Chapter 17 – The Journey
They set off driving into the early sun. It was February so, even though the early morning was still cool, there was intense heat in the sun. It was mid morning when they came to William Creek. There was not much there, just a roadhouse hotel and some old railway relics. By now the heat was baking, the thermometer on the hotel verandah read 38 degrees. Mark told Elin it would get a lot hotter yet, probably reaching around 47 by three o’clock.
Rather than pushing hard to cover the miles he had originally planned he said to Elin, “Now I have a companion I am happy to only go part way today. There are a few places I would like to show you along the way.”
Elin nodded, “I am your willing guest, take me where and when you will, Mr Outback Man.”
They both had a beer and then a second one before Mark indicated it was time to head on. He said they were heading for Coward Springs, an oasis in the desert, where the old cameleers used to stop on their trips following the mound springs. Here they would have a swim in the oasis springs to refresh themselves before going on the Marree.
It was much hotter by the time they came their oasis, the cabin thermometer read 43 degrees as they pulled up at the campground, a few old buildings scattered under pepper trees. Date palms, images wavering -in heat rising across open ground, marked the watering place.
Mark paid the feel to swim and bought them both an ice cream which melted almost faster than they could eat them. They walked across to the pool and the surrounding shade. They were the only people outside in the ferocious heat. By the time they had walked the hundred yards every pore in Elin body was dried out and blasted with the warm air.
She went to jump in but Mark put his arm on hers to hold her back. “First I want you to experience something that few people have enough patience to try,” he said.
He sat on the edge and she sat down next to him. He said, “Feel the heat as it blasts into your body, that fifty degree hot wind that feels like being inside a fan forced oven.”
She put her mind into that place where it was only her body absorbing the heat. She pulled her hair free and tipped her head back, pushing her body out like a sunbather revelling in the sun.
Mark nodded his approval. “That is it, drink it in, feel it heat and dry you to your core. Now do as I do”
He slowly lowered his feet into the water, an inch at a time.
She mirrored his action. The feeling was indescribably delicious. The water was cool and refreshing, but it was the contrast that struck her most. As her feet went deeper she felt wonderfully refreshed and cool. They both sat there, side by side for several minutes, revelling in the pleasure: the cool water, so delicious and cooling them from below counter posed against the blasting hot air above.
She looked at Mark, he was watching her finish her ice cream, his own long gone. He had a lascivious look on his face. “By God it is hot. Looking at you makes me even hotter,” he said. Standing he walked over, scooped her up with his arms and stepped into the pool.
She laughed in delight as the cool water doused all of her. The water was chest deep, and the cool water made her nipples erect under her thin shirt, showing them in perfect outline in a watery silhouette.
She slowly unbuttoned her top, exposing her breasts. “I think you have been trying to look at these so I thought I would give you a full view.”
Now his mouth was on one and his hands pulling her pants down. She wrapped her legs around him and he pushed into her. God it felt good.
He carried her to the bank and laid her on the baking hot ground. She felt prickles and sharp stones prick the skin on her back and bottom, along with the baking heat of the ground, burning into her skin. It aroused her even more, like multiple love bites, exquisite in its pain.
She flicked her body and rolled him over. Now it was his back in the dirt and prickles. She pinned him to the ground as she worked herself back onto him, laughing as he squirmed with discomfort. She could feel herself coming with the wildness of it. As she began to lose control he rolled again and pushed her underneath, laughing at his ascendancy. Now they both came in a great rush.
As she felt herself come down off the mountain she stroked his head and hugged him to herself. “Thank you, I have had some wild bonks over my life but I think this one under the baking desert sun with prickles in my back and bottom will take some beating.”
He gently kissed her on the lips and said “Me too.”
After a few minutes more of swimming and playing he asked her if she was ready to head on. She nodded; she would have been happy to spend a lazy afternoon with him here but was game for whatever came next.
As they drove on the air shimmered with heat haze. They came around a corner in the road. A huge expanse of white glittered before them, running away endlessly into the horizon. “That is the start of Lake Eyre,” he said. Right now its surface is hot enough to cook an egg. It would kill us in half an hour if we tried to walk over it. So now we will just drive past and look at it. Tonight, when the moon is full, if you are one made of brave enough stuff, we will walk on it.
As they drove through the full midday heat their world took a surreal feel. Even though the air conditioning was working well in their four wheel drive nothing could remove the heat blasting through the glass windows and shimmering of the salt lake and sand hills. Elin felt she had entered a trance as the relentless heat mirage blasted into her. Mark had his eyes gritted with the strain of the sun-glare.
Finally they sighted buildings in the distance and came into a small town. No one was in sight so they pulled up outside a sign which read Marree Hotel. The cabin thermometer in their Toyota read 49 degrees. They walked through the swing doors into a dark interior which felt so restful after the glare. There were more than a dozen people at the bar and a blast of cool air washed over them as they came close. The bar tender said. “Howdy MB, bit of a bloody hot day for driving across this God forsaken country. Do you want to introduce me to your lovely passenger?”
Elin said, “Hello I am Eli, does this man usually bring his other visitors to such desolate places.
The bartender replied. “Well you are a rare one. Not many have the stamina to travel on a day like this. Hottest day so far this year. Over fifty degrees out there in the sun and even in the shade of the verandah it is 48 degrees. No wonder you look like you need a drink.”
They stayed for two hours, slowly sipping drinks as they felt the fluid ooze back into their pores. At first they drank lemon lime and bitters and then, as their hydration returned, they shifted to beer.
When the clock passed five in the afternoon Mark stood up and said, “Well that will do me for the day. Got a mile to make!”
It was still baking outside but, with the sun sitting low in the sky, the ferocious glare was gone. They drove on, following the signs for Birdsville, heading out of town. Now the sun was behind them, lighting up the desert scrub in a range of colour tones; golds, russet, oranges, olives and browns. As they drove they slowly veered from a heading of east to north. An hour further on they approached a turnoff to the left.
Mark looked at Elin and asked, “Are you game for a full moon walk out on the lake? While it looks solid on top of the salt crust, underneath parts are like jelly. It can be real scary if you fall through, like quicksand only worse. But it is beautiful for those with the courage to dare.”
Elin looked at him and laughed. “If you are brave I am too. Plus I am with a true outback bushman. I trust him to know what to do.”
Mark grinned, self deprecating. “Out here there are no certainties, even for bushies like me. It is a game of Russian roulette. Mostly fortune favours the brave. Sometimes even the brave loose.”
“That sounds like my Viking ancestors throughout their long and chequered history, whether discovering new worlds or hunting whales. Whoever got it wrong died, such was their warrior way.”
The sun was a hand’s breadth above the horizon as they came to where the track ended
at the edge of the lake. From their elevated position in the sand hills the surface still shimmered in heat haze. But a thing of magic was happening, it was becoming a rainbow surface, as all light’s many colours refracted off the surface crystals, taken in, splitting and rebuilding from the hues of the late afternoon light.
Elin looked out and said, “Wow, it is like Antarctica when the light hits the ice sheets, so barren and yet full of an eerie and remote beauty that it takes your breath away.”
Mark unpacked a box from the back of his truck, it was an ordinary looking tin box and inside were things to make a meal, a frying pan, a billy can, along with some metal plates and cups and some tins of food.
The heat was still beyond hot on the sand but there was something restful in the view. Mark pulled out a square glass bottle of brown liquid. He poured an inch into two tin mugs then added water from a canvas bag tied to the back of the cabin. He passed one to Elin and said, “To your best health and a good trip to nowhere.”
She raised and clinked her mug to his, “Nowhere beats any other anywhere right now.”
She did not know why but she felt more content than she could ever remember, sitting here in a desert place with this man she had only met this morning, his soul met with hers in a place of dangerous emptiness. In the centre of this dangerous emptiness lay a powerful bond of empathy between them. Moved by affection she slid her bottom across the hot sand, coming close alongside him. She put her arm around his body then snuggled against him and lay her head on his shoulder.
“Thank you for bringing me here,” she said.
He did not reply but ran his fingers through her hair and stroked her head. They sat that way, almost unmoving, until the sun orb fell below the lake and the light had faded to a deep red in the far western sky.
Now Mark stood up. He gathered scattered pieces of dead wood from the surrounded scrub, formed them into a pile, inserted some dry grass and struck a match. The grass flared and burned brightly. Soon the wood was burning fiercely, throwing sparks and bright splashes into the night sky. Mark found a packet of sausages in a cooler box, chopped an onion and fried the mixture in a pan, before adding a tin of tomatoes. It was simple fare but tasted sumptuous after a long day of travelling.
They sat side by side, each eating with their own knife and spoon from the pan. When it was just juices left he passed her a slice of bread. Each wiped up and ate the remnants until only an empty pan remained. He wiped the pan out with a damp piece of paper towel which he tossed in the fire before returning the pan to its box, along with the other meal things, saying, “Out in this place water is very precious. So I don’t waste it on washing unless I can refill the water tank. You never know when you might need it. One would be dead inside a day, on a day as hot as today, out here, without water.”
She nodded, it made sense.
He said, “Ready for a moonwalk on the lake?”
She looked behind her; the moon had just crested the horizon, it was a day after full moon, but still it made an almost perfect circle. In her mind Elin was taken to other places of moonlight memory, nights in the Arctic winter when there was no sun, where a full moon made its way across the dark sky bathing the whole world in silver which gained an overpowering intensity when seen reflected off a snowy landscape. Then it was so cold that every part of her was covered, here warm air played off her skin as it gently wafted in the night.
Mark found a coil of light, strong rope, the sort that climbers use, along with two webbing harnesses. He put one harness on and passed the other to Elin. She put it on following his lead. Then he clipped one end of the rope to her harness and, about half way along, tied a loop in the rope which he clipped to his waist. He looped up the remainder of the rope which he also clipped to his harness. He took a big water bottle and also clipped it to his harness.
Then he picked up a small tightly rolled canvass bundle. “I thought we might sleep out there tonight, in a place where our whole horizon is only flat salt. We will have to walk for an hour to get that far out.”
He passed her a hard plastic foam object, like a piece cut from a surfboard, about 50 mms thick and half a metre across, with a hand sized hole cut into one side. “This is for you. If you suddenly fall through the crust, put this flat on the unbroken salt next to your body and fold your upper body to rest on it. It should be enough to hold your weight and stop you sinking down into the mud. Equally, if I fall through, stop and put it on the ground where you are, sit down on it and stay there until we work out how to get out.
As you are a lot lighter than me it is probably better if you go first. Try to avoid places where the surface is a funny colour or looks different. If you feel the ground wobble, stop and walk backwards gently until you are half way back to me before you try a different direction.”
Elin nodded, she could feel the nervous energy course through her, filling her with a sense of intense concentration and excited anticipation.
They headed out. Twice in the first five minutes, she felt the ground move a bit. Each time she backed up, as instructed, and took a quarter turn to take a new direction. Then the going became good and she fell into a routine, walking along carefully and steadily as she surveyed her route.
They went on that way for around half an hour. The moonlight bathed the surface in a sparkling glow of iridescent colours, innumerable tiny salt crystals each reflecting their own tiny point of starlike light. Erin felt as in a trance, captivated by fairy light beauty.
Without becoming aware her attention drifted from the close up watching required. In an instant the world collapsed underneath her, sucking her down into bottomless liquid mud. The mud rose above her waist. It was midway up her chest before she mustered the presence of mind to put her plastic support into place. She felt fear washing through her. She tipped her upper body towards the float and rested her arms on it. She tried to raise her body slightly but the suction was formidable and she could feel the ground under the float wobble.
She looked over at Mark. He had sat down on the ground, body spread out, his back resting on his bed roll, and was now pulling in the couple metres of loose rope between them. She guessed he was about eight metres away. He was looking at her intently, gauging her courage and resolution to deal with this situation. He raised his eyebrow as if to say. Well, what now?
She knew it was a test. She could ask him to come and rescue her and, no doubt, he would.
But she did not want this; she must think on her own, see if there was some way for her to improve her situation and, maybe, get out.
She slowly turned her head and surveyed the salt surface which receded from her in all directions. Now she could see her error. A seam of darker colour about a metre wide ran through the salt. It was like the meandering course of a river. She had fallen through two thirds of the way across this dark seam. Her plastic support was resting on the same unsafe surface directly behind her, its edge just tipping the harder surface.
She decided that she needed to move her support to the more solid ground, which lay closer directly in front of her, and see if it gave a solid enough surface to try and lift her body onto. Millimetre by millimetre she slid the foam piece across the wobbling surface, slowly rotating her body to stay over it. She was half way round when the ground gave a major wobble. Her heart skipped a beat but she calmed herself. She realised she had sunk another inch or two into the slime. The rope to Mark was now pulled tight, with him taking the strain. She was determined not to give up now and ask him for help. So she steeled her mind to continue.
Slowly she resumed the sliding movement. Now she was three quarters of the way to getting her float to where she wanted it, her float corner was almost to the edge of solid ground. She squeezed all other thought out of her mind and focused on her task, now the float was ten centimetres onto the harder surface, then twenty, then at last it sat fully on it. She brought it fully in front of her and surveyed her situation.
The ground where the float rested seemed
solid but she would prefer to get it ten centimetres back from the edge. In that place she would still be able to rest her upper shoulders on it and try and use this to lever her body out. So she inched it forward, a centimetre at a time.
At last it was in position. She bent her body forward as far as it would go resting over the foam, wrapping an arm around each side, resting them on the salt and crossing them above her head. He cheek lay flat on the foam. With conscious effort she blocked everything else out of her mind and focused it only on her body and its relation to the mud, making tiny muscle movements in her waist, hips and legs, testing for any places or spaces of give. One foot, her right, felt less tightly held than the other. She flexed her pelvis and managed to raise this hip slightly. Her foot slipped up, perhaps one or two centimetres, with a sucking sensation.
Now she had to hold that gain before she tried to raise her other leg. She used her right arm and shoulder to inch this right side of her body forward until the suction stopped her progress. Now she concentrated on her left side. Her foot felt trapped in a vice but, as she worked her knee around, she realised she could move it slightly backwards and forward. She did this several times gaining gradually increasing movement. Now she must use this loosening to try and lift her left side.
She stilled her body completely and concentrated her mind only on that place; she would put maximum effort into a single movement to lift that hip. One, two three, she convulsed her body. At first it felt futile, stuck in a vice. She redoubled her effort of lifting that hip as she struggled to keep the rest of her body locked in place. Suddenly her foot gave, and she realised she had gained five centimetres on that side. She felt a flood of exultation run though her body which was shaking with the effort.
She stilled herself again and regathered her strength to do it again, back to right side. She gained a further five centimetres. Once more she did it, now the mud was only a bit above her waist and she was able to rest her body on her elbows improving her leverage. Now she repeated her side by side movements with the support of her shoulders and upper body. Slowly she slid free. Suddenly she was out, lying stretched out on the salt and panting with exhaustion.
She looked back at Mark. He gave her a wave and a huge grin. She felt ten feet tall. Her body was covered in slime, but she was still alive and her own efforts had made it so.
She sat up and cautiously stood up, testing the surface. It felt solid. She took two steps further away just to be fully sure. She sat down again on her foam board.
Now she felt light headed as the adrenalin washed away. She pointed to the line of softness. “Do you see that? That is the bad bit.”
“Yes, I can see it now.” They looked in both directions, following its course as it snaked across the surface. It widened in one direction and narrowed in the other. The both started walking along the opposite sides, heading towards the narrowest place, after which it widened again.
Elin asked, “Should I come back to your side or shall we go on and you come to mine?”
“No going back,” he said, “you managed to cross it, now it is my turn.”
She walked away from the edge until she reached the end of the rope and sat down.
Mark walked forward until a metre from the edge. He lay down and wormed his way forward on his flat body, pushing his bundle in front. At the soft place, he placed the bundle on the other side to support his body as he slid it above the surface of this gap. Then, when his hips were across, he rolled onto his side and swivelled his legs across.
Now they were both on the same side and she came to him and they gave each other a high five. They surveyed the horizon. On the distant horizon, directly in front, they could see a slight rise. Behind them now the horizon was only undulating salt from their view.
They headed for the rise. It was a tiny relict sand dune, sitting about a metre above the surrounding salt. Parts of the surface were encrusted with white hard baked material which she realised was concrete like layers of dried bird poo, made rock like from the baking sun.
They sat side by side on their little hill and shared a drink from the water bottle as they looked back to the faint line of the edge from which they had come, now a dark smudge behind the glistening silvered surface over which they had walked.
“I think this is a good place to stop and sleep,” said Mark. “What say you? Is this to be our desert kingdom of the night? “
She nodded, lost for words. She felt a wild exultation at being in this place. It felt as if she had dreamt of it all her life.
In the glimmering of lights and shadows she imagined that here gods and goddesses came down from the sky and walked on the land. She too walked amongst them, as did the man who sat beside her. Moonlight glow lit her hair with flashes of silver and the palest gold. She arched back her body and with her hands fanned her hair out beyond her in a shimmering wave. She turned and kissed the God who sat beside her, in the billowing light, full on the mouth.
“That is a kiss of joy from the Elf Queen of the Vikings to the King of this Desert Land,” she said. “This place is a union of the desert in your soul with my soul come fresh from the sea. Both are mingled on this vast plain. Today the desert is in the ascendancy but another time the sea will rule again. In that time and from this place it will cover the known world. I would like to come back to this place when the sea rules again and sail upon it with you. Then I will be your Captain, tonight it is you who rule.”
Mark put his arm around her shoulders. He hugged her body, pulling it to him. “For now you are my Elfin Queen of the desert. But one day I will return and sail these waters with you,” he said.
She nestled in close to him feeling fully content to be his desert queen within this lustrous light.
Mark smoothed out a space on a flat patch of sand, and unrolled his bed roll. Inside was a thin piece of high density foam, with two thin light blankets of soft wool, perhaps cashmere. He took the piece of foam she had carried. He placed it at the end of the sleeping mat for a pillow then spread one blanket to cover it in softness.
He indicated to her to come over to him where he sat on it. She walked towards him. As she came alongside he stood up next to her and unbuttoned her clothes, sliding them to the ground. He took a hanky from his pocket. Slowly and tenderly wiped all traces of mud from her feet and legs, inch by inch, moistening it with the water bottle. Now it was only her naked body reflecting the light.
He took off his own clothes. His body hair was dark though the moon glowed off highlights in his hair. She could see his member standing proud and erect in the silver light. It looked like the body of a Viking king, sword erect and she his Viking queen, waiting to receive it.
Now she lay down and gestured him to her, spreading her hips wide and arching her body towards him. The lovemaking of the hot day had been wild and exciting. This belonged to another world where only gods and goddesses dared to dwell.
They slept in their silvered world, waking in the earliest dawn glow. Far out the palest streaks of deep red were lighting the eastern sky as the moon lay low to the west. The watched the silver light fade as the red brightened to streamers of pink and gold which shot high into the sky. The lake bed glowed with a mix of both sets of colours. As they lay with bodies pressed together their awareness of the outside world faded and soon it was only the two of them in their blanket cave in the soft dawn light, the Warrior Elfin Queen and the Desert King, bodies joined. They clasped together, his hands running through her hair. Her hands felt hard muscles and scars on his back. She had never really known any feeling for a man which compared to this before. She had found the one and would stay with him until it ended, that was enough. She told him these words.
He said he would write them down, record them for all the world to know, his and her joy of togetherness.
When the sun was risen they rose too. They walked back across the lake bed following last night’s tracks. They lit a fresh fire for breakfast and then drove on, she now sitting in close to hi
m with her arm linked through his. Sometimes she dozed; sometimes she looked at his face and smiled.
They crossed a broad dry river bed with the name Coopers Creek on signposts, no water was to be seen. They kept driving, coming in the late afternoon to Birdsville, where Mark booked a room in the hotel for them to share. They showered and put on fresh clothes, then ate large steaks, washed down by beer.
In the late afternoon, just as the sun was setting and the day’s heat was easing, he brought her to the Diamantina River, a channel with waterholes and high green grass. On the rocks on the other side they sat on the hill of the Thutirla Pula or Two Boys Dreaming Place. Together they imagined these black people of legend walking across the remote deserts of this land, another story and imagining which now resonated with each of their own.
He told her of his crocodile spirit totem and told her that she was embodiment of the elf queen of Lord of the Rings become flesh, all he needed to do was add an F to her name for her to become Elfin.
They laughed together then made love together in the soft grass of the riverbank. She puzzled at why she thought this man was dangerous, he was captivating and entrancing but she felt safe and secure with him. She had chosen to stay with him wherever life led.
However she knew there was a broken part inside him that had broken when his own mother had deserted him and died. It was not very different to the part which had broken inside her when her own mother had died. He had told her the stories of his life, the good and the bad, of his African lover, now dead, and their African son, even stories of others he had killed. But this only made her trust him more.
Lost Girl Diary Page 19