After checking in all directions Graham took off his webbing and crouched to remove the two packets from his haversack. Both were dry. He put on his webbing again. The post box was out of sight round the front.
Walsh spoke. “We got time to buy something, sir?” he asked.
“Yes, good idea. You attract attention while I post these letters. Leave your gear here,” Graham replied. He crawled under the fence and led the way forward into the light. As they did their boots crunched on gravel and a dog started to bark in the backyard of the shop.
A powerful spotlight suddenly shone on them from a car parked in the shadow of a big tree beside the highway. The police!
“Act normal,” hissed Graham trying to control his alarm. The thought of the packets in his hand, then of the little brown notebook and pistol in his basic pouch started his heart thumping at such a rate he felt momentarily giddy. He shielded his eyes and waited while a policeman, armed with a shotgun, walked over.
“Who are you?” the policeman demanded.
Graham swallowed and had trouble speaking. “Cadets. We are on a compass march,” he replied.
“Are you lost?”
That offended Graham, who prided himself on being an expert navigator. The irritation helped calm him. “No, not really. We just wanted to come to the shop,” he replied.
“Where have you come from?”
“We are camped just across the river,” replied Graham, stretching the truth and hoping the policeman was hazy about local geography.
“It’s a bit late isn’t it?” the constable asked, but he was no longer suspicious and had put up his gun. The spotlight was turned off. Graham saw another policeman with a bright red torch waving down a car coming along the highway from the direction of the river.
“Yes. We waited till the officers were in bed. We aren’t supposed to be here. You won’t dob on us will you?”
The policeman turned away to help his friend search the car which had stopped. “Nah! Get a move on though. This isn’t a safe area. You know about this missing girl?”
Graham nodded. “Yeah. We’ve spent half the day looking for her.”
The constable walked off. Graham turned and walked along the front of the shop. There, next to the public telephone, was the red painted Australia Post letter box.
‘Collections daily 10am,’ a notice read. A quick glance. The policemen were busy looking in the car. The two bulky packets were pushed in then Graham followed the other two cadets in through the shop door.
A cheerful, middle-aged woman greeted them. “Hello dearies. It’s a bit late to be out isn’t it? What would you like? Dear me, you look a bit wet. Have you come across the river then?”
“Yeah, we are camped the other side. We got a bit wet,” Graham answered.
“Oh dear, so you did. Fancy crossing the river in the dark. You could’ve been drowned!”
Livingstone cut in. “Nah! It’s only ankle deep this time of year,” he drawled. They all laughed, even Graham, although his was more with relief.
They purchased chocolates and biscuits and a couple of tins of food which were stuffed into pockets. Graham’s watch showed 11:30pm and he suddenly realized just how cold and tired he was. His leg muscles were trembling slightly from the effort of walking on all that soft sand. He looked at his map under the light and checked his compass while the others began munching on chocolate bars.
“Goodnight, see you later,” they called and went out. The cold hit them as they stepped through the door. The policemen were visible as two pale faces in their car. Acting innocent Graham waved as he led the other two back past the phone box. A hand waved in reply. The boys moved at a fast walk to the fence where they’d left their webbing. After crawling under they swung their webbing on, then set off on a compass bearing across a huge open paddock.
Graham had planned a different route back and was now glad of it as it meant much less sand. It was easy going and no problem navigating as they were moving almost parallel to the highway and the occasional vehicles were clearly visible. Even when they dipped down into a little valley they could still see the headlights.
They had to cross a small gully with eroded banks lined with thorn bushes. Then it was up a long, gentle bare hill with spear grass and lots of football sized rocks. Numerous thorn trees provided cover as they made their way across the wide, gentle crest of the hill. They crossed the vehicle track which led to the guard post at the river but saw and heard nothing. When they reached the top of the gentle rise they paused for a drink. The view in the moonlight was quite remarkable.
CHAPTER 16
FOG ON BUNYIP RIVER
The moon was now well up and was silvering the whole landscape. Beyond the dark tree line of the river the pale outline of Bare Ridge could be plainly seen two kilometres away. The distant rumble of a heavy diesel grew louder. This developed into the metallic rattling and roaring of a train, very loud in the still air, even though it was passing about two kilometres away on their right.
The lights of the train came into view. Graham noted it was a passenger train on its way to Townsville.
“The ‘Inlander’ from Mt Isa,” Livingstone said.
The scene puzzled Graham for a moment. The huge steel girders of the Bunyip River rail bridge were clearly visible, standing out stark in the moonlight, and in the glow of the train’s headlights. It was the background of white- like cotton wool -that had him puzzled.
Fog! That was it! A huge mass of fog was rolling up the valley. It had filled the river bed below the rail bridge and was even then seeping over the pale concrete strip of the Highway Bridge in front of them. A white, woolly mass was moving beyond the rail bridge and appeared to cover half the horizon. To Graham it seemed somehow sinister and menacing.
“We’d better get on or we’ll be caught by that fog,” Graham said, putting his waterbottle back.
“Yeah, Holy Moses! Look at it!” cried Walsh.
They headed down a long slope, threading through numerous large thorn bushes. It was across this slope that Graham had led his patrol on the exercise to raid the rail bridge when he was a corporal so he had no trouble navigating. Half way down they disturbed a dozen beef cattle which got to their feet in alarm before lumbering off to the left in a cloud of dust.
The cadets had to crawl under a fence and then stumbled down an animal pad through rubber vines. Now they were in the Anabranches - a series of flood channels with steep little ridges and thick undergrowth. Graham had a vivid ‘flashback’ to the camp the previous years. They had done a night exercise called ‘Bunyip Ghost’ through this area. At the memory Graham’s hair stood on end and he looked nervously around. He now regretted coming this way and knew he had only done it to test his own courage.
The first streamers of mist began appearing and Graham felt alarmed. The cadets struggled down a steep slope, only to find their boots sinking in mud. A smooth flat area twenty metres wide extended across their front. Graham pulled out his torch and shone it.
A swamp!
But how deep?
“Do we go across?” Walshy asked as Graham’s torch beam swept up and down the marshy depression. The red eyes of resting cattle gleamed 50 metres downstream.
Graham shook his head. “Don’t know how deep it is,” he replied.
“Probably only ankle deep this time of year,” Livingstone commented.
Graham’s temper was now very short. He switched off the torch. “This way!” he snapped. He led them along a muddy cattle pad to the right. After about a hundred metres the marsh dwindled to a few metres in width and they crossed along another cattle pad, squelching in deep ooze.
“Well! That was ankle deep!” Walshy said in disgust, trying to scrape and flick the slime off as they walked.
“Isn’t this where Dimbo Doyle’s mob discovered that body?” Livingstone asked.
“Somewhere near here,” Graham agreed.
The other two looked nervously around. “Let’s get out of here!” Livingstone
cried, a distinct quaver in his voice.
Graham led them up over a low ridge covered in rubber vines, then down across another muddy hollow. The place looked eerie, all shadows in the fog. Graham knew he was scared and it annoyed him.
Ahead was a steep slope with masses of thorn trees silhouetted on top- by fog as well as the moon. They climbed up onto a flat area covered with so many big thorn trees they formed a forest. It was difficult to get between them and to navigate and they began to go under them at a crouch, getting snagged and scratched as they did. Tempers frayed and curses were muttered. It all seemed like a bad dream.
They were now on ‘Ruin Island’ - a flat, half-moon shaped area inside the great bend of the river. The centre of the island had once been a farm and they encountered an old rusty barbed wire fence. Then the ruin itself appeared on their right under several Burdekin Plum trees. The trees looked black and forbidding and the ruins:- a crumbled brick chimney and concrete slabs, looked haunted in the fog which was now enveloping everything.
The group halted while Graham used his carefully shielded torch to check the map. ‘This is where Peter acted as the ghost in that exercise,’ Graham remembered. He had been two hundred metres away back on the edge of the swampy hollow. ‘But I had a fire, Peter didn’t. I don’t know how he was game to do it,’ he thought. A shiver ran through him at the thought of bodies and ghosts.
Wanting to reassure himself as much as the two cadets he said, “Not too far now. Only a hundred metres to the river.”
“What’s the time?” Walshy asked petulantly.
“Twenty past twelve.”
“How far home?” Livingstone wanted to know.
“Bit over a kilometre - say one and a half Ks,” Graham replied. By this time he was feeling tired and was regretting the whole business as a waste. ‘I could have just called Captain Conkey aside, away from the NORMAC man and explained it all,’ he thought, ‘or we could have just waited till Miss McEwen returned with the Federal authorities. She has probably been back for hours and is worrying about where we are!’
Feeling silly and decidedly unheroic Graham led the way again, depending completely on the compass now as the fog blotted out everything more than a few metres away. The air was icy cold and clammy and, in combination with the sweat working its way out from the inside, was rapidly soaking their clothes.
Abruptly they came to the steep cliffs on the edge of the river bed. These were about 20 metres high and almost sheer. They were composed of soft, crumbling clay which was deeply eroded. The three had to walk along until they found a cattle pad leading down a steep washout. Ahead was just a white mass.
They had to push their way through some prickly bushes and a belt of waist high thistles which stung. “Bloody Scotsmen!” Graham swore, forgetting his own ancestors came from the Highlands. Once at the bottom they were down on the flat sand of the river bed.
“Bloody sand!” cursed Walshy as they trudged across it.
It was only about 500 metres but to their tired muscles it took on all the qualities of a bad dream, where you want to run but your feet seem caught in treacle. The fog made it worse. There were just the three of them trudging in white nothing.
The muffled noise of a car and the dim glow of its lights as it crossed the highway bridge a kilometre downstream broke the spell. Soon after that the trio came to the first trees and the edge of the water. The fog had lifted slightly here and was resting on a small inversion layer of warmer air. Distinct wisps rose from the inky black water.
They were several hundred metres downstream of where they had previously crossed but Graham could hear moving water and made his way towards it. They began walking in shallow water flowing over small rounded stones. Then it was over their boots and Graham heard a muttered “Ankle bloody deep!”
There was a cry and a splash. Walshy had slipped and was sitting in the water. He got up, swearing aloud despite Graham calling for silence.
Livingstone chuckled. “You washin’ yer underpants from when yer crapped yerself over that pig Walshy?” he drawled. This restored their humour. They edged on into knee deep water with a sandy bottom, then weeds and mud and then they were out of the water groping their way through the trees. By the time they reached the top of the bank up another animal pad it was 0100hrs and they were so tired they just sat for a while.
Graham checked his watch and hauled himself stiffly to his feet. “Come on. This is no good. We’ll catch our death of cold. It’s not far now,” he said. He urged his protesting muscles to move. After a hundred paces going up a rocky slope he reset his compass and then led them up over a series of low stony spurs. They encountered a jumbled mass of black rocks that tripped them up and skinned knees and knuckles as they tried to go around them in the darkness and fog. Graham began to worry that they were lost.
Then a fence loomed up.
“Through the fence and follow it to the left. It should lead to the platoon position.”
They crawled under. In his fatigue Graham wasn’t as careful as he should have been and got up too soon, ripping his jacket slightly. Walshy unhooked him. They began plodding along beside the fence, which vanished into the mist. ‘It must lead somewhere,’ worried Graham.
They came to a dirt road and a gate. Graham relaxed. ‘We aren’t lost,’ he told himself with relief.
“Nearly home, two hundred metres.”
This seemed more like two kilometres they were so tired. But at last the dark pile of Black Knoll loomed up through the fog. It was very quiet and there was no challenge from a sentry as they stumbled up over the rocks. Graham found figures asleep amongst the boulders, wrapped in groundsheets. There was no sign of a sentry at Cpl Sheehan’s sentry post. A surge of anger sent Graham quickly up the slope to grope at a sleeping figure.
“Wake up Corporal Sheehan, wake up!”
The sleepy eyed NCO peered out of his blankets and mumbled half asleep gibberish. Graham shook him. “Wake up! Where are your sentries Corporal Sheehan?”
There were other voices then, attracted by the angry murmuring.
“Is that you CUO Kirk?” came Roger’s voice.
“Yes, Sgt Dunning,” Graham replied.
Roger came over to them. “It’s alright. When this fog came in I told all the corporals to stand their sentries down. There’s no possibility of anyone coming here in these conditions and it will just tire them all out. I’ve kept a watch at HQ.” he explained.
The good sense of this was at once apparent.
“Sorry Cpl Sheehan. You can go back to sleep,” Graham said.
“What about us sir?” Walshy asked.
“Yes, you two can go to bed. Thanks for that effort, it was great. You can brew up first if you like.” The two stumbled off into the mist searching for their packs.
As he and Roger made their way to Pl HQ Graham asked, “Is Miss McEwen back yet Roger?”
“No, not yet.”
A little stab of worry jabbed at Graham.
“Perhaps she’s delayed by this fog?”
“Perhaps. You sound exhausted. Did you post the letters?”
“Yes mate. It was a fair cow of a walk though. Worse than I thought it would be. How’s it been here?” Graham took off his webbing and sat. His leg muscles were now trembling.
“Very quiet. The only thing we’ve seen were two vehicles about 2100, a Landcruiser and a car, one behind the other. They came from the highway, stopped at the NORMAC guard post on the Canning causeway, then drove on along the road past ‘Canning Park’. Otherwise nothing.”
Graham lit his stove and put on coffee water. A flickering glow in the white showed where Walsh and Livingstone were also heating drinks. Several figures could be seen there and one detached itself and came groping through the fog to join them.
Margaret Lake’s cheerful freckled face peered out of beanie and scarf. “How’d it go sir? Livingstone keeps muttering about the river being only ankle deep and Walshy goes off his brain and they’re both wet as shags.”
This brought a grin to Graham’s chilled face. He felt better and began recounting the night’s events. Hodgins woke and peered out of his sleeping bag and joined in for a while. It was after 0200 by this.
Graham looked from pouring hot water into his cup canteen. “How’s Elizabeth? She ok?” he asked.
Margaret hid her hurt but there was just an edge of pique in her voice as she replied. “She’s fine, sleeping like a log.”
A hot cup of coffee and some chocolate made a big difference. Then Graham unrolled his bedroll and took off his wet boots and socks. “Don’t look Margaret,” he said as he began unbuttoning his shirt.
“Why not?” she asked with a grin.
Roger grinned as well. “Bad for discipline if you laugh at the boss’s shortcomings.”
“Short what?” Margaret replied with an impish grin.
“Bite your bum both of you,” Graham snorted. “I am just changing out of these wet clothes.”
Roger grinned at Margaret. “Didn’t you two used to have baths together?”
Margaret blushed. “Oh Roger! That was years ago, when we were only little.”
Roger chuckled. “Was he little?” he teased.
“Roger!” Margaret replied, blushing even more. Then they laughed but turned away.
Graham had also blushed and experienced a rush of heated memories. Several times in years gone by he and Margaret had been naked together and it had always been very enjoyable. They had never had sex but there had been a lot of pleasant cuddling and had come very close. Smiling at the images he stripped off his wet clothes and changed into dry ones. “That feels a hundred percent better,” he said as he draped the wet clothes over large rocks.
Roger said: “Now you get some sleep boss. I’ll worry about the piquet and will make sure you are all awake on time. Margaret, you get to bed. I’ll tuck the boss in.”
The Cadet Under-Officer Page 16