A Rusty Backdrop

Could you spend a year in the Bush? This was the question they asked her. She couldn’t say.

 As she left Melbourne behind, some of her stresses peeled away. By the time they were flying over Lake Eyre, she could appreciate its beauty and isolation. The glittering salt deposit was a glacial dumping of snow. The aircraft’s engine throbbed in the mantle of silence. The white blinded and drew her on.  

Flying over the Simpson Desert foreshadowed the remoteness of the territory into which she was heading. It stretched for plane hours, pitted and dusty red, like a fragmented clay pot. Its rises and undulations crept on for miles, unstoppable as the tide rushing in on a beach.

 At Alice Springs, she collected a car. There was no air conditioning. She rolled down the windows. The arid wind snatched at her throat and tugged her hair from under her hat. She could allow herself one day for small excursions. She drove to the sacred site of Anthwerrke.[1] Half a dozen tourists were returning to the car park. Their raucous inanities bruised the peace. She was glad when their Nike soles pressed the pedal to the floor and their cars roared off. Puffs of orange dust settled on her boots and muffled the receding engines.

 The water in the waterhole came up to her knees. At first it wasn’t cold but by the time she had waded to the other side, her feet and ankles ached. Muddy sand oozed between her toes. As the surface of the pool stilled once more, the flies returned, buzzing persistently. A dragonfly swooped as a kamikaze pilot, pulling up just short of death. It loitered for a moment. A tiny frog, so recently a tadpole, pulsated through the compost-green depths.

 A span of water just twelve feet across could have been an ocean, such was the contrast on the other side. There was no wind. Burnt rocks guarded the sacred place, trapping inside a ponderous silence. Their vicious teeth thrust upwards, renting the perfect blue sky. If she had been with a companion, she would have whispered.

 Haunted. Alone. Would the earth yield up its secrets or swallow her into it?

And yet not alone. As she paused, the flies settled on her back. They stuck onto her hat. They sought the moisture of her lips. Painted finches studded a scrubby bush. As crumbs on a tablecloth when shaken, they scattered, only to re-alight a moment later.

Dusty fragments of earth were dislodged higher up the rocks. In the heavy silence, they became a thunderous avalanche. Her eyes sought the cause. Tiny rock wallabies were catapulting themselves upwards, their feet exploding off the rocks. They were roasted chestnut on a rusty backdrop. Two blinks and they were gone.

Once more alone. A ghost of wind whispered in, making the “Keep Out” sign wheeze and sigh. She looked at the rock paintings of the caterpillars, trying to make sense of the Arrernte[2] people’s stories of the battles of their ancestors.

She had moved on to Simpson’s Gap by the time the sun melted into the horizon, blasting the underside of the sparse scrub with gold. Twilight came, shaking out an indigo sheet. First one, then another radiant star appeared to be sewn onto the silk. Then night descended like a thick eiderdown, already imprinted with winking illuminations.

Here, where there was no light pollution, she could dream the dreams of the Arrernte. She could embellish her own fantasies, using the Southern Cross, the saucepan and Orion’s belt. A satellite scudded past. She imagined all the data it was collecting. She felt safe here. Alone. In a vast nothingness. In a complete world.

The moon eventually clawed its way over the rocks to sit comfortably to one side. It drained the light out of the closest stars and glowed more brightly. In its light, wicked highwaymen became benign trees; pacing dingoes settled into steady bush.

The next day, it was time to report for work. She drove from Alice to Yulara, to the Aboriginal organisation that was to employ her. Now would begin her trial in the bush.

Her foot was flat to the floor. The car sped along, unencumbered by speed limits. She had never driven in such wilderness. Some of the scrub plants bowled along beside her, their flimsy tendrils unable to root in the poor soil. The landscape seemed to her like a child’s primary painting palette. There was the burning yellow of the sun and the electric blue of the sky. The dried-blood red of the soil and rocks. Only the green was wrong; the Spinifex was a brittle silver.

After three hours, Mount Connor loomed to her left. Many before were deceived into thinking they had arrived at the Rock. Many before exulted prematurely. She was not tricked. Her purpose was clear.

The sun’s rays bored through her hat as she got out of the car. Uluru looked magnificent. It sat heavy and lumbering, solid and unwieldy. It held many secrets. Few would winkle them out.

Could it tell whether she had the resolution to endure?

Elizabeth Anne Beattie