by Jamie Maslin
Zed and I plowed onwards together into a magnificent, visually seductive landscape, arresting in its eerily desolate and expansive beauty—a world bisected by the perfect seam of a uniform flat horizon: huge sky colliding abruptly in simple geometry with the unyielding elemental power of the earth, cleft so perfectly in two as to appear more a seascape than of land. The lower half comprising dry light-brown savannah; the upper half, penetrating, deep blue sky with sparse low-lying cumulus clouds. And all illuminated by the purest, brightest light that cast the clouds above a lustrous white and the grasses of the near roadside below a shimmering blonde.
As we drove deeper into the wilderness abyss we chatted away like old buddies.
I mentioned my earlier conversation with the racist trucker.
“It’s a real shame,” he said, shaking his head with genuine embarrassment. “There’s a lot of racists here, almost to the point where it’s socially acceptable.”
After nearly three hours on the road, we approached the first outback town along our route, the remote dwelling of Wilcannia, home to about five hundred people, as well as what is perhaps Australia’s most shameful statistic: the average life expectancy for an Aboriginal in Wilcannia is just thirty-seven years. And this in a country ranked as the richest place on earth by a Credit Suisse Global Wealth report. Just before reaching the village, we crossed an old wrought-iron vertical lift bridge with a welcome sight beneath it—a river.
“Fancy a swim, Jamie?”
Damn right, I did.
Driving into Wilcannia, it had the distinct feel of a ghost town, with no shortage of boarded up shop fronts and barely anyone on the streets. Suddenly the town’s houses petered out and we came upon a dirt track, of sorts, leading through the bush. This was what Zed was after, and his four-wheel-drive monster made for. He hit the gas. The truck came into its own, tearing across the super bumpy landscape, its giant engine giving a throaty roar that mirrored our excitement as we lurched and jolted about in all directions towards the river. The chunky oversized tires locked up, bringing us to a dramatic skidding halt on a grassy bank covered with thin, curly leaves from multiple eucalyptus trees lining the river. Silty-colored water stretched a couple of hundred feet to the opposite bank, flowing at what looked an invigorating, if slightly daunting, pace for a swim. Kicking off our shoes, we threw on our bathers and approached the water.
“Keep an eye out for crocs,” said Zed, scanning the river from left to right.
I laughed.
He wasn’t going to get me with that one. I knew crocodiles weren’t found this far south. Although, to be fair, there was probably no shortage of snakes, spiders, or other Aussie outback nasties within the vicinity that could despatch an unlucky Brit just as easily as a crocodile. After all, the world’s ten most poisonous snakes are all Australian, as is the world’s most poisonous arachnid, the funnel web spider; the world’s most poisonous fish, the stonefish; the world’s most poisonous tick, the paralysis tick; not to mention the most poisonous creature on earth, the box jellyfish. No other country has as many animals that can kill you, nor in so agonizing a manner.
I put this out of my mind and waded into the water with Zed. Squelchy mud wrapped around my toes as my feet sank into the warm sludge underfoot, creating satisfying explosions of cloudy sediment, diffusing the clarity of the clearer water near the bank. I gradually waded deeper. Having been so hot for so long, the water had an instantaneous cooling effect on my sizzling skin. I felt like a piece of heated steel being doused. Another few steps and the bank dropped away beyond our depth. I submerged my head, flipping back my hair like a shampoo commercial, bringing immediate clarity to my sun-weary mind. Zed and I swam leisurely for a couple of strokes before the current seized us, dragging us downstream with a surging force. Struggling, we paddled against the water, never pausing for a breather. One moment of rest equaled succumbing to the rush of thousands of gallons of water. With more than a mild struggle, we made it to the calmer water of the bank. After catching our breath we got back on the road. Five minutes out of town and we were on another long stretch of deserted asphalt, slicing its way through a parched and barren landscape of rusty-colored sand, mottled with low-lying, grayish-green brush.
Zed turned to me with a complete no-brainer.
“You wanna drive for a bit?”
We pulled over and swapped places. I’d never driven anything as powerful as the 5.8 liter V8 monster that I was about to take the reins of. Buckling up, I slowly turned the ignition key, tentatively giving her some revs. The beast beneath my feet growled like a restrained bull about to be let out of the cage at a rodeo. I had no intention of sparing the horses, so I held on tight and dropped the clutch. The acceleration was epic, launching me into my seat as we scorched off into the void ahead. With the windows down in place of air-conditioning, hot desert air blasted throughout the cab, letting us feel connected and part of the barren landscape across which we powered. I loved every minute of it, and with Zed’s permission took his baby up to some serious speeds on the empty road, but no matter how hard I pushed her, she was always a giving mistress with plenty more waiting in the wings. A guy’s vehicle to be sure.
An odd feature about hitching is that quick bonds are often formed. On the road complete strangers open up to you. Maybe it was the confined space of the cab, or possibly the open, expansive environment we drove through, but it seemed to encourage Zed and me to talk, and it wasn’t long before he was telling me about some of the hardships of his youth.
“My life’s really working out now and I feel happier than ever, but it wasn’t always that way,” he told me. “I was abused as a boy, and the depression led me to turn to alcohol, drugs, and pornography. Slit my wrists and even tried to hang myself.”
He showed me a long, thick and painful-looking scar on his forearm.
“What happened to the person who abused you?” I asked, not really knowing if this was an appropriate thing to query, but justice and retribution was my first reaction.
“He’s in prison,” he stated flatly. “I got to give evidence against him recently, as did some other people he abused.”
“How long did he get?”
“Eighteen years.”
We talked of this for a while, with Zed going on to tell me how he’d kicked all his addictions and even helped counsel other victims of abuse.
“I’m at ease now and finally enjoying life,” he told me with a contented smile.
Two hours of driving in a straight line, and by early evening we reached the mining town of Broken Hill, where Zed was starting work in the next couple of days. Known as the Capital of the Outback, Broken Hill is a delightful oasis of civilization amid the barren expanse of nothing surrounding it, being home to around 19,000 people. It’s a long way from anywhere: the closest major city is Adelaide, 320 miles away. The town’s other colloquialism, The Silver City, is a reference to the huge deposits of silver, lead and zinc found there in 1855 by boundary rider Charles Rasp, who made his discovery when out checking fences. Rasp secured his fortune soon after, and became one of the founding members of a syndicate that established what would later become Australia’s greatest industrial powerhouse—mining company Broken Hill Proprietary Ltd. The town became a thriving mining center, which, at its peak in 1893, had sixteen mines and employed nearly 9,000 miners toiling away in cramped, roasting-hot underground shafts. Today things are different. Gone are the picks and shovels, with high explosives being the weapon of choice for getting at the precious ore within. Huge chasms the size of apartment blocks are blown clean out of the earth, then scooped up and spirited away by colossal trucks.
Two major mining companies operate in Broken Hill now, but their operations easily dwarf the efforts of the town’s boom years. Such mechanical productivity has seen a big decline in Broken Hill’s population, which has nearly halved since the 1950s. A good example that illustrates the scale of mining in Australia today, is when the country’s largest mining company Broken Hill Propriety Ltd, merged with Billi
ton plc in 2001 (to become BHP Billiton), the world’s biggest mining company was born that at the time of writing is the sixth largest listed company on the planet, in terms of market value,11 with profits greater than the gross domestic product of ninety-three countries.12
I drove into the town along an attractive high street with multiple buildings possessing that classic outback feature, a double tiered veranda—providing shade for shop fronts along the sidewalk, and for the balconies of pubs and restaurants above. The town had a cheerful and relaxed feel about it, and retained a good helping of stunning old architecture, including a red-bricked post office with huge clock tower, and a grandiose town hall with lavish arched windows and intricate filigree work on its façade. Dominating much of the town to the south were several sprawling mullock mounds—giant man-made hills of leftover waste material from mining. Perched on top of one was a café.
I pulled up opposite a bronze statue of an Australian World War I soldier throwing a Mills Bomb (hand grenade). Zed and I got out to go in search of food, and after a brief perusal of what the place had to offer—which wasn’t much, as almost everywhere was closed—we selected the local Democratic Club. Most clubs in Australia are a bit on the peculiar side, in that you don’t actually need to be a member to use them. All we had to do was sign a big book at the door to get temporary membership, and we were welcomed inside its dated surroundings to enjoy its extensive café and bar. I went for a succulent roast chicken and veggies, while Zed got himself half a cow, in the form of a super thick and juicy-looking T-Bone steak.
“This one’s on me,” said Zed, as we approached the register.
I protested but it was no good.
“You can get me a drink instead,” he offered by way of compromise. “I’ll have a lemon, lime, and bitters.”
As we tucked into our veritable feasts, Zed’s cell phone went off. It was his boss, with good news for him but disappointing news for me. He had booked Zed into a local hotel for the night, scuppering our previously discussed plans of finding a local river to set up camp next to. It looked like I’d be roughing it alone, and there’d be no scenic riverside camping for me. It would have to be at a spot near the road, I couldn’t be wasting the following morning traipsing back to one.
“I can drop you out of town if you like,” suggested Zed.
This was a big help. The last thing I wanted to do was pay for a central campsite.
Zed’s “out of town” turned out to be a good twenty miles past Broken Hill, by a lonely picnic shelter on the side of the road in the absolute middle of the desert. It was perfect. By the time we got there, the last of the remaining light was fleeing from a darkening restive sky.
“You sure you’re gonna be alright out here?” asked Zed, looking around at the desolate and barren landscape that stretched in all directions.
“Yeah, no worries,” I said, content that I had plenty of water and that come the morning the remoteness would pay dividends with any drivers that happened by.
After a fond farewell, I stepped out of the comfort and safety of the truck into the stark isolation of the windy outback, churning the surrounding sand into an airborne fury that lashed my face with such force as to be painful. A final wave and a toot of his horn, and Zed spun his four-wheel-drive beauty around and drove off into the distance. I stood motionless, watching through screwed up eyes as he disappeared from sight into the darkening abyss. Pensive contemplation at an end, I hastily set up camp, doing so on impossibly hard earth that felt like a cold slab of iron and bent several of my tent pegs in half. It was a relief to crawl inside, cloistered from the howling wind and sand that lashed against its taut nylon walls. Out came my inflatable “Therm-a-Rest” bedroll, a Christmas present from Emily, and minutes later I was lying down, drifting off into a contented sleep.
CHAPTER FIVE
Aussie Rules and British Tools
“I was sheep shearing with this Irish bloke up in New South Wales and on the way back to Broken Hill we spot this ewe with its head stuck in the fence. She looks at me, and me back at her with a twinkle in my eye. So I say to this Irish fella, ‘shall we?’ and he’s like, ‘okay.’ So I go ahead and have my wicked way with the sheep, and when I’m finished I say to the Irish bloke ‘your turn,’ and he goes and sticks his head in the fence!”
I laughed.
“I’m not saying that it’s true, but it’s a sheep shearer’s yarn,” said my first ride of the morning, Brett, a rough-as-guts, happy go lucky, thirty-two-year-old sheep shearer who picked me up shortly after dawn in a sporty black sedan.
“Been pissed here many times, rolling rotten drunk!” said Brett, as we drove through the ramshackle hamlet of Cockburn that was home to only twenty-five souls and straddled the boundary of states New South Wales and South Australia.
“I know every publican in every town around here,” said Brett, as we drove on into another seemingly endless barren void. “If you work like a horse you’ve got to drink like a horse. And shearing’s the second hardest job in the world.”
“What’s the hardest?”
“They haven’t worked it out yet!”
He picked up a vicious-looking set of spiked shearing combs from the dash board.
“Worst bit is when you jab it up your fingernail or cut yourself. My old man lost six pints of blood, his heart was pumping that fucking fast. The hardest of men just cry sheep shearing. It’s the only job where you still take a sweat towel to work—gotta stop the stuff getting in your eyes!”
Brett handed the spikes to me for inspection.
“So what is it you do, Jamie?” he asked.
“I write books.”
“Never read one in my life,” he exclaimed proudly, before adding, so as not to offend me, “My misses reads them, like.”
Brett was certainly a laugh a minute, and had no end of anecdotes to enliven the monotony of the flat outback scenery.
“We had this fucking fat Maori chick called Rangi who got a job out on the station, cooking for us shearers. Whale of a woman, eighteen stone of blubber she was. Come morning smoko, we went to the kitchen and there was no sign of her, so we had to make our own sangers. Lunchtime comes around and she’s still nowhere to be seen, so we have to make that too. Everyone thought she’d quit. Only discovered where she was when one of the boys went to the dunny. It was a great big drop toilet, and stuck down there, right at the bottom, up to her shoulders in shit, was Rangi—who fell in after the seat collapsed under her fat arse. Lowered a rope in but she was too heavy, so we had to rip the bloody walls and roof off the thing. Threw a chain in on the bucket of a tractor and winched her out. Give her credit though, she was game alright. Showered off and started to cook. None of the boys were too keen to eat now though, so the boss goes in and tells her, ‘Sorry, luv, but we’re gonna have to let you go.’ Some days it’s better you just stay in bloody bed!”
Several stories later, and I asked Brett if he’d seen much of the country.
“I drove all around Australia once, and without a license too. Been done for drunk driving six times. Would have been jail time but it was in different states,” he told me with a satisfied grin.
He was currently on a provisional license plate.
“You can get up to some great speeds on these roads. They used to do the Cannonball Run out here from Alice Springs to Darwin. Got banned after two Japanese crashed their Ferrari at over 300ks. Killed them and two officials.”
I told Brett that when I got near Alice Springs I planned to visit Australia’s most iconic natural wonder, Uluru (formally known as Ayers Rock), a giant sandstone monolith that changes color with the moods of the sun, and asked if he’d been there.
“Yeah, but I didn’t go right up to it. Abbos charge you fifteen dollars, then spend it on piss and go and stab each other.”
Since “Abbo” was the Australian equivalent of “nigger,” I decided to hastily change the subject. I may not have liked his vernacular, but neither did I want to fall out with him over it an
d see my ride cut short. So I steered the conversation in a different direction, asking Brett if he had any good music on his MP3 player, which was currently plugged in but silent.
“Choose something for yourself,” he offered.
I flicked through his collection and was surprised to see a large cache of England’s cheesiest old crooner, Cliff Richard.
“I didn’t have you down as much of a Cliff Richard man,” I said to Brett with a smile, expecting to be told that Cliff had only wormed his nasty way onto his MP3 after the wholesale dumping of someone else’s collection on his. After all, Cliff Richard is the sort of person your Grandma listens to.
“You’re kidding. I fucking love Cliff!” he replied, in all sincerity.
A couple of hours drive and we arrived at a remote junction in the middle of nowhere. Brett was heading south, whereas I needed to head west for the small town of Peterborough. It should have taken about three hours to get here, but the way Brett nailed it, we shaved a full hour off the drive.
A short lift in a white SUV from a couple of butchers who skinned sheep for a living, and I made it to Peterborough—formerly Petersburg, but renamed due to anti-German feelings during World War I. Grabbing a meat pie and sauce for lunch—an Aussie favorite—I hiked to the other side of town, where a turning led towards my final destination of today, Port Augusta.
I threw down my pack on the dusty red earth beside the road, and surveyed my surroundings. To my right was the iron fence of a small home across the road; to my left, beyond an abandoned lot, was a cream-colored warehouse building that was part of a steam railway museum; and ahead, just up the road before it took a gentle curve to the left and disappeared from sight into farming lands, was a small rectangular reservoir.
There weren’t many cars passing and those that did showed little interest in stopping. After about an hour in the blistering sun, a bare chested, heavily tattooed man from the house opposite called out to me.
“Be careful out here,” he said. “Been a few hitchers come a cropper.”