s not questioning how or why, she thought. He still doesn’t believe the ancestors are leading him. How fascinating. ‘That’s really great, Matt,’ she said and she sat back and enjoyed the ride.

  They’d been travelling a good half hour or so when up ahead on their right, two rock formations came into view.

  ‘There they are,’ he announced, according to his reckoning they were by now roughly thirty kilometres from Alice Springs. ‘Yep, that’s the place all right,’ he said as they drew nearer, and again Jess was amazed by the normalcy of his manner. They
might have been arriving at a favourite picnic spot.

  Upon reaching the site he brought the Land Rover to a halt and they climbed out in order to walk the twenty metres or so from the track to the rocky hillocks.

  The place is exactly as he described it, Jess thought, two granite outcrops about ten metres apart, one a lot larger than the other, a natural clearing in the middle, how extraordinary. She found the larger of the hillocks impressive, rising out of the surrounding flat terrain, the late afternoon sun lighting up its fiery redness, and she searched for any evidence of the sign he’d mentioned. But she couldn’t see anything: perhaps it was on the far side.

  As they reached the rocks and walked into the centre of the clearing, Jess’s eyes continued to rake the larger outcrop seeking the sign and suddenly there it was. From this particular angle she could just make it out. Halfway up the hillock and indistinct in the glare of the sun, it would have been all but invisible had she not been searching. She wondered what it could be. Early Aboriginal artwork perhaps, as yet undiscovered? They were in a remote spot; it was quite possible no-one knew of its existence. The prospect was exciting.

  ‘I can see it, Matt,’ she said, her voice hushed, not wishing to disturb the silence. ‘The sign, it’s there. I can’t make out what it is though,’ she said, squinting up at the rock face.

  She received no reply. Beside her, Matt appeared to be in a state of semi-consciousness. He remained deathly still, his eyes open, but trance-like: he was in another place altogether, hearing and seeing nothing, or so it seemed.

  Jess found the sight unnerving, but, realising he was having one of the blackouts he’d talked of, she knew she must not disturb him. Even now the ancestors may be making themselves known; under no circumstances must she intrude.