The Road Read online

  ‘I thought we were.’ Noel was muttering again. ‘It’s probably best to be on the safe side, though.’

  ‘When are we going to have ice cream?’ Rose queried, and Peter gave her a nudge. ‘What?’ she said, as he pulled faces at her.

  ‘We’ll get ice cream, sweetie.’ Linda sounded very tired. ‘As soon as we reach an ice cream shop, we’ll have ice cream.’

  ‘But I wa-a-ant one!’

  ‘Rose!’

  ‘It’s okay, Rose,’ Louise said quickly. ‘We can play “Fish”. Do you want to play “Fish”?’

  ‘Yeah!’ Rose’s face brightened. ‘Now?’

  ‘Right now.’

  Peter heaved a sigh of relief, knowing that he was excused all card games while travelling, in case he threw up. (Rose, like Louise, had guts of iron.) While Linda reached into her bag for playing cards, Noel turned his key in the ignition and hauled at the steering wheel. The car swung around in a wide U-turn before starting off down the road.

  Peter found himself looking towards the electricity pylons rather than the creek, and it occurred to him that on their trip up to Broken Hill a week before he must have viewed the same scene from the same angle. If only he could remember more about it!

  ‘We should have bought one of those topographic maps from that army disposal store in Oxide Street,’ he remarked. ‘Those maps had everything on them – all the creeks and ridges and tracks and everything. I bet if we had one of those we could tell where we are.’

  There was no reply. Recollecting that his parents had scoffed at his suggestion that they purchase a set of such maps, at eight dollars each (when they had already spent eighty, in the same shop, on an Akubra for Noel) Peter wasn’t surprised that they refused to comment. Peter had always liked maps. He liked drawing his own maps of imaginary kingdoms, and he liked studying the family atlas. His request for a set of topographic maps had therefore been regarded as just another attempt to pursue one of his hobbies, and had been greeted no more favourably than Louise’s request for a new pair of polarised sunglasses.

  Peter thought: So I was right all along, wasn’t I? You should have bought those maps.

  ‘Okay. Let’s see. Have you got . . . an octopus?’ Louise inquired of her sister, and, upon receiving a negative reply, picked up a card from the centre stack. ‘Oh! Two seahorses.’

  ‘Yell if you spot that mailbox, Peter,’ Linda said. ‘It’ll be on your side, and we don’t want to miss it.’

  ‘Those maps had all the stations marked on them too,’ Peter continued. ‘With their names.’

  ‘Yes, well, that’s very interesting, I’m sure. But since we don’t have any topographic maps, it’s not very useful, is it?’

  ‘Do you have a goldfish?’ Rose asked, and Louise nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, drawing a card from the collection dealt to her.

  ‘Yay! Do you have a crab?’

  They retraced their route, heading north again, as the sun travelled across the sky.

  Chris and Graham McKenzie were following in the steps of Burke and Wills. For three long years they had planned their trip, which would take them north from Melbourne, across the New South Wales border to Menindee, past White Cliffs, through Tibooburra and into the Sturt Stony Desert. They didn’t necessarily expect to get as far as Normanton during the two weeks available to them, but they were hoping that they might see Birdsville, and even Boulia. At the very least, they would be visiting a portion of Queensland’s far west.

  Chris had researched the area thoroughly. He had purchased the requisite maps and guidebooks, and had read almost every available text dealing with the ill-fated journey. He found it a strangely compelling story. In 1861, Robert O’Hara Burke and William Wills had set off at the vanguard of a great expedition into Australia’s heart, with the purpose of discovering a route from Australia’s south coast to the Gulf of Carpentaria. The expedition had ended in tragedy; Burke and Wills had both died, without actually reaching the waters of the gulf. Yet their failed attempt had worked its way into the Australian psyche, and the McKenzie brothers were not alone in their fascination with this tale of doomed hopes and fatal mistakes.

  Chris, perhaps, was the more obsessed of the two. Graham simply liked camping and trekking; together, he and Chris had explored the wilderness of south-west Tasmania, Kakadu National Park and the Abel Tasman coastal track in New Zealand. Graham was willing to give anything a go, and had no problem with Chris’s desire to visit ‘Burke and Wills country’. Chris was especially keen to see the Dig Tree, an old coolibah still growing beside Cooper Creek. One member of the 1861 expedition, William Brahe, had waited three months for Burke and Wills at the Dig Tree before packing up and leaving just nine hours before the wayward expedition leaders actually did return.

  A brand new Land Rover Freelander had been acquired especially for the journey. It belonged to Chris, who could afford it; he was a veterinarian with a practice in Orbost. Graham worked in a plant nursery on the outskirts of Melbourne (though he was training to be a landscape designer) and earned barely enough to support himself, now that his ex-wife and son were living in a separate house. His contribution to the trek had been in the preparation, which he had undertaken with his customary patience and attention to detail. On his advice, Chris had bought a hand pump, a pressure gauge, a set of radiator hoses, a pair of tyre levers, an adjustable spanner, four jerry cans, nine litres of engine oil, and an extra fan belt. After their hikes through various national parks, they already possessed the requisite tent, compass, sleeping bags, first aid kit, camp oven, Swiss army knife, aluminium water bottles and satellite phone.

  Graham wasn’t about to make the same mistakes as Burke and Wills.

  They had stayed a night in Mildura, visiting an old school friend, and had left a little late after enjoying a big fried brunch; it would have been uncivil to refuse their friend’s hospitality. But as they drove along the Silver City Highway, adjusting their original plans, Graham reminded Chris that the whole idea of this trip had been to take it in easy stages. They had plenty of time. They weren’t chasing a short-lived natural phenomenon or a seasonal migration or an agricultural show. The land was timeless, and they were looking to slow their pace. Graham, in particular, needed to slow his pace. The big city vibe had infected him; he had been rushing about trying to finish jobs, finish his training, keep an eye on his son, wrestle with the Tax Office and his wife’s lawyer . . .

  ‘I need to soak up the silence,’ he remarked. ‘I need to get out of there.’

  Chris grunted.

  ‘I’m not breathing right,’ Graham continued. ‘My energy levels are fucked. I’m all disconnected.’

  Chris said nothing. He was by far the less talkative of the two brothers, though Graham tended to quieten down if he spent any time in Chris’s company. Graham’s trouble, in Chris’s opinion, was that his ex-wife happened to be a neurotic hippy who spouted off about discovering emotional equilibriums and releasing tension and ingesting pure substances while simultaneously dumping on everyone close to her, knocking back huge quantities of prescription drugs and causing endless blow-ups at work (when she wasn’t taking sick days off to visit tarot readers and naturopaths).

  Chris disliked her intensely, because she was always screwing with Graham’s head. Graham was an easygoing sort of bloke who, if he had married someone stable, would have been quite content with his life. He was a McKenzie, after all. McKenzies were quiet achievers, every one of them; they were thorough, patient and capable, and they didn’t indulge in the sort of histrionics that Graham’s wife had made her specialty. It could be argued, in fact, that the McKenzies were a little too quiet. Certainly Graham’s wife had been of that opinion; she had constantly complained that they didn’t communicate with each other, that they were repressed and closed off and impossible to talk to. She herself never seemed to shut up, so it wasn’t surprising that she found the McKenzies dull. Perhaps they were, a little. They had a way of choosing their words carefully, and abs
orbing ideas without comment. Their long, companionable silences were as expressive of comfort as cheerful noise might be in another family. But it never seemed to occur to Graham’s wife that when the McKenzies failed to respond in a spirited manner to her observations about the Life beyond Life, and healing crystals, and her own psychic intuition, it was because they found such observations ludicrous, and were too polite to say so.

  Why Graham had married her was a mystery to them all. Perhaps he had found her alluringly exotic. Even Chris had to concede that she was stunning to look at and that Graham might have been a little bored with the inexpressive good sense of women like his sister – the kind of women with whom the McKenzies tended to socialise. They were country people, after all, and Graham’s wife wasn’t. She was a suburban refugee. A private school dropout whose own family was in a permanent state of surreptitious warfare.

  No wonder Graham kept escaping into the bush. It was the only way he could survive.

  ‘I wish I could have brought Tian along,’ Graham suddenly observed, when they were close to the Eastern Time Zone boundary. He was referring to his son. ‘Tian would have loved this. He would have been right into it.’

  Again, Chris made no reply. He knew why Tian hadn’t come. The boy’s mother wouldn’t have allowed it, and Tian, after all, was only four years old. Chris himself didn’t know if Tian was quite ready to undertake such a trip. Apart from anything else, the kid had problems. Of course he had problems. With a mother like that, and a divorce under way – it was inevitable.

  Chris offered up a silent prayer of thanks that Tian wasn’t sitting in the back seat, screaming that high-pitched scream which sounded like a steam train whistle. One day, he knew, Tian would have to become involved. A trip into the wilderness would become his rite of passage. But until that day, Chris wasn’t going to be wishing him any closer than he was.

  ‘You want me to take over?’ Graham inquired, after a long pause. In the McKenzie code, this meant: you’re not saying much, you must be tired. Before Chris could respond, however, both brothers caught sight of a shape up ahead. Drawing closer, they saw that it was an enormous truck, clumsily parked on the side of the road.

  Chris immediately reduced his speed.

  ‘I think he wants some help,’ said Graham, of the man who was hovering at the rear of the motionless vehicle. On closer inspection, this mechanical monster had revealed itself to be a road train, with two huge trailers attached to the truck.

  Its driver, in contrast, was quite small: a stocky young guy with a head of dark, curly hair, wearing blue jeans and a grey T-shirt. Easing to a halt beside him, Chris noticed that he looked all shaken up, as if he’d had an accident. But he wasn’t hurt. That much was obvious.

  ‘You all right?’ Graham asked.

  ‘Nah, mate, not really. Run outta fuel.’

  ‘Yeah?’ said Graham. Chris lifted an eyebrow. It was not a predicament that he would have considered normal among those who carried freight for a living.

  ‘Well,’ he remarked, ‘if this was a Turbodiesel we could have given you a top-up, but we’ve only got unleaded back there.’

  ‘Oh.’ The truck driver shook his head. ‘Wouldn’t be enough anyway. Look, ah . . .’ He hesitated, squinting down the road as if ashamed to meet Chris’s eye. ‘You headin for Broken Hill?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Chris thought: where else would we be heading? But he suspected that the comment was a roundabout way of begging a lift, and gave the stranded truckie a once-over, noting the mobile on the belt, the watch on the wrist, the sunglasses dangling from the restless fingers. ‘You want to hop in?’

  ‘Aw, mate.’ The guy’s whole body sagged. The lines on his sunburned face relaxed a little. ‘Could I?’

  Graham shrugged. ‘Plenty of room,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks. Thanks a lot. Bloody hell, I’m just . . . he’s gunna tear a strip off me.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘The boss. If I keep me bloody job, I’ll be lucky.’

  As the engine idled, and the McKenzies waited, their new acquaintance scrambled into the back seat. He smelled sweaty and seemed nervous – though not in a threatening way. Antsy, Chris decided. He was antsy. A bit strung out.

  Pep pills, perhaps?

  ‘This is Graham, and I’m Chris.’ Hearing the back door slam, Chris removed his foot from the brake, and they set off again. ‘You going to be right, in Broken Hill? Do you know someone there?’

  ‘I live there.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  ‘I’m Alec. Muller.’

  ‘Is that an Iridium satellite phone?’

  It was Graham who asked the question. He had spent a lot of time researching the satellite phone market before choosing a suitable product. Alec shifted his weight.

  ‘Yeah,’ he answered. ‘But it’s stuffed.’

  ‘Why? Power problems?’ asked Graham.

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘Were you trying to call someone?’ Chris interrupted, and exchanged a quick glance with Graham, who added, ‘We’ve got one ourselves, if you need to make a call.’

  There was no immediate response. Flicking a look at the rearview mirror, Chris saw that Alec was biting his thumbnail, a troubled expression on his face. Chris decided not to press for an answer. It went against the McKenzie grain to prod and pry. Then Alec said: ‘Does yours work?’

  ‘Our phone? Should do.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Graham. ‘Here.’ He removed it from the glove-box. Chris was watching the road ahead, so he didn’t see exactly what Graham did next. But there were enough clicks and grunts to suggest that Graham was dealing with an uncooperative piece of technology.

  ‘Bloody thing’s not working,’ Graham finally declared.

  ‘Eh?’ Chris frowned. ‘Must be.’

  Silently, Graham passed the phone to his brother. With one eye on the road, and one hand on the wheel, Chris fiddled about with the little black box of circuits (using his thumb to press buttons) until he finally had to concede that Graham was right. The bloody thing wasn’t working.

  Being McKenzies, they didn’t instantly start to blame each other for dropping it, immersing it, or forgetting to top up the power. Instead they both sat musing for a while, trying to grapple with the question of what had gone wrong. Alec was the one who finally spoke up.

  ‘I was thinkin it might be magnetic,’ he said.

  Chris checked the rear-view mirror. Graham turned. They saw that Alec was plucking at his bottom lip.

  ‘Eh?’ said Graham.

  ‘I was thinkin it might be magnetic fields, or something. You know. Interference.’

  ‘Right,’ said Graham, and shifted around to face the windshield again. Chris made no comment. He wasn’t one to judge, but he was beginning to make the cautious assessment that Alec wasn’t too bright. First he had let his truck run low on fuel, then he had started to blame a dead phone on mysterious ‘magnetic fields’. In Chris’s opinion, that was little better than blaming an overheated engine on UFOs.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter,’ Graham remarked easily. ‘We should be there soon. Eh, Chris?’

  ‘I don’t know. The markers have all been shot to buggery. What do you reckon, Alec? You’re the local. Is it much further?’

  At first Alec didn’t reply. Chris heard the rustle of fabric and the creak of pressured seams. Another glance at the mirror revealed that Alec was gazing intently out the window, still worrying away at his bottom lip.

  ‘I dunno,’ the truckie sighed at last. ‘But I guess we’ll find out soon enough.’

  On the ridge behind Thorndale, where parched shrubs were scattered very thinly over the stony, hard-packed earth, Mullet followed a confusing tangle of scent trails.

  Clearly, the boy that he was pursuing had been all over this hillock. He had slid down a shallow incline on a piece of corrugated iron. He had dug up stones, and picked tiny red berries from the branches of a thorny saltbush. He had drawn pictures in the dirt with a stick.

  The freshest tr
ail, however, didn’t wander about like a magpie looking for food. It headed straight up over the ridge and into a hole that had been dug there towards the eastern side. This hole was large and deep – large enough for Mullet to squeeze into – but he hung back, panting. The loose earth in front of the hole was newly turned; it was scored with lines and gouges. A small, ill-defined handprint had been left in the dust.

  Pebbles clattered and rolled as the man made his stumble-footed way down from the top of the slope. Awkwardly he came to a halt, unbalanced by the weight of his gun. One foot was braced against a large rock. The other was wedged into a handy fissure.

  He studied the hole carefully, bending a little to squint inside. But its dark maw was impenetrable.

  ‘Mmm,’ he said, straightening. Then he gave Mullet a nudge with the barrel of his gun. ‘Gittim. Mullet! Gittim, boy!’

  Mullet sidled away. He didn’t like the hole.

  ‘Mullet . . .’ the man said threateningly. Mullet knew that tone, and knew it meant trouble. But he couldn’t bring himself to enter the hole.

  ‘Mullet!’ An angry bark. ‘Cummeer!’

  Head down, tail down, Mullet slowly advanced. The man seized his collar, dragging him towards the mouth of the hole. Mullet resisted. He didn’t like small, dark places. He scrabbled frantically, pulling against the pressure of his collar’s choking grip.

  Finally his master was obliged to lay down the gun and force Mullet into the hole with both hands. Mullet, however, would not be forced. He was a slippery, muscle-bound dog. Time and time again, when the man pushed him into the hole, Mullet wriggled and convulsed and come surging back out. The man swore. He grabbed the dog’s collar and tail. He threw him at the hole and gave him a boot in the rump by way of encouragement. As Mullet tried to back up, the boot remained where it was, pressed with great strength against the base of his spine. So Mullet had to curl around on himself, twisting his spine like spaghetti, to squirm his way into the light again. It was very uncomfortable. He found it difficult to breathe. Perhaps for that reason, he lost his head – and when his master’s hand came down, reaching for his collar, Mullet snapped at it.