‘How hot does it get in summer?’ she asked, shading her eyes.
‘Oh, way hotter than this,’ her dad answered. ‘And there’s a monsoon, so it rains, even out in the desert. There’s no way we could be doing this in summer. Come on, let’s get cracking.’
There was a lot to do before they could set out. They had to pick up their rented four-wheel drive and double check that everything was safe for a trip to the desert. Two spare tyres, an extra jerry-can of petrol, plastic containers of water and a satellite phone in case anything went wrong. They needed to go to the supermarket and stock up on food for the next two weeks, as the supplies in the Aboriginal community near the lake were quite limited, and expensive.
It took them several hours to get it all done, and have a quick lunch in one of Broome’s outdoor cafés. Rachel wished they had time to explore the town, with its funny low wooden buildings and flowering frangipani trees everywhere, and the famous outdoor cinema. The air smelled of flowers and salt water and seafood, and she’d never been anywhere like it. But Mike shook his head.
‘On the way back we might have time. Today there’s just one last stop, to meet Libby from Wild Horses Kimberley. She knows more about the horses than just about anyone.’
Libby lived in a rambling two-storey wooden house in Broome with two large dogs that barked furiously at Mike and Rachel, but quietened when Libby came to the gate to let her visitors in. She sat them down with a cup of tea and opened some files on her computer.
‘Father John McGuire ran the Aboriginal mission at Balgo in the 1960s,’ she explained. ‘Lots of the Aboriginal people from Paruku worked on the pastoral stations as stockmen or domestic helpers. In 1969, we think, Father John sent to Melbourne for thoroughbred and Arabian stallions and stud mares to improve the quality of the stockhorses.’
Libby opened some photo files and Rachel and her father both leaned forwards to peer at the old images.
‘That’s one of the thoroughbred stallions, called Basin Street,’ Libby said, pointing to a handsome bay horse standing outside a ramshackle stable, held by a young man. ‘He was a Melbourne Cup runner. We can’t find a photo of the Arabian, but his name was Grey Ghost. The Arabian and thoroughbred bloodlines all mingled when the horses were turned out to the wild in the 1970s.’
Rachel stared at Basin Street. He was a classic thoroughbred, rather like Aragorn, a dark bay with a white blaze on his face and a long, lean body. She thought back to the brumbies she’d seen at Guy Fawkes National Park, a few hours from home. They were small, stocky creatures: nothing like this horse.
‘You know, these brumbies have a history of being sent around the world already,’ Libby said. ‘In the 1970s, several hundred horses were rounded up and shipped to Tanzania. The mounted police over there had lost all of their animals to equine influenza, and the Australian horses replaced them.’
Rachel looked over Libby’s shoulder again as she flicked through some more photos. ‘Do you think the horses mind being caught?’
Libby rolled back her chair. ‘Yes, I do. I think they should stay wild, myself. They’re happy like that. But the blokes out there don’t agree with me.’
There was silence for a minute and then Mike pulled out his map of the Paruku Indigenous Protected Area. ‘Can you show us on the map where the horses can be found?’
They turned down the main street of town and came to a halt in a traffic jam. The other cars were also four-wheel drives, loaded up just like theirs, with swags and jerry-cans on the roof. It was school holidays, and lots of other people were arriving to explore the Kimberley.
‘Don’t worry,’ Mike said. ‘The tourists mostly head to the coast. We’re going right into the desert.’
Rachel spread out the map on her knees and traced her finger along their route. They would drive east towards Halls Creek and turn onto the Tanami Highway, a red-dirt road that ran through the Tanami Desert down to Alice Springs.
‘Where will we stay tonight?’ she asked.
Mike grinned. ‘Don’t tell your mother, but we’ll find a spot by the road, roll out the swags and light the campfire.’
‘Right,’ Rachel said doubtfully. Sleeping by the road didn’t sound much fun; she felt nervous as they crawled through the traffic.
In a few minutes they were through town and on their way, speeding east. It was still hot and they wound all the windows down. Now that they were moving, the wind came in and dried Rachel’s sweat. Mike put some music on and she found herself tapping her foot along with it. They didn’t listen to much music at home — they didn’t do much of anything except look after the horses — and it was nice for a change. It was kind of country and western, with a slide guitar, a harmonica, and men’s voices singing in harmony.
‘Like it?’ Mike asked. ‘The Pigram Brothers from Broome. Cool, eh? I used to listen to them when I lived out here.’
Rachel nodded, and looked out the window, tapping her foot. The countryside was completely different from what she was used to. It was wide and flat, with occasional low rocky hills under an enormous, brilliant blue sky. The grass was pale, and the reddish sand beneath showed through.
‘What’s that?’ She had never seen a tree like the one they were passing. The trunk swelled outwards like a huge tummy.
‘It’s a boab. Also called a bottle tree. The Kimberley is famous for them. They grow to be hundreds of years old, you know. You can eat them, and the Aborigines also carve the nuts.’
‘How do you know so much about them?’
He grinned. ‘From when I worked in Kununurra. It was the only vet clinic in the region, so I flew around in a plane to treat animals.’
‘What kind of animals?’
‘Stud cattle, working dogs and stockhorses, mostly. An animal had to be valuable for it to be worth the vet flying out. The clinic also did wildlife rescue, so we saw wallabies and kangaroos and all sorts of possums and gliders. I even treated a dingo once that had been shot in the leg. Got it well enough to be released again. They had a sanctuary in Kununurra for animals that couldn’t be released.’
‘What about brumbies? Did you ever treat them?’
Mike shook his head. ‘The problem with the brumbies is that, Libby aside, most people want them gone. They’re feral pests out here. A lot of them get shot, just like they do in other national parks. In some places people try to catch them and find them good homes, but it’s very expensive.’
They were both silent for a long time. The traffic began to thin out as the day ended. The sun dropped low and the light changed from the harsh white of daylight to a warm, yellowish glow. It was getting cooler too, Rachel noticed with relief. She could feel her eyelids drooping. The day had started a very long time ago and she dozed off.
‘Here’s a good place,’ Mike said, waking her up as he turned the car off the road.
Rachel blinked and looked around. It was almost dark and she couldn’t see anything much, just a deep blue sky with the first stars showing and the orange glow of sunset on the western horizon. They bumped over grass and earth until a big boab tree loomed up out of the darkness. Mike stopped the car and the roar of the engine, her companion for hours, was replaced by silence.
‘Is this it?’ Rachel asked, rubbing her eyes.
Mike laughed. ‘Sure is. Like it?’
Rachel looked around. The road wasn’t far away and a car whizzed past in the dark. ‘I don’t want to sleep by the road. We don’t even have a tent!’
‘Hop out,’ Mike said. ‘I know this spot from years ago. None of the drivers can see us and anyway, there are only road trains at night. We’ll light a little fire on the other side of the tree, cook up dinner, and roll out the swags. There’s nothing better than sleeping under the stars, Rach. You’ll never want to sleep in a tent again.’
Rachel fumbled in her pocket for the camping head torch her mother had given her before they left. She felt a little stab of homesickness thinking of her mum, and had to swallow hard as she strapped the torch on. She jumped down from the car
and nearly fell into a huge clump of pale-coloured grass. It prickled and she jumped back.
‘Watch the spinifex!’ Mike scrambled up the ladder on the side of the car to the roof rack, unstrapped the swags and tossed them down. They landed in the red dirt with a heavy thud.
‘You can get the beds sorted,’ he said, hopping down and opening up the side door. ‘Pick a spot where there’s bare sand. I’ll get dinner on.’
Rachel felt tired and cross. She wished they could just go to a motel, buy some dinner and go to sleep in real beds. She opened her mouth to complain again, and then closed it. She’d begged to come on this adventure. She didn’t want her father to regret bringing her.
By the time Rachel found a patch of red sand away from the spinifex, dragged the swags over to it and unrolled them, Mike had the camp chairs and table set up and a pile of firewood ready.
‘Don’t we need newspaper to light that?’ Rachel asked, shining the beam of her head torch on the pile of sticks in a hollow in the sand.
Mike laughed. ‘Hold a match to it and see what happens.’
Rachel crouched by the wood, struck a match and put it to the twigs. They flared into life at once and within moments the fire was crackling merrily.
‘That’s why you need to be so careful in the Kimberley,’ Mike said. ‘One little blaze can get out of control in no time. When we put the fire out, it needs to be doused with water and buried.’
The heat was very pleasant and Rachel realised she was cold. She zipped up her fleece — just a short time ago she’d been hot!
‘Dinner’s just packaged stuff tonight,’ Mike said. ‘But I’m a great camp cook. You’ll see.’
Rachel plopped herself into the camping chair, switched off her head torch and started poking the fire with a stick as her father prepared dinner. He didn’t use the gas stove they’d brought, but emptied the tandoori chicken mixture into a black-bottomed frying pan Libby had lent them, and put it straight on the fire. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing. He hummed as the food began to bubble and in a few minutes he ladled it into enamel bowls.
‘Fang into that,’ he said, handing one to her.
The food tasted fantastic and Rachel shovelled hers down. No one was there to tell her to sit up or eat slowly. Her father was wolfing down his dinner too, as though he was starving. She started to feel better.
Over on the highway she heard a faint roar and saw the glimmer of headlights in the distance. They both watched as the road train approached. To her surprise — she hated trucks — there was something quite comforting about the road train. She could see it coming from a long way off, and the sound slowly got louder and then whooshed past them and receded. After it was gone, the silence descended again.
‘I hope we’re not here on a wild-goose chase,’ Mike said, staring into the fire.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘The brumbies I saw years back in the Kimberley were a mixed lot. Their only natural predators are dingoes, and dingoes will only go for horses if there’s no easier prey around. So the horses breed fast and most of them survive if there’s enough food and water. They’re stocky things with great big heads and short legs. I’m worried we won’t find any that are good enough for the Sheik.’
Rachel stared into the fire too. The flickering flames were hypnotic. ‘They just have to be fast, don’t they?’
‘Fast, but also strong,’ he answered. ‘Endurance horses win on staying power rather than speed. They need to go all day long, and pass their vet checks along the way. The Sheik hopes that these wild horses naturally have that kind of endurance, but I’m not so sure. These horses probably run very little. There’s nothing much for them to run from out here.’
The fire popped and Rachel’s image of a graceful silver horse galloping through the gum trees disappeared in a burst of sparks, replaced by a bunch of scruffy horses with dusty coats standing with their heads hanging in the hot desert sun. ‘Why does the Sheik want these ones?’
‘He needs horses that are used to the desert,’ Mike said. ‘Dubai’s really, really hot and the horses train right through summer. Any horse that didn’t grow up in a desert would probably break down.’ He glanced at his watch and sat up suddenly. ‘Bedtime! Go and clean your teeth. Spit into the sand and then cover it up. I’ll put out the fire.’
‘There’s no toilet, Dad,’ she said.
He grinned. ‘You’re a bush girl now. Take this shovel, some toilet paper and a match. Dig a hole, and when you’ve finished, burn the toilet paper and cover it all up. And wash your hands well — here’s some antiseptic.’
It was all together in a little bag — the toilet paper, matches, tiny shovel and hand-washing gel, and Rachel managed it all without a problem. She realised how tired she was as she stumbled around looking for her toothbrush. She wet a flannel and washed her face, cleaned her teeth, and got her pyjamas on. By that time the fire was out. She clambered into her swag, glad of the thick sleeping bag inside the stiff canvas cover to keep out the desert chill. It felt strange to be lying on the ground with nothing above her except the sky, but without the light of the fire she could see the stars. They were so bright she wondered how she’d ever fall asleep.
Mike settled into his swag nearby, the zip making a loud noise in the desert quiet. Far off, very faintly, Rachel heard a howl on the night air.
‘Dad! Is that a dingo?’
‘Hmmm,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t worry, it won’t bother us.’
She settled back down, feeling a flutter of fear in her tummy, and looked up at the stars again. The distant howl came once more. She hoped the dingo wouldn’t come along and decide that two humans sleeping on the ground looked like a good dinner. I’d better stay awake, she thought. But her eyelids were heavy and within just a few minutes she was asleep.
Chapter 5
‘Are we nearly there yet?’ Rachel asked.
‘Got you!’ Mike said, snapping his fingers and pointing at her. ‘Less than an hour.’
‘Oh, Dad! I don’t believe you. It was hours ago when I asked.’
‘It was not. You’re on washing-up tonight!’
Rachel stuck out her bottom lip, but she didn’t really mind. Her dad was in one of his funny, teasing moods and she enjoyed it. She couldn’t think when the two of them had ever had so much time together.
They were bumping along the red sand of the Tanami Highway — her dad called it the Tanami Track — near the end of the second day in the car. They’d stopped off at Wolfe Creek to check out a huge crater, formed by a meteor that smashed into the desert hundreds of thousands of years ago, and now they were headed for the start of the Canning Stock Route, a meandering four-wheel-drive trail that headed south. That was where they’d turn off for Lake Gregory — ‘Paruku’ was its Walmajarri name — where the horses lived.
The landscape was much prettier than Rachel had expected, with its orange-red sand, pale clumps of spinifex, and brilliant green grass shooting up in the areas that had been burned off. Short coolibahs with white trunks were dotted around in clumps, and every now and then they’d come to a small hill that stretched out either side of the track. They were sand dunes, running in long lines as if someone had dragged a giant plough across the country. The car bumped up and over and down the other side of each dune, giving a wide view of the land around them for a few seconds. The sky was a brilliant blue and the sun was warm on her arm.
She saw something up ahead, standing out against the flat horizon, and pointed. ‘What’s that?’
Mike squinted. ‘Desert art?’
She thought he was teasing her again so she ignored him, fixing her gaze instead on the square object they were approaching. As they came close, she realised it really was a painting, though it wasn’t till they pulled up beside it that she realised what it was painted on.
‘It’s a car bonnet,’ she said.
‘They make great canvases.’ Mike turned off the engine and opened his door. ‘Nothing else to do with old car
s out here. It’s too expensive to get rid of them.’
The car bonnet was nailed to a post so it stood upright, and the whole surface was painted with a sign showing drivers the Canning Stock Route turnoff to the right. To the left, the sign pointed to Mulan, the Aboriginal community nearest the lake. The picture was beautifully painted, showing ancient Aboriginal faces against a starry sky and some orange hills. At the bottom was a Ford logo, also beautifully painted, surrounded by wisps of smoke.
‘Those fellas have a good sense of humour,’ Mike said. ‘We’re nearly there now.’
Over the afternoon breeze, Rachel heard a faint thudding sound. ‘What’s that?’
They both stood still to listen. The car was stopped next to a burned area; new green grass was shooting up among the termite mounds. A movement caught Rachel’s eye, and she pointed.
‘Ah,’ Mike said. ‘They’ve come to welcome us.’
Two horses were cantering towards them across the burned patch, a bay and a chestnut, their colours perfectly matching the orange ant hills, the ochre-coloured sand and the black ash. Rachel had expected wild horses to run away from people, but these came straight for them, heads up, nostrils flared.
‘Aren’t they scared of us?’ she whispered.
‘Wild horses are funny like that,’ Mike said. ‘They’re a bit scared, and terribly curious too.’
The two horses were big and strong, with glossy coats, round bellies and muscles that rippled under their skin. They stopped about forty metres away and stood still for a moment, heads raised.
Mike lifted his head and sniffed loudly through his nostrils, and Rachel remembered to do the same, giving them a horse greeting the way she did to Rapscallion and Aragorn.
The two horses trotted a little closer. They looked completely at home in the desert, as if they’d come to challenge the humans for stepping into their territory. Then, for no reason that Rachel could see, both suddenly swung around and started trotting away. The bay had two white socks, she noticed. They propped, trotted in a wide arc that brought them close to the humans again, stopped once more.
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