‘What happened, son?’ asked Dad, pointing to Dawson’s knee, where a small trickle of blood was already drying.
‘I scared him,’ said Emma, proudly. ‘And he fell over.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ protested Dawson. ‘I was just startled, that’s all.’
‘I scared you,’ repeated Emma, grinning broadly.
‘Ha,’ Samantha mocked as she jogged over. ‘Is poor little Dawsy-Wawsy spooked by the ghost town?’
‘Hey,’ interrupted Dad, ‘enough of that! I thought I told you guys to be careful. It’s so easy to get hurt in amongst all the rubble and broken building bits.’
Dawson smiled. Broken building bits. Alliteration. Ever since he’d learned the term at school, he’d noticed how often Dad used it, stringing together words starting with the same letter. ‘Vile voluminous vomit.’ Those had been Dad’s most used words when Emma had gastro a few months ago. He glanced at Samantha. She looked back, trying to keep a straight face. And then they both burst out laughing. It was an ongoing joke between them.
‘Oi,’ said Dad. ‘This is no laughing matter. If you get hurt, there’s no doctor around. All we’ve got is a first-aid kit.’ His hands were on his hips now as he slipped into full-on Dad Mode. ‘And if you get seriously injured, what then? Do you see a hospital nearby? Huh?’
The kids looked blankly at each other and then back to Dad.
‘No! Of course not,’ continued Dad. ‘We’d need to find some way of contacting the RFDS.’
‘R … F … D … what?’ asked Emma.
‘RFDS,’ said Dad, smiling now. ‘The Royal Flying Doctor Service. They’re doctors and nurses who fly around in planes to help people in the middle of nowhere.’
‘Wow,’ breathed Em. ‘Doctors who fly.’
Dad turned his attention to Dawson’s bloodied knee. ‘You need a bandaid for that?’
‘Nah,’ answered Dawson. ‘It’s just a scratch.’
‘Anyway,’ continued Dad, ‘no running around in the collapsed buildings. It’s dangerous. Got that?’
‘Sure,’ Samantha said, a gleam in her eyes.
Emma nodded.
‘Besides which, if you’re running around you’re not looking at the sights properly. And there’s so much to take in …’ He turned around. ‘But we’ll see more of it tomorrow. Come on. We better get back to camp and start dinner.’
As he headed along the dirt road, Dawson looked back at the town of Farina. It was a ghost town. But that didn’t mean it was full of ghosts. Farina was abandoned. No one lived there and it was literally falling apart.
Bathed in the golden light of sunset, the place did look supernatural. Dawson imagined spirits of the past hiding in the buildings and pacing the deserted streets. He remembered the Ghastly Ghosts video game he liked so much. There was a deserted town in that. All he needed now was an ecto-blaster to hunt ghosts with. He smiled. Ghostly video game images floated through Dawson’s mind as he turned and followed his family.
Dinner was baked beans on fried bread. Dawson was sick of camp food. Dad wasn’t a great cook at home, but his camping menu was even worse. You’d think that as a stay-at-home dad, he’d be able to cook better. Sadly not.
If they camped anywhere near shops, they had sausages in bread. If not, then whatever they ate came out of a tin. The bread was fried because it had gone stale in the heat.
‘You can revive anything by frying it in butter.’ This was Dad’s cooking motto. Dawson wasn’t so sure about it. He imagined buttery bush ants and witchetty grubs popping and splattering in a frying pan. He grimaced. But he was hungry, so he shovelled beans and butter-sodden bread into his mouth.
Dawson looked around as he chewed. The campground was nestled in amongst a scattering of trees, about a five-minute walk from the town itself. The glow of their lantern lit up their immediate area. In the distance was another circle of light. Campers who had recently arrived – probably the same people who’d been hanging around earlier, judging by the red car.
‘What are we doing tomorrow?’ asked Samantha.
‘I reckon we can spend a little over half a day here,’ said Dad. ‘We’ll have a late lunch and then get moving. It’s about fifty-five kilometres to Marree, which is our next stop.’
‘Is that another spooky town?’ mumbled Emma, her mouth full of beans.
‘You mean ghost town,’ Samantha corrected.
‘Nah,’ said Dad. ‘Marree is an ordinary town – people still live in it. Nothing special, though. It’s just a place to camp before we move on to Oodnadatta.’ He scooped the last of his food into his mouth but continued talking, spitting little bits of food in his excitement. ‘There’s lots to see before we go. Aside from the buildings of the town itself, there’s bits of the Old Ghan railway, some carriages, water towers and other stuff to the east. Then there’s the cemetery …’
Dad was now in full-on Dad Tourist Mode. He loved adventure and seeing things. He was always bursting with stories of overseas travel that he and Mum had done before they had kids. This trip, driving to Uluru and back, was supposed to be a test. The first big holiday the whole family did together, now that Emma was old enough. And if things worked out, they would consider an overseas trip the following year.
But things hadn’t quite worked out. Mum hadn’t been able to come with them. She was stuck back in Adelaide, finishing off a case. She was a lawyer, and the company she worked for needed her to stay an extra week. So the rest of the family had started the trip without her. She intended to fly to Uluru later and meet them there, then they would do the trip back by car.
As Dad droned on about the history of Farina and what they would see in the morning, Dawson’s thoughts drifted to his family, the Millers. They were a bit annoying, but not too bad. He guessed that he loved them, even though they drove him crazy sometimes.
Samantha was his older sister. She was twelve.
Sam loved exploring, so Dawson knew this trip was right up her alley. She was adventurous and daring. Dawson admired the way she just did things, no matter what anybody else said … but it also scared him a little. He sometimes wished he could be a bit more like her.
Emma was his younger sister. She was seven.
Everyone loved Em. She was cheeky but cute, mischievous but kind, and the baby of the family. She often made Dawson laugh – even when she was being irritating. For her, everything was a game. No wonder she was so good at hide and seek.
At almost eleven, Dawson was stuck in the middle. Em and Sam always called him Daws. But Em, with her little-kid way of saying things very carefully, made it sound like ‘Doors’. Dad always called him ‘son’, almost like an acknowledgement that he was a boy trapped between two sisters.
Dawson sighed. His sisters were enjoying this camping holiday more than he was. He didn’t mind camping usually, but the thought of doing it all the way to Uluru and back didn’t thrill him. Especially since they had to pack and unpack every day or two.
He would have liked it better if Mum was with them. Dad was a bit intense with the touristy stuff, wanting to stop and examine absolutely everything. (‘Look, there’s a historic building.’ ‘Look, there’s a cultural landmark.’ ‘Look, there’s a brick that might have been part of an important structure a century ago.’) Mum was more reasonable. A bit touristy, yeah, but in a fun way.
Dawson also missed his Xbox. Not that he would admit it. Dad was always going on about how he spent too much time playing video games.
Dawson tuned back into the conversation. Dad was now prattling on about the animals they’d seen so far and others they might encounter on their trip – kangaroos, emus, lizards, echidnas and something called a thorny devil.
‘Hey,’ said Dad. ‘What’s the collective noun for a group of emus?’
‘Herd,’ said Sam.
‘Flock,’ said Dawson, looking at his sister as if she knew nothing. ‘They’re birds.’
‘Nope,’ said Dad.
Sam poked her tongue out at Dawson.
> ‘Crowd?’ said Em, hopefully.
Sam laughed.
‘Actually,’ said Dad. ‘That’s pretty close.’
Em smiled proudly.
‘It’s a mob of emus,’ Dad finally revealed.
Em giggled and Dawson smiled at her.
‘A marauding mob of elegant emus.’ Dad was putting on his radio announcer’s voice, while extending his neck back and forth with a strange movement that he obviously thought made him resemble an emu. He was wrong. It just looked silly. ‘Casually cruising for cacti across the desolate desert.’
Em laughed. Sam groaned. Dawson rolled his eyes.
‘Righty-oh,’ said Dad with a chuckle. ‘Enough animal alliteration. Time we all turned in. The sun will have us up bright and early tomorrow morning.’
Sam stared into the gloom. The moon cast eerie shadows across the canvas. Quietly, she climbed out of her sleeping bag and tiptoed past Em, who slept soundly, clutching her fluffy pink bunny. She carefully unzipped the tent, hoping the sound wouldn’t wake Dawson, who shared the tent’s other room with Dad.
There was no danger of disturbing Dad, who could sleep through an earthquake, but Dawson was another matter. He was a light sleeper and if he discovered her, he might follow and lecture her about how she shouldn’t be sneaking out of the tent at night. Or he might even tell Dad. Dawson could be a bit of a spoilsport sometimes.
Sam often thought that Dawson didn’t behave like a ten-year-old should. He was always trying to be so grown-up. Of course, his answer to that would be to remind her that he wasn’t a ten-year-old – he was an almost-eleven-year-old. Sam nearly laughed out loud.
Slipping on her shoes, she crept out and zipped the tent up again. She paused for a moment to listen. All quiet in the tent. She smiled to herself and moved off.
The night was chilly and she wrapped her arms around herself as she walked in her shorts and t-shirt along the road to Farina.
She did this in every place they camped. Waiting until the others were asleep, she would sneak out for a private midnight wander. It was her chance for a bit of alone-time and an opportunity to explore. And the lure of a dead-of-night visit to a ghost town was too enticing to pass up.
Reaching the edge of the town, she stopped to gaze at the moon-bathed buildings and streets. In the darkness, Sam could imagine the buildings were not falling apart, that they might have people sleeping in them. And in the surrounding night might be … anything. People. More buildings. A city. What had seemed lonely and desolate and abandoned by day was mysterious and full of potential by night.
Sam breathed in deeply the evening air, smiled and took off down the main street at a sprint.
Yes, she was tired. Yes, she would be woken early by the rising sun (or maybe even earlier by her sister). But for a few minutes at least, before she headed back to bed, this town was all hers.
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Version 1.0
Royal Flying Doctor Service: Emergency Echo
9780857988799
Published by Random House Australia 2016
Copyright © George Ivanoff 2016
Illustration copyright © Maria Pena 2016
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A Random House Australia book
Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd
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www.randomhouse.com.au
Random House Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com/offices
First published by Random House Australia in 2016
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry
Author: Ivanoff, George
Title: Emergency Echo [electronic resource]
ISBN: 978 0 85798 879 9 (ebook)
Series: Royal Flying Doctor Service; 2
Target audience: For primary school age
Subjects: Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia
Medical emergencies – Juvenile fiction
Airplane ambulances – Australia – Juvenile fiction
Dewey Number: A823.3
Cover and internal illustrations by Maria Pena
Cover design by Christabella Designs
Emergency Echo Page 7
