Red Can Origami

by Madelaine Dickie

  Noah lifts his beer.

  —It sounds pretty straightforward, but there are a lot of tensions within our group, a lot of fighting. If the agreement is strong, and I recommend it, I know my family group will get behind me, but there might be other family groups—the Turners and the Greys, for example—who vote against it, not because it’s a bad agreement, but because they don’t want to be seen to be supporting me.

  —It sounds like a mess.

  —The whole native title system is a mess. While we’re all supposedly part of the ‘Burrika’ native title group, traditionally we didn’t share the same country. Those Turners and Greys even speak a different language. We’ve been set up to fail—mobs all over Australia have been set up to fail. Anyway, that’s another discussion for a long night and a full carton.

  You cool your cheek with the frosty glass.

  —So, ahead of this first negotiation, is there anything you need to know? Or anything you want me to pass on to Watanabe?

  Noah thinks for a moment, then says,

  —I want to know if I can trust you. If Gerro Blue try to cover anything up, try to doublecross us, I want to know that you’ll be straight with me.

  Jammed between a lawsuit and lust. But only if something goes wrong.

  —Of course you can trust me.

  Nothing will go wrong.

  Ash is back in town.

  —Stoked I’m back for Straya Day! We’re going camping. You in?

  ‘In’ involves following a convoy of four-wheel drives for a four-day barramundi fishing mission. ‘In’ involves considerable personal and financial risk. The road to the fishing spot—ten winding hours of dirt between cliffs and over rivers—is closed for the season. If you’re caught by the rangers, the fine’s a thousand dollars per tyre. That includes spares.

  —Pfff, Ash says. We won’t get caught.

  He tells you the road is touted as one of the great four-wheel drive trips in Australia, says that during the dry season it’s punishing, it’s basically a freeway of caravans and Prados and you can’t overtake because of the dust. At that time of year, the drive’s harsh: the vegetation on either side of the road withers and fires leave the gunmetal skeletons of forests.

  It’s nothing like that now. You look out the window at the shredded husks of old tyres. Weeds have narrowed the road to a single lane. If your car broke down, if you weren’t carrying water, if you ran out of red cans, if a cyclone hit, you’d be fucked.

  Ash tells you that once he got caught in a dry season fire. He had to act counterintuitively; he had to act fast. He threw matches in front of the fire to burn himself a safe place to stand.

  —Were you scared?

  —Shitting myself! Speaking of shitting yourself, and sorry to bring up work, but there’s something you should know.

  —Righto.

  You were hoping for a long weekend away from it all.

  —So, there’s this group called Green Gubinge. Olivia’s heading them up.

  Olivia, the combative nurse from the NT. She’s driving the four-wheel drive in front. She’s handling it like a pro.

  —Green Gubinge are gunna do everything they can to stop this mine going ahead. I went to their last meeting.

  Ash catches the frown.

  —Ava, I’m a fisherman. If this mine goes ahead, then all those spots on the lower part of the river will be off limits. Not to mention the risks to groundwater, the risks to bilbies, the risks to …

  —Yeah, I get it.

  It comes out way too curt. And Ash almost doesn’t tell you, he almost falls into a surly, disapproving silence … But silence isn’t his go.

  —Okay, after I tell you this, not a word more about work. We’ll camp, fish, drink and enjoy. Deal?

  —Deal, you agree.

  —Green Gubinge is going to try and sabotage any formal agreement between Burrika and Gerro Blue.

  —What? Why would they do that? And why would you warn me?

  Ash grins.

  —Sorry Ava, that’s all I can say. That was the deal. Do you mind grabbing me a red can?

  On the way to the fishing spot, you all pull in to one of the big-ticket gorges. Cliffs slide like lava into a deep green waterhole. You’re the second of the group to bomb it—leaping off one of the higher rocks in a mad surge of beery adrenaline.

  The water hurts when it hits, has a deadness to it, so different to the sway of the sea, the buoyancy of salt. It’s scary, contemplating what might lurk a hundred metres below your toes. What blind yabbies, what prehistoric, unclassified fish.

  Four hours later, the sun’s setting, dripping like molten coffee over stone country. You’re in the troopie listening to Thievery Corporation in what you imagine is a companionable, perhaps even an intimate silence, when Ash says casually,

  —I caught up with your sister when I was in Melbourne over Chrissy.

  He’s nudging the car slowly over river rock. The water’s up to the doorhandles. There are No Swimming and Danger: Crocodiles inhabit this area signs on both banks.

  She didn’t say anything, the little shit!

  —Nice place she’s got.

  An apartment in Brunswick. Windows that spill snow-pale light. Furniture elegant and blanched, like in a Scandinavian crime series. It’s got a certain icy charm.

  Ash cuts a hard left onto an ungazetted road and skirts a washaway big enough to swallow the car.

  —Have you convinced your sister to move up yet?

  —Not yet.

  He crawls a near-vertical embankment in first gear and when the car skids backwards, you clutch the doorhandle, ready to jump in case it rolls.

  —Are you sure you don’t want me to walk this bit?

  Ash eases the car to the top.

  —’Ee right, he replies.

  A kilometre on, you pull up at a clearing by the river. The tide’s low, exposing a rock bar.

  —This is the spot, Ash says. Tomorrow night it’s a new moon, the tide’ll be running in and the barra will be on!

  Just as well it’s tomorrow, because no-one’s got the stamina to fish now. Mozzie domes are erected and wood is collected in silence. Ash wraps four big freshwater barra in tinfoil, and soon, you’re munching barra burgers, loaded with mayo, Danish feta, limp rocket and black pepper. The fish tastes like the shadow of mud—probably a three or a four, though tonight no-one can be bothered arguing the subtleties.

  Crawling into your mozzie dome after tea, it’s almost unbearably sticky. Half a degree hotter and you’d be looking at sleeplessness, or dreams worse than Mefloquine hallucinations. As you sweat your way to sleep, you think about being under the spell of this country, think about how it’s almost too ancient, too majestic, too difficult to wrap the heart around in comprehension.

  The sun’s drilling your eyelids. Ash, Olivia and Harley are already around the fire. The others are still asleep. Harley’s got three hexagonal steel percolators on the go and Ash is lathering up a frypan for bacon.

  —You ready, Ava? Today’s gunna be your day! You’ll pull in a metrey for sure!

  You grin and the four of you are quiet for a moment, slowly chewing on the bubblegum backdrop of mountains. The only perspective you get in Gubinge is from the sand dunes. You’d forgotten how mountains draw the eye, give you a different sense of space. In your collective reverie, one of the percolators starts to spit and then capsizes. The spilt coffee hisses black on the coals.

  Harley moans,

  —Not this morning! Any morning but this morning …

  —What’s the plan? you ask, throwing Harley a tea towel.

  Ash answers,

  —Well, we’ve got two highs today, ten this morning and ten tonight. So after a cuppa and a sanga, we’ll catch some liveys and get out some lines …

  Olivia drives onto the rocks and turns up Triple J’s Hottest 100. Spirits are high. The tide’s rising. Harley describes Dick Smith’s banned Australia Day ad, in which an old girl, holding a jar of OzEmite, says, ‘There’s only one dick
I’ll be eating on Australia Day!’ Everyone pays out nationalism and watches for crocs.

  Sun sears shins.

  Harley lands a catty that makes a slippery twist and spikes his hand; the cut pisses blood. Olivia hauls in a gulping eighty-five with a plump midriff; Ash gets the money shot.

  And then that’s it.

  For the next eight hours, there are no bites, no boofs, only a saltwater croc that swims slow parallels to the bank and watches you.

  Olivia sidles up, sometime in the feverish hot light after lunch.

  —Nothing?

  —Nothing.

  —Fishing’s been shit for the last few years, she says. In the Territory, too. We need a cyclone. Country needs a drink.

  She crouches down beside you, her elbows sticking out awkward as broken wings. You don’t have to wait for long; within moments, she’s launched into a torrential sermon.

  —I’d like to tell you what I know about uranium.

  She starts in India, at the Jaduguda uranium mine where workers and nearby communities are exposed to constant radiation. Children are born with swollen heads, twisted skeletons. Tailings pipelines have burst four times. She asks if you know about the pond failure at Church Rock in New Mexico. No? Well, it’s an area populated with Native Americans. Nearly one hundred million gallons of tailings flooded a river system. People wading in the river at the time of the breach were rushed to hospital with burning feet. Others suffered burns that became infections, requiring amputation. Herds of sheep, cattle and small children died. Do you know about …

  Exasperated you interrupt,

  —We’re not talking about India or the US! We’re talking about Australia! An accident like this won’t happen up here, no way. We’ve got too many regulations.

  —Well, you obviously don’t know anything about Ranger in the Northern Territory …

  She’s wrong about that. You know it’s a dinosaur of a mine that should have been shut down years ago, you know about the incidents: the children who built castles with radioactive mud, the staff who showered in and drank contaminated water, the spills onto the wetland. But Olivia’s changing tack, catching you off guard.

  —So, I’ve heard Burrika are working on a native title agreement with Gerro. When do you reckon it’ll be locked in?

  —Hopefully by the end of the year.

  She rocks back to a sitting position, a slight smug smile on her pale face.

  —Yeah, well. Good luck with that!

  You don’t grace her sarcasm with a reply.

  On dusk a bloke turns up in a company ute. Since Olivia’s attack, you’ve fished away from the others, further upstream. The bloke makes a beeline for you and talks without prompting, tells you he lives at the closest town. It’s about an hour away, between an old nickel mine and a prawn farm. He says,

  —It’s a sunny place for shady people.

  He doesn’t seem like a shady bloke.

  —Do you come down here often to fish? you ask.

  —Nah, mate. Gotta sweeten up the wife first. Bottle of bubbles usually does it, but not always. Before I left this arvo, she put the hard word on me, said, Bazza, just tell me, tell me straight. What do you like better? Fishing or sex?

  The tide froths over the rock bar.

  —And? What did you say?

  —I said to her, ‘Honey, it’s a no-brainer. Sex lasts, what, six minutes? And fishing lasts …’

  You laugh and tap stubby holders, discreetly admiring Bazza’s calves. They’re chunky and pink and bristled as a bush pig’s.

  —Yep, he says. This here’s the spot.

  The rest of the group are right on the rock bar, lines baited and weighted. Bazza lowers his voice and points to the water in front of you.

  —This is where the big girls are.

  Then he plants arse to esky, can to lips. Tells you the fishing here’s heaps better than in Gubinge. He lived in Gubinge for ten years. Worked on a pearling boat. One season the skipper of the boat died. The company brought on a new bloke, Red Beard from Busselton. It started with the showers.

  —He’d say to me, ‘Bazza! What are you still doing in the shower? We’ve got a strict three-minute-shower policy.’ ‘I’m floggin’ the log,’ I’d tell him. ‘What do you think I’m doing in here?’ Then he started hammering me about my smokes. Said he couldn’t stand the smell of rollies. ‘Well I can’t smoke the fucken water!’ I told him. So, one night, I stuffed a handful of rollie butts under his pillow …

  You learn Bazza speaks Japanese—there were often Japanese pearl technicians on the boats. He goes to Japan every year for a few weeks. Loves it.

  —The sumo, the Robot Restaurant … and shitloads of bowing! Everyone’s so polite. Walk into the 7-Eleven for sushi and beer and their foreheads practically wipe the floor as they welcome you!

  Bazza’s mention of sumo gives you an idea. When the tide starts to run out and buckets and handlines are packed up, you propose a before-bed game. You’ve just invented it. You’re calling it Swagmo.

  Ash and Bazza are up first. They lie sideways across a swag each and allow Harley to roll them up, clip them in and lift them to their feet. Their bodies are like barrels and they’ve got no use of their arms, only their legs. The idea is to bounce the other person to the ground or to bully them from the makeshift ring of rope. The first one to fall or stumble from the ring three times is out.

  —We need salt! you cry.

  Harley raids the communal kitchen pile for Saxa and as the blokes square off against each other, stamping and growling, you chant in Japanese, crudely imitating the salt rituals of the sumo. Then, it’s on!

  Bazza and Ash lower their heads, charge. Their shoulders lock through the swags. They’re at a stalemate, sweating and swearing. Ash steps back fast, circling the wheezing Baz, shifting from foot to foot like an armless boxer, wondering how to outfox him. He’s taller and leaner and fitter, but Bazza’s got a low centre of gravity and those powerful calves. It could go either way. The maths teachers are laying bets. Someone turns on the car radio—the winning sugarbag from the Hottest 100 is on high rotation. Then Bazza lowers his head like a bull, burps obnoxiously, slams into Ash’s midriff, and drives him out of the ring.

  It’s a lightning conquest.

  Bazza wins three–nil, and then the next pair are up …

  It continues, until the inevitable midnight disaster. Paige, a petite paediatrician, disappears inside a swag and is pitted against Olivia. Within thirty seconds, Paige is bounced from the ring, and she splits her head open on the corner of an esky. It misses her eye by a fraction. Game over.

  It’s not until late February that you experience your first cyclone. It’s been dubbed ‘Rex’. In the days before Rex makes landfall, there’s a steady traffic of baby barni crossing and recrossing the highway. There are tales of fish on the move—Ash reckons he caught fifteen fingermark in a single session. Photos, or it didn’t happen, you tell him.

  Rex coincides with the first negotiation meeting with Burrika. The cyclone isn’t meant to be serious, a category two at the most, so the meeting goes ahead as planned in a room at one of Gubinge’s resorts. There are floor-to-ceiling views of the rain-ripped bay. All the Burrika directors—bar three—are present.

  Noah takes the lead.

  —Well, I know the Turners and Greys will turn up in their own good time, so let’s get started. I want to reiterate that, as per our previous correspondence, we’d like to have the agreement finalised and put to the entire native title group on Sunday the twelfth of December.

  The water on the glass windows has the frenzied angularity of a lino print.

  —These are some of the things Burrika want enshrined in this agreement.

  Noah starts to read.

  —We want funding for a heritage survey at Fortune. We want to bring experts to Lalinjurra to formally investigate the massacre site. We want an apology from Yuma Watanabe about the damage to our cultural heritage. We expect a minimum of forty per cent Burrika employment
in the first year of the mine’s operation …

  The list goes on.

  Peter, one of Gerro Blue’s senior lawyers, folds his arms.

  —And finally, we want a ‘no means no’ clause, meaning that if our cultural heritage is at risk, we can put a stop to Gerro’s activities until the issue’s resolved.

  Here, Peter snorts and glances at you. Noah catches the look.

  —Is that a problem, Peter?

  —I can’t see Gerro Blue agreeing to that last condition, not under any circumstances.

  Noah’s about to respond when the door swings open and the three missing directors push into the room.

  Old Honeybird Grey is the first to throw shit at the fan.

  —Look here! What for yubala bin start this meeting early? I bin sendem message la you!

  The old woman glares at Noah, then gestures out the windows. The resort’s plumped-up lawn is underwater. There are no tinnies up the creek, no-one braving the bay. She swings into formal English, addresses you and the rest of the board.

  —I don’t know why we’re even bothering talking about an agreement when my family’s country hasn’t been properly recognised. Them lawyers drew a line and said Lalinjurra is on the Ishikawa family for country. But that’s bullshit. Everyone knows that’s the Turners and Greys for country. This mining company should be talking with my family, my sisters, not with you!

  Noah gets to his feet, skin taut over his jaw.

  —If you know in your heart that you’re connected by story, from your ancestors, to that country, then no-one’s gunna argue with that. But the benefits from this mine are for …

  Old Honeybird Grey interrupts again and everyone sits silently as the shit rains down.

  Blitzes of lightning throw into relief buoys and boats, and the wind sweeps a chilly twenty-two degrees across the open-air deck.

  Ash hasn’t arrived and you don’t see Keith or Emmet. A couple of women are perched awkwardly on bar stools. They’ve got skinny legs ending in chipped pedicures, and guts ballooned with yeasty beer and salty chicken wings. The barman, a young bloke with dreadlocks that fall to the last disc in his lower back, sees you, then turns and starts stacking schooner glasses.