Kamikaze Kangaroos!

by Tony James Slater

  A few hours later, the same bloke pulled up going the other direction. Good as his word, he’d brought us a bag of ice big enough to fill the Esky. “Still here, are ya?” he asked.

  I considered it a rhetorical question.

  “We tried to call the RAC, but we couldn’t get any signal.”

  “Oh yeah, phones don’t work out here, mate.”

  “Yes, we figured that out.”

  “But I see you’ve got yer tent up!”

  He was right – in the paltry shade of that single stunted tree, on the verge beside the carriageway, we’d pitched our little tent. It was an act of desperation, the only thing we could think of to keep out of the sun – though it had pretty much the opposite effect on heat. Sitting inside was like being trapped in an industrial oven, and we could only manage it for short bursts. Sweating was bad, because it led to dehydration. We had plenty of water with us, but in these temperatures we should be drinking constantly. And we had no idea how long we’d be out there, next to that long, empty road, in the middle of nowhere, with sod all around us but one measly tree.

  Three days, as it turned out.

  The Very Helpful Bloke agreed to call in to the local RAC branch on his way back through town. Just to be on the safe side though (having already been on the receiving end of his help once), we stopped every car that passed that afternoon. All three of them. Each driver promised us faithfully that they’d have a word with the RAC rep in Halls Creek, and that he’d be back to get us in no time…

  On the second day, we mostly lounged around, splitting our time between the car and the tent. Both were insanely hot, but moving between them gave us some illusion of choice – as though we were here by design, for the fun of it. In any case, we tried to stay positive. We cooked and ate food, much as we had when camping beside the road previously. A few more cars stopped by to offer help that day, some bringing us ice, some offering to give us a lift into town – but much as this idea appealed to us (it didn’t), we had some logistical issues to contend with. We couldn’t leave the car. This place might look deserted, but everything we owned was inside Rusty. Guaranteed, within minutes of us leaving the whole car would be stripped bare. We’d be lucky to find the wheels still on him when we got back – and we already knew how much those puppies were worth.

  I fancied going to town myself, to get a hold of the RAC dude – literally grab hold of the fucker – and ask him why the bloody hell he wasn’t out there, rescuing us. But then, I didn’t fancy leaving the girls here all alone. Equally, though I wouldn’t mind waiting with Rusty, neither Gill or Roo liked the idea of setting off in a strange man’s car – and wandering the streets of Halls Creek seemed like a nightmare.

  No – he had to come. The RAC guy – it was his whole raison d’etre. Surely?

  We spent the second night in the tent, clustered together under every blanket we owned. As hot as the day was, the night was colder. I’d read about that happening somewhere. Oh, yes! The desert. The Australian Outback was remarkably like a desert.

  Only with road trains.

  When one thundered by in the middle of the night, giant wheels chewing up the gravel only a few feet from our heads, we understandably shit ourselves. There wasn’t much sleep to be had for the rest of that night, and we lay awake listening to the howling of wild dogs in the distance. At least, we hoped it was the distance…

  Escape From Hell’s Crack

  Halfway through the next day, the police showed up.

  “We kept getting reports that you were out here, but we didn’t believe it at first,” one cop said.

  “We thought we’d have to have a look for ourselves,” the other added.

  “So, if you know, and presumably the RAC know, then why are we still here?” I asked.

  “Search me! I reckon we’d better go and ask old Mick what he’s playing at. Does one of you want to come along?”

  Roo offered to go – but just then, the officers got a call on their radio, and they “had to check this out,” so Roo had to stay with us. “But we’ll speak to Mick about you,” they said.

  And left.

  That evening the cops returned, with the news that RAC Mick was ‘busy’. The bastard! They’d had a few choice words with the grumpy old bugger, presumably mentioning that it was his job – and they’d convinced him to come and get us in the morning.

  “But we can’t leave you out here all night,” one of them said, “it’s far too dangerous.”

  We loved hearing stuff like that.

  So we piled as much gear as we could into the back of their truck, bid a nervous farewell to Rusty, and tried not to picture him being a burnt-out wreck when we returned. The cops dropped us at a campsite – sorry, the campsite – in Halls Creek, and, well, that’s where we stayed.

  For quite some time…

  Amongst the delights the next morning brought us, was discovering that RAC Mick was the same asshole who’d tried to sell us light truck tyres for Rusty the last time we visited him. Top of my list of questions was, why the hell he hadn’t come for us himself when the police told him to – forcing us to abandon Rusty to Fate and the wilderness. But this question was answered long before I had to get angry about it; as we approached Mick’s garage, we couldn’t help but notice that the tow truck sitting outside was missing the entire front section!

  No headlights. No grill. No windscreen.

  No wonder he couldn’t drive at night!

  The whole cab was stripped down, as though being repaired after an accident. This did not instil much confidence, either in the tow-truck, or in the ugly old git that owned the thing, but it did give us a moment of comedy: what was left of the vehicle was parked directly in front of a huge sign that read ‘24 HOUR TOWING’.

  Indeed! 24 hours a day – so long as it wasn’t dark.

  Mick was none too pleased about being made to fetch us, so Roo and I climbed into the half-cab and endured his constant stream of complaining in silence. I started out on the journey wanting to strangle the bugger, and by the time we reached Rusty I had to sit on my hands to stop myself reaching for his neck. Only the disturbing way he kept scratching it kept me away. Nothing was right in Mick’s world. Everyone was out to get him. And you know what? I was more than happy to join the queue.

  He brought Rusty back and ditched him outside the campsite. Almost for a laugh, we’d asked Mick what it would cost to get him fixed. He’d had a rummage around in the engine while we were making Rusty ready to tow, and he didn’t hesitate to give us his opinion.

  “Busted water pump, it is. Cost yer two grand, yeah, at least that.”

  Laugh or cry? I chose option 3. “Bullshit! Why?”

  “It’s a Nissan. A Nissan Nomad van, yeah? Not many of them about.”

  “Seriously? We only saw eight cars yesterday. Three of them were this exact same van.”

  “Yeah. Imported, they are. Can’t get the parts. Very hard to find.”

  “Riiight. Thank-you.”

  And so we spent most of the afternoon emptying Rusty completely – and then pushing him back through town towards the mechanic that had sold us the right tyre.

  His verdict was the same; a new water pump would have to be ordered, and couriered in from Perth. But his price? $350. Which, whilst still heart-stopping, was within the bounds of possibility. Now all we had to do was wait…

  For a week.

  In Halls Creek.

  Where waiting was no.2 on the list of fun things to do – right behind shooting yourself in the forehead.

  “You could get a job in the hotel,” the campsite owner suggested, when I mentioned why we were so eager to reach Kununurra.

  I just smiled and nodded, as there’s no polite way to say ‘Honestly, I’d rather be raped by a cactus.’

  The campsite in Halls Creek – or Hell’s Crack, as we’d come to call it – did have two redeeming features. One was the campsite swimming pool, our only respite from the baking heat, to the point where we spent all day, every day in
it; and the other was the three backpacker chicks who showed up there the day after we did. None of them were particularly attractive, but they had redeeming features of their own – and they weren’t ashamed to show it. Within minutes of their arrival, all three of them were in the pool with us – and all three of them were topless!

  And they stayed that way the entire week.

  I tried to ignore it, of course. I mean, I didn’t want to be that guy; the one always staring at boobs. But when they’re right there in your face? And we were in Hell’s Crack – a place so barren, there was literally nothing else to look at…

  If I passed those girls in the street tomorrow – and they had their clothes on – I don’t think I’d recognise a single one of them.

  At least it helped me to conceal my growing obsession with Roo.

  The balance of bad luck continued though – both Roo’s shoes, and then my shoes, broke; our tent collapsed, snapping one of the poles in the process, leaving us even closer to being homeless than we were already.

  And on the evening of our first night, a fight broke out just beyond the campsite fence. It sounded ugly; screams and yells from dozens of throats pierced the air, and we huddled in our tents, hiding from what sounded like a full-scale gang war.

  In the morning we expected to see bodies. Blood stains, severed limbs, discarded weapons – the aftermath of a conflict so violent, the screaming had kept us awake until the early hours of the morning.

  But there was nothing.

  It was eerie. A brawl that protracted and brutal couldn’t have been cleared away so completely, could it?

  That night, at roughly the same time, it began again.

  It was the aborigines; drunk to the point of psychosis and filled with hatred and despair, they apparently spent every night this way; hurling torrents of abuse at each other as part of extended family feuds, not coming to blows (presumably because they could hardly stand upright by this point) – but such passion, and such venom was in their shrieks, that we constantly expected to see corpses littering the ground outside the campsite.

  When our water pump showed up from Perth and was installed a day later, we could have kissed the thing – grease and all.

  Not the mechanic though, as the campsite owner had warned us he was a paedophile.

  We hardly dared talk about leaving Hell’s Crack for fear of jinxing it.

  It seemed too fragile a dream to risk unveiling in such an awful place.

  If we didn’t get away this time, I would definitely consider shooting myself in the forehead.

  And then, at last, we were sitting in Rusty, pointing out of the place.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I said.

  “If we can!” said Gill. “This place is like a black hole – it keeps sucking us back in! It’s inescapable.”

  She was wrong, thank God.

  Smashing Pumpkins

  After the physical and spiritual desolation of Hell’s Crack, we arrived to find Kununurra a thriving oasis of life.

  There were trees here, for gawd’s sake!

  We checked in to a pleasant campsite on the edge of a lake, and pitched our tent amidst acres of lush green grass.

  Then a day later we moved it, because all that lush green grass was maintained by a network of automatic sprinklers programmed to come on at six in the morning – and we’d pitched our tent right in the middle of them.

  Rusty got a damn good soaking too, which frankly, the old boy needed; he hadn’t been washed since before the girls had painted him. He’d ceased to be a multi-coloured marvel and had been completely redecorated in Insides of Insect.

  The first item on our to-do list was a biggie – getting a job. We’d kept our eyes and ears open as we travelled up the coast, but every piece of advice we’d been given was the same – that Kununurra was the place to go, to work in the fruit-picking industry. And if we didn’t want work in the fruit picking industry, well, there was plenty of other work – in Perth.

  So we figured, perhaps fruit picking was worth a shot.

  On our first trip into town we signed up with a job agency – and agreed to start the very next day.

  Picking pumpkins.

  “It’s either that, or melons,” the agency woman told us, “and you do not want to pick melons.”

  So, five o’clock the following morning found Roo prodding me insistently – with the butt-end of a torch.

  “Tony, wake up! Gotta get ready for work!”

  Outside our tiny tent, darkness reigned and the civilised world still slept; but we had pumpkins to pick, and one thing farm work the world over has in common, is a hideously early start. Intellectually I knew that this far north, by 7am the inside of the tent would be like a blast furnace – but I still loathed and detested 5am.

  We spent half an hour stumbling around in the darkness, trying to remember the way to the toilets, and rooting around inside Rusty for hats, sunglasses, sun-screen and water bottles. Then we trekked through the campsite to the main road, where we stood waiting for the staff transport – a Land Rover so encrusted with muck and dust it was tough to tell what its original colour had been.

  And from there, we were whisked away to join the other backpackers working at Ivanhoe Farm.

  If there was a definition of ‘back-breaking work’ – picking pumpkins would be it. In no way is this an exaggeration. We’d start off quite innocently, using long-handled snips to cut the pumpkins off their stems. Now, I say long-handled, but they are only long in relation to the short-handled ones, which aren’t substantially bigger than a pair of scissors. To employ these tools, we have to bend over at about forty-five degrees, make a cut, then shuffle forward two steps. It soon became too much for my lower back muscles to straighten me up after each cut, so I adopted the perma-hunchback position.

  The rows were evenly spaced about half a metre apart – and each row was exactly one kilometre long. I tell you, by the time I got to the end of a row, I had a powerful need to stand upright!

  So I did. For about thirty seconds. Then, before I got spotted by the boss (who was racing up and down the furrows on his mud-splattered quad bike), I turned around, assumed the position once more, and started back up the row next to me. By then my spirit was freshly crushed, as during my half-minute stretch, while shocks of pain and pleasure chased themselves up and down my spine, there was only one thing to look at: the endless expanse of field, rows upon rows, receding into a distance too far for the eye to measure. Infinity. Of pumpkins. In fact that would make a good collective noun for them; ‘an infinity of pumpkins’… either that, or ‘A Chiropractor’s Delight’.

  Anyway. Lunchtime, when it came, was a particularly torturous respite. Our mobile lunchroom, aka the battered Land Rover, was like a furnace. Rather than using it to ferry us all back to the break room, the boss simply left it there on the edge of the field. By the time we’d trudged back to it, our lunch break was half over, but this was a blessing in disguise; inside the car, the temperature was sufficient to liquefy every item of food we’d brought with us. Including the sandwiches.

  We had to give the exposed bits of us some relief from the sun, so we crammed ourselves inside the vehicle and tried to rehydrate with water hot enough to make tea with. Flies and mosquitos were as thick in the car as they were outside, with the additional problem that swatting them usually resulted in smacking someone else in the face. It was insanely hot, ridiculously sweaty, and the supervisor sat in the cab and cranked up his Eminem CD to the point where the benches shook in sympathy.

  “I think they do this on purpose,” Gill said. “They make breaks so frigging awful that I actually want to get out and snip pumpkins again!”

  As we poured out of the Land Rover for the second innings, the boss raced up to us with a request. “I need four of you to help me with the Jarradales.”

  All three of us volunteered so enthusiastically we nearly left the ground, but the boss was only interested in blokes for this gig.

  “Sorry la
dies,” I said to Gill and Roo. “But this job could be even harder!”

  Gill’s response to that was a suggestive snip with her shears that brought a tear to my eye.

  So off I went. To a different field, which was welcome, as I’d started to imagine the one we were working on stretched all the way around the world to meet itself. It was a refreshing sight, the end of it, even though it was very, very far away from where Gill and Roo were starting to bend over.

  In the top corner of the new field was a tractor, with four enormous plastic crates strapped to the back of it. At least this looked more interesting…

  The boss began his briefing while we were still walking.

  “Easy, this,” he said. “I’ll drive that tractor. You take a row each and follow me, picking up the Jarradales and putting them in the back. Just remember, place them, don’t throw. That’s it.”

  “So, what’s a Jarradale?” I asked, just as we arrived at the edge of the field full of them.

  “That.”

  His foot rested on a gigantic pumpkin, like the ones kids carve out for Halloween. Except it was a greenish-grey-blue colour. And it was the size of Rusty’s spare wheel.

  “Oh… Shit.”

  And though I’ve had a strange and varied career as I’ve travelled around the world, I have never yet encountered any form of work as tough, and as painful, as picking Jarradales.

  It went something like this:

  1) Stand behind tractor. Breathe deeply to fully appreciate the aroma of its exhaust, as it crawls forwards in low gear.

  2) Bend double at the waist. Wrap your hands and forearms around a monster-pumpkin – each weighing between fifteen and twenty kilos – take the strain, and haul that bugger skyward!

  3) Ditch said pumpkin in the crate attached to the back of the tractor. Take one pace forwards.

  4) Repeat.

  It was agony. Periodically, the boss would up the speed a notch, confident that we were now ‘getting used to it’. By the time we’d been at this for two hours, he was up to jogging speed. I had to plead with him on behalf of all of us – and then on behalf of the pumpkins, which were being thrown haphazardly at the back of the tractor from several metres away as we tried in vain to catch up to it. He relented, and passed on the good news: “Just another couple hours of this, lads, then it’ll be back to the other job.”