Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Vile Structures
978-1-4461-5902-6
3
Foreword
swooned, I vomited disgust for the act I had had to commit, alone
and unseen under the canopy of the great trees. I hated myself
with the bush to this one final act, an act which had been long in the
carved up; with the drop of each progressively smaller slice cold in
blessed whole. But as our cuts become ever more numerous, the
outside of the influence of all else; men who recognize where the
true blame lies; men such as myself. And if I must bear around
be. I dodge around the iron rod of an old gum, pausing against its
far side, my left hand on its belly, the cut of the crown of thorns
4
Introduction
He lies back into his seat, one leg crossed over the other at the
5
Away Again
The three other seats in my berth were empty. I was finally alone
again, after having been patient for so long. I could think again as I
saw fit.
constant blur came finding its way up to me. I wasn’t paying special
What was there for me when I did trouble my gaze out there, that
Greens and browns. A constant blur, each set of greens and each
the bush, greying as the long summer spent its water; the browns of
Blur the synaesthetes, hamper their designs on life, steal all of their
habits and keep them there, in iron-solid cages buried far beneath
the slow melting snow of pallid spring. Steady them with pain until
6
they speak, answering for the insight we crave into the malignancy
of colour. No military has yet had the stomach for such a study.
The green was now strong again outside the window. The train most
likely had ended by all the larger towns and getting on now into real
bush. The journey would be long. I would sit here and more yet.
I break a pen in half, throwing the two pieces against the glass of
There were papers sitting patiently on the opposing seat, still quiet,
steely: certain that the time I gave to my stare out the window
electricity. It will give itself away, sure. And quickly. Why the fuck
The repeater, they had informed me, had not been inspected in a
long time, not in fact since it had first been relocated from its
Maybe this is the day you learn. He is an officer in this man’s army!
7
Not outstanding, mind you, but by Jove he fits the bill.
- Hic!
Why the officer? There was no reason for this! Minute details
worked over feverishly, the end product rarely the logical amethyst
for them. A tired, old ill-fit. To what damn roll were they going to
throw this village boy! Let him drown then, blast him. And let him
blessed coals.
repeater by any means eloquent, staff it with a new battery and turn
that!
everyday brought the chance of storm. And these things they had
8
weather, variable as it is, has too few foreseeable ways of ruining a
enemy activity, at least none which would interest me. The satellite
developer. The map was the only item of any real value. It alone of
all the paper could help me complete the mission. Now, I flipped
important enough to view in ink, these papers were well worth their
weight in gold.
which they felt it blessed to meet. They knew I thought the military
weather beat, but they had accepted this, saying no more, well,
tree of life lower than I. They spoke to me and as they did I knew I
had become their wayward, yet ultimately loyal and gallant son,
was at least honest about the need for their petty favours to my
9
ego. Thus, I could ignore the worst of it. Their fetid romanticism
in mischief out in the bush. The Generals knew how I was taken
with it, being way out in it, alone, complexed. They knew they could
exemplory.
I had not earned their esteem through sheer luck; nor had I found it
passively wait my time - which might have come later rather than
sooner, or not at all - or to boldly forge it, with both eyes focussed
on the end and nothing else. I had chosen the latter course, seeking
most terrible sins of deed and word and though my heart had
myself. But I had been patient, and now I no longer had superiors to
count below the Generals and now nearly all I could call a
1
There had been an equal, however. An old bastard whose neck had
we had been similar, but I had felt no empathy for or with this man,
I pushed my legs out and sat back in the seat. The greens were still
The most pressing disaster: it had been a day now since the news of
the Foreign Minister's death had penetrated through every head and
returning from the East when his plane had broken and spilt itself
out over the land, rushing and gurgling like nitrous filing down a
throat. Nothing definite was yet known about the crash, though
rumour had sprung to life like a kite thrown to a changing wind. The
facts of the crash were still rather limited, and the Generals had
public knowledge. They had been chased all over by the journalists,
and the story had revealed itself swiftly in the newsprints, certainly
well before I’d been offered the Generals' version. Mouth water of
1
the gays still pools where the journalists had been.
the set and flipped through them again until I came to the map.
- Get on that train to McKellar’s Junction, refute you. Our man will
forty kilometres to the bush highway, the end of our journey and the
I would find the hike easy. I had my balance over rock, hill, bush,
able to orientate myself at any time of day, a foot down onto any
1
in that time depending on the terrain. I’d already had two or three
picking daisies, rigging booby traps, cursing the land through the
filter of drink.
For this mission, I figured eight hours a day the optimum, which for
only a week at the guess wasn’t pushing too hard at all. However, I
planned for seven hours in the day so as to allow for the officer. He
might turn out fatuous and I’d need a kiloton of salt on his tummy to
I realised I had been staring again. And why not! I thought. Who
Hiking long over the earth gave me my time, but confined to a seat,
McKellar’s Junction was marked in bold type on the map. The map
of course held only a hint at the skin and bones of the town, but I’d
little of it. It was a service town for the many farms in the area. Its
station was the last on the line, the line itself the only way in or out
1
for goods and produce. I remembered the main street of the town,
collective pride. It ran parallel to the station and was fenced with a
The population of McKellar’s Junction was, from what I had heard, for
the most part still quite friendly and open to travellers. Outside of
conversation with a local teacher with whom I had been sharing the
train journey.
- I’ve lived and taught in McKellar’s Junction for ten odd years now.
- How so?
is just the one way in or out – this train - and that once a week. Now
feels that that isolation is soon going to be total. The enemy has
1
family out by the Water Shack have always been insane for one
reason or another. But now it seems like every polite man in town is
and killed by his own neighbour last month because he was out late
in the dark. God knows what he was doing out there then. Peter
apparently was roused by one of his cows and he came out to see a
silhouette at his fence. It was the far paddock, but he still cracked
would break out in the next wet of our lips. The Foreign Minister had
had broken and cracked open, many weren’t sure that that didn’t
mark the beginning of war, that the country wasn’t even already at
war. The Foreign Minister had wanted peace more than other, and
most had felt sure he was the only one who would try for it. Not
Generals. As much as I believed she too hoped for a peace, still she
or give the whole guest list away. I could only shake my head,
In any case, people were starting to give more and more of their day
1
enemy, these stresses were doubled in the least.
And it will come swiftly over the mountains, past the Water Shack,
into the farmhouses and finally onto the platform that we will soon
step down onto. We arrive not at the answer of what it might bring,
but once it’s here, there will be no rational method for its
eradication.
The Teacher had been really only considering her own little life. But
hoping and waiting that someone else will do with the fighting. And
reward was a stupidity the enemy didn’t possess. A nasty war deep
out in the bush would be most likely, though perhaps the mountains
dangerous.
A beef cow? Only with a gun to my head would I use language like
that. Wouldn’t the teacher have felt it more natural to have said
‘cattle?’
1
I smashed the arm of my chair, fist lightly clenched, the rebounding
hand opening.
A repeater. If I put all those hen clucking papers out in the rain - the
map, the weather report, the enemy activity report, the briefing, the
satellite photos - maybe when the ink ran out, it would run away
towards the repeater, so that I would only have to follow the black,
congealing trail...
the Rusty Range, down in the Deepness Valley. That last mission I
taking over both rear passenger seats, I had chatted on and off with
the pilot. He had said he enjoyed his job, though he had added his
boss could be a little cheap. He had been a big man, and having
could ever get out. Maybe he would have to wait for a crash, when
he could then be prized out, cracked out as a delicacy all juicy and
runny.
I had stayed the night in McIntosh, getting a room at the old Central
had wanted to talk to the locals to get whatever I could from them
about the land ahead. Nobody, though, had been out as far as I was
going in a long time. Country folk are forever claiming their worth
on the land – the truth is they rarely venture outside the secure
gates of their properties. The only news of any value had been the
1
story of a family feud running between two of the outlying farms.
The two families were taking pot shots at each other over a son’s
those farms.
The next day I had set out, and after ten days of zigzagging through
the bush, surveying the land as I went for places where troops could
volcano. Rock structures and large boulders had littered the floor of
Climbing down the back of the range, down into the valley, I had
The Antarctic Beeches had loomed like gods looking down on their
other words to describe the power that those trees had possessed. I
realised I had had it near the exit to a deep conifer gully. The fog
had lifted, and the conifers were awake, drying themselves. I had
gone to them, but before I could reach them, in a turn of events that
1
out of the gully, I had found fresh footprints...
The train went on. I vanished away in stare. Again, and not for the
last time.
1
Beginnings (1)
stands with a manilla folder in her hands, crisp and stiff in her
military dress, her hair back in a bob and pushed tight into the dress
- Come and never the hour, be you slow, your haste left bleeding
from heart, bed covers sprayed in it, left in bed. Late you never
know, standing room and hare-brained, ticket I give you, come and
- Disclaimer?
- Medication? Solace finds you, door sweeper, let solder form, melt
- Present, present, you do. I’ve never been more further from your
heart.
- Ticket and walk, stand, baulk, grip the rail, strength yourself into
- Very well. Huff. Your kind lords it over me. I’m dripping…
2
I threw my pack onto the train and then turned and stood in the well
of the door, gripping the cold steel handrail for support. And as I
leered out at her, I reached down deep into my trouser pocket with
gave her a wink and then dabbed the homemade poppy solution
throwing the empty Syrette under the wheels of the train. The train
servant of the serpents, and she was still standing there on the
foam beginning in the corners of the mouth, foaming all the way off
2
End of the Line
just met the Generals, offal abiding his fatigues. He had given me a
the door I had just closed. I had seen the bastard only recently too,
and here he was again, looking like he’d only just come in from the
bush. Oxprey was dead now. No more creaking that arthritic neck
An odd half an hour had passed when any quality began again in my
There were two main roads leading out of town. Both truncated
often as they went out to touch the farms that they serviced. The
left road drove out at a rough right-angle from the main street of
on the map of a kind of warped fan. The right road swung out at
the Water Shack and beyond. It was perhaps to this right road to
which I would turn, though I regretted not having asked the Teacher
about routes when I had had the chance. Before I could reprimand
2
myself any further, the conductor had asked his way past my berth,
asking that tickets be ready and baggage not forgotten. I folded the
map, putting it and the other papers back into the front pocket of
my pack.
The train began to brake. The rushing outside the window slowed to
the perceptible, seats were vacated, baggage gathered and the door
wells busied with the alighting. The final brake threw us all a little
off balance. We collected, the doors opened and I saw the Teacher
2
Platform
form, the key object of which is the passage out of the station
through the small gate that opens out onto the town. The
turn. I had calmed my way off the train, and now found myself well
back in the line. Ahead of me were all the usual dishrags: farmers
long ago escaped for the city; the feral children of the farms
Towards the head of the line, some Empress was shouting at his
equally bizarre friend about the latest model of steely hell. Just
Only the one track ran into the station; on either side of the track a
platforms, the left for arrivals and the right for departures,
roofed space. This space, quite thorough and lined with benches,
was, as were the platforms that ran to it, set with the greens of
2
potted plants - ferns and palms mostly. The station building itself
was built onto the arriving platform, the structure extending out to
where tickets could be bought from outside the station gate. The
gate itself was a small white-picket fence, the same kind of fence
you can see many times over in a country town. It was here that
burden of ticket.
After passing through the gate, the new arrivals would be covered
for four metres or so by the same roof that sheltered the chlorophyll
decorating inside the station. Here each arrival had gone their way
- off to the left on their own, straight out into waiting family or
war had been haunting them as they had gone off to their days, or
whether they still just had the daily to tend. Perhaps the more
bullets?
out on the Water Shack road; they will come from the mountains.
wanted to smack his head back into the ground for that.
2
As the other passengers and their lots disappeared, I noticed a man
in military uniform alone under a tree. This could have only been
the officer I’d been promised. He was young; his face, though by no
means a shame on anyone’s part, was a little small and it didn’t well
off-set his deeply short hair. And tall - he must have been around a
hundred and ninety centimetres in height - though for his height, his
body didn’t look like it carried the weight it should. The Officer had
ironbark. The shade ate him up, though it was a gentle digestion,
the gum hanging down its many hands in the midday breeze,
slight blue tinge under his eyes from what I assumed was a lack of
youth, and his eyes shone with what could have been anticipation.
He had obviously already been briefed and this probably was his
manner and was met in kind. For early morning it was already quite
hot and the Officer quickly agreed that we could talk in the air-
conditioning of the car on the way to his office. The car, an official
my pack into its cavenous boot, jumping then into the oasis. The
2
Officer lithed into the driver’s seat, giving me a ‘let’s go, Sir’. With
engine waiting up to us. He let the clutch out so that the engine
picked up first gear and we pulled off the kerb. We had to drive a
- Sir, I couldn’t help but notice your shoulder patch. That’s the
uniform. The Officer gave a single nod now towards the patch, to
make the point that it was open for anybody to see and that he
where I myself could see the patch. ‘It is old,’ I thought. The patch
blue and black stripe - the former superior to the latter - running
behind the figure. How long had it been since I had first won that
- Sir?
air, one filtered through warm, soft sunlight. He had the immediate
2
also be disposed to cling too tightly if allowed. And he enjoyed talk:
- I was briefed on the mission last night, Sir. They talked to me for
an hour, Sir!
- Nothing especially, Sir. Just that one has to be set up out in the
bush somewhere.
- It’s not a transmitter. It’s a repeater. It’s already there and has
- Sir?
previous experiences he’d had, I saw then that they very definitely
then how much rum I would be able to jam down into his pack.
- Whether we’re reactivating an old one or setting a new one up, it’s
still a bit strange. I mean, why do they need a repeater out there,
Sir?
2
at the end of this if you’re expecting anything. We’re just
repairmen, is all.
- Why didn’t they give me the full story when they briefed me, Sir?
- Listen, why have you on this mission at all? Secrets are the
Generals’ way. It’s what they know. I don’t know why they
bothered. They know I’m far too portly of mind to share interest in
their secrets. It’s me versus them, jelly haughty. I’ll kill them when
the time comes. You didn’t hear that from me, though!
We had found our U-turn and were heading back towards the main
road. The station was still now. All the passengers were gone. I
last tasks that precluded heading into the station office to get drunk
The Officer indicated out onto the main road and we began passing
office.
the slow gait of the few pedestrians on the footpaths reflected that.
The main road was an old, grey-stained bitumen track marked for
opposing lanes and frayed at the edges; like most country roads, it
ran at its edges into dirt before it had a chance to hit kerb. Tall
2
recently mown grass held around their strong feet. A road sign went
our conversation:
- You talking again, are you? Very well. How so, then?
- Yes, Lieutenant. They always have and they always will. But they
won’t hinder my, our, work. They never do, even though some
might look at you as though they will hunt you down that very night
while you sleep fatly in their Central Hotel. You’ve made a lot of
friends here?
Sir. These giant slabs of rocks have been shaped into water slides.
3
After rains you’ll find every boy and girl around here down there
them forever, so that they may never run into years that have been
hunting for his own amusement, unrepentant that his actions had
consequences for all. That kind of person – any end for the glory
concern again, but there were others, and the Generals were quite
We passed a car parked on the kerb, very close, almost too close. I
was no concern - there were too few around at this time - but
running into the gutter and puncturing a tyre on the kerb was a
clear in my mind.
to have at least a vague plan for the first stage of the hike in mind.
3
To do this, I would need all the talk that the Officer could offer me
nonsense when the car came up to the last building on the main
beyond:
- I haven’t been back home for a while, Sir. Maybe a year. Leave’s
hard to get out here. Maybe they reckon everyday out here is a kind
- War?
- You’re asking me? I don’t know what to tell you, arachnids are
grey.
- If they are, then they wouldn’t be able to tell you exactly what
they’re supporting.
A flip of the indicator showed that this last building was the office.
The Officer kept a continuous speed as he dived the car from the
road into the shallow driveway. He braked at the very last. There
- Well, here we are, Sir. So, you don’t think the Prime Minister really
3
I opened the door and escaped the Officer and his conversation for
down over the verandas, running out over the front steps. The
garden was grassed, mown, furnished with palms whose reach was
its kind, the garden continued right up to spread over the veranda.
over the veranda and right into large French doors. The doors were
inspired. They gave the air and light of beguilement to the room
Ahead of me, the Officer unlocked and opened the French doors,
was all wood; I even thought that I could smell a little Huon in the
- Sir, would you like to freshen up a bit and relax a bit after your
trip?
tomorrow morning and we’ve got a bit to try on for size before then.
3
chair. We’ve got a lot to discuss.
The Officer went away to the fridge in the corner of the room and
- Tree clippings! That’s not going to do for me! I’ll have that.
The Officer prepared the drink and brought it over to me. I had
already pulled the map from my pack, laying it across the table in
wait of him. With a gentle sweep, I flattened out the crinkles and
then ran my finger over the ink, searching. It all meant something.
I turned to him:
you can see, we’re heading north for most of the way, up until we
get there?
- Yes.
- Well, there are two roads that will get us there, this one… and this
one, Sir. Both roads run to the Water Shack, Sir, but past the Water
- Ok, so here’s the Water Shack. From here there’s just the one
way?
- Brightness. How about these two roads going to the Water Shack?
- The left road, the H2, you can drive it as far as the Water Shack,
3
Sir, but you’ll need a 4WD and about four hours. The right road is
usually a lot quicker but it’s now only drivable as far as the bridge,
- Yes, Sir.
lay on the grass where the Officer had been maintaining the garden.
These little country offices were quite common and had been for
some time, though with the tension there was now, I imagined they
anything to report that would find its way on to the Generals’ desks.
spent most of his time engaging with the locals, running around on
some farmers just for kicks, that kind of slow summer amusement.
3
Beginnings (2)
yellow in the face from heat on an alcohol problem; this man has
men do not converse; rather Abrahim looks out over the tetanus
disaster that forms the window well of the passenger’s door into the
dry bush skipping past. Constant jolts from the passage of the track
3
The Holes
officer in the then nascent Bushranger unit had been to the Holes, a
barren outpost a two week hike from its nearest service point. I had
cities. I had stayed the night alone in the shack, beginning the hike
to the Holes the following day, having been joined in the early
In the end we had made it in good shape, a little tired and hungry
least a hot meal and a bed for the night. Rather, he hadn’t even
looked at us.
- Yes, Sir.
your orders.
3
- Yes, Sir.
- Go!
and a warm liquid person. His fatigues had been rolled back to the
elbow, and his forearms, though thin, were chiselled hard with the
- Lieutenants Abrahim and Marky? Bad news I’m afraid, guys. The
boss wanted you out at the OP as soon as you came in. I’ve got
some stuff I want you to take with you, as well. Not too much,
though.
supply for the OP for another week. We had struggled with the
weight, rolling and pitching at the will of the packs on our backs.
small trench dug into a bush enshrouded hill. Two men had been
- Didn’t expect you guys for a few days yet. Nevermind, that’s
- No. Nothing.
3
- Fucking Command. Never tell anyone shit. Just keep an eye out
Don’t radio back to camp unless you actually see anything. The
boss is pretty strict about that. The radio’s down in the hole.
And without further word they had gone. We had had no idea how
long we were going to be there and a week had past before we were
detailed to hike the two weeks back to the service point with him.
day, sniffling quietly in the nights, back turned towards me. He had
alright with the fact he didn’t have the same aptitude for things as
his father. Again I had spent the night alone in the shack, the next
3
Reasons for Choosing the H2
There were sounds on the front steps and the veranda. The Officer
- I’m glad we are using the H2, Sir. It’ll keep us away from Old Russ.
- Old Russ?
That was the second time I had heard mention of that name. I
had said something about Old Russ, though I couldn’t recall exactly
though, that at the time the name had sounded like it went with the
country town.
- Yes, Sir. Best to avoid Old Russ. His family, they’re all strange.
Their voices to hear are like nothing calling to nothing. Their land is
beyond ripe and their crops are weeds. Their farmhouse you walk
up on soon after the bridge on the Water Shack road. There are
many wild groves brooding aside the approach to the house and in
them I’ve imagined ghosts shadowing about. In all the time I’ve
been stationed in McKellar’s Junction, I’ve been out that way plenty
and every time I’ve felt something heavy in the air. They’re just a
always one of them out walking the East roads with a gun. Only a
matter of time really before someone gets shot. I also heard they
4
do nasty things to cats and dogs they come across. They have been
there for generations, taking whatever they can off their land to
though no one’s really sure about that. When you’re near their land
though, they all know you’re there, and you get a strong feeling
The room had darkened. Did the Officer possess the power to call
clouds over the sun when he wished to give effect to a story? No, of
course not and neither did I take his story too seriously. War was
close and the stress was bending minds enough that Old Russ’s
family might have just been the infected apple, placed in the barrel
with its rot by the enemy to eat away from within. There was
truth, well...War was burning the head of the Prime Minister; it was
The cloud shifted and the strong, warm beams removed back into
the room.
We talked on some more about the mission, our route out and things
in general, and a half hour later the Officer was gone into town on
4
Nurse (1)
I was waiting in a cramped room with fading and peeling rose pink
acknowledge her.
- Oh, hello.
- Do you mind me asking who you are then? It’s just I didn’t expect
- Captain Abrahim.
little clinic?
- Yes?
- I’m out here collecting data. I’m with the infectious diseases unit.
4
- Sounds boring.
- You don’t know the half of it. I’ve been trying to get a transfer for
months now.
around the table, away from the door, choosing a chair diagonally
across from me. She gently pulled the chair out from under the
I noticed your office here has a little weather station out the back
keys to the records room. She won’t be back for a while I expect,
though.
- Thank you.
4
Nurse (2)
− Excuse me?
- So what do you want to do about it? I’m not about to let you kick
- Oh God.
The Nurse went away then and let me do my work. I kicked the
door off its hinges and then went straight to what I was looking for –
the medicine cabinet. Oh yes, I’ll have one of those, and one of
4
Making Ready
At ten O’clock that evening I had been ready to go. And so I had
gone for my little walk along the main street to think over my plans,
which with the help of the Officer I had been able to decide at least
seven the next day. It would already be hot at seven. I liked the
heat. My favourite images came alive when the sun was welding
about eleven when the temperature would peak. From this point on
until about three it would plateau. This long period of constant heat
would provide the biggest challenge for the Officer, though I would
up high again over the crests, coming down on the next farm. With
the H2 saving us a day and a half already, I now put five days
4
hurry, I still desired to hike with all succinctness, wasting as little
disposition.
mountains. We couldn’t drive this, but the land was kind and I knew
actuality neither too high nor too extensive to hold us for longer
were rare in the extreme, usually found only in small, isolated areas
marked these springs boldly, and their colour ran a fair space of the
though this range was a lot less than the first. From the northern
slopes of this range, away went the bush again. This was scrub
also relatively flat bush, and though the path would run no further
than a day into it, I knew it would be easy enough to find our way
4
That then was our journey, at least as far as I imagined it. It swept
kept gliding down the smooth running edges of tangents, and often
pressure. They all seem to do that, like a nervous tic. I’ve swum
tailings from a war-plant of heavy metals and still I live with the fear
the particles, but tests reveal all, platelets heavy with positive ions,
It went on like this for an hour, until every possible tangent had
was called the Central Hotel. And there it was, the ‘McKellar’s
Junction Grand.' The first story, the public bar, had long glass
windows and a wide mouth that opened directly onto the street,
while the second story, the hotel proper, was rounded off by a broad
veranda filled with potted palms and other small decorative plants.
There was a small crowd buzzing around outside the pub on the first
floor. They were all dressed as if they had come straight from the
4
day, and they probably indeed had. Several people seemed to be
both inside and outside of the pub at the once. I went over. Maybe
stool against the counter. The room was quite full, both with people
and with smoke. The room itself was large, standing room mostly
with a few tables set right at the back against the far wall. Over the
heads of the militant, I could just make out the Gentlemen and
Ladies signs demarking the toilets on that side of the room adjacent
the pub counter. I recognized a few faces from the station that
morning, but not many. There must have been at least thirty dirty,
perhaps about fifty. His cheeks were both ruddy and yellowed at the
same time from years of exposure to alcohol and tobacco. His smile
- What'll it be?
expected. I took a sip, set the glass back down on the faded mat
that ran the length of the counter and took a look around at my
4
women, though they didn’t at all look out of place, the glasses piling
ruggedness. Except for two men seated right at the very back of
the room, barely able to be seen, hemmed as they were into one of
two table booths. These two men were both far too neat in
appearance to have been straight off the day’s work, and the way
they sat their large solid silver watches tight on their wrists
yard in their lives. I watched them for a few moments; the organo-
shoulder. I turned around, and there was a farmer, too close for
empathy.
the way I wished I only could. I sat down to party with him and his
4
whatever, missing to understand them by a few good inches of neck
I walked back towards the office. Before long I came on the last
swimming in the low opaque light flowing out of the mooned sky. I
crossed the last cracks of the footpath and brought my path left to
meet the French doors from where I had first started out into the
night.
- Sir, where have you been? Somebody’s been on the radio for you
- Who?
I followed him into the radio room and sat down to make the return
The Generals. What did they have for me now? The line crackled
for a few seconds before that familiar old honey voice came dripping
out.
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- Good. Just make sure there is no delay.
I shrugged my shoulders, got up, and went to the toilet. The Officer
The last thing I did that night was listen to the radio. It was a quiet
wild passion for the classics with long since dumb ears. I listened
the Valkyries’.
And in great fashion did the Viking warriors ride down on their
5
The Road Away
It had been about six thirty when the Officer had woken me. He was
heavy and sleep was still quite close, but I managed to strengthen
The sun smashed its way in through the French doors that walled
already, and its strong fingers would have soon shaken me awake
had the Officer not. I stretched my fingers for the sleep in my eyes,
and found a store of it. By placing one fingertip under and another
over the lashes, I was able to pull most of the junk off.
though this feeling lessened the longer I was awake. Finally, I had
to get up. I put my right hand down under my side and levered
The Nurse too was already awake. Through a window I saw her at
the letterbox outside her little clinic. She was retrieving the morning
paper. The letterbox snapped to and almost had her hand. It was a
5
rusty old iron trap. She would have serums for such an injury inside
efforts with the knife were doing more for the cockroaches and mice
I made myself a good cup of chai, using leaf I had found in the
I sat down at the small pine table and set my cup down amongst the
condiments. Salt from the ocean; pepper and basil from the dry
regions; burnet from the mountains; and turmeric for the blood.
large myrtle I could just see the old timber of the fence that
separated the Nurse’s clinic from the backyard on the far side.
Grasses ran about the feet of the myrtle and inside the grasses
would be ants, skinks, that sort of thing. In the yard on the other
side of the fence, natives sprang forth. A table and chairs formed a
place for the easy indulgence of Sunday breakfasts and the garden
had been well composted with cane mulch. The garden looked like
it might produce its own weather, such was the abundance of green.
5
But before I could enjoy anymore, the Officer came back. He
charged into the room, all uniform ready for blood and sweat and
boots polished and tied up tight like he had strapped himself in for a
ready to leave, knowing that I wouldn’t be, knowing that he’d have
- Calm down. My stuff’s all ready. Just need a quick cuppa and I’ll
be set.
- For fuck’s sake, relax. I’ll eat on the way. I just need a cuppa to
get started. Why don’t you go and get me that gun you told me
I very rarely carried an assault rifle with me, having never felt any
burden and indeed a danger – the sight of a man walking onto his
farmer. But the Officer couldn’t believe I hadn’t brought one with
as he, and he had looked a little hurt. So, for the sake of keeping
the peace, I had asked for one - though only as I had been closing
my bedroom door on him the night before. Even at that late hour,
he had seemed more than happy to go and find something for me.
5
Besides, it would be fun to fire off at pigs and cassowaries.
- I already got it, Sir. But I could only find forty odd rounds for it.
- That’ll do.
- I’ll just clean up this mess here, and then let’s go, Sir.
- Clean up the mess? Why? Leave it. Just go and get your pack
I did feel like getting a move on. It was nearing seven and I guess I
- The H2’s probably still a bit boggy in places from the rain last
Within five minutes the Officer had us on the road that would take
us to the H2 and the Water Shack, and eventually beyond into bush
and the repeater and finally, the unseen end of the mission. Soon
5
A Path through Farms
The 4WD winds along the white track of the H2, dodging precisely
the robust farms that keep jumping out at it. The Officer seems
relatively comfortable with the twists and turns of the road beneath
him. Abrahim is leaning back into his seat, feet crossed and up on
the faded dashboard. He is playing with the clip of the assault rifle.
About an hour into our drive the little sidetracks that ran off from
long since turned to dirt, and, though the surface was a little soft
and occasionally rutted where the soil was weak and had been
us, kept from running out over us by a rusty old barbed wire fence.
this – shining silver ripples on the roofs, a painful glare off a brand
well maintenance.
5
the other side. Great gums stood sometimes, preferring the solitude
clusters. The farmers respected the big gums and would not now
cut them. They were all old and eminent entities, many of whom
had been already established before the first clearing of the land for
little and let them drink from their roots in peace. Most of the
5
Beginnings (3)
Flashback.
Noises down below them, deep off through thick rainforest. A clear,
crystal clear stream flowing over a liquid bed of sand, might that it
below them, the fetid joking of a day’s killing, hearts sliced open left
Captain, ‘I will go and see if they are ours.’ He steals his way along
the thin bank of the stream, sometimes putting a foot into it where
cascade really, that takes the stream down to the voices, drops the
water down into a steep, narrow gully. He eases down the rocks of
pool bordered on its sides by wide, flat banks thick with palms. The
pool is quite deep, and translucent, with only the faintest blue-green
toward the voices. He alights behind one last palm, a short palm
with yellowy fingers, heavy and taught without wind on them. There
were five voices to the talk, and our man marked them all. From
behind rock and palm he stole back in life retribution for what had
been done. And as quietly and quickly as he had come, he left that
place, let the roots and the waters get back to the task of renewing
the earth.
Perhaps the first thing that you noticed about Oxprey was his large
5
hands. They sat on the end of his piston-like forearms like
magnificent golden claws, and you knew if they were ever bunched
had seen him work the fingers of those giant hands over the fine
details of a bolt-action rifle and knew the speed and agility with
are. Middle aged, yet full, thick, jet black hair. And eyes, dark yet
light, true drowning pools. They had had enormous gravity. Oxprey
years straight. When I had run the course as part of basic training
many years later, I had not even come close to making the same
Along with the fine body had gone the fine mind. He had graduated
anger though, and you either simply listened to him, nodding at the
appropriate times or, you risked his claws tearing away your face.
His rants, though, had been, without exception, well informed and
5
he had made cogent argument. But within his talk, he had missed
certain soft points, things I felt a man with his logic should have
been capable of working with. This had made me feel, yes, I was
6
Nurse (3)
- No, not unless you count the three people who died from a strain
of the flu within the two months after the comet came. Have you
- What?
6
A Summit
a stare out of the window. The Officer was keeping a steady drive,
About three hours into the drive we had begun to climb the first of
the bigger hills. The hill we were now ascending rose quite slowly to
hemisphere still separated by a day and a half’s walk from its bigger
fields ran its slopes; in the few places where this polite vegetation
I looked up towards the summit from our approach. The steep relief
- Any place we can stop up the top of this hill? I want to have a
- Yes, Sir. There’s a little park up there. It’s not much and you
won’t get a view to the west, but you should be able to see pretty
- Yes, Sir.
The road here was running like bitumen and the 4WD was finding
6
great traction. The bigger ruts also disappeared in the final two
As we began the last of the ascent, the pastures on the left side of
the road passed into bush, though the sunflowers on the right held
started to get the first of the good views. Looking back I could
I could also pick out some of the lone gums we had passed by, still
had run its course and had long since swept to something new.
picnic table had been set. Lush grass filled the clearing surrounding
the table, insulating it from the bush. A lone water tap had been
fixed near the road, right at the edge of the grass. Beside the tap
was a small parking space into which the Officer now steered the
4WD.
the clearing that I had been promised. I got out of the 4WD and
I came to the edge of the clearing and was immediately hit with the
6
view. The view from the north to the south took in about a hundred
and ninety degrees of the compass. The land below swayed light
headedly in the mid morning heat and in the haze it was hard to see
To the north the mountains stood. They were quite close now, and I
hoped that if we could start our hike sometime soon after lunch, we
could get to their feet around eight tonight. They looked tall and
strong from this distance and they seemed to brood like an old
master who has written it all but now waits, pausing before bringing
his pen down for the next word. I felt their mystery and I felt a cry
in me for a chance to read that next word. Also to the north, looked
Shack, its corrugated iron rusting so that what would once have
To the south were all the lands behind us. McKellar’s Junction was
now too far away to be seen, though it was a little far to the south-
The smoke was right on the horizon, far enough away that no flames
could be seen. It was thick, billowing up a way into the sky before
6
- Yes, Sir. That’s his house, and that smoke is definitely on his
property.
- You don’t have any idea what it might be, do you? You don’t do
- No. Not now, Sir. Not in the summer. I’ve got no idea what it is.
The smoke was gnarled and lifting in thick curls - enough to suggest
something not quite right, as though the barren fields and poison
algae lakes of Old Russ’s farm had raised up against the old farmer
himself. I knew nothing of Old Russ or his land of course. It was just
simply a feeling.
- Better get on that radio. Make sure the cops know what’s going
on.
- Yes, Sir.
again to look out at the coming times - the Water Shack and the
The mountains were spilling a magic on me. They were all at once
6
I had felt then as I had first looked on the neighbouring hills, feeling
for the first time that urge, that desire to adventure, so far away
Once we had climbed the mountains though and come back down
off them, they could no longer retain any sense of mystery. They
would be conquered. The largest mysteries lay still far off beyond
these mountains.
6
The Water Shack
Our 4WD was back on the H2, making slow but steady progress
through the lands below the Water Shack. The Water Shack itself
was still standing away in the distance, still largely out of view.
The farms finally dwindled to a few. The cattle turned brown, kept
now for their meat rather than their milk. The land was becoming
increasingly hilly, though for now the hills remained rolling, bounded
jump up more and more as the farms slowly decayed back to their
origins.
- I’m not sure, Sir. As far as I know the path has been there
forever…
I could see how he was right. The path had most likely evolved
even as the town had, coming into being as the more adventurous
- Who?
- He was some big figure back in the early days of the Junction. I
don’t know much about him really, Sir. He went a bit crazy in the
end apparently.
- I hate pioneers.
6
The sun rebounded hard and strong off the quarry stones that
formed the road. Most of the stones had at least one flat surface
and where the angle was correct, the sun was flown back up at us.
The windscreen did little for the Officer’s driving; it wasn’t tinted,
We had had our first good view of the Water Shack about two
flittered through the tight eucalypt forest. The H2 was now running
an old creek bed, the banks in some places over a meter high – a
The road had been for the last five kilometres an easy drive. The
been functional for ten years or so. What had once been a visible
The Water Shack had had a practical value to equal its symbolic
But that was then. Changing weather patterns, with a lean towards
6
Water Shack obsolete. It had run at half capacity, and then quarter
capacity for a time before it was finally shut down; the last of the
water to flow through its pipes had long ago soaked down into the
slightly deteriorated state, paved with the stones as they were, and
Reference to the map showed that the Water Shack was set on the
highest hill in the area, two hundred and seventy six meters in a
small range of three or four two hundred metre plus summits and a
gentle rolling hills, watery gravy. The Water Shack would afford a
good view over all this, and maybe even a glance of the path as it
The H2 road curled up from behind the hill and met the Water Shack
road, which ran a straighter, flatter line out from McKellar’s Junction,
just at the front gate to the outer fence of the Water Shack. The
Water Shack road was primary to the H2, and when the bridge was
Junction instead of the four and a half it had taken us on the H2.
climb soon becoming steep enough for the Officer to keep the 4WD
the higher end of the log. Finally, as the gums quietened down to
6
nothing and grasses sprang up, we came to the last curl of the H2,
majesty, but now, in the round, I found the Water Shack best
last for too much longer. Despite its faded state, it remained yet
construction had cost its investors. The Officer had told me that the
Water Shack had paid for itself with record sales of livestock and
produce within only its first few years of operation. Its appearance
About twenty metres down from the Water Shack there was a large
old jacaranda. It was past its bloom, and its limbs and fingers were
thick with bright green foliage. At this time of day its shade was
7
precious; its cover large enough to have rested the many picnickers
grass to spread a rug over then. The grass now was long and wild,
hiding many biting, stinging creatures. The Officer drove the 4WD
- Finally.
- Jesus, how about some lunch first. Want to water the adenoids,
surrounds, this still felt a nice place to stay a moment and lunch. I
was hungry, and the path was not yet calling that urgently.
The Officer had already jumped down from the 4WD and was busy
- Looks like you’re pretty hungry there too, boy. Don’t go giving
- Yes, Sir.
to sit on, and we began opening our packs to get at what might be
wished to see it done have had more than enough time to organise
7
support for their interests. That damn Prime Minister was confused
was what was needed. Why not let those silly bastards separate?
The government could not claim any genuine influence over their
hands been bitten enough? You know? We beat them and ram their
lands full of our own people – you really think they will suffer that for
long? Another war will break out, fuelled by even stronger energies,
promising even stronger implications. Kill them all, it’s the only way.
And what of this repeater? I didn’t really believe the Generals could
have had any real concern for our mission. They wouldn’t have
lettering. The Officer gleamed like a child who has found a vein of
pyrite; secret mission! It was right that we were the major players
in some grand conspiracy. Too much didn’t make sense. But where
again all possible events, the causes and effects. In this way they
built up their plans. I could see how it had become their way of
challenge for that power. So, they created challenges, tests. They
7
manufactured missions that wound like old rivers, missions that
they set fell in the pattern they had expected. Our mission would fit
question.
What these men had no handle on was the very real notion that, in
conjuring up these tests for their powers, they were rejecting out of
hand the responsibility they had to act rationally. They took their
power too seriously, too literary, and this weakness gave them the
not necessitate its exercise. I wished the Officer could have seen
setting up the rolls of thunder so that they would come down right
‘And I’ll just add this,’ a sudden burning taking my face. ‘If this all
stood, not knowing where my sudden rage had come from, then
the knife I always carried at my belt out from its sheath and stuck it
deep into the trunk of the jacaranda. The Officer was looking at me,
mouth ajar. I pulled the knife back out of the tree and cursed
myself for the wound I had inflicted unnecessarily. Soft green meat
opened to the air. Look what they made me do, curse them. I'll rip
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their throats out, strip their veins from the forehead down, excise
their whole organism, turning the meat loose for the pigs and dogs.
I sat back down, talking a little with the Officer. I checked the time.
It surprised me.
had the chance, asthma pulling DNA off my lungs. I walked over the
grass and dirt that ran the way to the outer fence. This fence,
perhaps half and again head height, was an old cyclone. Wrought
fleshy tissue.
I went in through the one gate in the fence, which actually opened
quite easily, coming quickly to the inner fence. This was in much
the same state as the outer; having been erected together, they
The inner fence also had only the one gate, though for some reason
this gate was a little further around to the side than the one I’d just
simply slipped through a hole in the fence where one of the sheets
of wire had come away from a post. From the inner fence it was
7
about twenty metres again to the Water Shack itself. Here, grass
a poisonous ring around the structure – and the stains of old work
I looked back over to the Officer. He was still under the tree,
I looked around the Water Shack for a way-in. There was an opening
for a look. It was dark and dusty inside. A few beams had crashed
down from the roof and where these had been a little sunlight now
shone in bright.
how far they still ran, though I shuddered at the thought of what
On the far side of the tank, there was a hatch set into the floor. I
- There’s a series of pipes deep under the Water Shack, Sir. They
run for kilometres out from the Shack, each as high as a man. They
pumping costs. Never been down there myself, but I’ve heard
If I ever came back this way, I thought I might like to take a look,
7
dump a body down there or something.
And that was all there was to see. I turned from the Water Shack
and headed back to the tree. The Officer was now fiddling around in
the 4WD.
I quickly came back over to him and five minutes later we were
standing at the head of the path. The path - its dirt carried its way
through the caress of the grass out over the northern slope of the
hill. There it fell out of view as the slope began taking it down, over
- About two hundred metres further on, just out of sight really, we’ll
hit the bush, Sir. There’s about two K’s of bush, then we’ll come out
on the Badrick’s farm. It’s the last farm out from McKellar’s
Junction. They’ve got cattle. Anyway, from what I’ve heard it’s
about five or so kilometres across the farm and then we’ll hit bush
again, Sir. From there we’ll start climbing up into the hills.
- You ready?
otherwise, for I well knew exactly how he felt, now that we were
standing at the head of the path, a path which for him would bring
I looked away down the path. It slipped away so tidily through the
scythe to the blades of the growth in their initial spring so that they,
7
thus trained, would never grow to cover the course. The soil that
formed the path was black and compacted, suggesting recent heavy
and around the stones large red ants moved in a procession towards
a found food. The recent rains would have tortured them well, but
those that had survived would be now enjoying the heat in their
blood again.
And so we began. I led off first, the Officer behind me, fallen on an
with me off into the bush. ‘A little alien growth for you, too!’
Around the path there were a few scattered melaleuca trees. These
were older trees; the ones which had survived the original clearing
of the hill when way had had to be made for the Water Shack. They
they finally died, it would be new species that would grow up in the
We began to descend as the path took us off the hill. The trees
younger in the wood, marking the gradual coming of the bush back
onto the hill, until it would finally overcome the work of McKellar’s
Junction and force the Water Shack into its last ruin, in which it
would lay, for eternity, under the awnings of the green abound.
A little further down the back of the hill, the path, as the Officer had
said it would, suddenly ran into quite thick bush. It was a steady
7
continent. The trees, for the most part, reached up to a ceiling quite
high, and at a few points they took argument with each other over
space. This was the familiar mix of old and young wood that told of
remnant forest, bush that had never been put to it by the sharps of
the occasional branch that had fallen from a height. The smell in
itself was both alive and dead – the life afforded by photosynthesis,
the fragrances of growth and the odours of the decay of that which
had broken and fallen, nutrients released directly into the growth
around. The path picked its way carefully enough through the mess
so that it never stepped out of its depth, and it was easy enough to
at least than other kinds of topography. And though it was not yet
the sun. And in winter too it was comfortable, as its thick walls,
which could close in quickly, made it difficult for the cold needle-
off. A little further on and we finally took the last steps off the large
hill of the Water Shack. We were beginning to put the Water Shack
7
We continued on through the bush, coming at us as it ever was.
Though now off the significant height of the hill where we had
lunched with the Water Shack, the path nevertheless took us up and
down as we rose and fell over many small rises. At the crest of the
third gentle ascent, the bush gave way a little into a modest
distorted view of our noon an hour before. However, the angle was
such that we couldn’t make the top of the hill itself where the Water
The Officer took off his pack to re-adjust the straps. I had thought
with the effort so far, but, if he did, he didn’t bother me with it. I
While the Officer fiddled with his pack, I threw a few small stones
from the path down into the bush. It wasn’t a considered action,
7
imagined them washing with fluid energy, a cleaning of filters as
they filled with the wholesome bush air. And then I let the air back
out; as it floated away it took with it the acrid must that had been
I breathed in again. The smell of the bush was as it ever was: the
dry green odour of the gums, the hot sun releasing the oils from
their leaves; the raw, organic smell of the brown earth as we walked
down the bare bank of a gully; the occasional grab of dry air, stale
- I guess after the farm, we get into the real wilds, Sir?
- I was in Thomas last month. The roads are still open, people are
still driving them, going about their business. I went out in the bush
- The war? I hope not. I don’t want to lose what I’ve got now. It’s a
sweet deal, being able to hike around in the bush like this.
quietened face I realised I had said the wrong thing. I should have
said, ‘The war? No way that’ll ever happen. Really.’ But that line
Reassurance was beyond what I could offer him. Cold honesty was
all I had, and at any rate, it was only honesty that could really
8
prepare him for what may be coming.
- You know of course if war does break out, then with your rank
- I think about that a lot, Sir. I understand I signed on for this, but…
I just don’t feel comfortable about it anymore, Sir. I just feel like
The Officer was being open with me. I acknowledged him in a nod.
existence, a level unknown and for which we had not asked. But I
also knew that, given time, things would adjust to where they would
treasure inside.
I didn’t offer any further reply to the Officer and soon the pause
filled out into an ending, the Officer slowly dropping his walk back in
behind me.
8
The Forward Scout
depression where the water table was but bare below us. The bush
land further aiding this process of refrigeration. That was the bush –
you could be hiking through plain open forest one minute, hot and
bright, and then the next, for no more reason than a slight change
images of the impenetrable jungles of the world – but the only thing
that was actually easy about it was the way in which you could
quickly find yourself out of your depth. I had rescued many walkers
who had thought they could venture off the path and go
8
those who had come suddenly on an unexpected change in the land
and been unprepared for it. Neither was I always prepared for what
maps, maps I had myself often helped to populate, but it was more
than sometimes that even one of these such maps had not been
before the tree line gave and the path came out on a slow yet
toiling under the weight of a steady volume. The path turned to the
left just as it met the creek, and from there it ran away again,
keeping a course parallel and tight with the creek. We followed on.
called a crossing at all, for the creek seemed to flow straight out of a
jumble of rocks (we were tracing the creek back upstream), the path
- Sir?
through here.
8
- Here! The path is marked through these rocks. There must be a
way.
- Well, it must be invisible then, Sir, because as far as I can see the
path ends here, and all I see is water coming out of those rocks, Sir.
Maybe the land had changed here recently. These rocks may have
fallen across the path in the rains, disallowing its use. However,
closer inspection of the rocks revealed that this could not have been
the case: the rocks were of water-smoothed granite, and had a fit
with the land that showed they had been fixed in their places for
and nothing of that kind could be seen anywhere around the area, a
sure sign that no recent upheaval had taken place. The path had to
be here somewhere.
I took off my boots and put a first foot into the creek. The water was
over the sand bed, guppies swam around in fright of the invasion.
A little further on the sand bottom gave way to rock, smooth and a
little slippery. I dared my balance over the rock, and though I had a
8
few nervous moments, I managed to keep my feet.
Finally, I came to the granite mess, the place from where the creek
creek, sheltering the rocks that had risen up out of the sandy bed.
climber. It wasn’t that I was being careful about a slip onto cold, wet
rock, rather, here below the low ceiling, this was all the range of
on its left side, a single bar of white paint. And, my eyes straining
into the dark, I saw another white mark a little further up that would
lead me up into the gap itself; and beyond it, just on the edge of
sight, a third marking on the lip of the gap itself. I’d found the path.
- There are markings for the path through these rocks. It looks like
a bit of hard work, but the path does continue up through here.
C’mon.
Above the loud rush of the water he had heard me, and he was now
getting ready to follow me. I turned from him and got on with my
The three markings did indeed take me up through the gap, through
8
finally up through an opening in the head of the tunnel and into
and I was relieved when I finally pulled my way out into the sun
again. The first thing I noticed was the difference in the land.
The bush had largely gone. It had been replaced by a wide, flat
creek with large, gently sloping granite banks. At the edge of the
left bank, wet eucalypt forest waited, far from the water, unable to
sink its roots through the old granite. Just beyond the granite bank
to the right were the barbed-wire fence and pasture of a farm – the
last farm. The white markings had come up out the rocks with me,
continuing over the granite to the right where the path began again
at a gate set in the fence. Looking up the wide creek, which ran
before the creek and granite disappeared again into the patient
bush.
After the Officer had emerged from the gap and we had begun
the realisation that we had forgotten our packs back down below the
path led from the gate straight over a rich pasture splendid with
clover, here and there unstable with the old weight of a grazing
8
something I had read as a child. Daisies, buttercups, daffodils,
marigolds, bluebells, that sought of thing. But here now there were
cobbler’s pegs and spear thistle and slender nutgrass on the fringes.
There was no sign of cattle, though a water trough stood full under a
lone oak a little way off to our right. They will come when the tides
At the end of this first pasture a short rise bounced up, blocking our
immediate way. The path did not hesitate though, and we followed
the needs of their herds as had elsewhere been the case. And
below us, just a short descent, was an old tin shack, bursting from
the inside out with lantana and Johnson grass, so that it resembled
A metre from the rent wall of the shack was a ditch - most likely dug
for the purpose of irrigation - that led down to a slight field. The
field itself, only the length and breadth of a small market garden,
was sunk well down into the ground, drains marking its four sides.
Nothing could have been grown in it for years. The shack, then, was
I felt curious. I just wanted a quick look. The Officer was surprised,
8
path.
- Yes, it is. But I’ve always had a weakness for old sheds. Stop your
whining or I’ll shoot you and leave your bones for the cows.
- Sir…
beat me off the farm, how about looking for somewhere to camp?
mountains.
I left the path and sprang the short distance down to the shack. It
disconnected and useless up against the one good wall of the shack.
I went over to the field. The ground was hard, baked by the sun, all
the soil deep under foot. The grounded cracked under my boots.
surprise a small bog, rivered with just enough water in its near side
I stopped here for a minute. It was beautiful; the grass and the
8
view around. No, it was more sort of a rough image, an archetype
that you could build into a great memory and keep with you forever,
just something small that could make you remember beauty and
I knelt down by the small barren field and thought for a moment
about other times I'd felt such a sentiment: the bush proposing to
lived in quests to the meadows and fields beyond the visual reach of
our home. It seemed then that all I was about now had to do with
The path was still there waiting for me when I came back to it. How
far along would the Officer be? He couldn’t have been too far. I
hadn’t stopped long, and I hadn’t day dreamed too much either. I
set off at pace with the intention of catching him up before he could
make camp.
An hour later and I was back in the middle of rich pastures. A few
The path was here a little down from the top of a low ridge, running
parallel with the crest. Though the ridge afforded a proper view,
base of the hill through a slight dale and on to a further hill, distant
8
O’clock and the westering sun was throwing all its rays at me, like a
tree in its last flowering. The force of its heat, though, was
have even already come to the boundaries of the farm and found
somewhere to camp.
had once alluded. They had turned the whole thing back on me:
- I’d better answer the question then. Yes, I’ve made plenty of
though.
- For example?
- You mean if you take someone’s tractor and drive it off a cliff, you
- The military will compensate the owner, but yes, they can’t touch
An old gum tree shook off its age in the breeze. I stopped just past
this tree and took a drink of water. As I was turning the flask over to
close.
9
The path ran past a solitary mango tree about twenty meters further
on. I picked up my pack and flashed over to the tree, lying the pack
down against it. Then I turned and jogged off down the path,
leaving the pack behind under the broad span of the tree.
I jogged as low to the ground as I could, keeping well off to the side
Pushing through to the other side of this tree break should bring me
close to where I would have placed the origin of the shots. Most
Officer had been shooting at a pig. It's not like I ever hadn't, out of
wanton boredom.
I hit the tree break. The gums pushed out of the ground at me like
angry hands, bristling me with their slaps. The leaves, stones, and
I kept clambering on, ignoring the cuts that were steadily growing in
number on my arms and legs. I kept pushing back that next stalk
their attack.
9
On and on and over and finally out of the back of the break and into
the next pasture out along the ridge. The sky was blue again; the
disappeared around this curve, there were only its grasses and a
few trees to be seen. Nothing else. Nor were there any sounds,
I noticed that the path had come through the tree break about
twenty metres further up the ridge. It carried along the ridge until it
the edge of the break until I was certain nothing malicious would
Eventually I came to a point right before the ridge began its curve.
A few steps further and the path would drop down into the fold.
There, within the fold, I could plainly see the prostrate figure of a
man. I edged the few steps to the head of the drop and recognised,
simmering in the lowest part of the fold, the Officer. He had already
On reaching him, I threw myself down beside him, taking care that
- Four or five of them, Sir. I noticed them first in the lows down
9
there.
He was pointing to the line of trees that ran the fence at the bottom
of the ridge.
- I just thought they were farmers, so I didn’t worry too much about
- Yes, Sir. They took off after that, down along those trees.
The tree-line was on the far side of the fence; they would not be
- You should have killed them. Would have been good practice for
I snuck my way up to the top of the ridge and crouched down on the
soft grass. The view out over the west was spectacular. At the
bottom of the slope, the pasture ran to its last fence. Immediately
beyond this fence, the bush jumped up again and sprang away for
as far as I could see, over the close low hills and beyond to the
ominous shape and this was possibly the best view I’d get of them
before we would actually climb up through them, for, from this point
forward, they would become too near to permit focus: like a finger
9
and it was doing so now as I looked out over it, shimmering slightly
in the afternoon heat. There were birds, many birds of many kinds
skipping over the canopy, diving down under it. Though the
distance between us was too great for the twittering voices of the
smaller birds to be heard, I could hear well the sounds of the whip
- There’s nothing going on over there. Did you get a good look at
them?
You stay here and keep an eye out. I’m going to go back and get my
pack. If they come back, make sure you keep them right away from
the path. Shoot them in the head. Get yourself a war trophy.
- Yes, Sir.
Within two hours I had collected up the Officer and we had left the
some hundred metres off the path, in the deeps of the gums. I
buried the camp deep, talking only in whispers. With the Officer
9
settled, I then went back to the path, and, some distance back along
it, built a small campfire. I kept a watch then to see if I could attract
9
The Mountains
Shepherd green face, long, doughty wall; the view of the mountain
heat of the sun on their potent angles, using its absence in crooks
and gullies to build waters for the nourishment. Abrahim and his
The longer we hiked through the day, the greater we became aware
up a hill face, the path levelling off again at the end of each short
burst. This is how it was until about twelve O’clock, when we came
upon the first of the serious climbs. All at once we came out of the
boulders.
On the far side of the clearing, the great wall of the range stood. It
gleamed with a faint metallic green, and black too in places with a
harder metal. With what kind of cutting device had the path been
put into this wall? It seemed insurmountable; dare we try our feet
on it…
In reality, although I would agree it was steep, it was not yet steep
9
more daunting ascents on my travels, ascents on which I would
have simply not risked the Officer, ascents where I had sat at the
base of the climb for hours just steeling myself for the attempt.
Seven hundred meters the wall rose, four hundred of these straight
up as far as could be seen. It continued its line both left and right,
running away on both sides until the dimensions of the thing finally
again I was awed, now, more than ever, especially so - the sheer
Officer sat down to open his pack. He looked a little tired, flushed. I
wondered if the shock of the previous day hadn’t kept him awake
last night. The Officer had in fact done well. He hadn’t panicked;
risking neither his own life nor mine. Maybe there was a slight
though I did not yet sit to open it. Instead, I found the largest
difficult – the boulder was quite rounded and it was rarely I could
9
use an adjacent boulder to lever my way up, taking in the view then
I tried to look back to from where we had come, but the boulder
didn't offer enough height to allow me to see over the heads of the
angle, angling back again here and there as it kept its rough line of
ascent. The path ran out of view about a hundred meters up,
The mountain face held a few scattered trees, but for the most part
it was simply stuck with knee-high grasses, emerald green from the
were for mid-summer, in the spring I had just missed, this climb, I
unbearable.
9
It was a familiar voice, a voice I’d heard often. It never simply
the bush? None. I could make it tremble with fire and bulldozers to
intent.
I climbed back down off the boulder and came back over to my
pack.
- No. But, the climb, I think, is a bit easier than it looks, though.
- Yes, Sir.
We started our climb. It was easy at first; the path ascended over
steps that had been dug rigidly into the soil, the energy purposed
9
for this task utilized directly and without compromise. I was a little
surprised at the condition of the steps given the recent rains and
more closely, I noticed the soil was heavy with a brown clay.
so that most of the water coming down on the steps would not
A quarter of the way up, at about the point where I had first seen
the path disappear from view over the ledge, we came to a steeper
stop often to allow him to catch up. Looking back down from my
he could reach me again. I used the time to get the view which I
north - and therefore the land that would lie ahead of us - from this
we had already passed. I could see all the bush between us and the
last farm. I could see the farm itself, its pastures now so small, the
starkness of the white road that fed it. I saw the bush we’d come
through on the Water Shack side of the pastures and the barren grey
of the granite banks that marked the rough location of the rock
tunnel from where we had first come out on the farm. Further back
1
in the distance was the Water Shack itself, barely visible, standing
sunflower fields and dark-green bush all took turns to colour the rest
of the view. It was now a long way back to McKellar’s Junction, and
we were nearing the last reaches of its speculation, from which point
we would truly pass from beyond what comfort it could have ever
given us.
There was a light breeze blowing and I noticed that already the
temperature was lower than what it had been down in the bush
below.
At last we came to the final section of the climb. It was over bare
found the confidence to move over the rock without too much
concern of a fall.
A last little quiver backwards when the Officer’s ankle came down a
bush.
Five minutes on and the path was running level again, flitting
behind again. I jogged back to him. He was bent over, his hands on
his knees. He was a strong red in the face and was breathing
heavily.
1
- You are a sad sight. Might have to put you away.
- You had better be. We’ll stop for lunch at the base of the next
climb. I’ll take your pack and go on ahead and get a fire started.
I gave him a wink, gesturing for him to hand me his pack. He wasn’t
going to allow a superior to carry his weight for him though, but
rifle at his head. With a monstrous effort he slipped it off his back
going. Again, he tried and failed to keep pace with me. Even with
- So, what were you doing this time four years ago?
A bank of grass led the way over to the glass stream. The darkling
eaves of the forest waited only for the last of the sun to vanish. I
couldn’t take flight from them, their wintry claws coming ever on. I
turned from them, not forgetting them. I stopped and sat under the
willow gum that lent its curls out over the water, dropping its
nightshade leaves for the myriad small fishes. Its wood was soft
and white.
1
Allegations of unlawful conduct had been levelled at the military.
My own father had come specially to visit to say, ‘I hope you have
been surprised with the news that his body had filled with rank
carrying leucocytes and dirt, so that if I cut myself, the wound site
sweaty thing – we are right; we are pure. Let the nobodies beat on
- Damn you, it’s not my cup of tea either, but I already told you, this
stuff happens. Now, what you gunna do? Get used to it. You’re not
Back at the stream the willow gum bent even lower and asked,
‘Well, how do you feel about him now?’ And I couldn’t answer, not
a bloodless surgery.
- What?
The sun no longer keeps me, and I must choose for myself my path.
1
And it is not into the dark of the forest where the trees are winter
and will possess in their upper boughs my heart frozen and spring
never comes.
The Foreign Minister had been dead three days. The bush told us no
news, but I could imagine some of the things that would be said
back in the cities. The Generals were crawling for war; lonely, grey
never understand the interest these people had in war. What kind
of option was it, even for a liberal Prime Minister out for kicks.
Maybe they were right. However, what I did know was that, with the
Foreign Minister dead, the voices for war had become the loudest,
The Foreign Minister had been a great man; he had seen both
forwards and backwards along the line into which time formed itself.
alternative information. He was the only one who had ever asked
1
Just past this point the path jumped back upwards again. We would
have all lunch to ponder this. I didn’t think the Officer would be a
friend to his ponderances – he was tired and the sight of the path
him at all. The first four hundred meters had been a test on his
A few birds called in the thickets, but otherwise it was quiet. The
sun waved down on us, and though the altitude took a few degrees
off its smite, it was still hot. The Officer had been forced to strip
most of his uniform, and even what little he retained was stained
the mind.
The words were coming out of his mouth forced and bunched up.
His eyes were pale and his face was blotched. He was trying for me.
His words were slow in the coming; one sentence spanned out over
what seemed like many acts. His frequent pauses were filled with
- Um, I haven’t had a chance, I guess, Sir. I was um, shy in school
1
and then, er, um, the military took up all my time.
- We can’t have that. It will never do! With a war coming up and
all.
finished with him yet. I decided to try something else for his peace.
I grabbed out a roll of electrical tape I had in my pack and went over
− You see this? Well, we just stick it between these two trees, like
this, wrap them up tight, and there you go. The next man who
comes along this path is going to see this and wonder what the
He smiled for me, then dropping his head back into his lap. I gave
up.
Though time went by the climb didn’t relent. Through the afternoon
at the Officer. Each metre heavier than the last and his legs
groaned it.
Finally it grew towards six O’clock. The sun was getting older,
becoming gentler as it readied itself for sleep. The sky had turned a
was already beating quietly in the low Western sky. Like the sun, it
The path had become quite steep again. The Officer looked now
1
near complete exhaustion. He wore his head low, not even thinking
legs were a little tired from all the climbing, but otherwise I felt
much as I had when I had first woken that morning. I could push on
for a while yet, but I knew the Officer needed to stop; it would be
I looked up the path. It hit more steps, a set of maybe fifty or so,
before vanishing into the heights. The bush here was tight and the
to duck down, walking stooped to avoid hitting the ceiling. This was
times, falling over into the untidy reaches of the bush. Everytime he
scrambled himself back out onto the path he vomited raw energy.
We came to the steps and started climbing. The Officer was resting
often.
On we went.
I forgot about the Officer for a minute and turned around to find him
down all those steps only to have to climb them over, but I couldn’t
leave him like he was. I went down and when I got there, I saw that
- We’re already pretty high. I’d say this mountain is going to run
1
- Yes, I think so, Sir. But this isn’t just any mountain. This is evil,
Sir.
With a little grunting, he was finally able to continue his limp up the
steps. I left him here and escaped up the path. It wasn’t long
The path then carved left to where it seemed to open out into a
quite obvious. When I finally emerged from the last of the bush, I
I found myself in what was indeed a clearing, cut out of the summit.
An old wooden marker with etched lettering gave the altitude – one
for half of its distance before flattening right out and moving over to
palm trees stood about halfway into the centre of the clearing. Just
beyond these I could make out a low rock wall set just to the side of
the path, which was continuing its way through the clearing.
The red light of the dawning sunset was playing off everything, and
the view out over the land was already resting in deep, deep colour.
temperature for most of the night, cooling a little only in the pale
1
I looked up at the sky. Stars were quickly filling it. Not long from
I headed over to the rock wall, passing through the palm grove.
When I reached it, I saw that there were in fact three walls to it,
three sides of a square. What would have been the fourth side had
been left open in welcome of the path. I guessed the walls had
been set like this, right against the path as they were, for the
yellow and reddish mineral stains of age, and had obviously been
set in place some years ago, perhaps even when the path had first
been made. That would have been a story, and now that I thought
about it, I was a little regretful that, though I had briefly broached
the subject with the Officer on the drive to the Water Shack, I had
of the clearing showed that the rocks had not been quarried from
here. They had been brought in from elsewhere. Who had that
much energy?
The soft grass that quilted most of the clearing comforted also the
insides of the camp. Looking into it over the nearest wall nearest, I
could see the remnant ash of a small fire, though it was not at all
recent. I wondered how long it had been since anyone had been
here. It looked like the camp had been lonely a long time. We
1
would use it for the night though. I put my pack down and went
He had just come out into the clearing. Having looked up and taken
- Exhausted, Sir.
- There’s a little place we can camp just past those palms. C’mon.
We walked together over to the rock walls bounding the little camp.
The Officer slumped straight down. The first few days of a long hike
can near ruin you, but every extra day you add to that your strides
become easier as your lungs adjust to allow for the sway of the
- You fucker.
have turned back even at the disappearing creek. That would have
1
been far enough for me, I think. And then I almost got my head
blown off. You know, the one thing that kept going through my mind
then, Sir, was that you were near and you would know what to do…
- You did very well back there. You did a good job.
− Don't say that, Sir. I'm not particularly interested in war right
now. I may have very well just been lucky back down on the
− You might still be here to talk about it. I think you're only half as
− Of course you're not! But that doesn't mean you can't survive.
Yes, I was definitely liking this man more and more. He was honest,
have emasculated him with a heavy dose of vitriol and then spat on
him, walking off with a tear in his eye, ashamed that such men walk
the earth.
What a pity that Oxprey would never open his mouth to another
It was a beautiful night that night. The Milky Way spun low and
showed us all of its collection of stars. I made out the Pleiades, and
the Officer pointed out the Jewel Box, a smaller, though more
1
Cross. The Southern Cross itself was high in the sky, waiting for
into the night. The Officer had a few apples. We sliced one up and
enough to take the pieces from our hands. These were common
though these cheeky few seemed to have been fed before and knew
its alfoil plan and divided it as evenly as I could for the two of us. I
took my portion and a cup of billy tea to flavour it, and slouched
back against a wall, relaxing into the night. The Officer did likewise
and we sat there enjoying the slow chew of the damper and the
new, calmer mood that the warm night had finally brought.
Milky Way still promising not to drip down onto us, we fell asleep.
1
A Day in the Springs
Bumble bees drone in the large flowering gum that stands as a rear-
guard to the summit clearing. The sun promises more heat than
Abrahim and his Officer pack slowly, taking care that the coals of
The next day we hiked leisurely down the back of the mountains.
We had started off late, having enjoyed the morning on the restful
spending the night in them. I was eager to get into the springs and
had therefore decided to take this day slowly, making camp at the
last of the descent off the mountain, in dry bush, leaving the run
into the springs until the new day. This plan would also give the
The lowly pace and the morning sun brightened both our moods,
and we really set out to enjoy this day. It soon became hot, hotter
1
Around three O’clock we dropped down a short slope. We’d had a
lethergy.
A little further into the afternoon and my body began to feel tight.
acting on us. Sucking gently at us, trying to pull us into the black
Another minute down we finally walked out of the trees and onto an
artesian springs. And here we saw it - a dark, almost jet black line
The storm was still away on the horizon, but it was moving quickly
and it was growing as it came. Its leading edges would race over us
in only a half an hour or so; the front would be only another fifteen
minutes behind.
1
Another few minutes and it had spread to cover most of the western
thing might have been. I did not want to get caught naked by one.
As the leading edges blew ever closer, I began to see how large this
storm was, strong as I’d ever seen. It was rotating, like a heavy
black iron wheel, and I watched in awe as its base extended even
lower. Lightning gleamed from it like the flashes of the sun off
drawn swords in the midst of some dark, forgotten battle where the
prize had been survival. The thunder was already coming up hard
to our ears. It would soon drop down onto the mountains with the
green wood would not break down on us, and whose small height
would not bring lightning. The grove itself was a little further down
from where we were and we would have to make pace. I hurried the
Officer down to the grove and had him get in amongst the quivering
trunks. I then waited just outside the grove and watched while the
The leading cloud quickly covered us, dampening all our senses.
1
With this cloud came the first drops of rain. Then everything was
still. The air around me was slipping off, being taken back into the
storm to feed its great black engine. The light was dropping too,
not a gloom, for a gloom is stale and without pace. This was a
couldn’t see much of the approach of the storm from where I was,
but I heard it – the wind ripping somewhere just behind the western
The wind had been still sucking only gently when the front hit. The
initial gust that came with the front smacked me in the face and
bent the young gums of the grove to their knees. Seconds later the
downpour began. It was a hard, heavy rain, and we were both soon
drenched. The gale and rain continued in tandem for about five
the gusts. And then the hail began. I dived into the grove to take
cover. We used our packs as shields, and with these raised over our
heads and the grove all around us, we managed to avoid the worst
of it. I was stung maybe twice, though I could see from the rate at
which the ice was collecting on the ground outside the grove that a
The lightning now sliced all about us, and the thunder split our
heads with its axe. The rain, hail and wind kept on coming, ever
1
dream…
We waited and in a short half hour it was all over. When the hail and
wind had passed, and only a steady rain and occasional stroke of
dark - the sun would not be back today; the rain and its heavy
clouds would continue well into the night. Though it was dark, we
were still able to make out some of the sad debris of the storm –
branches, having been stripped bare of their leaves and ripped from
their trunks, lay everywhere, the bones left behind by the wolf to
decay.
brought a small tent each, and with these I hoped we might be able
The day was already shining bright when we woke. The sky was a
calm ocean again, its waves gently lapping at us, bringing us the
day’s heat. The storm though, along with the scars of its native
Neither of us had had a good night. Even though our tents had kept
out further rain, we each had taken some from the first of the storm
to sleep with. The Officer looked the worse for it. He said he hadn’t
slept much, his eyes dry and red. I hoped that we could push hard
1
today, through the springs, camping then on the other side of them
felt the chances of another storm might be quite high). How far we
had been wringing out a wet sock when I had asked him:
everything and started the day’s hike. In the light of the sun we saw
the full damage of the storm – trees everywhere torn of limb and de-
and greens. We also saw the ending of the bush and the levelling
flatland. Low grasses lead the way about five hundred metres to
what looked from distance like a patch of reed. The path shrank
here, a thin line between the grasses. It was a simple start to the
day, and I stepped out, pulling the Officer with me. It was beautiful,
the grasses soft and cool on my ankles, the sky open in deep blue
above us. About half way to the patch of reed (I could now see from
this distance that it was indeed reed) a few crakes flew overheard.
1
They drifted on past the reeds, disappearing away into the heat
this new flora. Beyond this first spring, many others could now been
seen.
from the beginning of the reeds, I stopped and bent down to look
into one of these pools. The particular pool I had stopped by was in
depth about a hand’s length. I put out my hand, dropping it into the
The Officer didn’t acknowledge his surrounds. With feet still damp
I left the pool, standing up to the path once again. As I did, the
to a point along the path where a few boards had been lain down
across part of a large spring. The spring itself was mother to the
1
standing on ever-drinking roots. The boards were lying loosely;
caution was needed in crossing them. They had obviously lain there
a long time, the wood discolouring with rot. Indeed I was surprised
that they held us at all, and didn’t at once disintegrate under our
weight. They must have had been treated with a potent force to
have withstood the constant waters on their fibres for so long. Not
with faults in the earth below. These mounds, comprising soil and
the depth of the reed thicket prevented any real examination of this.
clearly make out several rises - the reed seeming to bulge upwards
for as long as its water held; finally giving out on the steeper
five metres. The path seemed to lead off between the two patches,
1
of the two a little off to the right without ever seeing its waters. The
path then curled around hard to the left, bringing us close to the
far. Again we found planks of wood lain down here and there over
its wider pools and wetter sections. The top of the mound, away to
our right, was still a good adventure through the reed from the
closest point the path made to it. I decided to make this adventure.
I jumped off the path and into the midst of the reed. They, though
terribly crowded, were light, being of hollow stalk, and were easy to
push from my way. The worst of the going were the constant pools,
After a few minutes of this, the ground began to rise, and the water
ran-off below me. It wasn’t long before I pushed through the last of
the reed and began on the light sedge slopes of the upper part of
view.
I could see fairly around me, at least enough to see that there was
no easy way through the series of springs. In fact, the path seemed
wet looking thicket still relatively beyond us. This was indeed an
have had its own storm cloud, brooding and above it always. The
1
some depth, and I imagined we could easily find ourselves back-
tracking for more solid ground. In size, the thicket itself would
width of the basin in which we were in, leaving us with little room in
But the size of this spring wasn’t what had caused my surprise.
Along the path, between my stand and the larger thicket away,
where the path found again and for a time a drier route through
paperbarks. These were the only trees of any kind to be seen for
kilometres around, at least out on the open green face of the basin.
here.
reed as I passed back through it. The Officer was waiting for me
- Only enough to know we’re still not through this day by a long
shot yet.
- Great.
- There looks like there is a place we can stop for a bit of a break
1
started to get close to the grove of paperbarks I’d seen from the top
of the mound.
I hadn’t seen the creek from the mound. Its course had obviously
been set too low into the earth to have been visible from that
distance.
The path was now out of the sedge and back on relatively solid
ground. As we got closer, it became clear that the creek was full
Finally we reached the near bank. A deep creek indeed ran before
us. Its source was evidently back in the mountains, its current
old logs laid together side by side, we entered the paperbark grove.
oxbow the creek had left behind. The path continued on through
the grove; towards the far end of the billabong it suddenly jumped
to the right and went off up a small rise. Here, a large ghost gum
paled in the dim light, the only light it had managed to free as its
height ruptured the canopy. Ghost gums are beautiful trees. They
are elegant, majestic, yet aloof and enigmatic, the spectres of long
As we came under its boughs, we could plainly see that it had been
1
living too richly for its own good – it had gorged itself too greedily on
king whose only interest left in life kept him at the dining table. Its
trunk was bloated, its leaves off-colour and sagging with weight. In
cough, but rather throaty, scratchy. The Officer wiped his nose with
the back of his hand. He was obviously still a little damp on the
inside. He went over to the ghost gum, perhaps to lean against it.
A little further along the path, though still under the reaches of the
great gum, we found an excellent spot to sit down and have our
among others.
- No idea.
I pulled the map from my pack, laying it out on the ground so that
course. Not too big, though. More like hills really. We should get
over them pretty easily. And then I’d say another two days of open
The Officer ran his hand over his nose again, this time extending the
1
activity by turning around and, with a finger closing off one nostril at
The Officer leaned back and relaxed his body, bringing his head up
so that he could stare at the sky. It was only blue, a deep blue that
escaped the mark of cloud. Though only noon, the sight of the
naked sky gave me hope that there would be no new violence in the
heavens today.
A light breeze pushed against our backs. It was a sea blue in both
hue and fragrance. The frail hands of the ghost gum waved with the
air slightly off above our heads. I wondered if the storm last night
had ravaged the springs as well, for there was no obvious sign of
this.
Oxprey had often hiked through storms, not seeming to have cared
tough man, and had always been so. The Bushrangers – we – were
his creation. He alone could have claimed credit for the formation of
the unit. He had petitioned the Generals for years to allow him to
down his requests time and time again, for they had felt the already
1
proposed by Oxprey. But eventually they had relented when they
professing that they had been necessary in order to bind his love
(sic) to him. And, perhaps most tellingly, the man had revealed an
likes before. The old film was at times hard to watch, if just for the
started off again. Beyond the paperbark grove, it wasn’t long before
the path soon wallowed back down into sedge and spring. Here and
before, only this time they seemed more virulent in their behaviour.
from the top of the mound I had climbed some distance back. Reed
sprang up again from the sedge and the pools muddied and merged
even as they came up under our feet. The Officer tripped over, just
though it had arisen in the back of the throat, the tonsils. I didn’t
1
need him getting sick now. He sighed audibly, putting his hands
yet strained, look. I wondered if the chills had come on him yet. I
going to get?
Unlike those before it, this spring, the largest, had been left
we found ourselves often losing the path into a pool, leaving us then
to skirt around well out of our way, desperate for any dry passage,
resurfaced. Time grew on, and the reed grew denser, nearer. In
The Officer just nodded his head and tried to keep his eyes open. If
he had been well, he might have asked me, ‘What’s going on, Sir?’
carefully.
We went on, over pool and brown, matted waste, adrenalin leaking
out with the sweat release from pores, dripping down into the murk
1
the original splashing sound came. Here and there we passed the
marks of loose trotters, where the reed had been scuffed and
fetid wash, rose up before us, and the already hesitant path dropped
down into it in frailty of indecision. I could have left the path here
vessels that faced closest the correct direction, but the sheer depth
A dank air permeated the mess of stalk and eye that ruined the
the Minotaur in some sick dead end. A sow, in protecting her young,
could quite quickly freeze our mission, stop it still as zero Kelvin. I
fingered the trigger of the assault rifle, letting it walk out in front of
1
Beginnings (3)
Every step now had to be careful. I had come face to face with the
watcher of my soul. The farmer looses his dogs on me, but I don’t
shoot them. I wait, and then I use the butt-end on them. The
which I reply, ‘What have you got for me?’ gesturing up towards his
mad. You must want me to torture you, before I kill you…’ I’d
prayed that I’d find evidence against him. Like burning white
snakes at harvest.
1
The Danger Passes
Moments passed, and moments became periods and still luck kept
to us. A great bower of reed shot up on our left. It was the last of it
- beyond this sunlight grew again. A crake wheeled in the sky above
The Officer looked dazed. I saw in his posture that his whole body
achy and jittery in rest. His body had been sucked of all its energy,
yet the mind was firing off signals to it at a great rate. He was sick.
His glazed eyes and paled face also reported this. The wet night of
the storm and the continuing dampness of the springs had softened
him enough for an invasion to have taken place. His cough had
become something.
of illness that would trap him in a torture already building just out of
my sight. Tonight his sickness would really catch him. I hoped that
I coaxed him on. The blue of the sky was deepening at the end of
another day.
We left the final steps of the springs, hiking on again through the hot
1
bush. It was good to be rid of the water, the midges and the threat
1
The End of the Path
looked terribly drawn. The campfire couldn’t dance off his sallow
face. His head was obviously astray from the general discomfort he
would be feeling. His voice was now very weak and he missed much
they would have been in the springs at least, though I didn’t think it
After leaving the springs, we had walked up and down bush hills
same earthen path through the same grasses and gums, while the
same birds had gathered for the night even as we had passed them
and the same cicadas had sung on. It had been as though we had
Our hike had ended when we had come to a promising site on the
rounded top of a hill. There, I had set up our camp, making a fire
and wrapping the Officer up in the few blankets we had between us,
- No good, Sir.
1
And as if touched by a magic wand, he fell instantly into some kind
of unconsiousness.
When I had finished my dinner, I lay back next to the small campfire
with its rich, woody smell, and enjoyed the night air cool on my skin.
Politically, the situation had been tense for years, going back at
least ten years to the first appearances of the new ideas in the East.
That had all changed about three years ago when the young, vibrant
purgatory. Perhaps the enemy thought they could push far the new,
the word ‘weak’ has for a liberal. Perhaps the new Foreign Minister,
with his inclination for drama, was most responsible for the sudden
rise in tensions. Even now in death, the Foreign Minister still had a
starring role in the unfolding of events, and thinking about him and
caused it, the whole situation had accelerated in months from quiet
1
The enemy could not want war, because it was they who stood to
lose everything and gain so little. Diplomacy was their best bet;
either way the road to their hopes was long, and in few situations is
The enemy’s ideas had trapped them in the end, and I thought for
the most part they were locked into facing war. It was our
government who held the power of the first move. The enemy,
caught like this, could not afford to plan for peace without
abandoning their dreams and their pride, but nor would they attack
first – they would not want to destroy what small chance they had of
close to achieving this, and even though he was now gone, they still
wouldn’t risk the little hope for it that remained. If war was burning
But of course I had no real truth in my hand; what if the enemy did
want war?
I looked away into the dark night under the trees. A slow, defensive
The next day rose quickly, and I came out of my own dark,
though he was still to sight out of sorts and shaky about the legs.
1
After a short breakfast, we got going.
We walked on all that day, stopping quickly for lunch in a soft low
between two weather-scarred ridges, their sides clawed and red with
greens and browns of the dry sclerophyll bush. On into the twilight
the path.
The Officer was exhausted, and the constant torture of his sickness
reclined him fast. His fever had broken though, and another
After tending to the Officer, I sat down with the map. We were now
only a few kilometres from the last of the path, and the repeater
was not far beyond that. Once the path concluded, it would be all
mind of the line we should make now while I still had the time to let
still sick tomorrow? I knew I couldn’t push him on too far if that was
1
And what would I say when I was asked why the repeater had not
been activated?
I felt a certain blood rise in me, though I knew that this reaction was
unnecessary.
The Officer was sick. How dare the Generals expect that of me - to
I sighed and lay back on the ground, playing with my empty cup,
and our course and looked up at the stars. Out in the bush they
points of light. The Milky Way curtained its way across the sky – its
light fabric of silver lace veiling ever so delicately the stars in its
arm. Orion shone out to one side of this great arm, alone and
I threw a stick away into the dark. I put out the fire and lay down in
of unspoken worries, the morning again brought nothing but hot sun
and a long day. The Officer said he still felt a little slow, but
1
certainly the night had healed a lot of his sickness – he was fuller to
the eye at any rate – and so we packed up and headed off with the
repeater in mind.
After about the first half-hour of our morning’s hike, the path fell
down the back of a last hill and brought us into view of what looked
abandoned for many years, although the bush had not yet had the
long it had been here, there was certainly much more of the farm in
ever more frequent blasts of rust – lost bolts, horse shoes, tools, bits
fell different on my eyes. Certainly, the path had gone astray here –
though where the mountains had been deep in their wisdom and
honest in their revelations, this old farm was bleeding with ill. What
ruins were not marked on the map, though I might check it and
check it again, and, stranger still, nor did they seem they should be.
homestead and opened the gate – the gate itself coming to its final
rest as it fell from its last rusted hinge at the least of my push – and
1
realized the undeniable physical existence of it all.
- Yes, Sir.
It was an old Queenslander, not far in style from the office back in
McKellar’s Junction except for the state of its repair: its light blue
windows were opaque with scum and more often than not broken;
landscaped, was burning with weeds; where there was still a roof, it
the elements.
I led the way towards where the front steps should have been.
The encircling veranda was the first obstacle to entry into the
door.
presumably what had been the living room, was a little dark. The
Officer had been right – the room was more or less bare except for a
1
dirty green carpet running the floor and a few books, a ragged doll
carpet.
A missing door on the far side of the room revealed a second room.
portion of its roof to the decay. I headed over towards this second
only one last wire, a green earthing wire browned and disappearing
darkest corner, a cast-iron bath. The sink was old, well stained with
many chips in its porcelain. Another old photo lay over the drain
period in their lives. They looked happy, yet sad. Had they lost
I went over to the bath. It was filled with a brownish liquid, what I
feel sick.
Something caught my eye just under the surface of the brown foul,
rifle into the water, prodding it. I got the barrel underneath it, lifting
it up to the surface.
closely and saw dozens of them in the bath, dozens of cane toads
1
suspended in death. I couldn’t imagine how they had become
trapped in the water - and what had lured them into it in the first
place. I retracted my gun from the bath and went over to a broken
window, the only one in the bathroom. I looked out over the back
The Officer was waiting for me back in the first room. I couldn’t
- Let’s go.
The Officer accepted this without comment. We left the house and
came back to the path. Just at the last pile of rust that represented
could see ahead that it continued straight on for a little way before
finally wrapping out of sight around a small hill at the bottom of the
farm.
- Sir, there isn’t any road into this farm. I didn’t see one anyway.
We had walked through a good section of the farm, from where its
poisons still kept the bush back, past the broken holding paddocks
and cracked feed trays and the outlying sheds, through what had
towards its ends again at the northern side, and seen nothing, not a
single indication of anything amiss. And yet the very air told us
otherwise.
1
- Don’t know what to make of this place. It just doesn’t fit
We had come up on the hill at the bottom of the farm, its little
rounded climb jumping up just before us. The Officer had frozen
- They look cared for, Sir. Look, they’ve been clipped recently.
The foliage on the trees had been uniformly cut, so that they
hill by a groundskeeper.
- The grass around the trees is also trim…like it’s been mown or
- Sir?
We came to where the path rounded the base of the hill, taking us
out of sight of the farm. But as we turned the hill, we came upon a
The path ran right to the edge of the field. And then stopped. That
was it. It didn’t disappear into the field, hidden underneath the
1
sunflowers. It just stopped. We had reached the end of the path,
and in what manner – the way blocked by what looked like a hectare
- Sir?
With that I turned around and plunged into the sea of dead
sunflowers.
air was still, bland. It was dry and unkempt, dust choked.
Every stalk that we bent back seemed to straighten right back again
snuffling quite a bit and a few times he dropped behind me, making
me wait.
sweat crawling my skin. I still felt unnerved from the farm; this field
was made of the same spectacularly vile stuff, its structures all
forced out of the same materials, the same basic design. I dared
stalks, grown in this soil as they were, were ever put under a
Once more I stopped to wait for the Officer. We must have been
somewhere close to the centre of the field. There was no way to tell
1
this though as we could see naught for the sunflowers. I imagined
ghosts, keepers of all wrong with this world, homed in this briar
patch of illness, sunset red eyes stalking about. A deep chill swept
a hot day.
At about an hour into our wade through the field, we came across a
narrow, though deep, irrigation dike. The bottom of the dike was
ran away both left and right; I imagined it must have once drained
took a giant leap over the dyke, the Officer stepping over it gingerly
After the dike, we had crossed a bone flat section of the field. As
our walk had just begun to find a nice quiet rhythm over this
otherwise it would have been just the natural rise and fall of the
land. From over behind the crest of a third rise came the sound of a
heavy rustling. At first it was far off, but it soon became louder and
1
nearer. In short time we were confronted by the rising wall of this
made towards the third rise. Finally, at its most deafening, the gust
that we could only kneel down, hands barring our faces. It came at
arisen.
- Heat convections.
The flattened and crushed sunflowers now made the way a little
easier in the going, and after rounding the top a last minor ridge
line, we broke free of the field, soon after again finding ourselves
both tired from the battle through the sunflowers, and to my eye the
Officer looked a little off again. Hiking slowly the rest of the day, we
set up camp that night under plain stars. I quickly found the
quickly slipped off into another fitful sleep. I decided then and there
power and I was not the kind of man to carry another on his back.
The Officer had expired, his mission over and that wasn't my fault. I
did worry about leaving him here alone, but I was more concerned
about the possible consequences of not getting to have fun with the
1
I would go to the original script. It made most sense now. Me,
working alone, and for the greater good of mankind whether this
the Officer would be too. His bones had been leached of all their
The next morning the sun woke fine and filled me full of its stuffing,
strands of energy that could be wound out like DNA, the sun’s own
DNA, the beautiful sleep I had had the night before rendering me
The Officer too was awake. But he wasn’t moving, except to inhale
the air that would allow him to moan. Prolonged fevers often
became hard to sleep on, as though the body had had enough rest
- Morning.
- You can’t go on. I’ll go on for help. You just rest here.
know where you are. See, I've marked it here on the map.
We were parting ways sooner than we had thought and not under
1
making of the situation now that day was up, but I couldn’t.
After that we ate (I ate, forcing the Officer to take some water), and
over the meal, I thought back on the previous day. Dirty fence
had been done to the farm and its fields against its will, turning it
from health.
smoke at Old Russ’s, the shooting on the last farm, the mood on the
stress of fear. War, burning all our heads. Burning everything our
After eating I set a shelter for the Officer as best I could from the
materials I had available. I left him the bulk of the water, for a fever
when his fever did break and he could manage solids again. It was
the time food and water could have become a serious issue in his
1
other choice did I really have? My energy surged.
1
The Repeater
Bush, greens and browns. I set off a little further into the morning,
taking only a little food and water, the parts for the repeater, a bed-
roll and my 9mm. The repeater site lay roughly along my path, and
medicine.
I walked on through the hazy bush, and as I went I began to feel that
was nothing, I knew, in the larger design of things, but for me,
heart and my blood was beginning to run off down it, down to the
It was towards the time of day when I could have taken lunch, but I
had no interest in it now. Some people have the ability of being able
1
But now I did stop. The repeater was close enough that I could
throw down the map and begin to look for physical traces of it
Producing it, and using my thumb and forefinger, I curled off its lid
had arrived on me. I spat a taste of the water out into the bush.
I stood for moments, until, finally, I decided that there were three
possible places that I might begin my search for the repeater. I was
down a little further into a brief hollow before beginning a slow rise
again into a thickly planted bank. To the left, the hollow burst out
into a significant gully that drove away down to the right of the hill
where I stood. To the right, the hollow simply opened up again into
flat bush, and this continued on into anonymity for as far as I could
see.
1
bush to the right was a little plain to consider seriously. I decided to
The bank was obscured from view from a low point by a vegetation
finally levelled off, it was only more wattle and barbs that awaited
me. On I went, any grime that may have been remnant from the
longer, and I pushed back a final knotted wire, stepping out into a
wondrous glade. The glade itself was stuck with grasses that had
been set long ago, where gums once had yielded to men and been
of the glade, a longish steel rod within five paces of the edge of the
I just stood there and stared at it. This was my mission finished. I
was free, complete. I felt relieved, and then I felt good. I felt good
thought then to the Officer. All of the interactions I’d shared with
him the last week had been to the cause of this single metal rod,
1
and now it was just I who witnessed it. It was unfair in a strange
way that I should be the only one to actually meet it. He had been
the one who had been blood-curdling excited about this mission.
He’d already given a part of his soul to it when he’d taken those
blasted himself through hazy days of fever and vile discomfort. And
it would be. I scratched around in the dirt at its base for a moment
or two, finally finding the top panel to its guts. I took off the panel,
inserted the silver battery, connected its leads and closed it all up
again. It was on. Whatever the military wanted the bastard thing
for, it was now theirs to use. With my mission done, it was now time
back through the mess of wattle and back out into bush.
1
Beginnings (4)
into the walls of existence but was rarely audible, so sensitive did
one have to be to garner even the faintest hint of it. Maybe it was
the solar wind, or what of it that had penetrated the magnetic belts
gully I’d woken up next to one morning, the long distance I’d tracked
his trail, his mark was gone, until wandering along the far bank of
the swamp I had come upon him – George Oxprey, the man who had
first made the cut in the Generals’ eyes, the origin of the
Bushrangers esteem, a man who had been so great for so long, but
was now starting to lose it, a man who had felt some great threat
rise. I had waited for him all that day and at night I had come on
him, taking his own gun and waking him from a fat sleep with the
barrel right on his nose. ‘G’day George,’ I’d said. He had sat bolt
upright and almost screamed until his senses had adjusted and he
Bluey. What the fuck are you doing out here?’ ‘That, of course, is
1
The one time I had spent any significant time with Oxprey was when
routes in and out of the Star Falls, a beautiful area in the northeast
rainforest waterfalls that marked the end of the brisk but serious
Crayol Range. I had learned on that mission that while Oxprey was
a master of the land, he had no regard for it, at least not in the
or action, yet he himself flushed his waste all over it. All the
dirtiness in his mind he let out over the land. If it struck him to kill a
bandicoot, he would. This was his land, he was the King for all time.
- Two years ago to the day Colonel Song defected to the East, Bluey.
You remember that, of course. He may have been born there, but
his loyalty should have been to the Generals. And though a lot of
being tactically fallible, I knew that that simply wasn’t the case. So
did the Generals. Song was destined to become one of them; I bet
you didn’t know that! His defection was a personal slight against
East, destroy them at once before Song could get a foothold. The
That fool Foreign Minister made some clever argument for giving the
1
East a little more time. We spied out his papers and came across
many notes he had culled from conversations with you. You of all
people, Bluey. You were helping turn the country back from what it
1
Rainforest
The sky was red. The sun was just up and it was shining red. Rain.
in my belly.
A small hill stood alone a small distance from where I was. The view
would help.
The climb up the hill was grass here and eroded bank there. Once
ran away a deep face of rainforest framed at its back by the black
line of a storm. Summer, I’d forgotten. The storm was still building,
always careful of too firm a tread for fear of leaving a mark on their
perfection.
The rainforest below was set flat in a shallow valley, its front at my
feet and its back away against a small but not insignificant range.
Its hardest travel would lie in the heavy lines of the many creeks
and gullies that the range waters had created. I wouldn’t need the
map here to find myself. Just beyond the far edges of the rainforest
were the Bush Highway and the end of my mission. Of all the
1
keenly. A day to myself, to take me through the dark and the wet of
the rainforest.
distant crack of thunder sounded, yet far distant. I ran down the
closest bank. Already the gums were ending and being replaced by
palms, figs and the giant strangling vines that wound up the bigger
trunks, looking for eggs to steal. At the tree line, I pushed back an
Smaller palms and ferns drank in gullies and along other veins of
support. The figs and taller palms pushed in tight, almost trampling
it.
rainforest floor, and the skin under my clothes eased a little at the
searched long, they found too few ways in, and beneath the dense
canopy it was still and dark as the path plodded on before me.
Frequent streams were bridged with old logs cut from the nearby
The path was running more or less flat. The worst of the moment
1
were the occasional patches of mud. These patches, hidden by leaf-
tread down onto the slimy leaves and ever risk their skate over the
mud underneath. The path, though flat, was not running straight. It
though this burbling was for the most part drowned out by the ever
Finally I reached the full height of the climb and, pushing back an
interfering palm frond, looked down onto a wide gully, cut by the
down into the gully. The bank on which the path slid down into the
gully was steep enough to warrant steps and, further down, near the
five degree angle back upstream to avoid a fall. Once the path had
navigated the bank, it turned away to the right, following the creek
downstream. From the top of the bank I couldn’t see the waters,
hidden as they were by the wings of the myriad palms and other
1
stout flora, but they gurgled healthily with a volume afforded by the
I started down the bank. The steps made the descent quite
the path soon evened out, beginning its run alongside the creek.
Here I now got the occasional sight of the creek through its green
border. It was a rock stabbed creek, bleeding its way through the
cutting its channel in many places. Ever still the waterfall was
growing in sound.
creek that had swung in from behind. This new creek pulled left
hard at the last, erupting through the bank of the first, losing its
identity as its waters spilled off into a new channel. Though neither
of the two creeks was worth more than their soft gurgles alone, their
Passing over the bridge, the path swept away again to the right,
taking me momentarily away from the creek and its new energy. I
green haze. The next time I would see it, it would be falling exposed
rainforest.
I imagined all the powerful characters the masters had given us; all
1
desperate, bleak characters of enormous potential, of strength and
charisma. How would Oxprey have liked their company? For he had
and their passions, and their confusions, the confusions that had
driven them all towards their ends. And Oxprey had been no
demi-gods who had gone mad on the largeness of their own being,
men who could bend the very elements of the earth to their will, tie
the seas. Men who could claim ownership over the individual
molecules of the deepest oceans and keep the dark matter of all
space and time in their back pockets. And yet fail and fall into
madness and ruin, bringing whole aeons down with them, crashing
to break the bare back of time, splinter its spine, shards pushed
leaks out over all life, heart eviscerated, pneumo-thorax, the ending
of all thought; and the slow, melodic patter of the rain left to fall the
sky voided by the done storm, its easy pattern reassuring and
soporific.
bends.
1
I had tripped a little, stubbing my leathered toes, just managing to
avoid the final loss of balance that would have landed me face first
the waterfall, and my right foot had caught hard as solid rock stole
The drop of the waterfall wasn’t right before me. Rather, it was
away beyond a short series of rock pools. The rock pools were all
them to the final rock before the drop. The channel through the
rock pools was quite strong; I was a little surprised when a water
dragon jumped out from under the milky movement and darted off
Coming in fast on either side of the rock was the rainforest, darting
in tight at the very hint of the rock conceding to soil. A soft mist
was floating in from over the edge of the waterfall, and it was,
without voice or fuss, slowly diffusing the light for which the rock
provided.
This waterfall had stood here for thousands of years, waiting for me
to come and admire it. I finally had. Looking down, it was about
hydrogen and oxygen atoms of the water were split as they found
years to come, but the water was going to have its final revenge
1
over the rocks, slowly wearing at them until their cruelness would
valley until it eventually ran off into the indiscernible. This valley it
seemed soon rounded out into a vast bowl, filled with a mist-
away but within the day’s walking distance. Though the mist was
The vale in its mist was another world, far, far removed from even
set by another force, a force I could intuit but never know. Once
enveloped by it, the vale would not allow any communication with
mists swirled with the peace we all hoped for but knew we had to, in
fact wanted to, return back home from eventually. A place as long
out of time as this was always heavy on the mind, and I knew that,
my head. I felt a need to experience it, but also to get quickly back
I started my way down into the vale. The path went off to the left of
the waterfall and zigzagged down the ridge that shouldered its
1
falling waters. It was only a quarter of an hour’s walking down the
path to the floor of the vale. Here, the path found easy passage
through the less dense rainforest of the vale. I had noticed this
bunya-tinged affair. The forest here looked tidier too; the trees
plants fought with none else for their space. It was beautiful, crept
I eventually came to the creek again where the path hit the floor of
the vale and ran across the base of the waterfall. The creek was
algae and nardoo. It was here that I got again that sense of
into mystery. The creek and all the bush I had experienced so far
was all at least expected, if not all understood. But here now the
creek disappeared off into something I had never been out in before,
ancient forest that lived alone of its own accord, its hermitage a
The afternoon went on. The path had lost the creek long ago,
flattening right out again. It was running over a soft, porous soil
1
quilted with the same leaves that had fallen all throughout the
The waters were cool and fresh and as energised as the blood from
the path revealed the passage of all kinds of life, from searching
darting rainforest skinks. In amidst all this industry, where the busy
still were busier, I felt something growing on me, like some sort of
The mist was thickening around me. Perhaps it was just this, and
the small light that was stubborn enough to insist on being let in,
but it all built to a real sense of being alone, and helpless. I felt as
though I didn’t have the ability to protect myself, nor to see against
what to protect myself. The rainforest was starting to climb all over
me, its figs reaching up to strangle me down into its earth, its
rocks came and went, lichen kept passing me at every step, the
1
trees blurred and their vines were no longer noticed. I turned my
The mist was now curling in around the trees. Out from behind
green hands it appeared, the heavy down of orbs of water, dull with
into a rot. I could see it moving, slow was its ride over the barren
space of the path, over the path, on into the betweens of the foxtail
white sheets. These ghosts were not silent though, and the mist
I turned again. Mist. Was my head also burning? Maybe this should
be the old forest’s message. All those ghosts, all following along at
what could have only been set distances behind me, all like little
shadows but those that did not tell of my being, some kind of
trailed off into the gloom whether it was under midday sun or rain-
cloud night.
A little further down the path, I made out through the gloom what
some wedded to the bed of the small gully in which they’d been
1
trapped; the others elevated to the slight breezes that would play
smaller rocks sheltered, and between them ferns and other small
now found the energy to come to life and run around freely,
eyes.
I was standing now almost right at the first boulder, where the mist
sucked the path down and to the right and on in between the
outcrop. The gully in which the outcrop was lying ran away both to
the right and the left, though I couldn’t see for how far for the mist.
The gully itself was heavily walled by a plant life that was following
the vein of water that tracked the bed of the gully. I looked behind
and ahead. Another look at the outcrop and suddenly I knew what
to do.
I felt sick, not a nausea or such as the Officer would have felt with
his illness even as I had left him. No, not the feeling associated with
Then, the rainforest spoke to me. A clear voice, like that which is
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reported by the movements of water chimes, arose from the earth
and filled me. It may have been that the leaf litter and other decay
on the floor had filtered the voice as it had passed through them, for
the voice was as wet with nutrition as though it had picked up some
of the leaking minerals from the waste. The voice whispered gently,
once and once only. It simply said, ‘He was no friend to us.’
the first of the large boulders and came to an archway where the
see that beyond this archway was the last of the outcrop, and
though I had no real view, I knew that after this, it was back to flat
rainforest again.
I stayed crouched behind the boulder for about five minutes. Then I
The path dropped off to the right, not in the direction I wanted, and
so I left it. This was real rainforest now, no path, only Gumnut
darken. Where in the open bush there might have been reasonable
again. Finally I emerged from the wet under. I turned and gave the
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promised. It had been as though I had never had the day broken by
the rainforest, mist and heaviness. But I had, and I had come
I wandered on through the dry sclerophyll scrub for some time yet,
Highway. The storm, which had held off for so long, was finally
violent burst that had caught us on the back of the mountain days
earlier, but a long, slow rain, with only moderate winds and plenty of
A sudden flash illuminated for a moment the slow face of a rocky hill
to camp on the other side of the hill, hoping to find a nook in the
thunder arrived just before my left foot came down onto the ground
was compact and intense, its waves arriving all within a short period
of time. I stopped, letting the last of the roll sound out back into
the rain, oil with sweat, off my fringe and found minutes later that I
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still had my hand there, covering my eyes, as though I was in some
comfortably in its branches. Doesn’t the fool know that the leaves
down at me, mocking with horrid evil eyes, ‘Bluey, I never knew…’
1
The Scent of War
It was hot. The wind had stilled and the sun was angling right down
at me. It was a little past noon, maybe two or three. It was two
storm today; the western horizon was clear. The remnant of the
storm had kept me awake until late last night. I had enjoyed the
storm had had an impact on the area where I’d left the Officer. I
And the Officer? He was an officer. He’d be flown from the bush to
a hospital, and upon recovery he’d be fed back into the machine at
some point. If war broke, he would be going to fight. He’d fare well
I also wondered what news my return to the city would find. Talk of
the crash would be at its height. Things would have shifted from
It was now we’d see how strong the influence of those who wanted
war was, whether all their positioning would finally get them what
they wanted.
1
mission and not me. Before even leaving McKellar’s Junction he
the Water Shack, Oxprey would have pulled out his treasured
1
Beginnings (5)
a gum tree just apart from me. I was staring out into the deep view
beyond.
I had camped. The night had moved on. Star had turned to pale
dawn, the waking of the day again. I hadn’t slept, but it wasn’t lack
that the sky is well awake and the sun’s entrance can no longer be
brightness of the sun’s disc appears to when the whole fiery globe
has ascended into the air. I had had only perhaps an hour before
I had moved out from the small grove where I had buried myself,
quickly crossing the sparse grasses of the open bush. Shortly, I had
come to a red gully, eroded and naked. It had been deep enough to
cover most of me, and the earth, dry and loose, had been, if I was
jumped down into the bed of the gully and started my way down the
hill.
A little way down, the bush had begun to thicken again. Gums and
their attendant shrubs had been rising out of the ground just
bordering the rim of the gully banks. Here and there dead branches
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had lain at my feet, stolen of their energies.
I had finished the last of the descent, coming out on the dry bed of a
creek that ran away from the base of the gully. I had left the creek,
this kind of behaviour even years ago, though I never thought I’d
actually see it come into the real. How long had he been planning
this? It all might have occurred to him around the same time his
wife was divorcing him; but more likely the things going onside his
head had their origins long before that, back in the compounds that
made him. He had no choice in the matter, really. Things fell the
Later that night I had found him. I had tracked and caught the great
He had had his hat pulled down over his face. I had walked up to
him and noticed the barrel of his precious handgun just sticking out
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Beginnings (6)
…I had kept the gun on him. His sun-scarred face had showed signs
- If you’ve come this far, you must have worked it out, Bluey. I must
- Why is that?
made sure you had orders that you would keep you well away from
me.
- Why not? What can you do with this news? Nothing. Everything
He had shifted a little in his posture, moving his weight to his left
side. He had stretched his left arm out a little further behind him to
accommodate this new weight. With his right hand, he had stuck
his index finger into his eye and fidgeted it around for a moment,
the sleep his finger had collected away towards the bush and looked
back at me.
Oxprey had had a ruined and deliberately evil smile. I didn’t believe
had been a conservative (if that’s what you could call his ideas – for
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he seemed to comment very little on morality) and I felt sure that he
was a man of good. It was one of the only ways in which people
and then rationally justify it all afterwards. Maybe I was the same,
- No, Bluey. I’m not going to give you everything. You’re going to
I had then fired a round into the sand next to him. He hadn’t even
flinched.
- You know what, Bluey? I made you who you are today. Honestly.
I created everything that you claim as your own now: your training;
your skills; your prestige…and then you spit it all back in my face.
You’re an individual, Bluey, and that’s fine. But you work against
me. Why? Your reports contradict mine, you sneak around on your
own private missions, you dismiss me, you stalk me in the bush and
then stick my own gun in my face. You think you’re morally superior
to me. That’s right, isn’t it? Well, let me tell you something…
He had been glaring right in my face. His rage had been obvious. I
- …you aren’t better than me. Your ideas are weak, fashioned from
the driftwood and other shifting fancies of long dead believers. I’ve
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blossom, and how it irked me no end. You betrayed me, Bluey.
it had made a lot of sense actually. Oxprey had been right. He had
- What do you fear from me, Oxprey? You fear I’ll replace you soon,
don’t you? I’ve been a bad boy, yes, that’s all true. But that’s not
what’s really bothering you. I’m better than you in the bush,
Oxprey. I’ve tracked enemy squads that you never could, I’ve
gotten into places that you never could. I even tracked the great
Oxprey, and caught him napping. You never would have done
likewise to me.
- Bluey, kill me if you want, but I will still die your superior. I won’t
- I don’t have time for this. Now let me get back to my job, since
He had leaned over, making for the radio that was just out of
- And you did that for what reason, Bluey? We both know who you
are, really. You despise my way of getting things done, maybe the
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- Yes, Bluey, and what of the other accidents since then? And what
about your worst crime…and the very first one you committed? I
found the body, Bluey. Even at that young age you were already
deed out there. But I did. Of course I didn’t know what had
I removed the warped bullet from the poor man’s brain (now that
hadn’t been too hard) and took it back lovingly to the lab. I got a
nice surprise when the result came back…this bullet had been fired
only you. You mustn’t have liked that poor man too much – the
torture you obvious put him through before you finally blew his
- You got a taste for it, didn’t you? You enjoy the power, the ability
That’s why I’m so disappointed with you – you are a killing machine,
been for your ideas. Why, Bluey? Why the hate for what we, you,
are doing?
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- Yes, Bluey, I saw him.
- But you know nothing of why he had to die, do you? You can talk
about what you found all right, but you don’t know what really
- Bluey, don’t shit yourself over it. I’m sure you did what you had
Meant nothing to him? I had thought. That man had meant all in the
He had still been smiling at me. I had pulled the trigger, on his gun.
handful of the sand that had lain loose on the bank of the billabong
and thrown it into the hole in his head. There’s some of your dirt
1
Alone Again
highway. But for now I’d found a banana plantation. I entered it,
brown down at my feet. Hard cuts into flesh on the trunks around
trees ripped apart, blood splattered over those that still stood.
malaise.
the big banana leaves, showing me how dead and finished they
were, looking like the long ragged strands of cancer-sick DNA drunk
With the effort of all my heart did I come out from that plantation.
And walked down a bank into a march of freshly dug graves, set in a
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The repeater now made sense, if there was an action taking place
The air was frigid. It was night and I was alone, after having been