by Lucy Walker
They said little as they drove along. They had left the bitumen and were following a side track over a strip of bulldozed clay-pan. Next they were crossing an upland desert of sand and gravel plain, ancient and ageless. It had been just this for millions of years. Age was a thing one could not define in figures, Mardie thought, not on the outback.
‘They’re the oldest land forms in Australia ‒ those dips and mesa outposts,’ Jard said when Mardie asked about them. ‘This part of the continent has changed little since Pre-Cambrian times ‒ that’s a geological expression for saying six hundred million years or more.’
‘As old as that?’ Mardie was awed.
‘The “undatable oddlands” we call them,’ Jard said.
‘Not so odd when they give up riches like gold and now nickel …’
‘There aren’t many places in the world that render up such odds,’ Jard said with a wry grin. ‘That gravel you see all over the flat lands is laterite. Broken down residue of denuded mountains. The mesas sticking up singly here and short ranges there are the last and hardest rock cores left from the weathering of the hardest and oldest rock forms of them all. The ultra-basics where the minerals are found in dykes.’
‘And if we all lived for another few million years and left them untouched, they too would weather down to gravel rubble?’
‘Laterite!’ he corrected her mildly. ‘Rubble indeed! Don’t let David hear you say that! It’s in the lateritic bands we first look for the sulphides. They indicate the possible presence of nickel underground. It’s along those lateritic gossans we use the rotary percussion drills, mostly called down-the-hole power drills, to look for dykes of pay dirt. If any. Do you know what pay dirt means, Mardie?’
‘An area worked over that will pay with precious metals,’ Mardie said almost glibly. ‘I read that somewhere. I’ve been sending for books that will tell me accurately about this land I live in now. It’s like reading a mystery story about the long, long ago. Mister’s Dreamtime land.’
‘I see you’re getting the bug. You’ll make a geologist yet.’
‘But not like Joanna …’ This time she spoke almost sadly. ‘She went to University and really learned about it properly.’
‘But not about human relations,’ he said unexpectedly.
Now what did he mean by that? Mardie wondered. Perhaps it was something to do with Joanna’s stark-type statements when she sometimes talked to other people. Perhaps not. Perhaps he meant Joanna did not show the right kind of affection for people close to her. Himself? Maybe this was why he himself had been strangely aloof and silent when she had first known him.
Supposing she herself became the greatest heroine of all time and be the one to tell him Joanna cared. What then?
Well, she wasn’t heroine enough for that. She knew ‒ intuitively ‒ that Joanna’s caring was really a matter of possessing and Jard was not the kind of man who would like being possessed. He wasn’t a major specimen of highly valued nickel. Mardie, on that fateful crash night, had seen him helpless and in need, conscious or unconscious. She had seen and known him ‒ very human. In those few precious hours when he had neared consciousness he held her, as she held him. Then he was at peace before he passed out again.
In the heart of every man a crying schoolboy?
She stared out over the brown spinifex land beyond the ironstone cappings across the broad drainage lines of shallow clay-pans, and the flat uplands between them; and thought about it. She knew more about Jard than Joanna would ever know. Yet this knowledge was something she had to keep locked in her heart. Perhaps … mercifully … some day she would forget. Time did pass, didn’t it? Just as those denuding mesas and the wind-eroded dunes forming in shallow circular clay lakes now proved. Time ‒ millions of years ‒ had passed for them. But it had passed.
Well … she hoped she didn’t have to live six million years to forget.
Mister Falldown remembered through generations of forefathers the mountains and rivers, the water lakes of his Dreamtime Land that once had been here, and which he now believed was out there … beyond space and other galaxies. Where the Big Fella ruled. Moon walks would mean nothing to Mister Falldown. He knew there was a land far far beyond a mere earth-tied moon!
‘Why so quiet, Mardie?’ Jard asked. ‘You are having a very long “think”, aren’t you?’
‘I was thinking about Mister Falldown and his Dreamtime Land.’
‘For them ‒ the Mister Falldowns ‒ there is such a place.’
Mardie was surprised. ‘Do you believe that?’
‘I’m a geologist ‒ on the hydro side ‒ and I know something of their legends and the things they’ve passed on down the generations. Geologically speaking, what they know and describe must have happened before. What they remember through their rites, sacred totems and taboos, tallies with what we geologists do know happened long ages here on earth. Mister Falldown’s limits of geography are far beyond our galaxy. Outer space and the moon are small fry to him. There are millions of galaxies that we can’t even dream about. They do.’
He looked down at her and smiled. It was that glorious heart-warming smile she had glimpsed only once or twice before.
‘You put so much store on laughter taking the first prize in life,’ he said whimsically. ‘I give equal prize to wonder. That’s the fascination of the outback, Mardie. Sheer wonder. Think of the age of these rock stones we’re driving over. Pre-Cambrian. Six hundred million years at the minimum.’
‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘It’s like a sort of magic. It takes a hold on one, doesn’t it? I mean the wonder of it.’
‘If you ask me,’ said Mrs Richie in her prime state of matter-of-factness, ‘I’d put more store on you watching where you’re driving, Jard. Next minute you’ll hit a pothole if you keep looking at Mardie. Then we’ll have a broken axle on our hands. Goodbye big-fella party at the Dig-in!’
Jard laughed. ‘You always were a one for a party, weren’t you, Mrs Richie? If you can’t go to one, you give one at The Breakaway. When’s the next coming up?’
‘I have it planned already but I’m not telling you when or why.’
‘Oh ho! A mystery?
‘Not to me and Mr Richie. Though I’ll admit it might be to you two, and a few more, for the time being.’
‘We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?’
Mrs Richie pursed her lips and nodded her head thoughtfully. ‘I give it a month,’ she said as if pronouncing matters for Judgment Day. ‘Want to take a bet on it, Jard?’
He shook his head, watching the track carefully now, for they were crossing a salt lake ‒ hardened only on the surface. His eyes were narrowed as if not only watching where and how he drove, but thinking about something he and Mrs Richie possibly knew. But not Mardie.
‘No-o,’ he said, this time drawling in his normal way when going about business or talking to strangers. ‘No bets with you, Mrs Richie. I have a hunch you’re likely to win. And know it.’
‘You two are prattling in conundrums,’ Mardie said reproachfully. ‘Please talk about the scenery instead, then I’ll be able to join in.’
Jard glanced down at her again. His smile was in his eyes only. But it was a good smile.
‘Look over there … as far as you can see. Across the right bumper,’ he said. ‘You’ll see the Dig-in coming up now. That will be scenery enough for you for one day, Mardie. Satisfied?’
The Dig-in was a wide brown flatland of a place. Spinifex and low-growing tired-out ground-bushes broke the worn, barren pattern of the area as far as the eye could see.
A line of rectangular bunk houses stood part-sheltered on the south side of a long hump of hill mounds. The mess-hut could be distinguished from the others only because it stood a little apart, was bigger, and sported a chimney with smoke coming from it. The First Aid hut ‒ one of Joanna’s provinces ‒ bore a large Red Cross insignia.
Near, and in the far distance, stood two drilling rigs. Mardie had seen them from the air. They were t
all, steel-legged tower things. Near the top of each was a kind of platform where men ‒ the Roughnecks ‒ steel-hatted for protection, stood. On the near one Mardie could see something from somewhere deep in the earth being drawn up. The noise of it was ear-clattering.
‘That’s only a specimen being drawn up for the benefit of the Directors, so they can see how it’s done,’ Jard explained as he ground the ute to a stop in the shade of the nearest bunk house. ‘They’re double checking everything these days. That’s since a couple of Companies a month or two back gave their shareholders incorrect information. Result ‒ law suits and the Stock Market teetering.’
‘Am I allowed to ask if they are really finding something?’ Mardie said. ‘Don’t tell me if it’s confidential, Jard. Then I won’t go dropping any clangers around in the wrong place, will I?’
‘You’re allowed to ask and the Company has already reported that the percussion drilling ‒ which is what they’re doing now ‒ has resulted in something sufficiently interesting sulphides-wise to justify a programme for diamond drilling.’
‘Diamond?’ Mardie was puzzled. She was thinking of bracelets, rings and beautiful brooches.
Jard smiled in his most sardonic way. ‘Diamond is the hardest cutter of all, Mardie. The diamond in the tri-cone bit of a drill would cut through the hardest rock on earth. The percussion drill works off compressed air and only tests the possible depths of the stuff you find in the surface areas. If the results are promising they change over to diamond drilling and go for depth.’
‘Hence the Directors having a “Meeting-on-Location”.’
‘Hence the Directors, etcetera, etcetera.’
Mrs Richie suddenly came to life again.
‘What’s that man doing … sitting on the mound over there?’ she demanded. ‘He’s using binoculars. What’s he looking for? And there’s another one on the other side with a telescope. What are they looking for? Nickel up in the sky or something?’
‘Nope.’ Jard was thrusting his long legs out of the drive door, not even looking at Mrs Richie. ‘The binocular fellow is looking for bush spies and the telescope fellow is watching to see if any low-flying aeroplane or helicopter not belonging to the Company is trying a come-over to see how we’re going.’
‘Whatever for?’ Mardie asked, slipping out of the ute after Jard. ‘The sky’s free, isn’t it?’
‘Because they wouldn’t be flying over for the sake of a free jaunt in a free sky. That’s why.’ Jard was wearing a half-grin now. ‘The word is already about that the Directors are up here. They’ve got the spies wondering what we’re up to. Changing from percussion drilling to diamond drilling is big news for the punters in mining markets. Our chap with the binoculars is on guard for the same reason. He’s watching for spies at bush level. Like …’ He broke off.
‘Like the two men with rifles who came to the crash scene?’ Mardie asked quietly. ‘And who later came to The Breakaway?’
‘Exactly.’
Mrs Richie had hefted herself from the ute before Jard managed to get round and open the door for her.
‘I’m going over to look at the mess-house,’ she said flatly. ‘I’m more interested in bush cooking than diamond drilling. Whatever you two might find to talk about, I just dunno. Nickel looks like nothing more than a dull piece of grey stone as far as I’m concerned. I’d rather go see someone who can make better kangaroo-tail soup than I can!’
Mardie and Jard watched her stumpy but determined figure march off in the direction of the mess-house.
‘She is rather a pet,’ Mardie said at length.
‘She wanted to leave us alone,’ Jard said. ‘She thinks we may have something to talk about that concerns us both.’ His voice was steady, his eyes searching Mardie’s.
‘If she thinks it’s something to do with thanking me for that stint of amateur bush-nursing I tried my hand at after the crash ‒’ Mardie began, feeling there was no escape from these issues now ‒ ‘then please forget it, Jard. Could we make a deal? Let’s never mention that beastly crash again. You know something? It seems such an age ago ‒ I’m just plain bored with the subject. Can’t we go over and look at the camp site now? I’m dying to see …’
‘Everything that you can see, in half an hour’s time.’ Jard finished for her. ‘And about the crash. Sorry, but I can’t forget it. Why should I? My life was at stake. You, too, could have been killed when that bird hit. Why should I forget it?’
Mardie half leaned, half sat on the ute’s bonnet.
‘I give in,’ she said at last. Her eyes looked anywhere except at Jard. They took in the vast distances ‒ the brown, brown land. The loneliness of it. The incredible age of it. The wonder of it. But she would not look at him.
‘When you came to The Breakaway with Mister Falldown,’ she said. ‘The day Joanna was there ‒ you came to say something special. I felt it in my bones and I tried to ward it off. Please say it now, Jard. Then it will be over once and for ever. Finish. Then maybe we can try to forget it.’
‘You go first, Mardie. I feel you have something special you want to say too. Over to you.’
‘You want to know did I have my clothes off under that blanket, while you were unconscious? The answer is ‒ Yes, I did. Your shirt off too. It was the only way to keep us both warm. Warm flesh gives out a heat of its own, doesn’t it? We had to salvage every bit of warmth just as you have to salvage every pint of underground water you find in order to run a mine at the Dig-in and …’
‘And make the mine a living thing. A workable enterprise,’ he took the theme out of her hands. ‘It was the same with that night. You had to find and salvage warmth to keep and salvage life. Water to salvage nickel ‒ if you want it your way. I think I knew all along. It didn’t take those two men and their bush antics to tell me ‒ or all the world, for that matter. In any case, Mister Falldown told me.’
He was half leaning, half sitting on the ute’s bonnet beside Mardie now, his legs stretched out before him and his arms folded.
Mardie looked not at him but at those long legs. They made something in her ache. They were so much part of him.
‘Of course!’ she said, her voice straining at the effort for a common-sense sound. ‘Why didn’t I think of it? Of course Mister Falldown would tell you! You would want to know all that had happened, naturally. And you asked him.’
‘Like you said, Mardie. Of course! And because he would know the truth and he would know why. He would have known what he would have done … being a bushman. He knew what you had done, and that it was right.’
Mardie’s eyes pleaded with him. ‘Then need we talk about it any more?’
‘Yes. Because one other thing happened that Mister Falldown did not know. Neither did our two rifle-carrying runaways know.’
Mardie looked at him startled. ‘What was that?’ She was more surprised than curious.
‘There was one moment when I came-to. I saw someone … looking down at me. A face full of care. It was wondering, hoping, and very beautiful.’
Mardie closed her eyes. That moment when he had all but come-to! Ah, but Jard had a thing about faces, hadn’t he? He had said he had once been in love because of a face. Everyone had their obsessions. Hers was fear of loneliness.
So he had seen her face ‒ looked right at her. Then closed his eyes again. The ‘very beautiful’ bit was his imagination, part of the dream world that is probably part of semi-consciousness. Now he was being nice and ‘chivalrous’ about it because of the kind of person he was. Maybe it had something to do with relief that he was alive, not dead. That kind of relief would make anyone think anything they looked at was ‘beautiful’ ‒ even a leafless, shadeless tree out in a spinifex desert.
‘I’ve been a “loner” all my life, Mardie,’ he was saying. ‘That’s because of my job. First the long months of walkover survey to study the geology of an area and locate target points for testing. Next I follow up with my “little box” doing the resistivity survey. Seismic refraction and refl
ection, etcetera, etcetera. They’re all “loner” jobs in proving and evaluating an underground water supply.’ He paused, then went on. ‘But that face ‒ that one face ‒ did something to me. It turned my heart over ‒ and till then, I didn’t even know I had a heart.’
‘What did you think you had?’
‘Just a thumping engine that kept the blood stream trickling along.’ He smiled now. ‘Something like the pump engine that keeps the water flowing when we’re actually drilling.’
‘But a face doesn’t do any of those useful life-giving or mine-making things.’ She was trying to talk his language his way. Or the way Joanna might have talked it. Did all scientists read everything in a scientific light?
‘Mardie,’ he said, looking down at her, his face serious again now. ‘Don’t try to make me change the subject. My heart did turn over. The real heart. It was as if an angel was leaning over me and I had been given back life. It was a pale, misty, luminous, beautiful face because it cared. I wasn’t a loner any more. Even the memory might have been good enough, but it wasn’t. I’ve wanted something more …’
He wasn’t looking at her now. He too was gazing out at the brown land and the spaces and the vastness and the sort of abiding terror, loneliness and wonder of this dry, brown, oldest land on earth.
His mood seemed to change. He stopped being a dealer in wonders. His two long legs stretched out before him, were strong and physical and firmly planted on the hard ground.
‘I’ve wanted the promise that was in that face. I’ve thought about it night and day ever since. The reality of it. Could you …? Mardie, will you marry me?’
He still didn’t look at her. Nor she at him. They leaned side by side against the ute and looked only at the infinite sameness, yet subtle and secret varieties of the measureless red-brown land.
She wanted to say ‘Yes’. She wanted to cry it out. But she couldn’t because Mr Lawson had told her he was coming to ask her this very question ‒ but only to restore her good name. Of course he would do it in a chivalrous way. He was that kind of man. Five minutes ago she had given up the battle of trying to stop him going in for this old-world stash at knightliness. Now he was doing it magically, romantically … all so that she wouldn’t think it was just a case of ‘being honourable and doing the right thing’.