Hammond Innes - Golden Soak

‘What do they find to live on?’

‘The roos? They don’t need much to keep them alive. Another month without rain, when the heat really hits, and you won’t see them at all. They’ll be lying up in rock holes, preserving their body moisture. And when it’s over they’ll start to breed again.’ He was more relaxed now and driving slower. ‘You can have a young joey running beside its mother, still suckling, while she’s got a youngster in the pouch and another embryo forming in the uterus. What’s more, that embryo can go into a state of suspended growth, so that a female doesn’t necessarily need to mate in order to continue the reproductive process.’

It was extraordinary, this ability he had of distracting his mind with talk. It was as though by talking he could exorcize whatever devil it was that had been tearing at his mind up there at the entrance to the mine. ‘The wren goes to’t, and the small gilded fly does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive…’ He smiled thinly. ‘A strange play, Lear. And I can tell you this, copulation needs to thrive in this wretched land. That’s if the animals are going to have any chance of survival.’

I stared at him, wondering at his fascination with Lear. Had he cast himself in the role of that sad, tragic figure? His face, limned in the glow of the headlights, seemed less tense, and there was a note of almost boyish enthusiasm in his voice as he added, ‘It’s a bloody marvel, the kangaroo.’ He shook his head, actually smiling how. ‘You’d think God had created the creature just for the sort of conditions we’ve got here in the Pilbara right now.’

I asked him how he knew so much about the kangaroo, and he said, ‘A professor from Sydney, Zoology. He’s dead now, but he was an authority on marsupials and monotremes, and a lot of his field work was done here at Jarra Jarra. That was before the war, when I was young and full of wild extravagant plans.’

One of his plans had been to fence off a big slice of land and run it as a sort of nature reserve. He gave a weary, rather cynical laugh. ‘What my father never told me was that Golden Soak was bleeding the station to death.’

‘Surely you must have known?’

‘Mebbe I did,’ he answered vaguely. ‘But I was a youngster then, riding all day, fencing, putting down bores, drinking and having fun. The old man dealt with all the financial side, y’see — wouldn’t even allow me into the mine office. I thought things would go on like that for ever and that one day I’d be able to put my plans into operation.’ Again that tired, cynical laugh. ‘It didn’t work out like that, of course. My whole world suddenly fell apart — and then the war.’ Reliving it in his mind, his face became clouded and his voice suddenly sad. ‘Afterwards — when I got back … well, I was grown up then and Jarra Jarra no longer the place for dreams. We’d lost so much.’

The rattle of the wheels on the cattle grid was a reminder to both of us that we were almost back at the homestead. ‘Jan can run you in to Mt Newman first thing in the morning,’ he said. ‘If that’s all right with you.’

I didn’t say anything for a moment. It was Nullagine I wanted to get to, but he couldn’t be expected to know that. ‘How far is it to the Highway?’ I asked.

‘Forty-three miles. That’s to Lynn Peak. But you’d much better go to Mt Newman. You can get a plane from there. Or you could hire a car. The road’s reasonable from there to Perth or Kalgoorlie, whichever you want.’

‘I’ll go to Lynn Peak,’ I said. ‘I can hitch a ride on from there.’

He drew up beside the petrol pump, and when he had switched off the engine, he turned and looked at me. ‘You going to Nullagine then?’

‘Probably.’

‘I see.’ He sat there for a moment, not saying anything. And then he nodded. ‘As you wish.’ He got out and stretched himself, the two of us standing there in the dust by the pump, waiting for Janet. And when she arrived he told her, curtly and without any explanation, to take me in to Lynn Peak in the morning. He turned back to me. ‘I may see you before you leave, I may not.’ He was staring at me, or rather, he was staring through me at something that was in his mind, and there was a bleak look in his eyes. ‘Sorry we missed seeing the New Year in together.’ And then he turned abruptly, a shadow moving round the side of the house, his footsteps hollow on the bare boards of the verandah.

Was this what I really wanted — this sudden dismissal? And Janet standing there, saying, ‘So that’s that. You’re going, and you’ve hardly even arrived.’ I could just see her eyes, the whites brilliant and the stars shining pale behind the loose halo of her hair. In that moment she looked almost Beautiful. Abruptly, she turned and went into the cool house, sitting herself down at the table and staring straight in front of her. ‘Can I have a cigarette please?’

I offered her the crumpled packet from my pocket. She grabbed one quickly, and as I lit it for her I saw she was on the verge of tears, the cigarette trembling in her mouth. ‘You’ve no idea what it’s meant to me — having you here.’ She paused, looking away and blinking her eyes. ‘For months now I seem to have had the whole place on my back. The times I’ve wished Henry were alive.’

And then she was looking at me, the tears ignored: ‘I suppose you thought I was tough. Well, I am. I’ve had to be. Just as my grandmother had to be. But underneath …’ She shook her head, the sadness showing through, all her self-confidence ebbed away. ‘The fact is, I can’t cope — not any longer.’ She suddenly put her head down and started to sob uncontrollably.

I touched her shoulder, but that was all. ‘We’d better leave about dawn,’ I said.

She nodded. ‘Hell of a way to start the New Year.’ She smiled at me through her tears, and then suddenly she was her normal practical self again as she got quickly to her feet, her voice firmly under control. ‘We’ll have to take the Landy. Daddy told me our track’s all right, but on the Highway the bulldust’s bad all the four miles to Lynn Peak. Driving through bulldust’s like riding on water; you need a four-wheel drive.’

I didn’t see her father again that night. He’d shut himself away in his den and it was she who filled the tank of the Land-Rover and got the spare wheel for me to strap on to the bonnet. The night was very clear, the sky full of stars, and somewhere above us on the Windbreaks a dingo howled. We were standing together on the patio then, a breath of air before going to bed, and she said, ‘I enjoyed that trip to England. It was a change and I met a lot of people. But this is where I belong.’ And then, so quietly it was like a sigh: ‘I hate the thought that we might have to leave.’

‘Where would you go?’ I asked her.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I couldn’t live in a city. Not after this. All my life I’ve had this glorious sense of freedom. I don’t think I’d feel at home anywhere else. It’s part of me, this place.’

The whisper of her words was still with me when I went to bed, her voice, it seemed, the voice of all the countless women who had led solitary, difficult, uncomfortable lives, pioneering the outback of Australia. And lying in her brother’s bed, lumpy now with disuse, I couldn’t help wondering what he had been like, whether he would have managed any better. Would he have succeeded in holding the place together if he had still been alive?

We were up at five, tea and boiled eggs, and with the dawn we drove out across the cattle grid and took the track that skirted the paddock fencing, heading north-east. It was almost cool and in the flat beyond the northern shoulder of the Windbreaks we saw camels grazing. Ahead, more hills stood black against the newly risen sun. Soon we were crawling through the dry gully courses that feed Weedi Wolli Creek and by the damp earth of a dried-up spring Janet seized my arm — ‘Look!’ She was pointing. ‘Did you see it? A dingo.’ But I hadn’t seen it and she said, breathless, ‘Just a flash of cinnamon. Beaut!’