Lizzie's Tale

by Graham Wilson

  Chapter 16 – Only the Desert Remains

  Lizzie drove out of Halls Creek following signs for Kununurra and Katherine. After a few miles a sign came up for a turn to the right for Alice Springs. The sign said it was six hundred and fifty miles, much as expected. There was also a new looking sign, hand painted, saying “Fuel and Accommodation at Rabbit Flat, and a number which looked like 198 miles, though it was hard to read as someone had shot holes in it. That must be the place she was told of last night.

  So Lizzie turned down this road. At first it was a good road. A couple times station roads turned off it, with signs pointing to them, one was named Gordon Downs. Lizzie drove on steadily. The road was getting much less travelled. She passed one car going the opposite way after she had come about twenty miles.

  When her speedometer said she had come sixty miles from Halls Creek she came to a place where there were two roads and no signs. There was a big wide graded road running dead straight and heading off at an angle to the right and a smaller road which went straight ahead, but was not much more than a set of wheel tracks.

  Lizzie was unsure but she thought that the main road must be the bigger one; the smaller road must just be a station road that had lost its sign. Both roads were obviously used but neither had signs of much recent use. So, after stopping at the junction for a minute, Lizzie turned onto the bigger road and drove along it looking for any signs or landmarks.

  At first it ran over dry stony plains with short grass and a few cattle seen in the distance. Then it started to come into sand hills. Lizzie had driven another thirty miles by now. The road was definitely getting worse, now mainly sand. It seemed to be solid, but once or twice she felt the car sliding and the wheels spun a bit. She concentrated on driving carefully. Another twenty miles passed.

  Now it was just endless low scrubby desert sand hills that the road crossed. It was really just a graded path between them which occasionally crossed a small ridge sometimes of gravel, sometimes of sand, once or twice there was something resembling a creek but with no sign of water anywhere and very few animals seemed to live in this desolate place.

  She was watching her speedometer, so as to keep track of the distance. She realised she had followed this track for over fifty miles since the last major turnoff. A bigger rocky ridge was coming up in front of her, and she welcomed the relief that it gave to this dreary and monotonous landscape, even though the ridge was not really high. She changed down a gear as the car climbed this hill, hoping to see something significant from its crest. She decided that she would have a break at the top of this hill, and turned to the side of the road as they crested the rise.

  Without thinking she turned off the car engine when she stopped. She got Catherine out to stretch their legs. They walked around for five minutes. The view was just endless sandy ridges, seeming to get bigger as they stretched towards a horizon in the south. She wondered if she was foolish heading into such a barren place, perhaps she should go back towards Halls Creek and then head for Darwin rather than take her chances in this endless desolation.

  She was starting to regret her decision to come this way, there seemed to be a lot more cars on the main road to Kununurra and Katherine, and despite the corrugations that road was better. She had a growing anxiety that she had come a hundred miles south of Halls Creek into the heart of the desert and no one knew she was here. On reflection it seemed a foolish thing to do, and particularly to bring her six year old daughter.

  That was it; she made up her mind to return. She would return the way she had come and, once she had refuelled at Halls Creek, she would go instead to Katherine and work out her way from there.

  She turned the key in the ignition. Noting happened. Not a spinning of the motor, not a sound. She turned the key backwards and forwards a few times but still nothing. She got out and walked around for a minute, hoping whatever gremlin was stopping the car would go away. Then she tried again. Still nothing, the dashboard lights came on but no noise of an engine turning.

  She knew that a car had a battery and the battery was needed to start the engine. Alec, as part of the limited introduction to cars he had given her, had shown her where the battery was and how to check and make sure it had water. She opened the bonnet and checked the battery. It looked like it should work, the leads were attached and the fluid level seemed right. That was the limit of her knowledge. She checked the headlights; they were bright so she suspected it was not the battery. There was nothing else she could see that would give her any clue to what the problem was, but her ignorance was vast.

  But what should she do? There were a few trees on the ridge, so she could put a blanket under them, in the shade, where she and Catherine could sit. While their food was not abundant they had two packets of biscuits, and a block of cheese unopened. They still had some lollies though she and her daughter had been eating them this morning so they may be mostly gone. There was a jerry can of water in the back, though more than half the plastic bottle of water they had bought this morning had been drunk to wash down to lollies.

  She had heard of people pushing cars to start them. As they were at the top of a hill she wondered if this was possible. She did not really know how to do it but had an idea, from watching a couple times, that one person sat in the car, put it in gear and let the clutch out, once it was rolling, and the others pushed to make it go fast enough. If she could get the car from the flat place on top to where the road ran down hill then this could be tried. She asked Catherine to help her. Together they tried to roll the car towards where the ground began to fall. With them both pushing they managed to move the car an inch. After that it would not budge; so much for that idea.

  Lizzie realised she needed to get serious about this situation. It was early September and the days were getting warm though nights were cool. She did not know where this road led, but she had increasing doubt about it being the road through to Alice Springs, considering she had not sighted anyone since she had turned onto it this morning and that was almost three hours ago. She knew it did not have heavy traffic but she expected to see a couple other cars in half a day. This lack of traffic was what had motivated her decision to go back. But, without a car, they could not go back. Perhaps they could walk ten or twenty miles over a day or two with the water they could carry. But they could not walk more than 100 miles back to Halls Creek or even a bit more than fifty miles back to the last major turnoff.

  She knew that people who broke down in the outback should stay with their vehicles. With a jerry can of water they should be OK for a week or so. She decided she must check this jerry can, this water was critical. She untied the rope that held both jerry cans in place and wriggled the petrol one out of the way.

  She had an awful feeling, this water one moved around easily and the petrol one was heavy. She lifted it, it was really light. She turned it on its side and back, there was no sloshing. With an awful sinking feeling she opened it up and looked inside. It was bone dry. She held it upside down. Not a drop came out. She looked inside, holding the bottom up towards the sun. She saw a faint line where sunlight was coming through at the bottom. Looking carefully she could see a hairline crack running along the seam around the bottom edge.

  She cursed herself for her stupidity. Such a simple thing to check, even this morning, why did I not bother?

  Here she was a hundred miles into the desert with her six year old daughter. They had less than two pints of water between them. What had she done? If only she had not panicked, if only she had not run, if only she had planned properly.

  She gazed across the vast expanse of sand dunes with a sinking heart. She could feel fear and desperation really rising. The chance of finding water in this landscape was remote, she had barely seen anything resembling a creek in this last hour and any water which flowed would just vanish into the sand.

  Now she looked at the small rocky range on which they sat, perhaps it was twenty or thirty feet above the surrounding desert. When it rained the water woul
d run off these rocks, there was some chance that there would be a pool or two around its edges somewhere. It was less than a kilometre long, the part that poked above the sand. This afternoon, when it was cooling and the sun was lower, they would follow their way around the edges and see if any water was to be found. It would only take an hour or two to walk around and look.

  In the meantime they must sit in the shade and conserve what little water they had. She had this awful thought of them both slowly perishing in this wasteland, she could not bear the thought of her daughter left alone here to die on her own. Yet she could not bear the thought of watching her daughter die while she lived on. Well, they must carefully share what they had and hope someone came along this road soon.

  She knew she must talk to Catherine, to explain and help her be strong and understand. So she sat down beside her and told her the story in simple terms, the whole story about how those men had hurt her and made the baby Catherine grow inside her, how she had run away to make sure nobody took her girl away from her, how she had lived in Melbourne and done things that other people would say were bad so that they would have money for food, how she had to run away again and come to their house in Broome. Then, how yesterday, one of these bad men had come back and threatened to hurt them both, and that was why she had left where they lived. And now how she made a terrible mistake in coming to this place, bringing Catherine with her, where they had broken down and had almost nothing left to drink.

  Catherine looked at her with big wide eyes. When she finished she said. “It’s alright Mummy, we are together. We will both be brave, no matter what happens. Then she wrapped her small arms around Lizzie’s body, cuddled in tight against her and fell asleep.

  Lizzie sat in the solitude, hugging and loving her daughter in return. She had come to know one thing with certainty from being alone here. She made a promise to herself, her sleeping daughter and to anyone else who could see or hear. It was that, if they survived, she would never again run from men like these again. She knew it was her duty, not just for herself, but for all the others who they had hurt and terrorised, to fight back against them.

  When Catherine awoke they walked together around the sides of the hills. They searched for water, but they found only dry rocky hillsides. By the time they came back to the car it was getting too dark to see. Nothing resembling a pool or a soak in the sand had been found. They each drank a small mouthful of water and sucked a lolly while they watched the stars come out in the desert sky.

  It was so huge, a beauty of desolation. Beyond them only the vast desert remained.