THE Heart OF THE Continent


By

Nancy Cato


The rugged grandeur of the outback the
great red centre of Australia - forms
a dramatic setting for this vivid tale of
life in the first half of the twentieth
century by the author of All the Rivers Run.
Alix Macfarlane comes from a
wealthy home in Adelaide where she is
expected to achieve certain social
ambitions, but she is determined to be a
nurse. Newly qualified, she and her
friend, Mab, go to work in an isolated
outback settlement, learning to cope
with harsh conditions and to understand
the wildness and mystery of this
dangerous desert land.
There Alix meets and marries Jim
Manning, a Queensland cattleman with
a three-thousand square mile property.
She moulds a new life for herself,
founding a clinic for the station's
aborigines despite Jim's opposition.
When Australia enters the First World
War, Alix begs her husband not to enlist,
but he doesn't listen and meets his
death with the Australian Light Horse,
the mounted forces in Palestine.
Alix's only solace is their baby
daughter, Caro, with whom she returns
to Queensland to show her the
windswept land with its commanding
majesty that is her heritage. It is Caro
who will fulfil Alix's dream of bringing
medical care to this disturbing, secretive
country, when she becomes a pilot and
nurse in the newly formed flying
doctor service.
By Nancy Cato and published by New English Library

All the Rivers Run
Forefathers
North-West by South
Brown Sugar
A Distant Island
NANCY CATO

THE NEW ENGLISH LIBRARY


British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data


Cato, Nancy, 1917
The
heart of the continent.
1. Title

823 [F]

ISBN 0-450-40662-8
Copyright © 1989 by Nancy Cato
First published in Great Britain 1989


All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
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a division of Hodder and Stoughton Limited,

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Photoset by Rowland Phototypesetting Limited,
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Printed in Great Britain by Mackay of Chatham PLC, Chatham, Kent.

For Bev and Bronnie, without whose help
this book would never have been finished.

The very heart of the continent and most of the great space we
temporarily inhabit is threatened with destruction . . . Sand blows across
bare tracts where a failure to exercise intelligent restraint has wasted the
land with greedy, reckless overstocking . . . We have placed too much
of it in the hands of men who cannot be trusted to use it well.
Ray West of Centre

Book OneChapter One


"Wait for me! Wa-ai-t!" Laughing, gasping for breath, Alix MacFarlane
ran after her friend, tripping on her long skirt. The grass of the parklands
was as dry and slippery as straw.
"Come on! We'll be late, and old Blue Nose will have us up before
Matron. Can't you hurry?"
"I am hurrying. But I've got a stitch in my side."
They were walking home through the park to the North Adelaide
Hospital, to save the penny tramfare. Their total wages amounted to five
shillings a week, and every penny counted. As probationers they had
received nothing in their first year, only their keep and the privilege of
working a twelve-hour day and learning the occupation of nursing. Now,
in their third year, 1911, they still worked just as long hours, as well as
attending lectures.
"Come on, MacFarlane. It's that Berlin bun you had for tea. You
know you shouldn't have--"
"I know. I couldn't afford it, either. But oh! It was yummy." Alix licked
her lips reminiscently, tasting again the golden, doughy fried dumpling
with its coating of sugar and the slit in the side (saved till last) filled with
cream and raspberry jam.
It was nearing the end of a long hot day in late summer; already the
cooling, blustery "gully wind" was beginning to sweep across the city as
the colder air on the top of the eastward hills began to slide down the
steep gullies to the plains below. The hills, catching the last of the light,
were rounded, smooth, and golden-grassed against the sky, shadowed
with viridian and cobalt. As the girls crossed the parklands, where smaller
trees had been eaten off to the same level above the ground by grazing
cows, the sparse gum-trees began to lash and bend in the strengthening
wind, shedding curved shells of bark and a few twigs of narrow leaves.
"Mab Kingston! Stop a minute!"
. Alix (who had been christened Alexandra) leaned against a smooth
bole, panting, and dragged off her hat. The soft, pale-brown curls, pulled
into a bun at the back of her head, were starting to come down. Her hair
was so fine and silky that she always had trouble anchoring her stiff,
starched, cone-shaped uniform cap on top of it, however many pins she
used. "Old Blue Nose will have to wait. I can't hurry any more."The Sister they called Old Blue Nose was not old, probably no more
than thirty, but to the girls she seemed ancient. She had an unfortunate
tendency to indigestion, which made her bad-tempered, and in the cold
Adelaide winters her usually red nose turned purplish. The young nurses
likened her silent cruising round the ward, looking for faults, to the
cruising of a blue-nosed shark.
Mab came back a few steps and leaned on the other side of the tree,
where small black ants crawled up and down like traffic on a city
thoroughfare.
"We should've spent the penny on the tramfare," she said. "If we get
docked our free time for being late we'll be even worse off."
"I'm sorry, Kingsy. But I had to have a breather."
"All right, little 'un." She squinted down at her fob watch. "We've got
five minutes yet; that includes getting into uniform."
They were nearly there; the hospital grounds adjoined the terrace that
bounded the parklands on this side. Alix smiled at her friend. They were
"Kingston" and "MacFarlane" to each other most of the time, no soft
feminine first names; but though Alix was taller, she was so thin, with a
tiny waist, that patients referred to her as "the little nurse"; and the wiry
Mab, ever protective towards her, often called her "little 'un." Alix's face
was too thin and pointed for beauty, but her soft hair, naturally red lips,
and cornflower-blue eyes caused the unthinking to refer to her as "a pretty
little thing," a phrase she hated.
Mab Kingston had straight, sandy, wiry hair, a rosy complexion, and a wide, straight mouth that looked uncompromising when closed, but
could relax into a cheerful grin in which there seemed to be more than
the normal number of teeth. Patients were scared of her until they saw
her smile.
They raced into the entrance of the nurses' quarters and into the room
they shared, where they flung their outdoor clothes on the floor and were
into their uniforms and running down the tiled corridor fixing their caps
by one minute to six.
"Made it!" muttered Mab out of the corner of her mouth as they glided
decorously into the ward. The evening meal was over and they had only
to do the rounds with supper and medications, hustle the last visitors out
of the ward, take out the flowers, and settle the patients ready for the
night nurse to take over.
They had already worked a nine-hour day, but the regulations said that
they must not work more than three hours without a break. After an early
morning cup of tea they came on duty from six to nine, then had half an
hour for breakfast. Three hours later, at half past twelve, they stopped for
lunch, worked for three hours, and then had two hours off.
At six they were back on duty again till nine, when they usually
snatched a cup of tea and a piece of bread and butter in the ward kitchen before falling, exhausted, into bed. At five-thirty in the morning they had
to be up again, and ready to go on duty at six.
It was not so bad in summer, when the mornings were often the best
time of the day, before the blazing sun rose high above the eastward hills
and beat on the shimmering plain. Even so North Adelaide, being a little
higher than the rest of the city, would catch whatever breeze there might
be.
The hospital's wide verandas, which acted as overflows for the wards,
were provided with canvas blinds that had to be dropped in the afternoons
and rolled up again in the evenings--a process as complicated as hoisting
a sail. The heavy wooden weight, big as a mast, was pulled up by a series
of ropes and pulleys, with the canvas rolled around it. Alix hated coping
with the blinds. She was deft with bandages but no use with anything
that required physical strength and mechanical knowledge. Mab, the
practical one, was her opposite in all things. When Mab attacked the
blinds they seemed to roll themselves into neat sausages, while for Alix
they hung crookedly, half-furled, and drunken-looking.
Twice a week the nursing students had time off for lectures, where they
made notes in exercise books in hurried, cramped writing. Physiology,
anatomy, biology, invalid cookery, dressings, bacteriology, trolley-setting,
bandages. . . . The practical lessons were the best, when they had to turn
out coddled or lightly scrambled eggs, milk jellies and egg custards, or
practise elaborate bandages and splints on the bodies of volunteer
patients.
The worst thing, Alix found, was being treated like a half-witted child
and not being allowed to answer back. By the end of the day her stiff,
starched collar was beginning to chafe her neck. When spoken to by
Sister, etiquette demanded that she stand with her starch-cuffed hands
behind her back, heels together and shoulders straight. Sometimes she
longed to do something outrageous, swear or poke out her tongue; but
she stood there answering meekly, "Yes, Sister. No, Sister."
She remembered how a finicky senior nurse had made her life as a probationer a misery. While Alix was preparing bread and butter for the
patients' supper, the senior would come in, watch critically, and say,
"Don't hold the knife so, Nurse, but so. And when you cut off the crust
begin with the left side first, then turn the bread so, and so, and so. And
don't place your first finger so far down the knife, Nurse."
Shut up, get lost, Alix muttered under her breath, but aloud she said
"Yes, Nurse. Thank you, Nurse." When the senior had gone, she threw
the knife across the pantry, and bolted a piece of bread and butter to force
down the anger in her throat.
At night in their narrow cell with its tall window, two iron bedsteads,
tiled wash-stand and single wardrobe, and a "duchess chest" with swinging
mirror which they had to share, the girls talked about their future, whenthey should have completed their third year of training and become
certificated sisters.
"D'you want to work in a hospital?" asked Mab.
"No! Heaven forbid! Think of the night duty!"
"Think of the Dragon [their name for the Matron] and the Blue-Nosed
Shark. There'd be someone like them in every big hospital, I bet."
"Perhaps a country hospital?" said Alix. "I'd like to see other parts of
Australia. Queensland, the Northern Territory--"
"Too hot."
"Well, Western Australia then."
"Too far."
"Mother will want me to come home to live, and make eyes at a beau,
and put myself on the marriage market," Alix predicted. "I'll have to get
right away from Adelaide."
"At least my old man doesn't care what I do, as long as I'm self
supporting and don't ask him for help," said Mab. Her mother had died
two years before, having been nursed by Mab in her last illness.
"Well, we've got plenty of time to think about it. I'm going to sleep."
And she promptly did so, without a single toss or turn, her healthy,
tired young body shutting off consciousness like a velvet blind until the
alarm clock shrilled at five-thirty next morning.

Chapter Two

Alix's determination to take up nursing had horrified her mother.
"I don't know how you could even contemplate such a thing!
"Your father would never hear of it.
"I certainly don't approve! A nurse is only a glorified servant girl. . . .
And such an indelicate occupation. You would be required to wash men
patients all over. Of course, as a young girl you don't realise quite what
this means, but I assure you the experience could be quite a shock. . . .
How can I face my friends and say my daughter has gone to train as a nurse?"
So, with many verbal underlinings, Mrs. MacFarlane had received the
news of Alexandra's ambition.
What made Frances MacFarlane so bitterly opposed was her own
uncertain position in the tight little circle of Adelaide "Society"; her father
was the brewer of Carter's Lager. When she changed her name from
Carter by marrying Major Robert MacFarlane, retired British Army
officer, she felt her position improved. Her ambition now was for an
official invitation to a Lord Mayor's Ball or a garden party at Government
House.
She was a little round woman with curly dark hair and sharp blue eyes.
The tall and solid Major MacFarlane had found her irresistible, with her
tiny pearly teeth between which she would catch her rosy bottom lip, as
was her habit. He had no family in Australia to disapprove of her
connection with "trade"--not that it mattered in a young community
where the upper crust consisted simply of those who had money, or
property, as against those who had neither. He owned property in the city
besides having an interest in a couple of flour mills in the country.
There had been many battles before Alix finally got her way, for her
mother was as obstinate as she was herself. In vain she claimed that she
had a vocation, a call towards nursing, "almost like the vocation of a nun,"
as she had told her father.
"Good heavens! I hope you haven't got any ideas about entering a
convent!" he said, blowing out his fine, silky moustache with a great
breath.
"No, no, Father; I just want to be a nurse."
"Well, your mother won't hear of it, I'm afraid, and that's that."Alix sulked for a week, but she knew her father would not take her side
against her mother.
A combination of outside events helped her to get her way in the end.
A disastrous fire destroyed her grandfather's brewery, and the bank from
which old Will Carter had borrowed for rebuilding threatened to foreclose.
His daughter Frances could not bear the disgrace if her father should be
declared a bankrupt, so she appealed to her husband to sell his assets in
the city and bail out Carter's Brewery.
Major MacFarlane agreed unwillingly. It was a bad time to be selling
property. Then, when he had realized his assets, little remained after
paying his father-in-law's debts.
"I really don't know," he said gloomily to his wife, "how I'm to keep
my head above water. There's only the income from the two flour mills
left, and with the price of flour dropping every day--"
"This Depression can't last."
"And the upkeep of this big house, and having to pay a manager for
each of the mills. . . . Now if I'd had sons who could take over the
management for me--"
"Robert! It's not fair to throw that in my face now." Frances bit her
bottom lip and dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. It was an old
sorrow; their only son had not lived above a day, and after that a series
of miscarriages had left Frances unable to bear any more children.
Alexandra was their only child. And what sort of a child have I produced!
Frances said to herself in despair. Not interested in young men, no sign
of getting married, and now this mad idea of becoming a nurse. . . .
As though he had heard her thoughts, her husband brushed back his
long moustache with a determined hand.
"And in fact, if Alix is not goin' to get married and take herself off our
hands, she'd better take up this nursing idea. It will give her her keep and
a bit of pocket-money, which I won't be able to afford."
"Robert! You wouldn't give your permission? I should die of shame-- a daughter of mine, washing dirty bedpans!"
"Well, the gel seems set on it as a career. And after all I saved you
from dying of shame, as you said, when I rescued your father from
bankruptcy. Now you'll just have to put up with it."
So Alix, just turned eighteen, enrolled at the North Adelaide Private
Hospital, which her mother thought a little more genteel than the Public
Hospital.
The work was far harder than Alix had expected, but she never seriously
regretted her choice.

"Oh, Nurse!"
An elderly patient called to Alix in a quavering voice. He had just
come back from surgery, and had not yet learned that young Nurse MacFarlane, with her soft blue eyes and pretty hair, concealed beneath
her delicate features a will of iron.
The ward was Men's Surgical; the old man had had twenty-seven
stitches in a badly gashed leg, opened down to the bone by the ironbound
wheel of a runaway cart.
"Nurse, can I 'ave a 'ot-water bottle? I got the ducks an' drakes somethin'
cruel," he said, shivering exaggeratedly.
"Now, Mr. Barrett, you know we aren't allowed to give hot-water
bottles to patients just back from the theatre. Didn't you ask Sister Bryant
before she went off duty?"
"Yairs; but I thort--"
"It's a safety precaution in case you're still sleepy from the anaesthetic.
If you're unconscious a hot-water bottle could burn you badly without
your being aware of it."
"Yair, but I ain't unconscious, am I?"
"I'm sorry. I'll get you another blanket instead."
"Cripes, you nurses is 'ard-'earted," he complained.
"Is your leg keeping you awake? Sister left you a sedative if you need
it."
"Na, don't like takin' them sleeping pills. I'll be right."
Alix went to the window and looked down at the deserted grounds of
the North Adelaide Hospital. It was early in the morning and she was on
night duty, gliding about with a small lamp, administering a cool compress
here, a glass of water there.
One of the men, a solid, muscular bushman with a nose that looked
as if it had been broken, had been admitted with liver damage from a
prolonged drinking bout. He suddenly went into delirium tremens,
shouting that there were snakes in his bed.
"Mr. Wilkins! Calm down now, you are disturbing the other patients."
He glared at her with no comprehension in his wild glance, and threw
back the sheet.
"Mr. Wilkins! You are not to get out of bed."
He thrust her slight frame aside and ran towards the windows, two
floors above the ground. "'Ave ter get out of 'ere!" he yelled. "They're
after me--snakes--devils--!"
Alix ran and got between him and the windows. "Mr. Wilkins--listen
to me! The snakes are gone now. Look!"
He paused and a light of dawning intelligence showed in his bloodshot
eyes. "Gone? They'll be back, don't you worry."
"What colour were they?"
"Eh? Red--and purple, and yeller, with big fangs."
"Well, they're gone now. Come and I'll make you a cup of tea in the
pantry."
She did not dare take her eyes off him."Nurse!" came a whisper from Mr. Barrett. "D'you want me to tackle im?
"No, no, you know you're not allowed to walk yet."
"Well, you yell if you need help."
She tried to calm the patient with a cup of weak tea, but as he reached
for the cup his eyes began to roll wildly. He started back, and struck the
cup from her hand.
"It's no good! They're gunna get me!" he yelled. He grabbed a sharp
knife from the sink and with his other hand ripped open his pyjama
jacket. "I might as well end it now," he muttered, gesturing towards his
bare chest.
With desperate strength Alix grasped his wrist, "Give me that knife!"
But he shook her off and backed away from her. With a trembling
hand she mixed a Seidlitz powder into some milk.
"Here, Mr. Wilkins. Drink this. It's guaranteed to drive away demons."
"Yair, but what about snakes?"
"Snakes, too. Drink up."
This time he took the cup and drained it, though he kept the knife
pointed menacingly towards her. She looked quickly at the fob watch
pinned to the front of her uniform. Three a.m.--it would be three hours
before she could expect any help.
Alix went to a cupboard where games, jigsaws and packs of cards were
kept for the patients. She took out a pack of cards.
"Mr. Wilkins! D'you remember you told me you were good at cards?
What about a game of euchre?"
"Eh?" Once again the dazed look of half-comprehending came back
to his ruined face.
She sat down at the night sister's table and cleared it of papers. Then
she shuffled the cards and started to deal two hands. The man came
unwillingly to watch. He sat down in the chair opposite and picked up
his hand, but kept the knife close beside him on the table.
"Ha! A right bower," he gloated, then shot her a look of suspicion. "I
shouldn't 'a told you that, should I?"
She ignored him and began to play, first taking the notepad and pencil
that dangled from her waist and putting them ready for scoring. She
prayed he would have good cards.
After half an hour he had become absorbed in the game--she let
him win most of the time. He seemed to have given up all ideas of
self-destruction, when he began to get restless again. He picked up the
knife.
"Get away! get away!" he yelled suddenly, kicking at something on
the floor.
"What is it, Mr. Wilkins?"
"Ruddy great centipede, that's what!"
Alix had a horror of centipedes. She looked under the desk with a
shudder. There was nothing there.
"No, no ... that's not a centipede. . . . You didn't know I had the
joker, did you?"
"Eh?" The vague, puzzled look came back into his eyes. She judged
it was safe to risk moving away.
"Let's have another cup of tea, and then you'd better get back to bed."
"No! It's full o' snakes."
"I'll make sure the snakes are all gone."
Reassured by the quiet murmur of their voices over the cards, most of
the patients had gone back to sleep, except the one who had offered
assistance.
Now he asked in a stage whisper, "You want help in getting 'im back
to bed, Nurse?"
"I'll be all right, Mr. Barrett. He's much calmer now."
"Well, you're game as Ned Kelly!"
For a moment she saw herself as if looking at a scene from outside,
and she was amazed. Here she was in the middle of the night, playing
euchre with a crazed patient by the dim light of the one lamp, with a
ward full of incapacitated men and no help within call. She ought to be
terrified, but her main fear was that the patient might do himself an
injury.
"Eh, what about giving 'im my sleeping medicine?" Mr. Barrett
whispered.
"Good idea."
She mixed the powder into a cup of tea, and at last got the patient back
to bed.

The next day Mr. Barrett tried to tell Matron, on her morning rounds,
of the bravery of the "little nurse."
"She should be given a medal, that's what."
"I'm sure Nurse MacFarlane was only doing her duty, Mr. Barrett."
"Yes, but she kept her head and calmed 'im down, big hulking brute. Hours she played cards with him, till she got 'im back to bed."
He glared across at the shape of Wilkins, now thoroughly sedated and
snoring heavily. Alix had gone off duty. It was not until the next week
that she learned Mr. Barrett had whipped round the ward for a suitable
present for her, and had put in the biggest contribution himself.
She was back on duty a week later, and re-bandaging Mr. Barrett's leg,
when he handed her a little packet. "Got my brother to get it engraved
for you," he said. "Just a little reward for bravery, like."
"But Mr. Barrett ..." She unwrapped the tissue paper and found a
piece of notepaper wrapped round a small silvered medal with her name
and "Oct. 19" on one side, and "For bravery" on the other. The paperwas inscribed in Mr. Barrett's best copperplate: "To Nurse MacFarlane,
with the best wishes of Ward 7, in recognition of her brave action when
alone in the Ward and faced with a patient suffering from the D.T.s."
She was embarrassed, but she thanked him and slipped the medal into
her pocket.
Later that morning she had to accompany Matron on her morning
rounds of the ward, as it was Sister Bryant's morning off. The surgeon,
that godlike man, would be doing the rounds with Matron, and Alix felt
her palms grow damp, her mouth go dry with fear and excitement. Just
to see Dr. Hamilton in the distance made her heart turn over. He was
not young, for the fair hair had receded from his high, broad forehead,
but he was an imposing figure, tall and broad-shouldered, in his white
coat, and he carried himself with the conscious dignity of one whose
word was law, before whom medical students quailed and ward sisters
became obsequious.
"Are you ready for rounds, Nurse?" came Matron's crisp tones. Her
bosom jutted out to an extraordinary distance under the starched white
uniform, giving Matron's figure the appearance of a schooner in full sail
before a following wind. (The young nurses had a theory, quite unjustified
by science, that this mammary overdevelopment had been caused by
"thrills"--unspecified, but to do with adventures with men in her youth.)
Dr. Hamilton accompanied Matron, and they proceeded round the
ward with Alexandra a few deferential steps behind.
"Well, Jack, how's the leg?" asked Dr. Hamilton, when they stopped
at Mr. Barrett's bed.
"Orright. I'll be out of 'ere in no time."
"Well, we'll see about that."
His long, sensitive fingers were deftly unwinding the bandage, which
went the length of the man's lower leg.
"That's an excellent reverse spiral," he said approvingly as he unlapped
the rounds of bandage, each with a sharp turn or fold at the front of the
shin, and each exactly above the next fold. "Who was responsible?"
Alix gulped, but no sound came from her throat.
"Nurse?" said Matron sharply.
"I--I was, Dr. Hamilton."
"Good work, Nurse."
"Thank you, sir." Alix's cheeks were pink, her soft blue eyes luminous
with adoration, but the doctor did not look at her. He was examining the
suture with a pleased expression. "I did a very neat job here, though I say
it myself. It was a nasty gash."
"Yes, Doctor," murmured Matron.
Alix went about her work for the rest of the day singing inside, though
she didn't dare sing aloud. The great Dr. Hamilton had noticed her!
(Well, he'd noticed her bandage.)
That night she burned the light late and kept Mab awake while she
read her "bible," as Mab called it--the well-thumbed 1900 edition of Modem Methods in Nursing.
Under "Bathing--the Bed-Bath" she read, "The chest and abdomen
dried and covered, the genitals are carefully washed under cover. In many
cases patients are able to do this for themselves with some little assistance
from the nurse. With helpless or unconscious patients it must not be
neglected from a false notion of delicacy, the skin in these parts becoming
easily inflamed and sore from the natural secretions, unless kept scrupulously
clean."
Her mother would have a fit! Mrs. MacFarlane was full of false notions
of delicacy, so much so that she had left Alexandra to discover the facts
of menstruation for herself, so that she spent two days of panic before a
school-friend enlightened her.
" 'Care of the Back--Prevention and Treatment of Bedsores,'" she read.
"For Pete's sake, MacFarlane! Do you have to read out loud?"
"Oh! Sorry."
Alix read on silently, but forming the words with her lips so as to
memorize them.
"After the daily bath, the back, hips, and other points of pressure
should be rubbed with alcohol and dusted with powder. Besides pressure
from the weight of the body, the common causes of bedsores are moisture,
wrinkles in the bedclothes, crumbs in the bed, want of cleanliness, and
bruising from the careless placing of a bedpan. ..."
"Crumbs!" murmured Alix.
"What?"
"Crumbs in the bed! A cause of bedsores. Can you imagine Sister if
she found crumbs in a patient's bed?"
"Hardly! She would faint with shock and horror."
"Listen: 'From earliest days pupils should be taught quiet and dignified
behaviour while at their work. ... No conversation on personal topics
should be allowed in the wards, and no raised voices or noisy movements.'"
"And
no reading aloud in bed after work! Put the lamp out and go to
sleep."
Alix did so, and placed the heavy book under the bed. But she did not
go straight to sleep. She lay awake pursuing one of her fantasies about
Dr. Hamilton. In one she rescued him from in front of a bolting horse,
bravely leaping up and catching the maddened animal by its bridle. He
then thanked her tenderly, bowing his big fair head to kiss her hand. . . .
In another scenario, desperate with unrequited love she flung herself
before a horse-tram and was brought, dying, to the hospital for him to
operate on. She let him know that it was for his sake she had suffered this
fate, because she could not bear his indifference. Then, stricken withremorse, he made a superhuman effort and saved her with a successful
operation. And then, and then . . . but at this stage she dropped off to
sleep.

Chapter Three

In June 1911 Alix and Mab graduated together as fully trained nurses.
They each received a purple-enamelled Maltese Cross along with their
certificates. They were photographed in the group of their year, in their
pale blue uniforms buttoned down the front, without their white pinafores,
and wearing the tall blue velvet caps and blue velvet capes that made up
their dress uniform.
Alix was glad the long grind of probation and study were over; but she
realized with a sinking feeling that she would probably never see Dr.
Hamilton again, unless she could be admitted for urgent surgery, and
become his patient. But she felt extremely healthy.
She would never love anyone else, she felt sure, and she meant to
dedicate herself to relieving mankind's suffering and tending the sick. She
didn't want to specialize in midwifery or child nursing, though Mab had
decided to enrol at the Queen Victoria maternity hospital for six months.
Alix, after working part-time at a private hospital, was impatient to nurse
under the most difficult conditions and in the most distant places.
When she met Mab on the Beehive Corner for an ice-cream soda, she
was full of suppressed excitement. She had read the report of a lecture by
John Flynn, the Presbyterian minister who had been on a travelling
mission in the outback with camels. He spoke of his plans to establish
something he called the Australian Inland Mission, to open the first of a
chain of hostels through the loneliest parts of Australia, staffed by trained
nurses. Alix decided to apply. Mab had finished her midwifery and was
"specialling" an elderly patient; they could both get away.
"How's your patient?" Alix asked when they were seated in front of
their drinks.
"Crotchety as ever. I don't think I can stand it much longer. He's
impossible."
"Good!" said Alix.
"MacFarlane, you're up to something, I can tell. When your eyes have
that blue innocent look, I beware."
"Well, you see . . . Listen, Kingsy, there's a most marvellous opportunity
for two trained nurses to run a hostel in the far north of South
Australia. Remember I told you about the A.I.M. . . .?"
And she launched into an enthusiastic description of the isolatedoutpost where they would be entirely alone, without a doctor nearer than
three hundred miles away.
"I've written to arrange an interview. But you have to come too. Their
letter says, 'In such an isolated place, it is most important that the two
appointees are compatible.' It's at Hergott Springs, that used to be the
terminus of the northern railway before it was extended to Oodnadatta.
It sounds just perfect for us."
Mab said teasingly, "What, you're asking me to leave the flesh-pots of
the city, for heat and dust-storms and Aboriginal kids with runny noses
and ringworm? You must be mad."
Nevertheless, before they parted Alix had Mab's promise to think about
it. A week later she wrote, "Free at last! I've told the old curmudgeon I'm
leaving. He immediately had a turn for the worse, on purpose I believe.
But I can get away in a month."
Alix enrolled at a dental clinic and learned something about extractions.
The more qualifications they had the better their chance of acceptance.
In three weeks they had their interview, conducted by a dour Presbyterian
minister who painted a daunting picture of the hardships that awaited
them.
"There's one hotel at Hergott Springs, and a store, and that's about it.
Apart from the springs themselves, which are mineral water, and of course
the railway station. The town's a railhead for cattle which are droved
down the notorious Birdsville Track, ye'll have heard of that, a real
perisher--"
Seeing Alix's face alight with interest, he gave her a sharp glance from
under his sandy brows. "And I hope ye're no' looking on this as just a
wee adventure," he said severely. "It will mean work, hard and lonely
work in deeficult conditions--"
"Don't worry, it's the nursing which interests us."
"Aye. That's settled, then. We'll send your train-tickets next month--
second class, I fear. The appointment is for two years, when you will be
relieved. . . . Weel, that seems to be all."
He rose and shook their hands. For the first time a smile warmed his
frosty face.
"Ye're a pair o' brave lassies, and I wish ye the best for the future as
A.I.M. Sisters. It's grand work ye'll be doing."
Outside Alix danced along the pavement. They had the job! They
would be travelling north in the fabled '"Ghan," the little steam train
named after the Afghan camel drivers, along the line pioneered by the
teams who helped build the Overland Telegraph Line all the way north
to Darwin. They in turn had followed in the steps of the explorers, lured
northwards by the shimmer of vast blue lakes which turned out to be dry
clay-pans filled with salt.
She went home to break the news to her mother.
"Going to the far north! Out in the bush!" Frances cried when
Alix informed her of the appointment. "A young girl, alone and unchaperoned--"
"Not alone, Mother. My friend Mab Kingston is coming too."
"Well, two young girls, then. I've never heard of such a thing--"
"Mother, I am twenty-two years old and a trained nurse. I'm not a
child any more."
"No, and you should be thinking about getting married," said Mrs.
MacFarlane, changing her tack. "You'll soon be an old maid at this rate.
Your father and I were looking forward to our grandchildren, and now--"
"I certainly don't intend to get married until I've seen a bit of Australia
and used my nursing skills where they'll be most useful. It would be
wicked just to get married and waste three years of training and all that
I've learned."
"I can't see that at all."
"No; well, we don't see eye to eye on most things, do we?"
"Oh! You're impossible, Alexandra." And her mother swept away with
an indignant rustle of her taffeta skirts.
Now, in her bedroom at home, in the eastern suburbs just below the
curve of the Adelaide Hills--what was known as the foothills, though it
was in fact a sloping plain little higher than the rest of the city--Alix took
her "bravery" medal out of her drawer and looked at it. She didn't have
a silver chain suitable for hanging it round her neck, and anyway it would
have embarrassed her. What to do with it? She felt she couldn't just throw
it away.
She looked out the window at the round hills, still green with last
winter's rains, grazed by sheep into a series of tiny terraces as they moved
around the face of the hill. She put away the "citation" from Mr. Barrett
carefully, wrapped the medal in a piece of tissue paper, and put it in the
pocket of her skirt.
"I'm just going for a walk, Mother," she called.
"Where? If you're going down to the corner shops, you can get me--"
"No, I'm just going for a walk. It's such a lovely sunny afternoon."
At the top of their street houses gave way to empty paddocks, not yet
subdivided. Then she was on the lower flanks of the hills, striding
vigorously, leaning forward against the slope. Small sticks and prickles
did not cling to the firm weave of her long gabardine skirt, which she
now kilted up above her ankles.
She would not look round, though she was aware through the corner
of her eye of the suburbs, the flat plains, dropping away below her. She
wanted to get to the very top before she looked.
A strong wind buffeted her suddenly, and the green turf flattened out
before her feet. She had climbed one of the lower slopes of Mount
Osmond, and now at about eight hundred feet found herself at its summit.A few lichened rocks protruded in grey slabs from the grass, and hard dry
sheep-dung rolled under her feet. She turned, the wind in her hair, and
gasped with delight.
The Adelaide Plains stretched out before her, close and yet far below,
to the pale blue line of the Gulf to the west, the smoky chimneys of Port
Adelaide. House-roofs looked near enough for her to bounce a pebble off
them, yet she knew the nearest must be a mile away. Some grey clouds
bunched about the westering sun, but a single ray shone through and lit
the grass to brilliant emerald.
She looked at that effulgent ray with a feeling of superstitious awe. She
had come here to dedicate herself to God and suffering humanity. She
began circling, picking up grey stones with some clay attached to them,
breaking off weathered pieces of quartzite from the outcrops, and piling
them together. She took the medal from her pocket, made a little cache
for it in the ground, and built her cairn on top.
Then she knelt on the short turf, raised her arms to that dramatic sky,
and dedicated herself to her career.
"O God," she prayed, "make me unselfish and single-minded, and
give me the gift of healing. I promise to go wherever I shall be called. . . .
Amen."
She half-expected an answer from Heaven, a wisp of flame on her
cairn, a thunderclap from a clear sky, something. But the gold ray faded,
the clouds moved away and left a sky like a clear blue lake, and in the
pauses of the wind she heard the melancholy "baa-aa" of the grazing
sheep moving below the hilltop.
Feeling a little deflated, she began a swift, stiff-legged, jolting run down
the slope. She spread her arms as though flying, and then, overcome by
high spirits and the wide sunny prospect below, she lay down and rolled.
She ended up, breathless, against a small tree, with a piece of rock sticking
into her back. She had torn one of her black cotton stockings on a thistle
--oh well, it wouldn't show, it was well above the hem of her skirt.
She arrived home ravenous, with glowing cheeks, feeling she had
passed an important milestone in her life. Frances MacFarlane looked at
her daughter sourly.
"What on earth have you been doing, Alexandra? There are bits of
dried thistle in your hair!" She added grimly, "Your father wants to see
you in his study." This was her term for the small room which was really
an office; the Major studied little there but accounts and share prices and
the price of flour.
"Now, my gel," he said as Alexandra appeared, demurely dressed in a
blue poplin skirt and white shirtwaist with a high collar. "Harumph!" He
coughed unnecessarily to give himself time to think. "Er--your mother
thinks, she tells me, you have some idea of going off into the wilds on
this nursing caper--"
"Father, I--"
"Hear me out, if you please. Business is looking up, and I'm now in a
position to launch you in society, with a dance to open the season or
whatever she considers necessary."
"And what about what I consider necessary? I'm grown up, I can decide
what I want for myself. Look, Father, I've been out in the real world,
dealing with life and death, with people, not 'social acquaintances.' I
don't want--"
"Your mother has set her heart on this, Alexandra. I'm afraid if you
cross her it may affect her health."
"Don't worry about Mother. She's tough. She's wiry like me. You can
bend and twist us as much as you like, but we won't break." She knew
he didn't care twopence for the dance, he just wanted to make his wife
happy.
"You see, Father, 'this nursing caper,' as you call it, is my whole life,
and I intend to carry on with it."
"Not in some far northern town, I hope. We'll miss our girl, you
know."
He looked so despondent that she jumped up and gave him a kiss.
"Cheer up. It's not for a while yet, and I'll still be in South Australia."
Yes, but out there in the back of beyond, she thought, the red centre,
the Never Never, that was where they would be going; beyond that
mysterious blue plain to the northward whence came in summer the
scorching breath, the red dust haze of the vast inland. She could not wait
to see it.



Chapter Four

The little train was travelling due north over a barren plain. Dried grasses
grew along the edge of the line where a rare thunderstorm had caused
water to collect below the edge of the permanent way. Among them were
some clumps of white everlasting daisies.
The third occupant of the compartment climbed down from her bunk,
rubbing her eyes, glanced out the window, and her tousled orange hair
seemed to stand on end.
"Gawd! Look at it! Will you just look at it?" She appealed to the
others.
"Yes. It's immense, isn't it?" said Alix.
"Just miles and miles of bloody desert! I hope it ain't like this where
we're going."
"I'm afraid so, only more so. What did they tell you at the employment
agency in Adelaide?"
"Just--just that I was needed to be a plain cook, nothing fancy, at a
hotel somewhere up north. Hergott Springs. I thought it sounded nice,
sort of. I mean, springs--it must be fairly green, with plenty of water.
Though they told me it was a hot place."
Alix and Mab exchanged a glance. "Did they tell you the springs were
hot?" asked Mab.
"Eh?"
"Artesian water. It's hot where it bubbles out of the ground. And you
can't drink it!"
"And all around the town is gibber plain and sandy desert. I hope
there'll be some trees, but somehow I doubt it. Maybe date palms, like
an oasis, you know."
"Gawd! What have I let meself in for?"
It was late morning when they pulled into the station at Hergott Springs
after two days of travel.
The carroty-haired cook was sitting at the window in a state of shock.
She said not a word, but stared out at the blowing dust.
A cheerful, large-limbed, broad-faced man whose leathery cheeks
creased into deep gullies when he smiled, appeared at the compartment
door.
"You the new A.I.M. Sisters?" he asked. "I was told you'd be on this train and I've brought the buggy to meet you. Mounted Constable Jack
McGuinnes. Welcome to the Springs."
He shook their hands. His grip was firm and strong.
"These your bags?"
They said yes, then indicated the English cook, who was sitting
numbly looking out at a group of Aboriginal men in cast-off clothing
standing on the far platform to watch the train come in.
"Oh, yes, they're expecting you at the pub, they'll be along in a
minute," said Constable McGuinnes.
He led the two Sisters into what appeared to be the main, or only,
street, a wide dusty expanse occupied by two goats. At the far end, outside
the two-storied hotel with its upstairs balcony running right round, four
camels attached to a cart were tethered and a blue dog slumbered in the
dust.
The policeman's cart was two-camel power, a conventional buggy with
special heavy-duty shafts and harness for the camels in front.
Alix and Mab looked askance at these large, rather supercilious creatures,
who were chewing the cud and looking disdainfully over their
heads. One gave a roaring cry, showing long yellow teeth. Alix started
back nervously.
"Don't be scared," said Constable McGuinnes with a laugh. "I travel
with camels all the time on my regular patrol, and I've become quite
fond of 'em."
The Constable was a huge man, at least six feet two, Alix thought, and
he must weigh about fifteen stone. He had strong black brows that almost
met in the centre of his forehead.
"They get a bit cranky at times, but there's really no harm in them."
"You mean they won't bite?"
"Not usually. But it's wiser always to walk up to a strange camel with
your hands behind your back, and let him 'kiss' your face, or at least sniff
it." Just then the nearer camel turned its head toward her, opened its
mouth to show a set of great ugly yellow teeth, and gave a complaining
roar.
"No, thank you!" said Alix, and walked carefully round the beast.
Jack McGuinnes handed her up almost reverently. He was already
smitten by her cornflower-blue eyes and the soft brown curls showing
under the grey, wide-brimmed washing hat. It was part of her travelling
uniform, worn with a long-skirted dress of plain grey linen, now sadly
crumpled. Mab was dressed exactly the same, but with her small grey
eyes with their sandy lashes and her ruddy cheeks she did not appeal to
him like the other one. Alix was so slim, so fresh-looking in this rough
outpost of few white women: the mailman's wife, thin and wiry, her hair
like dry straw; old Mrs. Allison the storekeeper, seventy years old if she
was a day.Alix and Mab stared about them. Here and there a stunted shrub
outside a house struggled along on a diet of washing-up water; or a few
hardy native trees, too dusty for greenness and too thin for shade, survived
inside fences.
"I am determined to grow a garden!" announced Mab.
It seemed a wild idea. Most of the houses lined up facing the railway line
had no fences, and goats had eaten everything. The Constable explained
that the artesian water that was pumped to the town from the springs half a
mile away was not fit to drink, though it was all right for stock.
"It's not really hot here, not like further into the Artesian Basin. But
vegetables won't thrive on bore water. You save your washing-up water
and any other scrap of tank water, and use that," he said.
He pulled up the camel-buggy opposite the hostel. An old building of
local stone rebuilt by the A.I.M., it had only two rooms for patients, then
a living-room and bedroom for the Sisters, a dispensary, and a big kitchen.
The roof was of galvanized iron, the new iron glittering in the sun with
an unbearable glare. And along the front was a veranda enclosed with
fly-wire.
"Oodoo," said Jack McGuinnes to his camels. "Hey, Potwalloper,
Rocket!" He helped the two girls to the bare ground. "I've just got in from
a short patrol, and they've been on their feet all night," he said. The
camels chewed the cud and looked disdainfully into the distance.
"I'll get a fire alight in the kitchen for you, and take your bags in." He
picked up a clothing trunk and a cane travelling basket in each huge fist,
and led the way. Mab and Alix looked at each other in unspoken dismay.
Not a tree, not a green leaf, just some dirty papers caught in a sagging
wire-netting fence in the midst of the orange dust. Beyond, across the
wide bare road, the railway lines gleamed into the distance. This was
their new home.
It was Mab who discovered the cellar, and the mesh safe full of good
things--corned beef, goats' milk, eggs, home-made bread--which the
townspeople had put there to welcome the new Sisters. In the kitchen
was a Coolgardie safe, which they proceeded to make operable by filling
its troughs with cold water. Mab had been used to one of these ingenious
coolers at home. Strips of hessian hung over the mesh sides of the safe
into a tray of water, and continuous evaporation made the contents cool.
The cupboards were filled with necessities, tea, coffee, sugar, flour,
and the woodbox was full. Jack McGuinnes regretfully refused a cup of
tea. The girls took theirs in the living-room, where there were cane chairs
with floral cushions which gave an air of comfort.
They saluted each other solemnly with tea with goats' milk.
"To us!" said Mab.
"To us!"
In the next few days most of the townspeople dropped in to "have a
geek at" the new Sisters. The mailman's wife, Mrs. Crombie, brought
a home-made chocolate cake, and invited them over for afternoon
tea.
The hotel proprietor brought a crate of soft drinks, lemonade and
soda-water, a gift for the hostel. Others called on various excuses, were
given a cup of tea, and remarked on how wonderful it would be to have
two trained nurses at hand, instead of the nearest being two hundred
miles away at Port Augusta.
Alix and Mab decided to divide their duties by taking turn-abouts to
be cook. Alix was nurse for two weeks while Mab did the cooking; then
they changed over and Mab became nurse. It gave them a break, and
worked out very well.

Their very first casualty turned out to be a youth with a nasty camel
bite on his hand. He was the woodman's "offsider", Joe; they had to go
farther and farther afield for their load of mulga and dead-finish, as the
sparse timber around the town was eaten out by goats or cut down for
firewood. There was a ten-mile radius of common where anyone could
run goats or camels, but little was to be found there but sand, clay, and
gibbers. The strings of camels which used to do all the carting of stores
had eaten it out, but there were fewer of them now, as the original camel
men grew too old, and the younger men left for larger towns or the
southern city.
The camel-bite, which had started to turn septic, looked nasty. Mab
bathed it in boiled water with antiseptic, and made a bread poultice with
one of the fresh loaves delivered from the train to "draw" the poison.
"Don't use all our bread ration," said Alix. "Remember there'll be no
more for a week."
"I expect we can borrow a loaf from the pub. At least we know the
cook." Mab expertly twisted the cloth wrung out of boiling water by the
ends, so that the bread was squeezed almost dry. She reassured the thin,
scared-looking boy (was he part Aboriginal?--she thought not, though
he was burnt a deep tan by the inland sun) that she was not going to hurt
him. "I won't put this on till it's cool enough not to burn you. But it
must be hot. You tell me when you can bear it."
He winced, but bravely let her wrap the hot poultice round his hand,
followed by a strip of flannel and an oil-cloth cover. Alf the woodman
called in his four-camel cart to see how the boy was doing.
'Joe can go home, but he'll have to come in to have his hand dressed
every day," Mab told him. "And he mustn't use it--lucky it's the left.
I'm going to put the arm in a sling."
"Silly young codger. I told 'im not to put 'is 'and out, like you would
to an 'orse. The camel didn't know 'im, see, and it was nervous-like ...""I think I'd be 'nervous-like' if I had to work around camels," said
Mab.
Joe gave her a shy smile and thanked her as he left. He had told her
he had no family in Hergott Springs but boarded at the hotel. He had
come north looking for adventure and to work outdoors. He couldn't save
any money because the hotel took all his pay for board. But the meals
were good.
"The cook's all right, is she?" said Alix, when Mab told her this. "You
can never tell by appearances. We should go over on Sunday for a treat.
Might be a roast dinner."
"Yes, I bet they have a roast, even in this heat. And a steamed pudding
with custard to follow."
So as there were no in-patients and they had time on their hands, they
took off their uniforms on Sunday. Alix put on a light muslin gown, Mab
a tusser skirt and white pleated blouse.
They were dusty and perspiring by the time they had walked to the
hotel, the biggest building in the town apart from the old Overland
Telegraph Station.
"Roast mutton and veges., two," sang the young part-Aboriginal waitress
through the hatchway into the kitchen. When carrying orders in both
hands she pushed the swing door open with an expert thrust of her
rounded hip.
She set down two steaming plates of meat, roast pumpkin, potato and
gravy in front of the Sisters. "Would they have got mutton off the train,
and how would they keep it for a week?" asked Alix doubtfully.
"I've seen no sheep about here."
As Mab took her first mouthful of meat she looked thoughtful. "H'm.
Roast goat, I would say. But it tastes rather like mutton, if a bit dryer."
"Y'having dessert?" asked the girl from the other side of the table.
"Oh--er--, yes, I think so."
"Both of youse?"
"Both."
"Pudding two," yelled the waitress at the window.
She soon came back with two white bowls of steamed yellow pudding
with custard. "I told you!" said Mab triumphantly. "Good plain English
cooking, never mind the temperature."
"Just think what the temperature must be in the kitchen, with the wood
stove going."
They had been going to call in and say hallo to the cook, but on second
thoughts decided that she would hardly be feeling sociable at such a time.
The dining room held several other guests, including Joe, to whom they
waved, and the Constable, who evidently hadn't a wife in the town.
He had nodded and smiled when they first came in, and now he came
across to their table and asked, "Mind if I bring my cup of tea over and have it with you two? It's not often I get a chance to sit at a table with
ladies."
"No, please do."
"By all means."
He dropped his wide-brimmed hat on the floor beside his chair and sat
down.
A cup of tea followed dinner as night follows day. The waitress brought
theirs without even asking.
They exchanged some small talk, the Constable's brown face showing
his delight in this unexpected socializing. Then Mab remarked, "We
don't see many Aborigines about the town, yet there was quite a group
on the railway station, when we first arrived."
"No, the blacks live over the railway line--east of the town. So do the
Afghans."
"Afghans?"
"Yes, the remaining camel-men; some of them travelled with explorers
like McKinley and Larry Wells; some of them are hawkers, or descendants
of hawkers, and some still take stores out along the Strzelecki Track, to
Innamincka."
"We haven't seen them, either."
"I'll take you over to meet Abdul Dervish if you like. He's Muhammadan,
of course--they hold their Sunday on a Friday. They're most
law-abiding people, I never have any trouble with the men."
"But you do with the Aborigines?"
"Only minor things usually--cattle spearing or sheep stealing. Drunkenness,
occasionally. Sometimes there's a fight and someone gets killed.
Or a couple of white men get on the rum in a lonely camp, and one kills
the other in a drunken brawl. I hardly ever see any real crime."
"And where do you go on your regular beat?" asked Alix.
"South almost to the Flinders Ranges, north to the Diamantina, and east
to the border fence. My district covers about four thousand square miles."
He laughed at their dropped jaws.
"I go on month-long patrols, with two native police."
"In that camel-buggy we rode in?"
"Yair. Only way to travel up here, or by riding camel. Camels can live off the land, bushes and shrubs and trees, where a horse would starve;
and there's no fodder, except in a good season when the kangaroo-grass
grows. It's too expensive to bring it up from the south."
He entertained them with stories of his lonely patrols, of the perishers
he had been sent out to find, usually too late to find them alive. "You
know, you'd be interested in this, as nurses," he said earnestly, wrinkling
his brow under the rough dark-brown hair. "When a man perishes in the
desert, after a few weeks the flesh parts from the bones as it dries, quite
cleanly. It's a strange sight.""I'm sure," said Alix, glancing at Mab and pushing her pudding plate
farther away. "I'm glad you didn't give us the gruesome details before we
ate our dehydrated goat."
"Hell, I mean, heck, I'm sorry, ladies. I didn't think. Not used to
dinner-table conversation."
"That's all right, Constable. It's just that we're new chums," said Mab.
"We realize that this is a hard country."
"It's a wide open country, and that's why I like it. Couldn't stand being
hemmed in by trees and hills. Give me the desert and a wide horizon. I
wouldn't want to live anywhere else. Except perhaps Innamincka, on
Cooper's Creek, where there's a permanent waterhole."
"We've seen nothing yet, except from the train."
"Haven't seen the Springs? I'll take you later on this afternoon when it
gets a bit cooler."
The Constable was without his tunic--sensible man! thought Mab-- and the sleeves of his khaki shirt were rolled up, showing his brown
forearms. When he smiled, his grey-green eyes disappeared in a fan of
wrinkles. Not young; in his late thirties or early forties, perhaps. But it
was hard to tell; everyone who had been up here for long had aged,
weather-beaten skin.
"Well, shall we go?"
They stood up, Alix turned towards the door--and stood in the middle
of his official hat.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she said, trying not to laugh, her blue eyes dancing.
"But it is rather a large hat."
"Think nothing of it," said Jack McGuinnes gallantly. "I shall treasure
this hat now," he added, punching the crown out again and putting it on
his head for safety.
Out in the wide dusty expanse of street, bordered by houses on one
side and the railway line on the other, a willy-willy danced, whirling up
dust and debris into the pale-blue sky. A flat-topped tent hill seemed to
float in the distance, beneath it a beautiful sheet of blue, shimmering
water. As they looked, the hill divided into three, became elongated,
and appeared as three dark-blue towers on the horizon, wavering and
changing.
"Mirage," said the Constable laconically. "That's how the first explorers
thought Lake Torrens and Lake Frome were full of water. They still
colour them blue on the map."

He called for them later and they walked out to the main spring. The
water lay in a circular pool ringed by a wall of dark mineral deposits built
up over the years. There was a windmill to raise the water to a gravity
tank for the town supply and for the cattle-troughs for watering travelling
stock.
Mab climbed the crusted ring of mineral deposits and scooped some
of the clear green water into her hand. "It looks a lot more appetizing
than that muddy stuff in the underground tanks," she said. She tasted it,
then gave a good swallow. "It tastes all right too, if you hold your breath
and don't smell it."
"Well, don't be misled by that. If you drink much of it you'll be sorry."
"But it isn't poison. Or the cattle couldn't drink it."
"No-o. It will just give you a bad case of the trots."
"Oh!"
He held out his big hand to help her down. Mab ignored it and jumped
down by herself.
Away across the level plain, as they returned to the main street, the
sun was setting in a crimson ball. It was like a sunset at sea--nothing to
break the horizon's rim in any direction, except for a few low tent-hills
like the hulls of ships. But away to the southwest the Willouran Range,
just within the bounds of sight, glowed pink and purple in the last rays.
To the east, a great gold full moon rose as the sun set. The west began
to glow apricot, merging into a clear, cold after-sunset sky, more green
than blue. The pure arch of sky descended all round them like the interior
of a tinted glass bowl.
"I've never seen such a moon!" exclaimed Alix, who had been staring
silently, her breath held in wonder. "It's clear as honey, and so huge and
close you would think it was resting on the rim of the earth, that if you
were over there you could reach up and touch it."
"Yair. Full moon's good for travellin', up here. It's cooler at night, and
the moon's so bright you can see the red colour in the sand-hills. But
wait till the dark of the moon, when you'll see the stars like you've never seen 'em before. One bloke swore he could read a newspaper by the light
of the Milky Way."
"There are compensations, aren't there? I mean, for the heat and dust,
the isolation--"
"I like isolation," said Jack McGuinnes with a grin.
Chapter Five

The mail travelled to and from Birdsville, just over the Queensland
border, by a horse-drawn, four-wheeled, home-built buggy. Four sturdy
horses pulled the Royal Mail over the sand-hills and through dry creek
beds, with a spare horse running beside. In drought or flood, the mail
usually managed to get through. With a half-caste helper, Wal Crombie
drove all the way, spelling the horses in turn. When the going was good
they made up to fifty miles a day and reached Birdsville in a week;
sometimes they travelled night and day to make up time when they were
running late.

Jack McGuinnes called at the hostel to tell them that he was off with one
of his black trackers to search for a foot-traveller who had gone missing
on the Birdsville Track.
"He came through about three weeks ago on the train," said Constable
McGuinnes, "and I warned him about the long waterless stretches. Even
in winter, the air's so dry and the sun can be so hot that dehydration sets
in very quickly. He wouldn't listen to me. Walter Crombie picked him
up and gave him a lift to Kopperamanna, and advised him to come back
to the Springs. He's not been seen since."
On his return trip from Birdsville the mailman had seen the stranger's
footprints leaving the Track and heading for the dry bed of the Cooper.
Wal had followed as far as he dared, but the tracks grew fainter and there
was no sign of the man. As soon as he got home, Wal raised the alarm.
Nearly a week had passed, and strong winds in the last two days had
probably covered all traces. Constable McGuinnes and Micky the tracker
were now going out on two riding camels to search.
Unthinkingly, concerned for his safety, Alix put a hand on his brown
forearm. She had grown fond of the big policeman, who had done all
sorts of small services for them; she and Mab both now familiarly called
him Jack.
"Be careful!" she said. "It must be dangerous, going off the Track into
that empty sand-hill country, isn't it?"
"Not very, with two camels. One will be loaded up with tucker bags,
and the other with canteens of water. You're far safer on a camel than
on a horse in this country."
She had meant only natural concern for another human being,
but now she realized that he had taken her gesture more personally.
He put his big hand over hers. "And I'll be thinking about you all the
way.
Confused, she drew her hand away and bent to straighten a bedcover
and to hide the flush in her cheeks. Jack turned at the door to give her a
long look with his green eyes, then, putting on his wide-brimmed hat,
he patted the crown, waved, and was gone.

While Constable McGuinnes was still away, an exhausted stockman rode
in from Etadunna Station, nearly a hundred miles north along the
Birdsville Track. One of the small daughters of the station manager, Bob
Rushton, had been badly burned when her dress caught fire, and the
frantic mother had sent him for help.
Mab stayed in charge of the hostel, for she was attending the difficult
birth of one of the part-Aboriginal girls--a girl of scarcely fifteen years.
Alix set off with the mailman, who was fortunately just leaving. She
took with her anything that might be needed--disinfectants and soothing
ointments, soft bandages, pain-killers--but from what she had learned
from the stockman she was not hopeful; the burns were too extensive, the
child too ill to be moved down the Track and sent to hospital in Adelaide
in the train.
They set off at dawn over the stony gibber plain, on which, farther out,
some sparse annual saltbush grew in tiny silver-grey tufts that looked as
if they must be dead, but were in fact still growing. The saltbush survived
except through the worse droughts by absorbing moisture from the air,
not from rainfall. It was an excellent and nourishing stockfeed.
In spite of her grim errand, Alix was looking forward intensely to her
first experience of really travelling beyond the town, on the fabled
Birdsville Track, even though she would be seeing only its lower end, the
first hundred miles. What surprised her, after they had traversed the stony
desert and entered sand-hill country, was the sheer beauty and subtlety
of the colours: a land bleached by heat, tinted to the delicate colours of
potch opal, with vast lakes of pale-blue mirage above which floated
pink-red and salmon-coloured sand-hills. They seemed almost transparent,
like a water-colour wash against the pale blue of the sky. The
sand-hills were real, but some of them floated like islands in the sky, with
sheets of "water" showing beneath. Or they changed shape mysteriously,
sometimes seeming to end in abrupt bluffs or breaking up into separate
coloured blocks above their own reflections. It was a country of deception
and illusion.
It was evening when they came to the Clayton River crossing, after
passing over illimitable plains where the largest growing thing was a
stunted bush and the empty horizon came down all around for 360degrees. A line of timber, real trees, appeared. Now to this permanent
waterhole in the dry river bed, made by the overflow of the artesian
bore, had come all the wildlife, seemingly, for a thousand dry miles.
Pink-breasted galahs rose from every tree, white cockatoos with sulphur
crests flapped shrieking from one calm blue pool to another, and clouds
of finches filled the air. A huge flock of budgerigars, slender as small
green fish, veered in swift shoals above, their voices silver-shrill. The
place was alive with birds: pigeons and wild ducks, plovers with their
grating ratchet cry, ibis and egrets. As they stopped to change horses and
boil the billy for tea, Alix watched entranced.
After the death-still plain they had traversed for most of the day, it
was an affirmation of life, eager and vibrant, full of shrill fierce joy in
being.
The hot, crusty damper baked in the ashes, the slices of salty corned
beef that went with it, the sweet black tea tasted better than any meal she
had eaten under a roof. She wished they could camp there and see the
birds again in the dawn, but the mail must go on; she must get to her
patient as soon as possible. She had ridden much of the way beside Wal,
while Mervyn, the slow-moving, slow-speaking part-Aboriginal helper
rode high on the load, spreading himself over the mailbags.
She woke to hear Wal saying, "Dulkaninna! We've got to spell the
horses here and hobble 'em out, so we'll stop the rest of the night. Did
you bring a swag, or d'you want to sleep in the buggy?"
"No, er, I didn't think of it. But I brought a warm coat."
Wal glanced at Mervyn with a long-suffering look which, Alix knew,
meant "Women! They're always trouble."
"Here, you can have one of my blankets, and dig a hip-hole in the
sand near the fire. You'll be more comfortable."
She protested but at length accepted, and spent a wakeful night,
disturbed by the unfamiliar glare of a brilliant moon that had risen about
ten o'clock. Yet though tired, she scarcely wanted to sleep. She wanted
to savour the strangeness of camping out in the open in the middle of
nowhere with only one white man and one black one for company, and
the howling of dingoes in the distance. A stone-curlew cried, a lost and
lonely call that seemed like the voice of the encircling desert. It sent a
tingle up her spine. This strange, empty land! How could she sleep? And
then at last she must have slept, for she woke to find the rim of the earth
quickened with living gold, and Mervyn tending a small fire on which a
quart-pot was already steaming.
"Breakfast, missus!" said Mervyn with a wide grin, unearthing the
damper that had been left to bake in the ashes the night before. Wal was
on his way back from a toilet stop at a group of small trees. With the
bushman's unfailing courtesy he had gone to the trouble of walking some
distance so as not to embarrass her if she should be awake.
They breakfasted as the sun rose over the cold windswept plain. Alix
was glad of her coat. Looking back from the jolting buggy as they left,
she saw the Dulkaninna bore-head smoking in the dawn. The cold
morning air was turning to steam the hot water brought up from the
bowels of the earth. They passed a deserted station, its walls crumbling,
beginning to be buried in sand.
When the Birdsville Track was opened up as a stock-route, Wal told
her they were dependent upon natural waterholes and sometimes there
were long dry stages of a hundred miles--the mail and stores then went
by camel. Now there were government bores every thirty miles; but the
natural waterholes had silted up.
The sand-hills had been running parallel with the Track, running
roughly in a north-westerly direction with wide clay-pans between. Now,
from Dulkaninna to Blazes Well, they became more tortuous and sometimes
crossed the Track at right angles. The horses would charge up the
long slope, then at the sharp crest begin a wild slither downwards, the
buggy held back by the brake. It was a nerve-racking ride, though Wal
told her it was worse in the opposite direction where they had to climb
the steep side first. The crests had been flattened by continuous traffic,
but fresh sand kept drifting, each sand-hill smoking at the surface in
the slightest wind. In a real dust-storm it became almost impossible to
travel.
"But there's always some life and feed in the sand-hills, even when the
gibber plains are bare. At the next one get out and walk, and you'll be
surprised at the flowers and things growing in the bare sand.
"I dunno how they survive. After rain, of course, the sand-hills are like
a garden--purple parakelya, yellow daisies and billy-buttons, scarlet desert
pea. . . . But in the last drought I seen this country that bare you could
flog a flea over it and never lose 'im. . . .
"O'course it was the rabbits that were the finish. Course there
was overstocking to blazes, especially when they used to run sheep; and
then about 1900 the rabbits arrived from the south. The gov'ment
put in thousands of miles of rabbit fencing, but it got silted up so they
hopped over the top, or they burrowed underneath. They ate everything."
He
said they were like a plague. They had burrowed under the roots
of the saltbush and bluebush, eaten out the grass, and all the plants
binding the sand, so that it started to drift. They even ate the young
shoots of the mulga trees, and ring-barked the saplings of ironwood and
needlebush. "But the drought," he added, "was a blessing in a way; the
rabbits died out, just about, but the damage was done."
Alix did get down at the next sand-hill crossing, ploughing up to the
top in the yielding red sand. As Wal had said, there were delicate flowers,
tiny shrubs, and a few larger casuarinas, and the flat silver leavesof saltbush which she nibbled and found tasty, salty though somewhat
bitter.
She climbed aboard again at the summit, only a hundred feet or so
above the depression below, but giving a view all round of a vast and
empty land. There had been footprints in the soft sand, too, marks of
lizards' feet, and the two paw-marks and long back feet of tiny marsupial
mice--creatures that lived in holes during the heat of the day and came
out at night to feed.
At Blazes Well there was no water, the well having fallen in and not
been repaired. A hot wind blew across the scalded clay-flats between the
sand-hills, strewn with the skeletons of cattle that had died in the last
drought. It was a daunting, desolate place, and Alix was glad that they
did not stop but made for Kanuwaulkinna Creek, where permanent water
flowed from a bore and they could water the horses.
Suddenly the Track underwent a change: the green timber of the creek
showed above the horizon, flocks of tiny emerald-green parrots filled the
air, and all round there was good herbage, even grass.
"We are actually inside the boundary of Etadunna Station," Wal told
Alix, "but it's still a long way off; there's no front fence, and the station
covers three thousand square miles."
Alix welcomed the break for lunch in these pleasant surroundings. She
was beginning to feel the journey would never end, although she had
slept fitfully while Wal drove.
She was dozing again as they reached Etadunna homestead. She woke
to the barking of dogs and gazed about her. The cluster of buildings
surrounding the homestead included an abandoned wool-shed, for this
cattle station had once run sheep in the days when the German Mission
owned it.
Now the cattle ran free between each muster. The only fence, apart
from a huge horse-paddock, was around the homestead building itself, to
keep the stock out; and inside the fence was a green garden with stunted
date-palms and native wattles in bloom.
As the buggy pulled up and Mervyn opened the gate for her, Alix was
overwhelmed once more with the thought of the task ahead of her. She
sent up a quick prayer that she would be able to help save the life of the
little girl. Her heart was wrenched by the sight of the mother's face as she
ran out to greet Alix: gaunt, weather-beaten, strained, with wisps of black
hair falling untidily from her bun, looking as though she had slept in her
dress.
"Thank God, Sister!" Mrs. Rushton grasped Alix's hand."Thank God
you're here! She's still alive."
"How--how old is she?"
"Lucy is only four."
Wal brought in the mail and Alix's bags, accepted a glass of cool water and was on his way. Stopping only to wash her hands, Alix
went straight to the cot in a darkened room where the little patient lay
between life and death.
Chapter Six

Farther up the Birdsville Track another fight against death was taking
place in the shifting sands and scalded clay-flats to the north-east of
Kopperamanna.
As soon as the two men had reached the point where Wal Crombie
had seen the tracks of the traveller heading out into the desert, Micky hoosh-ta'd his camel to its knees and dismounted. Leading it by the line
attached to its nose-peg he began moving in wide circles. Jack McGuinnes
searched farther up the Track in case the wanderer had doubled back.
Then he saw Micky throw up his arm.
"Boss, I got 'im!" he called, setting off at a loping run with his eyes to
the ground. He had picked up the faint imprint of an elastic-sided boot.
Several times when he came to windblown sand or stone-hard claypan
he lost the tracks and would circle patiently until he picked them up
again. He was wearing his police tracker's red-banded cap, and a police
inspector's discarded tunic over an old pair of trousers.
When night fell the trail was still leading indistinctly towards the dry
beds of the Cooper. At least the man was not going in circles. At
"piccaninny daylight" Micky was off again, eager as a hound upon the
scent. There had been no wood for a proper camp-fire, but Micky had
slept, blackfellow-fashion, curled about a tiny fire of smouldering sticks.
They must have covered fifty miles, with circling and doubling back,
when the tireless Micky decided to ride again. He could see farther from
the height of the camel's back, and the signs were now so clear, that he
could read them while mounted.
Now the tracks doubled back on themselves, a bad sign.
"Him sit down 'ere. Him tired." He pointed.
The tracks took their old direction. They crossed a bare gibber plain
where Jack McGuinnes could not see any signs at all, towards a painted
sand-hill lying along the skyline, a pale delicate salmon-red.
The tracks turned and went along its base towards the dry Cooper
floodplain.
After a while Micky said, "Him bin lie down 'ere. Then walk, walk.
Him look for water."
"Well, at least he's still going. Apparently he didn't know that if he
followed the Cooper down it would cut the Track."
They came to a dry sandy watercourse, its bed lined with the skeletons
of dead trees. Here he had attempted to dig a soak with his hands, but if
he had obtained any water, there was now no sign of it. He had thrown
off his shirt and his walk had become a stagger. Then they found where
he had thrown his empty water-bag away.
"Him close-up finish," said Micky.
And then, late on the second afternoon, he suddenly cried out and
pointed ahead. His sharp eyes had seen a dark shape huddled under a
dead tree.
There, crouched on his side in the dry creek-bed, was a man with his
head in his hands. He looked up blearily at their shout, and attempted a
croaking cry. His tongue was swollen and black, his lips were terribly
fissured. But he was alive. Without Micky's skill and persistence, he
would certainly have perished.
They gave him a piece of cloth soaked in water to suck, and gradually he
was able to swallow. They put the stranger up on Micky's camel and began
the long trek back to Kopperamanna, then Dulkaninna and Hergott Springs.

The child lay with her eyes open and glittering feverishly. Her hair and
one side of her face were burned, and most of the rest of her body except
the legs.
"Lucy! Can you hear me? Here's Nurse come to make you better."
Only the eyes moved in the charred face. "I tried to cut her dress off,
but she screamed so, I couldn't bear it. I put olive oil--"
"She has to be bathed," said Alix, opening her medicine case. "I'm
going to give her a shot of morphia so that it can be done without too
much shock to her system."
"Lucy, I'm just going to give you a prick with this needle, so you'll be
able to sleep."
When the child's eyes were closed and she was breathing more regularly,
Alix cut away what she could of the charred and blackened clothes, then
bathed the rest away with cold water. She knew that such extensive burns
were always serious, and when they covered more than two-thirds of the
body they were usually fatal. Shock and nephritis affecting the kidneys
were the most dangerous complications.
Slowly and patiently she bathed away the scraps of cloth, strips of skin
coming with them. When the trunk was clean she irrigated the surface
with warm boric solution.
"I don't think I'll try to put on dressings," muttered Alix. "The burnt
area is too extensive, and besides they will stick and be very painful to
change. Open treatment might be best."
She was talking to herself as much as to Lucy's mother. She dusted the
burns with sterile zinc powder, and rigged up a makeshift bed-cradle to
keep the sheets from touching and pressing on the burns."I daren't give her any more morphia," she said, as Lucy began to
show signs of returning restlessness. "Meanwhile I want you to go and lie
down and try to rest. You haven't slept since this happened, have you?
Next thing I'll have you for a patient."
Mrs. Rushton gave the ghost of a smile. "No, I haven't. But my
husband will be in soon, and he'll give you any help you need. I might
lie down for a bit. And I'll get the cook to make you some afternoon tea.
You must be exhausted yourself by that trip."
"No, I'm all right."
While Alix was snatching a cup of tea on the veranda, Mr. Rushton
rode in, left his horse with a black stockman and came striding up the
steps.
"Sister! How wonderful that you got here!" He pressed her hand as she
rose from her cane chair. "Is my wife with Lucy?"
"No, I just persuaded her to lie down. Lucy is still partly under from
a morphia injection, and one of the black staff is watching her."
"God, what a dreadful business!" said Mr. Rushton. "It happened so
quickly. She pulled over a lantern, the kerosene spilled on her dress, and
she went up like a torch."
His lips were shaking. He was a short, solid, nuggety bushman with
a nut-brown face and a fan of lighter wrinkles about the corner of each
eye.
"What's the outlook, Sister? You can tell me. I won't tell my wife."
"Well . . . It's not good. She should be in hospital, really. What I fear
is complications which I won't be able to treat. But we mustn't give up
hope."
"No, of course not. I'll go and see her. Have you been shown to your
room?"
"Not yet. I went straight to Lucy."
He showed her a door opening off the long veranda. Her bag had
already been placed on the bed. "I expect you'd like to have a wash and
change after that long trip. You must be tired out."
"That's what Mrs. Rushton said; but I'm not. I enjoy travel, and
camping out, though it was a bit cold early this morning. And I had a
wash and a cool drink when I arrived."
He turned away with a discouraged slump of his shoulders.
"Mr. Rushton! At least she has survived the initial shock. There is still
hope."
"Yes, yes ... I must go to my wife."
Alix bathed in the basin in her room and changed into a fresh uniform.
The other children, a fair little girl about six years, and a small boy,
came and peered in the fly-wire door, but ran away giggling when she
spoke to them. They were as wild as little bush creatures.
Next day Lucy's temperature was up. She had an unquenchable thirst, but she passed very little water, a worrying sign. There was a lemon tree in the station enclosure, and though there were few lemons on it Alix
had drinks with a squeeze of lemon made up from the cold water-bag on
the veranda.
Lucy was in terrible pain from her burnt back pressing on the bed.
"I think I'll try immersion," said Alix. "Have you a small tub long
enough for her to lie in? Fortunately it is warm enough in the daytime
for her not to get a chill, and we'll keep the temperature of the water just
tepid."
She added bicarbonate of soda to the water, and after dusting the burns
with a sterile powder and rolling the child in a clean sheet, she lowered
her into the bath with a support for her head.
"The water excludes the air, keeps the surface clean, and supports her
weight," she explained to Mrs. Rushton, who had been talking quietly to
Lucy throughout. The child had begun to cry weakly, but she drank a
little milk and took some gruel from her mother's hands.
By the third day the burns were suppurating and forming sloughs. Lucy
was put back in the cot and the surfaces irrigated with a solution of picric
acid. But her temperature continued to rise. On the fourth day it reached
104 degrees. She was extremely restless, muttering in semi-delirium. Alix
could not hide her foreboding. All the symptoms were there for nephritis:
the scanty urine, with extreme thirst and vomiting. Alix gave Lucy a
bromide, and tried to persuade her to drink some milk with lime-water,
and lemonade with cream of tartar. She was snatching some sleep, sitting
in a padded cane chair in the patient's room, when a scream from Mrs.
Rushton woke her.
"Nurse! Nurse! She's unconscious!"
Little Lucy Rushton had passed into a final, fatal coma.
Lucy was buried on a sand-hill behind the homestead, joining a baby
brother who had died at birth. The mail had returned to Hergott Springs
while Alix was nursing the child, and had passed again on its way north;
now it would have to come back from Birdsville before she could return
to the hostel. Alix worried about Mab coping by herself, but was glad to
be able to give a woman's sympathy to poor Mrs. Rushton, alone in a
world of men apart from her children and the black staff--who had set
up a terrible wailing at the death of the little girl. Alix gave Mrs. Rushton
sedatives to help her sleep, and finally persuaded her to walk up the
sand-hill with some petunias for the little grave, which at first she said
she never wanted to see. Her hard, closed-up tearless face worried Alix.
Now, at the sight of the new sandy mound, so pathetically small, she at
last broke down and wept.
Alix felt numb herself. She had lost patients before, but this was such
a little child, and she had fought so hard to save her. Perhaps she had eased
Lucy's suffering a little. But why should innocent little ones suffer so?What was God thinking of? She had always hated nursing in the children's
ward when she was training.
She sat on the homestead veranda, going over in her mind all she had
done, wondering if she had done right. Faintly, she thought she heard
the sound of camel bells . . . and then, beyond the green garden enclosure,
she saw two camels in single file.
Jack McGuinnes got down from his camel, and leaving Micky in
charge, came through the gate and bounded up the steps.
"Oh, Jack!" Alix was on her feet, in a moment she had buried her
weary face against his strong shoulder, and his arms went round her
protectively. "Oh, Jack!" was all she could say. It was infinitely comforting
to have a broad shoulder to weep on.
"There, there!" said Jack McGuinnes.
"I lost her. I did all I could."
"There, there. Yes, I heard from a stockman on the way in. In fact,
after what I'd heard of the burns, I didn't expect you could save her. I
can sign the death certificate, look after the formalities. I can't take you
back to the Springs, but the mail will be here soon."
"Oh-h, Jack!" was all she could say again. And then, "Did you find
your man?"
"Yes, and we found him alive, what's more. He's been doubling up
on Micky's camel. Not in bad shape now, but you might have a look at
him. Give him some ointment for his lips, they're badly cracked."
"All right. Oh, Jack, it's so good to see you back safe!"
At this he looked at her so tenderly that she withdrew herself from
his arms. "I'm sorry. I don't usually cry. But it has been rather a
strain."
The rescued man, still weak, sat on the veranda while she applied some
soothing ointment to his lips and his sunburn. He seemed vague about
why he had left the Track; had some idea that the Cooper was not far
away, and he would be able to swim in a waterhole.
Bob Rushton shook his head in disbelief, and raised his eyes to the
brush roof.
"The Cooper was about forty miles away, and he'd be lucky to find a
waterhole before Innamincka that wasn't dry."
"Just as well Micky's a top-notch tracker," said the Constable.
When they had gone Alix sat and talked for a little with the station
manager.
"Mrs. Rushton will take a long time to get over this, I'm afraid," she
said. "You must give her all the help and companionship you can."
"Of course. Until mustering starts. But it has meant a great deal, having
another woman here at this time. God bless you, Sister."
"I just wish I could have done more."
When the mail buggy arrived from Birdsville Wal Crombie already knew
the sad outcome. Somehow he had heard along the Track by the "bush
telegraph." He took with him an order for a small tombstone to be sent
up from Adelaide five hundred miles away.
Back at the hostel at last, Alix found that the wanderer had been
admitted for a couple of days, and then packed off by the Constable on
the next train south.
"Other men could have lost their lives looking for you," he said. "You
should remember that, when you decide to go off the beaten track. This
is a hard country."
"I know that now. You and Micky saved my life, Boss. And I've learned
a lesson I won't forget in a hurry. Think I'll stick to the coast from now
on.
Mab was delighted to see Alix back. She said it hadn't been a very busy
time, but the Aboriginal girl had been in labour for three days, and nearly
died of exhaustion. "She would have died, in the old days. Native women
very rarely have complications, but when they do--say from some
malformation of the pelvis--they usually die. So the characteristic isn't
passed on to the next generation."
"And the baby?"
"Was born dead. The cord was around its neck."
"What if she gets pregnant again?"
"It shouldn't happen again. This was a breech presentation. How I
wished you were here to help me!"
"Yes. And I didn't do much good by going all that way."
"Alix, from what you told me it must have been pretty hopeless from
the start. And at least you were able to ease her pain a bit."
"Yes ... I suppose so." But she was still depressed over her failure to
save the child.
Chapter Seven

Alix strolled along to the only store, a small fenceless building set back
from the road. Mrs. Allison greeted her warmly--a little woman with
grey hair, spectacles, and a neat storekeeper's apron over her floral cotton
dress.
She seemed a kindly soul, though her voice was rather harsh, like a
crow's, as if the inland dust had got into her vocal cords.
The store was jammed to the roof with goods. There were hobble-chains
and saddles, boots and camel-bells, blue blankets and canvas water-bags,
ground-sheets and camp ovens, billy-cans, quart-pots (but no teapots),
Bedourie ovens, tin plates, sheath knives, butchers' knives, buckets. . . .
Mrs. Allison was a universal provider. She kept some bright cotton dresses
("gins' frocks") for the Aboriginal women in the town, and jodhpurs and
leggings, drill trousers and hats, and elastic-sided boots for men, but in
general, horses were catered for better than human beings. Groceries
were stored on the floor and on shelves behind the counter.
"Well now, I was meanin' to call," said Mrs. Allison, leaning companionably
on the counter. "I heard youse two had arrived, but I thought
I'd give you time to settle in. I bet the whole town's been having a gander
at the new Sisters."
"Yes, we have had a good few visitors. But everyone's been very kind.
I wonder if you have any postcards?" said Alix doubtfully.
"Yair, sure to be here somewhere." Mrs. Allison began sweeping aside
a pile of hessian sacking, and came up with four postcards showing the
main street, with two camels.
"Yes, I like a bit of life, somefhin' going on, like you get in town."
Alix looked out the door at the wide, empty street. There were no trains
in, and the only sign of life was a lone blue-grey dog dozing outside the
pub.
"I suppose there's plenty going on when a droving plant comes in?"
"You can say that again. Or a string of camels with wool. Wouldn't
know the place then."
"Have you lived here long?"
"'Bout five years. Before that my late hubby and me, we kept a store
out on the Birdsville Track. Never saw nobody except the trooper with
his camels, or an Afghan hawker, or the mailman twice a fortnight. It was the drovers kept us goin'. Not like the old days, before the waterholes
all silted up."
"There are not many women in the town, then, besides yourself? The
mailman's wife, and the cook up at the hotel--the publican's wife lives
in Adelaide, I believe."
"Yair. Couldn't stand the climate," said Mrs. Allison scornfully.
"Who'd want to live in the cold old south, with rain pourin' down, and
sleet, and I dunno many what-all. Up here, it's nilly always cool at night can be real cold in the winter--and the sun shines all day."
She paused to give a deep, phlegmy cough.
Alix bought some soap, dried milk, and canned butter. They could
sometimes get fresh goats' milk, but the supply was erratic. The Aboriginal
woman who drove the goats with their tinkling bells out to where there
was something, however dry and unappetizing, to eat, would sometimes
fail to return at dusk, and would come back the next morning with the
nannies bleating in pain at their swollen udders.
"Y'know what the black gins like to buy when they've got a few bob?"
Mrs. Allison asked.
"Lolly-water?"
"No, soap. 'You got chope?' they say. They love soap, 'specially if it's
scented or a pretty colour. The men never buy it. Men and women is
different, no matter what their colour."
"Yes, I know what you mean. Not just biologically different, but-- different."
Mrs. Allison coughed deeply in agreement.
"D'you do anything about that cough?"
"What cough, Sister?"
"I'd say you had a chronic cough--probably worse in winter."
"Oh, it doesn't worry me none. I'm used to it, like."
When Alix got back she found that Alf and young Joe had brought a
full load of wood for them, and had not charged for it. Joe's hand had
mended nicely and he was no longer an outpatient.
"The people in this town are very kind," said Alix, stoking the wood
stove with the dry lengths of wood, for this was her fortnight for cooking.
"They couldn't be nicer," said Mab. "How was Mrs. Allison?"
"Oh, a bit of a character. She's got a nasty smoker's cough, but
it doesn't seem to worry her. She's coming over one day soon to meet
you."
"By then we'll have met everyone on this side of the line."
"But we still haven't met the Afghans on the other side. Remember
Jack promised to take us to meet Abdul Dervish?"
The three of them crossed the rail the next afternoon, walking with
their backs to the sun. They passed the kerosene-tin and corrugated-iron
humpies of the blacks, who like the Afghans kept to "the other side of theline," or the east. The humpies looked deserted, except for a group of
ragged children playing at kicking an empty can about.
The Afghan residents, who were called 'Ghans, though most of them
or their forebears had come from northern India rather than Afghanistan,
had slightly better homes than the Aborigines. They were decorated with
white or blue paint, peeling in the relentless heat. Some of them, said
Jack McGuinnes, had married Aboriginal women, some had married
whites. There was a school for their children where the boys studied the
Koran, for all were devout Muslims.
Abdul had been a famous camel-man in his youth, travelling with
early explorers and surveyors.
As they approached his house through a dusty yard, the girls recoiled
slightly. A bunch of bloody entrails, pluck and liver and heart, hung in
the porch, dripping blood on the floor.
At Jack McGuinnes' call a slim young girl came to the door, dark and
sloe-eyed as an Eastern princess. She called her father, and Abdul Dervish
welcomed them, immensely tall and brown in baggy white trousers, a
European shirt worn outside them, and a grey silk turban on his head.
He had a magnificent beard sprinkled with grey, and a strong, hooked
nose. He smiled and welcomed them in with a graceful sweeping gesture.
The girl had swiftly retired from sight.
"Well, Abdul, I brought the new A.I.M. Sisters to meet you. So you'll
know them if you ever have to go to hospital."
"I am never sick. Never, never." He clapped his hands twice, and soon
the first girl and her sister, older but just as pretty, brought sickly sweet
coffee in an elaborate metal jug, which they proceeded to pour into thick
white cups without saucers.
The girls did not drink with them but stood submissively in the
background. "These are Mira and Deneb," said Abdul, with one of his
lordly gestures. "Named after stars by their mother, may Allah give her
peace."
He proudly showed them his greatest treasures, including a beautiful
sapphire ring made from a stone he had found himself. Then he accompanied
them outside on the way home. Inside his fence a small
irrigation channel flowed into a mineral-encrusted pool, and beside it
grew two tall date-palms. Abdul gave the Sisters a lesson in elemental
biology.
"This one," he said, slapping the trunk of one, "lady tree; and this one," slapping the other one, "gentleman tree. Without this one, no
dates."
He promised to send them some dates when his meagre crop was ripe,
but the trees were failing from a diet of too much salt. There had once
been a big grove of date-palms at Hergott Springs, he said, now almost
all dead. "Once, many of my people; now only few. Camels, not many.
The young men, all but one of my sons, go away, go to the south; and
who in this town is there for my daughters to marry?"
His son was away on a camel trip up the Strzelecki Track, taking stores
and goods to remote stations. Abdul was a mournful, dignified figure as
he stood beneath the palms, with his turban making him look even taller,
as they took their farewell.
"He's right, of course," said Jack McGuinnes reflectively. "Who is
there for them to marry? The men sometimes find a white wife, but it
rarely happens the other way around. Aborigines will marry them--but
Abdul despises the Aborigines as uncivilized. It's a problem."
"They're beauties, too," said Alix. "What a pity they couldn't go to the
city, where I believe people are less racist in their attitudes; or where they
might meet men of their own race."
"They have no mother, and Abdul Dervish would never agree for them
to go unchaperoned, or let them marry an Infidel."
Mab, struck by a thought, asked if one of the girls might like to work
at the hostel?
"We haven't really enough work for two," added Alix. "You see it's
not really a hospital, just a tiny dressing-station."
Jack McGuinnes doubted if Abdul would agree, though he thought
the girls would be delighted. They must be bored with their life. Perhaps
it could be arranged for them to work week about, so that each had a job
and one would not envy the other.
Next day a short, bearded bushman came limping in on makeshift
crutches cut from two forked limbs of a mulga tree. He had tipped the
boiling quart-pot off the fire over his foot, some of the scalding liquid
had gone inside his boot, and he'd had to cut the leather from his swollen
foot.
"If it turns septic we'll have to send him down to Adelaide on the
train," said Alix. "Otherwise he risks losing his lower leg. And he's one
of those independent types who'd rather be dead than crippled."
She tried compresses of the clear green bore-water, which contained
so many dissolved minerals that surely some of them must be beneficial.
Mab had tried drinking it, but after two days she was making a beaten
path to the earth dunny, and beginning to feel weak. She gave in and
drank the brownish-muddy water from the underground tanks. The
rain-water tank attached to the hostel roof was dry.
She had coaxed some tomato seedlings to come up, and they seemed
to be flourishing, when there came a dust-storm from the northeast--
more flying sand and big particles than dust--and completely buried her
vegetable garden. When unearthed the small plants were burnt and
withered. The hot wind and flying debris had the same effect as a severe
frost down south.
Yet the next morning dawned clear and still. The pale golden sunlightspilled from a pure blue, cloudless sky. Alix, busy sweeping dust out
the front door while Mab muttered over her buried garden, leaned on
the broom to watch the galahs. A great flock of the rose-breasted cockatoos
was arrayed on the Overland Telegraph Line, which they used as an
elongated perch. They were clowning among themselves, turning somersaults,
hanging upside-down by claw or beak and swinging, pretending
to fall and swooping up again to the crowded wire. All the while they
kept up a shrill chatter and squawk.
"To think that people keep them in cages, down south!" said Alix.
"Why, they're as tame as house-sparrows."
The birds ignored her as she stepped out into the dusty stony road.
Then as she turned to go in they decided to take off, as one bird, for their
morning drink at the railway-station tank's overflow. The pale grey mass
swept into the air, then turned, banking slightly, to reveal one sudden
flash of rose-pink against the blue.
Yes, it has its compensations, thought Alix.

Chapter Eight

Some unusual overcast nights--though no rain fell--made the air hot
and stifling after the sun had set. There was only one patient, in the
women's ward, and she was thoroughly enjoying herself. It was Mrs.
Allison from the store--as there was so little to do in the hospital, the
Sisters let her borrow Mira to keep an eye on it for her. Abdul's daughter
Mira was now on the staff, but her older sister preferred to remain at
home to look after their father.
Mrs. A. had fallen over a piece of old iron in the yard and broken both
bones in her leg just below the knee. It was a clean break and she would
soon be able to get around on crutches. Meanwhile, after a long hard life
with few luxuries, she appreciated afternoon tea on a tray, and three
meals a day that she did not have to cook herself.
She told them stories of the bush, some funny, some grim. Her late
husband had once rescued a man who'd fallen off his horse and broken
his upper arm, the splintered bone protruding through the flesh. He was
not far from a waterhole and managed to keep alive, but when by chance
Mr. Allison found him the arm had turned black.
"It had to be amputated in the end. It took a week to get him to a
doctor, and by then gangrene had set in."
When a droving plant arrived in town she was distressed. "Just my
luck!" she moaned. "Just when there'd be a bit of business, I'm laid up.
Can't I get up, Sister Mab?"
"Not for at least a week. We have to make sure the bones have begun
to knit, and you might be tempted to put your foot on the floor if I let
you up on crutches."
Stan Reilly, the boss drover, came in to get some drops for his eyes.
They were red and inflamed with the dust of the track, after following
behind a thousand head of cattle.
He was a sturdy-looking man in his early thirties, dark-haired with a
shadow of dark stubble on his chin and upper lip. He wore leather
leggings, a khaki shirt with the sleeves rolled up, tight gabardines, and a
high-crowned, wide-brimmed hat.
"It was a hell of a trip from Queensland," he said. "An unlucky plant
--it was jinxed from the start, I reckon. First one of my men died, and
then the others deserted--rode off back the way we had come. I was leftwith one black stockboy and a lad driving the cart. One man alone, tailing
a thousand head! Had no sleep for about a week. We could only make
seven miles a day."
Mab bathed his eyes with a weak boracic solution, and suggested he
should lie down for a while with cold compresses on his inflamed eyes.
"Can't," said Reilly laconically. "Have to get the beasts ready for the
train. The copper has to inspect them before they go. And it takes time
to water a thousand head."
She gave him a cup of tea, and told him that weak black tea would
make a good eye-lotion when on the track.
"Thanks, Sister!" And he left, squashing his dusty felt hat down on his
dark hair.
The cattle, having been watered at the mound spring where the water
was allowed to flow into a series of open troughs, were driven into the
holding yards near the railhead. Alix and Mab heard the bellowing,
blended notes from a thousand throats, the sound rising and swelling as
they came nearer, the crack of stockwhips and the shouts of the drover
and the Aboriginal stockman. They went out on the veranda to look.
"He's one of the most masculine men I've ever met," said Mab, watching
the drover.
"Curse it! Can't you let me out of here?" wailed Mrs. Allison from her
bed.
"There won't be all that much business at the store, there's only one
drover with the plant, Mrs. A."
A sea of red-brown backs and tossing horns was moving beside the
road towards the stockyards. The drover rode his horse easily, keeping
the tail-enders up to the mob, his whip circling in the air, and
helped by a blue cattle-dog; while Billy, his offsider, rode on the flank
on a lean brown horse that could turn in its own length. The shouts of
the men, lowing of cattle, and crack of stockwhips blended in an outback
symphony.
They watched, fascinated. The cattle-train was due from the south in
two days, and would leave the following morning for Port Augusta and
Adelaide, and for the fattening-paddocks where the cattle would put on
condition before being sold for beef.
When the mob was safely penned, the drover went off to the pub for
a well-earned beer. Under the laws of the land his helper, being Aboriginal,
was not allowed to drink alcohol. He went round the back and Reilly
handed him a bottle out the window. He made camp that night near the
yards, while the boss drover "dossed down" at the hotel. Earlier, he had
sent Billy over with a choice piece of rump for the hostel larder.
The next night was so hot and airless that the Sisters left the hostel
door open, with just a swinging wire door between them and the night.
They went to bed early, and around ten o'clock were awakened by a dreadful din. It sounded like clattering hoofs, crashes of crockery, an
army careering round the wards.
"Sister! Sister!" shrieked Mrs. Allison.
Had the cattle broken out and invaded the hostel? Alix and Mab put
on wraps and lit a lamp. A ghostly shape cantered along the passageway.
They followed it to the kitchen. There was a white goat on the table,
eating the rice custard from under a net cover.
Two other goats dashed into the women's ward, dancing across the
beds. "Get them out of here!" shrieked Mrs. Allison, fearful for her leg.
But that was easier said than done. After ten minutes of chasing and
shouting, the goats were still in occupation.
Mab sat down, gasping and laughing. "I've heard of a bull in a
china-shop, but never a goat in a hospital!"
"Three goats," said Alix.
"I'm going to get the drover and his 'boy.' They'll get them out," said
Mab. She slipped into a dress, took a lantern and walked to the hotel.
The hotel bar was lit, and looking in the window she saw Stan Reilly
leaning on the bar with a pint mug of beer in his hand. She had to steel
herself to face the tight little circle of men, but she went to the door and
called, "Mr. Reilly!" She had not stopped to put on her uniform, and
Reilly, who had seen her only in her apron and white cap, did not
recognize her.
"Sister Kingston, from the hostel," she explained. "There's--a mob of
goats inside, and we can't get them out. They're wrecking the place. If
you could round them up--"
"Sister! Of course. I never recognized you in clothes."
There was a shout of laughter. Stan Reilly detached himself from the
bar. "Er--I mean in mufti, out of your uniform." He grinned. Mab
looked furious. "Come on, we'll pick up Billy on the way, and a
stockwhip."
At the hostel the goats were still enjoying themselves, munching at the
thin curtains and chasing each other round the wards.
"Just leave it to us," said the drover, and uncoiled his whip. But there
was no room to swing it properly. After minutes they had caught one goat
with a running tackle, and evicted it. The other two were loose in the
women's ward, and Mrs. Allison, enjoying herself hugely, was cheering
them on and shaking with laughter.
'Call yerselves drovers!" she jeered. "Can't round up a couple o' goats.
Why, if I could get out of this bed ..."
Reilly set his jaw, made a lunge at a goat and missed. Then the animals
took it into their heads to run down the corridor towards the back door.
It was shut, but in the narrow space the two men collared the goats and
thrust them outside. Panting and covered in sweat, they came back to
find Mab and Alix helpless with laughter."I'm sorry!" said Alix. "You did a great job evicting them."
"It was good as a circus!" said Mrs. Allison.
"I think a cup of tea all round?" said Mab. "I'm afraid we've no beer."
When the tea was brewed they sat drinking it on the two empty beds
in the women's ward. Billy was very quiet and shy and said little, but
every now and then he broke into a wide reminiscent grin. "By cripes,
Boss, I'd rather drove cattle 'n goats," he said.
Mrs. Allison said afterwards that it had been as good as a tonic. She
hadn't laughed so much for a long time, she told Mab, who was collecting
cups to take to the kitchen. Mrs. Allison sat with her good leg hanging
over the side of the bed, her night-dress rucked up round her waist.
"I'll never get to sleep again. Better give me an aspirin or something,
Sister."
Mab brought a tablet and a glass of water. Mrs. Allison took the glass
in one hand and the pill in the other, but somehow she dropped it. She
scrabbled anxiously between her legs, then came up with the pill and
swallowed it.
"Help, I thought for a moment it had fallen into the letterbox."
Afterwards, in the kitchen, Mab said, "It's certainly a term I've never
come across before; at first I didn't know what she meant. But I had to
laugh."

After the goat episode, they had an adventure with camels. They were
having dinner once more at the pub, and this time managed to see the
carroty-haired cook. She had lost weight and her face was thin, but she
said that the job was "not so bad", as most nights there were only the few
"permanents" to feed--two railway staff, Joe the woodman's assistant,
the hotelkeeper, and the barman. "I'm gettin' used to the heat," she said,
"but you never told me how cold it gets. When that wind comes up it
goes right through yer. I been colder here than I ever was in London."
Jack McGuinnes, back from a patrol out to the dingo fence, had come
over to their table and asked them if they would like to try camel-riding.
Alix looked nervous, but Mab said at once, "We'd love to! Wouldn't
we, Alix."
"Er--well ..."
"Of course we would! When?"
"This afternoon, if you like."
He helped them up onto Rocket, Mab in the double saddle and Alix
"donkeying" behind. It was not so bad while the camel was kneeling, but
when with an unnerving roar he lurched to his feet in three bone-jerking
movements as his long legs unfolded, it was like sitting on top of an
earthquake. From his full height it seemed a very long way to the ground.
Alix nervously tucked in her gossamer fly-veil which, tied under the chin,
held her shady hat in place. The Constable led them round for a while at a walk. Then he handed Mab the noseline. "When you want him to
get going," he said, "you have to say 'Ibna!' They don't understand."
But at the word for "Go!" Rocket emulated his namesake and set off at
a sudden gallop, striding with first two legs on one side, then two on the
other. The girls, precariously seated side-saddle on top, clung to the
saddle and each other as the Ship of the Desert rolled from side to side.
Jack ran after them, as well as he could for laughing, while Mab pulled
at the noseline, which was supposed to convey instructions to the beast
through its sensitive nostrils. It did not seem to get the message. Then
Jack shouted "Oodoo!" (Stop!)
The camel stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Its stomach rumbled,
and it gave a loud belch.
"I think," said Alix, "that that was a comment on our riding
ability!"
They asked Jack to lead them back at a walk, and he complied.
"I think I'd prefer an elephant," said Mab. "It has such a broad back,
it would be harder to fall off."
"But farther to the ground."
Outside the hostel they tried saying "Hoosh-ta" and were rather surprised
when Rocket obediently folded his knees half-way, then his back
legs, then tucked the front ones under, tipping the riders back and forwards
as he did so. Mab slid down quickly, but Alix's long poplin skirt was
caught in the back of the saddle. As she tried to descend it rode up and
revealed a pair of white boots and slim legs in white stockings.
"Here, let me." Jack McGuinnes unhitched the skirt, and lifted her to
the ground. Alix, a little flushed, thanked him and escaped inside. Not
that he had looked, exactly, but she had felt the tremor in his hands as
he held her waist.
A few days later he called to tell them he was off on a patrol to the west
of Lake Eyre, the desolate region between the west shore of the lake and
the railway to Oodnadatta. Word had come down the line that there had
been a brawl in the fettlers' camp, and a man had been killed.
"It will be an easy trip," he said. "At least I can't get lost, with the
railway line on one side and the lake on the other. In fact I think I might
go by train; the 'Ghan is due in tomorrow."
They gave him afternoon tea in the cool-looking living room with its
cane furniture and the cushions that Alix had covered with some sea-green
material her mother had sent her for a dress. (She didn't like sewing and
she didn't need another dress.)
He laughed over their story of the goat invasion. "Pity I was away. I
should have been called to arrest them for breaking and entering."
Not to mention stealing--a bowl of rice custard!"
A few days later a dust-storm blew up. It started as just a few swirls ofsand; then the sky to the north-east took on a reddish-yellow tinge, as
though from the smoke of a bushfire; but there was no thick bush for
many hundreds of miles.
Out of doors, the infinitesimal specks, each separate grain of sand,
stung the flesh and gathered in the corners of eyes. Only one advantage
came from the dust-storm: the all-pervading flies were blown away, or
sheltered somewhere out of the wind.
The yellowish-red cloud came nearer, dimmed the sun, and turned it
a livid blue. It went on for two days, days in which they had to light the
lamps at two in the afternoon.
Sand and grit came through the fly-wire and silted up the veranda,
seeped under the doors; even the meals tasted of grit. Mrs. Allison had
gone home, and mercifully there were no patients. Mira had not come
to work.
They sat listening to the roof-iron flapping in the fierce wind, and
wondered if the roof would blow away. An empty water-tank came bowling
along the street, banging and booming like a giant drum.
"I just hope," said Alix nervously, "that Jack went by train. I wouldn't
like to be out in this in an open camel-buggy."
"He couldn't travel in this dust. He'd have to camp somewhere and sit
it out."
It was stifling with all the windows closed, for the wind was hot as the
breath of Hell. Mab tried opening a window on the lee side, but an eddy
swirled a choking cloud into the room, making in no time a miniature
sand-hill on the linoleum.
The roar of the wind dropped to a wavering, high-pitched whine
through windows not properly sealed, and it was just barely possible to
make out the other side of the street. The sun was almost without light, as pale and ghostly as a daylight moon. Alix looked through the front
windows and gave a cry.
"The front fence is buried!" she called. A smooth orange sand-hill had
taken its place.
"And we don't even own a wheelbarrow!"
"We'll be able to get one at the store. Mrs. Allison stocks everything."
When the wind finally dropped they went out into a silent world. All
the birds had disappeared, even the flies had not come back. Hillocks of
sand were piled against every obstruction. Not even a dog or a goat was
to be seen in the empty street.
"Well, it's no use crying over spilt milk," said Mab practically. "We'd
better start sweeping up inside."
Even the curtains seemed to be impregnated with the finer particles of
dust, and would all have to be washed. They shook the bedspreads, beat
the dust out of the green cushions, and then started to sweep.
"Jack would have come and given us a hand, if he was in town," said Mab They sat side by side on a bed and stared despondently at the gritty floors.
"What about Wal Crombie? Is he on the way to Birdsville?"
"I hope not."
But just then there came a cheerful hail from the veranda, and in
walked Wal with his eldest son. "We've got a wheelbarrow outside, and
a couple of shovels," he said. "We'll just clear your front gate for you.
It's no job for a woman."
Gratefully the Sisters watched as the men shovelled sand in a kind or
parody of men shovelling snow in a cold climate. Except that the
fine dust and sand flowed like water, trickling through a hole in the
wheelbarrow, and it was not white but orange and yellow.
Mab's herb garden, which she had started again, had entirely disappeared.
"I'm going to grow them indoors in pots this time," she said
indomitably. "As soon as I can get some seed."
Chapter Nine

Mira had a "follower," a part-Aboriginal boy who hung about the hospital
waiting to escort her home, for she did not live in. Alix had taught her
to make a creditable egg custard, but jellies, except in winter, were out
of the question; they would never set.
The Sisters had found that in summer they had to keep even the
thermometer in the cool-safe, or patients would seem to record horrifying
temperatures. It was frequently 110 degrees inside the building by late
afternoon. But in the clear dry air the heat quickly dissipated after sunset
and the nights were usually cool.
Mira wore an embroidered blouse over a white cotton skirt down to
her ankles to work. She usually added a bright-coloured scarf thrown
loosely about her neck, or tied round her thick black braids. She was
gentle, quiet, unassuming and willing, but was inclined to go into a
day-dream in the midst of dusting or sweeping. Leaning on the broom
she would gaze unseeingly out at the empty main street with her liquid
dark eyes.
"A penny for your thoughts, Mira," said Alix, finding her mooning
about, an unused duster in her hand.
"They not worth much. I just wishing I been born a boy. Men can
travel, do things. I never bin outside the Springs."
"Perhaps you'll get married, go and live on your husband's place,
somewhere different."
Mira shrugged. "Who I to marry? Our men, they marry white women
sometime, but white man no marry us. Only Abos want us, they just
rubbish peoples. And they have to turn Muslim, or Father not let us
marry. Never."
Alix said nothing, as Mira began desultorily to dust the furniture. Alix
knew that it was true. But Abdul was a travelled man, he had been down
to the city and visited the Mosque there--the one in Hergott Springs was
little more than a corrugated iron shed. He must have some money stored
away, and his son was still travelling to the outer stations with his, Abdul's,
camels laden with store goods, Indian silks and cottons such as Mrs.
Allison never stocked; blouses and scarves and kitchen gadgets all calculated
to catch the eye of lonely white women hundreds of miles from the
nearest big store.
She resolved to suggest strongly to Abdul when she saw him again that
he should take the girls for a holiday to Adelaide. Mira was saving her
'money for there was little to spend it on in the town. She would soon
have enough for her fare.
Constable McGuinnes came back without a prisoner. He'd travelled by train after all, but the dust-storm had caught them on the way to
Oodnadatta, and sand drifting over the line stopped the wheels from

"We all had to get out and shovel sand," he said, telling Alix about it.
(Mab was in the kitchen, supervising Mira in the setting up of two trays.)
"And then when we finally got going, there was still some sand on the
track, and the wheels screamed and slipped over it--enough to put your
teeth on edge."
"What happened at the fettlers' camp?"
"I didn't get my man. He'd hopped on the train to Oodnadatta, and
when I wired there they said he had left by camel for the Alice. He could
travel across country, well away from the usual track. But I telegraphed
the Constable at Alice Springs to arrest him on suspicion of murder as
soon as he gets there. Unless he perishes on the way."
He said this so impersonally that Alix gave a little shiver.
"He bashed his mate's head in with a shovel," said Jack grimly. "Might
be better to disappear in the desert than be brought back to hang for
murder."
"I suppose so ... D'you want to stop for lunch?" she asked rather
coldly.
"No--no, I've got loads of paperwork to catch up. But I want you
to come over tonight when you can get away--towards sunset, if you
can.
"We're rather busy at present--"
"Just for half an hour. I've got a present for you. There's only one of
them, so I can't ask Sister Mab."
"A present!" She was intrigued. What could he have brought
back from the "abomination of desolation" about Lake Eyre? Perhaps a
polished pebble, or a collection of garnets, "Centralian rubies," which
could be picked up in dry creek-beds. "Why didn't you bring it? Is it
heavy?"
"No--light as a feather." He laughed. "But I want to give it just to
you, no one else. See you tonight."
After the patients had been fed at five-thirty, Alix washed her face and
changed into a cool tusser silk blouse and skirt. She told Mab she was
just going across to the police station to get something and would be back
soon.
Her heart beat a little faster as she crossed the dusty space, lifting her
long skirt above sand-drifts and heaps of dry roly-poly bushes. She knewthat Jack McGuinnes was attracted, she had even flirted with him a little,
and now she was worried.
What could his present be? Surely--surely not a ring? At that thought
she almost panicked. Then she scolded herself for vanity. He must be at
least thirty-five, and no doubt was a confirmed bachelor. And he had
never even tried to kiss her.
At the sound of her high-heeled boots on the two wooden steps of the
little police station, the Mounted Constable came to the door to greet
her, a huge grin on his sun-bronzed face.
"Come in, come in! I was afraid you wouldn't be able to get
away."
"I can't stay. I've left Mab getting our tea."
He led her into his tiny office, lifted his report ledger from the desk
and opened it. Then, going to the window where the last yellow rays of
the level sun shone in, he held up something coloured like a jewel. A
feather!
"It's for you," he said, handing the foot-long feather to her. "It's from
the tail of a red-barred black cockatoo--I found it in a dry creek-bed,
caught in a dead bush."
Alix's mouth was open in an "O-oh!" of delight. It was beautiful, like
a painted sunset--red shading down to orange, edged with palest yellow,
and, sketched across it like a flight of dark birds against the sky, wavering
lines of black to dark-brown. The tip was a glossy jet-black.
"Jack! It's beautiful. I saw those cockatoos near Etadunna, but they
don't seem to come down this far. O-oh! Can you bear to part with
it?"
"Of course. I'll probably find another. Anyway I'd give you anything,
you know that."
"Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much."
He came close, loomed above her. Such a large man! Although she was
tall, she felt frail and vulnerable before him.
"Is it worth a kiss?"
"I--I suppose so."
She was crushed against him in a moment, her feet almost leaving the
floor. She had been kissed before at parties, by various medical students
and young doctors a little elevated with drink, but never so thoroughly as
this. Her heart beat faster, but she disengaged herself from his bearlike
embrace.
"I've wanted to do that for a long time," he said with satisfaction. "Ever
since you trod on my hat."
She said breathlessly, "And now I must go. Thank you again for the
feather. I shall treasure it."
"Don't go! Sit down a moment, please! I wanted to talk to you alone,
that's why I asked you to come over."
The sun had set, with the effect of a great lamp being extinguished, as
it disappeared abruptly below the flat horizon. Already the office was
growing dim. Given courage by the fading light, Jack McGuinnes made
his proposal.
"I want you to know, Alix, that I don't kiss girls lightly, unless I really
care for them, I mean. And if you could care for me ... I would be
honoured if you would be my wife."
He took her hands and gazed into her face, but she dropped her eyes
and pulled away from him.
"Jack, you know I'm fond of you, but that is all. I don't love you, and
I really don't want to get married, not for a long time."
"Unfortunately, I have fallen in love with you."
"Oh, Jack!" (That's all I ever seem to say to him, she thought fleetingly.)
"But I'm afraid I don't feel that way about you."
"I thought--I thought you liked me a little."
"I do! I like you a lot ... and you're a good friend. But--but I don't
want to get married, or even engaged. And I don't love you in that
way."
She had been looking down at her hands, clasped together in front
of her. As she looked up into his face she saw that it had become
greyish, the healthy ruddy tan had faded and changed. She saw the
pain in his eyes, but what other answer could she have given? It was not
fair to raise false hopes, when she knew she would not change her
mind.

"Well, what was the big surprise? Did he bring you a fabulous opal?"
asked Mab when she returned to the hostel.
Alix held up the cockatoo's feather silently.
"A feather! But it's beautiful. You don't look very happy, however.
Were you disappointed?"
"No, of course not. . . . Only, Mab, he has asked me to marry
him."
"Good heavens! Though I did think he was a bit smitten. And what
did you say?"
"I told him it was impossible."
"And he took it badly?"
"Yes. I hope it won't spoil our friendship."
"Oh dear! Well, it's your own fault for being so attractive."
"But it is my fault, at least. ... I did flirt with him a little. I mean,
he's the only man near our age group about the place."
"Oh, MacFarlane! I hope you have learned a lesson."
That night, for the first time in many months, Alix thought about Dr.
Hamilton. She had loved that man with a sort of idolizing emotion, from
a distance. He had never so much as touched her hand. Yet she had almost fainted with excitement if she saw him coming towards her down
a corridor. She would gaze across the ward when he was on his rounds,
seeing his calm, kindly face bent above this patient or that, and her heart
would swell with love. Of course, she had told herself impatiently, nurses
always fell in love with senior surgeons. But it did not alter the fact that
when he spoke to her she became breathless and pink in the face, quite
unable to control her pulse. If her feelings were obvious, he did not seem
to have noticed.
She thought perhaps she would dream of him, as she put out the lamp
and settled down to sleep. Instead she had a horrid dream about a ten-foot
snake that had somehow got into the kitchen, and which she eventually killed by cutting off its head with a meat-cleaver. It had been so real that
she lit the lamp and looked round anxiously, while Mab slept on,
unconcerned.
Alix lay awake, thinking, quite unable to get back to sleep. It was Jack's
proposal that had unsettled her. She liked him, she hated to hurt his
feelings. . . . If only he had fallen for Mab! She wondered how she would
feel if Mab went and got married, perhaps to someone like that manly
drover she had been rather taken with. She couldn't imagine carrying on
without Mab's companionship. They complemented each other, they
had the same sense of humour, they simply "got on"; and they-had years
of shared experience behind them. There was something like love between
them, though neither would have admitted it.
No, she couldn't get married, not even if Jack McGuinnes were the
most attractive man in the world.
She punched her pillow irritably and turned out the lamp. She got
back to sleep, and had no more nightmares about snakes.

The very next day as she was going into the kitchen she saw a movement
by the Coolgardie safe, and gave a scream of horror. But it wasn't a snake,
it was a huge Perentie lizard that had got in when Mab left the outer wire
door open while she went round the side of the building to water her
tomatoes. The lizard had evidently smelt the eggs which were stored in
the safe.
Alix, not feeling at all brave, took a straw broom and waved it threateningly
at the creature. It opened its ugly mouth at her and stood firm.
She jabbed with the broom, and suddenly it took off, with a ridiculous
undignified waddle, and disappeared out the door. Mab found her
sitting in a kitchen chair clutching the broom, for her knees had turned
to jelly. Mab promised that she would not leave the wire door open
again.
"Remember the goats!" said Alix. "And this time it might have been a
snake."
Hergott Springs in winter was unexpectedly cold, but at least it was not wet The small isolated hills, flat-topped or pointed like a pyramid,
showed grey beyond the wide gibber plain, where the desert-hardened,
sand-polished boulders appeared dark purple as you looked towards the
sun- but when you looked back, the sun-struck surfaces were every shade
from maroon to rose-madder to orange-red. The beautiful blue mirages
had disappeared.
A cold dry wind came down from the direction of the Simpson Desert
to the northward. The wind whistled mournfully through the wires of
the Overland Telegraph Line and stirred up feathers of pale-orange
dust in the road. It flapped the old sheets of iron and piled up the
dirty papers against the fences. A veranda blind made out of a garish
painted canvas from some former advertising sign waved like an untidy
flag.
And old Uley, last member of the Dieri tribe which once flourished
north of here, was brought into the hostel suffering from bronchitis.
He was the first full-blood Aborigine they had treated, and they were
advised by his relatives to make up a small fire for him.
"Him gotter have a fire. Old blackfeller bugger-up pinish, sposem no
got fire where him bin schleep."
The Sisters showed them the fairly primitive heating arrangements,
which consisted of a kerosene drum with holes punched in it and a fire
burning inside.
No, that wouldn't do at all, the retinue of followers who had brought
the old man explained. He had to have a little fire, a blackfellow fire,
to sleep beside. In the end Mab came up with a solution: a sheet of
iron was placed on bricks on the floor, and a small fire built on top of
this.
The old man was too sick to take part in this discussion, but lay groaning
and coughing in his ragged shirt and trousers while his relatives argued.
Alix and Mab suspected that he would never have agreed to be brought
in for treatment unless he was in a pretty bad state.
He was their only patient at the time, and between them they managed
to get him into a clean pair of pyjamas borrowed from the mailman. Uley
struggled feebly against being bathed, but even this was accomplished by
dint of much patience, and a warm poultice, placed on his hairy grey
chest with its tribal scars, seemed to give him relief.
It was hard to get him to eat, but though he had little appetite he loved
bread and butter and tea with plenty of sugar. He had been brought
up on "whitefeller tucker," for his tribe had been taken in by the German Lutheran missionaries at Kopperamanna, after the massacres
by early white settlers in the Coongie sand-hills, where it was said
up to two hundred men, women, and children had been shot. The Dieri fought fiercely for their land and their precious water, but
after a few white stockmen had been speared, the revenge was swift and
terrible.
Having failed to persuade him to let her trim his big grey beard, which
got in the way of the hot poultices, Alix sat down to talk to Uley and gain
his confidence.
"Where you born, Old Man?" she asked. "This not your country?"
She knew the importance of "place" to the blackfellow--that it held a
spiritual meaning for him, "me-country"; also that "Old Man" was a title
of respect, among a race where age gave status and the old men of the
tribe used to rule.
"On t' Cooper, that where I born, out Kilalpaninna way. Then I bin
brought into Mission. Father Vogelsang, he grow me up."
"There were many of your people in those days?"
"Big mob. Around Lake Kopperamanna there was hundreds of the dark
people. They laugh. They sing. They dance. Now all gone. I lie here, I
think about them old times."
Uley coughed painfully. There were tears in his dark, bloodshot
eyes.
To distract him, Alix pretended to have trouble with the tongue-twisting
native names. "Kopperamanna, Kilal-paninna. . . My word, those plenty
long names. What the longest you know, Uley?"
He thought for a moment. "Out by Ooriwilannie," he said, "dry lake
by name Noodlawandracooracooratarraninna."
"You gammon--that a real true name?"
"True!"
Soon she had him laughing at her attempts at pronouncing, or even
remembering all the syllables of this extraordinary word, which he told
her was the native name for the kangaroo-rats that bred there, which the
blackfellows killed with a quick throw of the boomerang.
He said that at Kilalpaninna where there was once a second Mission
station some twenty-five miles down the Cooper, there had been a
big lake, now silted up and turned to desert, where they had fished for
bream.
"But there's water at Kopperamanna now," he added. "Big gub'mint
bore, bring water from undergroun'." Alix realized that this was the same
water which at Hergott Springs flowed to the surface, for the town was at
the edge of the Great Artesian Basin.
In another week he was fit to be discharged. His whole family came to
pick him up, bringing a stretcher, but he insisted he was well enough to
walk.
"T'ank you, Chister," he said to the two girls. "Ol' Uley not ready kick
t' bucket yet, eh?"
They laughed; the colloquialism sounded quaint from the lips of the
dignified old man, last of his tribe. His relations were all of mixed blood, some lighter-skinned than others, but all descended in part from white men who had travelled or worked in this area for almost fifty years.
Uley took home a bottle of the "coughin' medchin" to which he had
become rather addicted.Chapter Ten

Whenever one of the Afghans from across the railway line had to be
admitted to the hospital there were all sorts of problems. They would not
come in until they were desperately sick, not liking the idea of being
touched by an Infidel woman. They would not eat meat unless it had
been killed in the prescribed way. And they often refused at first to remove
their clothes; they never removed their turbans.
When Akbar, a hawker with a string of camels, was admitted with a
nasty ulcer on his leg that had eaten almost into the shin-bone, he clung
to his long blue tunic and white pantaloons but consented to roll them
up above the knee. He had brought a beautiful hand-woven prayer-mat
with him, so that he could pray towards Mecca at the appointed times
during the day. Mab warned him sternly against kneeling on the bad leg,
but he still got up and bowed himself over the stretcher, touching with
his forehead the mat spread upon it instead of the floor.
Mahomet Ali, a wizened old Afghan, came to Alix to have two teeth
out. Dental patients usually visited the pub first to fortify themselves with
a couple of strong rums or whiskies; Mahomet Ali, being Muslim, did
not have the benefits of numbing alcohol. Alix painted his gums with oil
of cloves to deaden the pain. When the operation was over he thanked
her with a bow, and took her hand in farewell. As he did so, Alix felt
something hard pressed into her palm. She looked down and found two
glowing pieces of opal.
"A gift," said the old man.
"Oh, but there's no need--"
"For you," he said, and departed with a graceful wave of his brown
hand.
Alix was often called on to show her dental skills, though all she could
do were extractions. Her hands were slender and her patients sometimes
looked doubtful, but she had very strong wrists.
A traveller came in one afternoon, rather the worse for drink, asking
to have two teeth out.
"They've been giving me hell, Sister, if you'll excoose the expression,"
he said, weaving his way along the veranda.
"Come in and sit down in that chair," said Alix firmly. "Now, open!"
The teeth were fairly loose, and soon both were lying in a dish with bloody roots exposed. Only one of them was a double tooth. She plugged the sockets with cotton wool.
"By jingo, you're a top-notch dentist," said the man admiringly. He
wavered off towards the pub, holding a handkerchief to his jaw.
Some time later a second patient arrived. He was completely drunk,
scarcely able to stagger.
"Me cobber tells me you're a great dentist," he muttered. " 'Little thing,
looks as if a puff of wind'd blow her away, but she's all right.' Thatsh
what he said. Had--had a coupler drinks for Dutsh courage, yer know.
Want you to take out this tooth."
He opened his mouth and Alix peered in, recoiling slightly from his
whisky-laden breath. He had not a tooth in his head.
"I don't think you need my ministrations," she said, escorting him
firmly off the premises.
"But the toothache, somethin' crool it is--"
"Well, it must be imaginary. You don't have any teeth left to ache."

For the next fortnight Alix was cook and Mab took over the nursing. She
was having a worrying time with a maternity case. The wife of a dingo
trapper had been brought in by her husband from his camp near Lake
Harry. Mrs. Bates was near her time. She was overweight and far from
healthy. Her legs were swollen and she had high blood pressure.
On testing a sample of her urine, Mab found that it was almost pure
albumen; after heating the specimen and adding a drop of nitric acid, a
dense white cloud formed and coagulated into a solid precipitate.
"Nurse, I can't see properly," moaned the woman.
"All right, Mrs. Bates. Just keep calm."
She asked Mira to call Alix from the kitchen to help. She expected
complications, and as Mrs. Bates went into labour she developed eclampsia.
The fits were frightening, she frothed at the mouth and went rigid,
her eyes rolled up in her head. They held her during the convulsions that
followed, put a peg between her teeth to stop her biting her tongue. Then
she became comatose. Her contractions had ceased.
"We'll have to bring on the birth as quickly as possible," said Mab,
preparing an injection and an infusion of quinine.
Mira was looking rather green. Mab sent her away to the kitchen.
After yet another eclamptic fit, as she entered the second stage of
labour, the woman became comatose again. Mab tried vaginal dilation
with a Sims' speculum. The water had broken, and peering into the
cavity, Mab said, "I can see its hair!" Then, "I'll have to use forceps, I'm
afraid. The mother will die if she goes on like this much longer."
Mrs. Bates woke up. "Try to bear down," said Mab urgently. "I'll help
you." As soon as dilation of the cervix was complete, Mab gently inserted
the instrument and gripped, careful not to use too much force andcrush the vulnerable skull. She had been present when a doctor did an
instrumental delivery, but had never had to try it herself.
Soon a dark head appeared, a purplish face, and then the small body
slid out, covered in blood and mucus. Mab held it up triumphantly. "It's
a girl, Mrs. Bates."
She bathed the infant in oil and wrapped her up well before placing it
in a basket by the bed. Mrs. Bates was pale and exhausted, but her eyes
were clear. "Can I see her?" she asked.
"Just for a moment," said Mab, holding out the yelling baby for her
to see. "I want you to relax now." Her fear was that Mrs. Bates would go
into another fit before the placenta was passed. She waited anxiously,
kneading the patient's abdomen gently until the afterbirth was expelled,
sliding out so much more easily than the round skull of the baby. Surely,
she thought, Nature has made a mistake in creating such large heads on
new-born infants. She had seen so much suffering in her midwifery
course and since, that she had decided she never wanted to have a baby.
And the only way to be sure of that was not to get married.
She gave Mrs. Bates a double dose of potassium bromide and hoped
for the best. The fits did not recur, but the patient was exhausted. She
would need a couple of weeks' bed rest.
"Certainly she can't go back to that camp," said Mab decisively. "We
must make sure she has milk for the infant first, and also try to get her
weight down. Her blood pressure has improved since the birth, however."
She was up half the night with the baby, giving it boiled water. Alix
thought she was over-anxious and should let the baby yell. But Mab said
the important thing was for Mrs. Bates to rest, and she would never do
so while she heard her infant crying. After two days the baby, though
only six pounds in weight, was sucking vigorously and the milk had begun
to flow.
Mab took over as cook as Alix went back to nursing.
She was up at night a lot with the baby, who was underweight and
rarely slept more than three hours at a time. One night, walking about
the silent ward when the infant had gone back to sleep, she felt wide
awake, and she went out onto the veranda to stare up at the sky, which
seemed to overflow with brilliant stars. Looking east across the railway
line, she watched a star, flaring in blue and red fire, rise over the horizon
and slowly climb the sky beside the dark shape of the water-tower. She
could feel the turning earth, the great solid ball of it beneath her feet.
A terrible yearning overcame her, a longing for she knew not what. . . .
Well, what do you want? she asked herself crossly. Here you are in the
outback, doing what you want to do, dealing with life and death. But still
that divine discontent troubled her. It was the night sky in this place, its
great gold moon and glittering stars, the thin cry of the dingo uttering his
desire, the stone-curlew with his eerie call, sounding so lost and lonely.
Alone! That was it. She wanted someone to share her feelings, some
soul-mate, some man. Not good, worthy Jack McGuinnes, salt of the
earth though he might be. But there must be someone, somewhere who
felt this terrible unrest too, who shared her longing and would make her
life complete.
The baby gave an irritable cough and started a half-hearted cry. She
went inside and felt normality close round her, with the safe and friendly
roof overhead.

Scattered thunderstorms had fallen farther up the Birdsville Track towards
Mungerannie, and "you could almost see the feed growing," according to Wal Crombie. With the amazing recuperative power of the sand-hill
country, the soil was covered with purple parakelya, bluebush and annual
saltbush, daisies, and even some Mitchell grass. Stock were beginning to
be moved down the Track to the railhead, from beyond Birdsville. Mab
and Alix no longer rushed outside to see a mob of cattle arrive; it had
become almost commonplace.
Even the dreaded Strzelecki Track was in use, for though Cooper's
Creek was still dry for almost its whole length, there had been other falls
in the area, where rain had not fallen for years. The Strzelecki Creek, if
not flowing, was at least reputed to have some water in it.
One afternoon when Mab, having cooked a midday meal for two
hungry men patients and baked a silver cake and some scones for tea, was
lying down taking a rest, Alix heard a step on the veranda and to her
confusion saw that it was Jack McGuinnes. She had not seen him alone
since the night he'd proposed, and she felt shy in his company; while he
had adopted an almost offhand manner towards her, evidently still
suffering from hurt pride.
"Are you there, Sister?"
He bent his head through the doorway, at the same time removing his
wide-brimmed khaki hat.
"Oh--Sister Alix!" he said formally. "I came to borrow a stretcher for
an urgent case. The man must be superhuman, he's just ridden in with
this great gash in his stomach, cobbled together with a hair from his
horse's tail."
"Horsehair is still used for sutures sometimes. But how did it happen?"
"He was coming down the Birdsville Track, and then after leaving
Mungerannie he had a fall, or his horse threw him, while he was rounding
up a runaway bullock. The bullock went for him on the ground and
ripped him up. There's an Abo horse-tailer with him, who'll help me
carry him over. He's a bit exhausted. They came to the police station first
because it was nearer."
"I'll prepare a sterile cot at once," said Alix, all embarrassment forgotten
in this emergency. "I'll put some water on to boil. I suppose I'll have totry and sew him up. I wish there was a doctor in this town! I'll just have
to do my best."
"I'm sure you'll manage."
Before long her patient arrived on the stretcher. He even managed a
smile, with very even white teeth in a brown face. "G'day, Sister! I hope
you're handy with a needle. I stitched myself up with a needle I had in
my kit. But as soon as I tried to ride, the horsehair busted. This is the
second patch-up."
Alix compressed her lips as she opened his shirt and saw the wound.
It looked deep, nearly a foot long, and an angry red where it was puckered
around the clumsy black stitches. She sent up a quick prayer. Then she
proceeded to undress the patient and get him into a clean cotton gown.
Constable McGuinnes and the Aborigine faded away.
"They're big long-horned fellers back there," said the drover. "You've
got to be quick, they'll go for you as soon as look at you."
Mab got up and came to help. She took down his particulars. He
was Jim Manning, aged twenty-nine, of Cappamerri Station on the
Diamantina beyond the Queensland border. He had been bringing his
father's eight hundred head of cattle down to the railway at Hergott
Springs, but after the accident he had left the cattle and ridden on ahead.
It was nearer to come on to the Springs than to go back to Birdsville, and
he had heard there were nurses here. He had rested a little at Etadunna
and Dulkaninna and then come on, riding slowly and in pain. He had
just missed the mailman.
"We'll have to give him a whiff of ether while I clean the wound and
stitch it up," said Alix.
"I didn't have any ether the last two times," muttered the drover.
"Nevertheless, I don't want you moving while I'm operating, Mr.
Manning," said Alix grandly.
"Call me Jim."
They had arranged a table in the office and covered it with a clean
sheet. The patient lay on this, with another draped table alongside for
the instruments, clamps and needles, tweezers and scissors. Mab held the
ether bottle over the pad on his face and shook out a few drops.
"Right!" said Alix. "Is he under?"
She cut the horrid-looking puckered stitches of horsehair and removed
them with tweezers. The wound was inflamed, but not as deep as she
had feared, and there was no pus. She cleaned and irrigated the wound,
then took up a needle threaded with surgical silk. She saw that she would
have to draw together a partly severed muscle as well as the outer flesh.
For this she would use catgut, which would be reabsorbed.
Noticing that her hands were shaking slightly, she took a deep breath
to calm her nerves and began drawing the opening together. The man
breathed stertorously, but his colour remained good and his pulse steady.
When all was finished they rolled him onto another sheet and carried him between them to the men's ward, where he woke up and vomited.
He asked to see "what sort of a job you girls have done." Alix told him
she had a dressing over the wound for the present. "It was slightly infected,
and no wonder," she said. "In fact you're very lucky."
"I did boil the needle and the horsehair."
"Yes, but the wound wasn't fully closed--"
"And it is now?"
"Yes. I'm afraid I was never much good at sewing, and it's not very
neat, but I think the sutures will hold. As long as you rest quietly; no
getting out of bed till the infection is controlled."
"Hell! I can't stay in bed! And what about when I want to go-- You
know."
He looked so embarrassed that Mab reassured him. "Don't worry, we
have a bedpan. Nothing to it."
Jim Manning looked resigned. He was feeling rather sick and not
inclined to argue.
Alix, lying wakeful in her bed that night, heard the weird, lost cry of
a curlew out on the stony plain. She was thinking about her patient. He
was exactly her idea of the Australian bushman--lean brown face,
sun-bleached hair, pale-blue eyes like chips of glass between slitted lids
used to screwing up against the glare of the outback sun, which had left
a fan of pale wrinkles at the corner of each eye. There was no spare flesh
on him. He was wiry but not thin, well-muscled and very fit. And game,
to have ridden his horse for days with that wound in his stomach.

All their troubles seemed to be coming at once.
Next, Mr. Bennet, the station-master, was brought in with pain in his
abdomen, which was tight and hard. It looked like an acute appendicitis.
"I'm not attempting an appendectomy!" said Alix.
"Me either," Mab said. "We'll have to get him down to Port Augusta
on the next train. It's due today, back from Oodnadatta."
"What if peritonitis sets in?"
"He'll have to take his chance. We can't operate. But one of us had
better travel down with him."
When the train came in from the north, they asked the Constable to
inquire whether there was a doctor among the passengers. Fortunately
there was one on his way back from Oodnadatta and the Alice with a
scientific party; two geologists and an ethnologist from the Adelaide
Museum.
Dr. Brown, appealed to, agreed to leave the train and try to operate,
but he said he was out of practice as he had been semi-retired for some
years.
The driver of the 'Ghan was never in a hurry, sometimes stopping inthe middle of nowhere to brew a billy of tea with the guard or to shoot a
tasty plains turkey for the larder. He decided that he could wait for the
doctor.
The men passengers all got down and visited the hotel for some bottles
of beer which they carried back to the train for the next dry stage to
Farina. This was almost a ritual at the few stops where there was a liquor
store. The railway line from Port Augusta to Oodnadatta was strewn on
each side with brown glass bottles, indestructible artifacts glittering in the
sun.
Once more the office table was draped in white, with a second table
for the instruments. They hadn't all the correct items, but a breech hook
was used as a retractor, and a pair of angular forceps. The doctor, who
did not look young, remained unflustered while he made his incision.
Mab assisted him and Alix gave the anaesthetic.
All went well until, as he was tying the purse string, the catgut broke
and the stump had to be found again and oversewn. The doctor gave vent
to a mild expletive. Eventually the operation was over successfully, and
the patient transported to the men's ward.
Mab and Alix were pleased that they had made a correct diagnosis.
"Just got it in time," said Dr. Brown cheerfully. "Another day and it
would have ruptured."
Alix and Mab then asked the doctor to look at their other surgical
patient, and he congratulated Alix on her sutures.
"Should be no further trouble," he said. "But I'd advise bed-rest for
the present."
Jim Manning groaned. "Fair go, Doc. I'm sick of this bed."
"And if you get up too early you'll be back there for even longer."
Alix, thinking about her patient, reflected that almost all the men she
had met in the north were of solid build--the Constable, the mailman,
the drovers who passed through. The publican was positively fat, and the
station-master looked well fed. But Jim Manning was different, with his
rather hawklike profile and clean-boned face. She decided that she liked
him.
It was just chance, or fate, that it was her fortnight for nursing duty
when he came in, or Mab would have cared for him while Alix looked
after the meals. As it was, she rather enjoyed bossing him about, making
him lie still while she changed the dressing and examined the stitches.
He had been very shy when she brought him a urine bottle and still more
so over the bedpan. I hope I don't have to give him an enema, she
thought. He'd never forgive the insult to his dignity. But soon he was
able to get out on the commode.
When after ten days the stitches were ready to come out, the wound
looked clean and healed. She snipped and tweezered while he wriggled
and complained that it tickled.
"Lie still!" she said sternly. "Or you'll get another puncture from these scissors."
He stayed quiet, but as she worked he surveyed her with a quizzical
expression and a lurking smile in his eyes that made her self-conscious.
When she had done, she picked up the surgical tray to remove it. A lean
brown hand stretched out and held her other wrist.
"Sit down, Sister. Come on, I won't bite. Talk to me for a while."
Alix felt a moment of panic. Her breathing was uneven, and she did not meet his eyes.

I fear thee, ancient Mariner!
I fear thy skinny hand!
For thou art long, and lank, and brown,
As is the ribbed sea-sand . . .

The lines popped into her head, though they were not at all apt for a
place hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean; nor did the patient have
a "long grey beard and glittering eye" like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner.
But he had those far-gazing eyes of explorers and sailors, accustomed to
looking away to the rim of the world.
She sat primly on the foot of the bed.
"What shall I talk about?" she asked defensively.
"First of all--can I get up now?"
"Yes, you can go to the bathroom and the toilet. Tomorrow you can
get dressed."
"Well, thank the Lord for small mercies. I can't stand being helpless
like this."
"Tell me about your home and family . . . Jim."
"We-ell. . . . There's my dad, Big Jim Manning, and my mum--her
name's Olive . . . I'm the only son, and my two sisters are married and
left home."
"Is Big Jim bigger than you?"
"Not really. Same height, but more solid."
"And you run cattle at Cappamerri?"
"Yair, we had to get rid of the sheep. The dingoes got most of them,
and the fleece was always sanded. Still, mutton made a nice change from
everlasting steak. Which reminds me--Sister Mab is a great cook."
"You're lucky you're about ready to be discharged. I'm the cook next
week, and the meals won't be as good."
"Well, you can't do much with corned beef and tinned dog. I'll get
you some fresh beef when the mob arrives. They should be here in a day
or two."
"Thank you. Now, I do have other patients--"
"But you haven't told me about you!""Another time. Morning tea's at eleven, after out-patients. I'll see you
then. You don't really need any more nursing, but you might as well stay
till the plant arrives."

Chapter Eleven

"I don't know!" said Mab despondently. Her straight, sandy, wiry hair
was electric with the heat, and falling in long wisps from her bun. Her
cheeks were burnt to a ruddy hue.
She looked over the veranda rail at the spindly tomato plants struggling
to grow in the sandy soil. "I don't know why we bother. And I don't know
why we drink boiling hot tea in this heat."
"The theory is that it makes you perspire, and that makes you feel
cooler . . . Evaporation."
"Like a Coolgardie safe!" said Mab.
Alix had decided to serve morning tea on the veranda on Jim Manning's
first day up. She had it all set out when a thick dust-storm blew up, and
within minutes the milk was covered with a skin of sand, the bread and
butter looked as if spread with brown sugar, and Mab's white cloth was
filthy.
They had to remove everything inside, shake out the cloth, and reset
the table. They dreaded a full-scale dust-storm, but in the early afternoon
clouds appeared, and there was actually a sprinkle of rain--the first rain
they had seen since arriving in Hergott Springs more than a year ago.
The air was filled with that sweet scent of rain on dry earth, which Alix
remembered after summer storms at home.
The droving plant from Cappamerri arrived next day. Though Alix
warned him against riding as yet, Jim insisted on walking over to talk to
his men.
"They were a bit surprised to see me walking about," he said on his
return. "I rather think they expected me to have conked it, or at least
been very crook. But you can't keep a good man down."
"Of course, good nursing could have had something to do with it."
He grinned. "Yair. Could be."
He had brought a haunch of fresh beef with him. She thanked him
and hung it down the cellar in a muslin bag.
That afternoon the temperature reached 115 degrees in the shade. The
ram had not made it any cooler, and the thin film of moisture was soon
baked out of the dusty road.
The present drought had lasted since 1910, and it was now 1913, with one of the worst years yet to come. No one had yet realized that droughtwas the normal condition for the far north of South Australia and for
western Queensland.
The relieving station-master from the city was the only man in
the town who regularly looked spruce and tidy, wearing his official uniform.
But Jim Manning was resplendent this morning in checked shirt,
well-fitting moleskin trousers, and high-heeled riding boots with
spurs. He looked a real cattleman, Alix thought admiringly. The effect
was rather spoiled by the high-crowned, battered, sweat-stained felt hat
he wore.
He had collected his swag from the wagon travelling with the plant
when it came in, and appeared in his clean change of clothes. He asked
Alix to walk over with him to see the eight hundred beasts penned in the
railway stockyards.
Alix and Jim leaned companionably on the stockyard rail, while Jim
pointed out the good and bad points of various beasts.
"One thing, they've all got our brand on 'em--CM--not a cleanskin
among them."
"Isn't that usual?"
"Well, most droving plants pick up a few stray beasts on the way--it's
a big country with very few fences, and some unbranded cattle get mixed
in with the mob, and you just sort of incorporate them."
"And what if they carried another station's brand?"
"Some blokes would try and alter the brand--for instance ours could
be changed to OM fairly easy--but I wouldn't come at that caper." He
grinned disarmingly. "But if someone else's bullock wandered by when
you were about to kill a beast for tucker, well, he might just get in the
way of a bullet."
"Isn't that illegal?"
"Yair. But there's no brand on raw beef."
"Which reminds me, I'd better go and get the dinner on. Roast beef.
As you're still officially a patient, you'd better come and have some." As
she was now cook, Alix had looked forward to baking a succulent roast,
with plenty of cold roast beef left over for meals.
"Right-oh. Thanks."
He had asked to be discharged the next day so that he could supervise
loading of the mob on the cattle-train in the morning.
He came back riding a brown horse as if he were part of it, and hitched
it to the front fence.
"I'm not sure if you should be riding yet," said Alix. "What do you
think, Mab?"
"Oh, he's tough. If he could ride with a bit of horsehair holding him
together--"
"And riding has given me an appetite." He sat down to do justice to a
meal of his own beef.
"this is good-oh!" he said appreciatively as he cleaned his plate. "I
ht you said you couldn't cook, Sister Alix."
"I didn't say I couldn't cook. Only that Mab is better at it."
"Anyway, this'll do me. We don't get anything but steak mostly on the
track and boiled corned beef. I just hope this is the beast that opened
me up. Serve the bu--, er, the beggar right."
He lingered on the veranda, looking down at Alix with those light-blue
eyes with their clear whites against his brown skin.
"Eh what about coming up to the pub with me tonight, Sister?"
"We' don't usually go to the hotel, except sometimes for midday dinner
on a Sunday."
"Well, come for a ride in the moonlight, then. I suppose you can
ride?"
"Yes. But I'm not an expert."
"Like you're not an expert cook? Well, you can donkey up behind me,
then. My mare can canter like a rocking-horse when she wants to."
Alix had an impulse to say no, to make some excuse, but then she
thought, He'll be gone in a couple of days and I'll probably never see
him again. Why not go?
"All right," she said faintly. "I'll be ready after I've cleared up the
kitchen after tea."
Jim came early and helped her wash up while Mab was giving the
patients their night medication. He dried while Alix washed, polishing
the glasses and cutlery with care.
"See, I'm real domesticated," he said, draping the tea-towel over his
shoulder.
She put the things away and prepared a supper tray for the patients-- only two of them, including the station-master, who was also making a
good recovery. His wife called in with a home-made cake.
She brought it out to the kitchen. Alix thanked her, and cut a few slices
while Mrs. Bennet looked at the young cattleman with interest.
"Oh--this is Jim Manning. We had to sew him up, you know."
"Yes, of course, you were in the ward with my husband. I didn't
recognize you at first. How's the wound?"
"Right as rain, thanks to Sister Alix here. She's a dab hand with the
needle."
Mrs. Bennet's thin face did its best to look arch. "Well, it's quite
romantic, isn't it? I bet you've never been sewn up by a slip of a girl
before."
"No-o," drawled Jim. "Only by an Abo. Would you like to see my
scar?"
He made to pull the shirt out of his trousers, but Mrs. Bennet backed away. "Oh, no, no, thank you! I'm sure it's very interesting, but I must
go and see my husband. ...""He'll be able to go home in a few days," said Alix. "But not back on
duty for another week."
She and Jim exchanged a smile as the station-master's wife hurried
away. Mrs. Bennet, perhaps seeking to bring some colour into her drab
life, ordered romantic novels from the south every month, and had read
most of the books in the small A.I.M. library.
Jim stepped out onto the veranda. Alix went to tell Mab she was going
out for a while, and that the supper was ready in the kitchen.
As she came out through the wire door, Jim Manning took her hand
and led her into the street. They came out into brilliant moonlight--the moon, close to full, showed every detail and threw deep black shadows.
Alix had never got used to its brilliance in this clear inland air.
Once in the saddle, he instructed her to place her left foot on top of
his in the stirrup, and swung her up behind him.
"Now, put your arms around me."
"There's really no need--"
He jerked the rein and the mare started off with a bound. Alix gasped
and held on to him with both arms. She was seated sideways and felt
none too secure.
Jim calmed the mare with his voice, walked her to the end of the street,
then put her into a rocking canter. Alix began to enjoy herself, as the
lighted hotel and Mrs. Allison's store, the post office and the water-tower
fell behind. The moonlit plain stretched before them as they rode out
towards the Springs. She felt his supple trunk in its thin shirt, the firm
muscles of his diaphragm. She had bathed this man all over and knew
the wiry length and strength of him.
The tall shape of the windmill rose ahead, and then they came to the
pool of the mound spring, the water sparkling in moonlight as it overflowed
into the troughs. There was so much artesian water, it flowed so unendingly
that no one thought of conserving it, and millions of gallons flowed
away and soaked into the sand.
He pulled up and dismounted, putting the reins back over the head of
the mare, who stood quietly.
"Is she the one that threw you?" asked Alix to tease him.
"No, it was my night horse, and he didn't throw me, he fell and I went
down with him." He put up his arms and lifted her down, but slowly, so
that she slid the length of his body before her feet touched the ground.
He did not release her at once but held her close against him, while Alix
trembled, too breathless to speak.
At last, "Let me go!" she said faintly.
"Are you sure you want me to?"
"Yes! . . . No."
When he kissed her it was quite different from anything else she had
experienced. She seemed to float above the ground. Time ceased to exist,
the moon stood still in the sky, she was not aware even of the splashing
of the bore-water. After an eternity he raised his head and looked deep
into her moonlit face. He put up a hand and caressed the soft curls falling
from the neat bun.
"Such soft, fine hair," he murmured. "It's really light brown rather
than fair, but I think I'll call you Sandy. Alix doesn't suit you, it sounds
efficient and masculine. I've no doubt you're efficient, but you're also
very feminine."
"I'm also a dedicated nurse who doesn't have affairs with her patients."
"I'm not your patient any more. I've been discharged. I'll bet the men
patients keep falling in love with you, but."
She thought of the men she had treated since coming to the Springs
--podgy Mr. Bennet, two Afghans, a part-Aboriginal boy, a drunken
swagman . . . She laughed. "Not really." "I'm sure I'm not the first."
"The first what?"
"The first patient to fall in love with his nurse."
"And have you?"
"Yes! From the first moment I saw you, I thought, There's the girl for
me! You liked me kissing you, didn't you?"
"Yes."
He kissed her again, then leaned back against the frame of the windmill
and cradled her in his arms. Alix felt a great flooding peace. She laid her
head upon his shoulder. The vast silent night stretched round them, the
wide moonlit plain, the sky full of silvery light and a few pale stars. The
scratchy cry of a plover woke her as from a trance.
"The blackfellows call him the Death Bird," said Jim. "They fly over
the camp to bring news that someone has died."
Alix shivered, and he held her close. "I'd never seen anyone die until
I went nursing. There was a young girl who was badly burnt--" She
found herself telling him about Lucy, and how she herself had lost some
of her faith after that tragic death. "If only we could have got her to a
proper hospital!"
"Yair. You soon learn out here that life is not always pretty. Nature
can be cruel; the country itself is hard. In a drought you watch the cattle
slowly starving until they drop."
"I had lived all my life in the city, in Adelaide, before. Have you ever
been down to Adelaide?"
"Yair. . . . Went to school there."
"You did! I nursed at the North Adelaide Hospital."
"I was a boarder at Prince Alfred College. Only for a couple of years.
Before that it was home lessons, but I got out of them whenever I could.
Mum made me work at them, but Dad would say he needed me out on
the run, and of course I preferred riding to schoolbooks any day."

"But you live in Queensland?"
"Birdsville is our nearest town, and everyone, everything, even our
mail, comes up by way of the Birdsville Track from Adelaide. Brisbane's
too far away. There's nothing beyond us in Queensland except a little
place called Betoota, and the Stony Desert in between. So South Australia
is regarded as our home state. There's nothing to mark the border out
there anyway, except a broken-down fence."
"How big is Cappamerri?"
"Oh, about five thousand square miles. Only part of that is of any use,
except when there's rain, or water in the Diamantina apart from the
homestead waterhole. We haven't had a good year since 1910; we're just
hanging on. Those thunderstorms let us move some of our stock out,
they were too weak to travel before."
"You should be too weak to travel for a while."
"Is that your professional advice?"
"Yes. Besides--"
"Besides, I don't want to leave Hergott Springs, and you, when I've
only just found you."
"This is ridiculous! We scarcely know each other."
He said seriously, "I've known you long enough to admire you, and
like being with you, and want you as a woman. And it seems to me that
adds up to love."
"Jim--"
"I'm not the romantic type, I can't make flowery speeches, but--you've
just bowled me over."
"Oh, Jim!"
They stared at each other solemnly.
"I suppose you always kiss the girls when you come to town," she said
with an attempt at lightness.
"Well, yes . . . But none of them was a patch on you."
When they reluctantly turned towards the town, the moon was at its
zenith and shadows were at their smallest. This time she sat in front of the
saddle and he held her in his arms, while they moved to the dreamy rhythm
of the mare's effortless canter, the tattoo of her hooves on the dusty road.
He tied the mare to the corner of the front fence and led Alix into the
black shadow of the veranda.
"Alix--Sandy dearest--let me come in with you? Don't you want me
to? Please, darling. I've never wanted anyone so much--" He was
whispering urgently, his hands running up and down her thighs. But she
stiffened in his arms and pushed herself away.
"You just want to get me into bed. And anyway, I share a room with
Mab. It's not possible, even if--"
"There's a bed on the veranda," said Jim with a flash of white teeth in
the darkness.
"There's also a patient on the veranda. No, Jim. No, I mean it! You must go, we'll be waking everyone up."
She slipped away with a whispered "Good night," and cursed the wire
door as it creaked on its hinges.
She did not light the lamp but began to get undressed in the dark. If
Mab should wake she didn't want her to see her flushed cheeks and
somewhat tousled hair. She felt that the kisses they had exchanged must
show on her mouth like bruises.
But Mab was wide awake.
"Well?" she said. "Did you have an interesting time?"
Alix, her mouth full of the hairpins she was taking out of her bun,
mumbled, "Quite interesting, yes."
"You were long enough. Where have you been all this time?"
"We just rode out to the Springs."
"Just out to the Springs. Mm. What have you two been up to?"
"Oh, shut up, Kingston!" snapped Alix, flinging herself into bed. She
didn't want to talk, she wanted to savour every moment of the experience,
the feel of his lean, hard body, that hard part of him pressing into her
groin through their intervening clothes, making her faint with desire.
Was it possible to fall in love in a single night?
Chapter Twelve

Alix mooned about the hostel like Mira, forgetting what she was doing
and taking every opportunity to leave her cooking and look out for a
glimpse of Jim on his brown mare. A great swelling bubble of happiness
kept rising inside her, as if she would burst. She felt herself at the centre
of some sweet mystery, only half-guessed before, as if she had been
admitted to the secret society of lovers, and could only feel sorry for those
who did not love.
Mab regarded her quizzically but said nothing. Somehow she did not
quite trust the cattleman.
When the cattle had been safely dispatched, the Cappamerri men
wanted time to sample the fleshpots of Hergott Springs, such as they were.
By the time they were ready to leave, Jim and Alix had got to know each
other, and the more she knew him the more he surprised and intrigued
her, and the more deeply she was in love. They spent the last evening
together on her first night back on nursing duty. She would not ask Mab
to take over for her--for Mab had shown her disapproval of the affair in
various subtle ways--so instead of going out they sat in the little living
room on the cane chairs till Mab went to bed, and then occupied one
chair between them.
He kissed her deeply, his tongue searching her mouth. He pulled out his
shirt and she kissed the scar on his muscular belly, the wound that had
brought them together. Fortunately the nights had become cooler, but she
was aware of the scent of male sweat, and burying her face in his hair as he
nuzzled her breast, she found that it smelled sweet and clean as a baby's.
His hand was under her skirt, tugging impatiently at her pants as she
sat with her legs across his lap.
"Jim--I don't want--"
"No, darling, no, I won't do anything to hurt you, I promise. I wouldn't
want you to be worried. I'll stay outside, if you'll just help me . . . like
that ... ah! Oh, Alix, oh, darling, oh, God, you're so sweet, my
sweetheart, my darling, I love you, love you ..."
His body arched beneath her. With a great sigh he slid to the floor and
knelt against the chair. He undid the buttons of her shirtwaist and took
a hard nipple in his mouth. The great baby! She yearned over him like
a mother.
Then his searching fingers found her centre, and with practised skill
began to caress her. She became a mindless mass of longing, a core of
pure sensation. It left her tingling and quivering, flung back in the chair,
flooded with a new joy and understanding.
"Oh, Nurse! Nurse! Are you there, Sister?"
Alix hastily pulled down her damp skirt and pushed some loose hairpins
into her hair.
"What beaut timing!" said Jim wryly.
"Yes. She probably wants a bedpan. Romantic, isn't it?"
She got up to go to the ward, but her legs felt weak. There was pleasure
even in walking as her thighs brushed together. Sister MacFarlane on
duty! Smelling of semen, still throbbing from that marvellous experience.
And yet she was technically still a virgin. Only she did not feel like one.
Next morning Jim Manning came in to say goodbye. He shook hands
with Mab in the kitchen, said "So long, and thanks"; bid goodbye to
Mira, washing vegetables at the sink; then sought Alix in the dispensary.
She had a dropper in one hand and a medicine bottle in the other, and
as he grabbed her in his arms she tried distractedly to brush the curling
strands from her brow with the back of her wrist. He bent and kissed her
forehead and wound a soft curl around his finger.
"I have to go, dearest," he said. "Now don't cry, Sandy, or you'll have
me blubbing too. It's not forever, you know. I'll come back for you one
day--"
"When? Mab and I are here for only another ten months. Then I don't
know where we'll be. Write to me, Jim!"
"Of course. The mails are pretty slow, but they always get through,
barring a major flood. And there's not much chance of that, worse luck."
She was not listening to him, she was gazing at his face, the clean line
of his jaw, the taut brown skin and sun-bleached eyebrows, memorizing
every detail. He stroked her hair and held her head against his chest,
against the blue poplin shirt that was exactly the colour of his eyes. Then
he kissed her long and hard, his hands running up and down her back,
pressing her to him. When he let her go she staggered against the bench,
feeling almost too shaken to stand.
"I'll come and see you off." She recovered herself, put down the bottle,
and followed him out to the road. He mounted the mare in one easy,
fluid movement. Then, heedless of onlookers, he bent and kissed her full
on the mouth.
He looked down at her with a smile, but his brow was troubled.
"D'you ever read Henry Lawson?" he asked unexpectedly.
"Why--yes. We have a copy of his poems here somewhere. I always
thought they were a bit jingly."
"There's one of his I rather like--The Sliprails and the Spur.' You
should read it.""I'll remember."
"And I'll remember you. Goodbye, love."
He lifted his battered felt hat for a moment, the mare turned in her
own length, and, with a scattering of pebbles, he galloped off down the
street, after the small cloud of dust in the distance that marked the passage
of the horse plant and the returning stockmen.
Alix stared along the empty street until the dust settled. A flock of pink
and grey galahs was busy sliding down the corrugated iron roof, like a pack of kids on a slippery-dip, squawking and fluttering when they reached
the edge. She looked at them unseeingly.
A cold foreboding gripped her. "I'll remember you . . . Goodbye." It
had sounded so final. He was going four hundred miles away--would
she ever see him again? She rushed inside and flung herself on her bed,
curled into a foetal position, biting her knuckles. What had Henry Lawson
said? "There's many a good mate in the Bush called Jim."
Jim. Dear Jim. But would he make a good mate?
She had to go to out-patients now. But as soon as she could she would
find the copy of Henry Lawson--was it his Bush Ballads?--and look up
"The Sliprails and the Spur." She hoped it was a love poem.
There was a small box of books supplied by the A.I.M. for the use of
patients and for anyone in town who liked to borrow them, as well as a
pile of well-thumbed magazines. In the afternoon Alix went and searched
in the box, feverishly throwing aside Benbonuna and Paving the Way and
the songs of Banjo Patterson. Where was Henry Lawson? She reached
the bottom of the box and sat back on the floor, defeated. It was not there.
At tea she asked Mab casually, "Have you seen that volume of Henry
Lawson poems we had here?"
"Not While the Billy Boils?"
"No, that's short stories. I mean a book of ballads."
"Oh--I think Mr. Bennet was reading that. He must've taken it home
with him."
"There's something I want to look up. Jim and I had an argument over
a quotation."
"So Jim Manning reads poetry? I wouldn't have thought he read
anything but the stock and station reports."
"That shows how little you know him." Alix had been aware that her
friend did not like Jim, that there was a certain antagonism, almost
jealousy, which Mab had never shown over Jack McGuinnes. "I'll go
over after tea and get it back from old Bennet. His wife never reads
anything but romantic novels."
"Yes, she had you and Jim practically at the altar."
Alix pretended a non-committal smile, but her throat was constricted.
When she had extracted the missing book from the stationmaster's
house (which was overfilled with furniture and knick-knacks) she hurried back to her room. Mrs. Bennet, who just happened to be looking out the
window when Jim was saying goodbye, had handed it to her with a bright
query. "That young man has left for home, then, has he?"
"Our other male patient? Yes, he left this morning."
She fled from the woman's avid eyes.
Sitting on her bed, she turned the pages feverishly. "The Sliprails and
the Spur." There it was. She couldn't remember having read it before.
Yes, it was about two lovers, he a horseman named Jim. Now they were
saying farewell by the sliprails before he rode away. . . . with their
"Goodbye, Mary!" "Goodbye, Jim." And then--

Oh, he rides hard to race the pain
Who rides from love, who rides from home;
But he rides slowly back again
Whose heart has learnt to love and roam.

Oh! So that was his message! She smiled bitterly. His heart had "learned
to love and roam."
She read to the end, where poor forsaken Mary kept stealing out to the
sliprails in the dusk, waiting for the sound of his hoofbeats returning,
waiting for the sight of faithless, footloose Jim.
Alix groaned. Why had he pretended to love her, pretended that this
was something different, special, unique in his experience? What a fool
she had been! She flung the book violently to the floor, breaking its spine.

Mab was aware that her companion was out of sorts, scarcely eating and
moping about the place. Mira on the other hand had become quite lively,
for her, and went about the cleaning of the wards and peeling the
vegetables with a cheerful smile, at times humming a monotonous tune.
Mab noticed these phenomena with interest, but kept her own counsel.
If they wanted to confide in her, they would.
But Mira, who had been so unusually cheerful, suddenly turned
despondent; Mab could hardly get a word out of her. Alix, too, was
snappish and uncommunicative. If this is love, thought Mab, preserve
me from it!
She waited for Alix to confide what was troubling her.
Mira became so forgetful, and so often stood motionless by the window
with big tears rolling from her great dark eyes, that at last Mab spoke to
her one day in the kitchen.
"Mira, is something wrong?" she asked kindly.
"Nuthin' wrong."
"Then why are you so sad? You can tell me." A thought came to her,
and she studied the girl's figure as she stood by the sink. Was she ratherlarger round the middle? "You can talk to me, Mira. I'm a nurse, and
nurses are never shocked. Aren't you feeling well?"
"I ... sick, early morning. Bring up my breakfast twice."
"H'm. Any other symptoms?"
"No-o. On'y-- Oh, Sister, my monthlies? They have stop ... I so
scared!"
She began to cry, mopping her eyes with the teatowel.
Mab sat down by the kitchen table. "Now come and sit down, child."
(Mab was twenty-six, but felt older.) "How many periods have you
missed?"
"Two. One was due last week."
"Oh dear. I suppose you realize that you've got yourself into trouble.
And what will your father say?"
"I couldn't tell him. He kill me!"
"What about the boy who's responsible for your condition? Is it
Reuben?"
"Yair." She sniffed and gulped. "Said he marry me, but my father'd
never--"
"Would you like me to speak to him?"
"No, don't tell him, please, Sister!"
"Well, we needn't tell him yet, until you begin to show. Cheer up,
it's not the end of the world. Perhaps Reuben might turn Muslim, and
then--"
"Father not like Abos."
"Reuben is only part-Aboriginal, and Mission-bred. And Abdul Dervish
might prefer him as a son-in-law to having a grandchild without a father.
I'll have a talk to Reuben--have you told him?"
"Yair. You think I having baby then? Maybe I could lose it--"
"Don't talk like that!" said Mab sternly. "You'll have your baby, and
you'll find you love him, and if it's a boy Abdul might even be pleased
at having a grandson. I'll tell him, but later, when we're absolutely sure.
Would it be three months yet?"
"Could be."
"I'll give you an examination next week when I'm on duty. You can
come to my room and no one else need know."
"Not Sister MacFarlane?"
"Well, yes, she'll have to know. But no one outside the hostel."
She told Alix about Mira's predicament that night as they were getting
ready for bed. They were having an easy time, no patients for once, only
out-patients coming in for dressings, and one whom Alix was visiting at
home.
"I suppose it was to be expected," said Mab charitably. "You can't
blame the poor girl, with no mother to advise her and nothing much else
to do after work. But I'm afraid her father will blame us."
"We can't be responsible for what happens between here and home. But I suppose we should have got Abdul to call for her after work. Poor
kid!"
The news had shocked her. Watching the dispirited droop of Mira's
shoulders and her stricken face as she went about her work, she realized
how lucky she herself had been. There, but for the grace of God, go I,
she thought. Or rather by the restraint of Jim Manning, who hadn't
wanted her "to be worried." And how she would have worried! Yet she
knew that if he had insisted she would have let him do anything, reckless
of the consequences.
Of course, he hadn't wanted to feel tied down or responsible; no doubt
that was why he had been so careful. She felt grateful to him all the same,
though she had told herself that he was no good, a philanderer with a girl
in every town the way sailors were supposed to have a girl in every port.
But it didn't stop her thinking of him continually, with a painful longing
to see him again.
Chapter Thirteen

Alix waited in suspense for the mailman's buggy each fortnight ' as it returned from Birdsville. Jim had not written. He had never meant to write. She would not be the first to write, pride forbade it, but
she longed for some word. He might at least have sent a note to say
he'd arrived home safely, that his wound was completely healed. She
would not write to ask. It would be too shattering if he didn't bother to
reply.
Mab had examined Mira and there was no doubt about her condition;
but she had not told her father. They sent Mira home with a message for
him to come over to afternoon tea. She hadn't even told her sister Deneb;
she was too ashamed.
Abdul came stalking onto the veranda, his blue turban meticulously
folded, his loose shirt hanging outside his white trousers. They gave him
tea and home-made biscuits while he sat in one of the cane chairs. Alix
had a vision of herself and Jim struggling in that same chair. . . . She
was no better than Mira, only luckier.
"Abdul Dervish," said Mab formally, "we think you should know that
Mira may have to give up work soon."
"She not work well? I soon see to that!"
"Yes, she's a very good worker, on the whole . . . but..."
"She's . . . unfortunately . . . not well," said Alix desperately. "I
mean ..."
"Not well? She sick?"
"I'm afraid," said Mab firmly, "that Mira has got into trouble. She was
scared to tell you. The baby is due in about six months."
There was a suffocating silence; then Abdul Dervish sprang to his feet,
the teacup rolling on the floor.
"You--telling--me," he shouted, "my daughter! My daughter
been with some dirty Infidel! What man has done this thing? I kill
him!"
"Mira will tell you who the father is. The young man wants to marry
her. But they thought you wouldn't agree."
"Bah! He is not Muslim?"
"No," said Mab reluctantly. "But he loves Mira, and would be willing
to change his religion. If you would give your permission--"
' MI will not! I kill him! And you--you white Sisters! You take my
daughter away from her father's house, and this what happen! Allah be
thanked her mother not live to see our shame!"
"We are very sorry, Abdul," said Alix. "But we couldn't have prevented
it. Mira is young, don't be too hard on her."
"She not work in hostel no more! Finish!"
"Very well. She has saved her wages, enough to go to Adelaide. She
could go down there while the baby is born. But I think you should let
them marry."
But Abdul only said "Bah!" again, and strode outside and across the
railway line. The girls looked at each other anxiously. They expected he
would beat her. But perhaps he might come round later.

Mab made an effort to get a replacement for Mira from among old Uley's
half-white descendants who lived in the town. Mab and Alix interviewed
several girls, finding them shy and uncertain of their own abilities; but at
last they found one, Elvie, who said she'd like to try. She had clean, wavy
brown hair and smiled with very large white teeth.
"Well, Elvie, you must ask your father and mother, and we will put it
to the Hostel Committee."
To Mab's and Alix's surprise, what they had regarded as a mere formality
resulted in a veto from the committee, which helped to raise funds for
the hostel and conferred with the Sisters and the A.I.M. about the need
for any new equipment, or repairs to the building.
Mr. Bennet, chairman of the committee, gave a cough.
"I scarcely think an Aboriginal girl would be suitable," he said.
"Why not?" asked Mab.
"Well, really, Sister, I thought that would be obvious."
"In what way obvious?"
He said impatiently, "That patients would prefer not to be treated by
black gins."
Mab's cheeks were flaming. Alix said mildly, "Elvie is not black. Her
father was white."
"Well, half-castes then. And we all know what they're like. Mixed
blood never leads to any good."
"And if you're objecting to her mixed blood," said Mab indignantly,
"you might remember that it was a European man like yourself
who was responsible. It wasn't a case of immaculate conception, you
know."
Mr. Bennet bristled, and Mrs. Bennet bridled. "Well, really, Nurse
Kingston! There's no need to be blasphemous."
"Quite!" said the third member of the committee, the postmaster.
Unfortunately the fourth member, Constable McGuinnes, was away,
and Mab and Alix were outvoted. They had to tell Elvie that she had notbeen accepted. Yet they felt it would have been excellent for the girl, and
given her a sense of belonging to the community.
Instead of training her as a ward-maid and nurse's aid, they could only
offer her a job helping in the kitchen and with the weekly wash. She
agreed, but did not last long at these uninteresting chores.

Two months had gone by and not a word had come from Jim Manning.
Alix had given up waiting with terrible suspense for the mail to come in.
She began to hate the monotonous cry of the plover, flying through the
moonlit nights with its grating call.
"Those blasted birds!" she burst out one night, turning her pillow over
and thumping it.
"The plovers? I don't mind them," said Mab mildly.
"I hate the damn things!" She lay staring at the moonlit square of the
window.
Mab said with apparent inconsequence, "You haven't heard from Jim
since he left?"
"No." She turned over and hunched her shoulders against
further questions. She would have liked to unburden herself to Mab,
to admit how she had been hurt, but she could not bring herself to speak
of it.
They had seen nothing of Mira since Abdul's visit, but one day Mab
met Deneb in the store.
"How is your sister?" she asked anxiously. "We haven't seen
her . . ."
"Father not let her out of the house. Poor Mira! Reuben come to see her,
but Father chase him with a knife. Now he frightened to come. She is very
sad."
"But she is well, physically?"
"She all right."
Alix and Mab decided there was nothing they could do. Mira was under
age, and anyway Muslim women had few rights, and were trained to be
subservient to the male. Alix and Mab could only hope that Abdul would
come round and let her marry.
It was Mab who went to collect the mail from the post office when the
postcard came. Wal had come in that morning from Birdsville, and the
train arrived from the south in the afternoon, so it was a big day for the local
post office. Mab came back with three letters, one for her, one for Alix from
her mother--and a square envelope with a Birdsville postmark.
"For you," said Mab with a smile. "I think it's from Jim."
Alix snatched her letters and hurried to the bedroom. With shaking
fingers she opened the Birdsville envelope, tearing it jaggedly in her haste.
Inside was a postcard: "Pelicans. Diamantina River, Birdsville." A blackandwhite
photograph.
On the back were two lines of handwriting in bright-blue ink: "Dear Sandy, Still thinking of you. Love, Jim."
Two lines! Two lines, after nearly three months of silence!
Her first impulse was to tear it across. But she paused. At least he was
thinking of her, he hadn't utterly forgotten her existence as she had feared.
But he might have written a proper letter, one page even!
She got up and put the postcard in her top drawer, under her handkerchiefs.
Then she sat down to read one of her mother's complaining letters.
It seemed that her father had not been very well, had been told by the doctor
to slow up and take things easy. He had appointed a new manager and no
longer supervised the flour mills himself. He hasn't done anything for years,
thought Alix, who knew that the old manager had done most of the work
and Major MacFarlane, though "the Boss," had been little more than a
figurehead. Still, it was worrying; he was no longer young. At least her
mother had not suggested that she ought to come home. Alix realized that
she did not want to leave Hergott Springs. Up here, four hundred miles
seemed almost close. But in the city she would be nearly a thousand miles
away from Cappamerri.
"Was it from Jim?" asked Mab as they ate their tea of cold corned beef
and mashed potatoes.
"Urn." Alix had her mouth full and did not feel she had to say
more.
"Well! What did he say? Has he quite recovered?"
"I don't know." Alix gulped a mouthful without tasting it. "He--it
wasn't a letter. Just a postcard. O-oh Mab, he sent me two lines! And a
picture of some pelicans."
She dropped her knife and fork with a clatter, and covered her face
with her hands.
"H'm, obviously not one of the world's best correspondents. Cheer up,
Alix. It's probably the longest missive he's written for years."
Alix removed her hands from her face. Her cornflower-blue eyes were
swimming with tears.
"I'm sorry, Mabs. I haven't been much of a companion these last few
months, have I? You guessed why, but I couldn't talk about it, it was hurt
pride, I suppose. But now--now I'm going to forget him."
"Will you answer the postcard?"
"No! At least I might. If I can think of an even shorter message." She
pushed her plate away. "I'm afraid I'm not hungry."
"I must say I had some reservations about that young man. Too much
charm. And almost too handsome."
'I know you did. But unfortunately I fell for the charm, head over
heels. Oh, God! I've tried to forget him. But I can't."
"Never mind, old girl. You'll get over it when we've left this place
behind us. You'll find someone else.""Never!"
"I'm willing to bet on it."
"Anyway, I'm not going to think of him any more. From now on he's
just a memory."
Brave words! But on moonlit nights when the plover called, she tossed
restlessly on the hot bed, going over in her mind every precious moment
they'd had together, afraid that she'd forget. She composed several replies
to the postcard:
Thanks for nothing!
Not thinking of you.
No more ink?
Message received.
Commendable brevity, congratulations.
But none of them was enough to convey her hurt and anger.
I hate you. Mix.
No, that wasn't true. She couldn't pretend to hate him. At last she
came up with a message somewhat longer than his, and addressed it
to "Mr. Jim Manning, Jnr., Cappamerri Station, via Birdsville." She
chose a postcard from among the limited stock at Mrs. Allison's store:
a rather blotchy view of the overflow at the Springs. On the back she
wrote:
"How is your wound? Mine is now healed. Alix."
She enclosed the postcard in an envelope, as he had done. At least he
had not sent an unenclosed postcard for the mailman, the postmaster,
and everyone else to read. She did not expect a reply. Her message was
clear enough: It's over, finished, as far as I'm concerned.
Fortunately she was kept busy. It was her turn on nursing duty and
they had several patients, including Wal Crombie's son with bronchitis.
One of the men was admitted with boils, and there were two cases of
conjunctivitis calling at out-patients, besides a man with a septic finger.
Constable Jack McGuinnes had hurt his shoulder and elbow in a fall from
a camel--although he insisted he hadn't fallen; he'd "just dismounted
awkwardly." The elbow was painful and very swollen and blue. Alix
treated it with hot and cold compresses, striving to be brisk and efficient
while Jack gazed at her tip-tilted profile and heaved a sentimental sigh.
She made a sling out of one of her spare nurse's caps, for the loose type
that fitted round the forehead and hung down the back was now in
fashion, instead of the little starched caps they had worn in hospital
training. But her soft curls still escaped at the front.
"There you are," she said, patting his upper arm. "Just as well it's your
left arm. You're lucky you didn't break a bone. But you'll have to rest it
till the swelling goes down."
"You mean I don't need any more treatment?" The big man looked
like a small boy denied an outing.
"If it's very painful, come in again and I'll put a cold compress on it.
Next week Sister Mab will be on duty, she's good at sprains."
"I'd rather have you," he murmured.
"Now, Jack!" she said warningly.
He took her hand with his good right one. "Alix, is there no hope for
me? I still think of you."
(Oh no, thought Alix. Still thinking of you!)
"I'm afraid not, Jack," she said firmly. "What I said before still goes.
I'm not thinking of marrying, and I'm not in love with you."
"I thought you were a bit keen on that drover fellow," he said. "But
he's been gone for months. I thought I might still have a chance."
She patted his arm again. "Sorry, Jack. I'm really sorry." But she felt
a tenderness towards him. He was not a fly-by-night like that Jim; he
really loved her.

She heated some Antiphlogistine in its tin, and spread the clayey mass
on a piece of white cotton cloth, cut to fit round the neck and over the
chest of Wal's son, young Ken Crombie.
"Tell me if it's too hot," she said, holding the plaster just away from
the skin. She touched one corner to his chest.
"Ow!"
"All right, I'll let it cool a bit. The heat will stop your chest hurting."
The smell was antiseptic, the texture as she had spread it on the cloth
with a knife like that of soft butter.
Mrs. Bates came in with her baby in her husband's light spring-cart,
pulled by a skinny horse. The baby was dehydrated and suffering from
dysentery--the dreaded "summer diarrhoea" which carried off so many
infants. Alix consulted with Mab and they moved the cot down to the
cellar, the only cool place. It had windows, though half underground.
They draped damp cloths over the sides of the cot to cool the baby, and
gave as many fluids as she would take.

Young Ken, much improved, was about ready to be discharged, and the
Bates baby was out of danger (Mrs. Bates had offered to do the washing
if she could stay in the hostel with her infant) when an exhausted rider
came in from a station out towards Lake Eyre, about halfway between
the railway to Oodnadatta and the track to Birdsville. At Mutoorinna the
station manager's wife was in desperate straits, too ill to travel; she had
been in labour for nearly two days and was growing weaker every hour.
"It's only about sixty miles away," said the young stockman who had
ridden for aid. "The Boss wondered if you could come out and help his
wife."
"If it's only sixty miles, why didn't he bring her in to the hostel for the
birth?" asked Mab with some asperity."Well, it's not a first, see, and she'd had no trouble before."
Mab and Alix looked at each other.
"Could you ride on horseback sixty miles?" asked Alix.
"I very much doubt it."
"Nor could I. The camel-buggy? We could ask Jack McGuinnes--but
it would be terribly slow, and this is urgent."
"Anyway, Jack is out of action with a sprained shoulder and badly
contused elbow."
Mrs. Bates, who was listening with interest to this exchange, now spoke
up. "Youse can have the spring-cart and the 'orse I brought in," she said.
"If yer can drive, that is. It's a nice light vehicle, will go over the sand all
right. I'll stay and mind the fort here, if y' like."
"I'll pilot you along the track," said the young man eagerly. "Not that
you can miss it really, you more or less follow the bed of the Frome
River."
"Is there water in it?"
"Not at present, no. You'd have to carry water. There's a good well at
the station, though. The bore-water out there is that salt you can't hardly
drink it."
"Well," said Mab briskly, "we'd better pack a medicine kit at once.
Just as well there are no in-patients. Mrs. Bates can look after her baby
here as well as we could. Let's see--we'll need morphia--chloroform--
hyascine hydrobromide; and I suppose I'd better take the forceps and
dilators, though I hate the things."
"I'll get the horse and harness it up to the cart," said the young man,
whose name was Luke. "We'll start as soon as you're ready."
When Constable McGuinnes was told of their journey he looked
anxious. "I wish I could come with you," he said. "You'll be right off
the usual tracks out there, you could easily get bushed and it's still very
hot. Promise me, if you have any trouble that you'll stay with the vehicle.
Don't try to walk for help. You'll get dehydrated in no time."
"We'll have a guide all the way to Mutoorinna, and then we only have
to follow our own tracks back again," said Alix. "Stop worrying, Jack."
"How long will you be?"
"There's no telling with an obstetric case," said Mab. "If there is fever
or haemorrhage we'll have to stay; it could be a week or more."
"If you're not back in ten days I'll organize a search. There'll be water
at the bore at Lake Letty, so you should be all right. But don't drink it
unless you have to; it's very saline."
"We'll remember."

They set off in the early morning before the day had heated up. Alix
drove the light cart, her slim hands with their strong wrists firm on the
reins. She had often taken her mother driving in their baggy at home.
The young man rode ahead, waiting for them to catch up, lingering to
watch them through a patch of sand. But mostly the track was stony, filled with those strange polished pebbles that lie about Lake Eyre,
rose-madder to purple in colour. The track was narrow, having been
made by strings of pack-camels in single file bringing Mutoorinna wool
down to the railway.
The thin horse which they called Horace trotted bravely over this rough
terrain. As the sun grew high and the day hotter, Mab and Alix had
frequent recourse to the canvas water-bag hanging under the front step of
the cart. Then suddenly it was empty. They had to stop and get out one
of the four two-gallon tins which jack had insisted they carry. They
happened to be near a stand of needlebush and dead-finish, though much
of the way had been bare of vegetation, so they allowed the horse a brief
rest. Now the little black flies descended on them in a sticky cloud,
crawling into lips and eyes. They hurriedly urged the horse on, to where
the station hand was waiting for them up ahead, waving one hand in
front of his face in "the outback salute" to disturb the flies.
He had made the trip from Mutoorinna in one day and night, but in
spite of the urgency Mab and Alix had to stop at sunset when they reached
Lake Letty bore, to water the horse and eat some damper and corned
beef, which made them thirstier than ever. They gave the horse a nosebag
of chaff.
They were still barely half-way, and by midnight they were up again
and on their way in the cool of the desert night. There was no moon,
but they followed the shadowy shape of the horseman (for the track was
invisible) by the light of the stars reflected from the pale earth and polished
gibbers. The stars were a blaze of ghostly blue-white light, the Milky Way
a river of radiance curving across the sky.
By morning they were in sand-hill country. Rows of red and pink
sand-hills, tending almost in the same direction--north of west--that
they were following to the station, rose on either side; the distant ones
floating like pale islands on a sea of tranquil blue mirage.
The sand-hills were long and low, nowhere more than about two
hundred feet high; but when one cut across their track, they found it was
better to do a detour round its long axis than to attempt a crossing of the
crest, which was often sharply sculpted by the wind.
Warned by the speed with which they had got through the drinking
water yesterday--though they'd had a wash in the warm, salty waters of
the Lake Letty bore--they spared only enough water at breakfast to clean
their teeth and wipe their hands and faces with a damp cloth. The
second-to-last tin was broached to make a billy of tea. They were already
within the boundary of Mutoorinna Station, their guide told them. They'd
make the homestead, about twenty miles from where the front fence
would have been if there'd been a fence, by midday. Mutoorinna carriedsheep not cattle, but so far they had seen none. By now, Mab thought
worriedly, the poor woman would have been in labour for over three days
--it she was still alive.

Chapter Fourteen
There was an ominous silence at the homestead, no sign of life or activity.
The white, low-roofed house was set in a fenced garden with a few green
shrubs and palms, and even a vegetable garden watered from an overhead
spray. But beyond the fence all was bare, an eaten-out desert of clay,
dust, and stones.
About a hundred yards outside the fence some low rounded humpies,
made of old bags and tin, were clustered together. A dark figure came
crawling out of the side opening in one of these. She stood up, a plump
lubra in a bright cotton ginagina.
"Missus sick-feller prop'ly," she said, strolling over and holding the
horse's bridle. "Me an' ol' Molly, we try to help 'er. Baby no come."
Another dark figure appeared from the outbuildings at the back, and a
part-Aboriginal in shirt and tight-fitting trousers opened the gate and took
the horse to unharness him. Mab got her medicine case out of the
buckboard, and Alix and the dark woman carried their bags inside.
They found the woman in a dim bedroom, with her husband beside
her bathing her face with a damp cloth. Her straight brown hair was
plastered to her forehead with sweat, and her eyes looked enormous,
dark-shadowed with pain. A low moan came from her throat.
With a professional glance at the poor woman's swollen belly and
pale, exhausted face, Mab knew what a difficult case she had on her
hands.
"Mrs. Jackson--we're here to help you," she said brightly. "This is
Sister MacFarlane, and I am Sister Kingston."
The woman moved her head fretfully on the damp pillow. Mr. Jackson
stood up. He was tall, dark, and broad-shouldered, with a blue-black
stubble on his upper lip and chin.
"Her pains seem to have stopped," he murmured, shaking hands with
them both. "Nothing's happening."
"If you could show us where we can wash and change," said Alix,
"we'll do what we can."
In the dim bedroom, shuttered against the heat, where Mr. Jackson
brought a can of hot water and a jug of cold for the flowered china basin
on the wash-stand, Mab looked at Alix grimly. "I expect the baby's already
dead," she said. "Contractions have ceased, and if it's not expelled orremoved, it will putrefy in the uterus. Then septicaemia for the mother
is almost inevitable."
The five Jackson children, ranging from three to eleven, were playing
on the veranda in a subdued fashion, knowing that Mum was ill. Alix
looked out and saw that the eldest, a little girl, was carrying the toddler.
They all had bleached, wispy straw-coloured hair and skinny legs and
arms.
"A caesarean section would be the answer, I suppose. If she could get
to a hospital," she said over her shoulder.
"Yes; but as it is--"
Mab was getting into a clean white uniform that had been packed in
an oilcloth bag for the journey and did not seem to be contaminated with
dust. After they had scrubbed up she set her jaw and straightened her
back. "Well, here goes!" she said.
During the long struggle that followed, Alix stood by with sterilized
instruments, fetched boiling water from the kitchen and clean cloths
from a trunk of spotless linen. When Mab tried pressing down on the
swollen stomach, the woman came out of her lethargy and screamed.
She had given up and made up her mind to die.
"Mrs. Jackson, you must help me. Try to push, just once more--"
"No! The pain will start again." She began to cry weakly.
"Just for a little. And if it does get bad, we'll give you chloroform."
She kneaded the taut belly.
"Ahhr! O-oh! Blessed Mary Mother of God--"
A weak contraction was followed by two stronger ones. Mrs. Jackson
screamed. "God, help me!"
Mab nodded, and Alix administered a pad of chloroform, but only
briefly.
"She's exhausted. We must get it over with," said Mab.
There were no more contractions. Mab, having passed the speculum,
inserted the polished Heger's cervix dilators, and then took up the forceps
with a steady hand. Alix moved in with the chloroform, but Mrs. Jackson
had fainted. Mab prepared to make an entirely instrumental delivery,
thankful for the practice she'd had on Mrs. Bates at Hergott Springs.
As soon as she could see part of the baby's head and face, she knew
there was no more need to be careful. It was cyanosed, almost black. She
grasped with the instrument and pulled. The head was too large.
"I'll have to slit the perineum," she said. "She's going to need
stitches. ..."
When it was over, they kept Mrs. Jackson under with chloroform until
Alix--who was more experienced in the skill--had inserted a few stitches
of catgut. Mab called Mr. Jackson and handed him the dark, wizened
form of his latest son, wrapped in a cloth.
"Dead, Sister?"
"Yes. And I suggest you bury him before your wife asks to see him. He
has been dead for some time."
"But my wife . . .?"
"Will be all right."
The woman's muscles were so weak that Mab had had to express the
placenta manually; but now there was nothing more to do than to clean
up. Then came the moment she had dreaded. Mrs. Jackson opened her
eyes and asked to see the baby.
"I'm sorry, my dear. He didn't live. The labour was too prolonged."
"He? It was a boy, then. You know, I'm just too tired to care." She
closed her eyes again.
Alix bathed her face and hands. They rolled her expertly out of the
way while they put fresh sheets on the bed, and changed her bloodstained
nightgown. Then it was time to call Mr. Jackson to see his wife. Apart
from her pale face and dark-ringed eyes, there was nothing to show that
the bedroom had been a bloody battlefield, with one dead and one
wounded.
They had dinner with Mr. Jackson that night, a boiled leg of salted
mutton, cooked and served up by Judy, the Aboriginal woman who had
greeted them on their arrival. They noticed that their host had still not
shaved his bristly chin.
After she had brought the second course, Judy faded away towards the
humpies, carrying a billy of stewed tea and some scraps from the kitchen.
"Those little humpies must be terribly hot," said Alix musingly. "Is
there room to stand up inside?"
"I shouldn't think so. I've never been inside one. Of course they
wouldn't be happy in a house."
"And do the girls get a wage?"
"Not a fixed one. They get tea and sugar and tobacco, food for
themselves and all their family, a cake of soap and a couple of ginaginas
a year. It's all they want."
"What about the men?" asked Mab. "I suppose you pay the men
working as stockmen."
"The same. They get shirts and trousers, riding boots, tobacco, tucker,
a bit of mutton when we kill. What they really like is the innards best.
We feed all their relatives as well!"
"But they make very good stockmen?"
"Yeah . . . seem to have a natural seat on a horse. The half-castes are
all right, but you can't trust a nigger. They're likely to go off on walkabout
and leave the stock."
Alix noticed Mab's face growing red as she put down her knife and fork
with a clatter. She started to change the subject, but Mab said in a
dangerously quiet voice, "That term should not be used in Australia, Mr.
Jackson!""What? Walkabout?"
"Nigger. I believe the Australian Aborigine is not Negroid. And even
if they were--"
"I dunno. But they're not white, are they?"
Alix interposed tactfully.
"How many sheep can you carry to the acre?" she asked.
"Not more than ten acres to a sheep," said Mr. Jackson with a dry
laugh. "You don't even have one sheep to the acre up here. And not
even that with the present conditions. We're just hanging on, waiting for
rain. It's the worst drought since 1902."
He lapsed into a morose silence and Alix and Mab said no more, but
sat quietly eating their canned fruit and custard. They finished the meal
and the washing-up was left for the lubras in the morning.

"I'm glad we came," said Mab the next day as they drank their morning
tea brought on a tray by Molly, a shy, very fat Aboriginal maid in an
orange dress. "But I wish--"
"You saved her life," said Alix. "And you couldn't have saved the baby.
It was too late when we got here."
"Yes--but all that suffering for nothing. I'm never going to get married!"
she said vehemently.
"I expect you'll change your mind when the time comes. Anyway,
there are ways and means of preventing conception these days. I've half
a mind to mention it to Mr. Jackson."
"But they're never absolutely certain. And I don't think you'd better--"
"Well, I'll talk to her about it then."
She did have a word in private with the patient. Mrs. Jackson, still
weary after her ordeal, gave a wan smile.
"Yes, I know there are such things. I did suggest to my husband once
. . . but he said it wasn't natural, and besides, it is against our religion."
"It's not natural for you to kill yourself with child-bearing, when it isn't
necessary, and you already have a family. He can order something from
an Adelaide chemist, and they'll send it under plain wrapper. He needn't
be embarrassed."
"Well, I'll speak to him. But we only get a mail about once a month,
when someone goes in to Hergott, or Finniss Springs."
"That will be quite soon enough. You're going to be an invalid for
some time, even after the stitches have healed."
"Yes, Sister. And I want to thank you and Sister Kingston for coming
all this way. I thought I was going to die."
"You can thank Sister Kingston that you didn't. She's a very skilled
midwife."
"Yes ... I'd like to give her a little present. In that top drawer there
--the handkerchief case."
Alix fetched the linen case with its drawn-thread work, and put it on
the bed. Mrs. Jackson took out an exquisitely embroidered handkerchief
of finest lawn, with tiny rosebuds and blue forget-me-nots in the corners.
"Would you give this to her? And for you--"
"No, I don't want anything. I always lose handkerchiefs, anyway. But
Sister Kingston will appreciate this. She's feeling a bit tired, and I told
her to lie in for a while. We'll be leaving early tomorrow morning, before
the heat."
But when they rose before dawn the next day, it was already hot, with
a breeze from the north-east that conveyed nothing of coolness though it
did help by evaporating perspiration on the skin.
Mr. Jackson had their water-bag and tins filled with sweet well-water,
and he sent his man Luke with them to guide them on their way. Alix
and Mab thought he meant to travel with them as far as Lake Letty bore;
but Luke, who had ridden twice over that dreary track in the past week,
was not keen on traversing it again.
"Will you be all right now?" asked the stockman casually, reining in
his horse after they were through the front boundary of Mutoorinna and
within sight of the Frome channel. Pink sand-hills rose on either side of
the now well-marked track, but did not pose any difficulty as they ran
roughly in the same direction.
"Just follow your tracks back," he said as they were silent. "Your way
is south-east. Keep the Frome on your right hand, but don't go off along
any of its channels; you might get bogged in sand, and if you try to come
back you'll find the channels branching off in all directions."
"Well, I suppose ..." said Alix doubtfully.
"We can hardly get lost," said Mab.
"Hardly. Just let the horse take you back; he'll know the way. And if
you're at all worried, climb the nearest little jump-up and look for Lake
Letty bore-head. That's right on your line for the Hergott."
Mab and Alix looked at each other. They both wanted to prove that a
woman is just as capable in the bush as a man.
"We'll do that," said Alix.
"You'll be right," said Luke, turning his horse's head back the way he
had come. "So long, then."
Alix picked up the reins and urged Horace on. He seemed reluctant to
go, though he'd had a good rest at the station. He put his ears back and
tossed his head, looking back at the other horse receding into the distance.
Alix had to urge him on.
Mab was still tired after her night-long vigil, so they camped among
the pink and yellow sand-hill country as the day reached its hottest in the
afternoon. There was little shade and feed for the horse, but they felt they
had to share some of the water with him, as they had not made it as far
as the bore.They made a simple meal of cold mutton with some of the station's
home-made bread and a few ripe tomatoes. There was no question of
carrying even tinned butter in that heat.
"I know real bushmen always boil the billy," said Mab, "but I vote we
just drink water. I reckon it's too hot to light a fire."
"I agree."
"I wonder what the temperature is?"
"About 115 degrees in the shade, probably. In the sun--I hate to
think."
As they spread their swags they noticed small holes everywhere in the
sand, probably made by kangaroo rats, hopping mice, or lizards; but they
couldn't help wondering if some of them held a snake, like the deadly
Fierce Snake.
"We must make a really early start," said Alix. "It's going to be a
scorcher tomorrow."
She watched the sun set in an orange glow over towards the dry bed of
Lake Eyre South. The sky was pure and clear, shading up from apricot
to peacock blue to pale blue and grey at the zenith. The first stars
appeared, the brilliant pointers among them.
"We could travel at night and find our way by the Southern Cross,"
said Alix. "My father showed me how to find true south: you prolong the
long axis of the Cross, bisect the pointers and produce a line at right
angles, and where the two lines meet is the South Celestial Pole."
And then, as they settled down on their ground-sheets, the enormous
night sky arching over them, she said, "It's exciting, isn't it? Being away
out here in the middle of nowhere, on our own."
"H'm, yes. But I'll be happier when we're in sight of the bright lights
of home."
"Come, where is your sense of adventure?" Alix asked.
"I don't know ... I feel uneasy, somehow."
Horace the horse stamped and whinnied. They had unharnessed him,
but having no hobbles, had tethered him to a myall where he could
munch at the leaves if he wanted to.
In the night the dry wind rose, and by morning the tops of the sand-hills
were "smoking," blowing loosely in the direction they were going, east
of south.
"At least we'll have the wind behind us," said Mab, helping Alix to
harness up and load the cart with their things. They had a drink of water
and wiped the dust from their faces with a piece of damp cloth. Alix
wanted to give the horse a drink from the second tin, but Mab thought
it would be wiser to wait, in case they did not make the bore or the Springs
by tonight.
"Just think! We can have a swim in warm water when we get there-- won't need to wear anything, either."
By mid-morning the sand was blowing in a stinging cloud, and looking
behind them they saw an ominous sight--a huge, rolling dust-cloud
reaching up into the sky, billowing like smoke, and moving rapidly
towards them.
"Hell! A sandstorm!"
They stared at each other with reddened eyes. The horse continued to
plod along the track, his head hanging. Then suddenly there was no track;
it had been blotted out completely in a choking orange cloud. The horse
stopped.
"We'll just have to camp and wait for it to blow over," said Alix. "You
can't see a thing through this."
She groped around the back and lifted down a water-tin and refilled
the canvas bag. They both had a raging thirst, their mouths gummed
with dust.
"We'll have to give poor old Horace the horse one gallon. We're
dependent on him to get us back."
"Well--I suppose so. Shall we unharness him?"
"There's nothing to tether him to--at least I can't see a tree or anything
else."
"He's not likely to go anywhere in this. Better let him out of the shafts,
and loop the reins over the footplate or something. Then he can lie down
to get out of the wind if he wants to."
They managed to rig up a ground-sheet under the back of the cart to
break the flying, stinging sand. Immediately swarms of little black flies
came from somewhere to share their shelter.
"Blasted flies!" said Mab. "It's almost worth while going out into the
storm to get rid of them."
But they didn't talk much. Their mouths were too dry and sticky, and
as soon as they opened them the flies crawled in.
"This can't last," said Alix at last. "Or can it? If only we had reached
the bore!"
Mab said nothing. But her face looked grim.
Chapter Fifteen

They slept fitfully that night. The hot, stifling wind ceased about midnight,
and there was a lull in the flapping of the ground-sheet. The air seemed
suddenly more breathable. Mab got up and fetched them each an enamel
mug of water. The moisture seemed to disappear in their dust-choked
throats, leaving them still thirsty. The wind rose again.
Horace smelt the water and whinnied. He was thirsty, too. But a mug
of water would go nowhere with him; he would have to wait.
"We'll be able to move on in the morning," said Alix, "and he can
drink all he likes at Lake Letty."
An uncanny silence woke them. The air was still, but smelt of dust.
At first they thought the sun had not risen, but peering out from under
the cart, Alix saw it floating in the east--a pale ghost of a sun, paler than
the moon, shrouded in a veil of fine colloidal dust. Then she looked
towards the front where Horace had been tethered.
"Mab!" she squeaked, her throat made dryer with fear and shock. "The
horse is gone!"
They leaped out from the shelter, staring wildly about. There was no
doubt about it. Horace's tracks showed in the soft new sand, which had
drifted up around the wheels of the vehicle, leading away along the track
toward Lake Letty. In places the track was completely covered by a new
sand-drift. "He must have broken the reins," said Mab, "and has made
his way to the bore, where he remembers having watered on the way out.
I wonder how far it is."
They sat down, their legs suddenly turned to jelly as the full danger of
their situation struck them. Little more than a tin of water left, which
they would have to carry with them while they walked to the bore,
however far that might be.
They made a meagre breakfast, scarcely able to chew the bread, the
crust of which now resembled wood in texture and hardness. Before they
had finished, the wind rose. Soon they were once again enveloped in a
blinding cloud of sand and dust. They crawled under the cart with the
last tin of water, and curled their backs against the stinging blast. The air
was like a furnace breath, the temperature must already be over a hundred,
and it was only morning!
"Horace will make his way back to Hergott, and someone will come
looking for us," said Mab.
"Yes . . . Jack said whatever happened, to stay with the vehicle. At
least it gives us some shade."
"I wish he could see you now! Your hair looks like red wire, there's a
rim of mud round your mouth, your eyes are bunged up and your face
covered in dirt--"
"I never thought I'd long to see him, but I do. If he turned up now, I'd even kiss his camel!"
Mab's mask of red dust cracked in a smile. They were trying to cheer
each other up, trying not to panic. After a while, Alix said in a small
voice, "Horace will never travel in this. Suppose he just stays at the bore?
There's a bit of feed around there."
"Then we'll have to walk. As soon as this stops."
They moistened their lips and wiped their faces with a corner of a wet
cloth. Their skin felt dry as paper, their hair electric. Mab's face was bright red, her grey eyes were bloodshot. Alix's soft lips were beginning
to crack.
The wind blew all that night and half the next day. By rationing
themselves to one small drink night and morning, they had managed to
keep about a quart of water. Two pints. Four cups.
In the afternoon they moved their cramped limbs and crawled out into
the sun. The sky was clearing to a pale, dusty blue. The horse's hoofprints
had been obliterated, in fact a sand-drift covered the whole track. But the
sun gave them direction; they only had to keep east of south, pick up the
dry channels of the Frome and follow them down. But how far was it?
By night they might lose their way. But how could they travel in this
searing heat?
"Jack said to stay with the vehicle."
"Jack wasn't going to send out a search party for ten days after we left."
"But if Horace turns up--"
"And if he doesn't? We'll perish here without water."
They stared at each other, admitting to themselves the dread both were
feeling. Nothing on the horizon but empty plain, some half-dead trees
with their wind-eroded roots standing above the ground, and long pink
sand-hills, one of them floating in a cruel, cool-blue mirage.
To the westward was an isolated flat-topped hill, a "tent-hill" or
"jump-up" as they called it out here--a remnant of the ancient plateau
now worn down everywhere else to the present level of the plain,
somewhere near sea-level.
"Luke back there said to climb a jump-up and get the direction of the
bore," said Mab. "At least we'd know how far we had to go. You stay
here while I climb that hill. I'll have to go before sunset if I'm to pick up
the borehead.""We'll both go," said Alix, suddenly afraid of being left alone in this
empty, hostile place. No, not hostile. Just supremely indifferent. Man
was an insect crawling over its surface; whether he lived or died was of
no moment. The earth would remain, unchanged, unchanging.
"No. You stay here in case the sand gets up again, and you can cooee
to give me direction."
She drank half a mug of water, used a little to dampen the silk scarf
around her throat, and set out. Within a few minutes the scarf was dry.
Alix watched her figure with its long skirt and straw hat as she ploughed
through sand-drifts, then made better time over a scoured clay-pan, till
she reached the foot of the small hill. She began to climb. Half-way up
she faltered, sat down on a rock. The sides were not steep, they sloped
out all round the flat summit like a skirt. Mab must be exhausted by
climbing in this heat. They should have waited till morning. But every
day was critical now. They would have to start walking tonight, navigating
by the stars if they couldn't see the track.
At last the small figure reached the top and stood there, gazing to the
south and east. Alix saw her wave. On the way down she stopped again
to rest, her face in her hands. She came on slowly, stumblingly, reached
the level, and began crossing the clay-pan. Their enemy the sun was
dipping to the horizon, but the heat was no less.
It must have been about a hundred and twenty today, thought Alix.
Wish we had a thermometer.
She was tormented with thirst, but would wait to celebrate Mab's return
with what she hoped was good news, in their third-to-last cup of water.
Mab had crossed the clay-pan and was floundering through the soft
sand. Suddenly she pitched forward on her face and lay still.
"Mab!" croaked Alix, starting to run. She went back and got the
water-tin, now frighteningly light.
She reached Mab's prostrate figure and lifted her head from the sand.
Her eyes were staring, her face was bright red, her open mouth filled with
sand. Alix splashed some of the precious water over her face, into her
mouth. Mab shuddered, and comprehension came back into her eyes.
She tried to lift one arm to point, but it fell back. "Bore--not too far."
Her eyes glazed again.
Alix felt her pulse. It was rapid but weak, and her skin was dry, burning
like fire. "Heat hyperpyrexia." The words came back to her from some
forgotten textbook. In this condition the body temperature may rise to to 110 degrees. ... A complete cessation of sweating; at 95 degrees
sweating becomes the sole means of heat loss in the body. . . . In severe
cases, death often . . .
"Oh God, don't let her die!"
She lifted Mab's head on to her lap. "Kingsy, say something, speak to me. Can you hear me?"
At temperatures over 100 degrees physical activity should be limited. . . . Of course! She should never have let Mab make that climb.
Mab lay inert, breathing rapidly and noisily. Her eyes were open but
unseeing. She was muttering something. It sounded like "Headache ..."
"Mabs, can you stand if I hold you? I must try to get you back." The
sand was still giving off the day's heat as the sun dipped below the flat
horizon. "A bit cooler under the cart."
She got her arms under Mab's shoulders and dragged her to a kneeling
position. But her legs would not straighten, her arms swung lifelessly.
Alix swallowed a mouthful of water from the tin, then sat down in despair.
She could not move her.
She might drag her a little way, but not as far as the track. And in the
morning the blazing sun would rise.
Alix went back to the cart and collected their ground-sheets. At least
the flies had gone. Rooting in the back of the cart for something to prop
up a shelter for Mab, she found a tomato from Mrs. Jackson's garden that
must have rolled out of the tucker-box the day before. Without thinking
she wolfed it down, feeling the warm juice delicious in her dry throat. It
gave her new strength. Heat exhaustion--salt deficiency--dehydration.
She knew all the stages. But Mab seemed to be suffering from heatstroke.
She went back to the hot sand, dragging the ground-sheets after her,
and a piece of wood she had pulled from the seat. She rigged up a shelter,
took off her blouse and rolled it up for a support for Mab's head. Mab
did not speak again. Her eyes were open, but she seemed to have sunk
into a coma.
Ironically, the wind which had caused their predicament had completely
dropped. There was not a breath of air to dispel the heat being
given off by the sand, even though the sky was growing dark. Alix lay
down beside her friend and must have dropped into a doze of exhaustion.
She woke and saw the splendid stars overhead--remote, uncaring. Then
she became aware of the silence. Mab's laboured breathing had ceased.
"No!" she screamed. She knelt up and listened for a heartbeat. Nothing.
The air had grown cooler, and Mab's hands were already cold. She felt
her wrist. There was no pulse. She gave a wail, and bowed her head to
the sand. Now she was alone, alone in this dreadful desolation. Her friend
of so many years was dead. Dead. She could not believe it. She had
always thought of Mab as the strong one. She caressed the cold face, and
closed the lids over the sightless eyes.
She did not think to sleep, but when the desert chill woke her before
dawn she knew she must have. She took a few sips of water, now cool
and refreshing. In the east a line of livid gold showed between two
long banks of grey cloud. Cloud! Could it be going to rain, now when it
was too late for Mab? As the light grew she felt a reluctance to look at the
still figure beside her.She would have to walk on, try to reach the bore. But she could not
leave Mab here in the sun, for the flies and the dingoes . . .
Using the piece of flat wood she began scooping a grave in the loose
sand. It seemed to flow back again as fast as she dug. She knelt and dug
frantically with her hands, throwing the sand behind her like a dog.
At last she had scooped out a shallow grave. But she couldn't put Mab
in the sand, cover her face with it. She wrapped her in a groundsheet
and, sobbing and gasping, rolled her into the hole. She stuck the piece
of wood upright in the sand. Not a cross, but at least a marker. If she
could get back to Hergott, they would come and get Mab and bury her
properly. How far to the bore? Not far, Mab had said with nearly her last
breath.
Alix backed away from the pathetic mound, then turned and hurried
back to the spring-cart. She tied her hat on firmly with her veil, picked
up the water-tin now holding a little over half a pint. She thought of
damping her blouse before she put it on, but knew she must keep every
drop for drinking. The sun, which had been beaming through the gap in
the clouds, now went dim.
The enemy which had clubbed them with its rays was relenting, though
the thin, motionless clouds did not look like rain. The landscape lost its
colour, seemed grey and menacing. Alix trudged on along the sand-drifted
track. On her right she could see a line of dead trees, one of the channels
of the Frome, but she knew there was no water there. She was now
walking in a sort of daze, one foot in front of the other, drag the back leg
forward, then the other. Her lips were gummed together; she had to stop
and drink half of the remaining water, already growing warm. With the
sun veiled, though the air was stifling it was not as hot as yesterday. But
she could not risk the loss by evaporation if she put the water in the
cooling canvas bag. With half of her mind she realized that with Mab
gone, she had twice the chance of surviving on what was left.
She knew that if another sandstorm blew up, she was finished. The air
remained calm, the veiled sun enabled her to walk on; otherwise she
would have had to stay in the shade of the cart until the water ran out
and she perished. It was all very well for Jack to tell her to "stay with the
vehicle." To reach Lake Letty bore was her only hope.
Dehydrated, her skin burning through the chiffon veil covering her
face, she had to sit down and rest in the meagre shade of a dead tree. She
drank the last of the water, not enough to satisfy her thirst, and threw the
tin away. At least she would not have to carry the awkward thing any
further.
The track ahead looked level. It was level, she felt sure. Yet she began
to hallucinate that she was making her way down a long, steep slope. It
seemed to make walking easier. In fact the track had been climbing
slightly, and now as she topped a low, sandy ridge she saw ahead of her the shape of the bore-head. Elation gripped her. There would be cool
water in the bore overflow. The lake, she knew, was dry and silted.
She trudged on, too weak to hurry though her goal was in sight. She
came to the bank of the bore-drain. Water! Pale-green, milky water.
She staggered along the slope and fell full-length in the blessed moisture,
seeming to drink through her skin like a desert lizard. Along the drain] the water had had time to cool by evaporation of its surface, though it
had come hot from deep in the earth. She opened her mouth and
swallowed. It was horrible, warm and mineralized. But it was wet! If
cattle could survive on it, so could she. She crawled back to the edge for the shoulder-bag in which she had carried her only provisions, a piece of the rock-hard bread from Mutoorinna. She dunked it in the bore-water
and forced the softened mass between her sun-cracked lips.
Then a thought struck her. There was no sign of Horace, except for
some horse-dung about the bore-drain, fresher than what he'd left on the
trip out. It was possible he had returned to Hergott Springs and help
might be on the way. Exhausted, she crept under the shelter of a
needlebush, sparse and prickly, not even green, but some comfort in the
vast surrounding emptiness.
Chapter Sixteen

Alix slept, and dreamed about the sea. She had not consciously missed
it, though they had lived fifteen miles from the coast in Adelaide. In her
dream she was a child again, wading in the glass-clear shallows at
Semaphore Beach, where Mrs. MacFarlane had taken a cottage for the
summer. Her companion was the English maid, Rachel, straight out
from Liverpool, who could hardly believe the sun-drenched white sand
beach, the miles of blue sea under the cloudless skies of summer.
They built a backrest from the heaps of dry seaweed that lay along the
beach like stranded brown whales. Then they were wading in the wide
pools left by the tide. Alix kicked up a shower of crystal drops. The sand
under her feet was firm, ridged with a pattern of ripples. The water looked
so inviting, she bent and scooped up a mouthful and swallowed it.
"You mustn't drink seawater!" shrieked Rachel. "If you do you'll go
mad."
Alix screamed. She had swallowed the seawater, and now she would
go mad, and be locked up in Parkside Asylum behind the high grey walls
where they kept the lunatics. . . .
She woke with the salty taste still in her mouth and a sense that the
experiences of the past week were unreal. But then she was struck by the
simple, stark fact of Mab's absence. She had to admit Mab was gone.
It was now the eighth day since they had left Hergott Springs. The sky
had cleared to a pitiless, cloudless blue. Alix was beginning to feel weak
from lack of food, and from the dysentery that plagued her due to the
mineralized bore-water. She was not delirious, but she was subject to
strange fancies, while knowing that they were only fancies. At one stage
as she stepped into the shallow green water she fancied herself back on
the beach at Semaphore, paddling in the zircon-clear shallows left by the
retreating tide. Then she was arguing with her mother about whether
they should have gone to Mutoorinna at all--Mrs. MacFarlane insisting
that it had been "foolhardy, typically thoughtless, dangerous and stupid."
"But Mother! The woman would have died in agony."
"So Mab Kingston died instead."
"Yes."
Mrs. MacFarlane was gone. Alix stared at the pale-blue, heat-hazed,
empty sky and remembered that she had not once prayed in their extremity, except for that one involuntary, "O God, don't let her die!" as
she sat beside Mab in the sand.
But Mad had died; and Alix felt that she probably would never pray
again.
As soon as she moved to go down for a drink she began to feel weak
and giddy. A warm breeze sprang up, but did not cool the hot water
coming out of the pipe, and she had to go a long way down the bore-drain
till it was cool enough to wash in, let alone drink. The taste of it sickened
her. Her throat had become sore.
There were birds at morning and sunset, flights of green budgerigars
moving in shrill-voiced clouds, and little waxbills with their bright
orange beaks and creaking, whispering voices. No doubt if she could trap
a bird she could eat it, though the thought revolted her. Or perhaps a
lizard . . .
Then she remembered what Jack McGuinnes had said. "If you're not
back in ten days I'll start a search party."
The tenth day was tomorrow, or was it today? It was then she began to
hope. She had been dozing under the bush when a shout woke her. She
sat up, believing that she was hallucinating again. But it was real: there
was jack perched on the two-camel buggy, and beside him Micky on
another camel, water-bags hanging from each side of its neck.

Her throat slaked with sweet fresh water, her hunger by a rather dried-up
cheese sandwich, she told them croakingly of how Horace had got away,
and that Mab was lying back there in a shallow grave. "We can't leave
her there," she said urgently. "Out there in that dreadful emptiness!"
"No, no," said Jack soothingly. "We must get you back for now, then
I'll take a party out with a coffin, and the horse to pick up the Bates's
cart, and we'll bring her back to Hergott Springs for a proper burial."
Alix began to cry weakly. "What did happen to Horace?" she asked at
last.
"He turned up at the Springs yesterday, not much the worse for wear.
He must have stayed here for a while where there was water, until the
feed cut out. I was already preparing to set off, because I'd been worried
ever since that big dust-storm. But everyone said you'd have stayed at the
station till it was over."
"No ... we were in the thick of it. And Mab climbed a hill in the
heat, to look for the bore . . . and--and--"
He held her hand and stroked it. "Don't go over it now, dear." She
put her other hand over his big brown one. Dear Jack! So solid, so
dependable! As she watched his large figure coming towards her, to rescue
her, she had felt a surge of something like love.
Now she was back at Hergott Springs, the nightmare behind her,
recovering in her own hospital. But whenever she closed her eyes, Mab'sface rose before her with staring, sightless gaze and open mouth filled
with sand. (Years later, digging idly on an Adelaide beach where she was
staying, she felt the sand jammed beneath her fingernails and turned faint
and sick at the memory it brought back.)
A telephone message had been sent down the line to Adelaide to inform
the A.I.M. headquarters of the tragedy. Alix did not want a replacement
nurse for Sister Kingston; she would carry on alone until the two new
appointees, due next month, had time to get there.
Back came a message that the Reverend John Flynn, the originator
and moving spirit behind the A.I.M. hostels, was about to leave on the
northern train for Hergott Springs and Oodnadatta, whence he would go
on to Alice Springs to examine the possibility of a hostel there. One was
already built at Oodnadatta, and he was going to dedicate it. From there
he would have to travel from the railhead by mail coach to Horseshoe
Bend, and then another hundred and twenty miles by camel to the Alice,
with Tex of the camel mail.
When she heard that he was coming, Alix began to hope that he would
be there in time to conduct the burial service. Mab would have liked
that. . . . Alix looked forward to meeting this extraordinary man whose
vision had led to the first bush nurses' going to the outback, and the first
hostels being built by the A.I.M. of which he had become director in
1912.
When he arrived on the train, she found an unassuming, gently spoken
man in his thirties, the hair already receding from his high forehead,
with a quirk of humour about the mouth and eyes in his rather long face.
She liked him at once. Jack was not yet back from his mission, but she
asked John Flynn if he would mind conducting the burial service.
"Of course, my dear. It's the least I can do for that brave girl. Can I
go to see her parents when I return to Adelaide?"
"Only her father is alive. I wrote to him about it. But I'm sure he'd
like to hear from you."
She also told him about Mira's problem. He was a Presbyterian,
but the least bigoted of churchmen, and he offered to talk to Abdul
Dervish.
He came back to tell her that the father had agreed; Mira was to be
allowed to marry Reuben, in a Muhammadan ceremony. "He was a
Mission boy, so we've lost a Christian to the Muslims," said Flynn with
a wry smile. "But I'm sure God won't hold it against him. He can still
be a Christian at heart."
As the men's ward was empty, Flynn had a bed there. He liked to talk,
and after tea would outline for her his dreams of a "Mantle of Safety" to
cover the whole of outback Australia, the small towns without doctor or
hospital, the outlying stations and lonely camps. He planned hostels at
strategic points in Western Australia, the Northern Territory, Queensland, as well as South Australia, where it had all begun: and he dreamed
of aeroplanes and the new wireless to connect them.
Alix would get sleepy about ten o'clock and go off to bed, but getting
up one night towards midnight she saw the light on in the sitting-room.
John Flynn was sitting over a notebook, writing. He told her that he rarely
went to bed before 1 or 2 a.m. but didn't like getting up early in the
morning. In the evenings he wore his jacket; by day, his only concession
to the heat was to remove the jacket, though he still kept on the waistcoat
of his dark suit over a long-sleeved shirt, his gold watch-chain looped in
front.
Mrs. Bates had taken her baby and gone back to her husband's camp
out towards Lake Harry, for Alix was feeling quite strong again. She was
thankful for a quiet time in the hospital, having feared that patients, would
be banked up and waiting after the Sisters' ten days' absence. She had
only a child with a septic throat, and an old prospector who had wandered
in with an infected toe, who came to out-patients for treatment each
morning.
When the cortege arrived with Mab in the coffin, Jack left the cart
standing in the street and came to find Alix. "The burial should be straight
away," he said, "for obvious reasons. . . . I've sent two men out to dig a
grave in the cemetery."
Alix swayed on her feet, feeling faintness come over her. Jack McGuinnes
put an arm round her to steady her.
"Bear up, old girl. At least we have her safe from the dingoes. They'll
often dig up a shallow grave, you know."
"I--didn't know."
"You'll want to come, I suppose. I'll have a shot at the burial service,
but--"
"It's all right, Jack. The Reverend John Flynn, the Presbyterian minister,
is here on an inspection for the Inland Mission. He's agreed to take
the service."
Jack was relieved. He had to be everything at once out here: coroner,
registrar of births and deaths, signer of death certificates, burier of
the dead, stock inspector, besides arbiter of the law and protector of
Aborigines. ...
He and the minister shook hands and sat down to a cup of tea provided
by Alix, who left them to go round the town collecting people for the
service.
Almost the whole town turned up--except Wal Crombie, who was
away with the mail, and the postmaster and station-master because there
was a train due in. The little crowd, both men and women wearing hats
against the burning sun, stood about the open hole that had been dug
with crowbars in the iron-hard soil.
John Flynn spoke simply and movingly about sacrifice and service.'This is the first such loss we have had in our new venture," he said. "A
tragic loss . . . but without the dedication of Sister Kingston and others
like her, many others would have died."
He then read the burial service, and at the words "ashes to ashes, dust
to dust," Alix thought, how appropriate, she has been dug out of sand to
be interred in dust. . . .
But John Flynn had opened the service with the beautiful passage from
Isaiah:

The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the
desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose . . .
It shall blossom and rejoice, even with joy and singing . . .
Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees.
Say to them that are of fearful heart, Be strong, Fear not;
The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall
be unstopped;
Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb
sing; for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the
desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land
springs of water; in the habitation of dragons. . . shall be grass with
reeds and rushes.

As there were no flowers in the town--if there had been, the dust-storm
would have buried them--Alix had brought a handful of white everlasting
daisies, dry as paper, which used to decorate the table in their sitting-room.
In place of fresh flowers she carried the small white handkerchief that
Mrs. Jackson had given Mab, with its embroidered roses and forgetmenots.
She spread it on the coffin before it was lowered into the grave, and
turned away, her eyes blinded by tears.
John Flynn put a steady hand under her elbow, tucking the Bible and
prayer-book under his left arm. Big Jack McGuinnes, his eyes moist,
came up and silently wrung her hand. There was nothing to be said.
Chapter Seventeen

Alix missed Mab at every turn, not just in the daily running of the
hostel. In the last weeks the place had become hateful to her. She
could not leave soon enough, when the two new Sisters should have
arrived. She threw herself into the work and into giving the whole place a
spring-clean, though it was nearly autumn. The seasons did not vary
much up here; all equally dry and clear, though colder at some times
than others.
She asked Jack McGuinnes over for a meal because she couldn't stand
the emptiness of the other place at table. He came several times, when
he was not away on duty, and though he was circumspect and did not
importune her in any way, she knew that he was hoping she would turn
to him in her loneliness and grief.
"I feel so guilty!" she had told him. "Not just because I am alive and
she is dead. But I'm a trained nurse, I should have thought of the
possibility of heat-stroke in those awful conditions. Mab was always so
strong. ... I just didn't think of such a thing."
"You mustn't blame yourself, Alix." He had dropped the semiformal
"Sister" before her name.
"But I do! I want to get away from this desolate place, which reminds
me all the time of how she perished. I'm going back to Adelaide."
A shadow crossed his face. "You mean you're going to give up outback
nursing--stay in the city?"
"No. I don't think I could stand that. But perhaps I could get a posting
to somewhere with permanent water, and green trees. Even then I'd have
to find a new partner. They always appoint nurses in pairs."
Jack said, "I'm thinking of asking for a transfer to Alice Springs. Bloke
up there is resigning, I heard."
"Alice Springs! I've always wanted to go there."
He stared at her under his square black brows, then took her hand
across the table.
"Alix, would you come with me, as my wife? Will you just think about
it? It's even more isolated than here, but it does have water and trees, and
a reasonably cool climate for much of the year."
"Oh, Jack! I don't know. I haven't really thought about marriage."
"Well, just promise me you will think about it. I don't mind waiting.Have a holiday at home first. Then if I get my transfer I'll come down to Adelaide and find you."
"I'll give you my address. But I can't make any promises."

She was packing up her things, and Mab's, to take down to Mr. Kingston'
in Adelaide, when Wal Crombie came in from Birdsville with the last
mail before her train left. With him came a note from Jim Manning at
Cappamerri. When she saw his handwriting, and the Birdsville postmark,
she hurried home and opened the envelope with trembling fingers.
There was half a page of writing, neat and well-spaced, in very blue
ink.

My darling Sandy, I am so very sorry to hear about the tragedy that
has overtaken you. Word has just come about Sister Kingston. I was
planning to come down with a mob of bullocks anyway, to see you
before you leave--next month, isn't it? I find that I can't forget you.
From your last message I know what you think of me now. But I must
see you again. Jim.

Well! She felt winded, as if all the breath had been knocked out of her
body. So Jim Manning had not forgotten her! Fighting down a surge of
joy, she called up her reserves of pride and anger. He thought he could
just drift back into her life after months of absence and silence. But she
was leaving on the train in a few days and he would not find her waiting
by the sliprails when he returned,

"Her face grown pale--
Ah, quivering lips and eyes that brim!"

She wrote a formal note of thanks for his condolences, and informed him
that she was leaving immediately for the south, and would not be coming
back. "I never want to see this place again!" (Or you either, she implied.)
She signed it grandly, spurning his pet-name, as "Alexandra MacFarlane."
And that was the end of that chapter in her life, she told herself firmly.
Yet she did not feel any elation at thus slamming the door in his face.
However, the letter was written. She sealed it doubly with glue, for in
that small community everyone had been aware of her brief affair with
Jim, and she did not quite trust the postmaster not to look. She walked
along the dusty road to post it before she could change her mind.

Returning over the barren landscape, past the splendid Flinders Ranges
hi, the narrow-gauge, rocking train, she was reminded poignantly of the
journey in the opposite direction with Mab, the excitement and enthusiasm
of their first trip to the north. Who would have thought that she would be returning alone? Mab lay in the barren cemetery at the Springs,
under the simple stone monument her father had sent up in the train
from Adelaide.
Alix changed into the bigger train at Port Augusta, watching
the delphinium blue of the Mount Lofty Ranges beginning to lift
along the horizon. At the Adelaide Railway Station her parents were
waiting. She stepped down onto the platform and into her mother's
arms. So much had happened, she seemed to have been away so long,
that she was amazed to see her mother unchanged, perhaps a little
plumper, with no grey threads in her black hair and her sharp blue eyes
as bright as ever. Her father enfolded her in a loving hug, and bent to
brush her cheek with his whiskers. Her parents were still the same, incredibly
the same, yet she felt herself to be a different person, older and
more cynical than the young woman who had left the city just over two
years ago.
They spoke briefly on the way home in the car, of the tragedy of Mab's
end. "We couldn't help thinking, that it might have been our daughter!"
Mrs. MacFarlane said tremulously. Alix replied shortly that she didn't
want to talk about it.
"I'm dreading having to go and see her father, and take him her things,
but I have to do it," she said at home, setting aside the bundle of Mab's
few possessions. It hadn't seemed worth while to bring her clothes back,
and she had given them to the Aboriginal girls in the town, leaving the
white uniforms and caps to the relieving Mission Sisters, one of whom
was about Mab's size.
She remembered how, when going through Mab's things, she had
come across her mutilated fine wool dressing-gown: a great three-cornered
piece had been cut from the skirt to make a shawl for a baby whose mother
was too poor to provide one. Typical of Mab, who had given Mira, to
cheer her, the pretty coloured ribbon she sometimes wore round her hair
when off duty.
Sitting on the side of her daughter's bed, Frances MacFarlane tried to
imagine what it had been like, to see another perish in the desert, and
then dig her grave with one's bare hands. ...
She shuddered, and said, "Never mind about that now, you need to
rest and recover from your journey . . . and everything."
"I don't want to rest! I want to be busy so that I can't think, and so
tired at night that I can sleep. For a while I thought I would never sleep
again, because I kept seeing her face in nightmares."
"There, there." Alix suffered herself to be rocked in maternal arms.
"My poor, dear baby," said Frances, stroking Alexandra's soft curls.
Absence seemed to have made her mother's heart grow fonder. "What
you have gone through, up there in the heat and dust! Indeed, your
complexion is a little brown and coarsened, and do I detect a few linesaround your eyes? Just tiny ones, of course, and if you put cold cream
on them regularly we'll soon have you quite presentable--"
"But I shall be going back to work just as soon as I find something
suitable."
"What? Go off again into the back of beyond, where you will never
find a suitable husband--"
"I am not looking for a husband. I just want to work at my profession."
Frances compressed her lips but said no more.

Alix unpacked her things. Beyond the window were the old familiar
rounded shapes of the Adelaide hills, Mount Osmond where she had
dedicated herself to nursing ... it seemed like fifty years ago. She came
to the orange-and-black feather.
"Where did you get it?" asked her mother. "It's beautiful!"
"The feather? Oh--it was a gift. From the local policeman. It's a
tail-feather of a black cockatoo."
"A gift! Was he an admirer of yours?"
Trust mother! thought Alix irritably, to nose out your secrets. Well,
she was not letting on about Jim Manning and the suffering he had caused
her. Nor about Jack McGuinnes either.
"Just a friend."
The very next week came a letter with a Hergott Springs postmark.
Feeling her mother's eyes boring into her as she handed over the
envelope with its rather untidy scrawl - for Jack hated filling in reports
and had formed the habit of dashing off his words as fast as possible-- Alix bolted for her room and shut the door.
"Dearest Alix," it began. He was hopeful of the Alice Springs posting,
but the trouble was to find a replacement for the huge Hergott Springs
beat. No inexperienced city policeman would be able to take it on. And
whoever came, he would have to stay and "show him the ropes" before
leaving.
"However, I'm due for some leave soon, when I'll be coming down to
Adelaide. I hope by then you will be able to give me an answer, dear
girl."
She felt close to him because he was the only one who really knew
what she had been through, not just because he had been her rescuer
and she owed her life to him. He was honest, dependable, and kind, and
she felt she ought to love him. She would have to wait and see how she
felt when he arrived. Alice Springs would be new and different, and as
the policeman's wife she might be able to go on patrols with him and use
her nursing skills where they were most needed. Yet somehow, at the
back of her mind, was a feeling of doubt, of unease.
She wrote back noncommittally.
Enjoying the mild and sunny autumn, with windless days and crisp
nights, she began to feel better. She wandered in the suburban garden,
picking overripe muscatel grapes from the vine that grew over a trellis.
They were golden-brown rather than green, and had a taste of sultanas.
Many of the bunches were composed of withered skins, emptied by the
birds and the bees. That was how she'd felt when she first came back-- empty and dehydrated, both mentally and physically.
She heard the front gate click, a step on the gravel path, and turned to
bolt for the back door. She had a morbid dread of visitors offering
sympathy.
Then a well-remembered voice said, "Sandy!"
She whirled round. Jim Manning, the last person she would have
expected to see here.
"You!" she gasped.
"Yes, it's me. I didn't write, or ring up, in case you refused to see me.
When I got to the Springs and found you gone, I took the first train down.
I had to see you."
She stood rigid with shock, unable to move. Unconsciously she spat
out a chewed grape-skin. Then she was in his arms, pressed to that hard
muscular frame. One quick, fierce kiss and she relaxed against him, all
her defences down.
He led her to a wooden garden seat in the shelter of the front
hedge. If her mother looked out the window . . . but she didn't care.
She was filled with joy such as she had thought she would never feel
again.

As a concession to the city, Jim wore no spurs, but he was unconventionally
dressed in a leather jacket and light drill trousers. And he seemed to
have bought a new wide-brimmed hat.
Mrs. MacFarlane was enchanted by the handsome bushman, with his
tall figure and engaging smile; and when she discovered that his father
owned a cattle-station, it made him in her eyes almost a member of the
aristocracy.
"I suppose your property is a large one, Mr. Manning?" she asked,
pouring tea. Jim's hat was safely stowed beneath his chair. His legs were
too long to tuck underneath, but stretched out in front of him.
"A fair size. Just under five thousand square miles."
"Square miles'. And how much stock do you carry?"
"Normally around thirty thousand head of cattle, but we've been getting
rid of them because of the drought. Now they're too weak to be moved,
what's left of them. You see, I wasn't really coming down with a mob,
droving," he said to Alix, realizing that he'd given himself away. "Just
taking a wagon-load of hides down to the train."
"Do you run sheep as well?""Not any more. We lost fifty thousand in the last big Dry. But at least
the drought killed the rabbits."
"Cappamerri is in the gibber and sand-hill country, Mother," said Alix.
"They need a lot of acres to feed one beast. You have no idea what
desolation is, till you've seen the Channel Country. . . . And they say
this is the worst drought since the 1902 one."
"Ah, but wait till you see it after rain! Talk about 'the desert blossoming
as the rose'! In three days, at most four, the new growth is up, and there
are flowers everywhere on the sand-hills--red and pink and yellow and
purple . . . And all the gibbers covered in saltbush and daisies."
"But it hasn't rained for three years."
"Except for a few thunderstorms, no. But Cappamerri is on the
Cooningbeera waterhole in the Diamantina--permanent water. So there
are plenty of trees--coolabah and silver box, and birds by the thousands.
The homestead is on a knoll above flood-level."
"And what happens when the Diamantina comes down?"
"When she comes down we're cut off from Birdsville, though we can
usually get through to Betoota. The water runs away fast, but."
Alix knew that all this picturesque detail was for her benefit. She had
noticed that strange way of ending a sentence with "but." It seemed to
be a Queensland phenomenon.
"And how long are you in the city for, Mr. Manning?"
"Jim, please. Just as long as it takes to persuade Alix to marry
me."
Alix glared at him, but she could see he had won her mother over;
Mrs. MacFarlane was already seeing him as the son she'd never had.

"A most suitable match," she told her husband privately. (He had been
away on business, and had not yet met his daughter's suitor.) "I always
said," she added mendaciously, "that the outback was the place for
Alexandra to find a husband. Nice girls are few and far between out
there."
"H'm. I'll reserve my judgment until I've met the feller."
Alix at first refused Jim's offer of marriage. She hadn't forgiven him,
and it was only after a great many recriminations, and expressions of
regret on his part, that she began to soften. But he knew that cruel country
which yet held such strange beauty, and he understood what she had
been through on that dreadful journey.
She wondered what would have happened if, instead of finding her in
the garden, he'd been admitted by her mother and they had met on
formal terms in the drawing-room. She'd have had time to steel herself
against him.
"You took a lot for granted," she said. "How did you know I wasn't
married already?"
"Oh, I asked around. I got the impression from the locals that the
copper had his eye on you. So I didn't waste any time."
"You wasted a lot of time in the last year."
"I know. I was crazy. You see, I'd always had this horror of a woman
putting a legrope on me, and her brand on me for life. I like girls, but I
didn't want to be tied down."
"That was obvious."
"After your card came back I thought it was no good anyway. Yet I
couldn't get you out of my mind. I thought of writing again, but I'm not
much of a correspondent."
"That was also obvious."
"And then I heard the news. Everyone was shocked. And I thought,
What if she had died too? I knew then how much you meant to me. . . .
Sandy? Please say yes."
"We-ell ..."
"That's near enough. Dear darling girl, you won't be sorry, I promise."
He sealed her lips with a kiss, so she never did get round to saying
"Yes."

Her father approved, her mother was delighted. She began planning a
large wedding and reception.
Alix said firmly, "Mother, I intend getting married in a cream linen
suit and an ordinary hat. I doubt if Jim owns a formal suit. We don't
want a lot of fuss. Just a family reception, if you like."

The hardest thing for Alix was not leaving her family, but breaking the news to Jack McGuinnes. She began, "Dear Jack," and then could not go on. Dear Jack! And he was dear, a sterling friend, and she was terribly
sorry to have to hurt him. Resolutely she dipped her pen in the ink and
began to write.Chapter Eighteen

"The old man is a bit of a rough diamond," said Jim Manning as they travelled northward in the 'Ghan after a honeymoon at the beach, "but'
I think you'll like him. He doesn't have any small talk--the strong, silent'
type. How he and my mother came to marry is a mystery. She was a city girl. She's looking forward to having another woman to mag with."
"What about the cook?"
"The cook's a man. With the nickname of Leavin' Soon. When anyone
criticizes his cooking, he says, That's all right, you can cook for yerself, I'll be leavin' soon.' He doesn't leave, but he's always threatening
to."
"There are black women helpers too, I suppose?"
"Yes, but Mum gets very frustrated having only gins to talk to. You have to talk to them in pidgin, which is a bit limiting."
"Perhaps if they were taught proper English from childhood--"
"Yair, perhaps. But who's going to teach them? It's hard enough for a white kid to get an education out here."
"So the black children never learn to read?"
"They can read cattle brands, and the letters on the kerosene cases."
Alix saw herself bringing the light of learning to these wild children of nature. For of course they could be taught.
They were to travel north from Hergott Springs with Wal Crombie and
the Birdsville mail. Alix was nervous about a possible meeting with Jack
McGuinnes, who had not replied to her last letter. She was relieved to
find that he was out on a month-long patrol when they arrived. She knew
her happiness and fulfilment showed in her face. It would have been like
twisting the knife in a wound. . . .
During the time between the train's arrival and Wal's departure, she
visited the Sisters at the hostel, even though it was full of painful as well
as happy memories for her. She called on Mrs. Allison at the store,
leaving Jim drinking with some mates from the train. She knew that
women never, never entered the bar, except to serve drinks to the men.
The English cook had left, replaced by a thin, dark, sour-faced woman
who looked as if she lived on pickles.
Alix walked out to the cemetery, wearing a wide hat against the sun's
rays, in the later hours of the afternoon. Dry-eyed, she stood and looked
Mab's last resting place. The raw mound in the bare dusty cemetery
was marked by a carved stone:

Sacred to the Memory of Mabel Alice Kingston, only daughter of James and the late Alice Kingston, of Adelaide. D. February 22, 1914, aged 26 years.
She smoothed the hard dry mound with her hands, and placed some
white shells she had brought from the coast in a pattern on the grave. No
plants would ever survive there.
She looked up at the pitiless blue of the sky and round at the desolate
peneplain. Then she left, closing the gate, for the cemetery was fenced
against marauding goats. She was closing the gate on her past life and
turning towards the new life with Jim. She began to hurry, already
longing to see him after so short a separation. They'd had to share their
compartments with strangers, she with two women and he with three
other men at night.
Nearing the big stone hotel with its encircling balcony, she hesitated.
How well did she really know her husband? What if he stayed in the bar
for hours, and came to her hopelessly drunk? She went cold at the
thought.
In the comparatively cool parlour, she glanced through the bar window
and saw him leaning on the counter with one elbow, the sleeves of his
blue shirt rolled up, the neck open. He held a narrow-waisted glass of
beer in the other hand, as he talked with two rugged-looking types. He
glanced up and waved.
"I'll be with you in a jiff, darling," he called. "Just let me finish
m'beer."
"I'll go on up to the room," she said, feeling irked that she could not
join him in the bar. She could do with a long, cold beer. It was a man's
country all right! She climbed the stairs, visited the Ladies', and walked
along the high-ceilinged corridor. She went through their dim, shuttered
room with its double iron bedstead, its shiny linoleum floor, and out onto
the wide balcony above the street. A single horse was tied to a downstairs
post, and a dog dozed in the shade of a galvanized iron water-tank.
Would he come? She might have to go down to dinner alone. The
sun was still above the horizon, but this side of the hotel was shaded in
the afternoon, and there was a slight easterly breeze. A light step on the
boards behind her, and a pair of brown arms circled her waist. He kissed
the back of her neck. She turned to him hungrily, and they stood locked
in a long embrace.
"Ker-ist, it's been a long time," said Jim. "Two whole nights since we
shared a bed! Let's not waste any more time." He took her hand and led
her inside.He had brought her a bottle of soda-pop and pushed the glass marble
stopper in and poured her a drink.
"Actually, I'd have liked a beer," said Alix.
"What! I didn't know you drank beer."
"I don't usually, but that amber glassful in your hand looked inviting.
Besides, your breath smells of it."
"Oh, sorry! We'll have a bottle of beer with our dinner."
He began to undo the buttons of her white cambric blouse.

Wal made a leisurely trip, camping out three times where there was water
along the way. Some of the pale sand-hills had drifted across the road,
and the horses made heavy going. The passengers had to get down and
walk; Jim helped to dig sand from round the buggy's wheels. The weather
was cooler than when Alix had left for the south, and travelling with two
experienced bushmen she did not feel the terror of the wide, flat, empty
landscape that she had thought might return.
At Etadunna she was welcomed like a long-lost friend, when they
stopped to deliver mail and to have some cool lemon syrup and water.
Mrs. Rushton, mother of the poor, burned Lucy, was thinner, but she
seemed to have come to terms with her loss.
Kopperamanna, Ooroowillannie, Mungerannie, Mirra Mitta--the euphonious
native names chimed in her ears like bells. Now that she was
not afraid of it, the vast bleached landscape with its painted sand-hills
and blue mirages began to exert its old fascination. There was something
about this country, even in a drought, something in its emptiness and
wide horizons, that she had missed in cosy Adelaide with its friendly
grassed hills. Instead of feeling dwarfed and threatened, she felt her spirit
expand.
For the whole of the next day they drove across the enormous expanse
of Clifton Hills Station, leaving mail for the homestead, which was off
the track, at the makeshift mailbox by the road.
In the afternoon, while crossing a plain paved with small stones that
had been swirled into "crab-holes" by some long-ago flood, they were
treated to a magnificent mirage. The plain ahead was transformed into a
cobalt, almost purple lake, fringed with dark-blue trees that seemed to
float above the "water," and backed by tall crimson cliffs which wavered
and changed as they approached. Then the whole thing disappeared, as
if a magic lantern had been switched off, leaving only burning sand.
At Goyder's Lagoon, dry now and filled with a tangle of lignum bush,
they took the track to the east to avoid the uneven bed of the swamp; but
this brought them to the edge of Shirt's Stony Desert. The horses picked
their way along the ill-defined track among great purple-red gibbers
that gleamed like polished iron in the glare of the sun. It was slow
going.
They camped beside the track at the foot of one of the sand-hills which trended almost north and south, the direction they were going. They were now within striking distance of Birdsville: only thirty miles to go.
Next day they passed through a gate in a drunken-looking wire-netting
fence. "The border between S.A. and Queensland," said Jim. "It's
supposed to be rabbit-proof."
Then they were at Birdsville, fabled end of the notorious Birdsville Track. The horses dashed over the dry sandy bed of the Diamantina in
fine style. Lower down, the overflow from the town bore filled part of the channel in a permanent waterhole.
The township seemed even smaller and barer than Hergott, to which the
railway and the Overland Telegraph Line had lent a certain importance.
A long sand-hill blocked the view to the west. Beyond it lay the endless
sand-hills of the Simpson Desert. In all other directions stretched the flat
gibber-plain, great expanses of broken stone among which a few dried-up stalks of saltbush barely survived. The only street was deep in dust. But there was a school provided by the Queensland Government.
Their first stop was the post office, a single-room building with windows at the front and back that could open to catch any breeze that was blowing,
or be shut against dust-storms. The small sheltered porch was full of
townspeople waiting for the mail to be sorted--some receiving nothing, others no more than a packet of patent medicine ordered from faraway
Adelaide by post. There were a few precious postcards and letters, and larger parcels of necessities transported over eight hundred miles. At the
words "Wal's coming!" or "Mail-buggy's in!" the dead-looking town sprang to life. Jim was greeted on all sides, and congratulated on bringing back a bride.
Everyone then adjourned to the Royal Hotel, a single-storey building
of the local stone, with a curved iron roof to its front veranda, which ran the length of the building. It was not nearly as imposing as the Hergott
Springs Hotel. The bedrooms were small and dark, the dining room long and narrow like a railway carriage. But they were to stay there only one night while Jim collected the buggy he had left behind the pub, along with the two horses which had been expensively fed on hay transported by train and mail van from Quorn in the south.
Wandering about the town in the late afternoon, Alix came upon an
inviting-looking green pool, the first cooling-pond into which the bore
discharged. She thought she would like to paddle, and took off her white kid boots and stockings. She dipped a bare toe in--fortunately not her whole foot. The water was near boiling, though the air temperature was so high that it was not steaming, but looked deceptively clear and cool. Her toe turned bright red like a cooked prawn.
Then the blended cries of water-birds, the raucous calls of cockatoos coming in for their evening drink, drew her on to the long blue-greenwaterhole. She stood entranced. Red clay banks and crimson floatir
duckweed contrasted with turquoise shallows and white-boled paperbarks.
Green bullock-bush and coolabah grew on small islands, and the bank was fringed with reeds and canegrass.
An oasis, alive with sailing pelicans and wading white egrets, ibis and cranes and herons: the cacophony of birds' cries, even the croaking of:)
frogs! It seemed miraculously beautiful after the long dry stage they had
just passed through. Now she knew why this town on the edge of the
desert was called Birdsville. The town of birds.
They left early in the morning, after a hilarious and uncomfortable
night during which Jim fell out of the narrow stretcher into which they
had crammed themselves, and Alix sank almost out of sight in the sagging
middle of the mattress. He had to give up and transfer to the other
stretcher. A Royal Hotel did not necessarily live up to its grand title.
Leaving Birdsville they recrossed the dry bed "to the Cappamerri side
of the river," and set off across the gibber plains. Alix was excited and
nervous, wondering what her new home would be like, wondering what
her in-laws would think of her, and she of them. But with Jim at her
side, she felt she could face anything.
They camped that night beside the track. They were following the
trend of the Diamantina to the north of east, and the dead trees marking
one of its channels were on their left. There was plenty of good dry
firewood. Jim made a bright, dancing fire and hung the billy-can on a
metal tripod, mixed a damper of flour, salt, and cold water with a pinch
of self-raising powder. Alix decided that she would have to learn to like
strong bush tea; it was certainly a refreshing drink, black and sweet, after
a long dry day. With the damper they ate cold corned beef with lumps
of yellow fat, which she found to her surprise she relished as a substitute
for butter.
Then they made love under the stars. There was no moon, and the
inland sky was a blaze of blue-white radiance. "What bliss!" murmured
Alix, but in fact there were several small stones underneath the sleeping
bag on which she lay, which pressed into her back. There was no doubt
the man on top had the best of it out in the bush, she thought.
But she was too shy and too new a bride to complain.
The horse-bells sounded sweetly as the hobbled horses foraged for
dried-out feed. One horse travelled in the shafts, the other was a "spare"
which ran alongside, ready to take over pulling the buggy when the first
horse tired.
It was eighty miles from Birdsville to their destination; first along the
dirt "road" that led towards the little settlement of Betoota, and then
turning north along the stock route to Cappamerri.
There was no change in the iron-hard gibber plain, in the brilliant
orange sand-hills rising against the blue sky, when on the second day Jim said, "We're inside the borders of Cappamerri now. See that skull propped
up on the empty drum? That's the marker for our mail."
She looked around. Beside the track lay the bleached bones of dead
bullocks; a little farther on, in an utterly bare and eaten-out patch around
a bore, were whole carcasses reduced by heat and exposure to mere
mummies of hide over bone, with dreadful eyeless sockets staring at
nothing. She thought of Mab, and began to feel sick.
"Jim, could you stop for a minute? I think I'm going to be ill."
"I'm sorry, darling. Is it the heat?"
With the wind of their movement it had not been unbearably hot, but
she murmured, "Yes... I think so."
He pulled on the reins, and the horse, which had come twenty miles
that day, with a break at lunch-time, stopped thankfully for a rest. There
was a red sand-hill beside the track, shimmering in the heat, but out of
the burning sand grew a desert oak with dark trunk and thin pine-like
leaves, almost black in colour against the brilliant orange-red of the sand,
and throwing a dense shadow like a pool of coolness.
She staggered towards this and Jim followed with a handkerchief he
had moistened in water from the water-bag under the cart--crusted now
with red dust, but still cooling the water by evaporation. She sat with her
arms between her knees, head hanging. He tenderly wiped the sweat from
her brow. She had not been sick after all and was beginning to feel better.
"Would you like a drink?"
"No, thank you. I doubt if I could keep it down."
"You'd better rest for a bit in the shade. I was pushing on because the
sooner we get to Cappamerri the sooner you'll be able to have a bath and
a rest."
Her light-brown curls were sticking to her forehead as she pushed the
wide panama hat with its filmy veil to the back of her head.
"You still manage to look beautiful with a sunburnt nose and a dusty
face," said Jim.
She smiled wanly.
"Those poor cattle!" she said. "It's a cruel country, all right."
"Yes. It's damned hard to be religious in this country. When you see
a bogged bullock, still alive, with its eyes picked out by crows--"
"Don't tell me about it!" she begged. And then asked, "A great many
must have died in this drought?"
"Yes. They have to stay within reach of water, and gradually eat out
all the fodder round the bore. Then they get too weak to walk to feed and
back to the water, so they die of starvation."
"I never knew, when I enjoyed roast beef at home."
"Of course this is one of the worst droughts we've had. And my old
man is a confirmed optimist, who tends to overstock in the good years,
and then when drought strikes he's caught with cattle he can't feed andcan't unload. Yet recurring droughts are inevitable. The old-timers
they are getting worse, that the waterholes are drying up, silting over.'
"Mr. Jackson said it was caused by the rabbits."
"Yair, partly. The government spent thousands putting up the rabbit- ] proof fence, but there were soon as many rabbits on one side as the other.
But the dingoes come down from the other direction--I reckon they
breed in the Simpson Desert in the good years, and spread out into the
sheep country in a drought."
Alix pushed the damp hair back from her forehead and stood up. "I'm
all right now, really."
"Really?"
"Yes. Let's go."
He gave her a quick kiss and helped her up into the buggy. His lips
tasted salty from sweat.

Chapter Nineteen

That morning they passed through the first gate for many miles. The wire
fence stretched into the distance to left and right.
"The horse-paddock," said Jim. It looked as big as a coastal farm.
The track now came nearer to the eastern channel of the Diamantina,
which here ran roughly north and south. They passed through a group
of white-faced steers, which stood immobile, dully staring, too listless to
bound away in fright. The river course was marked with a line of green
trees.
"That's the Warrawarra waterhole," said Jim. "At least that's what we
call it. The blacks told Grand-dad when he first came here that its proper
name is Warrawarrapirralellyalullamalulullacoopalannie."
"I believe you," said Alix, laughing. "But I don't know how you get
your tongue round it."
"Dad used to make it a game, see if we could say it without leaving
out any syllables. My young sister always cried when she couldn't pronounce
it."
"Well, here we are at 'Government House,'" said Jim a little later.
There ahead stood a cluster of iron-roofed buildings about a central
homestead. As they came nearer Alix stared silently. She had dreaded
some barren, rocky terrain, but they approached through a series of
sand-hills rising like waves. The wide, low stone homestead was situated
between two delicately crimson sand-hills, beyond which lay a blue
waterhole screened by coolabahs and paperbarks.
Alix sat entranced. "Oh, Jim!" she murmured. "It's beautiful!"
There was a stock-proof fence around the main building, and inside
this all was green. Tall sunflowers stood against the walls. Flowering
bushes of oleander made a splash of pink.
Dogs barked, and small children and their mothers came pouring out
of the canegrass shelters of the blacks' camp to welcome the "Young Boss"
and his bride. A plump lubra came out on the wide, grass-thatched
veranda of the homestead and then dashed inside, arms and legs waving in frantic excitement. Someone opened the gate of the garden enclosure
tor them; someone else took charge of the horses. Jim picked up their
bags and carried them in.
Mrs. Manning was waiting on the front veranda to greet them. Alix,conscious of her own sunburnt face and grubby dress, saw a tall thin
woman with a sallow face and clear light-blue eyes like Jim's. The hem
of her pastel-coloured dress, with fine pleats on the bodice, reached to
her instep. This was not the tough outback type Alix had expected to find
on this isolated station.
"Mother, this is Alix," said Jim, dropping the bags and kissing her
"Where's Dad?"
"He and most of the men are out on the run, there are some cattle
bogged in the Coppambara waterhole. . . . Welcome, my dear."
She took Alix's hand and deposited a cool kiss on her cheek. She might have welcomed a new daughter-in-law every day of the week. Her voice
was neutral, neither warm nor hostile. In spite of the heat, Alix felt a
little chilled.
"You must come and have a cup of tea," she added.
"I think Alix would like a bath and a change before anything else.
We've had two dry camps on the way."
"Of course. Follow me." She said over her shoulder to Jim, "I've made
up your room at the far end of the veranda."
She led the way along to the last pair of fly-wire doors opening on to
an airy room with a double bed and marble-topped wash-stand. Alix
noted the white honeycomb quilt and the white mosquito net above the
bed.
"Mosquitoes! I didn't think you'd have to worry about them in a
drought."
"Yes, they breed in the billabong. It's only in flood time when the
larvae are washed away that we're really free of them in the hot months."
There was a kerosene lamp on the bedside table, and a couple of books
lay beside it.
"I thought you might like something to read. Now come and I'll show
you the bathroom."
Alix took off her hat and laid it on a cane-bottomed chair. She glanced
in the mirror over the duchess-chest and saw that her hair looked terrible,
wispy and falling down and far from clean.
"I really am longing for a bath," she said with a rueful smile, unpacking
a clean if crumpled muslin dress.
"Of course. The bathroom's a bit primitive, but there is fresh water
laid on. I must ask you to be sparing with it, though. We usually bathe
in bore-water, when the river's not flowing."
"I'm used to bore-water, from living at Hergott."
"Yes, I forgot you were used to the bush. ... I have never grown used
to it," she murmured.
She handed Alix a brownish-white towel, no doubt washed in muddy
river water, and a small coloured hand towel.
"There's fresh water in the wash-jug in your room, by the way. This bore-water tap, this the fresh, which you will want for your hair. "I'll leave you to it."
Alix was relieved to see a commode in the corner.
There were a face-washer and a cake of yellow soap on the side of the
tin tub. A round tin basin stood on a tripod. Alix filled this with fresh
water, then ran a bath, and lay luxuriating in the warm, soapy-feeling
bore-water. She dipped her head right under.
She washed her hair in the basin, rinsed it, and vigorously towelled
the water out of it. She noticed guiltily that she had splashed a lot of
water over the linoleum floor--lino probably brought all this way on the
back of a camel--and she hastened to mop it up with one towel while
she wrapped the other round her damp curls. It was wonderful to feel
fresh and clean again. The bath when she emptied it had been half an
inch deep in red silt.
Dressing in clean underwear and the white muslin frock, which was
short enough to show her ankles, she hesitated whether to put on stockings
or not. It was so hot . . . but then, first impressions! She realized that
she was rather intimidated by her mother-in-law. She couldn't imagine
addressing her as "Mother." Yet she could hardly call her "Mrs. Manning."
She
found Jim in the bedroom, dressed in a clean poplin shirt and
with his elastic-sided boots polished to a sherry-coloured shine. He opened
his arms.
"You look lovely, dearest."
"What, with my hair in a towel?"
"Let me dry it for you."
She sat on the side of the bed while he rubbed her scalp and wet hair,
then spread out the long strands and rolled them in a fold of towel,
pausing to kiss the back of her neck. As the curls dried in the warm breeze
coming off the veranda, they sprang up and turned a lighter golden-brown.
"So fine!" he said, feeling a silken strand between his fingers. She
turned and buried her face against his throat. This was true intimacy, she
felt, to have him dry her hair for her as if she were a child. He fetched a
brush from her dressing-case, which had been sealed against dust, and
began brushing her curls until they shone. Then he dropped the brush
on the floor and pushed her back on the white counterpane, and stretched
himself upon her.
She kept him nervously at arm's length. "When did you have a bath?"
"Just now, in the outside shower. It's a bit difficult--you have to fill
the kerosene bucket and then pull it up with a rope, and then when
you've soaped yourself you pull another rope and the water spills over
you. Very refreshing."
"Mm. . .You smell fresh."
His hand was exploring under her muslin skirt, her lace-edged petticoat."No, Jim, no!" She rolled her eyes towards the fly-wire door to the
veranda. "Your mother might come--and she's expecting me to appear
to drink tea. Jim! You're crushing my dress!"
"It was crushed already," he said sulkily, rolling off her. "I say--you're
not frightened of Ma, are you?"
"I am a bit."
"It's just her manner. She's very reserved; she'll be all right when she
gets used to you. Since the governess left and the two girls got married,
she's hardly had another woman to talk to."
"Perhaps she will see me as a rival!"
"Nonsense. Come on, put your hair up, then."
Before they left the room she glanced at the two books. The Story
of an African Farm, by Olive Schreiner. H'm, interesting. She'd heard of
it but had not read it. The other was a Meredith novel, The Ordeal of Richard
Feverel. This she did know. The story of a youthful marriage ruined by a
dominating father and a too-strict upbringing. . . .
They gathered in the central room, the living-room, which was
open to the veranda at each end, for it ran the depth of the house. The
veranda was closed in with louvers, which could be shut against a dust
storm but were now open to catch the breeze. The kitchen and its wood
range were in a separate building connected to the house by a covered
way.
There was home-made bread and butter, the slices cut rather thickly,
and some kind of bought biscuit that tasted slightly rancid.
"I'm afraid I'm no cake-maker, Alix," said Olive Manning, pouring
tea. "The cook will bake it when he's in a good mood, but I daren't ask
him at present."
"I suppose he said, 'I'll be leaving soon,' when he heard there was to be
an extra one for meals."
Olive Manning smiled faintly. "Something like that. We don't have
many visitors here, and he gets spoilt. But he's a good cook, and they are
hard to come by." She handed Alix a delicate china cup. "Now, tell me
all about yourself. . . . Where did you train?"
After they'd taken tea, Mrs. Manning excused herself--"I always have
a lie-down before dinner"--and Jim took Alix's hand and showed her
round. The veranda ran on three sides of the house, shading the northern,
eastern, and western walls. The back veranda, strewn with comfortable
cane chairs and long cretonne-covered couches, looked out over the
blue waterhole with its pink sand-hills, shady gums, and whiteboled
paperbarks.
"There are water-lilies there in spring," said Jim. "And there's a beaut
swimming-hole with a sandy bottom."
"Any fish?"
"Yes, the blacks catch fish and bring them up to us in exchange for some extra 'bacca. But Leavin' Soon will have cooked a roast of beef in
your honour."
Thinking of the starving cattle, Alix thought she would rather have
eaten fish.
Jim showed her the office, where his father reluctantly worked at times.
The desk was untidy and covered in a film of pink sand, an ashtray held
a blackened pipe. "Things are so tight we've had to let the bookkeeper
go," he said. "I help out with the bookwork. But Dad won't let anyone
touch his desk to tidy it. He's warned old Lucy she's not to set foot in the
office."
There came a loud squawking from overhead, and a raucous voice
demanded, "What're you doing, y'bloody ole bastard?"
"George!" said Jim warningly. "There are ladies present."
Alix looked around and up, and saw through a hole in the corner of
the ceiling a snowy-feathered head, softly flushed with pink, a hooked
beak, and an alert dark eye looking down at them.
"Meet George," said Jim. "He follows me around and thinks he owns
me. He gradually pecked a hole in the ceiling, after making his way in along the canegrass thatch of the veranda, so that he can keep an eye on
me. I can't think where he learned such language," he added virtuously.
"Is it a cockatoo?"
"Yes, a Major Mitchell; he lives down at the river but comes up to
visit."
Just then George, peering down at Alix, nearly fell through the hole.
He gave a squawk of alarm and his crest rose--a gorgeous sunset-hued
crown of feathers, yellow, orange, and white.
"He knows Mum won't let him inside. Come out and I'll introduce
you properly."
They walked down the steps, Jim gave a whistle, and the immaculate
bird came flying from the roof, his delicate rose-flushed underwings
showing. He landed on Jim's shoulder and began nibbling his ear.
"He's beautiful!" said Alix. "Hallo, George."
"Hallo, George," said cocky.
"Put your hand out--as though it were a bough--hold your arm
still. ..." He lifted the cockatoo down onto his wrist, and transferred
him to Alix's forearm. George walked up her arm to her shoulder, while
Alix rolled her eyes at the proximity of his strong beak to her soft cheek.
"It's all right; George is a gentleman."
"You take him," said Alix. "He's gorgeous, but I'd rather look at him
from a distance."
George travelled on Jim's shoulder while he showed Alix the cool-room,
a hut built of dry canegrass and roly-poly packed thickly between chicken
wire frames, and kept damp by overhead water pumped by the windmill.
"It's just like a giant Coolgardie safe!""Yes, we use it to keep perishables in, and when it's really hot we sit
in it. The meat-house over there is the same. That's the store, the men's!
quarters, the tool-shed and blacksmith's shop ..."
"Shut yer gob! Shut yer gob!" said George rudely.
"Now, George, that's enough." Jim brought a couple of nuts out of
his pocket and George ate them daintily, first shelling every bit of the
brown skin from each almond. "Now off you go, back to the river." He
launched the bird into the air, and after circling once it flew straight to
the coolabahs in the waterhole.
"He's never been in a cage, but he's quite tame," said Jim.
All the outbuildings stood on the bare sand beyond the green confines
of the garden enclosure. "Mother will show you the garden tomorrow.
She loves her garden."
"I hope she will learn to love me. Or at least like me."
He looked at her in concern. "What makes you think she doesn't like
you?"
"I don't know . . . she seems so cool, almost aloof. You said she was
looking forward to another woman's company."
"So she was, but she has to get used to you, and the fact that her only
son is old enough to get married. She's actually shy of you."
"That wasn't my impression. I would say rather . . . withdrawn."
"She's had a difficult life. I'll tell you the story someday."
As they turned the corner into the north veranda he put his finger to
his lips. "That's Mum's room," he said, indicating the second door.
"Dad's is along here."
"They don't share a room, then?"
"No. Haven't for many years."
Outside the door of their room he kissed her and said, "I must go and
see that the horses have been watered and fed. You have a bit of a rest
before dinner."
"All right. I am tired. I'll have a look at the books your mother left for
me."
Before dinner that night she met "Big Jim" Manning, and he was as
typical of the country as his wife was not. Tall and broad, with the slightly
bandy gait of a man used to long hours in the saddle, he had a deeply
sunburnt red-brown complexion and a stiff, brushlike moustache. His
hair was still dark but beginning to recede from his tanned forehead. A
life spent battling with the elements, with drought and flood and burning
sand, had etched his face like an eroded inland plain. His eyes, which
seemed to have retreated under his brows and between screwed-up lids
away from the glare, gave him a hard, calculating expression; his mouth
in repose was straight and firmly closed. This was a characteristic she had
noticed among men in the bush, where a carelessly open mouth would
soon be filled with the sticky little bush flies.
But when he smiled, laughter-lines joined the wrinkles about his eyes, his mouth relaxed to show teeth as strong and white as young Jim's, and
he looked less formidable. Alix smiled back. He grasped her hand
and shook it, or rather crushed it between his hard leathery fingers
and thumb.
"Well, so this is young Jim's girl? You certainly know how to pick a
good-looker, son. She's got pretty hair, eh, Mother?"
His slow drawl was answered by Olive Manning's precise tones. (I bet
she came from Melbourne, Alix thought.)
"Yes, Jim. I had noticed."
"I should hope so! Well, girlie, I hope you'll settle in all right. What's
she like on a horse, Jimmy?"
"She can ride."
"But not well," put in Alix. "And the only time I rode a camel, it
bolted with me. Actually I'm a bit nervous with horses."
"Ah, you'll soon get over that."
The meal was roast beef, as Jim had predicted, and it was the best and
tenderest beef Alix had ever tasted.
When she commented on it, Jim said, "Wait till you taste the steak at
breakfast."
Olive explained that there were no eggs at present, as it had been too
hot for the hens to lay.
The plates were cleared away by the plump lubra they had seen running
with the news of their arrival at the station.
"Lucy, this the new young Missus," said Olive Manning.
"Hallo, Lucy," said Alix.
"Lucy has been with us for years, she could just about run the house
on her own ... eh, Lucy?" said Big Jim Manning.
Lucy's smile grew broader. "No-more, Boss." She took the plates and
went back to the kitchen, to scrape the scraps of beef and potato into a
big tin pannikin--not for the fowls, but for the camp blacks. Another
container was filled with stewed tea, which had been brewing on the side
of the stove since afternoon tea-time. When she had finished in the
kitchen, she and the kitchen lubra, Jenny, would take the food down to
the camp, together with two loaves of bread baked that morning in the
big stone oven kept just for bread-making. There were also handouts of
flour, corned beef, and tea and sugar from the store each Monday
morning.
Mr. Manning explained that Lucy's husband, Billy, was one of his best
stockmen. "A half-caste, and a fine horseman."
Alix had noticed that her father-in-law had not changed out of his
dusty boots and moleskins, but had put on a clean shirt for dinner.
He and Jim talked about the bogged cattle, the state of feed, or rather
lack of it, on the Birdsville Track, and the price of stock in Adelaide. Jimhad brought his mother a silver brooch for a present, which she now wore
on the pleated bodice of her gown.
"You've had no thunderstorms while I've been away?" asked young
Jim.
"Yes, a couple reported over at the outstation, enough to bring up a bit
of feed. But no real rain." He added for Alix's benefit, "The Meteorological
blokes have installed a rain-gauge on the property, and I'm supposed to
send in the readings every couple of weeks. I haven't had to look at the
thing for three years."
As they were separating to go to their rooms about nine o'clock, Alix
said to her mother-in-law, "Thank you for the books. I've read the
Meredith, but I'm looking forward to Olive Schreiner."
"I expect you prefer modern novels."
"Not really--except for Arnold Bennett. I've brought some of his with
me."
"I think I like Thomas Hardy best of all. I have Tess. But many of my
books were left behind in Melbourne . . . transport problems."
"Well, you're welcome to borrow any of mine."

Chapter Twenty

Lying in bed reading The Story of an African Farm, Alix kept listening
for Jim's step. He was sitting on the front veranda talking to his father;
she could hear Big Jim's slow drawl and her husband's lighter, quicker
tones. She was impatient. This was their first night in what was to be
their home together, and she felt a sense of strangeness and excitement.
Of course, he hadn't seen his father for some time and they must have
a lot to talk about. She liked listening to men's talk about practical things,
and felt dismissed by Jim's "Run along to bed now; I'll be there soon."
But nearly an hour had passed. She began to think that Jim was punishing
her for her primness this afternoon.
She was getting sleepy when at last he came to bed. By now she was
feeling perversely antagonistic to his arrival. She pretended to be engrossed
in the book, though her heart was beating painfully. He dropped his
clothes on the floor, after pulling off his elastic-sided boots, and slipped
in beside her. He put his head down on her shoulder and threw one bare
leg across hers, demurely shrouded in a new nightdress. The page blurred
before her eyes. He took the book from her unresisting hands and blew
out the lamp.
The light of a half moon filtered in through the veranda shutters beyond
the doorway, making the mosquito net a shimmering white curtain
about them. They were close, cocooned, enveloped; without words they
conducted the mysterious dialogue of the flesh: question and reply,
demand and answer.
Then they talked quietly for a while, until a wandering plover flew over
the homestead with its grating, urgent cry.
She said drowsily, "How I used to hate those birds! Because they
reminded me of you . . . and your desertion."
"Did I desert you? I must have been mad."
"I was going to get married to someone else, just to show you I didn't
care."
"But you did care--thank God!"
"Jim, the other day you said 'Christ' as a swear-word. I'm not religious,
but it shocked me somehow. You're not a Christian, are you?"
"I don't know what I am. I believe in something, a kind of pattern, 'a
destiny that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we may.' ButI certainly can't believe in Gentle Jesus meek and mild, and virgin birth
and all that. Of course the Church wanted it both ways, a Mother-figure
and a pure maiden, so it invented the Immaculate Conception. No, it's
a religion for children and old women of both sexes."
"Yet we got married in the Church."
"Just imagine your mother's reaction if we hadn't! But I like the
marriage service, all those sonorous phrases and the symbol of the ring
sliding over the finger--very suggestive."
"Jim!" But she snuggled into his shoulder, feeling that he had expressed
something she had been groping towards ever since Mab's death. She
remembered Mab's crack about Immaculate Conception at the Hostel
Committee meeting.
Alix gave a reminiscent chuckle. "Mab said once that she would be
surprised if you read anything but the Stock and Station journal."
"Well, I read that too. She should have heard me reciting Banjo
Patterson or Victor Daley. But my favourite is Will Ogilvie. You know
his 'Fair Girls and Grey Horses'? No? He was a Scot, and he worked as
a horse-breaker and a station hand, and went droving too: Store-cattle
from Nelanjie! The mob goes feeding past, with half-a-mile of sand-hill
'twixt the leader and the last."
He went on reciting while she drifted into sleep, lulled by his steady
voice.
She woke as sunlight streamed in through the shutters, and turned into
his arms.

Jim was out on the run, visiting distant bores and outstations, all the next
week, sometimes camping out with the men, sometimes returning, dusty
and sweaty, just in time for the evening meal.
Then a heavy thunderstorm came up from the north-west. The dark
bellied clouds, riven by fierce lightning, with purple skirts of rain drifting
from them, could be seen far out on the run.
A few days later the men prepared to move cattle from the eaten-out
bore to the area where there had been rain.
Big Jim had pin-pointed the direction and estimated the distance at
about twenty to thirty miles.
"I know it doesn't seem possible," said Jim, "but the feed will be already
up, and by the time we get the bullocks to it there will be enough to keep
them going, enough to save their lives. There will be water lying in the
clay-pans for them to drink. And if the rain has fallen over sand-hill
country, the wild flowers will be blooming in a day or two; the annual
saltbush will be starting to cover the gibber plains; the buckbush will recover and the bullock-bush will be green."
"I'd love to see it!" said Alix. "Oh, Jim! Couldn't I come with you? It's
not such a very long ride, is it?"
"No-o. If you're sure you can stick on a horse. But you realize we
might have to stay overnight out there, and a woman in a cattle-camp
will be regarded as a damn nuisance."
"I don't care! It mightn't rain again for months, or a year."
"Don't say that," said Jim. "It's unlucky."
At dinner on the night of the thunderstorm, Big Jim Manning told
Alix, "You know there are kids in the dry country who've never seen rain.
When Jim was a little tacker, about three or four, it started to rain while
he was playing outside. He came rushing in, crying, 'Water fallin' out
the sky!' Remember, Mother?"
Olive Manning's response to this anecdote was to draw her rather long
upper-lip down farther, and shake her head with a quick frown.
"Don't you remember? It was in 1895, when . . . Oh."
"When Jim was nearly nine years old. It wasn't Jim who said that. It
was--
Her face froze, and she put down her spoon and left the room.
There was an uncomfortable silence while the others spooned up their
tinned fruit and custard, then Big Jim gave a strained laugh and said, "Of
course, you would have seen rain before that, young Jim." He turned to
Alix. "That's the sweetest music on earth, the raindrops on the tin! It
means money in your pocket, but it's more than that: it's a blessing, and
an assurance that this spot is not a God-forsaken corner of the continent
after all."
"Here's something you won't believe," said young Jim. "I've actually
seen it raining fish! They were only little fish, but they were kicking, still
alive. Some blokes reckon that pelicans drop them when flying between
waterholes, and they get caught in the updraught of thunderclouds. But
it seems more likely that they're sucked up by big willy-willies and then
come down again in the rain."
"I've seen whirlwinds picking up boxes and tins and whirling them into
the air, but . . . you wouldn't be pulling my leg, by any chance?"
"No, Scout's honour! It's true, isn't it, Dad?"
"Yes, I've seen 'em. One feller is supposed to have eaten them raw
when he was perishing from hunger out on the plains. Saved his life."
"The miracle of the loaves and fishes!" said Alix.
"Yair. No bread came down, but."
Olive Manning came back as Lucy brought in the pot of tea, and she
poured it with a steady hand. No comment was made on her sudden
departure, but Alix wondered what had upset her.
"Alix wants to ride out with us on the run, when we shift the cattle to
the new feed," said young Jim.
Olive raised her eyebrows but said nothing. Big Jim stared, laughed,
rubbed his hand across his mouth, and drawled, "We-ell, I don't see why
not, if she can ride.""I'll find her something nice and quiet."
"Don't you ever go out riding?" asked Alix, looking at her mother-in
law. She was embarrassed still about what to call her; the word "Mother"
stuck in her throat.
Olive's face became even longer; her lips turned down. "I never go
riding these days," she said distantly.
"She has a good seat in the saddle, all the same," said her husband.
Alix had brought a tailored divided skirt with her; she certainly didn't
intend to ride side-saddle in the bush. She brought it out in the bedroom
and brushed it lovingly, and chose a plain cotton shirtwaist with long
sleeves to go with it.
"A dress rehearsal, eh?" said Jim, giving her a kiss.
"Why does your mother never go out on the run? If she's a good
horsewoman?"
Jim's face clouded. "Oh, it's a long story. I said I'd tell you one
day. . . ."He pulled her down on the bed beside him, and caressed her
arm as he spoke. "It was years ago--my young brother was only four at
the time. Dad was going to one of the outstations and Mum went with
him, leaving us with the governess, a city type who didn't like station life
at all. We were working in the schoolroom, but young Dan wriggled and
sighed until Miss Wadsworth told him to run along and play, since he
was only distracting his brother. Dan wandered off outside. He didn't
come in for lunch, and the black gins were sent to look for him. Most of
them had gone on the muster, gins as well as stockmen, and there were
only a couple of old women at the camp. After a while they came up to
the house, wailing and crying. They'd found Dan in the home waterhole,
and floating beside him was the little toy boat Dad had made him out of
scraps of wood. He could swim a little, but the boat must have sailed
away from him with a gust of wind, and he'd have gone after it into deep
water farther than he meant to, and found he couldn't get back."
"Oh--!" said Alix, appalled.
"Yes, Mother came home to find her favourite, the younger one of us
boys, was dead. She shut herself in her room for days. Apparently she
felt terribly guilty, felt it was her fault for going oft enjoying herself,
while. . . Anyway, she never went riding again."
"And I suppose she doesn't even like swimming in the waterhole,
since.
"No, she never goes swimming." He was silent for a while. "She
became quite strange for a time, used to hear Dan's voice calling her.
Then one day when the men were away she filled her pockets with heavy
bits of iron from the blacksmith's shop, and walked into the waterhole.
It was old Lucy who saved her."
"The poor thing! What a sad, sad story."
"She apparently blamed herself, rather than the governess for not keeping an eye on him. Every year, on the anniversary of his death, she
stays in bed and doesn't leave her room."
"Does she ever speak of it?"
"Never. His name is never mentioned. Which is why she was so upset
tonight when Dad confused him with me over the rain incident. She
doesn't even visit his grave any more."
"I haven't seen a grave."
"It's quite small, naturally. It's over behind the second sand-hill. Dad
thought it was morbid of her to want him buried in sight of her window.
I don't think she's ever forgiven him."
"But they had more children?"
"Only one, my younger sister. My older sister was away when Dan
died, staying with friends on another property. Mum became withdrawn,
almost as if she wasn't here; I think that's why my sisters were glad to get
away. Meredith married young, she was only seventeen."
"So now you're the only one left."
"Yair. Except that in her opinion the wrong one survived."
"Poor Jim! A tragedy like that--it must have had an awful impact on
you at that age."
"Mm. When you're young you know about death, but you don't believe
it happens to children, to people younger than yourself. It made me grow
up very fast. I played up in lessons; the governess couldn't cope and Mum
tried in a half-hearted way to teach me, till they sent me away to
boarding-school."
"And you hated it?"
"Only at first. I made friends, found I actually enjoyed some subjects,
like geology and chemistry, and did quite well without being brilliant.
One thing Mum did for me--she got me to read the Australian balladists,
to learn them off by heart. At school we only got Wordsworth and
Shakespeare."
"Me too. But Mother had a few Australian books, a novel by Henry
Kingsley, and Victor Daley and Adam Lindsay Gordon in fancy editions.
I don't know that she ever read them."
"My mum's a great reader."

For the next week the men were away mustering, collecting the beasts to
be driven to the new feed. They were not hard to find, as there was no
water except in one or two waterholes and the bore-drain, and no fodder
except for the few bushes left on the sand-hills, and the green mulga
which the men cut for them every second day. They would eat this
seemingly dry-leaved plant, and the myall, another desert-hardy acacia,
when there was nothing else.
The cattle were kept in a holding-paddock ready to leave at first light
in the morning, before the heat of the day.There was only the faintest light in the sky beyond the veranda when
Jim rolled out of bed, calling on Alix to "rise and shine." She leaped up,
awake at once, her heart beating high with excitement. This would be
her very first cattle-camp. Swags and provisions for the trip had all been
packed the night before.
After a scratch breakfast of tea and toast they went out into the cool,
clear morning where the last stars were still fading from the night sky.
Along the eastern rim the light was steely bright, and down in the river
coolabahs the birds were already stirring. The lowing of cattle, uneasy at
the disturbance to their routine, came from the mob which was already
stringing round over the first sand-hill, ahead of several stockmen riding
on their tail and cracking long stockwhips.
Alix was mounted on a roan mare which Jim said was the quietest of
the horses, though Alix thought the animal looked at her askance as it
rolled the whites of its eyes towards her. But feeling smart in her divided
skirt of khaki drill, long-sleeved shirt, and blue scarf, she mounted bravely
and followed behind Jim on his brown horse. Her wide-brimmed hat
hung by an elastic round her neck, ready for when the sun rose. From
habit more than because she expected to need it, she had packed her
first-aid kit in her saddlebag.
Jim turned in his saddle. "All right, little 'un?" he asked.
"Don't call me that," she said painfully, acutely reminded of Mab and
her pet-name when they first went nursing.
"Well, Sandy then. Do you want me to put you on a lead until you
get used to her? Not that Cleo should give you any trouble."
"Certainly not!" said Alix, sounding braver than she felt. She cantered
round in a circle just to show him. Cleo behaved perfectly.
"If something frightens the cattle, and there's a rush, don't attempt to
join in the chase. Get behind the nearest tree and stay there."
"If I can find a tree." She looked about at the sparse, sticklike mulga
and needlebush growing on the flats between the sand-hills. The creak
of saddle-leather, the sweetish smell of horse-sweat, the crisp morning
air, and the lowing cattle, strung out in a red-brown stream that flowed
ahead of them, combined to fill her with exhilaration. She touched her
heels to Cleo's flanks and trotted up beside Jim.
"This is fun!" she said, her cheeks flushed, her blue eyes alight. "Thank
you for letting me come."
"H'm, wait till tonight when you're saddle-sore and weary. You mightn't
thank me then."
They stopped to boil the billy at mid-morning, the two coloured
stockmen lighting their own little fire and sitting apart. The dry gidgee
wood burnt brightly, with scarcely any smoke and a hot flame--yet
another of the ubiquitous acacias, which flourished in apparently dry
claypans.
Big Jim Manning leaned over and picked up a glowing coal in his
gnarled fingers to light his pipe. He was calm and relaxed as always, but
today he radiated contentment. Alix realized that he was really happy
only when out on the run. He was not one to manage his station from
his office.
"Y'know," he said, puffing reflectively on his pipe, "the 1902 drought
was the worst we'd ever seen, nearly half the stocks of cattle in the west were
wiped out; but it broke eventually. It started earlier than that, about 1900,
but that was the worst year; and in 1903 the rains came, and the country was
in great heart again. We only have to hang on--with the help of a few
well-spaced thunderstorms--till the good seasons come again."
Alix knew that the conversation, though centring on the ever-popular
themes of weather and rainfall, was meant to exclude her by referring to
the past. She felt that her father-in-law disapproved of girls in cattle-camps,
and had not accepted her. She kept very quiet, gnawing at a bit of brownie
that the cook, Leavin' Soon, had sent out with them.
Young Jim gave a snort, a noise half disagreement and half derision.
He lifted the quart-pot with a piece of wire and after tapping the sides to
make the leaves settle, poured the clear black tea into their enamel mugs.
It was nearly boiling, and Alix put hers in the shade to cool.
"What you don't seem to realize, Dad," he said, "is that drought is the normal condition out here. It's the good seasons that are the exception.
There was a crippling drought in 1880, and again in '86. About every
five or six years. And you still go on building up stock when it rains, and
losing half your beasts in the next drought."
"Aw, I dunno," drawled the head stockman, Milton Gibbs. He was a
short, solid half-caste with the bow-legs of one who has lived in the saddle
from an early age. He reminded Alix of the boss drover who had come
down to Hergott Springs when Mab was alive. "I reckon this drought will
break next year, or in 1916 at the latest. We haven't had a really good
year since 1911, stands to reason it can't last much longer."
Jim looked unconvinced.
When they went on into a section of barren gibber country, bare purple
and red stones reflecting the sun with an unbearable glare from their
polished surfaces, Alix wondered how such a stony desert could ever come
to life.
They stopped for lunch where a sand-hill, long and low, spread over
the plain, as isolated as if it had been dropped there by some mighty
willy-willy. There were a few desert oaks, dense and dark, to give shade,
and some stunted saltbush which the cattle browsed on, though it looked
too dry and withered to be nourishing.
About three in the afternoon, the cattle which had been crawling
reluctantly along suddenly livened up, lifted their heads and began to
hurry, bellowing as they went."They've smelt water!" said Jim. "I hope to God there's plenty of feed
as well, or we'll have to drove them back again."
Less than an hour later they topped an almost imperceptible rise, and
there in the hollow beyond lay the miracle of greenness--bluegreen
annual saltbush, bullock-bush, grass in clumps beginning to cover the
ground, and flowers everywhere--yellow billy-buttons, white and blue
daisies, purple parakelya, scarlet desert pea covering the sand-hills in a
waving mass. And the gibber plain was clothed with perennial saltbush,
pale blue-grey and already a foot high.
Water lay in sheets in the clay-pans that covered the hollows between.
They let the cattle spread out contentedly, and went on to make camp at
the foot of a large sand-hill. No longer following behind the slow-moving
cattle, they could give the horses their heads: they galloped down to some
fresh water lying in a "crab-hole" and drank greedily, Cleo nearly pulling
the reins out of Alix's hands as she stretched her neck to the water.
"Well, how do you feel?" asked Jim, as she dismounted stiffly.
"Not too bad--a bit chafed," she said, aware that the inside of her
thighs hurt when she moved.
"That's nothing, wait till you wake up tomorrow."
"I'll be all right."
The sun was setting in an orange glow as they unsaddled and hobbled
the horses. The pack-horses were already unloaded and a fire was being
lit on which to cook damper. With tea and salt beef, this was the standard
fare in a cattle-camp.

Chapter Twenty-one

Alix had slept in her clothes and only had to pull on her boots to be
dressed; but the dawn wind was chilly and she snuggled a moment longer
in her blankets, listening to the sounds of morning. One of the Aborigines
had gone out after the hobbled horses, and the man who had ridden
round the mob at night, making sure that they were settled down, came
in on his night-horse and dismounted by the fire, rubbing his chilled
limbs.
Alix saw a dusty boot beside her face, and heard a soft voice, "Young
Missus--you 'wake?"
She sat up to find a black man standing beside her, holding a quart-pot
by its wire handle, and smiling.
"Yes, Micky. What is it?"
"Old Boss bin tellem me bring you 'of water. Maybe you wantem
wash."
Alix was touched. Maybe it was a hint to her to get up and not lie in
her sleeping bag, but it was a kindly gesture all the same.
Sitting up had been painful, but now as she crawled out of her bag
and tried to stand, every muscle in her back and legs cried out in
protest. Though they had ridden slowly, she had been eight hours in
the saddle yesterday, using unaccustomed muscles, and now she could
feel every one. Groaning, she washed her face and hands and dried
them on a handkerchief. It was all she could do to get her arms up to
her hair to put in some pins and tidy it a little. Then she tottered away
to look for a tree--there were no trees! Not even the flimsiest bush to
squat behind.
She compromised by sinking down among a profusion of wild
flowers that reached to her waist when she was sitting. Her head and
upper body were of course perfectly visible, and everyone must know
what she was doing--but the bushmen looked elaborately in the opposite
direction.
She came back, rinsed her hands again and tossed out the water.
Walking to the sand-hill had loosened her muscles a little, but she still
walked stiffly and in pain.
After breakfast Jim informed her that they were going over to thenearest bore to check that it was flowing and to clear the bore-drain,
as the cattle would be dependent on it when the water in the claypans
dried up.
"Not all of us," he said. "Two men will stay to keep an eye on
the cattle, and the blackfellows want to do a bit of hunting for their
larder. Nothing big---kangaroo mice, lizards, and so on--they like to
get out and have some bush tucker. You'll want to stay and have a rest,
eh?"
After her muscles had loosened up a bit, Alix decided to climb to the
top of the sand-hill, only about a hundred and fifty feet high, which rose
from the stony, greyish clay-pan in a smooth orange-red wave. Every
hollow was like a flower-garden: pale purple marshmallows, white and
golden everlastings, little blue sweet peas, and the brilliant cerise-purple
of parakelya.
She ploughed upward through the soft, shifting sand, marvelling
how it held such nourishment and such a wealth of seeds in such
unpromising-looking soil.
"I wish we had more sand-hill country," Jim had told her. "There's
always some feed in the sand-hills, even when the gibbers are bare.
Though it looks desolate, the flat stony country doesn't erode like the
blacksoil plains in a flood; the stones just get washed into crab-hole
depressions but are not carried away. Cappamerri can carry a lot more
stock than we have at present. The trouble is, the Old Man gambles on
good seasons, with the beasts as the living stakes. Then overstocking eats
out the perennials, mulga and myall are cut down for feed, sand starts to
drift--he's like a man living on his capital, gradually using up all his
assets. He blames the rabbit plagues of early this century, but I say it's
bad management."
"Have you told him so?"
"Often. But he won't listen to me. He's convinced the land will always
recover. But it's the long-lived woody plants, the myall and old-man
saltbush and small acacias, which aren't regenerating. Their seed takes a
long time to germinate, and stock eat the seedlings before they've had a
chance to set more seed. It's a slow process of degeneration, and I'm
afraid it's irreversible."
Alix thought about this now as she reached the steep, bare crest of the
dune, which stretched away for half a mile, running roughly north and
south. She looked out over miles of country, clumps of gidgee in the
hollows, dark desert oaks in the sand, saltbush covering the gibbers with
a soft grey mantle. There was not much spinifex in this region, though
they had passed through a patch of the pincushion-like clumps on the
way. "Like velvet porcupines," she'd said, pointing at the rounded shapes
with their spiny fronds, looking as if they were ready to burrow into the
earth and disappear.
The mob of cattle was feeding peacefully, watched by one white
Stockman mounted and riding a wide circle; cattle were inclined to wander when water and feed were plentiful. If there was new growth at the bore
they would be driven on there tomorrow, so that when the surface water
dried out they would make their way back to the sand-hill country to feed
and return to water at the bore.
As she came plunging down the slope, forgetting her stiffness in
the exhilaration of the climb, she noticed that the black stockmen were
busy about their small fire. The gidgee burned palely in the clear
sunlight. Though the sun was getting hot, the air was so clear and dry
under the pure blue canopy of sky that the heat was not enervating.
There was enough breeze to keep away the bush flies that could make
life a misery.
As she came past she saw that the stockmen were roasting a big Perentie
lizard, skin and all.
"Him good-feller tucker?" she asked.
"You-eye. Number-one tucker, this one."
One of the men had a neckcloth bound roughly round his left
hand.
"You bin hurtim?"
The man grinned shyly, seeming to retreat under his large, floppy hat,
trying to make himself invisible.
"Go on, 'Arry," said the other, pushing him. "Show Missus."
Unwillingly he pulled off the blood-stained cloth and showed a nasty
jagged wound across the back of his hand.
"Perentie bin catch-im," said Micky, grinning.
With difficulty she persuaded the injured man to follow her to the
"whitefeller camp," where she unpacked her first-aid box: scissors and
sterile bandages, iodine and tweezers, cotton wool and a small enamel
bowl. She should use boiled water, but there was still a little in the
water-tins brought from the station, so she used some of that, and the
iodine would disinfect the wound. She wondered if lizard bites were
poisonous.
Preparing to use the stinging iodine dressing once the wound was clean,
she said to distract him: "Your name Harry?"
"Yair, Jarry."
"Is it Harry or Jarry?"
"Yair, thass right."
She left it at that. He did not even flinch at the iodine.
He thanked her sheepishly, not meeting her eyes, and went back to his
companion, holding the white-bandaged hand up in front of him like a
trophy.
Alix found herself singing as she washed her hands and packed away her kit. Why was she feeling so light-hearted? She realized that it wasbecause she had enjoyed using her nursing skills, even on such a minor
injury. She missed her work.
That night they had a singsong round the camp fire, the men singing
some old drovers' songs. One of them, known only as Bob the Bastard,
recited a ballad by "Breaker" Morant:

". . . Then over sand and spinifex and on, o'er ridge and plain!
The nags are fresh--besides, they know they're westward-bound
again . . .
The brand upon old Darkie's thigh is that upon the hide
Of bullocks we must muster on the Diamantina side ..."

Alix sat on her swag and stared about her. The night was cool, dark, and
still. There were no flies, no mosquitoes, and the young moon was just
setting, with a bright planet beside its yellow sickle. The fire danced, its flickering red and yellow lighting the faces of the men grouped around
it. From the darkness beyond came the tinkle! tonkle! tong! of the
horse-bells. This was the life!
During a moment of silence, a dingo howled somewhere near at hand,
to be answered by another and another. Alix felt the hair stir on her nape.
The thin wailing seemed to rise clear to the glittering stars: a howl of
longing, of untamed desire, the authentic voice of the wild.
Jim began to quote softly,

"Out in the wastes of the Never Never,
That's where the dead men lie!
There where the heat-waves dance forever-- That's where the dead men lie!

Out where the grinning skulls bleach whitely
Under the saltbush sparkling brightly;
Out where the wild dogs chorus nightly-- That's where the dead men lie!"

"Who wrote that?" asked Alix.
"Barcroft Boake. He went droving in western Queensland last century."
"Well,
he may have been a good poet, but he wouldn't get an A for
observation. I mean, saltbush! It's a sort of dull, powdery grey--"
"Ah, but you haven't seen it on a night of frost in mid-winter, when
the moon is shining. The frost-silvered leaves seem to be coated in
diamonds. It's quite beautiful."
"Oh!" Alix was mortified. She had shown herself up as a new-chum.
Jim reached over and squeezed her hand reassuringly.
"Poor bloke killed himself, didn't he?" said the head stockman.
"Yes. He hung himself with his stockwhip."
"How old was he?"
"Only twenty-six."
In the darkness beyond the firelight's ring, the dingoes howled again.
More than one man gave a shiver. Seated at a distance at their own small
fire, the blackfellows now began a low chant, ending with a sharp
"Yakkai!"
"It's a song about their good day's hunting," said Milton, the head
stockman. He had a foot in both camps; but he had been "brought up
white" by a station-owner's wife who had no children and took him in as a little fellow when his mother died.
The dingoes howled again at midnight, and all night long the stone
curlew sent up his weird cry: "Weerloo! Weerloo!"
"We might see some kangaroos and emus today," said Jim as he helped Alix saddle up in the morning. "They're often around a bore where a bit
of green tucker grows along the bore-drain. We didn't see any yesterday, but we were there in broad daylight. They usually feed in the morning and evening, and lie up during the heat of the day."
"I thought we would have seen a lot more about."
"The drought has driven them into the more closely settled areas.
They'll come back when we get a good season."
The whole party would be tailing the cattle to the bore, and then they
would return by a direct route to the station. Cleo was rather skittish after a whole day on the luxuriant feed, but she soon settled down and Alix felt her confidence increasing, her muscles less stiff. She was looking forward to the ride home, which would be much less slow than the
journey out with the mob. She had enjoyed camping out, but she had slept in her clothes for two nights and began to long for a bath. If the men weren't there she'd take a dip in the bore-drain where the water cools down enough for stock to drink it.
They had started at dawn, and it was still early when they arrived at The bore. Jim led her out wide of the mob of cattle and they cantered on
ahead of the party till he moved up and put a hand on her rein.
"Quiet!" he murmured. "Look--down there drinking--a mob of
kangaroos."
Alix held her breath as she saw a group of magnificent big red kangaroos at the water's edge. As soon as she moved to get nearer they were off, their powerful hind legs thumping the earth, their tails balancing like a redder. One big fellow stopped, sat up and looked back at the horses, his head held proudly as though he questioned their intrusion on his domain. Then he too was off in effortless bounds.
"That's a fatal habit they have--they take off fast, and then have to stop and look back inquiringly--and that's when they get shot."
"Fancy shooting such beautiful--"
"Don't worry, Dad would have had a shot at them if he'd been here.
He reckons they eat too much feed. But I like to see them around the
place.
As soon as the cattle had settled down on the new feed around the
bore, the whole party set off for the head station. Before they left Alix
had put a clean dressing on the Aboriginal stockman's hand.
As they rode fetlock-deep in the saltbush and waving grasses, a solitary
plain turkey showed its head above the growth. Big Jim quickly loaded
his rifle and from the saddle shot the bird neatly through the head. One
of the men picked it up, and the Boss tied it by its feet to the pommel,
its bloodied head hanging limply down. It was a large plump bird,
nothing like a domestic turkey, with soft grey feathers on the breast and
black-and-white patterned wings. Alix was sorry to see it shot, but Jim
said it would make a tasty addition to the larder.
They came to the foot of a long red sand-ridge. The horse-riders fanned
out to take it at different angles. Big Jim was ahead and to the right. As
they came over the ridge they saw a small mob of brumbies, led by a
black stallion, moving along the lower slope.
The black horse smelt the strangers, and stood arrested, mane and tail
flowing, in a statuesque pose against the sculptured sand. Then he
whinnied a warning to his mares. There were five with heavy dark-brown
coats, and one handsome chestnut mare with a yearling colt at foot. The
stallion turned to lead them away at a gallop, down to the smooth claypan
below, where they could move at speed. Big Jim Manning already had
pulled up, with his rifle at his shoulder. He fired once, and the horse
faltered in his stride; tried to gallop on, then his legs crumpled under him
and he lay still. The mares ran on without him.
Alix, who had been watching the magnificent free movement of
the wild horses over the red sand, sat rigid, staring in horror and
unbelief. She turned to Jim, who had pulled up near her, and saw that
his jaw was set so hard that lumps of muscle had come up in his
cheeks.
"How could he?" she muttered.
"It was a brumby," he said. "There are thousands of them in this
country in a good season. The Old Man shoots them because they eat
out the feed."
"It was a beautiful animal!"
"Yes."
They rode on in silence, Alix averting her face from the stricken body.
A pool of blood was spreading from the stallion's open mouth to stain the
sand a darker red. She thought of the widowed mares, without a mate or
a leader now. For the time she hated her father-in-law.
Tired after the long ride home, and still feeling sick from the death of the brumby, Alix went straight to bed on their return. She was asleep
hen Jim came to ask if she wanted some tea and toast.collection of bark wurleys and cane-grass shelters grouped near the water.
Though the morning was hot, a small fire burned in front of nearly every
hut, its thin smoke rising straight into the still air.
She had been told that it was bad manners, in Aboriginal custom, to
walk into a camp uninvited; you waited at some distance until you were
noticed, and an "ambassador" came to inquire your business. So she sat
down on a dead tree a little distance away. Soon an old man in shapeless
trousers and a threadbare shirt ambled over and asked, "What-name,
Missus?"
"Er--anyone in camp sick-feller? I'm a nurse--all-a-same doctor. You
ask Jarry--I treatem hand, makim better. Good-feller medicine."
"You gottim ashpin?"
"Er--ashpin?" she asked uncertainly.
"Yer--all-a-same little-feller white stone." He brought out a dingy rag
and unwrapped it, handing her a small black circular stone--a tektite,
one of those mysterious fragments thought to have entered the earth's
atmosphere in a molten state: flat as a button, with a small depression in
the centre, like the mark of a raindrop in mud.
"Him good medchin," said the old man, taking it back and polishing
it on the sleeve of his shirt. "But ashpin more better."
"Ah--aspirin! Yes, I gottim."
"Old woman belong me, she sick longa chest. You see her?"
"Yes, if you'll take me to her."
They passed along a line of huts, gathering an audience of giggling
children who accompanied them in a circle. It was unheard of for a white
missus to visit the camp.
An old woman with white hair and a single garment of worn and dirty
cotton lay on a grey blanket at the door of her hut. She looked eighty,
but the gins led a hard life and she might well be no more than sixty.
She looked up apathetically and started to cough.
"You tellim I make sick peoples better," said Alix.
"Orright. Merna, this one Missus clever-feller doctor, got good medchin.
She makin Jarry's 'and better."
Merna gave a weak smile.
Alix knelt in the dust and leaned close to listen to the old woman's
wheezing chest--holding her own breath, for Merna's unwashed body
had a distinct smell. She felt Merna's brow and noted that she was
feverish. Opening her first-aid box and dressing-case, she took out a
thermometer and shook it down, watched with fascinated attention by
the old woman and her husband and the children gathered round.
"Now, I put this-feller under your arm," she said firmly. "This one
magic stick, tell me what wrong." She didn't dare put it in the woman's
mouth in case she bit on it with her still-strong teeth.
She took out two aspirin tablets and held them in her palm.
"Ah, ashpin!" said the old man.
"Get her some water to swallow them with," she instructed, and he
leaned inside the wurley and brought out a small tin--it had been a
jam-tin from the station store--filled with water. Merna rose on her
elbow and swallowed the pills.
"Now, you takim two-feller more aspirin sundown, and tomorrow I
bring coughing-medicine."
Alix knew that if she left the whole packet with her, Merna would take the lot at once, believing that if two were good for her, a handful must be better.
Alix took a lint pad from her dressing-case, dipped it in the water-tin and bathed Merna's burning face and brow. It was not possible with a dark skin to see the flush of fever, but she knew before she retrieved the
thermometer and read the figure that it would be well over a hundred. A Hundred and two.
"Now, what-name you?" she asked the old man.
"Me--Johnnie."
"Well, Johnnie, Merna very sick-feller, I want you give-im plenty
water, cold tea, anything--she must drink plenty. Tomorrow I bringim milk, medchin, more aspirin--all right?"
"Orright."
Turning towards the children, a cheerful well-fed-looking lot, though their eyes crawled with little bush flies, which tumbled among their long, curling lashes, she wished she had some sweets in her pocket, even a few
biscuits, to gain their confidence. Two bigger girls pushed forward a small boy whose hair was matted on one side with dried blood. He stood shyly
in front of her, a finger in his mouth, staring unblinkingly.
"Silly-feller Tony walk into tree-bough. Down in waterhole."
Alix guessed that he had dived, or jumped, too near a snag, for the water was full of old dead trees.
"Well, who's going to get me some water for batheim?"
. The children dashed away in a body, two of them came back lugging a quart-pot full of water. Alix dipped some in a beaker and added some
permanganate of potash. As the water turned pinkish-lilac, there was a chorus of in-drawn breaths.
"Him good magic, that-one."
"Him pretty!"
She took some cotton-wool and gently bathed little Tony's head. He stood stoically while she took out her surgical scissors and clipped some hair away from round the wound. It was a deep cut, but did not appear
to be infected. With some ointment to stop it from sticking, she wound a gauze bandage around the youngster's head. His hair was inclined to
be wavy, but was stiff with dust.
There were murmurs of admiration. Tony smiled proudly."Now, I come look-at him tomorrow. No swimming till then. Head
belong-you must keep dry. No more water."
Tony's grin grew even wider. His huge eyes were shining and black
between their fringe of long lashes. The women had held aloof, but Alix
was a great hit with the children. Two of them took her hands, and the
whole mob escorted her back to the fence of the garden enclosure. Some,
like Tony, were pure Aboriginal, but she noticed among them a number
with lighter skins, some with fair, bleached hair.
Mrs. Manning was on the veranda.
"I don't think you should bring the black children up here, Alix," she
said. "The house and garden are strictly forbidden to them, except when
I let them have a 'playabout' watering the lawn. Otherwise they will be
stealing what little vegetables we have."
"I didn't bring them, exactly," said Alix. "They sort of escorted me
back. I'm treating an old woman who's on the verge of pneumonia, and
I'd like some fresh milk for her in the morning. And there's a small boy
with a nasty gash on his head."
"They won't thank you, you know. You might as well save your energy.
And if the old woman dies, you will be blamed for killing her."
"Oh! I didn't think of that. But she won't die, now she's getting some
treatment. Is there a lemon tree?"
"Yes, but it's not bearing."
Olive had taken her daughter-in-law round the garden enclosure,
where Alix dutifully admired the flowering pink oleanders, the enormous
sunflowers, and some Christmas lilies just poking green shoots through
the red soil. There was a palm tree, rather sickly-looking and with no
dates. An athol tree, a tamarisk, and a big old pepper-tree with pink
berries, gave some welcome shade.
There were even a few vegetables, spinach and fat hen and some
healthy-looking tomatoes.
They'd had fresh tomatoes with their corned beef several times lately.
Thinking of this now, Alix asked, "Are there any tomatoes left?"
"Only a few. The rest are still green. And you realize that when the
hot winds come in January and February, all the vegetables will be
withered and burnt up. They are a great luxury. Why do you ask?"
Alix had been going to beg one tomato for the sick Merna, but seeing
her mother-in-law's mouth closed like a trap, she thought better of it.
She changed the subject.

The men had been out on the run all day, but that night in bed when
she had him to herself, Alix told Jim about her visit to the camp. She
was quite wound-up, excited at finding some outlet for her nursing skills.
To her surprise he frowned, his thick fair brows coming down over those
ice-blue eyes.
"I wouldn't be going down to the camp if I were you," he said. "If
someone's sick, tell them to come up to the house. Now they know you've
got medicine, they'll be pestering you all the time, and you might pick
up something in the camp--"
"Such as?"
"Oh, I don't know. Scabies, head-lice, Barcoo spew ..."
"I've treated Aboriginal people before, you know. I do take precautions.
And I assure you I've had a shower since returning, and washed my hair."
"Yes, but I still don't like you going down there."
"Why ever not?"
"Because I don't. Isn't that enough?"
"No, it is not enough! Don't you or your parents take any interest in
the health of the station people?"
"Of course. If they ask for help, they get it. They can come up to the
store for Robinson's Pills and Perry Davis' Painkiller. Those and Goanna
Salve are the favourites."
"But you know they won't ask for help unless they're desperately ill.
You know how stoical they are. Today I found an old woman with a bad
attack of bronchitis, and a little boy with a nasty head wound."
"They've always got head wounds. The gins quarrel and bash each
other with nulla-nullas. Their skulls are thick, and they don't mind the
sight of a bit of blood."
"Nevertheless, I am going to take some milk down to old Merna in the
morning."
"You give it to Lucy to take down to her."
"No. I want to take her temperature, see if the aspirin has brought her
fever down."
"I forbid you to set foot in the camp."
"Good God, you're like those racist residents of Hergott. Worse. You
have some responsibility for the blacks on Cappamerri. And I am going
to treat Merna until she is on the mend."
"I'm warning you. You'll be sorry."
"Oh!" Alix was seething. She turned her back on him and hunched
the sheet around her shoulders. Treating her like a child, ordering her
about! She, who had been an independent woman, earning her own
keep, responsible for running her own hospital. It was beyond belief. She
had said those words, "to love, honour, and obey" in the marriage service.
But blind obedience was for slaves. She set her jaw firmly and glared at
the mosquito net. When he put a tentative hand on her shoulder she
shrugged it off and wound the sheet more tightly around her.
As soon as it was getting light, before the sound of the triangle being
beaten over at the men's quarters woke everyone up, she slipped out of
bed and into her clothes without waking him.
She unlatched the gate to the garden enclosure and set off for thenearest pink-red sand-hill, just beginning to take colour in the growing
light. She would watch the sunrise behind the homestead from
vantage point.
She heard the sound of the wake-up gong just as she reached the
summit, and turning saw the eastern sky flushed with gold. Soon the
blinding, brilliant yellow orb of the sun appeared over the ocean-flat plain!
to the eastward. Long shadows streaked out across the flats from house!
and shed and windmill, and behind her the boles of the paperbarks shone white-gold above the green reeds of the river.
The two sand-hills and the station waterholes were fenced off from
stock, as they would always break back from the bore to natural water and would soon have eaten the sand-hills bare and muddied the waterholes.
Alix felt safer when she was through the fence; she had no wish to confront
one of the half-wild, long-horned bullocks while on foot.
She had slept badly, and had woken still angry with Jim, though she
worried about their first real quarrel. Now all her tension fell away, her
spirit seemed to expand and float over the endless plains; a sky of tender
blue spread without a flaw above, and the air was still fresh with morning.
Yes, she loved this country. They talked about the "dead heart" of
Australia, but its immense red vibrant presence was not dead; and that
the desert could flower as the rose, as in the Reverend John Flynn's favourite passage from the Bible, she had seen with her own eyes. She
wished a flood would come down the Diamantina and fertilize the
barren-looking gibber plain.
The crest of the sand-hill was bare, patterned with wind-ripples and
the tracks of little nocturnal creatures that were never seen in the heat of
the day. She traced a hopping-mouse to a clump of silver-grey eremophylla,
but there was no sign of the animal itself.
Alix began to plunge down the steep side of the sand-hill towards the river
channel. Suddenly she pulled up. Where the dune levelled out there was a
stout fence surrounding a small grave. She leaned on the fence with tears
pricking her eyes. A cairn of small stones was heaped on the grave--of
course, to keep out dingoes--and there was a carved wooden headboard
that wind and sandstorms had eroded till it was like pitted stone. She just
made out the words "son, Daniel. . . aged four. . . sadly missed." What
a wealth of suffering lay behind those simple words!
She went on to the bank of the waterhole above the reach where the
blacks' camp spread. Flocks of green budgerigars were coming in to drink,
a cloud of white corellas flew screeching from tree to tree. There were
even galahs, the birds that had been almost tame in Hergott Springs, .with
their sunrise-pink breasts and ash-grey backs. The bank was shaded by
leaning coolabahs, the water partly covered with red floating duckweed.
She did not venture farther, worried about snakes, which were often
found near water.
Half-way down the other side of the dune she met Lucy toiling upward,
eyes on the ground following her tracks. "Young Boss tellim-me go findem
Missus."
"But I wasn't lost, Lucy."
When they got back to the homestead the men were gone and there
was no one in sight but Jenny, in a yellow ginagina which suited her
brown skin and dark hair, making up their bed. Jenny flashed her a smile
with her big white teeth.
"Breakfiss been pinish," she said.
"That's all right, I'm not hungry." (She was, all the same.)
"That Tony, him happy you fix-im bandage longa head."
"He had a bad cut. You see old Merna, morning-time?"
"Nah. She bin sick longtime."
"Well, I'm going down the camp, see her, take medicine."
Alix went to the kitchen where Leavin' Soon was banging heavy iron
pots about, cleaning up after breakfast. As she stood in the doorway he
gave her a sour look.
"Breakfast's finished."
"I know, I just wanted a pannikin of milk for a sick lubra."
"Milk? There ain't enough milk for the table, let alone for the blacks.
Not enough feed--the cow's goin' dry."
"I just want a cupful. The Boss said I could have some," she added on
the spur of the moment. The cook scowled, but took up a small pannikin
by its wire handle and went to the Coolgardie safe. While his back was
turned, Alix swept a broken piece of damper from a bench into her pocket
She did not dare ask him for anything else. Going back to the house,
munching her piece of damper, she searched the bathroom and found a
bottle of cough-medicine, smelling strongly of aniseed, in a cupboard.
Thank goodness! She didn't want to have to face the storekeeper as well
as the cook.
Jenny had finished tidying the bedroom. Alix went back and changed
into her divided skirt and boots and a high-necked, long-sleeved white
blouse. Though she did not admit it, Jim's list of possible skin conditions
had worried her. Old Merna clasping her arm, the sticky little fingers of
the children . . .
As it happened there were only a few smaller children about the camp.
From the shrieks and splashings coming from the waterhole she guessed
they were all having a swim. Would Tony keep his bandage out of the
water? She doubted it.
She found Merna lying just inside the shade of her wurley, on the
same dirty grey blanket. The old woman looked better and gave Alix a
gap-toothed smile. "Good-day, Missus."
"Hullo, Merna. I bin bring you some milk."
"Millik!" She took the pannikin and drank thirstily."You feeling better, Merna?"
"You-eye. Tchest belong-me no more cough, cough all-a-time."
"That's good." Her eyes were clear, her temperature was nearly normal.
Alix produced the small jar into which she had tipped some cough
medicine. She instructed Merna to take a sip morning and night, but if
she liked the taste no doubt she would drink it all in one go.
Merna's old man came back, and Alix asked him would he get Tony
up from the waterhole, or wherever he might be.
"Orright, Missus. Me bin fetchim."
Tony arrived dripping wet, wearing nothing but a tattered pair of shorts.
There was no sign of the bandage.
"Him come off in water," he explained with an innocent smile.
"Oh, Tony! You not get it wet, me bin tellimyou."
She took another clean bandage out of her dressing-case, dabbed the
wound, which didn't look any worse, with iodine--which made Tony
yell--and bound his head once more.
"You can bogey, but no put head under, see? You understand?"
"Yer, Missus. Me unnerstand."
"Otherwise, more of stinging-medicine tomorrow."
He ran off. Old Johnnie fumbled in the pocket of his shirt, and held
out in his palm half a dozen small black tektites.
"You take-im, Missus. Me no want-em."
"But Johnnie! You say they number-one blackfeller medicine?"
"No-more. Ashpin more better."
She left a few more aspirin and packed her dressings-case and first-aid
box. After thanking him, she made her way towards the homestead, but
a tall, thin man plucked at her sleeve.
"Missus, Missus. You doctor-lady? Me got headache longa eye."
She looked and saw that his eyes were almost closed with sandy blight;
they would need bathing with warm saline solution and treatment with
eye-drops or ointment. She could do nothing here. She looked around
despairingly.
"What-name, Missus?" Johnnie was at her elbow. He seemed to have
authority in the camp.
"Johnnie, I want you get all the men with sore eyes, all come up to
house tomorrow. Wait by gate. 'Bout midday ... I make-im better. All
right?"
"Orright, Missus. Me bringem."
She wondered what Olive would have to say about her first eye-clinic.
Jim was rarely in for lunch, and she hoped he would not be there.
Chapter Twenty-three

Alix had learned her lesson. That night she did not tell Jim eagerly about
her day's activities, and it seemed his mother had not noticed or mentioned
her absence at the camp. She was rather surprised at this. Surely if Olive
were jealous of her--as she had suspected--she would have made sure
to tell him. But perhaps she was indifferent to Jim too, as she seemed to
be to everything and everyone.
"Where did you get to this morning? I woke up and you were gone. I
told Lucy to look-out for you, I knew she would track you if you were
lost. You should never go off alone like that without telling me. I was
worried."
"I'm sorry. I wanted to watch the sunrise. I climbed the big sandhill."
"Well,
you can always see the homestead from there. But never go off
in the other direction, over the plain. What if a dust-storm came up?"
He was conciliatory, but she did not respond. After a silence, she said:
"Jim--I came across the little grave, over the other side. Just a wooden
headboard, I was surprised--"
"Stone doesn't last much better than wood in this country. Any
inscription would soon be polished away by the wind and driving sand.
That memorial is made out of iron-hard wood from the waddy-tree. It's
a fairly rare tree, and the blacks always used it to make their fighting
waddies with. Old Tommy, who's dead now, brought it in and one of
the station hands carved it."
"It made me think of Mab's grave in Hergott. Jim, I feel so sorry for
your mother. Yet I can't get through to her somehow."
"No. She's shut herself off from all of us."
He put an arm under her head. "Darling--I'm sorry about last night but I'd really rather you didn't go down to the camp. If they are sick
they can always come up and ask for medicine."
"Yes, but they often don't. And I'd like to keep on, now they've got to
know me."
"I know you must get bored sitting about the place all day. I'm riding
in for the mail tomorrow morning, would you like to come? The mailbox's on the Betoota Track, remember--only about twenty miles away."
"That's forty miles there and back.""We'll take it slowly, go across to the river for a picnic on the way
back."
"No, Jim, I don't think so. I need more riding practice, but not so far.
You could take me out riding after sunset, when it's not so hot."
Jim made a grimace. After being in the saddle most of the day he didn't
feel much like going out again at night. He said, "Tell you what. I'll take
you swimming in the waterhole. One evening next week."
She did not answer.
"You're not still cross with me?" he asked.
"Yes, I am. I don't like being bossed about."
"No, but you like being made love to," he said, tightening his arms
about her.
"Actually, I'm rather tired."
But she said it without too much conviction.
Alix lay awake for some time after Jim was asleep. She was feeling a
bit guilty at deceiving him, but she couldn't be away tomorrow morning
and let down those old men who were expecting her to treat their eyes,
perhaps stop them from going blind. She would have liked going off alone
with Jim, but . . .

Big Jim Manning and Young Jim had ridden off early in opposite
directions, and Alix found herself alone with her mother-in-law at breakfast
on the veranda. The hens had stopped laying again as the weather
warmed up once more and there was no fresh beef left, but Leavin' Soon
had cooked up some corned beef in batter.
As they drank their tea, looking out at the green-blue waterhole framed
between the coloured sand-hills, Alix was tempted to mention that she
had seen the little grave; but she thought better of it, seeing Olive
Manning's closed face. Instead she said, "Jim has promised to take me
swimming one evening." She said impulsively, "Wouldn't you like to
come with us? It's so hot."
The other woman's mouth closed tightly, and she shook her head
decisively. "No. I never go swimming. I shall sit in the cool-house today
and read one of your books. I'm enjoying Anna of the Five Towns."
"Well . . . you may notice some of the older men from the camp are
coming up to the house so I can treat their eyes. I'm afraid it is trachoma,
and they could go blind."
"What? Up to the house!"
"Yes," said Alix, setting her chin firmly, though she quailed inwardly.
She added, "Not to the house, exactly. They'll come as far as the gate,
and I'll take my first-aid things out to them. What I need is a little
dispensary and casualty station."
"This is not a hospital," said Olive Manning disapprovingly. "You say they could go blind? You'd better get Lucy to help you put up a table in the shade, and hold your 'clinic' there. I don't want them on my veranda."
Surprised and grateful--she hadn't thought they'd be allowed in the
garden--she said, "I'll do that," and went to check her supplies of
cotton-wool swabs and clean enamel basins. She had one bottle of
eye-drops and some Golden Eye ointment.
When she thought Lucy had finished the washing-up Alix went over
to the kitchen and asked her to help with the table. "The Missus say it
all right," she explained.
Between them they carried a light folding table down the two steps
from the eastern veranda, and set it up near the fence in the shade of an
athol tree. Alix fetched a clean sheet to spread over it, feeling excitement
rise in her as she put out her few instruments, including an orange-stick
for rolling back upper lids. Then she explained to Lucy that she must
have a kettle of boiled, not boiling, water, and a jar of salt.
Lucy stared. "You put salt in him eye, Missus? Mmm!" she said,
screwing up her own eyes as if in pain.
"Only little-bit salt, in plenty water. Make-im eye better."
She asked Lucy about her patient, Merna, and Lucy said she was on the
mend and had spread the word that the Young Missus was a "clever-feller
doctor." Little Tony's head was healing, though he'd lost the second
bandage.
Alix realized that she would need a chair, not for herself but so that
she could reach the eyes of the men, who were often six feet tall. She
fetched a cane chair from the veranda and set it up by the table. When
all was ready she forced herself to go to her bedroom and relax, putting
her feet up and breathing deeply. She must have steady hands for her
task.
Four men turned up, led by Johnnie, full of importance. All were
elderly, with white beards and eyebrows, which somehow made them
look more European than the younger, clean-shaven men. Two of them
were in a bad way and she would have liked to bandage their eyes, but
this was clearly impossible, and anyway, the bandages would not last
much longer than young Tony's.
They were shy about approaching the "tchair," till Johnnie showed
them the way, sitting down and leaning back his head. The first man did
not flinch when Alix turned back the lids of each eye and irrigated them
with saline solution, then applied drops and a soothing eye ointment.
(This form of trachoma was known as "sandy blight" because the lids of
sufferers felt as if lined with grains of sand.)
When she had finished she said, "Now I want all you-fellers come up
for treat-em eye again Monday morning. Same day store opens. Orright?"
"Orright, Missus. Tchank-you, Missus."
She was pleased with her patients and her morning's work. If it saved
the sight of only one man, it was worth it. She went and changed herclothes and scrubbed her hands. She would leave the basins till she could? get some boiling water to sterilize them. Just now it was lunchtime.
At lunch, Olive Manning did not ask about the clinic, or comment on
it.
Alix was resting in her room, while waiting for Lucy to clean up in the
kitchen and help her with the folding table. She must have fallen asleep.
She woke to hear dogs barking and realized that Jim must be home
already. He had left before dawn this morning.
Jim had gone to the kitchen with a letter addressed to "Harold Jensen,
care Cappamerri Station, via Birdsville." It was so long since anyone had
used the cook's real name that at first Jim couldn't think who it was for.
Then he took it to Leavin' Soon together with some small parcels of
patent medicine and other mail-order items for him to distribute to the
men.
Meanwhile Alix had slipped out to the garden and guiltily removed the
basins and the chair. She could not manage the table by herself.
When she came back there was a letter on the bed, addressed in her
mother's handwriting. She picked it up, feeling a curious reluctance to
read it.
She sat on the bed and skimmed through it. One of Frances's usual
epistles, she thought, reading that the latest housemaid had had to be
dismissed for "getting into trouble" with a man. But the next page made
Alix sit up and stare at the letter in her hand.

Your father believes that we will be at war with Germany before the
end of the year. They have been building up their Navy, and are
envious of British trade all over the world. He says it is only a matter
of waiting for an excuse, and the Kaiser will invade Belgium and
France. Of course Britain will have to come to their defence, and
Australia to the aid of the Mother Country and the Empire. It should
all be over in a year, he thinks, when Germany will have learned their
lesson.

Alix was disturbed by this news. They saw no newspapers in the outback,
and did not know what was going on in the world. War! She remembered
the Boer War, the hysterical patriotism, the shock when the son of
someone in their street was killed in South Africa.
Of course it would not affect them here. A few of the white station
hands, looking for adventure, might volunteer to go overseas. But Jim
couldn't leave the station, he would not think of going.
Jim came in, threw his hat on the bed beside her, and went to the jug
and basin to have a wash. He did not speak to her or attempt to kiss her.
She waited for him to say something, but he walked past her to the door, remarking only that his mother was waiting for them to come to afternoon
tea.
"Jim--!"
"I don't want to talk about it now."
She followed him along the veranda, tucking the letter into her
skirt-band.
"A letter from Marjory!" said Olive Manning, looking quite animated.
"It seems we can expect a grandchild next year. She asks would I like to
come and stay."
"Well, why don't you?" said Jim, buttering a slice of bread and taking
a hefty bite with his strong teeth. "Do you good."
"Oh, I don't know . . . It's so long since I've been to Brisbane."
"Nonsense. You write and tell Marj you'll be coming in the autumn,
when it's not so hot for travelling. I'll drive you up to Windorah to get
the mail to Longreach."
"My mother says we will soon be at war with Germany!" Alix burst
out. She took the letter from her belt.
"It's just the newspapers scaremongering," said Jim.
"No, I don't think so. Apparently my father is convinced."
"And of course the Major would know, wouldn't he?"
At his sarcastic tone Alix flushed. She knew he was angry with her, he
had seen the signs of her "clinic" in the garden, had perhaps questioned
his mother about it.
"Well, my parents are more in touch with world affairs than we are,
out here in the back of beyond," she said defensively.
"Marjory doesn't mention anything about it," said Olive. "I suppose
she is too full of her own exciting news. I've been so hoping for a
grandchild. I had thought by now you and Jim--"
"Fair go, Mum!" said Jim uncomfortably.
Alix coloured again, and looked down at her plate.
"It's all right, Jim," she said quietly. She had been hoping for the same
thing. Now, noticing her mother-in-law more interested in what was
going on around her than Alix had ever seen her, she realized that what
Olive Manning wanted was to hold a baby in her arms again, a new little
Daniel. If she, Alix, could only produce a grandson, it might break
through the wall of glass that Olive kept between them.
"Where've you been, you old devil?" asked a raucous voice from up near
the ceiling. George the cockatoo had poked his head through his peephole
and was looking down at Jim with one bright eye, his head on one side.
"You wait, I'll bring you a biscuit in a minute."
"Ouf, ouf, ouf!" said George, barking like a dog, and raising his
beautiful crest.
When Jenny came in with a new pot of tea Jim asked her to get a dry
biscuit from the cook for him."He not there," said Jenny. "Cookie, him read-im letter, bin leaveim
kitchen soon."
"Well! He must have had some news. I hope he's not really leaving
this time, eh, Jenny?"
"No-more. Me get-im you bishkit."
"And you better get Lucy to help you bring that table inside before it
gets dark."
Jenny shot a sidelong glance at Alix. "Orright, Boss."
"A war won't affect us here, at any rate," said Olive.
This had been Alix's reaction. Jim looked thoughtful. He remarked
that if it came to war, and troops had to be supplied with bully-beef, it
might put up the price of beef and consequently the price of cattle.
"If we could only get them down to market," he added. "But with the
back country in the state it's in, the stock-routes eaten out, you can't
overland beasts to the railhead."
Olive said as though she had not heard, "The baby is due early next
year, about March. I hope it's a boy."
Jenny came out to the veranda with some fresh hot water and a dry
oatmeal biscuit from the kitchen. Jim went down to the garden and could
be heard talking to George as the bird flew down to his shoulder, held
the biscuit in one claw and nibbled at its edges.
"All right, don't drop crumbs all over me! You're wasting as much as
you're eating."
"Sqwark!"
"Well, you're not getting another one."
Jim did not come back to the table and Alix did not see him until they
met at the dinner table that night. Big Jim was told the news about the
war, which didn't seem to interest him much, and then the good news
about the grandchild. "Good!" he said, and glanced at Jim. "Time you
had a son to carry on the name, eh?"
"There's plenty of time," said Jim stiffly. Alix said nothing.
They did not linger over the meal, which was one of Leavin' Soon's
poorer efforts. It consisted of cold corned beef with boiled onions, which
Jim sprinkled liberally with the tomato sauce that always stood on the
table. They ordered tomato sauce by the case at Cappamerri.
Before the second course came Jim announced that he'd had a long
ride, was dog-tired, and thought he would have a bath and an early night.
Alix, nervous about being alone with him, stayed on at the table till Jenny
had cleared away the sweets dishes. Then she took a second cup of tea
out on the west veranda and watched the clear orange light drain away
behind the trees, their leaves in a black lacy silhouette against the glow.
Venus was following the sun as the evening star, a great silver lamp above
the horizon. Alix saw it expand and send out silver spears as her eyes
filled, and hot tears fell on the hand holding the cup and saucer.
Jim would probably never forgive her, and the family felt she had let
them down by not producing any sign of an heir in four months of
marriage. The one thing she could do well and was trained to do-- nursing--she was not allowed to practise. She and Jim had been so happy
at first. Now she began to feel he was a stranger.
She set the cup down with a crash and made her way round the veranda
to their room.
Chapter Twenty-four

As Jim was still in the bath, Alix hastily got undressed and into bed,
hoping he might think her asleep when he joined her. He came in
wearing a pair of pyjama pants and towelling his wet hair, which looked
dark, almost brown, while damp.
The one lamp was burning on the table on his side of the bed. He did
not turn it out but climbed under the mosquito net and lay on his back,
his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. Alix looked at him from
under her closed lids. She tried to breathe naturally and slowly, without
success.
"All right," he said at last. "I know you're awake."
"Jim,I"
"Don't talk to me. I can't believe a word you say any more. So you
couldn't spend the day with me, because you preferred to give your time
to some dirty, diseased old blacks from the camp. I know, Mother told
me when I came in: I asked her about the table set up in the garden."
"Jim, it wasn't like that. I really did think it was too long a ride for me.
And I'd already promised the old men to treat their eyes today. I didn't
want to let them down."
"You could at least have ridden out to meet me along the track."
"I--I didn't think of it."
"No, you didn't think of me at all. If all you want is to be a nurse,
why did you marry me? You gave up nursing to come and live with
me."
"I know." She touched his brown arm timidly. "I should have told you
about today, but I was scared you'd stop me. I've arranged for them to
come up for treatment every Monday morning till I've cured their sandy
blight."
"Really! It's kind of you to tell me."
"I didn't go down to the camp since you asked me not to. I'm sure there are others needing my help, but I'll wait for them to come to me.
Since I am able to do something for the sick, it seems wrong not to make
the effort."
"It's your deceiving me that I can't stomach."
"But you would have stopped me, wouldn't you? And yet without
treatment at least two of those old men would go blind."
"I think you exaggerate."
"I do not exaggerate! I'm familiar with trachoma from nursing in
Hergott Springs."
"Let's drop the subject, shall we? I want to go to sleep."
He put out the lamp and turned his back on her.
"Jim ...?"
"What is it?"
"Will you still take me swimming?" she asked humbly.
"I don't know. I'll think about it."
They were awakened by loud wails and shrieks from the direction of
the kitchen. It was just getting light. Bare feet came pounding along the
veranda, and Lucy was shrieking, "Boss! Missus! Ai-eee! Cookie bin
dead-feller properly. Him bugger-up pinish."
Lucy, finding the kitchen dark and no fire alight in the stove or the
bread oven, and no bread set to rise from the night before, had gone to Leavin' Soon's room in a lean-to thatched with cane-grass adjoining the
kitchen, but found it empty. In the dim light she searched about outside
for tracks, which led behind the building.
At first she thought he was lying there asleep; but putting a hand on
his shoulder to shake him, she felt it sticky with blood. Lying by his right
hand she saw the gleam of the carving knife on the ground.
Jim dashed out in his pyjama trousers and met his father just emerging
from his room in nothing but a pair of shorts. His mother was calling
querulously to know what was happening.
Lucy was almost incoherent, wailing and throwing her arms in the air,
one hand and wrist covered in blood.
"Now calm down, Lucy!" said Big Jim in his slow, deep voice. "Where
you bin find him?"
"Jus' now. I go wake-im, but him no wake no more. Ehh! Ohh! Be'ind
cookhouse--"
"All right, you go and get the fire alight, make yourself a cup of tea
and one for the Missus. We'll see to it. Come, Jim."
They stepped out into the morning and looked behind the kitchen
building. In the growing light they saw a grim tableau. Leavin' Soon had
cut his throat, a great gash that gaped open like an obscene mouth. Blood
had poured over his chest and over the ground. In his left hand, clenched
on his chest, was a blood-stained letter.
Big Jim edged it out of the stiff fingers and attempted to arrange the
arms tidily on the man's breast. There was no question but it was suicide.
Nor was there any question of a doctor or a doctor's certificate, as the
nearest doctor was at Winton, four hundred miles away. The man would
have to be buried, and a message would have to be taken through to the
police at Birdsville, and to his next of kin.
"Poor cow had a wife, it seems," his father said to Jim as they wentback into the house. Jim looked rather sick. The cook had bled like a
stuck pig, or a slaughtered bullock.
They leaned on the veranda rail while Big Jim held the bloodstained
missive in his big fingers. "Dear Harry," he read, "As your cobber I think
you should know that your wife is playing up with the publican at Winton.
She took a job in the bar there, but if you arsk me she as taken up with
him as well. A word to the wise. A friend."
"A bloody anonymous letter!" said Big Jim savagely.
Alix came along the veranda in the cherry silk dressing-gown from her
trousseau, tying the sash as she came. She saw the blood-stained letter,
and looked an inquiry.
"The cook has killed himself. Cut his throat," said Jim tersely. "Apparently
he had news that his wife was living with another man."
"How awful! You're sure he is dead? Perhaps I should--"
"You should keep away," said Jim. "It's no sight for a woman--"
"Jim!" Her voice had a dangerous edge to it. "You forget that I am a
trained nurse, used to dealing with accidents and dead bodies. Someone
will have to clean him up, lay out the body decently for burial. I'll just
get dressed. Meanwhile I suggest you cover him with a mosquito net,
before the flies get busy, and set up a trestle-table to lay him out on."
She turned on her heel, leaving the two men looking rather dazedly
after her.
Lucy brought a cup of tea, her eyes still moist, her usually cheerful
smile missing. "Me bin find-im, Missus! Oo-er. . . I"
"That's enough, Lucy. Now I want you find-em me plenty cloth, old
sheet, towel. You ask Missus. And two-feller bucket water, one warm,
one cold. Understand? And bring-em to Cookie's room."
"No-more. Me not go there."
"Well, leave them at the door. And I want two men for lift-im. You
go over to men's quarters and get-im." She dismissed Lucy and drank her
tea before getting dressed. She wished she had one of her full-length
starched aprons to wear. She would tie a cloth over her old grey twill skirt
and white blouse.
As she went across the covered way she found Olive in the kitchen,
distractedly organizing Jenny in cutting some of yesterday's bread. The
fire was alight in the stove, with a pot of oatmeal porridge bubbling on
top.
"Oh, Alix!" wailed Olive Manning. "What a thing to have happened!
Do you realize we might not be able to get another cook for months! I
don't know how we shall manage!"
"Well, we'll just have to, won't we? Did Lucy ask you for some old
cloths?"
"Yes, she took them. Jenny, no cut-im so thick! It's for toast, not for
building-bricks."
A trestle-table had been set up in the cook's room, and when Lucy
brought the water and clean rags, Alix put a basin on the small table by the bed. Two men came in, carrying the cook, now draped with a net
and with a cloth over his head and face.
"You'll have to lift him on to the trestle," said Alix briskly. The blood
had congealed and no more had flowed when he was moved. The men
picked him up, one at the feet and one at the shoulders.
"Poor ole Leavin' Soon," said one, removing the hat that was almost
a part of his head. "He wasn't a bad old bastard. A bit moody sometimes."
"A lousy cook, but," said the other. "Well, he won't be leavin' this
place, that's for sure."
"We'll leave 'im to you, Missus. Rather you than me," said the first
man, as they stepped outside. A few flies were beginning to buzz round
the room.
After she had bathed away most of the blood, Alix bound a strip of cloth
like a muffler around the gaping wound. She cut off the blood-stained shirt
and bathed the upper body. The trousers and boots she decided to leave
intact. She found a clean cotton shirt in a tin box on the floor, and
managed to get it on him. She brushed his staring eyes shut and weighted
the lids with two pennies. "Harold Jensen, you look fit for burial now," she
said, emptying the first bucket out the door and dropping the bloodstained
cloths into it. She was about to empty the second bucket on the bare
ground, but thinking better of it took it round the corner of the house
and poured the contents on the struggling Christmas lilies. She had
learned the hard way to conserve water.
Coming back, she found Jim in the doorway. He looked at her
admiringly. "You've done a great job," he said. "I don't know, most
women would have screamed and fainted, been completely useless--"
"Jim, you keep forgetting that I'm a nurse. I once had to lay out a man
after he'd been run over by a train. You learn to deal with such things,
even if you never get used to it. And I stitched you up, remember? 'Most
women' would probably have fainted at the sight of that horrid-looking
wound, cobbled together with horsehair."
"Yes, of course. I'd forgotten that's why I first fell in love with you."
He went to kiss her, but she drew back. She had rinsed her hands and
arms in a bowl, but her shirtwaist and the front of her skirt were stained.
"I'm going to take a shower," she said, "if you'll fill the tip-bucket for
me."
"Right. I'll do it now."
"This old skirt can be burnt, it's not worth washing."
Jim said they would burn the rags too, and the cook's old shirt.
"By the way, you won't get Lucy and Jenny into this room again.
They're very superstitious. And you must never mention the cook's name
to them. He'll be just 'that poor-feller,' or 'that-one cook.'" "I'll remember," Alix promised.
After Harold Jensen, alias Leavin' Soon, had been decently buried in
the small graveyard half a mile away from the homestead buildings, Big
Jim wrote to the police officer in Winton to let his widow know the news,
and enclosed a cheque for the cook's wages made out to the end of the
next month.
He wrote a report of the fatality for the Birdsville police, and made up
a parcel of the cook's few possessions--a pearl-handled pen-knife, a silver
fob watch, a battered wallet holding some photographs and papers, and
a few pound notes in a cigarette tin. Leavin' Soon's spare clothes were in
the tin box, but it didn't seem worth while forwarding them all that way.
Everything would eventually have to go by a long roundabout route to
Winton. The letter and parcel had to be taken down to the mailbox on
the Betoota-Birdsville road.
"The mailman won't be there for another week, on his way back," said
Jim. "Would you like to come with me this time? I'll take the buggy."
"Can I drive part of the way?"
"If you want to."
Also in the mail went an advertisement for a new cook. It would
probably be months before there was a reply, and few itinerant workers
turned up at this isolated station.
Alix explained that she was not much good at cooking, except invalid
cookery, which would hardly appeal to the tough cattlemen, but she was
willing to learn to make bread and damper. She found there was a certain
satisfaction in kneading the great lumps of dough, and setting them to
rise in covered pans by the warm stove. The bread was like a living thing,
growing and expanding. Her first efforts were heavy and tough, but
when she turned out a respectable loaf at last, she felt a great sense of
achievement. With damper it was only a matter of mixing cold water and
flour to the right consistency, with some baking powder and a pinch of
salt. The main thing was not to over-cook it till it became hard. And to
remember the rising--Alix made one batch without, and it came out like
millstones, flat and rocklike. Like her first disastrous bread, she buried it
darkly at dead of night.
She enjoyed the long drive to the mailbox and back with Jim, taking
over the reins for part of the way. They left before the sun was up, the
back of the buggy weighed down with water-tins and more water in a
canvas bag hanging underneath. Most of the way they would not be far
from the many channels of the Diamantina; but as Jim pointed out, the
majority of these were now dry.
Jim's tame brolga accompanied them part of the way. The great crane
with his soft grey plumage and long neck and legs would sometimes fly
after Jim when he rode round the property, landing wherever he stopped,
and finally giving up and going back to his companions on the waterhole.

"I don't know whether he mistakes me for another brolga, or what,"
said Jim. "They call them 'native companions.'"
"Perhaps 'he' is a female, and is trying to woo you."
"I never thought of that."
Mail was waiting at the empty drum marked with the bleached skull
of a steer.
On the way back Jim pulled off the track and turned towards the
river channels, where a few trees gave some shade, to rest the two
horses.
As Jim broke some dry wood to light a fire and boil the billy, the brittle
branches cracked like a rifle-shot. Instantly a cloud of black cockatoos
rose from the dead timber along the channel. They screamed like demons,
flying heavily and clumsily, with their red-barred tail feathers spread
against the sun. Strange, barbaric, harsh-voiced creatures, they seemed
less like birds than the dark spirits of the land, the red heart of Australia,
belonging as the Aborigines belonged to a dream-time thousands of years
old. Alix felt a shiver, part delight, part superstitious fear, run down her
spine.
As they sat in the shade drinking black tea, she said thoughtfully, "You
know, I realize now that sending and receiving letters at Cappamerri is
no simple matter. I have forgiven you for not writing for months after
you first left Hergott Springs."
"It is a long way to the mailbox. But I might have written a decent
letter while I was about it. I bought the postcard in Birdsville on the way
up--should have posted it from there. Then I let two mails go by,
wondering what to say."
"You could have said, 'I miss you.'"
"Yair. Well, I've made up for it since, haven't I?"
They lingered in the shade for the hottest part of the day, then Alix
said she must get back in time to help get the evening meal. "Poor Olive
is doing most of the cooking, and she hates it. Lucy can do simple things
like boiling eggs, making toast, and grilling steak, but your mother is
doing the rest."
"At least you're making bread for the men and the house. Six loaves a
day is not bad going. But I hope the stores come through soon. The flour
won't last much longer."
Jim told her that the six-monthly store supply was due before Christmas.
It would come the long way round from Brisbane, by rail and then by
coach to Windorah, and from there by camel train to the stations between
the Barcoo and the Diamantina.
"We have to order jam by the crate, flour by the hundredweight, tinned
butter by the case, kerosene in four-gallon tins. It takes a string of a dozen
camels to freight them in.
"Dad has put a special order through for things like nuts and dried fruitand shortbread for Christmas. And we're fattening up the hens that aren't
laying."
"It will be our first Christmas," said Alix, kissing him.
Chapter Twenty-five
In spite of Jim's objections and Olive's disapproval, Alix had expanded
her work as several mothers brought their children to her Monday
morning clinic, held just inside the gate of the garden enclosure. Sometimes
it was a baby with dysentery, or a small boy with a cut foot;
occasionally a lubra came with a horrifying gash in her head from some
women's fight.
Alix had asked her mother to send her a new box of bandages with
ointments and lotions. She felt she was doing some good. Her old idea
of teaching the children their letters had been dropped; obviously she
would not be allowed to take a class on the veranda. Unfortunately the
children nearly all had running noses, caused by an unhealthy diet with
little vitamin C; and though their eyes were large and lustrous, the little
bush flies crawled in them continually. Olive preferred them at a distance.
A small boy was carried up from the camp one morning with terrible
burns to his feet and lower legs. It seemed he had been jumping over a
fire in some camp playabout and had landed short, among the burning
hot coals.
Alix did not hesitate. She told the two men to bring the lad up to the
veranda, where she let down a canvas chair till it was almost flat and folded a blanket, with a clean sheet doubled over it, for a mattress. She
sent Jenny for boiled water from the kitchen stove, and set out a tray with
basins, surgical gauze, scissors, and dressings. Both feet were so badly
burned that he would not be able to walk for some time. It was important
to keep the wounds clean, to change the dressings once or twice a day,
to keep them bandaged against flies and dust. She certainly wasn't
going to let him go back to the camp.
The little boy was a full-blood with the tribal name of Wondan. He
did not have parents or even close relatives in the camp; as a toddler he
had been left behind by a wandering family of blacks when his mother
died. He had been brought up by "aunties" and "uncles" of the Capparoerri
people.
Alix judged that he was about ten. She placed a small table beside him
to hold a jug for water and a cup, and her tray of surgical dressings. She
gave him aspirin and codeine, as big a dose as she dared, for he must be
in terrible pain though he did not cry out or complain, just compressedhis wide mouth and breathed quickly. With Jenny's help she rigged a mosquito net over him like a tent.
She had put Wondan on the side veranda, as the other two verandas
were really extensions of the living rooms. Walking round from her
bedroom for lunch, Olive Manning saw this apparition on her veranda
and stopped dead, then walked on quickly to confront Alix.
"What is going on? There appears to be a black child on the veranda,
asleep!"
"Yes. I'm sorry, I didn't want to disturb you, but I couldn't send him
back to the camp. Both his feet are badly burned, he can't walk. Also he's
still in a state of shock."
"But he can't stay here! Even the house lubras don't sleep here. I
certainly can't allow him--"
"You'll just have to, for the time being. As soon as he's well enough
I'll make up a bed for him down at the camp, and visit him there to
change the dressings."
"Jim won't approve of that."
Alix went on eating her fried rice without replying.
While Wondan slept she had been out to the kitchen and made some
thin porridge. After lunch she put some in a bowl, added golden syrup
and a little goats' milk, and took it to Wondan. He had just awakened,
and looked frightened. She decided to ask Lucy to feed him, for he was
used to her and Jenny, who would help ease the strangeness for him. He
was going to miss the other children as soon as he felt a bit better.
"Wondan, I want you drink plenty water," she said, holding the cup
to his lips, which had relaxed a little though a frown of pain pleated his
heavy brows. "Plenty, plenty water, from china cup. See? Him pretty,
eh?"
But Wondan, she noticed later, always drank direct from the wide
mouthed jug.
She also found a glass jar and showed him how to use it. He seemed
to find this operation intriguing; but solid motions were more of a problem.
She found an old baking-dish in the kitchen, and showed Lucy how to
slip it under the boy's backside. But old Lucy preferred to hold the boy
out over the edge of the veranda. Alix prayed that her mother-in-law
would not see this operation. She would go round with a spade and cover
the evidence later.
When the men came home Olive was waiting on the veranda with her
complaints.
"Jim! Your wife has a dirty black child from the camp sleeping on my
veranda. Will you please speak to her?"
Jim looked harassed, and said only that it could wait till he'd had a
wash. Big Jim asked what was wrong with the child. Alix popped out from
where she had been listening, and said, "It's only a ten-year-old boy. His feet have been so badly burnt that he can't walk. I need to have him close
for a while, to change his dressings and watch for infection."
Big Jim scratched his ear. "Well, Mother, I suppose it won't hurt for
a little while to--"
"It's against all the rules!" cried Olive. "Next thing I'll have
those children in the garden, rampaging over my plants, leaving the gate
open."
"I assure you that won't happen." Alix spoke quietly, but the blood was
pounding in her ears. She was determined to fight for her patient,
whatever the opposition.
She turned on her heel and went to the bedroom where Jim was
changing his shirt for dinner.
"You've really got Mum's back up now, haven't you?" he said, it
seemed to her accusingly.
"You might wait till you've heard why the child is there." She told him
what she had told Big Jim.
"And he really can't walk?"
"No."
Jim rubbed the back of his head, an irritable gesture. "I don't know!
She was starting to accept the garden clinic, but this--!"
"There was nothing else I could do. Would you like to see him?"
She led him along to the side veranda, and saw the deck-chair was
empty. There was a white bundle on the floor beyond. He had managed
to slide off, with the sheet and net, and was rolled up like a possum on
the wooden floor.
"Wondan!" She touched the bundle gently. Matted dark hair and a
single large brown eye appeared over the edge of the sheet.
"Wondan, this the Young Boss. I show-im feet belong-you."
She uncovered the large white bandages under which a piece of angry
red scorched skin disappeared at the ankle. Wondan made no sound. His
huge unblinking eyes stared up at them.
"Well, little feller, your feet sore-feller prop'ly, eh?" Jim squatted on
his heels beside the little boy and spoke reassuringly. "Nemmind. You
soon all better, go back to camp." He patted the bundle and stood up, in
one fluid, easy movement.
As they went back to their room Alix slipped her hand into Jim's and
gave it a squeeze. His support was important to her. Now she felt she
could face Olive and her displeasure.
"Leave him on the floor," said Jim. "He's used to sleeping on the
ground, and he'll be more comfortable."
It was not so comfortable for Alix, having to sit on a cushion on the
veranda boards to treat her patient. When she came with her tray of
surgical gauze, scissors, and swabs, he would look up from big, liquid
brown eyes with those incredibly long curling lashes, and bite his fulllips; but he never cried out or made a sound of pain. She was amazed:
his stoicism, and the rapidity with which the burns healed.
She had washed his hair, which was wavy and shiny. He was now an
attractive child, but she could not persuade Olive to visit him.
"Wondan, your feet better now," she told him one day, unwinding the
bandages and lifting the dressings, which no longer stuck to the raw tissue
and had to be bathed away. "See--new skin here, and here."
"You-i, Missus."
"Soon all better, eh?"
For the first time she saw him smile fully, a wide, white smile in his
brown face. Yet she had heard him laughing with Jenny in the mornings!
when the young lubra joked with him as she swept the veranda.
The atmosphere in the house, meanwhile, was strained. Alix noticed that Olive never spoke to her at the meal-table, or said so much as "good
morning" when they met. Jim was worried, because he did not like taking sides between his mother and his wife, and was still a little in awe of his
mother.
Only Big Jim Manning was unaffected, taking no notice of the situation
but occasionally asking Alix casually, "How's the patient?"
Olive spoke only once during the first day or two after Wondan's
appearance, to say frostily, "Alix, I trust you have washed thoroughly
before coming to the table?"
Alix flushed and muttered that she had, naturally. This was at lunchtime
when the men were out. Alix took her plate out on the veranda and
ate there.
One of the men made some crutches from two forked myall branches
padded with flour sacks. As soon as the less badly burned foot, though
still bandaged, was sufficiently healed to take his weight, she let the men
patients on her next Monday clinic carry Wondan back to camp.
She threatened and warned him about no swimming, and keeping the
bandages dry till she came to take them off. "No bogeying in the river,
mind! Or I'll be prop'ly cross."
When the stores arrived, there was great excitement. The people came
up from the camp to watch as men shouldered heavy bags and crates into
the store. The two Afghans had hoosh'd their strings of laden pack-camels
down in the dust. As they came swaying along in single file, they looked
like some Eastern caravan.
Perched on one of the loads was a small fat man with slanting eyes and
a pigtail. He was a Chinese cook, Wing Lee by name, who was looking for work on a station.
This was the best Christmas present Olive could ask for. She engaged
him at once, not even asking why he had left his last employ.
The Afghan drivers brought the news that England and Germany were
at war, and the Federal Parliament had voted to send Australian troops to help the British Empire. The camel train had been on the track for two months, visiting other stations on the way. It was now the first week
in November; news of the outbreak of hostilities had reached Longreach
only the week before they left.
The storekeeper was busy taking an inventory and checking the
flour for weevils, the potatoes for mould. He sniffed doubtfully at a forty
pound bag of sugar, which smelt strongly of camel. A large tin of biscuits,
taken up to the house by Olive and opened with great expectations, was
found, after two months of swaying on a camel's back, to be nothing but
crumbs.
The next excitement was an Indian hawker arriving on a riding camel,
with one pack-camel, from the other direction: he had come down the
Georgina from Boulia and Bedourie. He put up a tent and unpacked a
bale of treasures: coloured scarves, bright ribbons, combs and minors,
cheap bangles and beads. The station hands bought presents for their
girl-friends, or their future possible sweethearts when they hit town again.
The black stockmen and the kitchen lubras who had saved their tiny
wages bought freely.
That night, while the white people discussed the implications of war
on the other side of the world, Jenny waited at table with her hair shining
clean and a bright pink ribbon tied round it. Two glass bangles tinkled
on her wrist. She had an air of coquetry and self-satisfaction worthy of a
Frenchwoman in a new creation from a leading fashion house.
Alix could not sleep. Although she knew, in theory, that the war could
not affect them in this outpost, she yet felt a sense of dread. Away across
the sea, young men were marching out to kill each other; women no
doubt were dancing in the streets and cheering with patriotic fervour.
And what if it wasn't over in a year, or even two? It occurred to her
that nurses would be needed at the front, like Florence Nightingale.
Travel overseas, companionship, work--. What nonsense! Married
women would certainly not be expected to volunteer, even if Jim--. But
what if Jim decided to go? No, he would never leave Cappamerri.
She slipped quietly out of bed and through the wire door on to the
veranda, walking silently on her bare feet. The waning moon was setting,
but there was enough light to see the garden trees, the pale blobs of
oleander blossom. A curlew cried out on the plain, was answered by
another: Wer-looo-oo! Wer-looo-oo! That eerie, mournful, wailing cry . . .

A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

As the lines from Coleridge came into her head, a dark shape seemed to
move silently in the shadows of the veranda, by the door of the Boss'sroom. Alix froze with superstitious dread. What had she called up out of
the darkness and the sallow moonlight?
The dark shape moved towards the front steps, and there came the
tinkle of glass bangles. Staring unbelievingly, Alix saw Jenny step out into
the moonlight and turn towards the gate. She was naked, carrying her
gina-gina carelessly by one hand over her shoulder.
Alix felt winded. She sat down in one of the cane chairs to think about
what she had seen. There was no doubt about it, Jenny had been visiting
the Boss in his bedroom. Perhaps it was a regular arrangement. She
remembered the half-caste children down at the camp--might some of
them be Jim's half-brothers? Of course she had realized that such things
happened in the outback, were accepted though not publicly acknowledged.
Perhaps even Olive turned a blind eye . . .
And Jim? Were some of those dark children his? "Yeller-fellers" they
were called out here, because of their creamy complexions, neither white
nor brown. But it was an expression of contempt. Surely not Jim! And yet,
when not travelling with cattle, he must have spent long months here
without a woman. Probably even fat old Lucy had been lithe and attractive
not so long ago. She wanted to ask Jim--in fact, she wanted him to deny it --but she would not. Any such liaison must have been over before she came
here, and anyway perhaps it was not so; perhaps Jim even despised his father
for his weakness. For he must know about it. Everyone in the camp would
certainly know; Jenny would have great status there as the Big Boss's woman.
Alix felt constrained with her father-in-law at meals, and found herself
watching for any covert understanding between him and Jenny. But he
seemed to treat both black women the same, with a kind of jesting
familiarity born of long acquaintance. Perhaps Lucy had once occupied
Jenny's place as favourite!
The embarrassment she felt with her father-in-law was relieved when
the men went off on a ten-day trip to the outer bores, to clean out the
bore-drains, muster what cattle were left alive, and burn the carcasses of
those which had died. Any young calves which had been born were
knocked on the head, to give their mothers a chance to survive until it
rained. They cut boughs of mulga and myall for the miserably thin and
apathetic beasts.
In the area where rain had fallen and the cattle were still in good nick,
they cut out the cleanskin calves and brought them back to the stockyards
for branding and castrating. Alix, wearing her divided skirt, climbed up
and sat on the top rail to watch. The first calf was brought down, thud! on its side; one man held its horns and sat on its head, while another was
heating the branding-iron and a third was ready with a knife to cut off
the testicles. Alix felt sick at the stench of burning hair and hide.
Bellowing, the calf was let up and blundered away, while its companions
milled about in terror at the smell of blood.
She noticed the men carefully picking up the limp balls from the dust
and setting them on the rail, and remembered having heard that they
were regarded as a great delicacy, grilled over the coals. She climbed
down and went back to the homestead, the bellows of pain following her
all the way. She walked swiftly, trying to leave them behind.
The calves would have hung around the homestead bore, where the
ground was eaten out to bare dust, until they starved. Another thunderstorm
had brought feed up on the Jalata Bore, half-way to where the main
mob was fattening, so they were driven there. Jim said that the cattle in
the thunderstorm area were in such good condition they could be sold as
"fats," if only the stock-routes were open.
"Things are getting pretty desperate," he said. "We can hang on if we
get a few more thunderstorms, then if a big Wet comes down from the
north it will give us a chance to move them down to market."
"And if it doesn't?"
"We'll be finished. Another year like the last three, and we'll have
to walk off the property and leave it to the bank that holds the mortgage."
"How
long have the Mannings been out here?"
"Since the 1870s. Away back. You should get the Old Man talking-- he'll tell you about the first family of Mannings to take up land on the
Diamantina. It's quite a saga."
One night after dinner when they were all sitting on the eastern veranda
watching the moon rise, Alix asked Big Jim about his family history. "Jim
tells me they were real pioneers."
"Aw . . . yair, I suppose so. Came out here pretty early, only about
ten years after the explorers, McKinlay and Landsborough." He stopped
and re-lit his pipe.
"They were your grandparents?"
"No, parents. I was born in 1864; I was only a kid when I came out
here with the family. After the homestead was built, sometimes I'd be
left in charge of the cattle at night. I daren't sleep because I was that
scared of the dingoes howling round the camp. Before it got dark I'd pile
up plenty of wood, and keep building the fire up to keep them away. I
was only nine years old at the time. My father, Bill Manning, was a very
. stern family man, and his word was law. He had a big beard and these
,; thick bushy eyebrows and bright blue eyes. . . .
"When the family set out from the coast, there were my parents and
their children, and Mum's younger sister and her husband. We travelled
in bullock-drays, about fifteen miles a day, carting water and food, and sometimes having to live on bush rats while we were droving a mob of V. cattle that were too valuable to eat. We were away out on the western beyond Winton, when a big Wet set in. All the creeks were flooded, we couldn't go forward or back."My Aunt Annie thought she had plenty of time to get to our destination
on the Diamantina, but we were still held up, completely out of flour
and tea and living in makeshift tents that let in the rain, when the baby
arrived. My mother did all she could, but Annie and the baby both died."
"It's a cruel country," said Olive Manning hollowly.
"Yes, well, there was hardly enough wood even to boil water in that
treeless country--we'd carried some firewood with us--and there was
nothing to build a coffin out of. So they broke up one of the drays and
used that, with a piece to make a cross to mark the grave. The ground
dried out and they had to go on and leave her."
"Terrible for your mother!" said Alix.
"And for my Uncle Tom. They'd only been married a year."
"How old was she?"
"Just nineteen."
Big Jim leaned back and puffed on his pipe. Alix stared out at the
brightening yards beyond the shadowed garden, the shiny tin roofs of the
outbuildings reflecting the moon as it rose.
"I had to attend a birth on an isolated station once," she murmured.
"The mother lived, but the baby died. If there'd been a doctor, or a
hospital near enough, it would have lived. That's what John Flynn is
fighting for--hospitals and medical services for outback families--what
he calls the Mantle of Safety over the inland."
"The distances are too great," said Jim. "And half the time the tracks
are impassable!"
"He has some idea of using aeroplanes--yes, I know it sounds crazy,
but the man's a visionary."
"Crazy, all right. Unless they had a telephone, how would the doctor
know when someone was sick? And where would the plane land? Anyway,
aeroplanes are too unsafe."
"Yes, I suppose it's just a dream."
"Back in those early days," said Big Jim reflectively in his slow, deep
drawl, "there was trouble with the blacks. They didn't like their waterholes
being taken over--naturally enough--and they couldn't see why they
shouldn't spear cattle for food.
"It got so bad that a couple of stockmen at an outstation were speared.
My father sent a rider with a message for the Native Police, and a party
of them came out from Winton with their carbines. There was no trouble
with the local blacks after that."
"In fact, they were shot?" said Alix in disgust.
"It was called 'dispersing the natives.' The tribes were broken, those
who were left camped around the stations and became dependent on
hand-outs, and the men turned out to be excellent horsemen and cattle
men.

"As for the black police, they'd been recruited from Victoria, and had no compunction about shooting wild Aborigines in Queensland. They
had a white officer in charge. Later he was speared by the blacks up near
Dajarra. His grave is somewhere out there in the northwest."
"Along with the bones of hundreds of slaughtered Aborigines."
"Yes, Alix. But you must remember that it was a case of survival. The
pioneers had gone through tremendous hardships to bring their cattle
overland and establish a station in the middle of nowhere. The Abos
didn't use the land for anything except to wander over. The settlers
couldn't see why they should be driven off by a lot of myalls."
Alix said nothing more, but she told Jim afterwards that she had read
something about the Queensland Native Police--a bloodthirsty lot, who
notched up their "kills" on the stocks of their carbines. "I suppose it was
the same in South Australia and the far north--I know the Dieri were
all but wiped out, up near Lake Callabonna; I nursed the last full-blood
of the tribe down at Hergott. If one or two white men were speared, it
was called a 'massacre' or a 'treacherous murder,' and men, women, and
children were shot in reprisal. Apparently this was called 'dispersal,' not
murder."
"It wasn't just one or two white men," said Jim.
"At Pelican Waterholes,
four men were swimming one afternoon when they were all speared
and left in the water. And at one station, nineteen of the Wills Family
--women and children too--were clubbed to death in 1861. People
today don't realize how dangerous and daring they were in defending
their land. It was war, just as much as the Maori Wars in New Zealand."
"A pretty unequal war--Stone Age spears against modern guns."
"Well, dear, you've married into a family of squatters. My grandparents
took up this land; they worked hard to create a pastoral property out of
what was near-desert, with an average five-inch rainfall--"
"Five inches! Is that all?"
"That's all. But of course the artesian bores have made a terrific
difference. And then floods can come down through the Channel Country
without any rain actually falling here. Wait till you see the place in a
good season. Sometimes the water even reaches Lake Eyre."Chapter Twenty-six

On Christmas Day the thermometer hanging under the shade of the
front veranda registered 115 degrees. Olive had made lemon syrup,
using crystallized lemon rind boiled with water and citric acid. This
was kept down the cellar until needed, then mixed with cool water
from the big canvas water-bag. There was even some soda-pop that had
come in with the supplies, but no alcohol except for the "medicinal"
brandy in the store, which was rationed out to the Chinese cook to put
in the boiled plum pudding. The huge pudding was mixed in one of
the bread-pans and boiled in a cloth in the outdoors copper. A vealer had
been killed for the men's table, and the Boss went out and shot two plain
turkeys for the house and a kangaroo for the camp, and several hens
were sacrificed.
Olive had picked the three red Christmas lilies that still survived to
decorate the dining-room table, with a few grey-green branches of athol
tree. They exchanged presents in the morning, things ordered months
before from catalogues. The last mail had brought parcels from Jim's
sisters and from Alix's parents, which one of the black stockmen riding
down with a pack-horse had brought back.
Before midday on Christmas Day, the blacks came up from the camp
by invitation to where "lolly-water" and boiled sweets had been set out
on the trestle-table for the children; and little parcels of bright ribbons
and beads for the women and tobacco and gay neckerchiefs for the men
were handed out. Lucy and Jenny each received a small bottle of perfume,
violet and lavender. Alix had sewn them each a dilly-bag of coloured
cotton with a draw-string at the top in which to carry their treasures, like
the "pretty smell belonga me," as Lucy referred to her scent bottle.
Old Johnnie was there with Merna, quite recovered. She had brought
Alix a necklace made of seeds from the quondong, or native peach, seeds
as naturally round as a bead. The old men she had treated came up to
Alix and pressed her hand. Wondan, without crutches but hobbling a
little, gave her a small black-and-white-striped tail-feather from a zebra
finch.
Rather to Alix's surprise, her mother-in-law gave her a beautiful scarf
of Indian silk--perhaps bought from the Indian hawkers who had called
here earlier.
"I've had a lovely Christmas!" said Alix that night, and Jim said,
"Tomorrow I'll take you for that swim I promised you."
She read him Frances MacFarlane's Christmas letter, which informed
Alix that her father was very busy as he was in charge of the recruiting
office in Adelaide. "There is no conscription," she wrote. "Young men are
anxious to serve their King and country, and go to the help of little Belgium."
But the Major added a note that it would be all over in a few months.
Big Jim's Christmas present was a litter of six cattle-pups one of the
blue heeler bitches had produced. She was given a box with straw in the
harness-room, where she lay panting with the heat while the pups clambered
over her. The Boss, going in to have a look how they were progressing,
was surprised to find only four pups. Could she have eaten the other two?
Poor old Tess couldn't count; she didn't seem to miss them. The four were
growing apace, their little bellies tight as drums with milk.
Wing Lee, who was a great improvement on the dour Leavin' Soon,
surpassed himself with some delectable meat pies with light pastry made
from the new stores of flour; he was also a wizard at suet dumplings. The
pies appeared a second time--he must have kept some left-over veal from
the men's Christmas dinner.
When no more were forthcoming, Olive thought she would compliment
him by asking when they might expect some more of "those delicious
pies--very good, very tasty."
Wing Lee turned from kneading the bread dough, and said with a
smile:
"Ah, Missee! Wing Lee no can make more pie. Yesterday there plenty
puppy--now the puppy he all gone!"
Olive gave a shriek and rushed out to the harness-room. Tess was
anxiously licking a solitary pup; the rest were indeed "all gone."
"We'll have to get a new cook!" she wailed that night, after toying with
her dinner and eating little but bread and jam and some stewed dried
apricots. She had not told the others the story of the puppies until after
they had eaten. But Big Jim was not worried about that--his family, after
all, had eaten bush-rats and he had tried both goanna and snake when
travelling in the bush. But he was angry with the cook for turning
potentially valuable cattle-dogs into meat pies. Three of them had been
bitches, but the other three were males, of which only one was left. "He'd
better not touch that last pup," growled Big Jim.
"He won't. I gave him a talking-to he won't forget," said Olive grimly.
Indeed, she had handed out a tongue-lashing in pidgin-English while
the kitchen lubras listened with wide eyes, their hands over their mouths
to suppress their giggles.
"My cli'," the cook was heard to remark to them afterwards, "Missee talkee muchee, allee time, Missee talkee muchee when closs."Jim and Alix rode over to the station waterhole for a swim in mid
afternoon, when everyone else was asleep. Jim was wearing shorts, Alix
her demure neck-to-knee navy-blue swimming costume with white trim
round the neck and sleeves, under a divided skirt of grey linen.
The milky turquoise of the water looked inviting between its banks of
red sand and patches of floating duckweed. There were water-lily leaves
on the surface, but Jim said the flowers would not be out till the next
fresh came down: frail blue cups with gold stamens, spread over the water
like a floral carpet.
It was an ideal swimming place, shaded by drooping coolabahs, with
a sloping sandy bottom that had been cleared of snags. Alix wondered
why she had not come for a swim on her own before this; she would,
now that Jim had shown her the way to skirt the big sand-hill instead of
climbing over the top.
She was better at swimming than she was at riding. She showed off a
little, striking out strongly across the deepest part, daring Jim to follow
her. He caught up with her and kissed her, and as they sank together
kissed her under water. Alix surfaced, laughing, and began racing him to
the bank.
He caught her in the shallows. "You don't need this silly costume,"
he said, pulling off the navy pants and then the top with its short sleeves.
The wet jersey material clung like a second skin.
"Just like skinning a rabbit," said Jim.
"Thanks very much!"
"But the result is different. Whoever saw a rabbit with these beautiful
pointed breasts?"
They made love in the shallows, half in and half out of the water, a
perfect union that left them flooded with peace and wellbeing.
"Like a water-lubra," he murmured, sliding down to nuzzle between
her wet thighs. "If only you had long dark hair, I would think I'd caught
a water-lubra."
"What's that?" she asked drowsily.
"I think they're daughters of the Rainbow Serpent, or something. It's
very dangerous to catch one. And if you take her anywhere near water,
she'll slip away and dive in and you'll never see her again."
"I wouldn't. I'd never want to leave you."
They rode back to the homestead as the sun was setting, sending their
shadows stretching like giants' across the sand. Alix felt in love all over
again. And she had a strange feeling, almost a certainty, that she'd just
conceived a son on the banks of the Diamantina.
In the new year the whole camp went walkabout. This meant the house
lubras too, Jenny and Lucy, and all the Aboriginal stockmen. They would
come back in two or three weeks, refreshed by their sojourn in the bush,
but reminded too of how pleasant it was to have meat and bread provided, without the long process of food-gathering, hunting, digging for yams, and winnowing the nardoo seeds to grind up for flour between two stones.
But the freedom, the change of place, and the bush tucker did them

"It's very inconvenient," sighed Olive, "but we have to put up with it.
They have this need to wander sometimes, and it's only once or twice a
year."
Chapter Twenty-seven

Since she would soon be going away, and she could not very well go and
leave the station without a cook, Olive decided to overlook the unfortunate
business of the puppy pies. Wing Lee was a good cook, with a light hand
in bread-making, dumplings, and johnny-cakes. (Johnny-cakes were a
variation on damper, but the dough was fried in small pieces instead of
being baked. They made a pleasant change for breakfast.)
The station hands, who always grumbled on principle about the
standard of cooking, were more content. Their old joke, "Who called the
cook a bastard?" the reply being "Who called the bastard a cook?" was
laid to rest.
In late March, with the weather noticeably cooler in the evenings,
young Jim left in the buggy with two horses to drive his mother over the
mail-route, covered by a mailman with pack-horse every two weeks, to
Windorah. From there she would take the mail coach to Longreach, and
then go by rail to Rockhampton and Brisbane. In case of sudden rains,
or a dozen other possibilities, the buggy was stocked up with food and
plenty of drinking water. The horses would have to be spelled at Betoota,
where there was a hotel of sorts. At Windorah on Cooper's Creek, Jim
would spell the horses again before making the long journey back by easy
stages to Cappamerri.
Alix felt a lightening in the atmosphere at her mother-in-law's departure.
Since Big Jim's tongue had been unloosed in telling her about his
pioneer family, she found it easier to talk to him. She sometimes discussed
dinner menus with Wing Lee; although his English left much to be
desired, he was always affable and smiling, and did not intimidate her as
the late cook had done.
Wing Lee was a moon-faced, cheerful little man whose eyes almost
disappeared in his fat cheeks when he smiled. He got on well with the
kitchen lubra and the housemaid. But with the Missus gone, Jenny began
to put on airs, and was often cheeky. Alix longed to give her a piece of
her mind, but refrained; the household was not hers, and Big Jim Manning
might back Jenny if it came to a show-down. It was she, Alix, who was
the newcomer.
She missed Jim. He was away for more than two weeks, and as the full moon returned, flooding the sky with yellow light as it rose, she sat on
the veranda thinking of him.
One reason why Alix longed to see Jim was that she believed she had
some good news for him. She had missed one period, and when the next
one failed to make its appearance she felt fairly certain that she was
pregnant. She stopped riding over to the waterhole for a swim. She must
look after herself and the heir of the Mannings. As Jim was the only boy,
her son would surely inherit the station. That is, she thought, if the
drought breaks and it isn't taken over by the bank. For the first time she
felt a personal involvement with Cappamerri. Mannings had been here
for three generations! Her children and Jim's would be the fourth.

"Gosh, darling! Are you sure?" Jim held his left arm round her as they
sat on the bed. He tentatively felt her belly with the other hand.
"There's nothing there to feel yet. But I'm as sure as I can be without
a medical examination. Already my skirts are getting tight around the
waist. And I've been feeling a bit nauseated in the mornings."
"Well! Won't Dad be delighted. He's been wanting a grandson to carry
on his name."
"And if it's a girl?"
"Well, we can have a boy next time."
"I'd rather not tell your father yet, if you don't mind."
"No, that's fine. I'm going to be walking round with a big grin on my
face, but. You'll have to go south in plenty of time to have it. How long
before it's due?"
"Oh, ages yet. Probably about next October, the first week."
"We'll make a trip down to Adelaide."
Long before then, and while Olive Manning was still away, there
occurred a crisis that called for all of Alix's nursing skills.
Big Jim had ridden out on his own one morning, taking the rifle and
raying he was going to get a kangaroo and perhaps a couple of turkeys for the larder.
'"I'll probably camp over at Wiluna Bore," he told Jim, "and get a shot when they come in to drink this evening, or early tomorrow morning."
When he had not returned by the following evening, young Jim looked a little worried. "The Old Man has probably stopped to shoot and burn some bogged cattle. He'll be back tomorrow," he reassured himself.
But when there was no sign of Big Jim the next day, Jim sought out the best black trackers, Micky and Quartpot, and three of the men to help him search--a party of six, the Aborigines on foot. It was fifteen miles to the bore. The trackers indicated that the Boss had ridden this way, but there were no tracks coming back. After several more miles Micky stopped had called to Quartpot, meanwhile scratching his head and pointing to the ground."What name?" he asked.
"Might-it dead kangaroo--Boss pull-im along?"
"No-more. This one"--he pointed to a smaller indentation beside the
large one--"boot-heel. This one might-be stick."
The men followed the trackers back the way they had come,
but deviating off to the left from the old tracks. Then in the softer sand
they too could see the drag-marks of a large body being pulled over the
ground.
Micky and Quartpot started running, following the well-marked trail,
and suddenly threw up their arms with a loud "Yakkai!" Under the meagre
shade of a straggling mulga, they had seen the figure of the Boss, supine
on the sand.
His leg was broken above the knee, and he had strapped his rifle along
it with his belt as a makeshift splint. The leg was swollen and contused,
and Big Jim was feverish and dehydrated. Jim lifted his head and gave
him a drink from the canvas water-bag. He swallowed with difficulty
through his cracked and blackened lips.
"Came oft"... Pilot," he muttered. "Broke m' leg. No water. About
ten miles back." He waved a feeble arm towards the direction of the bore.
He had dragged himself on his backside, over stones and through sand and prickles, pushing himself along with the rifle, and then when the leg
became too painful, using it as a splint.
"Don't try to talk any more," said Jim, holding his father tenderly.
"We'll get you home as soon as we can. Wonder Pilot didn't come back,
and we'd have known you were in trouble."
"Praps--he's hurt. Or gone off with the mob of brumbies."
"He might be at the bore. Did he toss you?"
"He fell. . . and I banged ... leg on rock."
"It's a nasty fracture, bone's come through the skin. Alix will know
what to do."
Jim had sent two men home for a stretcher; it would be too painful for
Big Jim to be carried on horseback. They were not five miles from the
station. Big Jim had dragged himself two-thirds of the way. "I'd have
come on at night, after a rest," he said later, "and got back under my
own steam. You can't keep a good man down."
Alix was horrified at the state of the leg, with puffy, purple flesh, and
blackened blood around the wound where the bone had come through
the flesh. She could get the fever down with aspirin and sponging, and
the dehydration was responding to frequent small drinks. But she had no
ether, no anaesthetic to give the patient while she set the bone.
Then she remembered the small ampoule of morphia which she had
taken out of the hostel stores and carried with her on her journeys off the
beaten track, in case of just such an emergency as this. It was still packed
at the bottom of her first-aid kit.
After she had cut away the moleskin trousers and irrigated the wound,
she fetched a syringe and injected the morphia. Big Jim's features relaxed,
the lines of pain went out of his forehead, and he stopped clenching his
teeth.
Jim had fashioned a splint of wood and torn up a sheet for bandages.
Alix clenched her own teeth as she straightened the leg, and heard bone
grate against bone. Big Jim bit his lip, but said steadily, "It's all right,
Alix. I can take it."
"If there's any plaster of Paris, I'll make you a cast later on," she said.
"For now you will have to stay in bed and keep still. As the skin is
broken, the leg is likely to be infected; I'll have to put clean dressings on
it."
"You're a good lass," he said, his voice far away as he floated on the
wave of morphia.
"You should have a doctor, but I've done what I can. Now see if you
can get some sleep. You're still suffering from shock."
Big Jim Manning, who had an iron constitution, made a good recovery,
"thanks to Alix's good nursing," as he said. But it was to be a frustrating
four months before he could walk or ride.

Olive came home, looking almost happy. She announced that Marjory
had a son and she was calling him James Manning Bristow, her married
name. Olive could not stop singing the praises of her new grandson. He
was, apparently, the most handsome, the cleverest, most adorable baby
that ever was born. She showed restrained pleasure at Alix's news--by
now her condition was becoming obvious--but Big Jim was delighted
that the next grandchild would bear his surname. He treated Alix like a
heroine. No one thought it might be a girl.
Jim felt he could not leave the property for long until his father had
fully recovered. This meant that Alix would have to go to Adelaide alone
to have the baby. He would drive her to Birdsville to catch the mail-run
with Wal Crombie.
Alix did not want to go away from Jim, on the long journey of nearly
a thousand miles and a separation of months; but though she might have
had her lying-in at Birdsville or Hergott Springs, she had seen too much
of what could go wrong in childbirth to take the risk of not having a
doctor handy. If John Flynn's Mantle of Safety had been spread over the
inland, she might have had the baby at home without any qualms. She
was young and healthy and there was no reason to expect complications,
but she was taking no chances. Her mother was delighted that Alix
was coming down to Adelaide for the birth. Alix feared she would be
mother-smothered by Frances, but she would spend the first ten days in
hospital after the birth of the baby. Then she would have two months
with her parents before setting off on the journey north. If the baby wasdelicate--well, it might be necessary to wait over December and January,
perhaps stay till March, when the hottest season would be over.
She knew they would want her to spend Christmas in her old home.
Late in July, before the hot summer dust-storms returned, Alix set off
on the eight-hundred-mile journey to the southern capital. Jim took the
buggy in easy stages, and fussed about seeing that she rested properly and
didn't get overtired. They camped out on two nights, then spent a night
in the Birdsville Hotel while waiting for Wal to be ready to leave.
"You'd better write to me, or else!" she said mock-threateningly on the
last morning.
"Of course I will, darling! Every mail. Well, every other mail, perhaps."
"You rat! You know I'll write to you. And I don't want any three-line
postcards, either."
She sat in front of the buggy with Wal, under a canopy to keep off the
sun. He treated her with exaggerated care, helping her up into the buggy
and down again whenever they stopped.
"If you want a rest, just let me know," said Wal. "Won't matter if the
mail's a bit late for once."
"I'm all right; I'm fine."
He spoke, diffidently, of Mab's end and said how sorry he was to have
missed the funeral.
"You know, Jack McGuinnes went out to Mutoorinna. They'd heard
from a camel-man what had happened, and they were terribly shocked.
He wanted to confront this Luke, give him a reprimand from the Law he
wouldn't forget; but it turned out the bloke had shot through--whether
he had a guilty conscience, because it seems he camped out a night on
the run and didn't tell the Jacksons how early he'd returned--or whether
he just got itchy feet; he took his horse and a pack-horse, and said he was
going to make for Coward Springs. A terrible dry track. He may've
perished on the way. Serve him right if he did."
But Alix, who had come near to perishing herself, could not wish such
a terrible end for anyone.
"He was young and thoughtless," she said. "It was just incomprehensible
to him that anyone could come to grief in less than fifty miles on a
well-marked track."
"You know, the irony of it was," said Wal, "that the dust-storm
apparently came from out Strzelecki way, and missed Mutoorinna. They
had no idea."
In Hergott Springs, Alix was amazed to see a motor car--a brand-new
Model T Ford--parked outside the hotel.
"Who's your new police constable?" she asked as Wal threw down her
swag on the hotel veranda.
"Jack's still here," he said. "He didn't get his transfer after all. He took
his long-service leave, and then came back here."
"Oh!" said Alix.
When she had washed away the dust and sweat of the track, and had
had a good night's sleep, her first visit in the morning was to the hostel.
The same two Sisters were there and gave her a warm welcome. They sat
in the little living-room with the cane chairs and the cool green cushions.
"Have you seen Jack?" asked Sister Adams.
"No, he doesn't know I'm passing through."
"But we must tell him you're here!"
And the part-Aboriginal girl who came in to do the hospital laundry
was sent over to the police station with a message.
Alix tried to swallow some now-tasteless cake, and gulped some tea.
Then there was a heavy step on the veranda, and in came Jack McGuinnes,
ducking his tall frame through the door and removing his khaki hat as he
did so.
Alix, in spite of her heavy body, got to her feet.
"Jack!"
"Well, Alix. This is a surprise." She saw his eyes take in her condition,
and the sudden constriction of his smile. Impulsively she went up to him
and kissed him on the cheek.
"I didn't know you were still here, or I'd have let you know."
"Yes, I didn't go to the Alice after all. Seemed no point, really. And
it meant transferring to the Commonwealth Police."
He sat down and accepted a cup of tea. As he drank and set the cup
down, it rattled slightly in the saucer. He got up and set cup and saucer
down carefully on the small bamboo table.
"I see you haven't got one of these new automobiles yet," said Alix
brightly. "Have you driven one?"
"Yes, for short runs. But camels are best for the sand-hill country. Wal
still swears by his horse-team, but I bet he'll end up with a motor-truck."
He added, "Are you catching today's 'Ghan? I'll drive you to the station
if you like. The pub-keeper will lend me his car."
"That would be a help."
Before the train went, he drove her out to visit Mab's grave. The bare,
lonely cemetery, well outside the town, was depressing; she felt it was not
much better to have brought Mab to this desolate spot than to have left
her out among the sand-hills of the Frome. How she would have loved
telling Mab about the baby! But her friend was gone into an eternal
silence.
On the way back to town, Jack said, "I don't need to ask you if you're
happy. . . . When's the baby due?"
"End of September or early October. I'm going down to my parents
for the birth. Jim wouldn't let me risk having it up here." (Indeed, she
didn't want to risk it herself.) "Did you get to Adelaide on leave?"
"Yes, but I'd already had your letter."She put her hand over his on the wheel. "Jack, I'm sorry."
"It's all right. I'll get over it."
Jack drove her to the station to put her aboard the 'Ghan at midday,
with many admonitions about looking after herself and not trying to lift
heavy bags. She had a sleeping berth to herself all the way to Port Augusta.
It was time for the train to leave. He still sat beside her holding her
hand.
"You must get down, you'll be carried away," said Alix, as doors
slammed and the guard's whistle sounded. Jack smiled crookedly, as if to
say he wouldn't mind if he were. The train started to move. He kissed
her on the lips, then opened the compartment door and jumped out,
running a few steps along the platform to keep his balance. He went on
waving his big hat until he was out of sight.
Chapter Twenty-eight

Alix was surprised to be called for at the Adelaide Railway Station by
Major MacFarlane driving a gleaming new Hupmobile.
"Everyone's getting motor cars now," said her father, looking self
satisfied. Indeed, there were almost as many automobiles in the city as
horse-drawn vehicles, many of them Model T Fords, reliable, if not
much to look at.
"Can I learn to drive the car?" asked Alix.
"I've no doubt you can. I'm not sure that you should, in your condition."
"Certainly
she should not," said Frances firmly.
"But Mother! It's another six weeks, at least. It couldn't possibly hurt
the baby."
"Nevertheless, motor-cars are not entirely safe."
Frances wore a wide-brimmed straw hat swathed in a chiffon veil that
tied beneath the chin, both to keep the hat on her head in the supposedly
fast-flowing air of their motion, and to protect her complexion. "It is
called a motoring-veil," she explained.
"You are looking well," she added grudgingly, "in spite of the conditions
under which you've been living--"
"The station homestead is very comfortable, Mother. We have a cook,
a housemaid, and a kitchen maid. I had to learn to bake bread at one
stage, when we were without a cook, but I enjoyed it. And you know I
am used to the heat."

The war news dominated everything else, as Alix found in the next weeks.
At Cappamerri they had been insulated from the daily bulletins from the
front, the endless lists of casualties, dead or wounded or missing.
Some of the men she had known in what she now thought of as her
youth would never return. The Great War suddenly had become real.
Her father was deeply involved with recruiting of volunteers and her
mother in what was known as "the War effort"; she had joined the Red
Cross organization and rolled bandages and made up comfort parcels for
the troops. Though she was no knitter, she managed to turn out some
rather shapeless hand-knitted socks in khaki wool. She organized fundraising
teas. Frances, in fact, was rather enjoying the war. And herhusband, safely preserved by his age, was enthusiastically sending young
men into the carnage.
The disastrous attempt by Australian and New Zealand infantry to
storm the heights of the Gallipoli Peninsula had failed a second time on
August 8. Terrible reports were still coming through of the Anzacs, who were cut to pieces by the crossfire from entrenched Turkish troops at Lone
Pine and Hill 60. Patriotic feeling ran high, for stories of great bravery and daring skirmishes were being published every day. And still the
casualty lists grew. Alix found herself rolling bandages and writing little
notes of encouragement to go in the Red Cross parcels.
In Rundle Street one day she was looking in Balfour's cake-shop
window, when she saw some Berlin buns. She suddenly had a craving to
taste them again. She went in and said, "Two Berlin buns, please."
"Eh?" said the girl behind the counter, staring. "They're not called
that any more. You mean Kitchener buns."
They tasted just as delicious as Alix remembered them, whatever they
might be called. She supposed it would rather stick in the throat of a
patriotic Australian to eat a bun named after the enemy capital. How
Lord Kitchener might react to being commemorated by a doughnut was
another matter.
Caroline MacFarlane Manning was born on the last day of September
1915, at a small private hospital that specialized in midwifery cases. It
was a normal birth in every way; though Alix, knowing how many things
could go wrong, had worried right up to the time when her labour pains
began. Then suddenly she felt nothing but excitement, and curiosity to
see the infant she had been carrying for so long, the mysterious stranger
fed by her blood.
When they brought her the little bundle with a wizened face and a
wisp of dark hair at one end, she unwrapped it reverently and counted
the perfect little toes and fingers, the frail pink shells of the nails. As she
touched a tiny furled hand, it unclenched and closed around her finger.
My daughter! she thought with emotion. It was only later that she thought,
"Our daughter." She had felt like the initiate of some old order to which
only women were admitted: Caroline was one more link in the chain of
life that went back to Eve and the birth of the first girl-baby. She forgot
she had wanted a son.
Her father sent a wire via Hergott Springs, though by the time it had
travelled up the Birdsville Track and been taken by the mailman to the
Cappamerri mailbox, and called for by a station hand, it would be hardly
any quicker than a letter would have been. Alix wrote from hospital to
Jim. They had discussed names before she left; she had agreed to the
name of James, if a boy, and had had some arguments with Jim over the
name Caroline for a girl.
"It was my grandmother's name on my father's side," she had explained.
"I've always liked it, though I believe Gran was called 'Carrie.' I don't like that very much."
"Neither do I." Jim had thought for a while, and then suggested, "We
could call her 'Caro' for short; I like the sound of it."
So they had agreed, and as soon as she went home from hospital Alix
began instructing her mother not to call the baby Carrie or Caroline, but
Caro. But she was christened Caroline. Alix knew that Jim did not mind
if it was a boy or a girl, but no doubt his parents would be disappointed.
If Caro eventually married, her sons would not be Mannings.
A letter came from Jim at last, a whole page of exclamations and
endearments and congratulations. Olive had enclosed a few lines in Jim's
letter. Mr. Manning had slipped a ten-pound note inside the envelope,
with the words: "Good girl, buy something for yourself and baby."
Her own parents doted on Caro, their first grandchild. And of course
she was a most beautiful baby, thought Alix, as the dark wisps of hair fell
out, to be replaced by a fine cap of fair hair, soft as thistledown.
Jim wrote again at Christmas, to say that they were having an unusual
summer, grey skies and numerous thunderstorms. There was said to be
some feed coming up on the Birdsville Track, and things were looking
up at Cappamerri.
He might bring 500 head of cattle down to the railway at Hergott, and
travel home with her in February. She must let him know in plenty of
time when she was leaving.
"I can't wait to see you again, not to mention meeting our daughter.
If she's anything like you, she must be lovely."

Laden with gifts for the baby, Alix set off in early February--almost six
months after she had left the station--when Caro was just over four
months old. She was a bonny, healthy baby and Alix felt no fears about
the trip. Her mother was full of dire forebodings: the baby would be
dehydrated by the heat, or drowned in a flood; either way it was madness
to take so young a child on such a trip to the back of beyond.
Alix had met these objections with firmness: the child was going home
to her father; she had been away too long already.
She took a bassinet and a pile of clean napkins in the train, and fed
Caro from the breast every few hours. They both slept well as the little
Ghan swayed and rocked its way north. Four years since she had travelled
this way with Mab! She remembered their youthful excitement as they
set off on the new adventure together.
When the train pulled in at the open platform at Hergott Springs, there
was Jim waiting, lean and brown and with his light-blue eyes dancing
with joy at her return. He folded them both in a great hug. But Caro
screwed up her face and thrust out her pink bottom lip at this stranger.
It was some time before she accepted that Jim was part of the family.The Sisters at the hostel, nearing the end of their two-year stint, which
had begun when Alix left for the south, made much of the baby Caro.
The younger, Sister Henley, her complexion sallow from the heat but
her hair pretty and abundant beneath her cap, told Alix shyly that she
was engaged to be married when her term finished.
"She's engaged to the Constable, Jack McGuinnes," said Sister Adams
with a smile.
"Oh! I do hope you'll be very happy. He's a fine man."
"Yes, I know."
"What a pity! He's out on patrol at present," said Sister Adams. "He'll
be sorry he missed you. He is getting a transfer to Innamincka, on
Cooper's Creek."
"We-ell . . . Give him my very best wishes for his happiness."
Alix felt a slight pang that her faithful admirer had consoled himself
with someone else. Of course she was glad for him, she told herself
sharply. And his wife-to-be was a pleasant, sensible girl.
She hadn't told Jim of her meeting with Jack four or five months ago,
when he'd shown that he still cared. Now there seemed no point in telling
him. It was over and done with.
Jim had already watered and hand-fed his stock at the Springs, had
them checked by the Police Constable before he left, and sent them south
in a cattle-train. He told her they had not been exactly "fats" after their
trip down the Birdsville Track, but they were "in quite good nick."
Jim had brought the buggy along beside the dray, getting one of the
station hands to drive while he rode behind the cattle with the men. Now
Jim transferred to the buggy, lifting Alix and the baby in with exaggerated
care. Alix greeted the two Aboriginal stockmen, Micky and Jarry, and the
two drovers, Paddy the Gob and Bob the Bushrat, who were always
addressed by the others by their nicknames.
So it was in convoy that they travelled up the Track and through the
Channel Country, introducing Caro to her new home. She slept a great
deal in her bassinet on the buggy floor, and though the days were hot,
the nights were cool. There was saltbush and bright-flowering parakilya,
even some grass along the Track, although it was patchy, following the
scattered thunderstorms of the last months. The men had a last fling at
the Birdsville Hotel, where Alix and Jim and the baby stayed for the night
"in comparative comfort," as Jim put it.
"You know, I believe I prefer camping out," said Alix, in their dark
little room at the hotel. "There's nothing like sleeping under the stars,
even with dingoes howling all round."
"Ah, we'll make a bushwoman of you yet," said Jim. "I was going to
suggest that you ride all the way, but then I remembered Caro. We'll
have to teach her to ride as soon as she can walk."
"Jim--do you wish we'd had a son?"
"Not a bit. I think she's absolutely beautiful. Mum will think so too."
Once they were across the channel of the Diamantina, Alix asked to
be allowed to drive. Jim thankfully went back to his horse, a stock-horse
which he said was "as clever as paint", and unrivalled in cutting out a
beast from a mob.
Within the borders of Cappamerri, though the Diamantina was not
flowing, there was evidence of scattered rainfall in several areas.
"But the drought hasn't broken yet," said Jim."Of course the Old Man
wants to stock up at once, while cattle prices are still low, but I persuaded
him to wait. The bit of feed that's come up will keep our present stock
going, but if that's eaten out they'll be starving again."
At the homestead there was a great welcome from the blacks, who
had been missing Alix's ministrations. Children and old people came
streaming up from the camp as soon as they saw the dust of the party
approaching, to see the "new-feller piccaninny belong Young Missus."
Jim had driven the last few miles, as Caro was awake and Alix held her
in her arms. It was too hot for a shawl. The baby wore nothing but a
napkin and a short dress of lace-trimmed white madapollam, and a little
lace bonnet to match. There were exclamations of wonder and admiration
from the assembled blacks. Jim took the baby from Alix and held her
high to be admired. Then they went through the gate of the garden
enclosure and up the two steps to the front veranda, where Olive was
waiting.
Mrs. Manning kissed Alix and accepted the baby into her arms, but
her welcome was lukewarm. The reason was obvious--Caro was nota
boy. At least, thought Alix, she wouldn't have to worry about Grandma
spoiling her--which had led to some sharp words between Alix and her
mother in Adelaide.
Caro was a bit unsure of all these strange people; there had been so
many changes in her young life. But she suffered her grandfather to take
her on his knee and bounce her up and down in an expert way. Alix
thanked him for his generous gift, and brought out the hand-crocheted
cream silk shawl, with an intricate pattern and a long silk fringe, which
she had bought for Caro with the ten pounds. By now Caro accepted Jim
as her father, and would put her arms up to him when she caught sight
of him. He was a doting father. Between them, he and her father-in-law
made Alix feel like someone special in producing a little Manning. She
had plenty of milk--she would have had enough for twins--and Caro
thrived and grew fat.
Totally absorbed with the baby, Alix rather neglected her clinic. Even
though Caro slept a good deal, her mother hovered about the crib, moving
it to the shady side of the house, making sure the mosquito- and fly-net
was secure, and draping wet cloths over it when the temperature was
high. There were no more thunderstorms; the sun burned from a clearblue sky was hazed with the dust of hot north winds. Wearing nothing
but a napkin pinned around her chubby bottom, Caro crawled everywhere!
on the polished floors. By barricading the front and back steps, Alix made
a big play-pen from the wide verandas. But she kept an eye on the baby
at all times. The price of safety, she knew, was eternal vigilance.

Chapter Twenty-nine
Soon after Alix's return, the long drought broke in the far north. The first
they knew of it on Cappamerri was when a swirling red flood came down
the channels of the Diamantina. Some cattle farther down the river would
probably be drowned, but most of them were on higher ground, in the
sand-hills and gibber plains of the back country.
The Boss and Jim were jubilant, though Big Jim said, "I told you so!
We should have stocked up earlier. Now the price of cattle will go
sky-high."
The flood, bearing dead trees and brushwood on its crest, rose steadily;
the waterholes disappeared in the swollen river. Still there was no rain.
From far up beyond Kynuna, in north-west Queensland, the rain that
had fallen over a vast area of the north came flowing down towards the
basin of Lake Eyre, which was lower than sea-level.
A last trip down to the mailbox was made before the track became
impassable. There was a note from the mailman saying that the track at
Betoota was already cut, and he was hurrying back to get over the
Diamantina at Birdsville.
"So we are completely cut off, then? No mail, no stores ..." said
Alix.
"That's right. Just as well we're self-sufficient, eh? It won't get as far as
Lake Eyre, but. The country's so dry, even the river beds are so parched,
that half the water will just soak into the ground. And of course there's a
great rate of evaporation out here."
Leaving Caro with Lucy, Alix rode over to the highest sand-hill, her
horse up to its fetlocks in muddy water, to see the extent of the flood.
The river had overflowed the shallow banks of its many channels, and
spread over miles of flat low-lying gibber plains.
Alix gasped at the great sea of shallow water over the run, with the
sand-hills sticking up like long, low islands. The cattle had all made for
higher ground; though in the first week some bloated bodies came floating
down with the current--beasts that had been grazing in one of the river
channels and had been caught by the sudden rising of the water.
It took weeks for the floodwaters to go down, till the river was flowing
once more within its banks, clearing debris from the waterholes and
washing away the floating duckweed, which was beginning to choke theswimming-hole. Since no rain had fallen to replenish the underground
rain-water tank, the rather muddy river water was pumped to the house
--dead cattle notwithstanding. Alix, who had come to like billy tea, now
drank tea with every meal like the others. She did not fancy the murky
liquid in the water-bag, and she boiled all Caro's drinking water.
As soon as the water went down, a green film of new growth spread in
all the depressions; perennial saltbush flourished among the gibbers,
covering the bare stony plain till it looked like a field under crops. The
new river silt made long, waving grass grow in the clay-pans, and yellow
and white daisies began to flower, living their full life cycle in a few weeks
so that they might set seed for the next generation of plants. Their seeds
could lie dormant for years, till water returned to the soil.
A busy time followed for the Boss, young Jim, and the men. With
plenty of feed the cattle no longer congregated round the bores. As there
were no fences, they spread over hundreds of miles of open country;
mustering and counting stock meant weeks out on the run, at distant
outstations and cattle-camps. Beasts that had become hopelessly bogged
in the drying depressions, some with their eyes picked out by crows, had
to be shot.
Before the country had completely dried out, a low-pressure system,
blocked by a high to the east of Australia, was held up over the centre;
clouds built up, the atmosphere became unstable, and the result was five
inches of rain. Rain! They all rushed outside to bathe in it, raising their
faces to the warm drops, laughing with exultation. It was the first real
rain in five years.
George, the pet cockatoo, became excited by the rain and danced up
and down, flapping his wings, in a puddle just outside the garden
enclosure. His pale-rose breast was soon covered in red mud. Then he
flew up on the roof and let the rain wash him clean again, while uttering
loud self-satisfied squawks.
"Looks as if I'll have to send some rainfall reports in at last," said Big
Jim, beaming as he came back from checking the rain gauge. "I knew
the drought had to end before long."
Within a week the whole countryside had changed its colour from red
to green. The lower slopes of the sand-hills were first veiled with a wash
of green; a few days more and the growth was dense and several inches
high.
With the rain came hordes of flies and mosquitoes. Alix, worried about
the spread of dysentery by the flies, lectured Lucy on how the food should
be kept covered: the milk-jug with a mosquito-net circle edged with beads
to hold it down; cooked meat and custards to be covered at once with
fly-wire meat-covers or cloths.
"Now, fly properly cheeky-feller," she told Lucy. "Make-em ail-about
sick longa stomach. That one fly sit down longa dung-heap or might-be another dirty place, then come inside, sit-down longa tucker. Suppose
people eat-em tucker, they get properly sick. Might-be close-up finish
altogether. Understand?"
"Yair, Missus. Fly prop'ly dirty-bugger. Me kill-em dead."
"All right; but see you cover custard soon as him cooked."
Spiders and centipedes swarmed after the rain, and big black and yellow
wasps preyed on the spiders, paralyzing them, then walling them up in
mud-houses under the veranda roofs in which the wasps laid their eggs:
a living larder for when the eggs should hatch.
Sand-hills burgeoning with flowers, and orange-and-black butterflies,
were a more welcome result of the rain. There were clumps of bluebells
the colour of the sky, floating on hairlike stems; wild geraniums and tufts
of creamy-white candytuft and pale-pink convolvulus, which Olive called
blushing bindweed. The depressions in the sand-hills were like flower
bowls filled with white-and-gold everlasting daisies and yellow soldier's
buttons. The bushes of acacia and tecoma and neddlewood bloomed in
varying shades of yellow all the brighter for the contrast of the deep-blue
sky. Alix wished she could paint it, capture all that beauty and colour
before it faded.
"I'm glad you've seen the place in a good season," said Jim. "You're
seeing it at its best. If only we could count on a good season coming more
often!"
With the return of herbage and the refilling of waterholes, wildlife
multiplied. Big mobs of kangaroos, and parties of seven or eight emus
were seen close to the homestead. Many of the does carried joeys in their
pouches, from which a head or a leg might protrude as the mother hopped
along, feeding. Big Jim complained that the kangaroos would eat out all
the new feed; they bred with great rapidity after the rain because the does
had the ability to store fertilized eggs during a drought, and release them
one by one into the uterus after rain. The black men went hunting, and
the camp ate well.
Great flocks of budgerigars flew overhead in green clouds, black swans
and pelicans arrived at the home waterholes as soon as the floods subsided,
black duck flew in and the trees flowered with Major Mitchell cockatoos
and white corellas.
The drought that had depleted the herds had created a demand for fat
cattle, with prices soaring. So as soon as they had put on condition, a
mob was rounded up and sent off to the railway at Hergott Springs. A
few days were spent going over camp gear, mending and making hobbles
and plaiting greenhide into long whips. Then the droving party set off for
two months "on the track."

Since Alix and Caro had returned from Adelaide, Major MacFarlane,
horrified at Alix's ignorance of the Great War, had begun sendingnewspapers every fortnight full of patriotic fervour and gloomy dispatches
from the front. Jim read these and became increasingly thoughtful. Major
MacFarlane wrote that enlistments had fallen off to such an extent in
1916 that the government was thinking of introducing conscription. (A
referendum was put to the people later, but conscription was voted out.)
News came through of the terrible blood-baths on the Somme, for the
Australian Imperial Force was now fighting in France. It was another
Gallipoli--a blunder by the British generals, and the loss of 5,500
Australian soldiers and officers in one night. Recruits were needed urgently
to fill the depleted ranks.
"I don't know; a man ought to be in it," said Jim.
Alix looked at him in horror. "But not you," she said. "You're a
primary producer, and someone has to stay home to produce the meat
for the bully-beef to send the troops. You're doing your bit."
"I suppose so," said Jim with a sigh. "All the same--a free trip overseas,
no worries or decisions, just taking orders ..."
"Yes, orders to march into a hail of machine-gun bullets and get
yourself killed. I don't want to be the widow of a war hero."
She became so uneasy that she tried to hide the papers that came with
the mail if Jim was out on the run at the time. Another mob of fifteen
hundred head was being readied for a drove down the Birdsville Track.
Jim would be away for about eight or nine weeks. Alix said goodbye to
him with a feeling of foreboding.
He returned looking sun-browned and fit. The rain had laid the dust
and the journey had been "like a picnic", he claimed. He brought with
him a recent magazine given him by the new Sisters at the hostel.
He showed Alix the pictures, some blurred like amateur snapshots, of
men casually clad in flannel shirts and riding trousers, sitting about
drinking tea in the desert; of a long line of mounted soldiers moving along
a desolate track; and a close-up of four men smartly dressed in riding
trousers, leather leggings, belted tunics, and felt hats turned up at the
side with a bunch of emu feathers.
"The Australian Light Horse!" said Jim proudly. "I didn't realize they
were over there, fighting the Turk in Egypt. Apparently they're nearly all
from the bush, could all ride before they joined up. Some even took their
own horses with them."
"And their horses will probably be shot, or blown up. It's not fair to
animals to take them into war."
"There have always been horses in warfare," said Jim impatiently.
"What about the Charge of the Light Brigade?"
"And that was a piece of folly and needless sacrifice."
"But what a great feeling to have been in it! Listen to this." And he
read out an account of the approach to Romani, where the Seventh Light
Horse had successfully routed the Turks:
"Dawn came with a crimson sky. From a ridge we gazed behind at a grand sight all lit up in pink and grey and khaki, stretching right back past the redoubts of Dueidar, a winding column of New Zealand and
Australian mounted troops.
"We laughed with the exhilaration that disciplined comradeship brings,
then rode towards the boom of guns. ...
"We watered our horses at an oasis and moved off again, whistling and
singing, laughing and joking, the horses pulling at their bits, seemingly
careless of the fierce desert heat. ... All in our shirt sleeves except
the officers, all hardy, eager, fighting men. ..."

"It must be a grand feeling," said Jim wistfully.
"I would say that was written by a very young man. I wonder if he is
still alive."
She had tried to keep the hostility out of her voice, but Jim put the
magazine away and did not refer to the article again.Chapter Thirty

By September of 1916, with stock being depleted not by drought but
by sales at good prices, Cappamerri Station was out of the red. Big
Jim wanted to attend the sales in the south, hoping to pick up some yearlings
and rail them up to Hergott. The droving teams could take advantage
of the unusually good season to take them north along the Birdsville
Track.
Jim volunteered to make the trip for him, since Alix wanted to take the
baby down to Adelaide for the hot summer months, and her parents
wished to see Caro before she grew too much older. He would stay a
couple of months himself, as things were so much better that the station
could afford to employ a bookkeeper and some more station hands,
making the workload less for his father.
Alix had been conscious of her mother-in-law's irritation when Caro
cried or played up at meals; this made Alix over-anxious for her to be
good, and the baby sensed it and played up even more. She had started
to walk, with a determined plodding gait, but every few steps ended in a
sudden thump on to her bottom. Unless she happened to hit her head as
well, on door or table-leg, Caro never cried when she fell over.
She had begun to discover gravity; she threw her drinking-cup on the
floor and watched with interest as it shattered on the stone flags; she
pulled Olive's vases and knick-knacks out of the shelves, laughed when
she pushed a tower of blocks and watched them fall. Jim would patiently
build the tower again, over and over, and Caro never tired of this game,
which gave her a sense of power.
Alix couldn't help being a doting mother. Caro was so beautiful, with
her rosy cheeks and straight, silky fair hair, her large grey eyes with their
wide black pupils and curling lashes, her brows like a fine brush-mark
above them. By temperament she seemed to be good-natured but determined
on her own way; usually with a sunny smile, but occasionally with
rages, when she screamed with frustration and her little face went scarlet
to the roots of her hair.
Jim doted on her too, except when she woke him after a long day's
work. Alix had made a habit of giving her the breast to keep her quiet,
but when she was weaned this had to stop; Alix wasn't going to warm
milk mixtures in the middle of the night. After a while Caro settled down In the new routine and slept through till 6 a.m., when everyone was
awake anyway.
Alix remembered how she had quarrelled with her mother for picking
Caro up from her pram whenever she cried. She had to admit that she
had done a bit of spoiling herself for the sake of peace. Lucy adored the
baby. She would carry "Little Missie" round on her ample hip; Caro
appreciated the comfort after her mother's rather bony frame.
Lucy was the only one who cried when they left. Olive kissed the baby
goodbye with more enthusiasm than she had shown on her arrival.
Back in Adelaide Alix rather enjoyed being fussed over by her mother,
and having a willing baby-sitter at all hours. She and Jim were able to go
out to dinner and to the pictures, a rare treat. They laughed at the
Keystone Cops, and a new comic actor called Charlie Chaplin. But what
Jim liked best was the enormous The Birth of a Nation, a long, vivid film
of the American Civil War. There had never been a film quite like it
before. Australians, deeply involved in the war in Europe, flocked to see
it.
Major MacFarlane was gloomy about the war. The news from France
was devastating. In August and September there were 43,000 Australian
casualties on the Somme, on what was called "the Western Front." The
entire population of Australia was less than five million.
Many were invalided out with gas gangrene or "trench feet" from the
unending filthy mud in the trenches and in no man's land, over which
the contending armies fought back and forth after intense bombardments
that cut up the soil into water-filled craters.
Recruits were needed to replace the missing troops. Everywhere round
the city of Adelaide were large posters with a portrait of Lord Kitchener
pointing accusingly and the words "Britain needs you!"; others shouted,
"think! Are you content to let him fight for you? Won't you do your bit?
join today!"
When they saw a uniformed digger in the street, a hard-bitten soldier
who had been invalided home, Jim stared at him almost enviously. Alix
tried to hurry him past the posters, but Jim would stand rooted in front
of them. Major MacFarlane began dropping hints about how the country
needed "every able-bodied man to fight for the British Empire against the
Hun."
"It's all very well for you," said Alix, furious, as Jim looked discomfited.
"You know there's no danger that you will have to go. And Jim's doing
important work at home, growing beef for the troops."
"There's nothing I'd like better," said Major MacFarlane with dignity,
stroking back his military moustache, "than to be able to have a crack at
the fighting; but I'm too old, alas." Alix thought that he looked rather
splendid in his officer's uniform, with his polished Sam Browne belt and
leather leggings and smart peaked cap.Jim said quietly, "I'd like to have a go. But there's Alix, and the baby . . . and my father carrying on the station on his own. ..."
"Everyone is making sacrifices," said the Major. "The more men
have, the sooner the war will be over." He unfolded the paper and showed
a cartoon covering half the page: a civilian with a guilty expression, sitting! with a little girl on his knee who asked innocently, "Daddy, what did you
do in the Great War?"
Jim purchased fifteen hundred head of cattle at the saleyards north of Adelaide. He arranged to travel with them on the train as far as Hergott Springs, where the drovers would be waiting to drove them up to Cappamerri.
Then he returned to the city at the beginning of December to pick
up another thousand head.
But he did not travel back with them to the north. By December the
Australians had 87,000 casualties, and some battalions were down to '
quarter strength.
In Egypt, the Australian Light Horse under General Henry Chauvel
were faring somewhat better. The winter desert was cold but there was
no mud, and the men were mounted, so that they did hot have fatiguing
route marches between battles. They had routed the Turks and saved the
Suez Canal.
On New Year's Eve, Jim came home and broke the news. He had
joined up. He was to be sent to the Middle East to join the Australian
Light Horse. Because he could ride and shoot, he was accepted gladly at
the recruiting office. He would receive his training in desert warfare after
his arrival in Egypt.
"Congratulations, my boy!" said the Major. "This calls for a celebration.
Some of that French champagne left over from Caro's christening
last year, eh?"
Alix got up and rushed from the room.
"How could you? How could you, Jim?" she wept when he followed
her to their bedroom. She was face-down on the bed, her tears flowing
into the damp pillowcase.
Jim sat beside her and patted her back.
"Dearest, the war can't last much longer. If I missed it, I'd be kicking
myself for the rest of my life. Do you know," he added enthusiastically,
"that the Light Horse is the largest body of mounted troops the modern
world has known? We don't carry swords, like British cavalry, but rifles,
bayonets, and bandoleers."
"Oh, yes?" She noticed that "we." He had begun to identify himself
with the Army already.
"And the fighting's not so bad in the desert. In France a man has every
chance of being killed, but not in Palestine. I promise to come back to
you."
Alix was not reconciled. She picked Caro up and held her against
her breast, rocking back and forth in her grief. Caro began to cry in sympathy.

After
a week, Jim was sent to the Mitcham Light Horse Camp to
commence drilling. The volunteers had to ride round the grounds without
stirrups, arms folded, without touching the reins, then jump a three-foot
hurdle. Nearly every man came through the test.
After a while even Alix was affected by the fervour, the surge of
patriotism that gripped young and old. The Australians were fighting
towards the Hindenburg Line in Europe, and chasing the Turks towards
Gaza. Jim came home in his new uniform. She had to admit to a thrill
of pride as she looked at him wearing the turned-up felt hat with the
bunch of emu feathers which was the badge of the Light Horse. His
riding-trousers and tunic fitted his slim height; his leather leggings were
polished till they gleamed. She saw him off in the troop-ship from the
Outer Harbour with a brave smile, then went home and shut herself in
her room.
He had promised to write, of course, but she did not expect much,
knowing his aversion to putting pen to paper.

The Australian and the combined Anzac mounted troops, known as "the
Desert Column," had fought their way across Egypt and the Sinai
Peninsula through parching deserts where the dead were unearthed again
by the searing winds, or dug up by Bedouin raiders who stole their clothes
and left the naked bodies for the jackals.
The battle of Rafa had been won, fought half in Sinai and half in
Palestine. Jim and the rest of the relief troops knew when they were
passing the battlefield in the dark by the smell of dead men. One of the
returning troops told him that when they entered Palestine, they didn't
think much of the Promised Land: "They ought to give it back to the
bloke they promised it to," was their opinion.
Jim had written home from Egypt, a cheerful note saying that the fiery
desert wind, the khamsin, and the blowing sand made him feel at home.
They were training with Australian horses, stout-hearted "Walers" who
were both strong and game. "There is real affection between each man
and his horse," he wrote. "Often they are only used for transport of the
troops; the men spring off and fight as infantry, with a mounted horse
holder minding every four horses, ready for the men to remount and
make a quick getaway."
At the first battle of Gaza the Australian Light Horsemen had stayed
in their saddles and charged straight into the city, and actually reached
the suburbs, when the message came from the British generals to retire.
Men swore unbelievingly as they "gave the city back to the Turk."The Turkish Army brought up reinforcements, and were soon pouring troops and guns into Gaza.

Our men just can't understand why the Heads made them retire. Two
Brigades were actually in the city [wrote Jim]. It seems that the Turk
is a brave soldier, but is terrified of the bayonets attached to our rifle
barrels. . . . They just surrendered, terrified by the "mad Australians."
Our General, Sir Harry Chauvel, made a strong protest when the Big
Heads ordered him to retire his men; but he was over-ruled. . . . The
Turkish defences now stretch right across Palestine from the sea coast
at Gaza to Beersheba inland.

Jim was sorry he'd missed the Gaza battle. His next letter, which reached
Alix in June, surprised her with its fluency and depth of feeling. Jim
had been taken out of himself, his emotions sharpened, by the heady
excitement of danger and the approach of his first big engagement.

I have your photo in my hand, and as I gaze at our little daughter
looking at me with her darling little face, I think I have been a brute
to leave you for this life and all its danger, but I don't know, I can't
explain, the only thing I can say is that if I hadn't come I wouldn't be
worthy of my name. Dearest, I am about to go into action for the first
time. I must say goodbye to you now, my darling. I trust that after my
return we will live a long and happy life together. . . .Bless you, love,
and my darling little Caro.
Your loving husband,
Jim.

Alix tried to forget that Jim was fighting, perhaps for his life, on the other
side of the world. She had never seen a Turk, but from the photographs
of prisoners of war in the paper, they looked a villainous lot.
There was no forgetting the war. Her mother held teas in aid of the
Red Cross, and if they went out to a concert there would be wartime
songs, "Australia Will Be There," "Pack Up Your Troubles," and "There's
a Long Trail A-Winding."
A sentimental ditty to a heart-rending tune was heard everywhere, and
Alix joined in singing with a lump in her throat:

Keep the home fires burning
For our lads returning,
Though they still are far away
They dream of home.
There's a silver lining
Through the dark clouds shining,
Turn the dark clouds inside out
Till the boys come home!

News from the Western Front dominated the pages of the press. Almost
a million men from both sides died in the mud of Flanders in the third
battle of Ypres. Australian troops spearheaded five of the attacks, with
heavy losses. By comparison the losses in Palestine were slight. Alix began
to hope that Jim would come through the war.
Jim's first engagement had been to back up the Anzac Mounted Division
in a successful raid on the Turkish railway line.

. . . Our 80,000 horses, camels, and mules have churned the plains
into finest dust [he wrote]. It hangs all day in the air, stirred up by the
sea-wind or by a scorcher coming from the other way, from the desert.
We were sorry our brigade was not in the actual blowing-up of the
line, we just guarded the flank and cleared the country of snipers. We
galloped right down on a Turkish outpost fronting us with rifle- and
machine-gun fire. . . . Very rarely, in these mad gallops of ours, does
any good Australian horse go down. When it does happen, well, the
rider is picked up by a mate on another horse. . . .

It was not until a month later that those at home heard the details of the
Light Horsemen's greatest feat. On October 31, the Fourth Light Horse
made the magnificent cavalry attack that took the wells of Beersheba. It
was crucial that Beersheba should fall that day, so that they could get
water for the horses.
General Chauvel had decided, after a day's fighting by the Australians
without dislodging the Turks, to send in the cavalry with bayonets fixed.
The Turkish gunners saw them coming and opened fire with shrapnel
and machine guns, but could not get the range as the horsemen came
on at a hard gallop. As they neared the trenches the rifles opened fire,
but still the horsemen swept on. They leaped the trenches, dismounted,
and turned on the Turks from the rear with rifle and bayonet. The garrison
surrendered. Parties of bewildered Turks in the rear trenches threw down
their arms as another squadron galloped through them and on into the
town, just before the sun set over the wells. Beersheba had fallen.
Jim had been in that mad, exhilarating ride. The German engineers
who built the redoubts and fortresses of Gaza and Beersheba had claimed
that they were impregnable. The Turks never dreamt that mounted troops
would be madmen enough to attempt rushing infantry redoubts protected
by machine guns and artillery. The thunder of a thousand hoofs, the
loud shouts of the mounted men in that last berserk half-mile as they
came on at a frightening speed, paralyzed and terrified the defenders sothat their firing was wild. Within a week the whole Turkish front,
including Gaza, collapsed.
That was at the end of October and the first week in November. No
more letters came from Jim. Alix waited in dread, even going into the
city and studying the casualty lists posted up each day on public buildings.
Then came the cold, official telegram.

MANNING, J., 4TH LIGHT HORSE, WOUNDED 9 NOVEMBER NEAR GAZA,
PALESTINE.

Alix rushed to her room, picked up Caro, who was having her morning
sleep, and cradled her in her arms as she rocked to and fro. She had
feared, had expected this news. They did not say how seriously he was
hurt. . . . Would it mean that he would be coming home? But most
wounded men were invalided out to hospitals in Britain.
When a second official telegram came she would not at first open it.
She knew what it contained. Later came a letter from a man she had
never met. He had been with Jim when he was wounded; now he wrote:

It is with a sad heart that I write to tell you of the death of Jim, who
was my mate. He was wounded about 3 p.m. on 9th November during
an attack on a Turkish outpost about fifteen miles east of Gaza. All
through the day he had fought splendidly, taking all sorts of risks. . . .
In the early afternoon the squadron moved forward and carried a ridge
occupied by the enemy. Jim and his troops were advancing along the
ridge and all firing had practically ceased. I was only a few yards away
when he was hit. He was very cheerful and suffering no pain. I remained
with him till the ambulance took him. We shared a last cigarette.
Now I hear that he died at the Light Horse Field Ambulance Station.
I feel poor Jim's death, and I feel for you. We shared many dangers on
the battlefields. Never again can I have such a mate.
He and I made an arrangement before the battle started, that in the
event of either of us "going under" the other was to fix up his
effects. ... I will see to this, and send them on to you.

His effects . . . thought Alix dully. They would include the photograph
of herself and baby Caro. He would not yet have received the photograph
she had sent with her last letter, of Caro at her second birthday party,
blowing out the candles on the cake.
Now his light was blown out. He would never read that letter. He
would never be coming home.
In the first terrible weeks Alix was upheld by anger. Anger at fate,
which let him be shot when the engagement was almost over. Anger that he had to die, rather than the mate who was close by. She even felt angry with Jim, who had "taken all sorts of risks." She wanted a warm, living
man, not a dead hero.
She was angry with her father and all the recruiting officers, still safe
at home; and the bird-brained women who sent white feathers in the post,
and sang, "We don't want to lose you, But we think you ought to go."
She turned coldly away from her mother's tears and sympathy, from
Major MacFarlane's gruff attempts to justify Jim's death as "a hero of
Empire."
"I will never forgive you," she had told her father in the first wild
paroxysm of her grief. But it was not just her father; it was the whole
system of glorifying war. Would the fighting never end? It was supposed
to be "the war to end all wars," and she hoped that it was true. She had
to write to Jim's parents and tell them that their only remaining son was
dead.
As anger gave place to dull misery, it was Caro's needs that kept her
going, the feeling that she, as a mother, had to take the place of both
parents. And Caro was a part of Jim that was still alive.
When Armistice Day came towards the end of 1918 Alix felt her
bitterness come back. But as the returned men, some still sick from their
wounds, some with terrible disfigurements, came off the troopships-- on stretchers, on crutches, or with the remote dead eyes of the badly
shell-shocked--she volunteered as a Red Cross nurse in a repatriation
hospital. She was able to sleep at home, and Caro at three could be left
with her doting grandmother. Alix began to feel once more a purpose in
life.
There were legless and armless men in the streets; the big, cheerful
"follower" of the MacFarlanes' housemaid Mary came home blinded,
with the empty sockets weeping about his new glass eyes. Mary gave her
notice and married him, to spend all her time nursing him while he
adjusted to his blindness.
Alix wondered how it would have been if Jim had come home disabled
--crippled, unable to ride a horse ever again, perhaps confined to a
wheelchair. How he would have hated it! He would have preferred to die
in battle.
In 1919 nearly all the troops came home, but with them came the
deadly Spanish influenza. It was like a plague that spread over the world,
killing almost as many as the war. By the end of the year, ten thousand
Australians had died of it. Public gatherings were forbidden, and people
wore gauze antiseptic masks in the street.
Alix was terrified that Caro might catch the flu, as children and old
people had little resistance. Worried she might unwittingly bring the
deadly germs home from the hospital, Alix resigned from her job and
prepared to take Caro back home to Cappamerri.
Her mother wept when she saw them off at the station, but she admittedthat the child would be; safer away from infection. Big Jim Manning to say how much they looked forward to her return, and he would
her in Birdsville.
Alix found that Hergott Springs, like the Kitchener buns, had
renamed in the anti-German fervour; for the springs had been discovered
by a German explorer in 1859. The town was now called Marree, an
Aboriginal name.
Otherwise the town looked much the same, as hot and bare-looking as
ever; but there were motor cars parked outside the pub instead of camels, and she found that Wal Crombie's horse-team had been replaced by a Commer truck.
Wal carried rolls of wire netting and lengths of iron sheeting to put under the wheels in the soft sand.
"I've never had to get a horse to pull me out yet," he said. "The
trouble is the iron gets nearly red-hot in the sun, sometimes it's too hot to
handle."
It was a quicker trip, not having to stop to spell the horses and change
over the leaders, but not much more comfortable: the vehicle jumped
like a kangaroo over obstacles, hung frighteningly over sheer drops of
undercut sand-hills, and slithered over clay-pans in a zigzag course.
But the greatest surprise for Alix was the crossing of the Cooper. Across
the Track spread a wide green waterway, not flowing but obviously deep
and semi-permanent. "Yes, the Cooper came down in a great flood," said Wal. "It came down the Thomson and the Barcoo from Queensland.
First time for about fifty years, they say, Lake Eyre is full--or it's got
water in it, anyways."
There was a barge tied up at the bank, and a dinghy. Boats in central
Australia! Alix was bemused. Wal and his new young helper began to
offload the truck on to the barge. On the other side another vehicle was
waiting, and everything had to be loaded up again. Caro had a lovely time
paddling and splashing in the shallow green water under the coolabahs.
"It happened last year," said Wal. "It's certainly made a difference to
the Track. She's been dry ever since, but."
Alix realized with a feeling of guilt that she had not kept in touch with
her in-laws. All her interest had been centred in Jim and their baby.
When the mail-car arrived at Birdsville there was Big Jim waiting, his
red-brown face shaded by a wide felt hat, his checked bushman's shirt
open at the neck, the sleeves rolled up above his brawny arms. He folded
Alix and Caro in a bear-hug. His eyes were wet as he lifted Caro on to
his shoulder and picked up Alix's bag.
After Caro was asleep in the hotel bedroom they talked about Jim, in
a way Alix had never been able to talk to her own parents.
"How is his mother taking it?" she asked.
Big Jim sighed. "She's taken it badly, I'm afraid. I think she realizes now that she was unfair to Jim, all those years after Dan died. Now she
has lost him, she regrets that she didn't appreciate Jim while he was
alive."
"She did send me a note, but it didn't say much."
"No. She's withdrawn almost completely into herself. You know, how
she used to be, but worse. I'm hoping young Caro may help to pull her
out of it."
Alix had wondered how she would be able to bear coming back to
Cappamerri when Jim was not there. But as they followed the sandy and
stony track from Birdsville and she saw that the country was "in good
heart," as they said up here, her spirits rose. Within the boundaries of
Cappamerri they passed mobs of sleek cattle which shied wildly away
from the buggy.
"You haven't gone in for one of these new automobiles, then?" she
had asked when they set off.
"No way. Horses are best, if you ask me. Can't stand these new
contraptions, noisy stinking things they are."
They crossed two long red sand-hills green with bullock-bush, and
flats covered in flowering mulga with its yellow spikes. As the delicate
salmon-red of the homestead sand-hills rose on their left, and the green
blue reach came in sight beyond with its shady coolabahs and whitetrunked
paperbarks, the dusty blacks' camp down by the river, and the
station buildings with their iron roofs glittering under a limitless blue sky;
as she saw all this again, Alix heaved a great sigh, half joy, half sorrow.
She knew she had been right to come back to Cappamerri.
The barking of dogs brought the people streaming up from the camp
--old Johnnie and his lubra, the men she had treated for trachoma, the
children and their mothers, to welcome "Young Missus" and her little
one. Caro waved delightedly from the buggy at the smiling dark faces.
Then they were at the gate of the garden enclosure and old Lucy came
down to take Alix's bags inside.
"You go ahead. I'll just have a word with the head stockman," said Big
Jim.
The only thing worrying Alix was her mother-in-law's attitude. Would
she somehow blame her for Jim's death? And how would she be with
Caro? When Olive was not waiting on the veranda to greet them, Alix's
heart sank. They found her sitting in a cane chair in the dimmest corner
of the living-room. The outer shutters were closed against the heat. She
rose slowly and gave Alix her hand and kissed her cheek; but little Caro,
now an engaging four-year-old, slipped her hand into her grandmother's
and looked up confidingly. In her small world she had not known anyone
tail to respond to her sunny smile.
Olive stooped suddenly and picked up the little girl, who put her arms
round her grandmother's neck and nestled into her shoulder. Olive's faceand the great droughts of 1902 and 1910-1916, the town was a shade
of its former self. There were no great droves any more, except in
unusually good seasons. With grass and saltbush cover uncertain, ant
the woody desert perennials killed by rabbits and travelling stock, there was not enough feed along the famous Track. The school was now run by one teacher with less than a dozen pupils.
Although she had enjoyed station life, and would miss her pony which
she had ridden every day, Caro was looking forward to a real school. She
wanted playmates of her own age. Grandma had always discouraged her!
attempts to fraternize with the black children who came to Alix's clinic. .
She could scarcely remember her other grandparents in the city. But
it was fun to be travelling with Mum through the desert, though terribly
hot.
On the way down the Birdsville Track Alix yarned with Wal Crombie
and his helper, known as the Lyrebird, or simply as Billy the Liar.
Billy was a great teller of tall yarns, and he claimed that he could kill
a snake by breaking its back after cracking it like a stockwhip.
At their first camp, Wal caught a six-foot mulga snake. He handed the
wriggling reptile to Billy, holding it well at arm's length. Billy gave a yell,
swung it round once, and threw it as far away as he could.
"Curses, the bloody thing slipped," he muttered. "It weren't much of
a snake, anyways. Why, there was a king brown I killed up in the Channel
Country; it was eleven foot long if it was an ounce."
He reckoned that the mixture they were serving one Christmas at the
Betoota pub, based on overproof rum and port wine, was "that potent
that after two drops of it a little willy-wagtail come down out of his tree
and wanted to box with an emu."
They didn't dare give the pet emu any, he said, in case it got dangerous.
"Was the emu scared of the willy-wag?" asked Caro.
"My oath! Went for his life. We didn't see 'im again till Boxing Day.
By then Willy was sittin' on a dead bough with his eyes sorta closed.
Musta had a beaut hangover."
As they set off next morning, Wal held forth about the state of the
Channel Country and the sand-hill country in the triangle between
Innamincka, Birdsville, and Marree.
"There's no doubt the country's going back," said Wal, changing gear
and grinding up a small sand-hill. "They've had to close the Strzelecki
Track, it's that bad; and things have silted up something terrible between
here and Marree.
"The old blokes say there wasn't any Cobbler in the old days, there
was water in the Strzelecki and good waterholes all the way. O' course,
there's been a bad drought every ten years.
"It's not just a question of drought, though; there must always've been
drought in this country. But the sand-hills used ter carry a lot more cover in the early days. Overstocking has stripped the perennial saltbush, so it'll
never grow again. Spinifex and cane-grass used ter be thick, and they
stopped the sand from drifting. Today the sand's blowing, and it's silted
up the waterholes that used ter be permanent. Even the needlebush
and mulga's been killed, by cattlemen lopping the boughs for feed in
drought-time, and drovers have been cutting 'em down for firewood for
about forty years. No wonder it's going back. It's gone back a long way
since I first come up here."
"Jim always said his father would ruin the place with overstocking,"
said Alix.
"Yair--Big Jim was always an optimist. But you can't go on flogging
it year after year. In the Channel Country, the grasses and annuals that
come up after a flood don't last long; they dry up and blow away before
the next summer. There's plenty of permanent waterholes along the upper
Diamantina. But the feed isn't coming up like it did, and the topsoil's
blowing away."
"Is it too late for something to be done?"
"Well, what the country needs is a good long spell. But how . . . ?
There's no fences; and if you try to spell one area, the stock'll find their
way to it as long as there's feed on it. The stations need to be fenced, and
subdivided into different paddocks, so they can be rested. But no one can
afford to do it, the values are too low; when you can only run about one
beast to a square mile, you need an awful lot of land." He paused to
negotiate a sand-drift. "Ah well, I won't be around to see it; but I reckon
the sand'll take over eventually, and the homesteads will all be deserted."
Alix gave a shiver. There was something prophetic about his mood.
She wondered if that would be the fate of Cappamerri.

She and Caro, after leaving Marree in the train, had a fairly restful trip
to Adelaide.
At the station they were met, to Alix's surprise, by her mother driving
a new Essex. "Your father doesn't drive any more," she explained. "You'll
find him aged a lot, Alix. Do you remember Grandpa, pet?" she asked,
her arms around Caro as she stooped to her level.
"Yes, he drove us to the mailbox," said Caro.
"No, dear, I mean your other Grandpa--Mummy's father."
Caro looked uncertain.
"She was only four," said Alix.
'Yes!" Frances gave her a reproachful look. Her little mouth with its
Pearly teeth had grown thin, her blue eyes sharp. "Four years you've been
away in the bush. She's grown such a big girl! Grandma hardly knew
you."
I remember you, though," said Caro, and Frances hugged her.
Alix had noticed the grey threads in her mother's dark hair, but shewas unprepared to find her father completely grey. Major MacFarlane
was sixty-five, and looked more than his age. His military bearing, his
upright carriage had sagged, so that he seemed shorter, and his manner
had become rather vague. Since the excitement of the war was over,
when he had felt important and useful, he had become an old man,
querulous and partly deaf. Alix could no longer feel any animosity towards
him over Jim's death. At least Jim would never know the indignity of
growing old.
She enrolled Caro at the local State School for the remainder of the
year, and in the new year of 1924 received her call to Birdsville. Alix
knew she was fortunate to get the appointment, for the Sisters usually
worked in pairs. The ill health of one of them had caused the vacancy
before their two-year term was over. In February Alix and Caro left once
again for the north, in spite of protests from Frances.

A flight of pelicans had arrived from somewhere over the horizon, perhaps
all the way from the distant coast. Caro watched them flying in formation
on their splendid wings, rising and falling with the waves of air. There
would be several slow beats of the wings, and then a glide--but always
in unison, as if one brain informed the whole flock. The majestic birds
circled and came in to land on the Birdsville reach of the Diamantina,
planing down one behind the other. They braked with their wings as they
spread their webbed feet on the surface of the water, sending up a spray
of white foam like a fast-moving boat.
It must be a wonderful feeling to fly, thought nine-year-old Caro.
Sometimes she dreamt she was flying, floating effortlessly over the landscape,
rising and falling over hills and valleys. She had seen an aeroplane:
the little single-engined biplane of Ross and Keith Smith, which came to
Adelaide from Darwin after they'd completed the first flight ever from
England in 1919. Grandma MacFarlane had made a flag for her to wave
at the small humming object as it came over the Adelaide hills from the
direction of Sydney. It looked like a toy, and Caro did not believe that
there were big grown men inside it. Then Mummy took her to the
aerodrome where it was on display, and she touched its fuselage and
walked under the big letters painted below the wing: G.E.A.O.U., which
the papers said stood for "God 'Elp All Of Us." Caro had been four then,
and just learning her capital letters. It was big enough for two men, after
all.

They had quickly settled in at Birdsville, and Caro was now going to the
local school. Caro liked to come down to the waterhole after school. She
loved to see the white-trunked trees reflected in the blue-green water from
the bore. There was another drought beginning and the Diamantina's
bed was once more dry except for the bore overflow. She stopped on her back beside the first cooling pond, where the water came almost
Soiling out of the ground. The pool, about fifteen feet across, looked
pale-green and inviting, but she knew better than to dip her bare foot into
it
One of the boys from school was squatting by the hot-water pond,
poking under the surface with a stick. Billy Flannigan was part-Aboriginal
in spite of his Irish name. His feet, too, were bare. Most of the children
ran about without shoes except in summer, when the sand was hot enough
to burn the feet.
'"Lo, Care-oh," said Billy. The children insisted on calling her
Care-oh, however often she told them her name was Car-o, which her
mother had told her was Italian for "dear." And it was, of course, short
for Caroline.
"Bet you daren't put your hand in it," said Billy, squinting up under
his heavy brows.
"You're damn right!" said Caro. "I wouldn't be that stupid."
Billy grinned up at her with his big white teeth.
"Not if you knew there was a whole shillin' in there?"
"Eh?" Caro came and squatted down beside him. He pointed with the
stick at something round and shiny, glinting under the surface. Ripples
made by the light breeze distorted the image, but there was certainly
something small and silvery on the bottom.
"Can't you get it out with the stick?"
"Na; it keeps slidin'back."
"Here; give us a go." She tried to pull the object towards her up the slope of the pond, but it evaded the end of the stick each time.
"We could use a magnet."
"Magnets don't attract silver, silly."
Since she was a year older and Billy was a boy, Caro felt superior. "I'll
get a flatter stick, and try to dig it out."
"Bags we go halves."
"What? If I get it out, it'll be my shilling."
"I saw it first, but."
"Well. . . I suppose so."
She scouted around and found a flat piece of deal long enough to reach
the bottom. But though the coin moved tantalizingly nearer, it began to
dig into the silt on the bottom. Billy tried with the pointy stick, and
unearthed it again.
After ten minutes of futile dabbing, Caro's forearm ached and the coin
was still under a foot of hot water. She lost her temper and threw the
piece of wood across the pond.
"I don't care!" she shouted. "I will get it!"
And without giving herself time to think, she plunged her hand above the wrist into the near-boiling water, and grasped the object. Her handturned red as a cooked lobster, but the metal lay in her palm. It was only
a silver button, after all.
"You stupid boy!" She turned unreasonably on Billy, blaming him for
the smarting of her hand and wrist, for the disappointing find. "It's all
your fault!" And she threw the button at his feet. She ran home to her
mother.
Alix scolded Caro when she came into the hostel holding the smarting
hand in front of her. "Why did you do such a silly thing?"
"Billy made me," said Caro, biting her bottom lip.
Alix had just given afternoon tea to two patients, so she used the dregs
of the teapot to bathe Caro's hand in tannic acid, and dusted it with
bicarbonate of soda before binding it expertly in a clean gauze bandage.
She remembered how she had scalded her own foot in the same hot pool
when she first visited Birdsville.
Alix tucked in the bandage end and gave Caro's arm a pat.
"There you are. Your hand will be too sore to hold a pen tomorrow,
so you might as well miss school."
"Aw, Mum! I don't want to miss--"
"You will just have to miss one day." She tied a scarf round Caro's
neck for a sling, lifting her long, shining fair plaits out of the way. "You
can help me sort bandages with your good hand."
Alix was happy to be nursing again after eight years of being a
lone parent to Caro. There was no resident doctor in the town,
which was hundreds of miles from the nearest railway. Alix and the
other nurse--Sister Kinross--had to deal with medical emergencies on
their own.
Sister Kinross was a pleasant Scotswoman, an experienced outback
nurse, and a surrogate aunt for Caro. The three of them got on well,
though Alix knew that Janet Kinross missed her nursing companion of
years, now sent south with suspected tuberculosis; just as she herself had
missed Mab after she died.
During that summer there was a heat wave in Birdsville, when the
thermometer stood above 110 degrees nearly every day, and dropped to
100 degrees at night. On the day the temperature reached 120 degrees in
the shade, the school closed down and the whole population of the town
gathered at the big waterhole. One old man had died of the heat, and
had to be buried at night in the burning-hot sand.
The few sparse trees were full of birds; there were budgerigars like a
swarm of bees, their beaks open and gasping; the ground beneath the trees
was carpeted with dead birds. Every building had a solid mass of birds
sitting in its shade.
For the rest of the week the school opened only from 6 to 8 a.m., after
which, the teacher declared, it was too hot to work.
"Aye, and if it's too hot for yon teacher-laddie, it's too hot for us," said Janet Kinross. "Eh, Alix? I vote we take the bairn and go for a picnic by
the water."
"Ooh, yes, Auntie Janet," said Caro. Her little face was scarlet with
the heat, and her long fair plaits were pinned on top of her head for
coolness.
As there were no seriously ill patients in the hostel, each day they
donned their bathing costumes of navy-blue cotton jersey, and with
parasols, towels, and a water-bag they walked down to the river over the
bare burning ground where some stunted grey saltbush still survived here
and there, on the very edge of extinction.
By the waterhole there were green reeds and shady trees, though the
water was far from cool and had to be cleared of dead birds. But without
this oasis on the outskirts of the barren little town, Alix thought, it would
have been unbearable.
Chapter Thirty-two

The older bushmen were nervous of strange women coming to their
country, taking their "brands and descriptions" when they fell ill. They
didn't want females fussing over them, keeping them helpless and probably
not allowing them to smoke.
Harry Hays was a pioneer cattleman of the Channel Country who years
before had opposed the building of the hostel.
"They'd have to put a head-rope on me and skull-drag me into that
place," he'd said when the hostel opened. Now, nearly five years later,
he had fallen from a borehead at Duthie Station and been brought in for
treatment of a fractured femur.
Alix knew he would need to be in traction, but the problem was to
know what weights to use and where to procure them. She was able to
contact a doctor in Quorn by radio for advice. Then she borrowed some
weights from the post office, measured an equivalent weight of stones and
odd pieces of metal into a bucket, and weighed both bucket and contents.
With the help of the local carpenter she built a Hodgen's splint, which
held the leg from below the hip to the knee. Cords and pulleys were fixed
to the sides of the splint to keep the leg elevated. Following the drawings
in her invaluable Modern Methods of Nursing, the carpenter was able to
make a Buck's extension with the whole apparatus attached to a stout cord
run over a pulley wheel fixed to the high end of the bed. Alix raised the
foot of the bed, hung the weighted bucket from the cord, and Harry Hays
was in traction--as helpless as a trussed turkey.
"You girls like to get a man helpless," he growled, submitting with bad
grace to the indignities of the bedpan and the urine bottle. But his hands
were free, and after a while he began to enjoy the home-cooked meals
and dainty afternoon teas. Caro liked to sit by his bed when she came
home from school and listen to his stories of cattle-droves and "rushes."
"I mind the time the cattle rushed, out on the Ranken Plain," he
would begin. "Me night-horse fell, and I was lying right in their path ..."
Caro found that he and her grandpa, Big Jim Manning, had been
mates on the track years before.
When he asked one day for "a piece of wood to whittle," Caro brought
out the pictures of Sopwith Camels and Puss Moths she had copied from
Mr. Ryan's books. She asked him if he could carve her a model aeroplane.
"Well, I'll have a try. I saw one of those buggers in Longreach once.
I'm walking all round it when the pilot asks, 'Do you like the look of it?'
"'Like the look of it!' I says. 'How the hell would I know? I've never
seen one of the buggers before.' Then he asks if I'd like to go up for a
spin, three guineas for a joyride."
"And did you?" asked Caro. "Did you go up?"
"Go up? What, and have the bugger fall to pieces? Not for a hundred
quid I wouldn't. She was just like a bloody big hawk with engines. 'So
long, mate!' I says. 'I'm going for a beer.'"
He soon had the fuselage carved from a solid piece of deal, the cockpit
hollowed out, and a single wooden propeller attached to the front. Wings
proved more difficult, but Alix came up with an old thin silk scarf which
he glued over a plywood frame with struts of match-sticks to hold the
double wings apart, and wires made from cotton.
Caro was thrilled. With the other children she had followed the
development of flight and knew famous fliers, such as Kingsford-Smith.
"Smithy" was a hero. She had a newspaper picture of him pinned on the
wall above her bed.
Far to the north, half-way between the east coast and the Northern
Territory border, the aeroplane was already established. Young pilots
who had returned from the Great War were eager to keep on flying.
Kingsford-Smith joined a Western Australian company, and Hudson
Fysh helped establish Qantas--the Queensland and Northern Territory
Aerial Service--at Longreach in central Queensland. Backed by wealthy
graziers, an air service was begun that would one day send huge passenger
jets around the world. In 1922 they carried the first airmail from Charleville
to Winton.
Pilots lived by giving demonstrations of stunting, and offering joy-flights
in country towns in their little biplanes, saving their money to start small
commercial operations. They had to overcome the prejudice of people
who were suspicious of aeroplanes and reluctant to trust their lives to
such flimsy contraptions.
Though John Flynn's dream of a "flying doctor" was still unrealized,
suitable planes were now available and all he needed was a viable form
of radio communication from isolated stations to a flying doctor base in
some central position.
He had already started building his brain-child, the air-cooled hospital
at Alice Springs in what was known as central Australia.
Soon after Alix settled at Birdsville, John Flynn came through on one
of his "padre patrols" of the inland stations. He was welcome among the station people, for he did not preach, but would sit on a stockyard rail to yarn (though always wearing his dark suit-trousers and a dark waistcoat with gold watch-chain over his shirt). He would conduct a funeral or a wedding, listen to problems, and mend any clocks or watches that had
stopped, for clocks were a passion with him. And everywhere he went he
spoke of the need for the Alice Springs hospital, and for a mantle of safety
over the outback that could be provided only by a flying doctor.
Alix had not seen him since he conducted the burial service for Mab
at Marree ten years before. He looked older, if anything a little thinner,
and he was wearing glasses. As usual he talked far into the night, telling
Alix of his unique design for the Alice Springs building, on which he
had an expert stone mason working.
"It will have a sort of in-built air-cooling system," he said. "Here-- where's a sheet of paper--I'll sketch it for you roughly. The air comes in
below here, through two ducts with damp cloths hanging across them, to
the cellar, then it circulates through the building."
He had brought an open Dodge tourer on the trip. It was loaded down
with spare tyres, tube-mending gear, rolls of wire netting and sheets of
iron for getting through the sand-hills and across the wide sandy beds of
the Finke and the Alberga. He was travelling with a young wireless
amateur from Sydney, who was making an experimental tour of the back
country to test the possibility of a portable wireless.
"It has to work," said John Flynn as he took a cup of tea on the hostel
veranda and enjoyed a piece of Sister Kinross' Dundee cake. He explained
that they could set an electric generator on the running-board of the car,
jack up the back wheel, and run the engine to drive the generator by a
drive belt to get power for broadcasting.
"We've been experimenting with messages in Morse code from the
most isolated places, just setting up the equipment in the desert. We'll
try again from the Birdsville Track on the way down to Marree, and then
between Oodnadatta and Alice Springs on our way north again. We keep
hopefully sending messages that no one may ever hear."
Months later, Alix read in a copy of The Inlander, the A.I.M. journal,
that a message had actually been picked up three hundred miles away
across the Simpson Desert, by an amateur radio buff at Oodnadatta. At
last the dumb inland had a voice, the lonely outposts far from telegraph
lines or railways.
Flynn had seen the desperate need for this means of communication
--for what use was a flying doctor who had no way of knowing where he
was needed?
Some months after Flynn had departed, this was demonstrated in a
tragic manner at the Birdsville hostel.
Ironically, it was the son of the manager of Clifton Hills, who had
been very sceptical of the wireless experiments, who badly needed assistance.
Billy Williams had taken a somersault with his horse, which then
rolled on him, at a station nearly a hundred miles south of Birdsville.
Jimmy Naylor, the part-Aboriginal stockboy mustering with him, left
Billy alone in the waste of sand with his water-bag beside him and a supply of damper and corned beef in the tucker-box. He rode into Clifton
Hills, but Mr. Williams was away. Jimmy took a change of horses and
set off up the track for Birdsville, where he arrived two days later.
"He's broken somepin and it's bad," he said, rolling exhausted off
his horse at the hostel door. "I never tried t'move 'im case I made 'im
worse."
Sister Kinross was attending an obstetric case, so it was Alix who packed
her first-aid kit, morphia and splints, and set off down the track with
Constable Wills in his uncomfortable Ford T Utility. They had rigged a
stretcher over the back tray with a canopy over it.
They found the injured man lying where he had been left. Big meat
ants had come swarming after the beef, and he'd been forced to throw it
as far away as possible.
"I couldn't help thinking how they'd make a meal of me, if you didn't
turn up," he said wryly.
"I'm afraid you have a broken pelvis," said Alix after a careful examination.
"I'll give you a sedative and we'll get you into the car; you mustn't
attempt to stand. Let's hope the spine is all right."
They left before dawn the next morning and were back at Birdsville by
that night. He was in a state of shock, so that his eyes were unnaturally
bright and he was unable to lie still, though firmly kept in a prone position
by Alix. He kept talking about the things that had gone through his mind
as he lay there for three days unable to move, in the vast loneliness of
the sand-hill country.
"One thing I've decided," he said. "That John Flynn fellow has the
right idea; if we'd had wireless at Clifton Hills, you'd have got the message
two days earlier."
"And if there'd been a flying doctor at Cloncurry, as Flynn is planning,
you could have been flown back for expert care by now."
"I'm grateful to have your care," said Billy Williams.
She did not tell him what she feared, that there was some internal
bleeding, which could turn septic and dangerous. After a few days
the patient became delirious, and though she sponged him to get his
temperature down, the outside temperature was 110 degrees in the shade, and even the water from the water-bag was not really cold.
His pulse was rapid and irregular, and his breath shallow and sighing. Alix consulted with Janet Kinross, who could suggest only pillows under the patient's knees to make him more comfortable, and cold compresses over the injury. She put her hand over Alix's and gave a slight shake of the head. The prognosis was not good. "Och, the poor wee laddie!" she sighed.
At 4 a.m. the next day, as Alix got up to check her patient's condition, he heard him gasping and fighting for breath. Raising the lamp at his .bedside she saw that he was blue about the lips."Bill! Billy!" She took his wrist in her hand and felt only a faint flutter
of a pulse.
"Sister . . . I'm a goner," he sighed, and became unconscious. It was
a final collapse.
He had been young and strong; there was no doubt that if there had
been an aerial ambulance and he could have been transported quickly to
hospital, he would have survived. But the hostel was not equipped for
either blood transfusions or surgery. This was the battle John Flynn was
fighting for the people in the far-out places.
Charley Williams, the boy's father, had been away at an outstation on
the huge property when the accident happened. He wrote to thank Sister
Manning for her help, and enclosed a cheque for £500 for John Flynn
and his Inland Mission.

In the years they had been in Birdsville, Caro had mothered a baby kid,
feeding it with dissolved powdered milk from a baby's bottle.
Unfortunately he had grown into a large, aggressive billy-goat, full of
strength and cunning. Alix was wary of him, but visitors were his special
target. When the postmaster's wife came over with a gift of a baked
pudding in a bowl for the Sisters, Billy waited till she had her back to
him and then charged, head down. With a hefty butt he knocked Mrs.
Harris over in the dust, the pudding bowl went flying out of her hand
and landed some distance away, and the pudding sailed on to the veranda.
Mrs. Harris, though knocked nearly breathless, rescued the bowl and
aimed it at Billy, who was about to sample the pudding. It hit him on
the horns.
He bounded away, while the postmaster's wife shrieked after him, "You
blasted goat! I'll kill you if I get my hands on you! My lovely golden
pudding ..."
Fortunately the veranda was not too dusty, so she scraped the broken
pudding back into the bowl and carried it through to the kitchen, where
it was Alix's turn to be cook.
"Oh, lovely! A pudding for dessert!" said Alix.
"'Fraid it's a bit broken. I had a bit of a go-in with that goat of Caro's.
But it should taste all right." She poked at the pieces doubtfully and
picked out a bit of dry straw.
"It'll be fine. Caro's favourite!"
"You can tell her it's the last one she'll get from me, unless she ties up
that goat or gets rid of it."
"Oh dear! Did he butt you?"
"My oath he did."
When Caro came home from school Alix told her that Billy would
have to go. He was too big and strong, and he might end up hurting
someone, perhaps an old, infirm person coming in for treatment.
Caro stuck out her pink bottom lip. "Billy's my pet!"
"I know, dear, but he's getting too much of a menace."
"But--"
"Do you want some golden pudding for dessert?"
"Ooh, yum!"
"Well, Mrs. Harris brought it over, and Billy nearly got the lot. She
said she'll never bring another one till that goat goes."
"Well ..."
"We'll give him to Billyjim's lubra, who can put him with her milking
herd. It's time Billy had a nanny of his own and some little kids. He's grown up now."
"All right," said Caro.
She tossed a shining plait back over her shoulder and began to run
along the veranda, her arms outspread like wings.
"Mummy, I'm a pelican. Flap, flap, flap, glide. Flap, flap, flap,
gli-i-ide. I wish I could truly fly like a bird."
Chapter Thirty-three

In November 1926, John Flynn and Alf Traeger, the Adelaide inventor
who had been working on a portable wireless, made the first transmission
of a telegram by field radio in Australia. Traeger had invented a light
transceiver, which could both send and receive. One of their messages
was picked up in Adelaide, a thousand miles away. But the equipment
was still too heavy and complicated.
Traeger, a lean, keen, eager young man who was fascinated with
wireless, thought hard about the problem. What he wanted was a simple,
hand-operated electric generator. But turning by hand while sending
Morse was too hard. So he put bicycle pedals on a small manual
bench-grinder and screwed it to the floor, where it could be operated by
someone sitting in a chair and pedalling while transmitting.
It was a unique invention, the first pedal-wireless in the world. The
set would transmit, under good conditions, up to three hundred miles.
It had taken him two years to perfect. But there was no voice transmission;
the whole of the outback would have to learn Morse code.
In isolated Birdsville, though it had been gazetted a "town" for about
sixty years, they had never had telephone or radio communication.
Messages brought by a blackfellow on a piece of folded paper in a cleft
stick, or the fortnightly mail from Marree or Windorah, were their only
contact with the outside world. Alf Traeger arrived at the hostel with one
of his little pedal-radios, and it took a fortnight to install it and teach the
Sisters Morse and a running knowledge of radio science and upkeep.
The whole set, with its two-valve receiver and one-valve transmitter,
only cost 32 pounds penceBut to the residents of Birdsville, and of the far-out stations
with transceiver sets, it was worth its weight in gold.
"I expect I'll grow old and grey, still travelling about the country,
installing and servicing sets and teaching Morse," said young Alf Traeger
ruefully. "But John Flynn is such an enthusiast, and so utterly determined,
that you just have to go along with him."
"I always knew he'd do it in the end," said Alix.
Traeger said, "I wanted him to wait until I devised some method of
voice transmission. I mean, imagine trying to send symptoms and receive
instructions from the doctor three hundred miles away, all in Morse."
"Aye!" said Sister Kinross, who had been pedalling and trying to transmit, without success. "I canna work my feet at the same time as my
hands; they willna agree."
"No, Morse won't do, though it's better than nothing. I'll think of
something."
When he went back to his workshop in Adelaide he spent some months
on the problem, and came up with another invention: a Morse typewriter.
It was incorporated in the pedal-wireless--and Alf Traeger and John
Flynn had to travel all over central Australia again to add this refinement.
All the operator had to do was press down a letter on the keyboard, not
forgetting to pedal, and an automatic disc caused the transmitter to flash
out the Morse signal for that letter.
More and more stations were added to the network, until there were
thirty, with technical improvements that gave a range of six hundred
miles.
Cappamerri was one of the stations next to be equipped with a pedal
wireless, and Alix found its call-sign and pedalled a message to her
father-in-law.
"Lovely to hear from you," came back the message in reply. "Drought
bad here. Stock very low. Am just holding on. If rivers don't come down
this year will be finished."
What could she say to comfort him? Alix typed, "Sorry to hear bad
news. Caro sends her love." And Caro typed, while her mother pedalled,
"Dear Granpa how are you I am well," and Alix signed off, for there
could be urgent medical messages waiting to come in. Janet Kinross had
mastered the machine at last, but she preferred to let Alix do the
transmitting.
Sister Kinross wanted to return to Melbourne when their term of office,
already extended, was over in December. Alix offered to stay on, and a
relieving nurse was sent up from Melbourne by way of Broken Hill,
Tibooburra, Arrabury Station, and Betoota--a vast circle through some
of the most inhospitable country in the continent.
She arrived in an exhausted and dehydrated state with the mailman
from Betoota; Alix had to nurse her for the first week.
"I didn't know it would be like this!" she wailed. "I don't think I can
stand it. I knew it was hot and dry, but the air is like a furnace blast, it
seems to dry out the inside of my lungs and I can't breathe--"
"You'll be all right when you get acclimatized, Sister Bowen," said
Alix soothingly. "The nights can be quite cold, even frosty, at Birdsville. But that's in the winter, July and August. You've come in time for the
very hottest months."
Sister Bowen seemed very young to Alix. It was her first appointment
since her training; she was in her early twenties. Alix, who was thirty-six, felt old and wise beside her. She did not spend much time looking in the
minor, but she knew there were as yet no grey threads among herpale-brown hair; though it had perhaps lost some of its shine, it was curly
and abundant as ever. She dallied with the idea of having it bobbed when
she went down to Adelaide. Because she had the sort of skin that freckles
rather than tans, she had always worn hats and veils in the worst of the
outback sun. But her face was lined with fine wrinkles, especially about
the eyes and mouth.
Caro, on the other hand, had her father's smooth golden-brown tan,
contrasting with her fair hair, which bleached lighter under the inland
sun. The top layer was a pale gold, over straw-colour and deeper tones,
almost brown, so that it was particoloured rather than just blonde. The
fine strands were dead straight, except when the two long plaits in which
she wore it were undone, showing a pattern of waves where it had been
braided.
Caro studied the prostrate Nurse Bowen.
"Why don't you come down to the waterhole for a swim, Sister?" she
asked. "That's the best thing in hot weather."
"Waterhole? I thought it was just dust and gibbers and saltbush round
here," said Sister Bowen in a faint voice.
"No, there's a beaut permanent waterhole in the bed of the Diamantina
--kept going by the bore overflow. Want to come?"
"I'm afraid I'm too weak to do anything at present. Perhaps later . . .
tomorrow."
With some slightly cooler weather, Sister Bowen rallied and took her
share of the duties. She also managed to walk down to the Diamantina
with Caro, borrowing Alix's swimming costume, for she had not dreamt
of swimming in the arid centre.
"But you said it was just a waterhole!" she said, stopping short and
staring at the long sheet of blue-green water with its white-boled paperbarks
and green reeds, crimson floating duckweed and far bank of red sand.
"Why, it's a lagoon--it's beautiful!"
"That's what we call a waterhole up here. On the station, at Cappamerri,
the homestead waterhole is about twelve miles long, with a
sandbank in the middle dividing it into two. And that's in drought time."
"Well!" Exclaiming at the green grass underfoot, Sister Bowen made
her way to the shallows and dipped a toe in. The water was warm, of
course, after the prolonged heat wave of the past two weeks, but as the
dust washed from her ankles she realized that it was also liquid and
refreshing. A flock of quarrions, small crested parrots with pale delicate
colouring of grey-brown and yellow, decorated one of the dead trees,
uttering their melodious rolling calls: "Quarrion, quarrion." Five pelicans,
quite unalarmed by the arrival of human beings, continued to fish
in convoy in the deeper water. They were as graceful afloat as in the air,
sailing like stately galleons above the invisible thrust of their large webbed
feet.
Flynn of the inland came through Birdsville again with Alf Traeger,
very satisfied with his design for Adelaide House at the Alice, which was
now the most comfortable of all the A.I.M. hostels, though one of the
most remote.
"Not that it's as hot there on an average as Birdsville; it's two thousand
feet above sea-level, and can be cold in winter," he said. "Fewer dust
storms, too. The Macdonnell Ranges are like a great rocky wall lying
across the land from west to east. It's beautiful country up there. The real
centre of Australia."
"I've always wanted to go to Alice Springs," said Alix. "Perhaps if I
applied for the next vacancy? There's nothing to keep me here once Caro
finishes her primary schooling."
"They often need a relieving Sister at the Alice," said Flynn. "The
fettlers working on the railway bring a lot of extra patients. The train-line
should reach there by 1929."
Because there were only eight children in the school, the bright ones
were able to go at their own pace. Caro, just turned twelve, passed her
Qualifying Certificate along with the one fourteen-year-old, a boy.
"You know, you should really go to secondary school in Adelaide,"
said her mother. "If I go to Alice Springs, there will be correspondence
lessons, but they can't take you much further. Wouldn't you like to do
some science subjects, chemistry and botany, physiology--"
"And aerodynamics."
Alix blinked. "What's that?"
"It's part of physics--the study of bodies moving against the resistance
of air. Mr. Ryan is interested in aeroplanes and what makes them fly
although they're heavier than air. He says that one day people will travel
from England to Australia, and all round the world, in big passenger
planes."
"But they'd have to weigh tons!"
"Yes, it's all a matter of power-weight ratio and the right design of the
fuselage and wings, he says."
"Fuselage! Power-weight ratio! Whatever next will you come out with?"
"Mr. Ryan has lots of books on flying; he lets me look at them after
school, but he won't let me bring them home because he says he couldn't
replace them."
"I don't suppose he could, up here. But when you go to school in
Adelaide there'll be plenty of reference books. I'd like to spend Christmas
at home this year."
"Could we go to Cappamerri first?"
"I don't think so, dear. We'll see."
Chapter Thirty-four

Frances had written that Major MacFarlane was failing in health, and!
wanted to see his daughter and granddaughter, so they would leave for Adelaide as soon as the relieving Sister arrived and had been shown the ropes.
Before they left, Big Jim came down from Cappamerri with a truckload
of hides for Marree, with his head stockman, Milton, driving the truck.
By the time they had been railed to Adelaide, the freight would not leave
much profit, but the beasts had been too weak to walk the distance and
had to be slaughtered anyway. He was, he said, "cutting his losses," but he doubted if he would ever be able to stock up again in any quantity.
He told Alix that his wife, Olive, had died of cancer in Brisbane.
"I'm sorry! I didn't know ..."
"It's all right. We haven't even kept in touch by letter for years. My
daughter writes occasionally."
Alix felt a twinge of pity for her unhappy mother-in-law.
"So you've bought a truck after all," she said, looking from the hostel
veranda to the vehicle parked outside the hotel, piled high with skins.
"Yes--have to move with the times, I suppose. Still prefer horses
myself, but when there's no feed, motor vehicles come in handy. And
they don't eat petrol when they're not working. Even the mail comes
from Windorah by motor-car now."
"Next thing it'll be by aeroplane."
"Whatever next! I've never seen one of those contraptions, except in
pictures."
"Come in and see my model aeroplane, Grandpa," said Caro, tugging
at his hand.
"Guess who made it," said Alix. "Your old mate Harry Hays from
Duthie."
"Old Harry, eh? Fat lot he would know about aeroplanes. Horses were
more in his line."
"Yes; he told us he was nearly killed when his night-horse fell during
a rush at--at--where was it?"
"The Ranken Plain. Yes, that's one of his favourite yarns."

Alix could not get home for Christmas; it was February before they arrived
back in Adelaide. She was shocked to see her father so weak and breathless.
He'd had one heart attack, and had to take things very quietly. He'd even
had to give up lawn bowls, his only exercise. Frances belonged to a
croquet club and played in the parklands once a week.
Caro did not find her "other grandpa" as entertaining as Grandpa
Manning. He could walk only very slowly in the garden, and when she
asked him if he could make her another model aeroplane, he said he was
no good at carving things. Instead he sent Frances in to the shops to buy
her a model aeroplane, which gave her immense pleasure.
In Adelaide, living at home with her mother and her bridge parties,
Alix found the time dragging. Frances dropped many hints that after more
than ten years as a widow, Alix should be thinking about marrying
again.
"You're still young enough to start another family. Don't you think
Caro should have a brother or sister?"
Alix tried to explain that nursing and her career were still important to
her and she did not intend to tie herself down. She was only marking
time before taking up another position with the A.I.M., somewhere in
the outback.
In May 1928 the Inlander announced the opening of the first Flying
Doctor base at Cloncurry in western Queensland. A small singleengined
DH50 Moth was on lease from Qantas, who also lent a pilot, and the
Commonwealth Government promised a subsidy for every mile flown.
"I knew the service would come," John Flynn had said. "My faith in
it never wavered."
The Cloncurry base could cover eventually a huge area from the Gulf
of Carpentaria to well over the South Australian border. The town had
an airfield and hangar and a public hospital with a resident medical
officer, apart from the Flying Doctor.
The same issue contained the news that one of the Sisters at Alice
Springs had to go on sick leave for an indefinite time, and a single nurse
was needed to take over till she returned. Alix sent off her application.
With her qualifications she expected no trouble in getting the position.
When the reply came, asking her to proceed to the Alice in the
following autumn, she told her mother rather diffidently, feeling she
might be expected to stay and help look after Caro. But Frances seemed
pleased, though she and Alix had been getting on better of late.
In Adelaide Caro missed the swimming-hole--for they were ten miles
from the sea--just as she had missed her pony when they first left the
station. In Birdsville there were few horses in town except during the
Picnic Races once a year, when riders came in from all the stations
round. There was not enough feed for them in most seasons, and the
cost of transporting fodder was too high.
Alix took Caro for an interview with the headmistress of a girls' school
in the farther foothills, at Brown Hill Creek. The grounds were spacious;it turned out that they included a stable so that day-girls could ride to
school.
Caro hated the thought of boarding-school. Her grandmother backed
her in asking that she should live at home with her grandparents when
Alix went back to the bush. Caro begged for a horse so that she could
ride to school; there was a large vacant paddock just across the road from
Grandma's where a horse could be kept on agistment during the week.
Alix objected that she could not afford to buy and feed a horse. But
her father said he would be happy to get a pony for Caro so that she could
ride to school every day, and save boarding fees. It was three against one,
and Alix gave in.
Major MacFarlane did not believe in half-measures. He brought for
Caro a pedigreed white Arab mare, with a beautiful head and flowing
silver tail. So it was that Caro appeared to her less fortunate schoolmates,
all of whom without exception were horse-mad, to be a kind of princess,
traditionally blonde and mounted on a milk-white steed. And Caro did
not stint on her descriptions of Grandfather Manning's cattle-station and
the size of the homestead at Cappamerri, which began to sound like a
palace.

Alix said goodbye to her father at home, before Frances drove with her
to the station.
"Well, my girl," he said gruffly. "I probably won't be here next time
you come back--"
"Don't say that, Father!"
"It's true, though. I could pop off any time, doctor tells me. Not that
I care much, now I'm not fit for anything, not even bowls." He brushed
his white moustache back with the old military gesture, and straightened
his shoulders. "Well, goodbye, dear."
He hugged her tightly, and she kissed his slack old man's cheek and
brushed away a tear as she turned to get into the car.
While she had been home Alix had learned to drive the car, and got
her driving-licence. Now she slid behind the wheel, with her mother in
the passenger seat. The hood of the convertible was down, and they both
wore close-fitting hats that would not blow off. "Did he tell you he hasn't
got long?" asked Frances, seeing that Alix was upset. "It has done him
good, having you home, and young Caro will keep us both young. That's
why I'm so glad she's going to live with us. It will stop me being so lonely
when . . . when ..."
Alix pressed her hand. She put the car into gear, starting off smoothly
in bottom and then changing up without any grating of teeth.
As it was a schoolday, she had said goodbye to Caro in the morning.
With all her new interests, she did not seem to feel the parting as much
as her mother. Alix hated to leave her behind, but she wanted Caro to have two or three years' secondary education before she decided what she
wanted to do with her life.
"I expect I might do nursing, like you," Caro had said, but at thirteen
she could not be sure.

The trip to Alice Springs, which she had dreamt about for so long, did
not disappoint Alix. After leaving Oodnadatta the train toiled north over
the wide sandy beds of dry rivers, then the orange Depot sand-hills and
the empty Finke River. Beyond rose a pale-blue wave: the Ooraminna
Range, and then a flat peneplain with low tent-hills on the horizon;
wandering wild camels and donkeys along the track, and finally the
splendid, bare Macdonnells, which seemed to lie right across their route.
Then two rocky masses moved apart like shifting stage scenery, and an
opening appeared in the mountain wall--and as they came through
Heavitree Gap, there quite suddenly was the town, with its few white
roofs nestling beneath the green gum-trees that lined the Todd River.
Though the river was dry, the trees on its banks and growing right in the
channel were flourishing. Others grew in the middle of the few streets,
giving the whole town a pleasant park-like air. The sky that arched above
was a pure pale blue, darkening to almost purple above the ranges.
Here she was, thought Alix, in the most central town in the heart of
Australia. The springs themselves and the telegraph station were farther
north. The town was still officially named Stuart, and had less than a
hundred residents.
There was one hotel, the Stuart Arms, a police station, two stores,
and the imposing stone building of Adelaide House. After Marree and
Oodnadatta the place looked cool and inviting. With nearly every house
having a fresh-water well, good vegetable gardens abounded, and even a
few flowers. There was also a new railway station. Alix and the final
extension of the railway from Oodnadatta had arrived in Alice Springs
together.
The lone Sister was being helped by a retired A.I.M. nurse married to
the local police constable. Hearing this, Alix scarcely dared ask if it was
a Mrs. McGuinnes. But she found she did not know the policeman.
The pedal wireless now linked women all over the outback in gossip
and comradeship for a time each morning, known unflatteringly as the
"galah session." Alix found that Jack and his wife were at Innamincka in
South Australia; she had a brief chat with the former Sister Henley from
Marree. Jack was out on patrol, she said. The Cooper had long ceased to
run, and even the big waterhole was almost dry.
Because of the springs, because of the fresh water lying ready to be
tapped just under the sand, Alice Springs was a true oasis in the red,
burning heart of the continent. There was sweet water lying in pools in
the ranges at places like Emily Gap, which held the blue sky, red andorange rocks, and some enigmatic Aboriginal ochre designs in calm
reflection.
Then there was the blue in the atmosphere. This was something
intangible, yet all-pervading. It veiled the distances in shimmering colour,
so that red hills became mauve or softest blue; the closer rocks turned
more purple than red and the shadows in their clefts a deep and vibrant
cobalt. Against them the trunks of the ghost-gums, as pure and pale as if
they had been whitewashed, stood out in clear contrast.

There was no Aboriginal Ward, she noticed; the cool, comfortable
building of Adelaide House was for whites only.
"I expected to see more natives around the town," she said to Sister
Plomer on her second day.
"A lot of them, the Arunta people, are out at Hermannsburg, the
Lutheran mission--about eighty miles away. Those who still stay round
the Alice live outside the Gap, to the south where the Police Constable
has his house."
"What about a clinic for the children?"
"We don't have a regular clinic, but they are brought in if they're really
ill. They don't like going into hospital. We use the clubroom in the
grounds for a Black Ward when necessary."
Alix liked to walk out, when she was not on duty, to watch the dawn
on Mount Gillen, the nearest peak of the Macdonnells. It was painted
with the marvellous haze of blue, through which the red rock burned as
the sun picked up the peak and outlined the folded strata sloping steeply
down to the plateau beneath. The range rose straight out of the flat,
without any intervening foothills.
An old black man was ambling along in the sand, dressed in shapeless
cast-offs of shirt and trousers, his feet bare, his chin bearded. Alix caught
up with him. "Good-day," she said, the universal greeting of the bush.
"How y' going?"
"Orright." He glanced at her once from his bloodshot dark eyes, then
kept his eyes before his feet. His voice was low, almost a whisper. What
have we done to these people? she thought. Was it the dazzling technology
of the white man, was it the guns, the vehicles, their sheer numbers?
Yet whites were not numerous in the far inland. This man and most
other members of his race seemed to be overwhelmed, subdued, unable
to assert themselves or even to speak up, to look "the bosses" in the eye.
They were--yes, the word was cowed. Once their land, their ancient
waterholes, had been taken from them, it was almost as if they had ceased
to exist.
There was a good reason why the natives of the centre should be quiet
and inoffensive: fear. The older ones would remember, as children, seeing
their parents shot down like kangaroos for trying to protect their precious waterholes and native wells, their land to which they "belonged" in a
mystical relationship with every rock, with every hill and gully.
And not only the older ones; only last year, in 1928, the murder of
Fred Brook at Brooks' Soak, 150 miles to the north-west near Coniston
Station, had led to much ill-feeling, for his body had been dismembered.
A punitive party under Constable Murray had set out from Alice Springs,
and rumours of wholesale slaughter filtered back to the cities on the
distant coast.

"What-name that feller?" asked Alix in a friendly voice, indicating the
sharp edge of Mount Gillen outlined against the pale morning sky.
"That one belong Dingo-dreaming," murmured the old man. "Long
time ago, Dingo-men come along t' ranges, come out of t' desert, come
along ere; and this feller, big Old-Man of Dingo tribe, he stop 'ere an'
look aroun', he sniff aroun'. Him turn to rock. You see 'im sniff the air,
that dingo snout up there? Him still sit-down; that place belong him."
"Thank you," said Alix with feeling. Of course! Now she looked at it,
the peak of the mount was a dingo snout, the head of a giant dog who
ranged the country in the dream-time. And to the old man, though all
else was changed and his tribal life was no more, the Dingo ancestor was
still real and present.Chapter Thirty-five

For the long Christmas holidays Alix had hoped Caro would come up in
the train, travelling in the care of the guard, but a diphtheria epidemic
broke out in the Alice, and Alix sent a wire by way of the Overland
Telegraph telling Caro not to come. One of the retired, married Sisters
living in the town came to live in, so there would not have been room
for her anyway. Already the extra nurse occupied a bed on the screened
veranda. Watching their patients night and day, and visiting others at
their homes, the small band of nurses became exhausted.
One night Sister Plomer performed an emergency tracheotomy on a
little girl choking to death from the false membrane growing across her
throat. Intubation was performed at once so that the child could breathe
through the tube, but she had to be watched continuously. She gradually
recovered. But three others had died.
"And we might have saved them all if we'd been called in earlier," said
Sister Plomer crossly.
She was plump and good-natured, but lack of sleep and strain were
beginning to tell on her.

Alix's skill and practice in stitching wounds was called on when a young
man, driving a rusty old truck, turned it over in a washaway and badly
gashed his foot.
"He should have a shot of tetanus antitoxin," said Alix, consulting the
senior Sister.
"We are very low in antitoxin," said Sister Plomer. "Are you sure it's
necessary? The wound was a clean one, wasn't it?"
"Yes, but road-dirt--he's a definite risk. I'd like to give him as much
as we've got."
The wound was already healing when Tom Greaves, the young truck
driver, came in complaining of "tight" gums and a stiff neck. Alix admitted
him at once. "We must get some more antitoxin," she said. "It must be
a bad infection; the small dose hasn't stopped the symptoms beginning."
She pedalled a message to the Flying Doctor base at Cloncurry. "Please
bring anti-tetanus vaccine urgent. Alice Springs Hostel."
A message came back that the Flying Doctor was out on a call over the
Territory border.
He would get in touch as soon as he returned. Their own supply was
low, but they'd get some more flown up from Brisbane.
"Damn!" said Alix, and went back to her patient. The dreadful tetanic
cramps were beginning; teeth clenched, back arched, he fought through
them with sweating brow and emerged from each attack exhausted.
"I want absolute quiet in the hospital," said Alix. "Not even a dropped
saucepan, and no noisy feet in the corridors. The slightest sound can
send him into a convulsion."
Everyone tiptoed about the two wards. Young Tom was the only patient
in Men's, fortunately, and on the second day came a wire from Cloncurry:
the doctor would fly down tomorrow with the antitoxin, arriving probably
after sunset.
All was quiet when the young man's boss, the owner of the truck,
arrived at the hospital demanding to see the patient.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Roberts, no one can see him. He needs absolute rest
and quiet."
"Rubbish! I only want to see if he's all right, wants me to bring anything--"
He
pushed past Sister Plomer and arrived at the door to the Men's
Ward. Here Sister Alix stood on guard; she had heard the argument and
was furious at the disturbance.
"Get back!" she said, barring the entrance with an arm across the
opening.
"Out of my way!" said the man rudely. Alix whipped the other arm
from behind her back. She brandished a syringe filled with liquid.
"Look out! Unless you want an injection that will make you very sick,"
she said quietly. "Now kindly get out--quickly!"
"And if you attempt to come back I will fetch Constable Rycroft to deal
with you," said Sister Plomer behind him.
He went, muttering, but a few days later the Secretary of the Hospital
Committee came in to report that Roberts was spreading a story round
the town that young Tom would have been all right, but his foot became
infected through dirty sheets at the hospital.
Sister Plomer laughed grimly. "That is nonsense! The tetanus bacillus
entered at the time of the wound, with road-dirt driven into the flesh. It
usually takes some time for symptoms to manifest themselves, and we
were watching for them."
Because the Flying Doctor's plane would be arriving after dark, the
Constable organized all the owners of vehicles in the town to go out to
the airstrip, park all round it, and shine their lights towards the centre as
soon as they heard the drone of the little aeroplane.
About two hours after sunset, the plane was heard approaching from
the north-east. The pilot had to battle a south-easterly, almost a headwind,
and had needed to refuel on the way. A small fire with whitesmoke, lit by the nearest headlights, showed him the wind direction for
coming in to land. He circled twice and put down, bumping over the
rough runway that was rarely used.
Constable Rycroft was there to meet the doctor. He climbed down
carrying his doctor's bag in which lay the precious serum. The people
gathered round in the darkness cheered.
The hostel, because of its generator, was one of the few well-lit buildings
after dark. The policeman dropped the doctor there.
"Hallo, Sister, I've brought you a parcel," said the man casually.
"Oh, thank you! And you are?"
"I'm the doctor. Dr. Vickers."
"I'm sorry! Of course, Dr. Vickers! Come through."
The doctor quickly washed his hands in a basin provided by Alix, and
unpacked his bag.
"Good nursing, next to the antitoxin, is the most important thing in
tetanus cases," he said. He cast an appreciative eye over the ward and the
nurse in charge. Alix gave a restrained smile. "I've been specialling him,
day and night," she said. "He is holding his own; but beginning to get
exhausted with the spasms. I've given him barbiturates regularly."
"Well, Tom," said the doctor quietly, lifting the young man's arm and
sponging it with methylated spirits. "I'm just going to give you an injection
of antitoxin, a much bigger dose than you had before, which will help
you fight the infection, and beat it."
The young man's mouth was clamped shut, his dark eyes
looked frightened. He made no sign that he felt the needle, but almost
imperceptibly he began to relax, reassured by the mere fact of the doctor's
presence.
Dr. Vickers talked to Sister Manning just outside the door of the ward.
"I think we've got it to him in time," he said. "Thank God! With that
head wind, and being afraid we'd miss the town in the dark, I was
worried."
"You are doing a marvellous job," said Alix warmly. She had taken an
instant liking to the slender young doctor with his thick, dark hair and
strong dark brows. How old was he? Hard to tell, but he might be thirty
at the most. "We hear stories of the Flying Doctor all the time, and I get
the Inlander. You are very game, flying in all weathers."
"Don't worry, the pilot won't fly if he thinks the weather is too bad.
I've had many an argument with Arthur about taking off on an urgent
flight when he said it was impossible. He's right, of course; no sense
losing the plane, the pilot, and the doctor through being foolhardly."
Dr. Vickers kindly offered to stay with the patient while Alix had a
break. She had tea with Sister Plomer and Arthur Affleck, the first Flying
Doctor pilot.
"Your aeroplane looks very small," said Sister Plomer, pouring tea.
Alix noted that the pilot had a big nose and a long, humorous face. He
looked as if he enjoyed his work.
"Yes--but Moths are easy to fly, and you can land almost anywhere.
In Normanton you land in the main street--it's wide enough and empty
enough--and taxi up to the pub."
"Normanton--that's on the Gulf, isn't it?" asked Alix.
"Near enough. It's about twenty miles up the estuary of the Norman
River. Full of big salt-water crocs, too. I saw some of the local blacks
swimming the river, back to their camp on the far side. They all swam
in a bunch, sending an old lubra on ahead, and with an old dog following
behind. They reckoned if there were any crocodiles around they would
get them first."
He told them about "Bedourie showers," dust-storms so thick that you
could not see ahead through the dusky red curtain, but had to look behind
for landmarks. "Like they say, the crows out there fly backwards to keep
the dust out of their eyes.
"It's real bad country out between Cloncurry and Mount Isa," he said.
"There are all these sharp rocky hills and the flat land is all trees or
spinifex. But landing in a smooth paddock is just as bad if it's too small.
I once managed to get down in a tiny paddock in an emergency, but the question was how to get out again? I backed the craft into a corner, with
six men from the town holding on to each wing and the tail-skid roped
to a corner post. Revved her up, and shouted 'Let go!' Someone cut the
rope, and we were up and away.
"But we didn't have enough height to clear the telegraph lines just
ahead. So I flew under them."
Sister Plomer shook her head unbelievingly. "Now, Sister," she said,
"I think you should take a little rest while you have the chance. I'll take
over while Dr. Vickers has his tea."
"But I don't feel tired," said Alix, who hoped for another talk with Dr.
Vickers, though her head was swimming with weariness.
"Off you go," said Sister Plomer. "I'll call you a bit later."
The little DH50 Victory took off at dawn next morning for a six-hundred-mile
flight to Croydon, in northern Queensland, to pick up a
child with meningitis. But thanks to the doctor's visit, and the extra
serum, Alix's patient recovered. He was to be an ardent supporter of the
Flying Doctor Service for the rest of his life.
Chapter Thirty-six

Major MacFarlane died in the new year. In February there was a
prolonged heat wave when the city temperatures finally reached 112
degrees in the shade. Many city-dwellers went down to the beach or into
the parklands to sleep. Caro and Frances took mattresses out on the front
lawn, inside the prickly hedge, and slept under the stars. The clear starry
sky, once the street lights had been turned out at midnight, reminded
Caro of camping out in the Inland.
Was Grandpa somewhere up there, among or beyond those thousands
upon thousands of stars? It was very confusing. They told you he had
died; that was all they knew for certain. One day he was there, the
next he had disappeared forever. (Frances had sent her to stay with a
school-friend until the funeral was over. She was glad she was not expected
to attend.) Or they said, "He has passed away." Yes, but where? Where
did he go?
She had seen animals die, to be left where they fell, until in the burning
air of the Inland the skin and dried flesh fell away, leaving only whitened
bones. It would be more simple to think that people just went to bones,
like dogs and cattle.
Frances said simply that Grandpa had "gone to Heaven." She took
Caro each week to the local Church of England service, where Caro
found the old clergyman's dull sermon unutterably boring, and the prayers
went over her head. They sang about "Peace in Thy Heaven." But where
was Heaven now that the sky was traversed by noisy aeroplanes that
sometimes flew above the clouds?
Frances wrote to Alix to tell her of her father's death. She did not use
the phrase "blessed release," but she implied that he had been glad to go.

It is such a help to me to have Caro here [she wrote]. Of course Robert
was older than me, and I knew I'd probably be left a widow one day,
but after forty years of marriage, it is very strange to be alone. . . .
Your father has left everything to me, apart from a small bequest to
Caro when she shall have reached the age of 21. He knew that the
house and all I have will be yours when I go. I shall of course continue
to pay Caro's school fees and look after her needs. ... I suggested she take dancing classes with some of the other girls, but she doesn't seem
interested. All her spare time is spent with that horse.

Alix was a little surprised and hurt that her father had left her nothing,
not even a token hundred pounds. Of course she had her war widow's
pension, and there was nothing to spend money on in Alice Springs. She
was saving most of her small salary. Perhaps her father had thought that
she should have stayed at home and nursed him in his last illness?
At least all the expense of Caro's schooling and clothing was taken off
her hands.
Alice Springs was growing rapidly since the railway had arrived, and
soon no doubt would have its own doctor and school. Yet old-timers still
sat in the sun outside the Stuart Arms, or perched on saddles and packs
at Charley Myers' saddlery, when the day was cold. They puffed on their
pipes, nested among nicotine-stained whiskers, and yarned the time away.
"John Flynn's done a wonderful thing," one of them said. "He's the
right sort of parson for out here--and he chooses the right men, like
Skipper Partridge."
Apart from the roving Presbyterian ministers such as Kingsley Partridge
--known affectionately throughout the centre as Skipper--and the Anglican
Bush Brotherhood farther north, there was also a Methodist Mission
at Tennant Creek.

Skipper Partridge arrived in the Alice on his way back from one of his
patrols for the A. I. M. He brought the story of the young Methodist parson
who had recently disappeared from Tennant Creek. The news had just
come through on the radio.
The young man, fresh from Melbourne and knowing nothing about
the bush, had arrived in town with his wife and their little dog. The
Church provided a car for him to visit the mines and the more accessible
parts of his parish.
Hearing that the wife of the manager at Rockhampton Downs was
something of an invalid, who could not travel into town to church, the
young man decided to pay her a visit and at the same time show his wife
something of the country. The station homestead was only sixty miles
away over a well-used track, to the east of the Overland Telegraph line.
The minister was warned of the dangers of leaving the north-south road,
and of the need to carry water; but he had good mechanical knowledge,
and was confident of his ability to get through.
They set out by car, taking the little dog with them. At Number 3 Bore
the dusty road was, as usual, obliterated by cattle-tracks from beasts
coming in to drink and fanning out to get feed. The thing to do was to
make a wide circle round the bore, until the unobliterated track was cut.
But they did not know this. They followed the best-marked cattle-track,which led out into an area of sand and gilgai bush, with no road at all.
After about four miles the tracks began to disperse out into the bush. The
car bogged down in sand. Although the temperature was fierce, above
115 degrees in the shade, they set out to walk for help.
When they failed to arrive at the station, which they had informed by
radio of their intention, the manager set out to look for them; but it grew
dark, and he went back to the station and radioed the police in Tennant
Creek. The party from town, including the Constable and Skipper
Partridge, set out at first light and found the car tracks diverging from the
bore.
"We'd been joined by the men from the station, and we found the
bodies about ten in the morning," said Skipper. "They had only walked
about five miles but it was very hot, and they must have become dehydrated
before long. We found the little dog first; and I couldn't help thinking
how that kind-hearted young woman probably gave the last of the water
to the dog, which would've become distressed first--not realizing the
deadly danger they were in themselves.
"When we found the two bodies we put them on the back of the
Constable's truck and took them back to Tennant. It was rough and we
had no rope. They kept sliding off. In the end I had to sit in the back and
hold them."
He closed his eyes a moment as if to shut out the memory. "They
would never have thought," he added, "that anyone could perish on
a trip of only sixty miles on a well-used station track. Who would
dream ..."
"I would," said Alix, reminded once more of Mab's end.
"Oh--! Of course. Sorry, Sister Alix. I'd forgotten."
Alix was shaken. She remembered someone in Hergott Springs--Jack
McGuinnes?--warning them: "This is an unforgiving country. You only
have to make one mistake, and that mistake can be fatal." Yes, it was a
cruel country. And though its harsh conditions created great "characters,"
its centres of settlement contained some narrow-minded and prejudiced
people.
She had seen how the Aborigines who once owned all this beautiful
area had been pushed outside the new town, and away from the springs,
to a settlement south of Heavitree Gap. They had become fringe-dwellers,
hangers-on, except those given the status of black tracker for the police.
The others had no respect and little consideration from the white invaders.
Their money was as good as anyone's, yet she had seen them forced to
wait in the shop to buy their bottle of "lolly-water," their loaf of white
bread, while all the other customers, even later comers, were served first.
And she remembered the ill-natured gossip over the tetanus case, when
the hostel was accused of causing the infection through dirty sheets.
Alix began to feel that Alice Springs, in spite of its physical beauty, was not for her. Since the railway had arrived, it was becoming too big
She would like a smaller place again, or a bigger place, like Cloncurry,
the centre of the Flying Doctor network. Meanwhile, once her time was
up, she would go back to Adelaide to see Caro, who had not come before
because of the diphtheria epidemic.
She felt a longing for the trim little city on its coastal plain, with the
rounded hills behind and the blue waters of the Gulf St. Vincent in front,
and no blacks with a lost darkness in their eyes to trouble her conscience.
She would go home for a while, and get to know her daughter again.
And then she thought of that attractive Flying Doctor, the amusing
pilot who flew him into the Alice. Perhaps she might go to Cloncurry in
western Queensland, the base from which all those wonderful mercy
flights set out, and where at times she might become a Flying Nurse.
Alix sent a wire to her mother and began packing her things. She was
looking forward to her trip on the 'Ghan, which now had not only sleeping
berths but a dining car. A few tourists were beginning to discover the red
centre.
The train made a long stop in Oodnadatta on the way down. She went
to call on the Sisters in the little bush hostel that had been one of the
first to be built. With its low iron roof and veranda and water-tanks to
catch the infrequent rains, it reminded her of the Hergott Springs hostel
where she and Mab had nursed together. But in front of this building was
a well-grown palm tree, and a garden of established shrubs sheltered by
a neat picket fence, which made it look much less bare and hot than the
Hergott building on its stony plain.
Alix had a cup of tea with the Sisters, who were young and enthusiastic,
as she had been once. It was almost twenty years since she had qualified
as a nurse. Would she like to be starting again at Oodnadatta, or
somewhere similar? No; she envied them but she did not wish to go back.Book 2

Chapter One



Caro Manning thought she'd had a wonderfully interesting childhood,
except that she'd never had a father, as far as she could remember. She
went to the morning service in the city on Armistice Day and thought
about him, so dashing and handsome in his turned-up hat with the emu
feathers in the photograph Mummy took with her everywhere in its
beaten-silver frame. A lump came into Caro's throat during the two
minutes' silence. At the stroke of eleven the whole city stopped: trams
and traffic and pedestrians with blood-red silk poppies pinned to their
coats in memory of the dead. Then came the long-drawn quivering notes
of the bugle, so heart-rendingly sad: the Last Post. Then the traffic started
up, and life went on as before.
Caro's grandmother had settled down in her role as the widow of a
distinguished man. No longer insecure in her social position, Frances
had become more relaxed and less prejudiced. Of course, she still believed
that Aborigines and Chinamen were dirty, and that "nice" women did
not get divorced; and she did not approve of these new beach pyjamas, or even of riding trousers. But she had to admit that Caro was a trim
figure, with her long legs and small waist, in the jodhpurs Alix had sent
her with a pair of short riding boots. If Caro liked horse-riding and
climbing trees, and absolutely refused to learn to play bridge, Frances
blamed her granddaughter's tomboyish ways on the years she had spent
on the cattle-station when she was little.
In 1930, when Caro was fourteen years old, an event occurred which
she was to remember for the rest of her life: Amy Johnson came to
Adelaide at the end of her record-breaking flight from England.
The Great Depression had touched Caro very lightly. Her life was
bounded by school, and as she rarely went to the city, she did not see the
misery of the unemployed, the queues for sustenance, the peaceful
marches of the hungry demanding work. As a change from the gloomy
financial news, the newspapers were suddenly full of stories about Amy
Johnson, the adventurous young Englishwoman in her tiny Moth biplane.
By the time she touched down in Darwin after crossing the Timor Sea
on the last leg of her journey, the press was delighted; for Amy was slender
and photogenic, with an English-rose complexion. This slip of a girl on
her "epic flight" had become a heroine.Wherever she stopped the crowds became ecstatic, the adulation almost
hysterical. In Adelaide a welcoming reception was organized.
Frances took Caro into town for the public meeting in the old Exhibition
Building. They parked some way up North Terrace, and as they neared
the building the crowd thickened. Soon they were jammed in an immovable
mass of people waiting to welcome the young aviatrix.
Caro began to feel panicky.
She had never been caught in a crowd before, forced to stand still,
forced to move when it moved, to sway forward when the official cars
arrived and people tried frantically to get a glimpse of their heroine.
Caro saw nothing; she closed her eyes and clung desperately to her
grandmother's plump arm, fearing she would faint or suffocate among
the taller adults.
Then at last there was space and air. The crowd thinned as Amy
Johnson passed into the building, and those who had tickets moved up
the steps. Frances resolutely pushed forward and found two seats not too
far from the front. The crowd was conducted in singing, "When Johnnie
comes flying home again, hurrah, hurrah!" and there were official
welcome speeches; then Amy was speaking.
Caro listened entranced to the soft, girlish voice, stared at the slight
figure in a long fur coat, at the wavy brown hair and pink cheeks of what
had become her idol. At last it was over. There were some questions from
the body of the hall, some friendly Australian chi-acking, then she was
coming down from the dais and along the aisle towards the front door.
Caro held her breath. As the young woman came opposite her seat
on the aisle, Caro put out a tremulous hand and touched the soft fur
coat. "Amy Johnson, Amy Johnson, I love you!" she chanted under her
breath.
She went home in a daze of emotion.
"I think I'd like to be an airwoman," Caro announced next morning.
"I'd like to learn to fly."
"Out of the question!" said her grandmother. "That is not a career for
women, dear."
"What about Amy Johnson?"
"That is quite different. She is an English aviatrix. There may be
openings for women flyers over there, but a young lady could never make
a career of flying in Australia."

At fifteen Caro went through a period of adolescent gloom, brooding
upon death and tortured by religious doubts and guilt about sex. Sex was
everywhere, and she was obsessed with it. She watched the pigeons mating
on the roof, the little gilded flies jumping on each other in a beam of
sunlight, a rooster treading the hens in the chook-yard at the bottom of
Grandma's garden. She climbed a smooth-limbed wattle-tree, its crown a mass of silver leaves and golden puffballs, and pressed a rounded bough
between her thighs.
Since her mother was a nurse, it should have been possible to talk to
her about such things, but the thought made Caro go hot all over. In
developing she had grown away from Alix, who had prepared her sensibly
for menstruation but not for sexual maturity. And as for asking Grandma,
the very idea was unthinkable.
On her return from Alice Springs Alix had found her daughter changed,
more mature, though she still wore her hair in long fair plaits; her breasts
were starting to develop and she was starting to take an interest in boys.
Alix decided to do a midwifery course at her old hospital. She was able
to live at home and travel to work each day. When Alix came off duty
wearing her nurse's uniform, Caro looked at her admiringly. She had
watched films set in the First World War, which she was too young to
remember. The Army nurses were shown as Sisters of Mercy, their
flowing veils a symbol of succour and self-sacrifice. But there were films,
too, about gallant airmen in caps and goggles, engaging enemy flyers in
desperate dogfights in their flimsy aircraft of wood and cloth.
When her mother asked her what she wanted to do when she left
school, Caro wasn't sure if she wanted to be a nurse or a pilot.
"Of course, Grandma would want me to be a nurse," she said. "She
thinks flying is unladylike. Yet she took me to see Amy Johnson."
"Grandma thought nursing unladylike when I wanted to take it up
more than twenty years ago. Her attitudes have changed a bit since the
war. If you take up nursing, you must be sure it's what you really want
to do. Would you like to come bush nursing with me? I'm thinking of
asking for a post in Cloncurry--that's the Flying Doctor base in far
western Queensland. Perhaps you could do part of your training there."
"I don't know. Anyway, I'd like a holiday on Cappamerri first. Grandpa
must be terribly lonely. And he might leave me some money when he
dies," she added naively.
Alix did not take that up. "Yes. . . well, we'll see." She presumed that
Big Jim would leave his property to his grandson in Brisbane. If there was
anything left to leave.
By the time Alix had finished midwifery, a letter confirming her
appointment for the coming year arrived from Cloncurry Hospital. Her
old friend John Flynn, "Flynn of the Inland" as he was now known, had
written her a reference.
She and Caro looked up the town on the map of Queensland. Caro
pointed out that to go from Adelaide to Cloncurry in a straight line was
only about eight hundred miles. To go round the coast and then northwest
by train was almost three times as far.
"If I had an aeroplane," she said, "I could fly you there in three hops."
"Ill enjoy the sea voyage," said her mother. It was possible to fly fromBrisbane to Cloncurry these days in one of the little Qantas mail planes;
but in truth she was rather afraid of flying.

Alix went by boat and train, and rocking westward over the endless grassy
plains she thought once more what an enormous country this was: the
thousands of miles between Sydney and Perth, between Adelaide and
Darwin, the empty deserts of the interior and these lonely plains that
seemed to be inhabited only by sheep and cattle. Flynn was right. This
was a land that cried out for the aeroplane.
After the treeless downs they came to open savannah where the trunks
of the iron-bark trees were black against the tawny grass, and their leaves
a silvery blue, a most unlikely combination.
That night, alone in her compartment, Alix switched off the overhead
light and watched the brilliant stars go reeling past, yet keeping pace with
the train. Venus as the evening star dived behind a small hill and
reappeared like a silver lamp almost ahead. Alix was leaning out the
window, smelling the grass with dew on it under the scent of coal-smoke
coming from the engine. A thrilling whistle streamed back across the
night, the wheels clacked rhythmically over the track, the carriage rocked.
Flying above the earth could not be as exciting as this! They seemed to
be boring a tunnel through the night, the powerful headlamp piercing
the darkness ahead.
She slept at last, outstretched on the padded seat with her head towards
the window. Her last waking sight was of the Southern Cross, low to the
horizon and about to dip below it, as it never did in the south.
Next day there were patches of spinifex and red sand, the spiky spinifex
flowering with tall yellow fronds and waving like a wheat-field. Here there
were small but shapely eucalyptus with slender white trunks and green
leaves among the dry creeks and jump-ups. Then Black Mountain and
the mine workings appeared and the train pulled in to Cloncurry, only
two hundred miles from the Gulf of Carpentaria, where the sea takes a
great bite into the north of the continent. The soil was still red, but she
was no longer in the centre.
Chapter Two

"It's quite all right, Grandma," said Caro impatiently, "you get the very
best training at the Adelaide Public Hospital."
"Your mother trained at North Adelaide, and I'm sure it is nicer."
"Grandma! She did her midwifery at the Queen Victoria Maternity
Home, which is a free hospital. We used to knit babies' vests at school
for them."
Frances set her lips in the thin, down-turned line they had taken since
Major MacFarlane died. "Well! Please yourself, then."
"I intend to."
Caro enrolled for the three-and-a-half year course, including midwifery,
on her seventeenth birthday; but stayed on at school till after the
final exams in November. Then she sold her mare, not without some
tears at parting, and opened a bank account. She was saving up to buy a
second-hand motor-car. Although Caro had her driving-licence and loved
to drive her grandmother's car, Frances would rarely let her take it out
on her own.
The dilemma facing Caro was that she needed a car to get out to
Parafield Aerodrome, but then she would have no money left for flying
lessons. Since it seemed that it was impossible for a woman to make a
career as a commercial pilot, except perhaps in the Flying Doctor service,
she would make nursing her career and somehow combine it with flying.
She knew now with absolute certainty that she wanted to fly. And when
she came into Grandpa MacFarlane's money, she would buy her own
little plane.
She celebrated her first week at the hospital, which provided accommodation
in a separate building for a Nurses' Home, by getting her schoolgirl
plaits cut off. Then she went defiantly to see her grandmother, wearing
a hat so as not to give her too much of a shock at first. The salon shampoo
had made her straight hair shine in all its gold and silvery-brown strands.
"Well! I don't know what your mother will say," said Frances when
she saw the plaits were gone.
"It's my hair, and I'm not a schoolgirl any more, Grandma."
"Alas, no," said Frances with a sigh.
Caro put her arms round her. "Cheer up, you'll get used to it after
you've seen it a few times."

Caro rather neglected her grandmother in the freedom of having her
own quarters. It was a long tram ride out to the suburb where Frances
lived, and a long walk from the tram. So much time was spent in travelling
that she would make the effort not more than once every two weeks, when
she was invited to midday dinner. Trams did not run on Sunday morning,
so she had an excuse not to arrive in time for church.
Alix sent her blessings on the nursing career, and a postcard of the
hangar with the Flying Doctor plane outside it, a red cross painted on
the side. It was a small plane with one engine, but it had an enclosed
cabin. Caro pinned the postcard on the wall of her cell-like room, half
underground, which she shared with a thin, cheerful nurse called Betty.
There followed a long letter from Alix describing the town of Cloncurry
and its surroundings:

This is the centre of a mining district, a fading "copper town" because
of the fall in the price of copper.
Round Cloncurry are low craggy hills which radiate the heat in
summer so that even the nights are often hot; it can be 103 degrees at 8
p.m. You know what dust-storms can be like, and there are willy-willies
which one of the pilots told me can reach up to two thousand feet.
But winter here is beautiful . . . cold and clear and sunny. Just after
daylight the ground is covered with frost, the native cypress-pines
white-frosted like Christmas trees and the air wonderfully clear and
fragrant. All the rivers here flow north, which seems strange to me.
That is, when they flow at all.
The hospital is old but well-equipped, with cases being brought in
from all round the map by the Flying Doctor Service--it covers an
area of 300,000 square miles! I get on well with Matron, partly because
of my being so long in the tooth. She hasn't much patience with young
probationers, so perhaps it's just as well you're not training here.
Please write and tell me all your news, and give my love to Grandma. She must be missing you now that you're living away. You must make
time to go and see her on your days off.

Betty had a friend who was a photographer on the evening newspaper.
She asked Caro to make a foursome with them on their evening off, as
her friend, Barry Muirden, was bringing a journalist from the same paper
along. They were going to have dinner at a little pub in the hills.
Caro was excited. This was her first date with someone older, not one
of her school-friends' brothers. They called for her in the photographer's
Buick, which belonged to his paper, the Standard. The other man was
a blur in the back seat; she only caught the gleam of glasses and a flash
of white teeth as they were introduced.
On the way round the hairpin bends to Clarendon, she was thrown against this stranger who obligingly put his arm round her to steady her.
She was nervous and talked in a continuous stream to Betty in the front
seat. In the light of the hotel veranda, when they arrived, she found that
Malcolm was not tall, rather stocky, with a lot of short wavy dark hair
and a humorous mouth that was wide and curly to match his hair; the
upper lip long, Irish, and deeply indented. Then as they took their seats
in the dining room, which was empty of other guests, and he sat opposite
her, she saw that he had the most amazing dark-blue eyes. They were
enlarged by his horn-rimmed spectacles, and shone with a lively intelligence.
She found them hypnotic.
With their steaks they had a good local red wine; and Caro, unused to
alcohol, became a little elevated.
Both sides of the table talked shop a little, Caro and Betty telling stories
of the horrid, arrogant honorary surgeon who thought he was God; and
Malcolm of the insensitive sub-editors who ruined his best opening
paragraphs.
Half-way through the second bottle of red, Barry sang a little ditty while
Malcolm beat time with two spoons:

Caviar comes from virgin sturgeon,
Virgin sturgeon is a fish,
Virgin sturgeon needs no urgin',
That's why it's my favourite dish.

I had a sweetheart kind and gentle
She was a virgin tried and true,
But since I fed my love on caviar
There is nothing she won't do.

Then Caro recited a verse from "The Bastard from the Bush," beginning:

"Would you let a woman work and slave, to
keep you if she could?"
The Bastard from the Bush replied,
"My bloody oath I would!"

But when Barry started to sing "The Hole in the Elephant's Bottom,"
the others shushed him, being aware of the disapproving looks of the
proprietor.
When the meal was over, Caro danced out of the hotel on feet that
did not seem to touch the floor. Malcolm caught her in his arms as she
stumbled over a loose brick in the paved path, and helped her into the
car.
Barry drove them to the Clarendon weir. The still water above the weirspread black and glassy under a nearly full moon. Caro noticed approvingly
that the men did not feel a compulsion to lob rocks in the water to mar
the perfect reflection of moon and downward-pointing trees. She was very
conscious of Malcolm's sturdy figure beside her.
"We're going to walk down to the weir," said Barry, with his arm round
Betty.
"Then we'll take the high road." Malcolm took Caro's hand and led
her over small rocks embedded in the grass. She expected he would kiss
her now. At a level spot above the shining water, he took off his raincoat
and spread it on the grass beneath a gum-tree with dark leaves glistening
in the moonlight.
"Are you cold?" he asked solicitously.
She was wearing her best apricot silk knitted suit, with a white pullover
under the jacket, and was quite warm.
"Y-Yes," she said. Her teeth were chattering, but not with cold.
He put his arms round her and kissed her deeply. His mouth was soft,
warm, demanding, wonderful. They staggered slightly. He drew her down
beside him on the coat spread over the tough, springy grass. In a moment
she was lying beneath him, everything forgotten but his weight upon her,
his mouth on hers. The pulsating sound of frogs, the hollow call of a
wild duck, the scent of moonlit grass, the pain of a small intrusive rock
beneath her back: they ceased to exist. There was only his mouth, his
caressing hands, and oh, she wanted him, and oh, this was beautiful,
and this was how she wanted it to be. ... To her intense surprise he
rolled away from her and stood up, turning to look over the water, putting
on his glasses.
"Malcolm . . . ? What. . . what is it?"
She stared up at him, dazed, unconsciously pulling her skirt down.
She was still wearing her suspender belt, her artificial silk stockings, her
flimsy scanties; in fact she was fully clothed.
"Stay there. I'm just going for a leak."
So that was it. But when he came back . . .
When he came back he put out a hand and helped her to her feet. He
kissed her forehead and led her back up the slight slope towards the road
and the car. She stumbled after him, trying not to cry. Before they got
there he stopped and held her close, putting his face down against her
neck.
"I'm sorry, Caro. I had no right. . . You're only a kid."
"I'm seventeen," she said defensively. "I mean eighteen. And I have a
birthday in September."
"Eighteen!" He lifted his head and laughed ruefully. "Do you know
how old I am, child? Thirty-two. But I got carried away a bit there ..."
"Malcolm! I didn't mind. What are you sorry about?"
"Because I nearly ... I know nurses are supposed to know all about these things, but . . . I'm older than you, and I had to think for both of us. You're only a kid, really."
"I am not a kid! Stop saying that!"
"Look, I've really enjoyed this evening, and I like you very much,
but--"
There came a coo-ee from downriver.
"Hey, you two," called Barry. "Is Betty with you?"
"I thought she was with you."
"No, she said she was just going behind a bush, and she didn't come
back."
They called up and down the bank, but there was no answer. The
black water holding the floating moon suddenly looked sinister. Caro saw
in her imagination the police dragging the deep pond above the weir,
saw Betty laid out on the bank, streaming with water, blue-faced and
motionless. . . .
"I'll go and get the torch from the glove-box," said Barry. "You keep
looking."
He hurried up the slope, and soon they heard the car horn sound.
"She's here!" he called. "In the car."
Betty was seated in the front, her arms folded, staring straight ahead.
"Why didn't you answer us, you silly bitch?" asked Barry, anxiety
turning to anger. "You must have heard us calling."
"I thought I'd let you sweat for a bit."
"That wasn't funny, Bet," said Caro reprovingly. "We were really
worried."
"Sorry. It was for his benefit, not yours."
Malcolm said nothing. He put his arm round Caro in the back seat,
and she laid her head on his shoulder. In the front-bench seat, Betty sat
as far away as possible from Barry. They did not speak.
"We'll have a meal in town one day," said Malcolm, kissing Caro
before the car pulled up at the hospital nurses' quarters. "I'll tell you the
story of my life."
In their room, Betty flung her handbag on the floor and kicked it.
"What's up, Bet?"
"That bastard Barry. Soon as we got away on our own he put the hard
word on me. Wouldn't take no for an answer. I fought him off, and then
said I wanted to go for a pee. I did, too, after all that wine. So then I
quietly went back to the car and sat there. Sorry I gave you such a
fright."
She tore off her jumper and pleated skirt, and scrubbed cold cream
into her face. "I mean, I don't like him in that way. How was it with
Malcolm?"
"He's a beaut bloke. I think I'm in love with him."
"Well! Tell Aunt Betty all about it. Did he ... ?""No. I don't want to talk about it. And I simply must go-- I'm
bursting."
Sitting on the toilet seat, feeling the utter relief of emptying her full
bladder, she began to dream of Malcolm, of his boyish, wavy hair, his
dark-blue eyes. She sat there until Betty called out to know if she'd gone
to sleep.

Caro waited in suspense for a week, then Malcolm called and asked her
out.
"Well, if you can't be good, be careful," said Betty anxiously.
Malcolm took her to the Black Bull, the journalists' pub in Hindley
Street, for a beer before dinner.
"But I don't like beer!" protested Caro.
"Have to learn to drink beer. You can't go out with a journalist
otherwise."
"Well . . . can I have lemonade in it?"
"Just a dash."
Then they went to a fish cafe in Gouger Street--Caro had never been
to that end of town before, except to pass through it in a tram. There
they had the most perfect fresh whiting.
"The fish is always good here, but the coffee's lousy," said Malcolm.
"We could have tea ..."
"Tea!" Malcolm was affronted.
"We always had tea with meals in the bush. Billy tea if you were
travelling and camping out."
She had been talking her head off, and he had encouraged her,
intrigued by her stories of Birdsville and Cappamerri, the mysterious
inland that he knew only by hearsay. Now she realized that far from
telling her the story of his life, he had told her nothing.
"We could," he said hesitantly, "go back to my rooms while I make
us some real coffee."
Caro, who was in a state of euphoria and couldn't have cared less about
coffee, agreed eagerly. She was in love. Her brain kept returning to a
recent popular song:

. . . Lovely to look at, delightful to know,
And heaven to kiss:
A combination like this
Would make my
Most impossible dreams come true . . .

His room, a bed-sitting-room up two flights of stairs, was lined with books.
She had never seen so many books except in the Public Library. She was enchanted, examining them while he put on the percolator in the
adjoining kitchen.
"Oh! You've got Ulysses."
"It's only been lent to me by a friend. You can't buy it, you know."
"I know, it's banned. And the Decameron."
"That isn't banned. What the authorities consider the worst stories are
printed in Italian. It's a great incentive to learn Italian."
"And Tolstoy! May I borrow War and Peace?"
"It's in three volumes. You can only have one at a time."
"Good! Then you'll have to ask me back."
He brought the coffee. They sat on cushions on the floor, leaning back
against the divan, which was covered with some sort of Mexican rug.
"Would you like a drink? Port? Muscat?"
"I don't mind."
There were bottles and glasses on the low table. He poured her a glass
of muscat.
"I wrote you a letter," she said. She drained her glass, seeking for
courage. "And then I didn't post it. It--I told you I'd fallen in love with
you.
He gently removed the glass from her hand, and kissed her muscatsticky,
sweet-tasting lips.
"Did you?" he murmured. "Did you really say that?"
"Yes. I do love you, Malcolm. I'll never love anyone else."
He kissed her again, and she pressed herself against him. Now, she
thought, he will lift me on to the divan, and he will be my lover.
But he put her gently aside and went to the gramophone and his stack
of records.
"What sort of music do you like?"
"Oh--!" She was too dazed and disappointed to think. "I don't know.
Opera."
"Opera!" he said disapprovingly. "You mean Mozart?"
She didn't know any Mozart operas. "No, Puccini."
"See if you like this." He put on a record. "Schumann," he said.
"Traumerei,' or Reverie."
But she soon began to talk again, telling him how she thought of him
all the time, even when she was on duty, how she had been reproved for
absent-mindedness by the Matron, a tall, daunting woman with a nose
like the Duke of Wellington's . . .
When the record was finished he got up and turned off the machine.
"You probably like music," he said tolerantly, "but you've never learned
to listen to it."
"You mean I talk too much."
"Well, dear, it isn't necessary to talk all the time."
She said resentfully, "You know how to stop me."It was true. One kiss could reduce her to quivering silence.
But he said lightly that it was time he sent her home.
She had to be in by midnight, and on duty at six-thirty in the morning.
He called a taxi and put her in it, paying the driver. Caro sat in the back
seat with tears rolling down her cheeks, clutching the first volume of War and Peace, while the cab crossed to the other side of the city. She had
planned to rely on an antiseptic douche as soon as she got back, though
Betty said that journalists and medical students were always prepared, like
Boy Scouts. But anyway nothing had happened.

Chapter Three
By the time she was up to the third volume of War and Peace, Caro was
still a reluctant virgin. She had been much moved by the romance
of Natasha and Prince Andrew; but when she read that Natasha, after
her marriage with Pierre, had become the plump, matronly mother of
four, whose greatest interest was whether baby's dirty napkins were a
healthy yellow; when she read this, Caro shouted "No!" She almost
threw the book on the floor. Natasha, that lovely, lively, fascinating
girl, with all her spiritual qualities, to be reduced almost to the level of a
cow!
When she returned the book she told Malcolm of her disgust, but he
only laughed at her and said that was how life was. He had cooked some
spaghetti and they ate it in the kitchen, with a bottle of claret. Caro did
not dare tell him that she preferred claret with lemonade.
She was feeling rather quiet and depressed.
"You're a bit down in the mouth," said Malcolm. "What is it?"
She fingered her glass and said, "I had to deal with my first dead man
today. Matron sent me into his room to cut the tapes and remove
the nasal feeding-tube. But--he didn't look peaceful or as if he was
asleep. He just looked . . . lifeless. As if he was only a model made of
wax."
"Yes. The dead do look very dead. You said your grandfather died . . .
didn't you see his body?"
"No, my grandmother sent me away."
"I think Victorian children were much better prepared for death--of
course nearly every family lost one or more children--and they learned
to cope with the sight, and the fact of death for those close to them more
easily."
"Children don't die in such numbers now, but they still die. My
room-mate Betty started at the Children's Hospital, but she had to give
it up. They put her in the cancer ward. Quite small children get cancer.
There was a little boy with cancer of the hip, they'd operated on his leg
twice, removing more and more, and finally it reached his hip. It became
inoperable. And the pain ..."
"Suffer the little children. . . "
"Yes, but not just the child suffers. Think what its mother must gothrough. Betty said it was terrible to see. So she resigned and took up
general nursing instead. Seeing old people dying of pneumonia, and
young people with broken legs, is somehow not as bad."
"You have to be tough to be a nurse."
"Yes. I thought I was tough. I suppose I'll become so."
"I doubt it."
In keeping with her mood he put a record on the gramophone, the
Dead March in "Saul." But she threw off her melancholy and, balancing
a small cushion on her head, walked round the room with slow and
stately strides in time to the music.
He put on "Liebestraum" and drew her down on the cushions.
She found she could listen quietly to any amount of music while his
arms were round her. But he still sent her home early.

Caro took some flowers which a discharged patient had left behind when
she went to see Frances. It was early spring, the hills that made a backdrop
for the city were a brilliant green after the winter rains, and the almond
groves seemed to be drifted with snow as the pale blossoms fell and
strewed the ground. The empty paddock where the mare had been stabled
was bright with yellow sour-sops. Caro no longer missed her horse. She
had sixty pounds towards a car, and it seemed she would need another
twenty or thirty to buy anything reliable.
Frances was delighted with the flowers, a bunch of spring bulbs, for
though she had daffodils and hyacinths in the most shaded part of her
garden, she hated to pick them. Caro led up to the subject of her
eighteenth birthday at the end of the month, and mentioned how much
she longed for a little motor car, and how she didn't have quite enough
money and couldn't save much on a nurse's salary. "If you could just
lend me enough, Grandma, say twenty-five pounds, I'd be able to get a
reliable second-hand one. And then I could pop out and see you so much
more easily, and I could come more often."
A week before her birthday a parcel arrived from her mother, and a
card from Frances. She opened the card first, and out fell a cheque for
thirty-five pounds. "I want you to get a reliable vehicle, and a safe one.
You don't have to pay this back, it's a birthday present."
Caro danced round the room, kicking up her heels. Then she opened
the parcel from her mother, and found in a padded box a piece of polished
malachite, deep green with white lines through it, and a large piece of
Queensland opal, like blue butterfly wings with flashes of fire, still in the
rough setting of brown rock in which it had been found. It was beautiful,
but the car money was more exciting. She rang her grandmother to thank
her, and arranged to come to dinner on her birthday, driving the new
car.
Caro had seen what she wanted, a smart little red Morris Cowley with a folding canvas roof. It was ninety-five pounds, but when she showed
the dealer the cash in her hand he let her have it for ninety.
She drove out to her grandmother's in daylight so that Frances could
admire the car, and took her for a spin around the block. Caro had the
roof folded down so that it looked more sporting, and Frances found a
short ride quite enough. The little car had a straight-out exhaust that
made a satisfying throaty sound. Caro had nick-named her Matilda.

She could not wait to show her acquisition to Malcolm. He had to
admit she was an adult now, a trainee nurse with her own car and a
driving-licence, and he thought she had turned nineteen. She wore her
hair in a straight long bob, hoping to look like Greta Garbo.
He took her to see Garbo and John Barrymore in Mata Hari, and they
held hands all through the film. The next time they had dinner and went
back to his place, he kept her mouth well occupied while they sat on
cushions listening to a Chopin nocturne. He said, "Do you know you
have a very sensuous mouth, eminently kissable," and kissed her again.
Garbo had a rather thin mouth, though beautifully cut. . . . Perhaps,
Caro thought, she should try to look like Katharine Hepburn?
She wrenched her lips away and, fingering his tie, not looking in his
face, she murmured, "Why won't you make love to me? You know I
want you to."
He hesitated, smoothing the straight fair hair back behind one of her
ears. At last he said, "Caro, there's something I have to tell you." And
then, "Oh, hell! Sometimes it's easier to talk in bed."
He lifted her on to the divan and slowly began to undress her, kissing
each part as it was revealed. "You have a lovely figure," he said, "like a
beautiful boy's--such long legs and narrow hips, and all these warm
womanly attributes as well. ... Lie there, I just have to go to the
bathroom for a tick."
Afterwards, looking back on it, Caro had to admit that the experience
hadn't been quite up to her expectations, had, in fact, been rather painful.
But she loved him, and was happy to have made him happy. It was the
shared intimacy she valued, the exchange of more than bodily contacts,
the drowsy talk as they lay twined together among the tumbled sheets.
"You know," said Malcolm, chuckling, "that most girls of your generation
have their first experience in the back seat of a car. And here you
are in a real bed."
"We could try my car, but you'd have to be a contortionist and very
determined. ... By the way, Betty helped me with a contraceptive, just
in case. . . I was always hoping. Why did it take you so long to get me
here?"
"I was wearing something, too, but ... these things are not always
effective. That's partly what worries me, and then, your being so young.""I'm a woman now."
"Yes, my darling; and I have something to tell you."
He fitted her head under his chin and stroked her hair, staring at the
ceiling while he talked.
"You see, I have a wife in Melbourne."
He felt her stiffen, but he went on, "We're separated, but just about
the time I met you, she wrote and said she'd like me to come home, she
doesn't want a divorce. So you see ... I have a sort of vested interest in
her, six years of my life. As soon as I get a transfer to the Melbourne Herald, I'm going back to her. It may not work out, but I have to try."
"Oh," she said flatly.
"And then we may go to London. I have the chance of a job over
there."
She asked stonily, "What is her name?" and when he said "Julia," she
announced, "I'll be leaving now."
"No! Don't go! Not now we've just found each other. I've wanted you
ever since that first night in the hills."
He held her arms and pinned her down with his weight. She struggled
feebly, but she didn't really want to leave; his eyes without their glasses
had a blind, defenceless look, intensely blue. She closed her own and
sighed.
It was more pleasurable the second time, and it was he who had
to remind her, happily dozing, that it was nearly midnight: "Come,
Cinderella!" and she who clung to him and did not wish to leave.
A blowfly, the first of the summer, was buzzing about the ceiling and
bumping into walls. When it came down low Malcolm stalked it with a
rolled-up copy of the Standard, leaping about the room and swiping at
it with the paper, wearing nothing but his glasses. He stunned the fly and
tossed the Standard into a corner. "It's a better fly-swat than a newspaper,"
he said.
The romantic Caro thought wryly that instead of a nightingale--or
even a little willy-wagtail--singing outside the window, she had woken
to the sound of a blowfly, the pest of the Australian bush.
When he took her down to her car he said, "Perhaps we shouldn't see
so much of each other, darling."
"Yes, yes! You'll be going away forever; I must see you, I must."
"Well, I'll get in touch."
"When, Malcolm? When shall I see you?"
He said with a sudden flash of irritation, "I don't know! Don't nail me,
Caro."
She shrank back and climbed into the car and drove off. So! she thought
bitterly. He's got me into bed and already he's tired of me! Back at the
Nurses' Home she crept into bed without waking Betty, and quietly cried
herself to sleep. But in the morning, finding blood on her pyjamas, she felt a surge of happiness. He was hers, her first man. He would forget
about going to Melbourne. He would not be able to leave her, after
all.
It was two weeks before she saw him again. She longed to ring him at
the Standard office, but dared not. She took detours past the front of the
building, but never saw him emerging. Then one day she saw Barry with
his bulky press camera slung over his shoulder, and tooted and waved.
He came over to the car.
Longing for news of Malcolm, she said brightly, "Can I give you a
lift?"
"No, thanks, love, I'm just going round to get the car. Are you looking
for Malcolm? He's up at the courts."
"Oh."
"I'm just on my way to Parafield to meet a pilot and take a picture of
his aeroplane. The same one he flew out from England, it's a Klemm
Falcon or something."
"Not Ray Butler? Is he in Adelaide?"
"Yes, there's to be a story in the Standard tomorrow. He'll be pleased
you've heard of him."
"I'd love to meet him."
"Come on then. He might take you up for a short spin if you smile at
him nicely. Do you know the way? I'll go ahead."

Caro had never seen a plane with only one set of wings, apart from
Kingsford-Smith's Southern Cross, which everyone knew from photographs
and newsreels. The stark, streamlined shape of the low-winged
monoplane looked strange to her. The airman, dressed in slacks and a
leather jacket, was tinkering with a wheel-strut when they came up. He
straightened and flashed Caro a smile, and shook hands as Barry introduced
her.
Ray was not her idea of the dashing pilot; he was short, with straight
dark hair plastered flat on his head, and thick dark brows. The plane was
quite small, with two open cockpits, one for the pilot and one for the
passenger.
Caro told him of how she had always wanted to fly, and that she had
read about his solo flight from England last year, and how she hoped
later to get her pilot's licence. She had no ambitions to break records like
Amy Johnson, but wanted to work with one of the aerial ambulance
services in the outback.
Caro is training as a nurse first," said Barry.
"Good for you!"
"I've never been up in an aeroplane," said Caro wistfully.
Well, there's no time like the present. I was just going to take her up.
Want to come for the ride?"Caro jumped at the chance.
"But you'll need something warmer to put on."
Barry offered the coat of his dark suit, which she put on over her yellow
linen summer dress. Ray helped her up to the forward cockpit and handed
her helmet and goggles.
"Before we take off," he said, "strap yourself in. Tell me if you want
an exciting ride or not."
"Oh yes! Please!"
"Right-oh. If it gets a bit too exciting, just put your hand up, like this."
Caro tightened the strap of her helmet, put on her goggles, and fastened
her harness.
The plane taxied out on to the runway and turned into the wind. A
pause while the pilot revved the engine and checked the controls. Then
a roar and vibration and they were away. Caro felt a great bubble of
elation forming in her chest. A short, bumpy run over the earth runway,
then the smoothness of flight. They were in the air. The earth fell away.
The gold paddocks of summer tilted sideways as they banked and turned,
and as they climbed, the blue waters of the Gulf widened out, the far
coast showed as a low dark line beyond.
The little plane seemed to hang motionless in the air, droning to itself,
while the landscape moved slowly beneath. Then they were climbing
steeply, the nose pointing into the blue. There followed a steep dive,
down, down, the earth rushing up to meet them. Caro held her breath.
They were over a poultry farm; she saw the startled hens streaking for
cover.
At the last moment Ray pulled her out of the dive, and they went
swooping up again. Up, up, up, in a stomach-fluttering climb to the
point where the engine stalled and the plane seemed to hang in the sky
by its propeller. . . . Then they were over, the sky beneath, the earth far
above. They came right way up again, and as they began a silent plunge
the engine coughed and roared once more into life. Caro's heart beat
high. She was flying, and they had looped the loop!
Ray zoomed down to hedge-hop over farms and paddocks of grazing
cattle. Suddenly the feeling of speed was very real, as fence-posts flashed
by beneath at a hundred miles an hour. Up again in a glorious sweeping
curve, at the top of which he pulled the joystick back and brought the
nose right up till the engine stalled. They came down in a controlled
spin, the nose pointed straight at the earth, which revolved like a coloured
wheel. Then he pulled out of the spin and they were diving, then
swooping up again. Caro felt a wild surge of joy.
All too soon they were circling the aerodrome, seeing the windsock
stretched out from the south-west, and coming in on a long glide to a
perfect three-point landing. They taxied towards one of the hangars and
stopped.
Caro climbed down with glowing pink cheeks and shining eyes.
"Oh, Mr. Butler!"
"Call me Ray."
"Oh Ray! It was wonderful! Thank you for taking me up."
"I noticed you didn't put up your hand."
"No. I wasn't scared. And I knew I wouldn't be airsick." She didn't tell
him that during the first mad dive, certain that they must plough into the
ground, she'd had to sit hard on her hands.
Barry was waiting by the hangar for his coat.
"She'll make an airwoman yet," said Ray. "What about next weekend,
Caro? Care to go up again?"
"I'd love to, but I won't be able to get Sunday off. I'm supposed to be
on duty."
"Well, the week after then."
Driving down the straight bitumen road to the city, she pushed Matilda
to her maximum speed of 55 miles per hour. The canvas top was down,
and Caro's pale straight hair fluttered in the wind of movement. But it
was not nearly as exciting as flying.
She could not wait to start her flying lessons. Yet at present she had
less than ten pounds in the bank, enough for only two lessons. It was
hardly worth starting. Back in town, she ate frugally at the kiosk in the
Botanic Gardens, resolving to save every penny she could. Anyway, as it
was Sunday, everything else in Adelaide was shut. Even the children's
playgrounds in the parklands were closed, the swings chained together so
that they could not be used on the Sabbath. It was a very Methodist city.
She lingered over her pie with peas and tomato sauce, wanting to relive
in her mind the exhilarating experience of her first flight.
Chapter Four

A message came for Caro at lunch-time at the hospital.
"Telephone for Nurse Manning." She flew along the hall and heard
Malcolm's voice.
"Caro? What about dinner tonight?"
"Oh! I'm on duty tonight."
"Tomorrow, then?"
"Yes. Yes!"
"Right. Pick me up at the office just before six."
It was such a warm evening that Caro suggested driving to the beach.
Even if he was too wary to take her back to his apartment, they might
make love on the sand, she thought.
They parked above a deserted beach twenty miles from the city, where
the tame waters of the Gulf began to build into surf. After eating salty
fish and chips from a newspaper parcel, they wiped their greasy ringers
on a new afternoon copy of the Standard.
"What sacrilege!" said Caro.
"Yes, some of my immortal prose is contained in that journal. Makes
even a better table-napkin than a fly-swat."
Caro chattered about her outing to Parafield and her first flight, and
the excitement of stunting in a small plane.
"Sounds mighty dangerous to me," said Malcolm.
"If you won't have me, I don't care what happens."
She turned into his arms, her heart beating high. And heard above the
crash and sigh of waves beyond the dunes, the first heavy drops of rain
on the stretched canvas roof.
It was not just a thunder shower; the rain set in steadily. A smell of
damp sand came up from the beach, the rain drummed on the roof of
the silent car. Caro asked herself why she hadn't bought a large car with
a wide back seat.
It was some time before they spoke, and then he told her that he had
received his transfer and would be leaving for Melbourne at the end of next
week. Caro made him promise he would see her again before he left.
But he left it till his last night to call her, and then she had to be on
duty till nine-thirty. By the time they met there were only snack-bars still
open, so they went to the pie-stall outside the Town Hall.
She was near enough to feel the contact of his solid shoulder as they
stood beneath the canvas awning with their elbows on the wooden counter.
One drunk and two men who looked as if they slept in the parklands were
the only other customers.
Though choking with misery, she ate her way through a soggy meat
pie in a plate of thick pea soup, known as a "floater." The soup was a
yellow-green colour, rather like vomit, but it was quite a good pie, with
plenty of gravy and no gristle.
"Coffee, love?" asked the pie-cart man.
Malcolm shook one hand in a definite negative, and her spirits rose.
They were going back to his place for coffee!
But he said no, he was going back to the office to finish cleaning out
his desk.
"Then I'll drive you to the office."
Instead she drove straight down to the Botanic Park and flung herself
in his arms, sobbing.
"Caro! For God's sake! You knew this had to happen."
"Yes, but I can't b-bear it."
She groped in her handbag for her handkerchief, and felt the little parcel
she had forgotten to give him--a gold fountain pen in a folding case.
He was touched and grateful. "But I should be giving you presents, not
the other way round."
"Will you write to me, with this?"
"No, darling. It must be a clean break."
A clean break! When she felt a torn, jagged place where he was tearing
himself away from her side.
She dropped him at last at the Standard building where lights showed on
several floors as the army of office cleaners worked their night shift. Then
she drove round aimlessly, wondering whether to drive into an electric light
pole and end it all. But what if she was just paralyzed, not killed? And she
hated to think of poor Matilda the Morris mangled and bent.
A stupid rhyme went round in her head, like the words of a popular
song:

After a pie,
We said goodbye.

Melbourne was 500 miles away, and might as well be at the ends of the
earth. And then he would probably go to London. . . . She groaned
aloud and beat her hands on the steering wheel. After a pie, we said
goodbye. She would never see him again.

"Well, did you see Malcolm?" asked Betty. "What did he say?"
"He's going to Melbourne.""Well, old girl, you knew there was no future there."
"Yes. But--it's so final."
While she had Betty's sympathy Caro asked her if she would mind
swapping her next Sunday off, as Ray had asked her to go up with him
again. But Betty had an arrangement with a medical student to go sailing
There was no way she could change it.
Sunday dawned sunny and clear, perfect flying weather. Caro was
getting herself a cup of tea in the pantry during a lull in the afternoon
(on Sundays the wards were full of visitors bearing flowers) when she was
called to the telephone. It was Barry Muirden.
"Caro? Listen, there's been an accident. I didn't want you to read about
it in tomorrow's paper--"
"Not Betty?"
"No. It's Ray Butler. He was stunting somewhere north of Parafield,
when a wing came off his plane. They were both killed instantly when it
crashed."
"Both?"
"He and his passenger. He took another girl up this Sunday."
Caro was silent, shocked.
"Caro? Are you there?"
"Yes ... I heard you, Barry. Thank you for letting me know. I suppose
you've just taken a picture of the wreck for tomorrow's paper?"
"Yes. It's just a tangled mess."
"God! I can't believe it. Poor Ray. He was so young."
"The girl was younger. I suppose this will put you off flying for life. I
mean, it could have been you."
"On the contrary, I feel it's Fate saying to me, 'You are not destined
to die young.' I'm still going to get my pilot's licence."
She went back and drank her cold tea without tasting it. A terrible
thing to have happened! But underlying that thought was another: I
would have been killed, if Betty had changed her day off. I might have
been killed two weeks before. But I am alive.

At Cloncurry the local newspaper had brought out a feature commemorating
the tenth anniversary of the first Qantas flight. In her next letter Alix
sent Caro a copy, with the "Regulations for Operation of Aircraft" issued
in 1920. Alix wrote:

Arthur Affleck has left the Aerial Medical Service, and the new pilot
is Eric Donaldson, a happy-go-lucky chap. Dr. Vickers has flown fifty
thousand miles on calls from here in two years. He doesn't normally
take a nurse with him, but I had one exciting flight to Kynuna, where
he operated on a man at the station for an urgent appendicitis, while
I performed the anaesthesia and Eric Donaldson held the lamp. We couldn't have the lamp too near because ether is inflammable, and
flying beetles kept falling into the wound, but the op was successful.
The patient was taken to Kynuna Hospital, a tiny place with a Matron
and one Sister but no doctor: population about twelve.
They usually fly in the mornings up here, because the currents of
heated air make the bumps worse in the afternoons. But as it was an
emergency we had to leave after lunch, and it was very rough, and the
noise and vibration gave me a headache. I was glad to get back to
Cloncurry in one piece.
Be careful driving your new car--no, I know it's not new, but you
are a fairly new driver. Give my love to Grandma, and tell her I will
be writing to her soon. She complains that even now you have a car
she doesn't see you very often.

With some amusement Caro read the "Regulations." Many were still
valid where the smaller Moths were concerned, with their frail fuselages
of wood and wings of doped cloth; all made by De Havilland and all
single-engined, though remarkably stable.
The Regulations said crisply:

1.	Do not take the machine into the air unless you are satisfied it will fly.
2.	Pilots should carry hankies in a handy position to wipe goggles.
3.	Riding on steps, wings or tail of a machine is prohibited.
4.	Learn to gauge altitude. Do not trust altitude instruments.
5.	Pilots will not wear spurs when flying.
6.	If the engine fails on take-off, land at once regardless of obstacles.
7.	No spins or tail-slides will be indulged in as they unnecessarily strain the engine.

Perhaps, she thought, Ray had strained his machine by too much stunting.
Driving out to her grandmother's a couple of weeks later, she stopped the
car to watch a little training Moth, high up in the blue, flying towards
the hills. It circled and came back, shot upwards, and did a perfect
loop-the-loop. In sympathy, her heart seemed to stop as the engine stalled
on the top of the loop, then started again as the following dive spun the
propeller and the pilot opened the throttle. The plane zoomed away
towards Parafield. Certainly it looked more like a moth than a bird, with
its double matching wings. She felt they were safer than the single span
of the monoplane.
She dashed away again soon after midday dinner, as she wanted to go
to the Public Library in town and read up about flying.
'I don't know; you rush in, and rush out again almost before I know
you're here," said Frances,"Sorry, Grandma, but I'm a working girl. I can't spend all my Sundays
visiting. And petrol costs money."
(It had used three times as much petrol to go to the aerodrome as it
did to this outer suburb in the foothills.)
At the Library she became absorbed in a manual on flying:
"There is safety in height; and there is safety in speed. . . . Flying is
easy, provided everything goes right; but it takes an experienced pilot and
some care to see everything does go right."
All the illustrations were of training planes with double wings, like the
DH 6 and the Avro 4J.
The book said that after a minimum of ten hours flying with
an instructor, the learner could fly solo "circuits and bumps." He then
had to do twenty-five hours solo flying before getting his "A" class
licence. The "Advanced A" licence was needed to carry nonpaying
passengers.
Caro wrote to her mother:

Now that you have been on a flight in a small plane, you will know
how fascinating and exciting it is. I have been up for a short flight and
I am passionately determined to learn to fly.
But it will cost perhaps 150 pounds to 200 pounds for lessons. If necessary I will
sell Matilda, but then I'll have no way of getting out to Parafield when
I have a few hours off at the hospital.
I have passed my First-Year exams in theory and practical. I don't
mean to give up nursing, just to take up flying as well.
If you could lend me the money, Mum, I would pay you back as
soon as I get Grandpa's thousand. It's no use asking Grandma, I haven't
even told her that I've been out to Parafield. Please let me know soon.
I am longing to get my wings.

Alix replied that as far as she was concerned she never wanted to go up
in a small aircraft again.

I was terrified! Some of the flight was very rough, and there was no
toilet in the plane so that I had to use an open tin in flight. I didn't get
airsick, but I felt woozy for days afterwards.
But if you're sure that is what you want, I'll send you a cheque for
what I can spare, about 180 pounds penceI suppose you'll need a flying-suit and
helmet. The Flying Doctor plane has a cabin, at least.
And please don't take risks! Remember you're my only chick.

Caro rang Frances to explain that she couldn't come out that Sunday, as
she was on duty. It was nearly true, she had to be on duty at five-thirty
in the afternoon. Instead she drove to Parafield Aerodrome, twelve miles
north of the city. She wandered among the hangars, in one of which was
the Vickers-Vimy which she remembered as a child, flying over the
Adelaide hills. It was to be set up as a memorial to the brothers Ross and
Keith Smith and their record-breaking flight from London. Ross Smith
had been killed when his plane crashed soon after take-off for another
world flight in 1922.
As she came out into the sun, she saw the lanky figure of Barry Muirden
with a press camera slung from a strap over his shoulder. Anyone remotely
connected with Malcolm was an object of painful interest to her. She
hailed him enthusiastically.
"Why, hallo, Caro. How have you been keeping? I haven't seen
anything of Betty for ages."
"Have you heard anything of Malcolm since he left?"
"I believe he's gone back to his wife, and landed a job with the
Australian Press Bureau in London--lucky bastard."
Caro, who had been nourishing a faint hope of seeing him again, saw
the hope wither and die upon its frail stem.
"Yes, I knew he'd gone to Melbourne."
"Still mad about aeroplanes, eh? Have you joined the Aero Club?"
"I haven't got a plane yet. But I mean to join."
Back at the hospital, she told Betty that Malcolm had left for
London.
"Barry told me about Malcolm. He asked after you."

"Oh?" said Betty indifferently. She was having a torrid affair with her
medical student.
Caro applied to join the South Australian Aero Club, which helped
organize aerial pageants, air races, and receptions for pioneer aviators
when they landed in Australia. It was also a social club, and provided
flying lessons for a fee which at present Caro could not afford. What
Barry had not told her was that the joining fee alone was 25, pounds of which 10 pounds would be refunded when a licence was issued.
The fees were 4 pounds an hour with an instructor, and 2 pounds an hour flying
solo. She had just enough for two lessons, until her mother's cheque
arrived.
In a second-hand bookstore Caro bought a copy of Swoffer's Learning
to Fly, a manual that detailed all the mistakes a pupil was likely to
make, and all the alarming things that can happen to a craft in the air.
But Caro was not daunted. She read the book from cover to cover, kept
it on her bedside table and studied it in her time off. Betty called it her
bible.
She also studied the advertisements in aircraft magazines that showed
drawings of smart young women in the latest flying gear: suede or
calfskin jacket with map pocket, 4 pounds 10s.; calfskin cap, lined throughout,
2s. 6d. Goggles and gloves would be extra. Her jodhpurs and bootsshe had long grown out of. But she was determined to look the part
whatever it cost, and though it might be years before she had her own
plane.

Chapter Five
On a cool grey day in early April, Caro set out for the aerodrome, wearing
long suede trousers and leather jacket, and carrying her goggles and
helmet. She was to have her first lesson with the senior Aero Club
instructor. When she made the booking he had looked at her doubtfully
and said, "Aren't you rather young, my dear?"
Caro, who would not be nineteen till September, had said airily that
she only looked young, she would in fact soon be twenty.
Now she was actually climbing into the back cockpit of the Tiger Moth
which waited on the runway, nose pointed up as if eager to be in the air.
She was in the pilot's seat, the instructor sat in front, speaking to her to
make sure she could hear through the intercom.
She felt no fear, only elation, as the aircraft rolled forward with
increasing speed, the runway blurring past, and lifted sweetly into the
wide embrace of air. Then they were banking steeply, and climbing to
three thousand feet. She had been told not to watch the instruments, but
to feel the movement of the plane by the seat of her pants. She held the
stick loosely while the instructor demonstrated turns with the dual controls
in the front cockpit. Then he let her try for herself.
Soon she was nervously making turns, correcting, trying to keep the
plane's nose dead on the horizon seen through the translucent circle that
marked the place of the turning propeller. It seemed no time before her
twenty-minute lesson was over. The instructor took over the controls and
brought the machine down in a long controlled glide, ending in a
perfect three-point landing--two wheels and tail-skid touching the ground
together--known as the Angel's Kiss.
She had to wait two weeks for her next lesson, when she began to get
the feel of the aircraft, with the instructor's steady voice in her ears: "Don't
lose speed on your turns. ... a little more to the left, left, ease her back,
a little to the right, that's it... hold her, hold her!"
I here came the day when she felt the aircraft responding correctly to
her every touch on the controls, and at last she was allowed to make a
landing: climb, turn, throttle back, and come in on a long glide, with a
bit of a bump at the end, but the instructor said, "Not bad for a first try.
You'll learn."
When at last the great day came and she was to go solo to do "circuitsand bumps"--practice taking off and landing--she was trembling with
excitement as the instructor climbed out and said casually, "All right,
you're on your own now." She had been flying well, making her turns
smoothly, getting her gliding angles right and touching down almost
perfectly. But now that head in the front cockpit had disappeared, the
insistent voice of the instructor was gone; he had always been there to get
her out of trouble. Now it all rested entirely with herself.
As she was about to take off, he said, "Remember, if your approach is
wrong, don't try to land; open up the throttle and go round again. You
can make as many approaches as you like."
Her feet were shaking on the rudder-bar as she taxied on to the runway.
Climb, turn, turn again, close the throttle, and glide in; judge the height,
bring the stick right back at three feet above the earth, then let her settle
gently down. . . . She had made it! Without even a bump!
Her instruction was still not finished when she had won her "A"
licence. To have it endorsed "Advanced A" she had to practise sideslips
and spins, and landing on a closed throttle from fifteen hundred feet
within so many feet of a small mark.
Her instructors stressed that the pilot's job was to stay with his aircraft
till it was safely on the ground--not that they had any choice, having no
parachutes. They said you could bring an aeroplane in to land on almost
anything, even if it involved shearing off a wing or two on a tree; it was
usually possible to control a crash. Moths could land at 50 miles an hour,
so they did not need large cleared areas for landing.
The only instruments in the cockpit were the air-speed indicator, the
altimeter, the rev counter, a spirit level for an inclinometer, a fuel gauge,
and oil gauge. In clouds you had to keep your head, trust your instruments,
and make no sudden corrections. It was easy to become disorientated, and
come out of the cloud in a steep dive or a spin.
Every hour that she flew was entered in a log-book and signed as she
came in. As part of her "Advanced A" requirements she had to fly
cross-country for fifty miles, so she flew to Murray Bridge, over the lowest
part of the Mount Lofty Ranges, and had her log-book signed by an
official before flying back again. It was the first time she had seen the
Murray River from the air, winding and twisting upon itself like a great
green serpent.
Since in country towns pilots were still looked on as some sort of heroes,
the locals rushed out in their cars to the football field where she landed.
When they found the pilot to be a woman, it was so unusual that she
was photographed and interviewed by the local newspaper.
Caro had not ceased to think about Malcolm, but she went out
sometimes with a medical student called Andrew, a likeable fellow with
a rather round, pale face. He was an amusing companion and shared her
interest in engines, about which she was determined to learn all she
could. So under Andrew's instruction she pulled Matilda's engine down
and put it together again. She ground valves in his workshop in the garage
at his parents' home, cleaned spark-plugs, fitted piston-rings and new
gaskets, learned to check tappet clearances and to clean a carburettor and
adjust the mixture. She had trouble cleaning grease from under her
fingernails before going on duty at the hospital.
Andrew owned a large second-hand Bentley, an aristocrat of a car in
which he sometimes took her for spins to the beach or the hills. It had
no roof and the windscreen folded flat. The low-slung body gave a
wonderful feeling of speed; it was the next best thing to flying.
They went swimming on lonely beaches, where Andrew kissed her
with increasing ardour and eventually she let him make love to her, more
from sheer persistence on his part than desire on hers. Flying was her
only love.
On her second cross-country flight, she flew north along the flank of
the Mount Lofty Ranges and went up to six thousand feet. It was strangely
lonely up there in the empty blue sky, with the earth a mile below; but
how soft and beautiful the ground looked with its coloured paddocks,
green and gold and purple-brown, its vineyard-clad slopes, and a few
white clouds far below looking as if pasted to the earth. She tipped the
nose down and went zooming earthward in a long, thrilling dive: "Caro
Manning, here I come!" she chanted. It was as the details of houses and
roads and railway lines came clear that she felt the first hesitation in the
engine. Her heart gave a responsive flutter.
She opened the throttle and climbed again: "There's safety in speed,
and safety in height," she remembered. But something was wrong with
the engine; it was missing badly. The fuel gauge showed half-full, but it
sounded as if the tank were empty. She looked around anxiously for
somewhere to land. She heard the instructor's voice: "Always watch your
country, know where you can put her down if something goes wrong."
And now she was too high to see what the surface was like down there.
She had neglected that wise precaution.
She would simply have to go down for a look, and pray that something
turned up. There were green patches that were probably vineyards,
and dark patches which would be ploughed paddocks--possible
for landing, but probably impossible to take off again. With the
engine coughing ominously she dropped, using her dive to keep the propeller
turning. The engine picked up again, and she saw the township of
Clare ahead--all telephone wires and electricity poles--and then a
pale square opened out, a stubble paddock just large enough for her to
put down. ... It was on a slope of a low hill, so she landed uphill so as
not to roll too far.
If there were any hidden stumps, it was too bad. She glided in over a
four-strand wire fence, ready to open the throttle if the next fence loomedup too soon. . . . But the soil was firm, and the plane was safely down
while the slip-stream threw up a cloud of dust and straw like a threshing
machine. She stopped two plane-lengths from the next fence.
Now to try to locate the trouble. She took the petrol filters off to clean
them, but they were all right; checked the points and spark-plug gaps; still
nothing wrong. Then she removed the plugs and found two of them badly
oiled up. This was the answer.
A farmer and his lad now arrived, full of curiosity and amazement at
finding a woman flyer in their field.
She got them to help her swing the tail round so that she could take
off downhill for extra speed; and as the Moth had no brakes, to hang on
to the wings and hold her back as long as they could while she revved up
the engine.
"Shut your eyes--you're going to be covered in dust," Caro called, as
she switched on, climbed down to swing the propeller, and climbed back
again. She opened the throttle, the engine gave a roar, then suddenly the
plane leaped forward and she was racing downhill towards the fence; she
pulled her up, up--and over!
She circled once and dipped a wing to acknowledge the help of the
two men waving their hats at the edge of the paddock. She felt sure she
had made their day, and the farmer would be telling the story in the pub
for weeks to come.

Now Caro was licensed to carry passengers, but she did not have a
machine in which to take them up. She hung about the aerodrome
whenever she had time off, hoping to be asked to go up with someone;
buying--when she could afford it--half an hour solo. There was only
one other woman regular at the Aero Club, so the two of them would
lunch in the little Club dining room, sitting at a table in the far corner
of this room devoted to men and male pursuits.
One day she drove straight from the aerodrome to her grandmother's,
wearing her flying kit and helmet. Frances, who was in the garden cutting
roses, nearly fainted.
"Caro! What on earth--"
"Hallo, Grandma," said Caro, kissing her and taking off the helmet.
"I thought you'd like to know that I'm now a qualified pilot."
"What!" Frances clasped the roses to her with a pained gesture. "A
pilot! Whatever next!"
"Next I want to get my own aeroplane. Then I'll be able to take you
up. I am licensed to carry passengers."
"You'll do nothing of the sort. I don't intend to go up in an aeroplane,
least of all one piloted by a mere girl."
"But you know I'll be twenty-one in two years. Then ..." She opened
her arms wide and smiled at the sky.
"By then, I hope, you'll be married and settled down," said Frances
tartly.
"I very much doubt it.
"Does your mother know about this--this--"
"She lent me the money for my flying lessons. Come on, what about
afternoon tea? Some of your almond biscuits," she said, taking the roses
and carrying them inside.

She had received the ten pounds back from her joining fee at the Aero
Club but still had to wait to get in enough flying hours for her "B" class
licence. She had studied for the theoretical examination, and had learned
all about thrust and drag, lift-drag ratio, wing-loading and lift coefficient,
all the mysteries of aerodynamics that kept a heavier-than-air machine
flying. She copied out her lecture notes at night when off-duty, sometimes
five or ten times over, to fix them in her mind.
Caro spent no money on clothes and ate at her grandmother's or at the
hospital. Andrew sometimes took her for a meal or to the movies, so her
only expenses were for uniform stockings, petrol for Matilda, and flying
lessons. At two pounds per hour she had enough for an hour's flying time
a week, and gradually built up her flying hours.
She spent her one and a half days off a week, and some of her days
when she should have been sleeping after night duty, at the aerodrome.
She had less time for Andrew, who sometimes drove her out to Parafield,
but complained that he hardly ever saw her alone.
There had been a coolness between them after Caro told him about
one of her patients, a young woman whose oesophagus had been badly
burned by caustic soda when she was a child. The girl's condition
necessitated periodical returns to hospital after food-particles got through
the damaged food-pipe and became lost in the chest cavity.
On their next meeting Andrew produced a neatly written page of verse,
which he handed to her and then waited expectantly.
She read:

Emily's oesophagus
Is no longer worth a cuss.
Her infant eyes mistook for beer
A bottle of what was, I fear,
Caustic soda deleterious;
With consequences rather serious.
For ever since, if she incline
To gorge above the waterline
The choicest morsels go astray,
And lodge among her vertebrae.

"Well?" he asked smugly.She handed back the paper with a slight frown.
"It's clever--and completely heartless," she said. "I thought you knew
how I felt about that girl. She must have suffered hell as a child. And
will never be able to eat normally again."
"Of course; we see tragic cases every day. But you have to laugh, or
you'd go mad."
"I still don't like it."
"Very well; I thought it might amuse you."
He took the paper sulkily, and scrunched it into his pocket.
"Doctors are terribly cynical," said Betty when Caro told her. "They
say nurses get hard, but doctors. . . I"
Inevitably, Caro's nursing studies had suffered. At the end of third
year, Betty passed her final exams with a credit, while Caro just scraped
through. In the same month the devastating news came through that
"Smithy"--her hero, Kingsford-Smith--had disappeared somewhere
near Burma on a flight from England. Neither he nor his plane nor his
co-pilot were ever seen again.
Caro took her certificate home to show her grandmother: certifying
that she was "received as a probationer on the 9th day of December 1932,
and had completed her full term of three years' training in the Medical
& Surgical Wards of the Hospital, both on day and night duty. Dated
this 9th day of December 1935."
Frances was pleased that she had persevered, and Alix sent her congratulations
and a little gold-and-blue enamel locket on a fine gold chain.
Betty went off to do relieving work at other hospitals, and Caro took
four months off before going to the Queen Victoria Maternity Hospital
to enrol in midwifery. By the time she was through she would be
twenty-one and able to buy her own plane. Meanwhile she could also
study for her aircraft engineer's ticket, although that, too, could not be
attained before she was twenty-one.
She pawned the gold locket to pay for flying lessons, for she had to log
sixty hours' solo flying to get her "B" class licence, which would entitle
her to take paying passengers, or to work for a commercial airline--if
anyone would employ her.
She also had to spend half an hour at six thousand feet. The instructor
used to say, "Don't be a fair-weather pilot. Remember, above the clouds
the sun is shining." So she took off on an afternoon when large blue
shadowed thunder-clouds were building up over the hills.
The clouds were enormous, towering to possibly thirty thousand feet;
there was no way she could get above them. Instead she flew in the narrow
spaces of clear sky between, with the great rolling solid-looking masses
almost near enough to touch. She knew that in their centres was turbulence
strong enough to tear off her wings. It was like flying past snowy
alpine mountains, exquisitely beautiful but also a little frightening.
It was so exciting that the half-hour passed too quickly and it was time
to return to earth. As she made her approach into the wind and throttled
down for landing, she knew the recurring joy of feeling the aircraft
responding to her every touch; then the exultation of the long glissade
down through the shining air, like a bird returning to its nest on the
ground.
It was an experience she never forgot in all her years of flying.
Now she had to do half an hour's night flying; this was exciting, coming
in to land along the flare path at Parafield, judging with difficulty the
height of the craft above the ground. But the most frightening part of the
course was flying blind.
The instructor travelled with her at the dual controls for this exercise.
A canopy was placed over her head and shoulders so that she could see
nothing outside the cockpit and the instruments in front: compass,
air-speed indicator, rev counter, inclinometer, and altimeter. She had
been warned to keep a close eye on her instruments, or she would lose
all sense of balance and direction in a few seconds; and any misdirection
of the aircraft could send it into a dangerous spin.
"Remember what to do in a spin," she counselled herself. "Centralize
all controls, stick right forward, and out she comes."
She breathed slowly and tried to relax as the instructor handed over
the controls to her, his calm voice reassuring her from the other cockpit.
His voice in the earphones was her only guide as she groped her way
through the air, feeling little sensation of movement as all outside visual
reference points were gone.
Her mouth was still dry with fear and excitement when they landed,
but the instructor said, "Congratulations; you came through that very
well. Now you'll feel safe if you suddenly find yourself flying in cloud."
Chapter Six

Caro was now a fully qualified commercial pilot.
Andrew, who was still an undergraduate, took her out to celebrate.
They danced to the music of a small band, against a background of
dark-blue velvet curtains. Andrew was a good dancer, and Caro, who was
not, enjoyed following his guiding steps. They went back to their table,
his arm still around her, and over a supper of asparagus omelettes he
asked her to marry him.
"Oh, Andrew!" It was her first proposal, and she was touched. She was
truly sorry, she told him, but she couldn't possibly get married--even if
she loved him enough--when her new career as a flying nurse was almost
about to begin. He poured her another glass of champagne with a hand
that shook slightly.
"I didn't mean right away, darling. I mean, I won't be through Medicine
for another two years. But we could just get engaged."
She had a moment of panic, beginning to feel trapped. She didn't want
to be tied down. She looked at him, with his round, pale face and anxious
eyebrows.
"I'm sorry," she murmured again, touching his hand. "It's just impossible."
His hand was white and smooth, hers roughened and skinned about
the knuckles.
It was true she wanted to be free, but also she had not yet got over
Malcolm.

Amy Johnson, her schoolgirl heroine, had been the first woman to qualify
as an aircraft engineer in England. Caro determined to be the first woman
to do the same in Australia. She already knew something about petrol
combustion engines, both theory and practice.
It was not a difficult course, she found; the difficulty was in being the
only woman in a class of men at the Institute of Technology, a class that
led up to an exam by the Department of Civil Aviation. She wished she
had been better at mathematics. Inevitably she came in for some teasing
from her classmates.
When they had to make notes and drawings of "a male-and-female
joint"--a term she had never before encountered--she felt afraid that
she might begin to blush, and of course the very fear made her do so. No doubt all the jargon had been invented by men, beginning with the
obvious origin of "joystick" for the main control lever in the floor of the
cockpit.
Oh, it was ridiculous--but, aware of sly grins from the students on
either side, she hung her head and let her straight fair hair fall forward
to hide her burning cheeks.
Working on actual aircraft was better. She enjoyed all the detail of
servicing a plane and making sure that it was safe to fly. She wore
workmanlike overalls and a scarf tied round her hair, and did not mind
how dirty her hands got or that there were smudges of grease on her
cheeks. Just to be able to tinker with an aircraft was the next best thing
to flying.
She was so busy that she saw much less of Andrew. Indeed, he was
less attentive since she had refused his proposal, and seemed to have given
up any hope of making her change her mind.
It was with a sense of shock that she read how a woman pilot had
been killed at Mascot Aerodrome in Sydney. And Qantas had had their
first bad crash when a DH 86 went into a flat spin near Longreach and
killed all four on board. Caro was undeterred, but her mother wrote
from Cloncurry that she hoped, now that Caro was fully licensed
as a pilot, she would be content to fly only for pleasure, hiring a plane
occasionally.
"Not a hope," wrote Caro cheerfully. "As soon as I'm a triple
certificated nurse, and get my inheritance, I shall buy a little plane and
take off for the north. So expect me at the end of the year!"
Having finished her basic training, Caro found midwifery less exacting.
She was no longer a junior probationer who could be bossed and harassed
by senior Sisters. And she could sleep at home when she was not on night
duty.
Caro didn't really like babies much. They were incredibly messy
creatures, at both ends. The sheer volume of noise from the nursery was
the worst on early-morning duty, when forty or fifty babies, all screaming
with hunger that sounded like rage, had to be distributed to their mothers
for the 6 a.m. feed.
Caro put her foot wrong in the first two weeks, when one young mother
pointed out worriedly that there were white patches on her baby's inner
cheeks and tongue. "Could it be thrush?" she asked.
Caro unwisely offered to mention it to the Matron, who swelled like a
turkeycock and exclaimed "thrush? There is no thrush in my hospital,
Sister. Thrush comes from dirty conditions. You will find that it is just
a clot of half-digested milk. Kindly inform the mother so."
However, the mother remained unconvinced, and Caro swabbed the
baby's tongue with gentian violet just in case, so that the infant looked
like an outsize blue-tongued lizard.Instead of books on test-feeds and baby weight gain, Caro studied
motor manuals, reading up on airlocks and carburettors, valve-seats and
piston-rings, wing-nuts and Whitworth bolts.
But she was nothing if not determined, and she could apply herself
with great concentration when she tried. Just before her final exam she
swotted up on theory, and she had proved herself in the labour ward as
conscientious and unflappable, though some young mothers found her
unsympathetic.
She finished her course in midwifery and received her certificate.
Caro gained her aircraft engineer's certificate on her twenty-first birthday,
and celebrated with lunch at her grandmother's. She fretted while a
firm of lawyers finalized the details of her inheritance, but at last she had
her thousand pounds in the bank.
She had been looking round for some time for a suitable and not too
expensive aircraft and now was able to buy, in Adelaide, a secondhand
DH 60 Gypsy Moth for seven hundred pounds.
She spent weeks doing long and short hops to familiarize herself with
the plane, but it was very similar to the ones she had done her training
in: they were all different types of the De Havilland Moth. But before
setting off across Australia from south to north, she needed more experience
of long-range flying. The Brisbane-Adelaide Air Race in December
gave her an opportunity, and she entered without telling her mother.
(Caro had written to tell her she was a triple-certificated nurse at last.)
A group from the Aero Club flew in leisurely convoy, with plenty of
stops on the way, to Brisbane. When the field was assembled at the
Brisbane airport, it was found that they had to wait for a Qantas overseas
airmail flight to take off for Darwin before they could start. There were
several women pilots among the starters.
They had to fly to Coffs Harbour on the coast, then to Sydney for an
overnight stop; then left Mascot aerodrome for Cootamundra on the
western plains, and spent the night in Melbourne. The next day was the
hop to Adelaide, with a stop near the South Australian border to refuel.
The winner was a young man called Reg Ansett. Caro did not get a place,
though she came a creditable fifth.
She was well pleased with her effort, and greatly enjoyed the comradeship
of other flyers at the stops en route. She had flown over mountains
and through cloud, hazards she would not be encountering on her way
north--unless they were clouds of dust.

Caro was off on her great adventure. She had bought almonds, raisins,
and barley sugar to chew on the way, and some canned sardines and a
ground-sheet in case she should be forced down; besides some screw-top
cans of water, a bottle of soft drink, and two square four-gallon tins of
petrol, enough for about eighty miles. She was assured that she would have no trouble obtaining fuel at the big stations on the way, but it would
be expensive because of freight charges.
Everything had to be kept to a minimum in the Moth's cramped space.
She had to find room for tools and tying-down gear for anchoring the
plane in the open, for it could easily be blown away in a high wind or a
willy-willy.
Frances, horrified at her making such a journey from Adelaide alone,
had asked why she didn't take a companion; but as Caro pointed out, the
space occupied by a passenger or second pilot would leave nowhere to
carry things but for the slip pockets on the inside of the two cockpits.
These would be used for carrying such things as maps, a torch, matches,
a comb and lipstick, a drinking flask, and a cloth for cleaning her goggles
and windscreen.
Frances still insisted that she take the tin of biscuits she had baked.
Caro did not argue; the tin would be useful later. She asked for some
empty jam-tins as well, without explaining to her grandmother the rather
lowly use to which they would be put, on the longer stages of the journey
to Cloncurry. For the same reason she wore wide-legged shorts instead
of her trousers, even though it would be cold if she had to ascend to any
height.
Betty and Andrew were at the airport to see her off, as were her
grandmother, keeping a brave face though she evidently never expected
to see her again in this world, and some of her Aero Club friends. They
waved until the little blue-and-silver craft, which she had christened Circe, had dwindled away in the empty blue sky to the north.
Caro felt a sense of exultation as the neat square paddocks below gave
way to plains covered in mallee, looking as dark as cinders against the
earth, then to grey saltbush and the beginning of the painted desert. She
left the rugged Flinders Ranges on her right and headed for Port Augusta,
two hundred miles north, at the top of Spencer Gulf, which penetrated
like a blue spear into the dry centre of South Australia.
Caro landed briefly to top up her fuel tank; from here she set a compass
course due north over Lake Torrens, 120 miles of dry salt-pan. It was
fascinating to trace its shores from the air, indented by water that no
longer existed, the surface apparently of pink clay with white salty patches.
Towards the northern end, where the lake bent away to the west, were
some small islands.
Animal tracks leading out to these from the shore showed where the
animal had broken through the pink-and-white surface into the dark
damp clay below. It did not look at all safe to land on. She had no detailed
route maps, and she had not been required to lodge a flight plan before
leaving, so no one would know where she was if she was forced down.
on
But she could hardly get lost between Lake Torrens and the north-south
railway line. She planned to stop at Marree, then briefly at a stationthe way to Birdsville, with a short hop from there to Cappamerri to see
her grandfather. Leaving the dead lake, she made north-east for the
railway and followed it over the desolate dead-flat plains to Marree. She
came in on a line between the dry bed of the Frome River and the railway
line, to land on what she thought was an airstrip, but was in fact the
racecourse.
Her arrival by air did not cause much excitement in the town--hadn't
they seen Smithy himself land here in his Lady Southern Cross? And
sometimes the Flying Doctor plane took an urgent case down to hospital
at Port Augusta or Adelaide. But the townspeople were rather intrigued
when they found the pilot was a woman.
The Sisters at the hostel were new, but they had heard of Sister
MacFarlane and her companion Sister Kingston who had perished. When
Caro told them she was Alix MacFarlane's daughter they made much of
her and invited her to stay the night on the wire-screened veranda, and
call Cappamerri on the pedal wireless early in the morning, before the
day's schedule of medical calls began on the Flying Doctor network at 6 A.M.
It was much easier these days with a microphone instead of having to
tap out messages in Morse code. They showed her how to work the pedals,
and the switch, and gave her the two call-signs:
"8YM to 8TG, 8YM to 8TG," she called, pedalling vigorously.
"Not too hard, dear," said Sister Walsh. "You have to get the rhythm
of it; otherwise you'll get out of breath."
Caro slowed down her pedalling. "8YM to 8TG," she called. "8TG,
it's 8YM calling, 8YM from Marree. Come in, 8TG."
It seemed ages before an answer came in: a faint and croaking voice,
"8TG, 8TG to 8YM. Cappamerri Station. Over."
"8YM to 8TG . . . Grandpa, this is Caro here. Yes, I'm flying up the
Track. See you late this afternoon. Well before sunset. Over to you.
Over."
There was a crackling silence over the air-waves. Then a blurred voice.
"8TG calling 8YM. Caro? Is that really you? Did you say you're flying?
Over to you."
"8YM to 8TG. Yes, I'm flying all the way. In my own plane, what's
more. I'll land on the clay-pan near the house. See you soon. Over and
out."
She switched off and beamed at Sister Walsh. "He doesn't really believe
me. He sounded half asleep. But he'll believe it when he sees me land."
She felt sure he had been asleep when she called. Grandpa, still in bed
after sunrise! Big Jim Manning must have changed his habits since she last saw him nine years ago.
She refuelled at Marree, saving the tins of petrol stashed in the
front seat with the jerry-cans of water. As long as she did not lose the often-obliterated track in a dust-storm, she could scarcely go wrong.
Cappamerri was less than an hour's flying time from Birdsville.
As she took off and circled for height, the shadow of her plane slipped
over the bare ground in the shape of a perfect cross, and for a moment
rested on a white headstone in the cemetery. Although she did not know
if the grave was Mab Kingston's, it could well have been, and moved by
the little touch of symbolism she decided to tell her mother it was so.
She was tempted to fly west towards Lake Eyre where Alix had nearly
perished with Mab. At the Clayton Crossing she turned and followed its
wooded channel north-west from the bore-drain. But as the river bed
became dry and the stony desolation about Lake Eyre appeared below,
she realized that she was doing a very foolish thing. The Sisters at Marree
would have warned Mungerannie Station that she was on her way; but if
she failed to arrive no one would be looking for her in this empty area
west of the Birdsville Track. There was nothing to the west and north but
the salty expanse of Lake Eyre and the dry bed of the Cooper. She turned
east-north-east and made for the Birdsville Track.
It was not nearly as easy to follow as the railway line, but she picked it
up at Dulkaninna, where the homestead had its name painted in large
letters on the roof; the aeroplane had well and truly arrived in the outback,
Caro thought. There were a group of people waving from near the
homestead. Caro flew down and "buzzed" the station roof and waved a
scarf in acknowledgement.
Even though mail-trucks used the Track regularly, it was necessary to
come low over the Oorowillanie sand-hills to pick out the winding
wheel-tracks through the maze of sand. She had seen no water anywhere
except at the government bores; and where she crossed the Cooper with
its lines of dead trees at Kopperamanna, she saw the old homestead, once
part of the Lutheran Mission to the Aborigines, almost buried in sand.
The sand was moving north-west along the longitudinal axis of the
sand-dunes towards the Simpson Desert, leaving behind silted waterholes
and bare clay-pans in which nothing would grow again.
It was depressing to see. She was relieved to arrive at Mungerannie
homestead, to a green oasis inside the garden enclosure, a bath in the
bore-water, and a meal of fresh beef. She had asked Marree to tell them
to light a small fire, or "smoke," to give her wind direction, and Caro
landed bumpily on a sand-drifted airstrip, to the squashing and popping
of green paddy-melons. The station people, a new family since her
mother's day, showed her the usual outback hospitality, and told her that
the best place to land at Birdsville was on the racecourse.
"I remember the racecourse," said Caro. "I went to school at Birdsville."
It was noticeable how the Boss and the Missus warmed towards her
when she told them this, and that she had spent her early childhood on
Cappamerri and that Big Jim Manning was her grandfather. She was"one of them"--the battlers, "We of the Never-Never" types, not some
city girl visiting the country like a tourist. Though pressed to stay the
night, she said she must get on as her grandfather was expecting her.
"We'll give him a call and tell him you've left here," they promised.
"Good luck, lass. You're game to be flying up here on your own."
"It's nothing," said Caro carelessly. "I'm on my way to Cloncurry, to
see my mother."
"Goodness! That's another three or four hundred miles further. The
Flying Doctor base."
"Yes; my mother is nursing at the Cloncurry Hospital. And I might be
the new Flying Doctor pilot--who knows?"

Chapter Seven

Caro made only a brief stop at Birdsville to take on fuel; also she wanted
to see the town again for old times' sake. The river bed was dry except for
the bore-fed waterhole, and the new punt installed in 1930 lay unused.
"Hasn't rained in Birdsville for five years," the Shell gasoline man told
her. He had driven out to the racecourse as soon as he saw her land. "It
has to break soon, or so we keep saying. . . . The school's closed down,
so has the Royal Hotel. The A.I.M. hostel burnt down, but it's been
rebuilt since. The town's not what it used ter be."
He offered to run her into the town in his truck and drive her back
again.
"No, I don't think I want to see it. It's too depressing. I lived here at
the hostel until I was twelve, but it's all changed."
The old hostel was gone, the school closed, the waterhole was invisible
in the flat and stony expanse, among the few wisps of half-dead saltbush
and dead roly-poly blown into depressions. She did not want to see any
more. And then, above the hidden waterhole, a flock of eight pelicans
rose and circled against the blue. With wide wings held motionless, they
climbed an invisible spiral of heated air, higher and higher. Gazing at
them, she remembered how she used to watch the pelicans and wish she
could fly. It seemed a good omen.
She took off into the dry south-easterly and circled back over the low
scattered roofs of the town. To the west stretched the Simpson Desert,
streaked with pink and orange, long sand-hills as regular as the waves of
the sea; to the east were the bare plains of Sturt's Stony Desert, with the
dry channel of the Diamantina meandering through it. She set off for
Cappamerri, following the river's course but cutting off the bends.
She passed by several permanent waterholes, shrunken but not yet
empty. She saw no sign of cattle, and no green anywhere except on the
banks of the river. And then the long red sand-hills, the twelve-mile
waterhole and the iron and cane-grass roofs of the station. . . . The sand-hills had encroached until only the garden enclosure was clear.
She had travelled in less than an hour the route which had taken the
station buggy two and a half days. Caro dived towards the homestead roof
and then zoomed up again to make sure they heard her, then circled the
clay-pan as dark figures began to run out of the campsite wurlies, andsomeone in a white shirt came out of the house and got into a truck to
come and meet her. As she made her last turn and began to glide in to
the landing, she saw two blackfellows industriously sweeping the bare
polished surface of the clay-pan with a yard broom! She could only hope
they would get out of the way in time.
She made a perfect landing, cut the throttle and watched the propeller
falter and stop, while her ears adjusted to the silence after the steady roar
of the engine in flight. She began unbuckling her harness and helmet as
her grandfather's utility truck came bouncing over the rocks, raising a
cloud of red dust.
The big man, with brick-red face and white hair showing under his
broad-brimmed cattleman's hat, lifted her down from the steps, hugged
her, and set her on her feet. Others were waiting with outstretched black
arms to shake her hand, those who remembered young Jim's wife and
daughter--the little girl with her pony and her friendly ways, the Young
Missus with her clinic for the children and old men with trachoma. One
old man had tears in his eyes as he welcomed her. "Young Missus save
me goin' blind," he said. "Mumma belong-you, before you born."
He must have been about eighty, Caro thought.
Big Jim put his arm around her shoulders.
"So you're a full-blown pilot, eh?" he asked admiringly. "You always
had plenty of spirit, like your mother."
He smiled, and the tiny slits of blue that were his eyes disappeared
entirely in the folds of his cheeks.
The sun was close to setting as they went up the shallow steps to the
veranda. The sand-hills glowed with pure colour, and the waterhole
beyond gleamed blue-green in contrast. The sound of water-birds came
up from the river, and a mosquito whined past. Yes, it was the same place
she vaguely remembered. Her grandfather, Caro noted professionally, was
overweight and did not appear to be in good condition. He had left one
of the men (or "boys," as he persisted in calling them) to carry Caro's
small bag, but he wheezed and was short of breath just from climbing
the steps.
But Jim Manning's deterioration was nothing to that of the homestead
since Olive's day. No white woman had been there for years, and old
Lucy, who had run the place so well, was probably dead. On the veranda
they stumbled over wisps of dead leaves and sticks, and little heaps of
sand deep enough to grow vegetables. Caro felt sand grit under her feet
on the flagged floor of the living-room . . . well, perhaps they'd had a
sandstorm recently. But the curtains were ragged and hung crookedly
from missing rings, and the table was apparently kept half-set with
sauce-bottles, salt and sugar, and some uncleared plates from the last
meal. Caro thought it might be wiser not to venture out to check on the
condition of the kitchen--after all, she had to eat here.
Outside, the nearest sand-hill had encroached on the station outbuildings,
half-burying the meat-house and cool-room, and was already up to
the garden fence. The garden itself was withered and neglected.
There used to be a black girl who helped to water the garden, and who
worked in the kitchen--Jenny, was it? As if in answer to her thought,
Big Jim went to the door opening towards the kitchen annex, and called,
"Jenny! Drinks for Young Missus, you lazy bitch!"
There was some delay before Jenny arrived with two glasses on a tray,
filled with lemon cordial and water--and actually two blocks of ice!
"Yes, we've got a kero fridge now," said Jim Manning.
Meanwhile Caro was trying not to stare. This fat and shapeless figure
in a dirty gina-gina--could this be Jenny? She had evidently made some
attempt to do her hair, but it was still like a rats' nest.
"Hallo, Jenny. Remember me?"
"You-i, Missus. You bin growed up; one-time you little tacker. Might
be seven, eight year old."
"That's right; more than ten years ago. You see me land my aeroplane?"
"No-more. Me bin schleep."
In the old days, Jenny would not have been sleeping in the late
afternoon, with guests coming. Things had indeed changed. The evening
meal consisted of tinned meat and tinned beans, with some thick hunks
of bread and no butter.
"I've seen no cattle about, Grandpa," said Caro as they sat on the
western veranda after dinner. The clear inland sky shaded down from
palest turquoise to glowing apricot behind the dark frieze of river gums.
"All dead," he said laconically. "I can't afford to stock up again when
this drought breaks--if it ever does--and the place is eaten out. Don't
even own a riding horse any more." He slowly filled his pipe. "I'll end
up in this old-timers' home I hear they're going to build in the Alice. As
for the station--I'll give it back to the crows and the kites."
"What about staff?"
"Don't even have a cook, let alone a bookkeeper. Place has gone to
pot since old Lucy died, as you can see. The blacks will hang about the
waterhole, catching their own tucker like they used to, or drift into
Birdsville as fringe-dwellers."
"And Jenny?"
"She's been a loyal helpmate." He looked defiant. "I know you don't
approve, but--"
"I didn't say I didn't approve. But--if she has sons ..."
He shrugged. "They can have the place, for what it's worth. Even a
good season won't help now. And she can have the house, and whatever
I can leave her."
In the morning, Caro found that Jenny had washed her dress and
smartened herself up, and had even swept the floor. But she was guarded,watchful, and unsmiling. Caro realized that she dreaded a white woman
coming here to live, where she had ruled the roost for so long. She had
a room in the cook's quarters adjoining the kitchen, but it was evident
she was used to being free of the house.
Caro saw her sullen mouth relax when she told Jenny that this visit
was a short one, she was on her way to north Queensland and would not
be coming back.
"You look after the Old Boss now, Jenny. I know you his woman. He say those boys belong-you can have this place when him gone."
Jenny's fat, dark face broke into a smile. "Me got girl, too. She wan'
to be nurse at Ho'pital, longa Birdsville, like-it you Mumma."
Jenny said her daughter had once been taken down to the hostel with
a poisoned foot, and she had never forgotten the clean white building
and the kind Sisters.
Caro explained that she could be a ward-maid at the hostel, but it took
a long time to learn to be a nurse.
"I'm a nurse, and it took me four years."
"You nurse too, Missus? Mine tink-it you bin Bird-lady."
"So I am. A sort of flying nurse."
Caro spent another two days at the station, enduring the terrible meals.
She could have offered to cook, but the idea of the wood stove in the
increasing heat of early summer did not appeal, and she felt sure she
would not be welcome in the kitchen building. She had looked forward
to riding again, but there were no horses. She talked to Alix at Cloncurry
and told her to expect her within a week, so that her mother would not
worry if she was delayed for some reason. So far the flight had gone like
a dream.
Her greatest danger lay in getting lost. Poring over the map with Big
Jim, she agreed that "the longest way round was the best way home." In
that trackless country, and with no railway lines as guides, the safest path
was to follow the beds of the great dry rivers, along which station properties
were strung and waterholes could be found. But to take the direct route
north to Cloncurry, she would have to cross a hundred and twenty miles
of empty sand-hills on the very borders of the unexplored Simpson Desert
to the westward. If she missed her way and flew into the desert, she would
eventually run out of fuel and perish there.
Big Jim's idea was that she should follow the Diamantina all the way
up to Kynuna, and then use the main road to Cloncurry as her guide.
Caro wanted to see Boulia and the legendary Bedourie, where the Bedourie
oven came from, and the dust-storms known as Bedourie Showers. But
the whole route was desolate and dangerous.
She decided instead to fly north-east along the Diamantina to Diamantina
Lakes Station, then north-west by compass to the Hamilton River,
pausing at Springvale Station on the way. This would be the most difficult part of her route, and her first major change of direction. She would then
follow the Hamilton northward through the Selwyn Range, and so to the
town of McKinlay and the mail-route to Cloncurry.
The whole camp came out to see her leave, the Bird Lady who was
the Boss's granddaughter. The sky was light in the east but the sun had
not yet risen. She would get a good start before air currents from the
heated earth made flying uncomfortable. With luck there would be no
bad dust-storms before the hottest months, February and March. The sky
as she lifted into it was clear from horizon to horizon.
As the sun rose, the earth revealed the ethereal beauty of dawn from
the air. Even the endless sand-dunes took on a softness and charm in the
diffuse golden glow along their summits; and shadowed with palest blue
were the clay-pans between them, while the harsh, forbidding gibber
plains to the east looked soft as a water-colour. From three thousand feet
all was level as the sea.
Following the mile-wide dry channels of the river, Caro settled comfortably
into her pilot's seat, relaxed and content. This was the best sort of
flying: when human wits and nerves were pitted, alone, against mechanical
weakness or elemental forces. Though nursing to her had been
incidental to her great commitment to flying, she saw now that there were
points of similarity between them, and perhaps one training had helped
the other. In both one must be constantly alert, aware, and foresighted,
ready to tackle an emergency without giving way to anxiety or alarm.
Duthie Station was coming up on the starboard side of the river, a few
cattle just visible, moving along the radiating tracks round each bore.
Sand-drifts showed around the homestead buildings, but Duthie did not
seem to be in as bad a state as Cappamerri. There was still a blue-grey
sifting of growth on the slopes of the sand-hills, though the gibber plains
were bare. Caro wondered if Grandpa's old mate Harry Hays was home.
Climbing for safety to four thousand feet, she levelled out and gazed
round for signs of dust or cloud. But the whole horizon was clear, merging
into the blue of distance all round.
A line of trees marked the main channel of the river, but sometimes
there were three or four, parting and meeting again. She passed over
Monkira Station, seeing a gleam of water in a long reach, and the white
specks of water-birds or cockatoos rising above the trees. It was fascinating
to see the country spread out like a map below, a map that seemed to be
unrolling slowly backwards beneath her. The engine droned sweetly,
without a miss, the wire stays vibrated gently in the wind of movement.
The air up here was pleasantly cool.
She dropped down to a thousand feet for a good look at Monkira.
She made a wide circle round the homestead, banking and turning,
seeing no very inviting landing ground. It was too early to refuel, so she
waggled her wings in acknowledgement to the few people waving fromthe ground, and flew away up the river bed. She felt sure her passing
would be recorded in the "galah session" during the morning, so her
whereabouts would be known.
From three thousand feet she could see the braided channels of the
river disappearing to north and south, but now they began to widen into
a confusing pattern, three or four channels joining and meeting again,
sometimes ten miles apart. At last the channel she was following, with
an occasional permanent waterhole in it, suddenly disappeared into the
desert. There was nothing ahead, no landmark, no river bed, not a hill;
just the endless empty plains. Was she west or east of the main channel?
If she kept taking wrong turnings she would run out of fuel. It was
daunting to think of landing in the midst of this emptiness to refuel from
her tins, even if she could find a suitable place to put down. Her watch
had stopped, and she did not know how long she had been flying since
Monkira.
The safest course was to retrace her track to where the tributary had
branched off, and then follow what seemed to be the main channel again.
She had lost all faith in the river as a guide but it was the only point of
reference in this vast, flat land. She had come at least fifty miles along
the false channel. This would mean a hundred miles before she was back
on course, if she returned. Forcing herself to breathe slowly and deeply,
refusing to panic, she made a swift decision and turned due east. She
climbed for a wider view, but the day was advanced towards noon and
the sky was becoming hazy. She wiped her goggles and peered ahead, her
eyes smarting with the strain.


Chapter Eight

After an anxious quarter of an hour Caro saw ahead a dark line of trees
trending north and south. But was this the main channel, or another
tributary leading off to the north? She flew on until she could see a second
channel beyond the first. From the map, Diamantina Lakes was on the
easterly one of two channels. Then, on the second channel but slightly
to the south, she saw the roofs and outbuildings of a station, and a large
waterhole beyond. She had nearly missed it! This was her turning-point
for flying west towards Springvale.
Feeling her knees begin to shake from the reaction to tension, she
thankfully circled lower, looking for a possible landing ground. The wind,
she was sure, would still be a steady south-easter. A sudden bump and a
lurch as a heated air pocket caught the plane, and figures like small black
ants appeared below. As she came lower she was able to see that they
were pointing southward to where a faint track crossed the dry river bed
and led to a scoured clay-pan. She side-slipped, throttled back and glided
--there was still time to pull up again if the clay-pan was strewn with
large boulders--as a motor vehicle came tearing along the track leaving
a plume of red dust.
"Are you Caro Manning?" asked the station manager as she climbed
stiffly out of the cockpit.
"Yes. Is this Diamantina Lakes?"
"No, this is Davenport Downs. The Lakes is twenty miles on."
Caro felt a chill of retrospective fear. If she hadn't needed fuel, if she'd
gone on without descending to ask her way, she'd have flown out into a
hundred miles of nothing between the Diamantina and the Hamilton.
She could have missed Springvale altogether.
"We heard on the pedal radio that you were flying up the river towards
Cloncurry. Come in to the homestead and have a drink. Or still better,
stay the night."
Caro squinted at the sun. She estimated that she still had five or six
hours of daylight left.
"No, I think I'll keep going. But if I could have a bite to eat--and get
you to draw me a local map? The channels are so confusing. Is Diamantina
Lakes on a single channel?""No, the channels are eight or ten miles apart there. But you've no
need to follow the river any further."
More than food, Caro craved a visit to the station's outside lavatory.
She had left early in the morning, with a selection of empty tins which
she threw out when they were full. And though she was thirsty, she had
limited her drinking as much as possible. Now she needed more than a
tin.
After lunch, Mr. Brooks drew a map, with accurate distances marked,
among the clutter of papers on his office table.
"See, you're in the heart of the Channel Country here. You go
north-west till you pick up the Mangeroo Knobs, a group of ironstone
jump-ups, and they will lead you to Spring Creek. Go up Spring Creek
to Springvale and just before its source you come to the track leading to
the Hamilton Hotel on the Hamilton River; whenever you strike the river,
go north, and it will lead you through the Selwyn Range to the McKinlay
River, which you follow into McKinlay and the main road to Cloncurry.
As soon as you see the rivers start flowing north instead of south, you're
nearly there."
Refreshed, and with the plane refuelled, she set a compass course
north-west. The manager would send a pedal-radio message ahead to
Springvale that she was on her way. She picked up the group of small
knobby hills and the green-looking course of Spring Creek, and kept at
less than a thousand feet to be sure of not losing her landmarks, till the
white roofs of a large station showed ahead. She circled Springvale once,
waved to the people on the ground, and flew on for the Hamilton River.
Bare stony plains stretched as far as she could see on all sides. Not a
single habitation anywhere. She strained her eyes ahead until at last she
picked up a winding line of black cinders, as it appeared, strewn on the
red-brown earth. This was the line of trees marking the river bed. She
came down to only five hundred feet and skimmed along above the trees,
looking for the Hamilton Hotel. No sign of it. Well, perhaps she had cut
the river too far north. But there was no doubt she was on the right track;
the dry bed of the river was tending steadily northeast.
After that, as the manager of Davenport Downs had mapped for her,
she followed the river through the lowest part of the rugged Selwyn Range
and looked for a river flowing north. It was strange to fly over the
"backbone" of the land where the rivers flowed off in opposite directions.
But she had little time to study the landscape. She was being flung up
and down in a series of heat-bumps, and feared going the whole way
down on to those inhospitable-looking rocky ridges. The Hamilton petered
out in a mountain creek, and ahead was the beginning of the McKinlay,
flowing north. Soon she was over McKinlay, and turning northwest
along the main road and with a tail-wind to help her, she was in Cloncurry
in little more than half an hour, with two hours of daylight left.
She had made it! It was an anxious business flying alone over unknown
territory, and without a watch. It was not till she landed on the Cloncurry
airfield, seeing the Qantas hangar, that she realized how tense she had
been for the last three hundred miles. But she had made it.

That night Alix was not on duty. She and Caro stayed up till near
midnight talking, though Caro was physically exhausted by the long, hot
flight from Cappamerri. She had a bath and went to bed in the second
bed in her mother's room, then Alix came and sat on her bed and they
talked some more, catching up on five years.
"By the way, I'm the sub-Matron now," said Alix. "I could probably
get you a job on the staff."
"No, thanks," said Caro. "I want to fly. If they won't take me in the
Flying Doctor Service--"
"The Aerial Medical Service, it is called."
"In the Aerial Medical Service, I'll take my plane to some little country
town and offer it to the local doctor for visiting his patients."
"What! You'd set up in competition to the A.M.S.?"
"Why not, if they're silly enough not to employ me? By the way, I've
got your hundred and eighty pounds, Mum. Two hundred pounds with
interest."
"I don't want interest, child."
"I'm glad you didn't get your hair cut, like everyone else," said Caro,
looking at her mother's soft curly hair with scarcely a grey thread, which
was falling about her shoulders as she took out her hairpins.
"I like yours short, after all." Alix stroked Caro's long bob, falling as
straight as straw on each side of her face, and with straw's silvery-gold
sheen. "Did you bring your nurse's uniform? I've never seen you since
you became a nurse."
"You've never seen me since I became a pilot, for that matter."
"No--you were still at school! I felt a bit guilty, leaving you with your
grandmother, but you were a great companion for her after Grandpa died.
Frances and I couldn't live in the same house for long. Has she aged much?"
"After Grandpa died she looked a lot older. But she doesn't seem to
have aged any more since. Like you, not a grey hair--but I think she
tints it. You know that sort of dead black?"
"Yes. She'll never let herself go grey. And Grandpa Manning? How is
Big Jim?"
Caro sighed. "He--he's going downhill. So is the station. He admits
he will have to walk off and leave it eventually. There's no feed left, and
the sand-hills are encroaching on the homestead."
"He has someone to cook his meals?"
"To open cans, more likely. Yes, Jenny seems to have taken over the
house.""Ah--Jenny!"
"I was only a kid when I was there before. Was she--was she already
established then?"
"Yes. Even in Olive's time. She was what the Bible calls a concubine."
"He's going to leave the station to her boys. What's left of it. There are
no cattle any more, just a few goats. Not even a riding horse!"
"So he won't be leaving you anything?" said Alix with gentle irony.
Caro laughed unselfconsciously. "Not a hope!" She added seriously,
"Poor old Grandpa! He says he'll end up in an old men's home."
"I hope for his sake that he dies before that happens."

In the next few days Caro gave her plane a thorough overhaul. She was
very pleased with the performance of the engine; it had not given her a
moment's worry, and she had averaged almost ten miles to the gallon of
fuel. . . . She was leaning on a wing, testing the wing-struts, when she
noticed the hangar was open, and two men were wheeling an aircraft out
into the sunlight where the red cross gleamed on its side. She guessed it
was the Qantas ground engineer, who serviced the medical-service plane
as well as the Qantas mail-planes, and the pilot, Eric Donaldson.
It was too hot for overalls, so Caro was wearing shorts and sandals and
an open-necked shirt, the shorts revealing a length of slender leg.
She climbed down and strolled over. The mechanic nudged the
pilot.
"This is the A.M.S. plane, isn't it?" she asked with interest. "And
you're Eric Donaldson? I'm Caro Manning, Sister Alix's daughter."
"Ah! We've heard of you from your mother--she's very proud of you.
And I hear you've just flown solo all the way from Adelaide--quite a trip
for a little crate."
"Don't you mean, 'Quite a trip for a girl'?" she asked mockingly.
He smiled disarmingly. "Well--it is unusual."
She smiled loftily, "Amy Johnson flew solo all the way from England
when I was a child."
"Yes--well--she was unusual, too."
"And let me tell you I'm a commercial pilot, with a "B" licence, and
a certified aircraft engineer as well."
He whistled. "That really is unusual for a girl. Thommo, meet Caro
Manning, who will be able to help you out when you've got two planes
in for servicing at the same time. Thommo Thompson is the Qantas
engineer," he explained.
Thommo grinned and sketched a salute.
She allowed herself to smile. "What's the problem?"
"It was a blown valve. All fixed now."
"I've been checking my engine, and it seems okay. I was worried by
the oil overheating on the last leg."
"In mid-summer you have to watch for vapour-locks. The temperature
often 115 degrees on the ground. Shade temperature, that is. It's all
right once you've got a few thousand feet on the clock."
"I had to hug the ground so as not to lose the rivers and the roads I
was following," said Caro. "You should have seen me hedge-hopping up
the Diamantina. And even then I got lost."
Eric Donaldson looked at Thommo and shook his head admiringly. "I
still say she was game to take it on."
Caro was used to being around flying men and talking shop, and when
tall laconic Eric asked her to come and have lunch with them at the pub
she agreed readily.
"The only thing," said Eric hesitantly, "is that they're a bit old-fashioned
out here, and a lady in shorts--however attractive she looks--might not
be accepted in the hotel dining-room."
"Not that we object, of course," said Thommo with a grin.
Caro, who had driven Alix's Baby Austin Seven out to the aerodrome,
said she would pop back to the hospital for a skirt, and join them later.
Over lunch in the Leichhardt Hotel Eric suggested that they ought to
organize a party to welcome her to the town. "Everyone wants to meet
you, especially the unattached males; they're always delighted when some
new talent arrives."
"Such as a new nurse at the hospital? Well, I'm a trained nurse too."
"You are amazing. There is a doctor in the Northern Territory Service
who flies his own plane, but there are no pilot-nurses!"
Caro was immediately interested. "Who is he--this doctor who flies
himself?"
"Dr. Trenowith. You must have read of his exploits--he's always
getting lost and having hairbreadth escapes from death. But John Flynn
won't have him in the A.I.M. Service. His idea is one man, one job,
and a doctor must be able to concentrate on his patient without flying
the ambulance plane as well."
"So, does this Dr. Trenowith have his own practice?"
"He works for the Northern Territory Medical Service, out of Darwin.
There's no Flying Doctor base in the Territory as yet, though we often
fly across the border to attend urgent cases. But Flynn intends to make
the Alice a Flying Doctor base eventually."
"My mother was at the A.I.M. hostel there about eight years ago.
Perhaps I might get a job with the new service when it opens. Meanwhile,
I'm looking for charter work."
'We really need a back-up plane when Victory is out of action--as it
has been the last couple of days," said Thommo. "Qantas has to scratch
round and lend a plane in an emergency."
And what are my chances of getting your job?" she asked, looking at
Eric."You've got Buckley's chance, I should say. Wouldn't you, Thommo?
The doctor's a bit conservative. You'll meet him--Dr. Avery. He and
the Medical Superintendent of the Cloncurry Hospital don't get on. He's
supposed to be Honorary Surgeon, but complains they never consult
him."
As they were finishing off the bottle of beer they had ordered with
lunch Eric said, "Dr. Avery will be a bit nervous when he finds he has
a woman pilot. He'll be expecting you to crash."
"I've never had a crash," said Caro, crossing her fingers. "I suppose it's
a bit like falling off a horse--you go up again straightaway to make sure
you haven't lost your nerve."
"That's about right. My worst crash was in December 1930, when the
engine failed: a vapour-lock in the fuel system. The temperature in the
shade was 115 degrees that day. The plane was a wreck, but I walked
away from it."
"He was born lucky," said Thommo. "You know what he does when
he's lost? Flies low over the first traveller he sees, shuts off the engine and
shouts, 'Where's Camooweal?' or wherever."
"Yes, one bloke was wild because I made his pack-horses bolt."
Caro laughed. "I'll try that next time I'm bushed."

Chapter Nine

In the next week Caro managed to get some charter work with local
graziers from the cattle-stations to the north when they came into town
and saw her advertisement. Some of them looked very doubtful when
they found that "C. Manning, Pilot" was a young woman. But as soon
as one had been brave enough to take the plunge--or rather the ascent --he encouraged others to do the same.
It was amusing to hear one sturdy, sun-browned cattleman urging his
friend over a beer in the Leichhardt Hotel: "Go on, George, you really
must go up, you've no idea how it gives you a complete view of your run
in only twenty minutes or less."
The same man, Caro had noticed, closed his eyes as she banked steeply
and he saw his property tilting alarmingly; he had gripped the sides of the
cockpit throughout the flight.
The party suggested by Eric was duly held, people coming in from
properties around. It was also a pre-Christmas party and the local hall
was booked and decorated with tinsel and red bunting. A bush band
which was passing through was commandeered.
Since everyone plied the orchestra with beer during breaks, as the night
wore on the fiddler became more and more frenetic, playing in faster
tempo, until at last his belt broke and his trousers fell down about his
knees. He kept on playing in his undershorts in the dim light, for the
petrol-lamps were running short of fuel.
All the men wanted to dance with Caro because she was new, an
unknown quantity. Her mother danced with the Medical Superintendent
from the Hospital, but Matron did not put in an appearance, pointing
out that "someone must hold the fort," for of course all her young nurses
wanted to be at the party.
Eric introduced Caro briefly to Dr. Avery, who did not dance, and his
wife, a local girl who had married the Flying Doctor.
"He's a fine surgeon," Eric told her as they danced. "Has rather a regal
manner which frightens some of his patients, but he has a kind heart and
will go anywhere at any time if he's needed. He knows that sometimes a
man who's been too long alone on an outstation may be imagining his
symptoms, but his policy is 'When in doubt, fly.'"As he took her back to her seat--all the women sat together round the
edge of the dance floor, while the men congregated round the door of
the hall--Eric said, "I want to ask you something, Caro. I'm trying to
wangle leave so I can go down to Sydney for Christmas, and I wondered
if. . . ."
For a moment she looked startled, thinking he was asking if she would
like to accompany him on such short acquaintance. "I wondered if you
could help. I might be getting married, at least I want to go and see my
girl, but they keep telling me there are no relief pilots available. And this
is where you come in."
"Me?"
"Yes, I want a few weeks off, and I'm sure you could carry on here.
I'll claim that I'm jaded and need a break. Your mother knows John
Flynn, perhaps she can pull some strings with the A.I.M. in Sydney. Are
you game?"
"What do you think?" said Caro with a broad grin.
"Good girl!"

Caro's appointment as temporary relief pilot with the Aerial
Medical Service came through in time for Eric to leave for Sydney
before Christmas. To her disappointment her first medical flight was to
be a short one, back over the route she had flown on her way to Cloncurry.
It was to Kynuna, on the upper reaches of the Diamantina
River. This was the same flight which Alix had written about with such
drama.
Caro was in her workmanlike long pants and boots, with a white
shirt, as she waited for Dr. Avery to arrive at the airstrip. She wanted to
check everything herself before take-off. Eric had briefed her and gone
up with her on a short flight but a Fox Moth's controls were not new to her
though a cabin-type was. The pilot still had his head out in the air in the
cockpit, with the usual inadequate little windscreen curved in front of
him.
Hearing the doctor's car approaching, Caro quickly put on her flying
helmet with the goggles pushed up on her forehead, her blonde hair out
of sight. She wasn't sure if he knew who the temporary pilot was. Dr.
Avery, carrying his black bag, stepped briskly up to the open door of the
cabin and placed the bag within. He then turned to say "Good morning,"
and his eyes became fixed on Caro's smooth brown arms emerging from
the rolled-up sleeves of her shirt, and the way the front of that shirt fitted
her figure. A keen glance at her face, and he turned, reached into the
cabin for his bag, and began walking back to his car.
"Dr. Avery! Aren't you ready to take off?" she called.
He stopped and looked back. "Not with a woman pilot, thank
you!
Caro shrugged and looked at Thommo, who was trying to stifle his
laughter with an oily rag, out of sight on the other side of the plane.
'Thommo. . . I" she appealed.
He came out from behind the plane and addressed the doctor. "It's
quite all right, Doc. I'd trust my life with her, any day. Eric says
she's good, and he'd know. She's just flown solo all the way from
Adelaide."
"Another Dolores Bonney, eh?" growled Dr. Avery. (Mrs. Bonney,
the year before, had flown around Australia alone.)
"And I came fifth in the Brisbane-Adelaide air race, and I won the
Ladies' Trophy." Even as she said it Caro had a feeling of dismay. What
if he knew that wasn't true? Actually, a young red-headed, bright-eyed
woman called Nancy Bird had won the trophy--what a wonderful name
for a woman pilot! It wasn't that she told lies, Caro reasoned, she was just
a bit prone to exaggeration. . . .
"Well, we'd better get on, I suppose," said Dr. Avery, putting his bag
into the cabin once more and climbing in after it. Caro closed the cabin
door and smiled at him. Thommo swung the propeller
"Switch off."
"Suck in."
"Switch on."
"Contact."
"Contact!" And the single engine sprang into life.
She taxied out and faced into the wind, after giving the engine a
thirty-second burst before the chocks were knocked away. She would
show this doubting doctor she could fly!
There was no trouble with navigating: she followed the road southeast
to McKinlay, the way she had come, then on over the dead-flat plains to
Kynuna. Here the river bed was flat and sandy, with some small waterholes
among the sand. There was obviously not much fresh water to be
had; the only sign of green was a tiny lawn at the hospital, looking no
bigger than a pocket handkerchief. (After they landed, out of curiosity
she measured it; it was exactly fifteen feet square.) The hospital had two
Sisters under the Bush Nursing Scheme, so Caro's assistance was not
needed during the operation on a child with a foreign body in the
oesophagus.
Kynuna township was small and bare. There was no bridge, and there
was no water in the river. Only a few stunted trees, and beyond, the baked
earth of the empty plains. Goats nibbled at empty tins and old papers in
the dusty street.
Caro was glad to accept an invitation to lunch at the tiny hospital. She
had chocked the wheels of the plane. The sky was clear, and though she
had brought her tying-down gear she did not use it.
They sat down to a late lunch of cold roast goat and tomatoes. "I hadonly two tomatoes, so I shared them among the four of us," said the
younger nurse.
The doctor was in a good mood after a successful operation. Caro had
taken only a few mouthfuls when there came a shout from the road, then
someone was hammering on the front door. "Eh, Sister, Sister!" he cried.
"You better tell the pilot of that there doctor's plane--"
Caro rushed to the door. "There's a bloody big willy-willy heading this
way," said the man, whose short sandy hair seemed to stand on end as
he pointed behind him. The sky was clear, but moving towards them
over the plain was a giant willy-willy, a spiral of red dust twisting hundreds
of feet into the blue.
"Quick! Come and help me hold her," shouted Caro, making at a run
for the large open paddock where they had landed. The little plane stood
alone and unprotected. No time to tie her down now. The first man
collected a bystander, and they sprinted after her. "Grab the wings!" said
Caro, watching as the towering red dust-cloud, tapering at the base, came
wavering towards them. Old papers, roly-poly bushes, a sheet of loose
iron were swept up by the whirlwind. Caro was desperate. She could see
in her mind the Moth snatched up and bashed down again, perhaps
impaled on a post--and she would have lost the Flying Doctor plane on
her first flight.
She gripped a strut between the wings till her knuckles were white.
The man who had called her held on to the opposite wing and the third
man grasped the tail-plane and rudder. Then the willy-willy was upon
them, whirling and dragging. Fortunately there were no trees or fences
to obstruct them as they went dancing along, with longer and longer
strides, every now and then taking twenty-foot leaps as the plane tried to
fly. Their eyes blinded by dust and debris, they closed them tight and
hung on.
As suddenly as it had caught them, the whirlwind let go its grip, and
the sand and dust subsided. Dazed and half-blinded, Caro saw the red
column dancing away over the plain. The aircraft was very dirty, but did
not appear to be damaged. Caro bent and kissed a gritty wing. Then for
safety she drove in the pegs and fixed a guy-rope.
When she made her way back to the hospital after giving each of the
men ten bob to spend at the pub, the others looked at her with worried
faces. "We kept your lunch," they said, and "You'll need a wash." They
pointed her towards a wall-mirror. Caro took one look and burst into
near-hysterical laughter. Her face was painted red with dust, her mouth
and eyes showing as three white patches, and her hair was full of grit and
straw.
"Well, that has taught me a lesson," said Caro to Dr. Avery as they
went back to the plane to fly home. "In this country, never leave your
aircraft untethered."
"Not in summer, anyway," he gravely agreed. "We could have lost the
plane."
She rather liked that "we."
In the next two weeks Caro flew the doctor more than a thousand
miles, and on each trip he grew more relaxed. She had her first glimpse
of the unfriendly flying territory to the west when they flew to Mount Isa
to pick up a miner with a broken pelvis. At Cloncurry the Great Australian
mine was still producing copper and some gold and iron from the dark
peak called Black Mountain; while at Mount Isa a great lode of silver-lead
had been opened up. The mineralized area was about a hundred miles
across, and from the air showed as quite distinct from the pastoral lands
around it.
But good mining areas meant dangerous flying conditions, mile after
mile of jagged, barren hill and gully; scorching hillsides of a dull red
brown, topped with rocky backbones like the plates on the back of a
dinosaur; great tumbled masses of broken rock; scrub and spinifex, and a
few stunted trees along the dry watercourses.
Caro found that under the regulations Qantas planes (and the Aerial
Medical Service plane was one) were not supposed to fly direct to the Isa,
but must take the long way round by following the railway line south to
Duchess through a gap in the hills, and then northwest again. It was
exactly twice as far.
She flew the safe way going out, but coming back with an injured man
in pain, she flew the direct route, going up to six thousand feet to give
her time to glide over the worst country in an emergency. The doctor did
not complain.

Much as she was enjoying being the Medical Service pilot, Caro had
to refuse to take off in a severe dust-storm that blew up from the south a
few days later at Cloncurry. Dr. Avery knew that a road trip to Julia
Creek would not only be uncomfortable, but it would take six or seven
hours, whereas they could fly there in one and a half hours. "What
use is an aeroplane if we can't use it in an emergency?" grumbled the
doctor.
"I'm sorry," said Caro firmly. "I daren't risk the aircraft, not to mention
your life and my own. If we wait till tomorrow morning, the dust may
have cleared."
"It can't wait. The matter is urgent, gunshot wounds to the chest and
internal haemorrhage. I have to go and operate as soon as possible.
There's only a Bush Nursing Sister at Julia Creek."
"I'm sorry," said Caro again. He turned away impatiently and went to
see about a car and driver.
Distressed, Caro went to see her mother. "I honestly couldn't fly in
this weather," she said. "We'd be sure to get lost. Eric told me that theview ahead is almost nil, looking into the propeller and the haze; you
have to fly along looking backwards, and I don't know the routes well
enough for that."
"You were quite right, dear," said Alix soothingly. "You mustn't let
Doctor bully you into acting against your own judgment."
Later that morning a wireless message came for the Qantas agent to
say that owing to the widespread dust the mail-plane could not leave
Longreach, as it would not be possible to find its way to Cloncurry. Caro
felt justified, but she also felt that the doctor might hold it against her.
Did he think she was afraid? It occurred to her afterwards that she might
have taken a risk with her own plane, but she could not be responsible
for jeopardizing the Medical Service craft.
That evening a call came from Julia Creek to ask her, if the weather
had cleared sufficiently, to fly out and pick up him and the patient next
day. She gathered that he'd had a fairly hot and unpleasant drive.
Fortunately the sky did clear.
As the summer heat increased, so did the frequency of dust-storms.
The visibility was reduced to a hundred yards, and the dust-clouds reached
thousands of feet into the air. Even at midday the sun appeared like a
pale Aspro tablet suspended in the orange sky.
On December 30, Caro had to fly to McKinlay yet again on the
way to take the doctor to El Rita Station, about forty miles south of the
town.
"Better stop at McKinlay for directions," said Dr. Avery before they
took off, but Caro explained that she had flown that way on the trip from
Adelaide, had passed almost over El Rita near the source of the Hamilton,
and she could remember the route quite well. "After I lost the Hamilton
I followed a stock-route all the way north to the main road. I must have
passed the station on the way."
The report had said that an old man making a fifty-mile cross-country
ride had broken his leg away out in the range. He was delirious and blood
poisoning was feared.
A car was waiting at El Rita and the manager drove them ten miles
into the hills; the patient was being carried nine miles on a stretcher from
where he had fallen.
Caro and Dr. Avery sat down in the river bed to wait. He had asked
her to come with him (after tying down the plane securely) to help ease
the patient's journey back to the plane
The sun beat down into the dry river bed and radiated from the heated
rocks. They waited and waited. Mr. Chalmers from the station drew some
water up from a soak dug in the river bed, and they quenched their thirst
with black tea--far better than plain water. It was now 2 P.M. and they'd
had no lunch, but it was too hot to think of eating.
As Mr. Chalmers handed Caro her mug of tea, a fly fell in and drowned in the hot liquid. Unconcerned, he hooked it out with a horny-skinned
finger. "If you can't drink tea with seven flies in it, out here," he said,
"you have to do without tea."
It was nearly 6 P.M. and the blazing sun had gone behind the shoulder
of the cliffs when they heard horses' hoofs stumbling on rocks, and
the party appeared--four men carrying a stretcher made from a
camp-bed and leading their pack-horses. A large old man, about seventeen
stone, lay on the stretcher with his eyes closed. His leg was held in
an improvised splint of bark; his long white beard was spread on his
chest.
The four men, quite worn out, lay on the sand to sleep till daylight,
while the doctor and nurse attended to the patient. He still had ten miles
to travel over a rough track in the station car, for there was no way the
plane could land anywhere in this rocky gorge.
There was nothing to eat--though fortunately someone had brought
sugar as well as tea--but Caro did not complain. After Dr. Avery had
given the old man an injection, she bathed the dust from his face, and
then sat with him and fanned the last flies of the day from his eyes and
mouth.
Before his eyes closed again he stared up at her blonde hair and trim
figure, and muttered "Cripes! An angel!" And then, with a weak smile,
"I'm ready to go." The men said he had been raving on the way out of
the hills, calling for his dead wife.
His injuries were worse than just a broken leg. His horse had fallen
back on him, and he had lain with a broken leg, collar-bone, and ribs,
from late in the afternoon till his mates reached him at midday the
following day.
Dr. Avery fixed a proper splint for the leg, and gave him something to
bring the fever down. As the rocks cooled and the camp-fire died down
it became quite cool. Caro covered the old man with a blanket they had
brought. When he was restless in the night she gave him two aspirins and
a drink of water, without calling the doctor. She went back to her sleeping
place where she had dug a hip-hole in the sand, but a brilliant moon, a
quarter past the full, rose over the cliffs and turned even the spinifex to
silver; it was so unbearably bright in that clear dry atmosphere that she
could not sleep. Here she was, sleeping out in a creek-bed in the middle
of nowhere with half a dozen men for companions, and accepted naturally
as one of them. She was content.
At "piccaninny daylight," well before sunrise, they heard another
vehicle approaching--this time a Ford van. They lifted the stretcher into
the back. The patient looked at Caro and put out his uninjured arm to
take her hand. "I'll travel with him," she said and crawled in the back
without waiting for the doctor's reply. She held the patient's hand over
the ten miles of dreadful bumps and jolts, and he did not complain once.Dr Avery rode in front with the driver. There was a car from the station
waiting by the plane, with coffee, and fresh scones with jam--a hurried
but most welcome breakfast before they took off.

Chapter Ten


In the last hundred miles over the now-familiar route from McKinlay,
Caro felt her eyes grow heavy from lack of sleep. She fought the urge to
close them and landed safely at Cloncurry, where the ambulance they
had radioed ahead for was waiting. Tired and dirty, she said goodbye to
Dr. Avery at the hospital, had lunch and a bath, and went to bed.
Alix listened half-enviously to her tale of adventure. "It must be
interesting," she said, "but I can't stand flying." Caro said she thought
their shared mercy flight had made Dr. Avery think better of her. "He
looked quite vulnerable, covered in dust and sweat. And as we parted he
actually smiled and said, Thank you, Sister.'"
She was glad to be able to demonstrate her nerve and ability as a pilot
as well as a nurse on a short but exciting flight to the little mining town
of Selwyn in the heart of the Selwyn Range. The landing ground was
small and tucked away in a gully where winds were funnelled in a direction
to make landings awkward. Caro made her way in cautiously, sideslipping
neatly to lose height, and made a perfect landing. A waiting car drove
them in to the half-deserted settlement to pick up a sick child.
The child, who had never been away from home, was most unwilling
to come. It was Caro, with a piece of barley sugar from her pocket, who
persuaded her into the car and then into the plane. On the way out Caro
had to weave her way up a gully to clear the hills that crowded round the
small airstrip. As she cleared the rim of the hills the craft hit an air pocket
with a great bump. Dr. Avery, who was not strapped in, was thrown
forward out of his seat, but the patient was safe on her stretcher.
When they landed, Dr. Avery said to Caro, "For a moment there I
thought we were going all the way down. My heart was in my mouth."
"Is that a medically accurate statement, sir?"
He laughed. "Well, no. To put it accurately, I was scared stiff."
Caro took a personal interest in the patients she had brought in from
points all round the compass. She visited the little girl, Margaret, and
the white-bearded old man, Mike Dunne, pleased to see that he was
keeping cheerful and was apparently on the mend. Alix had asked her to
wear a white dress when she came out of visiting hours, and preferably a
cap over her hair.
"Sister Alix tells me you're her daughter, eh?" said Mike. "And a nurse,too? I thought you was some kind of angel when I come to, and that I
was dead for sure. I was a bit surprised to see an angel in riding trousers,
but."
Caro laughed. "Not an angel, just a flying nurse."
"Well, I say you're an angel."

On the next flight they were called to Normanton, on the Norman River
Estuary, and to the Lorraine homestead on the Leichhardt River.
Fortunately the wet season had not set in, or they would have found
landing-grounds too boggy or completely under water.
First they flew north along the dry course of the Cloncurry River, over
miles of fertile red soil lightly timbered with white-trunked eucalyptus,
with a ground cover of spinifex and Mitchell grass, good cattle country.
The plain was intersected by more and more tributaries and watercourses,
and forty miles away they saw the first glimpse of the sea, a suggestion of
deeper blue on the northern horizon. Over the plains there was often an
illusion of being ringed by distant seas, as the horizon on a clear day was
always veiled in soft blue.
As the vegetation became denser they could see the cleared line for the
telephone, and followed it up to Normanton. Along the Norman River
great flocks of corellas flew against the green, and as they came low and
coursed down the river at little more than a hundred feet, crocodiles
basking on the banks slid hastily into the water.
Normanton, with its great wide empty streets, two pubs, bank, gaol,
and police station, and the large Burns, Philp store, had once been a
thriving town of three thousand people when the Croydon gold-fields
were in full production. Yet it had not the melancholy of a ghost town.
The little hospital, painted white, was situated on a red gravel hill
overlooking the town. It was built in an open design with wide verandas
and high roof, so that every breeze could flow through the open louver
windows.
While Dr. Avery was assisting with an operation at the hospital, Caro
wandered about the town. She saw several groups of Aborigines on the
river bank. They told her shyly that their camp was on the other side of
the crocodile-infested river; they had to wait for the ferry to take them
home. (In fact, they were not allowed to stay in the town overnight.)
There were acacias growing down the middle of the main street, and
bright bougainvillaeas. The place was neat and cared-for; the pubs with
their first-floor balconies and wooden pillars freshly painted. Normanton
lacked the deadly indifference to appearances that made the smaller inland
towns so depressing.

Burketown was their next stop. Dr. Avery had heard that the resident
doctor was seeking help with a puzzling case.
As they took off from Normanton, Caro could see the wide tidal river
meeting the bright blue waters of the Gulf of Carpentaria twenty miles
away; she turned north before heading west to Burketown. She thought
of the explorers Burke and Wills, reaching the Gulf near here after
struggling across the continent, only to die on the return journey. Now,
if they'd only waited till the aeroplane was invented. . .
Burketown seemed even more deserted than Normanton. A few black
and part-Aboriginal children came out to wave at the plane as they landed.
They knew the hospital; a regular clinic was held here each week for
them. They took Caro's hand and led her along. Once more the barley
sugar, very sticky now, came out from her pocket.
Another small plane, marked "N.T.M.S.," was already parked at the
airstrip. It turned out that the Northern Territory Flying Doctor, visiting
the Doomadgee Mission, had heard the call from Burketown and flown
the extra miles.
So there were three doctors at the little hospital to confer over the
mysterious illness of one man, and his symptoms; intermittent fever, ague-like pains in the bones, and fluid in the peritoneal cavity. It seemed
to be some sort of infection, perhaps carried by mosquitoes or drinking
water, and had so far proved intractable. Perhaps a new virus was involved.
Dr. Fennell of Burketown was naturally alarmed. They had lost a large
proportion of the population in the last typhoid epidemic.
After giving the medical men time for their conference, Caro walked
up to the little hospital and made herself known to the only Sister. When
they all met for a cup of tea in her sitting-room, Caro was introduced to
the Northern Territory doctor. He was casually dressed even by Territory
standards--no socks, just sand-shoes, shorts, and an open-necked shirt.
"Dr. Trenowith!" she exclaimed. "I've heard of you. Isn't that your
own plane out there?"
"No, alas!" he smiled, and his lean cheeks folded into deep grooves as
white teeth flashed in a brown face. "My plane was burned to cinders. I
got out just in time. This one is borrowed until I can get a replacement."
"I know; you're always having hairbreadth escapes and getting lost and
found again--"
"Oh, please!" He looked embarrassed. "The press never mentions all
the flights where no drama happens at all."
"Dr. Trenowith's exploits are good publicity for the Medical Service,
anyway," said the hospital Sister.
"You always fly yourself?" asked Caro.
"I prefer to; that's why the Flynn organization won't have me. And
you--I believe you're the Flying Doctor's pilot?"
"Sister Manning is a jolly good nurse, too!" put in Dr. Avery.
"Really?" Dr. Trenowith gave his engaging grin, a smile that involved
his whole face: even his blue eyes smiled. His thick dark hair was wildand uncared-for-looking, as though it might have been cut some time
ago with a pair of sheep-shears.
"I'm only a temporary pilot," said Caro, "while Eric Donaldson is on
leave. They couldn't get anyone else!"
"Are you a Queenslander--from Brisbane, perhaps?"
"No--I got my licence in Adelaide, and flew up to Cloncurry in my
own plane. . . . Poor Circe is grounded, with nothing to do."
"Circe? Wasn't she a wicked witch, who turned men into beasts?" asked
Dr. Fennell.
"She was an enchantress," said Caro.
After tea there was to be a clinic for Aboriginal children. Dr. Trenowith
left for the Territory on his way back to Darwin. Caro drove him to the
airstrip in the hospital vehicle--half utility truck, half ambulance.
"Is it true," she asked with a smile as they bumped over the corrugations,
"that you once buzzed the open-air cinema at Darwin during a programme
--you were actually between the projector and the screen?"
"Oh, you've heard of that? Yes, I was coming back late into town and
saw the screen all lit up--it was only just after sunset--so I thought I'd
have a look at the programme. Some of the patrons got a bit upset and
called the police. Then the Civil Aviation Department took away my
licence for a while. I had to apply for special permission to fly to urgent
cases."
"Yes, the Department can be a bit stuffy at times."
"Of course they're a,Canberra mob. Darwin is an easygoing place. The
proprietor didn't mind a bit, he thought it was a joke. But he said I should
have bought a ticket for the performance."
She pulled up at the airstrip. They sat and talked for a while.
"Have you ever landed upside-down?" he asked. "It's a queer feeling."
"Never, touch wood," said Caro, patting the dashboard.
"I did once. At least I landed right-way up, and then flipped over. I
was flying a Qantas kite, a small biplane with a cabin, and I had a
passenger for Katherine. I was forced down and landed, as I thought, on
a nice flat clay-pan--but the plane somersaulted on to its back. My
seat-belt had given way, and as the noise died away I found myself
upside-down, on the back of my neck, under the instrument panel. I
couldn't move a muscle because of what was piled on me--all the medical
kit had fallen through the cockpit door and landed on top of me. My
passenger was a large muscular pearler from Broome, and he had dropped
on top of me too. All I could hear was the shattering silence.
"'Greg,' I said, 'are you all right?'
"No answer. Cripes, I thought, I've killed him.
" 'Are you okay, Greg?'
'"No, I'm not bloody okay,' came from behind me. 'What the hell
happened?"
" 'I don't know, but if you can get off me I might be able to untangle
myself and have a look,' I said.
"There was a bit of an upheaval behind me, a foot trod on my stomach
and I was free to move--if I could. At last I managed to lever myself out
of the cockpit and got to the cabin door, treading on the ceiling.
"Well, I found both landing wheels had broken through the thin crust
--what I thought to be a clay-pan turned out to be a salt-pan, with soft
mud underneath. So be warned."
"I've had some lucky escapes," said Caro, trying to think of one to
impress him, "but I've never wrecked an aircraft."
"Well, I suppose I'd better get on my way," he said at last, shaking her
hand warmly.
"Happy landings."
"Perhaps we'll meet again, Sister Manning--I certainly hope so. The
distances are enormous, but the people are few."
She watched his tall, lean figure as he walked to his machine with long
strides, buckling on his leather helmet. He was not strictly handsome,
his face was too long and his nose too big; still, she hoped that they might
meet again.

After a clinic lasting an hour, to which several Aboriginal children came,
they took off again. Caro turned south along the Leichhardt River,
avoiding the first fifty miles of tidal channel, which twisted like a demented
snake, and flew on to Lorraine. Dr. Avery wasn't sure of the landing
ground. Circling low over the homestead, Caro dropped a note wrapped
in a handkerchief. Someone waved a white sheet, and then three sheets
were placed to form an arrow pointing to a cleared airstrip about five
miles away.
A station vehicle met them there to take them back to the homestead,
crossing two creeks on the way. With typical outback hospitality the
manager and his wife invited them to stay the night after Dr. Avery had
seen the patient, the station cook. One of the men had taken over baking
the bread, he said, since "the cook's crook," but he advised them not to
go too near the centre of the loaf as it was "a bit boggy."
In the morning Caro went down for a swim in the Leichhardt, in one
of the small pools in the shallow brown river. "Don't be frightened if you
see a croc," she was told; "they're only harmless freshwater ones . . .
never grow very big." She was still a little nervous, all the same.
"Him not cheeky-feller," the Aboriginal children who accompanied
her assured her, as she sat nervously on the bank and pointed to a swirl
in the water. She plucked up courage to go in and had a refreshing swim.
At an early lunch, before they set off back to Cloncurry, she was told
that everyone was not aware of the safe limits, in fact they varied at
different times of the year. Two friends of the station people had gone fora swim in a waterhole farther down the Leichhardt, in what was supposed
to be a safe area, when a stockman rode up and told them he had seen
"an alligator" take the shoulder off a horse in the same waterhole only a
few days earlier.
Leaving Lorraine soon after lunch, Caro headed south for Cloncurry.
It had been a most satisfactory flight of some six hundred miles. She had
now flown from Spencer Gulf in southern Australia to Carpentaria in the
north.
There were only two days left before Eric returned from his leave. Caro
hoped they would get some urgent calls from somewhere far away, perhaps
in the Northern Territory.
She would have gone up for a flight in her own plane, but she had to
be on call and available in case she was wanted.
"You know, Mum, you haven't once been up with me," she said,
having lunch with Alix in the nurses' quarters at the hospital.
"I don't know that I want to all that much."
"But, Mum! You have to. Why, even the doctor has got used to being
flown by me."
"I'm sure you're a good pilot; I just don't like little planes. With my
head out in the wind. ..."
"That's all right. I've got a spare cap and goggles."
"Later, then. When there's not so much thundery weather about."
Chapter Eleven

A most interesting part of flying the Aerial Medical Service network was
the contrast from day to day as they travelled three hundred miles north
or four hundred miles south. One day they might be among the crocodile
rivers and lily lagoons of the north, green with paperbark and palm; the
next flying above the burning deserts of sand and spinifex, the thin grey
vegetation of the centre; and each had its own beauty. Caro actually
preferred the red sand-hills and the plains of purple stone to the lush
green of the far north. Perhaps it was bred in her, a feeling for wide, bare
spaces and the subtle opalescent colours of the inland.
Her last trip as pilot with Dr. Avery was to Innamincka in the
heart of the desert country. The A.I.M. hostel had been built on a
bend of Cooper's Creek near where the explorers Burke and Wills
perished.
After flying along the Qantas airmail route to Winton, she stopped
there to refuel. It was a flat town with trees down the centre of the wide
main street, and the level black-soil plains stretching all round it. Because
she did not know the way to the Cooper, she had to fly on over the waving
Mitchell grass plains to Longreach. Then she turned south along the
Thomson River. Flying low over billabongs full of gold-white water-lilies,
she followed it until it became Cooper's Creek.
The long lagoon at Innamincka Station was full and fringed with
drooping coolabahs and white-boled gums. The station was three miles
upstream from the hostel, on the opposite bank.
The wife of the local Mounted Constable was seriously ill in the hostel
with pleurisy. Dr. Avery drained some fluid from the chest cavity, and
soon made the patient comfortable. He then found that another case had
been brought in--an Aboriginal man with a broken-off spearpoint
embedded in his chest.
Constable McGuinnes, a big man with grizzled dark hair and the
deeply weathered face of one who has lived long under central Australian
suns, explained that he was supposed to charge the assailant with attempted
murder. "But really," he told the doctor, "it was a tribal matter, some
woman-trouble, and the law according to the blacks said this man had to
be speared. I certainly don't want to drag the avenger in chains all the
way to the nearest court-house. I'm grateful to you for operating, Doctor.If he'd died I'd have had to arrest someone for murder--though in the
eyes of the blacks it isn't murder, it's justice."
The policeman's residence was a comfortable double-fronted galvanized
iron building with a wide veranda and high roof, set just across the road
from the nursing home. A wire fence enclosed a garden bright with
flowering oleanders and green with tamarisks, but everywhere beyond the
fence spread the red-purple gibbers of the Stony Desert.
As there were two Sisters at Innamincka, Caro's help was not needed
with the operation. Constable McGuinnes asked her to come across to
his house for afternoon tea. He made the tea efficiently and brought it
out to the enclosed veranda, where he had even laid a tea-cloth on the
little table.
As he handed her the teacup his brown hand shook a little. He looked
searchingly under his square dark brows at Caro's face.
"Sister Manning," he said, "was your mother Sister MacFarlane of the
A.I.M.? I used to be stationed at Marree."
"Of course! You're the one who brought my mother in from Lake Letty
bore, after Sister Kingston died. She used to speak of you."
"Yes . . . Alix MacFarlane. And she married young Jim Manning
from Cappamerri. I last saw her in Marree when she was carrying you."
"My father was killed in the war, you know."
"Yes. . . . What a long time ago it seems! You must be at least twenty?"
"Twenty-one."
He continued to stare at her intently over the rim of his cup. "Yes,"
he said, setting it down. "I can see a likeness to your mother about the
eyes. But you don't take after her, do you?"
"No, I suppose not. I didn't get her curly hair."
He said after a silence, "I was in love with your mother, you know.
Did she ever tell you I asked her to marry me?"
"No!" Caro was intrigued. To think that she might have been this
man's daughter, growing up in a town with about five inhabitants. . . I
But of course she would not be herself, Caro Manning, with a different
father.
"She must have been very pretty as a young woman."
"She was lovely," he said sincerely.
"And do you have any daughters?"
"One, about your age, and two boys. My younger lad is working as a
jackaroo on Innamincka Station."
After tea he offered to escort her back to the hostel, as he wanted to
visit his wife. And does she know about your lost love, I wonder? thought
Caro. "No, I think I'll walk over to the river and have a paddle," she said.
When she came back the doctor was having tea with the two Sisters,
who had come to the back of beyond straight from Melbourne.
The Innamincka Hostel, built in 1924, was an imposing two-storey building set on a stony rise, with wide fly-screened verandas and thick
concrete walls. With plenty of rain-water stores in underground tanks,
and a waterhole that never dried up about three miles away, they had
better conditions than in some less isolated posts.
The hostel had floors of polished hardwood, a kitchen with an underground
cellar, and two bathrooms with white porcelain baths and wood
chip heaters.
But the Aboriginal patient would not be sleeping there. He was
conveyed on a stretcher to a cane-grass hut built in the police-station
grounds, where, the Sisters explained, he would feel more at home than
in a hospital ward.
Out of curiosity Caro put her head in the ward and said hello to Mrs.
McGuinnes, now out of danger. She was dark-haired, with a plump and
pleasant face, and bore no resemblance to Alix MacFarlane.

The very day Eric returned, an urgent medical call came from Monkira
Station, away down the Diamantina. They didn't have wireless, and had
driven seventy miles to Davenport Downs to send the message. Caro,
hanging about the airport, half-hoping she might be asked to go along as
a nurse, spoke to Eric as he was going over the plane with Thommo.
When she heard the destination she exclaimed, "But I flew by way of
Monkira Station and Davenport Downs coming up here! I could pilot
you straight there," she added hopefully.
"No, Caro; you've had your go at being pilot," said Eric. "But you can
come as a passenger, if Doc Avery agrees."
She drove to the doctor's and found him just ready to get into his car.
"I can give you a lift to the airport, Doctor," she said. "I'm going back
there right away."
"H'm, all right, if you're as good with a car as you are with an
aeroplane."
"Is it a serious case?" she asked.
"Yes; sounds like a strangulated hernia. I'll probably have to operate at
the station, as soon as we get there. He's in a bad way."
"Would you--would you like a surgery sister to go with you? I'd love
to come."
He frowned quickly and her heart sank. Then his brow cleared. "Yes,
I don't see why not. I'll probably need some help."
Caro called at the hospital for her uniform and a warm jacket just in
case.
They called at Boulia to let the hospital know they might be bringing
a patient, then flew on for the Diamantina, Caro staring ahead to catch
a glimpse of that wide mass of channels that marked its course. For 120
miles they had seen no living thing, nor sign of habitation, except for
one lonely station homestead. There was not a tree or shrub or sign ofwater, just the desolate red-brown earth. It was no place for a forced
landing.
They came to the river and turned south, and soon saw the roofs of
Monkira. Two sheets were laid out in front of the homestead to indicate
the landing-ground. They landed and taxied across the dry and sandy
paddock to the house.
The manager's wife, Mrs. Wilson, apologized for the sand over everything.
After a recent storm they'd taken five barrow-loads out of the house.
"Thank God you've come, Doctor," she said, her lips trembling. "He's
very sick, and in great pain."
After a brief examination Dr. Avery turned to Caro and said, "I'll have
to operate at once. He's already bringing up faecal matter from the lower
bowel."
Dr. Avery was always neatly dressed in white shirt and long white
trousers. Caro slipped into the crumpled uniform she had stuffed into her
bag, and put on her white cap. The sight of her looking so professional
seemed to calm the patient, who was very distressed.
A scrubbed deal table from the kitchen was brought in and covered
with a newly laundered sheet that had been shut in an airtight linen
cupboard away from the dust. Caro, having prepared the patient, administered
the anaesthetic. Dr. Avery went in to the bowel, cut the constricting
band, and straightened a twisted loop. Caro passed instruments and
counted swabs as if she were in a proper operating theatre.
As the patient regained consciousness, his condition after the operation
monitored by Caro, Mrs. Wilson hovered anxiously.
"Your husband will be all right, but he'll have to go in to hospital,"
said Dr. Avery. "Will you prepare the stretcher, Sister?"
They took off again about 4 p.m., and in another two hours the patient
was in a comfortable hospital bed in Boulia. The hospital building was
tiny, so the three of them went to the Boulia Hotel for the night, as it
was too late to get back to Cloncurry. Night flying was frowned upon by
Qantas.
At dinner in the hotel dining room, where they had only tinned meat
and tinned vegetables to eat, Caro told them how the day's flight had
made her feel quite nostalgic. "You see, I was born on the Diamantina,"
she said, "on Cappamerri Station, not far downstream from Monkira."
"So you are a Queenslander!" said Dr. Avery. "You told David
Trenowith the other day that you were a South Australian."
"Well, I was actually born in Adelaide--Alix went down there for the
birth. But I lived on Cappamerri until I was about eight."
"I was born on a cattle station too," said Eric. "Out from Winton. I
joined Qantas when I came back from France."
"You must have been very young when you joined the Air Force,"
Caro said.
"Seventeen. But I passed as eighteen."
He told them some hilarious tales of the early days of Qantas passenger
flights, when there were no toilets and sometimes no paper-bags for sick
passengers. "We did provide free chewing gum, though.
"I was flying a Puss Moth with one passenger who was very sick, and
desperate for a receptacle; he let fly into my new felt hat which I'd thrown
into the front.
"Another time I was flying 'Derby' Hawkins, a big hefty cattleman whose
favourite drink was overproof rum taken neat by the half-tumblerful. I
was coming from Longreach and had to deliver the mail. All the passengers
were aboard when I heard this plaintive voice from the rear, 'Eric, where
can I have a leak?"
"Every minute was precious if I was to get to Cloncurry before dark.
'Sorry, Derby,' I said, as I shut the cabin door and hurried through to
the cockpit. 'No time--you'll just have to hang on till Winton.'
"When we arrived at Winton I saw Derby still seated near the back.
'Come on, Derby, I thought you were in a hurry!'
"No answer. Then he burst out, 'Okay, Eric, I'll get out. But what do
I do with these?'
"And he handed me two elastic-sided riding boots, both brim-full."
Tired after the long day, Caro retired early. She went to the ladies'
bathroom and found that the bath taps would not turn on, so she stood
in the bath under the shower rose.
The highly mineralized bore-water had a strange chemical smell;
Boulia water was said to rust iron in an hour. On the way back to her
room she passed the Gents, and as she did so Eric Donaldson popped out
of the men's bathroom door.
He was fully clothed, and he beckoned to her and pointed to the door.
"Just have a look at this," he begged, bubbling with laughter. "Go on,
there's no one in there."
Curious, she pushed open the door. A red cement floor, a small
opaque window, a large tin bath set on metal feet. Over the bath was a
hand-printed notice on a piece of white cardboard:

Gents are requested please not to pee in the bath, as it causes fever.
By order,
Mrs. Jackson, Proprietress.

Caro giggled. "Well, that's telling them," she said.
Chapter Twelve

Caro was not an A.I.M. nurse and she received no salary as assistant to
the Medical Officer. Her temporary appointment as a pilot had ended,
and she had no official position. She was still occupying a bed in her
mother's room at the hospital, as the Matron accepted her offer to act as
a relieving nurse on night duty.
Caro took a flight up to the Gulf and back just to pass the time. Alix
refused to come with her. When Caro called at the Normanton Hospital
and had tea with the Matron, at the back of her mind was the idea that
the attractive flying doctor David Trenowith might be there.
He was not; but two weeks later a telegram came to Cloncurry Base
asking for Caro Manning to get in touch with him at Katherine in the
Northern Territory, with a view to leasing or chartering her plane to the
Northern Territory Medical Service for at least a month.
It seemed that his little Moth had been grounded for some weeks
for repairs, and the N.T. Medical Service was without a plane for
emergencies.
Caro wired back: ok for charter but insist fly her myself.
She realized that this would not be possible where the doctor had to
pick up hospital cases and fly them back; anyway there was no room for
a stretcher so they would have to be well enough to sit up.
She said her farewells to the hospital staff and the Qantas staff, to Dr.
Avery and his pilot, and learned that Eric was leaving the service for
good.
"I won't be here when you get back," he said.
"So they'll be appointing a new pilot?" Her eyes flared with hope.
"Yes, my dear. In fact, they've already appointed him, from Sydney."
"A 'him,' of course."
"I'm afraid so."
Alix didn't like to see her go so far away, when they'd only just got
together again. "You won't be coming back after a month, I feel it in my
bones," she said.
"I'd come like a shot if they'd give me the pilot's job permanently."
"Alas, it seems that they want another man."
"It's not fair! I've proved I can do it; and Dr. Avery would recommend
me, I'm sure. But no! They're too hidebound, the Board and your precious John Flynn. He won't even let a good pilot like Dr. Trenowith
fly his own plane, though he'd be a great asset to the A.I.M."
"Flynn has certain fixed principles, to which he sticks. And one of
them is 'one man, one job.' He's a bit conservative--"
"A bit conservative!" cried Caro. "Do you remember when he arrived
in Birdsville in the middle of summer, still wearing his dark suit and
waistcoat with its gold watch-chain? I bet he never takes them off even
when he's digging the car wheels out of the sand in the middle of the
desert."
"He does take the coat off. But the waistcoat is to cover his trouser
braces when he's in shirt-sleeves. I suppose he feels braces are undignified
for a man of God."
Eric gave Caro the benefit of his experience of flying to the Northern
Territory, as he had been a Qantas pilot before joining the Aerial Medical
Service. She would have to fly over about five hundred miles of new
territory, but the whole trip was not as far as her journey from Adelaide.
She set off at dawn direct for Mount Isa, taking the more dangerous
route over the ironstone hills; then made north-west along the stock-route
to Camooweal. She saw the southward-flowing feeders of the Georgina
appearing on her left, while the Gregory and its tributaries made northward
for the Gulf. Once more she was flying over a divide. It was a wonderful
lesson in geography to cross the continent in this fashion. In a few months
she had flown from the Southern Ocean to the north coast; now she was
travelling from east to west.
After landing for fuel at the bare and dusty little town of Camooweal
with its temporary-looking galvanized iron buildings, she took off again
and crossed the dry bed of the Georgina. In five minutes she was crossing
the Northern Territory border, marked by the straight, endless line of the
rabbit-proof fence.
Below stretched the red-brown earth, flat and unbroken by even a dry
watercourse, mile after mile as featureless as the sea. Sometimes she
passed an earth-dam and a windmill of some outstation, for this was the
Barkly Tableland, famed cattle country. Above and all round spread a
cloudless sky, and below the flat land was ringed with the aerial blue of
distance.
The road she was following was the only guide. She came to the
Ranken River and the plain where Grandpa Manning's friend Harry had
his marvellous escape from the stampeding cattle--a rush, as it was
called.
After two hundred miles of unchanging landscape, she was over the
huge cattle-station of Brunette Downs. In a good season they stocked forty
thousand head, and nearly all the work of herding, mustering, and
branding was done by Aboriginal stockmen--natural riders, and inured
to heat and flies. And cheap, because they came under no award.
As she came in to land, a station truck set out to meet her. It was
crowded with black children clinging on everywhere, who tumbled off
and inspected the machine as she tied it down. They had seen aeroplanes
before, flyers on their way from Darwin after crossing the seas from
England, and the Flying Doctor plane from Cloncurry: but a lady pilot
was different.
Caro was pressed to stay the night by the hospitable manager and his
wife. After dinner, sitting on the veranda in the warm peaceful evening,
tired but relaxed, Caro was filled with content. She walked out into the
inland night and listened to the silence, broken by the cry of a water-bird
down at the lagoon. She looked up at the splendid summer constellations,
blue-white and glittering like chips of ice. There was no city within
hundreds of miles in any direction.
She attended two sick Aboriginal children in the morning, one with
sore eyes that were so gummed with matter that they would not open,
and another with a sharp sliver of wood embedded in the sole of her foot.
Caro had brought a first-aid kit with her, but though it included a small
scalpel she had great trouble extracting the wood from the leather-like
skin of the ten-year-old girl, used to going without shoes from infancy.
She had no anti-tetanus serum, but hoped for the best.
The next part of the journey was easy. As Eric had told her, there was
a well-marked road made by cars and trucks heading for Darwin.
Farther north the landscape began to change, with a few low hills to
break the monotony of the plain, and a cover of timber of some density.
Then on her left, she saw an open Janeway tending south through the
trees: the clearing cut for the Overland Telegraph line. Approaching the
O.T. line, she flew low enough to see the bottle trees and magnetic
mounds of the white-ant nests, standing like roughly sculptured red
monuments among the dry grass.
She had come two hundred miles from Brunette Downs, and decided
to fly on to Daly Waters where there was a good airstrip and a store for
petrol. Following the excellent guide of the O.T. line, she was able to
get some height as the day warmed up and the bumps began. There was
grey cloud ahead, and after an hour's flying she had to come down low
to get under it in case she missed Daly Waters altogether. The beginning
of the wet season? The Wet was late this year, or she would have been
in trouble on her flight to Normanton. The engine was overheating,
making the oil thin, and was running ragged when to her relief she saw
a few white roofs ahead and a cleared landing ground with even a
wind-sock! She was now less than four hundred miles south of Darwin,
and her next stop would be Katherine.
On the ground, as she stepped out of the cockpit, the heat enveloped
her like a hot, damp blanket. Here she was only about fifteen degrees
from the equator, and much farther north than Normanton.
After a short break to stretch her legs, and a welcome cool drink with
her late lunch at the store, she asked the storekeeper about the weather
as he filled Circe with petrol and oil.
"She's due to break any day now," he said, with a glance at the rolling
clouds ahead. "The Wet is late this year, but I reckon you've only just
made it in time."
"The air feels full of moisture," said Caro. "D'you think I'll get to
Katherine before it starts to rain?"
"I reckon so. We've had a buildup of cloud like this every afternoon
for weeks, and a lot of thunder, but only dry storms so far."
"Perhaps I should wait, and fly on tomorrow morning?" The store had
a tiny hotel attached to it. "No, I'll get on. Dr. Trenowith probably has
some emergency waiting for my arrival. I can hardly get lost with the
Telegraph line to follow. But it doesn't look too good for a forced landing,"
she said, gazing at the open forest timber and the red anthills.
She sent a wire up the line to Katherine: arriving this afternoon
d.v.w.p. wondering if indeed weather would permit. There were only
170 miles left to do: she intended to follow the road all the way and not
take any short cuts. And if cloud threatened to close in, there was Birdum,
where no doubt she could find a place to land.
She took off into the wind, which was north-west so that she would
have a head wind all the way; it would take her at least another two hours
to her destination. She felt hot and sweaty and promised herself a swim
in the Katherine River--for the town was far enough inland to be free of
salt-water crocs.
The little settlement of Birdum passed by on her left and the beginning
of the railway line to Darwin. Now the line bent north-west, a forty-five
degree change of direction, and led straight to Katherine.
She had flown about half-way along this section when wisps of cloud
began to flip past the wings. Looking ahead, she could see no break in a
towering mass of cumulus. It was useless to try to climb above it, as these
clouds were known to build up as high as twenty thousand feet, and
anyway she had to keep in visual touch with the ground if possible. She
looked at her watch; only twenty minutes to go. Just then the ground
below was blotted out completely. She was flying blind in the heart of a
white woolly mass.
Her first reaction was one of panic. Then her training came to her aid.
She fixed her eyes on her instruments and concentrated on keeping an
even keel, now that the horizon was lost. The little plane buzzed steadily
on. She had her compass bearing for Katherine, and told herself sturdily
that there were no mountains anywhere round, that she was flying over
a level plateau intersected with river gorges, and until she had to land she
was perfectly safe.
Caro began to feel as if she and the machine were a small blowflycaught in a huge white web: buzzing uselessly but unable to get out. She
must watch the time, and her ground-speed indicator, and work out
exactly how far she had come before trying to descend. It was possible
that the air was clear at five hundred feet, but what if she came down
that low and found herself skimming the rugged walls of the Katherine
Gorge?
She swallowed down the fear constricting her throat. After so much
fair-weather flying--apart from dust-storms--she had forgotten what it
was like to fly in cloud.
The trapped fly buzzed in the heart of the white web. She strained her
eyes downward, looking for the smallest break. After eighteen minutes
she tilted the nose down. One thousand . . . eight hundred--how high
above sea-level was the plateau? About four hundred feet, she thought.
She braced herself for the jarring crash as they ploughed into a tree or a
rocky jump-up. Her hand was on the joystick, ready to pull up and back
the moment she saw some obstacle ahead. Then, like a miracle, an
avenue opened in the cloud and there below was the Katherine River, a
blue ribbon in its rocky gorge. She banked and turned, praying that the
sky would not close in again--there seemed to be plenty of cleared space
below, and the buildings of a cattle-station right on the river bank, where
the gorge flattened out and the river spread between bush-clad banks. She
shot over the town and turned.
Then she saw it, a hangar and a wind-sock like a pale elephant's trunk,
beckoning her to safety on the ground. Thank God! She came in too fast,
bounced slightly, and came down again with a bump. She turned in a
wide arc and taxied towards the hangar. There was a tall figure standing
by the runway in khaki shorts and shirt, dark tangled hair blowing in the
warm wind. Chagrined, she realized that David Trenowith had witnessed
her botched landing, the first time he had ever seen her fly.
Chapter Thirteen

Caro tore off her helmet and met him with outstretched hand. She was
a tall girl, five feet nine in her shoes, and he was half a head taller. He
must be well over six feet; but his broad shoulders were slightly hunched,
as though he were trying to disguise his height. His blue eyes smiled at
her.
"Hallo! You were a brick to come at once. I was worried for you when
I saw the cloud closing in--"
"You were worried! I was scared stiff for the last thirty miles." And
unexpectedly she felt her lips and chin tremble; it was reaction to the
tension she had been under. "I haven't had much practice in flying
blind."
"I'm sorry!" He patted her shoulder in a fatherly manner. "We've had
almost no cloud till the last week or two. You'd better come and have a
drink."
They tied down the plane and he carried her bag to the waiting vehicle,
an ancient utility truck. He had to start it manually with a starting-handle
--"Starter-motor's had it," he explained. There was no door on the
passenger side--"Well, you didn't expect to be met by a Rolls-Royce, did
you?" He seemed to use the lowest gear, by changing down when he
came to corners, in lieu of brakes.
"Your wire went to the Telegraph Station," he said, "but I could have
heard a voice message from Cloncurry. I live upstairs above the radio
installation, which is under the house. I can give advice to patients by
radio from here."
"I thought your headquarters were in Darwin?"
"I was Honorary Surgeon at the Darwin Hospital, which has its own
Medical Superintendent. But this place is more central, and it normally
has a hospital--a tiny place run by one Sister--but closed down at
present. Sister's health broke down and they're having trouble getting a
replacement, apparently."
His house, just round the corner from the one main street, was a typical
Territory building set on high stumps, with the radio room underneath.
Caro looked askance at the sixty-foot radio mast. Perhaps she really hadn't
been that low, but it had felt like it.
"Billy!" he yelled, and a very dark, full-blood Aborigine appeared. "ThisSister Manning, berry-good, number-one pilot. She thirsty properly. You
gottim ice longa box?"
"You-i, Boss."
"How about a Scotch to settle your nerves and celebrate your arrival?
We'll arrange your accommodation later," said the doctor, leading her
upstairs.
"I'd just like to see the lavatory first." (There was actually an indoor
toilet in the building--no shortage of water here.)
"Then I'd like a swim in the river. No crocodiles?"
"Only little ones--freshwater crocs."
After a stiff whisky she began to unwind, and happily talked shop,
giving him a run-down on her plane's idiosyncrasies: "She lists to the
right a bit on take-off, you learn to make allowances for that--"
"Don't you think," he said seriously, "that you'd better let me fly the
thing for a while? You can come with me and get an idea of the country.
It's a bit different to the western plains."
"We-ell ..." Her experience in the cloud had shaken her. "I suppose
it would be sensible. Do you have any immediate emergencies?"
"Yes, unfortunately. An Aboriginal girl has been brought into the
Bathurst Island Mission who's apparently gone way over term. She had
some contractions a month ago, but they stopped again. The child must
be dead by now. Her relatives brought her in. I'll have to fly up there first
thing in the morning."
"I'll come with you. I've done midwifery."
"There's a trained nurse at the Mission. You'd better have a rest
tomorrow, after that long flight."
She explained that she'd broken her journey at Brunette Downs. "But
I hadn't time for a swim in the lagoon. I used to go swimming in the
Diamantina waterholes when I was little--"
"I thought you were a South Australian."
"No, I was born on the Diamantina," she said, deciding not to go into
details. "On Cappamerri Station in Queensland."
"So I suppose you like riding?"
"Love it."
"I'm sure one of the stations round here will lend you a horse.
Meanwhile I've booked you in at the hotel. You'd better have a sleep-in
tomorrow; I suppose you left Cloncurry at dawn, or before it, and you
must have started pretty early this morning."
"Not really. I held a little clinic for the black children on Brunette
before I left. But I think I will rest tomorrow, and unpack, and wash my
shirt and so on."
He explained that he held a clinic of the air each morning unless he
was away on a call. "When I'm not here, the Telegraph Station monitors
calls for me."
He hoped she wouldn't mind the hotel; they could find a better
arrangement later, perhaps.
"I suppose," he said hesitantly, "that I could ask the N.T. Medical
Service to let me open the hospital building for you, but--"
"No, thank you!" said Caro. "I'm here as a pilot, not a nurse,
remember? And as soon as it was known there was a Sister at the Hospital,
people would start coming in. I'm not really keen on cooking, either.
The hotel will be fine."
He looked at her with respect tinged with disapproval. "You certainly
know your own mind, don't you?"
"Yes. No doubt you'd like to get me involved at the hospital, and
fly yourself around as usual. But it won't work. And now, where's the
river?"
"I'll show you the best swimming place. The ford is quite shallow at
present. The famous Katherine Gorge is miles upstream."
After showing her the nearest swimming place, where there was a rocky
bar and a sandy bottom, he took her to the hotel. Mr. Tim O'Shay, the
proprietor, was standing on the veranda with his lanky pet brolga, a
handsome pale-grey bird with a red patch on his head. David introduced
Caro. "Look after Sister Manning and see that she gets a good night's
rest; she's just flown all the way from Queensland."
"Shure and I didn't know a plane was due today."
"She flew herself here in a little Moth."
"She did?" The proprietor's roughly shaven jaw dropped open.
"Whativer next, I wondther?"
"I'll see you here later," said the doctor as he handed Caro over. "I'll
pop in for dinner tonight."
After a refreshing swim near the ford in the clear, shallow river, shaded
thickly by paperbarks and pandanus palms on the river bank, Caro
returned to her balcony room at the pub and washed her hair under the
shower. She dried it with a towel, but the air was humid and it was still
damp when the dinner-bell sounded. All she could do was comb its
straight strands into a smooth cap, though its colour was darkened by
water. She put on a fresh pale-green blouse and a gathered skirt with
stripes of white, pink, and green. The water had dampened and darkened
her lashes and washed her eyes a clear grey-green. (When she wore green,
they looked more green than grey.)
As she came downstairs and moved through the dark little parlour
towards the dining-room, she saw David Trenowith standing by the
hatchway to the bar with a beer in his hand.
"Sister Manning! Like a beer with your dinner?"
"Thank you. I'm acquiring a taste for beer. It's the most thirst
quenching drink next to black tea that I know."
They carried their drinks into the dining-room and were shown to atable by a part-Aboriginal girl with pretty wavy dark hair and a complexion
of pale yellow-brown.
Over dinner they discussed business. The charter fee, he told her,
would be paid by the Commonwealth Government, which administrated
the Northern Territory, and would be based on mileage flown. The costs
were shared by the Department of Civil Aviation and the Northern
Territory Medical Service.
"I was a bit taken aback when I had your message about doing all the
flying yourself," he said. "I suppose I'd counted on getting the plane
without the pilot. I'm so used to flying myself around--"
"You sure it's not my sex that's worrying you? Do I have to cite Amy
Johnson and Lores Bonney and Nancy Bird to show that women pilots
have proved themselves?"
"No, no, I assure you. I thought when I met you up at Burketown that
you looked efficient, and you wouldn't have had the job if you weren't."
"Was that your first impression of me--brisk efficiency?"
"No. As a matter of fact, the first thing I thought was, She looks nice."
He smiled, and his whole face crinkled the way she remembered into
deep-grooved laughter lines. He must be good-natured, she thought, for
his face to show the permanent marks like this. She smiled into his eyes.
"I thought something the same about you," she said.
A subtle current passed between them. She had to admit that she had
set out to attract him. Her youthful ego had been badly bruised by
Malcolm's rejection, and she felt a need to prove that she could be
attractive to a mature man. Not that she meant to get too deeply involved.
She did not intend to lay herself open to being hurt like that again.
After the meal they walked out of the noisy pub, where the bar was
doing a roaring trade, into the still and humid night. Sheet-lightning,
too far away for thunder, flickered along the horizon.
Flying-ants danced in filmy clouds about every lamp, in a mad mating
flight about their queen.
"Do you know," Caro said musingly, "that after the nuptial flight the
queen bites off her own wings and crawls into a crack in the ground to
start a new colony? And then her whole life is devoted to laying eggs. It's
appalling!"
"Not perhaps for an ant. You are carrying the analogy into human
behaviour--"
"Exactly! I've seen women give up interesting careers to get married.
They have three or four babies, and their whole life revolves round the
cradle and the nursery, until the children grow up and don't need them
any more, and then they feel lost."
"I gather you don't intend to get married?"
"Never! I'm not giving up my freedom to fly for anyone. I'm wedded
to my aircraft."
"Then I suppose you'll give birth to a row of little blonde spark-plugs."
They walked to the railway station and saw the once-a-week train come
in from Darwin, hissing and breathing steam into the hot night. A few passengers got off.
"You know, it's ridiculous," said Dr. Trenowith, "that the rail from
Darwin ends at Birdum, and the rail from Adelaide at Alice Springs, with
seven hundred miles between them. There is a railway right across the
continent from Sydney to Perth, but none from north to south. In the
event of an invasion--"
"You don't think that's likely, do you?"
"It's a possibility. New Guinea is very close, and if the Dutch were to
lose their half of it, say to the Japanese, we could be in trouble. Troops
and tanks and so on couldn't be transported up here by air, and there's
no road. Heaven knows I don't want to see another war; I was in right at
the end of the last one--"
"You don't mean you joined up? How old were you?"
"I was only sixteen, but being so tall I bluffed my way in. It was 1918
by the time I got to France, and by then it was nearly over. I saw our
planes in the air, they seemed to me like eagles. And I resolved to learn
to fly if I didn't get killed."
"My father was killed in 1917, soon after Beersheba. He was in the
Light Horse."
"Hard on your mother!"
"Yes; I was too little to understand much about it."
"I can see you as a little girl: straight bobbed hair, big grey eyes, and
firm little chin emerging from the baby fat."
"Actually, I wore my hair in plaits."
They had walked to the end of the one street and back. At the hotel
he asked, "Would you like a nightcap?"
She said no, she was ready for bed after her long day.
"I may not get back before dark tomorrow. In fact, I'll probably stay
the night in Darwin. My wife complains that she never sees me."
Caro hoped that her jaw did not drop visibly. He was married! Well,
of course. He was thirty-five years old and very masculine, why wouldn't
he be? It just had not occurred to her.
"Of course you must visit her, Darwin is right on your route to Bathurst
Island. I'll expect you the day after tomorrow. Good night."
She turned on her heel, suddenly seething with anger. What cheek!
She had flown almost non-stop to bring the flying doctor an aircraft, and
he was using it to visit his wife! Her aeroplane. . . No doubt the Mission
call was authentic, but was it urgent? He had cleverly arranged to leave
her behind. Or did he think the patient might need evacuating to hospital?
If she was not too ill, he could fly her across to Darwin.
After a morning spent washing clothes, swimming in the river, andresting in her room with the door to the balcony and the door to the
corridor wide open in an attempt to get some breeze, Caro was fretting
for her aeroplane. She hated to be separated from Circe; it was like being
without an arm or a leg.
Then she had an idea. The doctor had left the utility truck for her to
use, saying she could get Billy to turn the starting-handle for her. She
went round to the house and asked Billy if the Boss had any tools. There
were none in the tray of the truck.
"You-i, Chister," he said with a broad grin. He dived beneath the
house and came out with a collection of screw-wrenches, screwdrivers,
chisels, and pliers.
She did not know how to work the radio receiving set, but she drove
to the Telegraph Station to see if they had monitored any calls for the
Flying Doctor; there were none. He flew the two hundred miles back
from Darwin the next morning, and arrived in time for lunch, having
got a lift round to the hotel.
"You don't have to be polite and eat with me, you know," she said
coldly. He replied that he'd felt lonely since the Sister left: she often gave
him a meal. "Besides, I thought you'd like to know how Circe and I got
on."
"Well? How did you?"
"She's a lovely little craft! Better than my old crate."
Caro's heart warmed towards him.
"And how was your patient?"
"She's alive. I'd rather not talk about it till after we've had lunch, if
you don't mind."
There were cold thinly sliced corned beef and mashed potatoes, and
actually a fresh salad! Caro hoped there might even be fresh fruit to
follow, but it was baked bread-and-butter pudding.
They talked about the plane, and flying conditions in the Wet: "In
Darwin, for instance, you can count on it raining every afternoon, then
the sun will come out as hot as ever; the mornings are muggy but dry;
there will be no rain at all between April and November, and about sixty
inches between December and March. So in the Wet you try to fly in
the mornings."
"In Cloncurry you also fly in the mornings in summer, to avoid the
dust-storms and the air pockets."
Striving to keep her voice level, Caro asked after his wife.
"Well as ever, but she's still nagging me to come back to the Darwin
base. We have a nice house and garden, and she doesn't want to leave it
for a rented place down here. And I suppose she has her friends, and a
social life of a sort. I can do without that."
"They say that women transplant less easily than men. Are more
attached to places, houses, society. I get attached to things, like my car and my aircraft. I think Smith must have loved his lumbering old Southern
Cross. The Old Bus,' he called her."
When they had finished their lunch, rounded off with the inevitable
cup of tea, she asked him about the patient he had gone to see.
He gave a quick frown. "It was worse than I expected. The girl was
very sick, and the baby was very dead. I had to remove it piecemeal from
the uterus, with forceps. And the smell--Gah! I can't get it out of my
mouth."
Caro made a face in sympathy. "Will she live?"
"I hope so. She didn't want to go to hospital in Darwin. I washed her
out as well as I could with warm douches. But I can't understand that
Sister at the Mission, not calling me earlier. 'Oh, you can never get any
accurate dates out of the black girls. I just thought she'd made a mistake,
or the baby was a little bit late, until she started to get distressed, and we
sent for you.' A little bit late! I reckon it was six weeks over term."
"You'd have been there earlier but for your damaged crate. Wasn't
your fault."
"No. And then I was able to operate on a blackfellow with a broken
jaw, back at Darwin Hospital. He loved the flight."
Caro felt that she knew him much better since their talk over lunch.
His leased aircraft had been seriously damaged in a crash that had made
the headlines, for he had a Commonwealth Government official on
board. He admitted to her with embarrassment that it was his own fault,
he had lost his way over the maze of winding streams and timbered ridges
in the head-waters of the Victoria River, and run out of fuel. Just before
he ran out, he glimpsed an outstation of Victoria River Downs, and knew
where they were. He tried to land, without power, among the trees. One
of the wing-tips clipped a tree, and they nose-dived into the ground. The
plane was a wreck.
"Yes, I read about that in Cloncurry," said Caro. "And when you were
rescued after four days, all you said was, Tm damned hungry.'"
"What I said in fact was, Tm bloody hungry,' and I was. We lived on
some malted-milk tablets I had with me; 'two tablets twice a day, without
meals.'"
"And your own little plane, The Flying Carpet, what was she, an Avro
Baby? What happened--you said she was burnt?"
"Yes, she went up in flames. I made a pancake landing in a squall on
a twenty-five-foot landing-ground. The sparks from the friction ignited
the petrol-tank."
"Where was that?"
"At the Mission on Bathurst Island."
"What? And I trusted you in your first flight in my precious Circe to
the same landing-ground?"
"Lightning never strikes twice in the same place," he said blithely."I'll drive you home," she said, getting up. The old utility truck had
no keys; it was perfectly safe in the main street. She sat behind the wheel,
while he went round the front to turn the handle. She waved him away.
Then, as she pushed the self-starter, the engine rumbled into life.
"It's all right, I fixed it yesterday," she said. "The brakes will need some
spare parts."
He stared at her as he climbed through the side with the missing door.
She smiled smugly.
"Well, there's no doubt about you!" he said. "I suppose you can fix
aircraft engines as well."
"Yes, as a matter of fact, I can."

Chapter Fourteen

The first call they attended together, the Flying Doctor and Nurse
Manning answered an urgent message from a cattle-station on the edge
of nowhere, near the maze of rivers flowing into the Gulf east of Daly
Waters. The wife of the owner, a woman in her sixties, had been gored
by a scrub bull. Mrs. Ronson had been born in the Territory and had
ridden ever since she could walk; she had helped to work cattle with her
husband for years.
"My mother," said Caro as they drove to the airstrip in Katherine,
"once had to operate on a cattleman who had been gored in the stomach.
He rode into Marree with his wound cobbled together with horsehair.
He'd sewn it up himself."
"Ah, they breed 'em tough in Queensland. But I thought your mother
was an A.I.M. Sister, not a doctor."
"She was. But there was no doctor nearer than three hundred miles
away, you see. She ended up marrying the cattleman."
"So! You get your courage from both sides."
"And I think it's my turn to be pilot, Doctor."
He did not argue. The route was fairly straightforward: down the railway
line to Daly Waters, then east to the McArthur River where they would
turn and follow the stream upriver to the station.
The last half-hour was worrisome, as the sun set and the light was
fading, but at least the sky was clear. Coming in low over a small fire
marking the cleared airstrip, Caro set down in a perfect three-point
landing. The tail-skid bit into the loose dry soil and pulled them up after
a short run. That will show him, she thought, pleased.
The doctor decided to operate at once. Caro assisted at the operation
on the scrubbed kitchen table, while Mr. Ronson held the lamp in a
hand that trembled. When he looked as if he might faint, Caro gently
took the lamp and sent him out to get some fresh air. "Mrs. Ronson has
lost a lot of blood but fortunately there is no serious infection," the doctor
told him, after the wound was sewn up and the patient, watched by Caro,
was recovering consciousness. "You'll have to nurse her for a while; keep
her in bed for at least a week--"
"I'll have to sit on her, then. She's a terror for work. Do you know she
bakes twelve loaves of bread a day for the men, as the lazy bugger of acook won't have anything to do with breadmaking; and she works on the
run as well, good as a man."
Mrs. Ronson was a thin, dried-up little woman with straggly grey hair.
When she woke up the first thing she said was, "I never had a bull get
me before in me life. Must be getting old and slow."
"Maybe he was just a very quick bull," said Caro.
"Oh, they're quick, all right, those wild scrubbers. They'll go you as
soon as look at you."
They had an indifferent meal with Mr. Ronson, cooked by the kitchen
lubra, and some excellent bread left over from Mrs. Ronson's last batch.
They stayed the night, Caro keeping an eye on the patient, for she was
not young and there was a chance of delayed shock. But in the morning
Mrs. Ronson was perfectly alert and complaining because she was not
allowed up to get their breakfast. The breadmaking, she said, was easy:
there were two large stone ovens set into the outer walls of the kitchen
building. Fires were lit in these till the stones were heated through, and
then raked out. The risen dough was placed inside, and cooked perfectly
without any fear of burning.
Doctor and nurse were now at ease together. There was a bond between
them from the shared duty of the operation. She had also felt a difference
in her relationship with the crusty Dr. Avery after their flight to Monkira
for the hernia operation. But they had never been on first-name terms.
After checking and re-dressing the wound, Dr. Trenowith impressed
on Mrs. Ronson the importance of resting and not disturbing the stitches
while the wound healed.
"Now, do you think you can remove the stitches after ten days?" he
asked her husband.
"I dunno, Doc; I'll try."
"He could never even remove a splinter without turning sick," said his
wife. "I'll prob'ly have to do it meself."
"If you have any problems, let us know at once, and one of us will
come back."
"A thousand thanks for coming, anyway."
After a good breakfast of thick steaks so tender that even the station
cook couldn't ruin them, they set off for Daly Waters and Katherine,
checking first that there were no new calls.
"Let me fly the first leg?" asked David Trenowith.
"What, to Daly Waters?"
"No, to Mataranka. I know a beaut swimming-hole. I thought we'd
stop on the way back."
The day was already heating up. Caro looked at the clear sky.
"All right. If it's on the way home."
They came down at Daly Waters to refuel and buy some sandwiches
from the store for a picnic. When Caro asked about the purchase of a swimming costume, the storekeeper, Mr. Pierce, said there was not much
call for them. Towels? Yes, he could let them have a couple of towels.
They took off again and flew the 150 miles to Mataranka without incident,
landing in a tiny clearing near the deserted station.
The walk to the thermal pools he had promised her was extremely hot.
They threaded their way through dry grass and thin gum-tree shade,
where flying-foxes in great colonies hung upside down in the treetops,
fanning themselves with their leathery wings.
They came to a green grove of feathery palms and tall paperbarks, and
there was the first pool, clear and inviting.
Caro stopped entranced.
"No, come on to the next pool, it's better."
An underground stream connected the pools. The water was a
clear mineral-green, and reflected the bright yellow-green of palms as
well. The second pool was longer, sparkling in sunlight. Every pebble
and grain of sand on the shallow bottom showed through the glass-clear
water.
Caro kicked off her shoes and tested the water with a toe. It was warm,
about blood-heat, but not hot. She slipped off her navy linen skirt and
white blouse and waded in, wearing her panties and brassiere. She swam
a few strokes upstream, and then let herself drift back with the current.
Putting her face under water, she stared down at the netted sunbeams
patterning the bottom with gold.
David Trenowith made a shallow dive, his body brown against his
white cotton underpants. The pool was long, but only a few yards across.
"Taste the water," he said. "It looks good to drink, doesn't it?"
The taste was bitter, the water highly mineralized.
"Where does this water flow eventually?"
"Along the Roper, and all the way to the Gulf of Carpentaria, due east
from here. This bit of river dives underground a bit further down, and
reappears later. The blacks say it was made by Kunapipi, or one of their
mother figures, in the form of a black snake."
She swam against the current as far as she could go, then floated lazily
down towards him.
His chest was almost hairless, she noted with approval, smooth and
brown with just a few hairs sprouting about the nipples. He swam with
long lazy effortless strokes.
Eventually she came out and sat on the mossy bank in a patch of
sunlight, squinting up at the flying-foxes squabbling in the trees. Her
body felt relaxed and refreshed from the mineral-spring water. He sat
beside her and they munched companionably on the rather dry sandwiches.
"That
water is exactly the right temperature," she said.
"Yes. I told you you'd have a beaut swim. Now we can go back toKatherine and say we've had a bath together; that should set the tongues
wagging."
"I believe you like to be talked about."
He considered a moment, his head on one side. Then his face folded
into one big smile. "I suppose I do, really."
He looked so like a cocky small boy that she had to laugh. "I'm going
to get dressed," she said, and taking her skirt and blouse she went along
the bank and into the bush, took off her wet things and had a pee. She
dressed and walked back carrying her damp underwear. Brushing against
a tree growing close to the water, she felt something fall on her bare neck.
In a moment several red-hot needles seemed to pierce her flesh. She
gave a scream and beat frantically at her neck and back.
David, dressed once more, came towards her along the bank. He
grabbed her, tore off the blouse and began brushing at something.
"Green tree ants!" he said. "They are buggers to bite if they fall on
you.
She slowly buttoned up the blouse again, twisting her shoulders in
pain. "I'll get some lotion out of the first-aid kit as soon as we get back to
the plane," he said. "You've only got three bites, luckily."
"Ow! They're burning."
"Well, at least they're not poisonous, like scorpion-bites. Just painful."
He thought she looked childlike and appealing, with her straight wet
hair flattened against her head and her grey-green eyes filled with tears.
He took her hand. "Come on. Let's hurry."
Back at the clearing he got out a bottle of soothing lotion with a dash
of ammonia in it. She loosened the top buttons and let the blouse fall
from her shoulders.
"Turn around."
She turned obediently. He dabbed the lotion on with his fingers and
smeared it a little round each bite. It felt like a caress. His hand slid round
under her arm and caressed her breast. She closed her eyes and swayed
back against him.
In a moment he was kissing the back of her neck. Slowly she turned
her head till he was able to reach her lips. And so they stood locked
together, while Circe waited beside them like a patient beast, her nose
pointing towards the sky.
He released her abruptly and turned away.
"Oh God, Carol I didn't mean to do that. I'm sorry. Now you'll take
your little craft and fly away forever, and I don't blame you."
She did up her blouse with fingers that trembled. That one kiss had
told her that she wanted him, she loved him. And he was married. It was
like Malcolm over again. She took a deep breath, striving to keep her
voice stern and calm.
"David, it's all right. But this must never happen again, if we are going to work together. I came here to work with you, not to have an affair with
you. Is that clear?"
"Yes, of course. You fly us home, will you?"
He repacked the first-aid kit and climbed into the front cockpit. As she
climbed into the rear seat she realized that somewhere in the excitement
she had dropped her blue panties; the damp brassiere was looped over
one arm.
There were no calls waiting when they got back. Caro was still hungry
after their lunch of sandwiches, so after he had dropped her at the hotel,
she had a shower and washed her hair, then walked along to the bakery
for some little cakes for afternoon tea. She had noticed it earlier, a tiny
corrugated iron building with its front decorated by signs in large print:

WEIRD PIES STRANGE PASTIES
ROCK CAKES FOR ROADMAKING LOVE BUNS FOR LOST VITALITY

while round the back the baker claimed:

IN THE DOUGH FOR THIRTY YEARS, AND STILL A LOAFER.

She bought some rock cakes and took them back to her room. There was
a canvas chair on the balcony where she could sit in whatever breeze was
moving. The air was steamy and oppressive.
He did not come in to dinner that night.
She felt churned up and restless, sad and happy, wanting to see him
again yet fearing that she would let her feelings show. The main thing
was, they had to work together, important work that must not suffer. She
could let him fly himself to all his calls, as he did normally; but she would
be terribly bored sitting around in this little town for a month with nothing
to do. But wait--what had he said about getting a horse for her to ride?
That might be the answer. Then she could explore out to the Katherine
Gorge and the country round. It was a change to be in such well-watered
country; for even in the Dry the Katherine did not entirely cease to flow.
A telephone call came for her early in the morning. She had to grope
her way down the dim stairs to answer it. "Dr. Trenowith wants to speak
to Sister Manning," the girl told her.
"Yes? Caro Manning here."
"Caro, I've had an urgent call to Brock's Creek up the Line--four men
injured in a fall of earth. I don't know how serious it is--may have to fly
one of them in to Darwin Hospital. Can I take the plane?"
"Of course. You don't need to ask--she's yours for the month."
"Thanks. See you tomorrow." And then he added in a rush, "I didn't
sleep very well."
"Nor did I."There was a speaking silence. The line hummed between them.
"I behaved badly. But I want you to know I didn't plan it."
"Let's just forget the whole thing, shall we?"
"That's the trouble. I keep remembering. ..."
So do I, she thought. Aloud she said clearly, "Goodbye, David."
After his return from Darwin the next day, there followed three days
without any emergencies, apart from a ganger on the railway at Pine
Creek with a crushed thumb. It was only a few stops up the line, and he
could have waited for the weekly train. But Dr. Trenowith flew up and
put a splint on the hand and gave him something for the pain. It did not
have to be a matter of life and death for the Flying Doctor to come. He
gave a tetanus antitoxin injection as well.
Since there were no calls, David suggested that they might take the
afternoon off and drive over the river and see about a horse for her to
ride.
He went across the shallow ford to Lovegrove Station. Lovegrove, the
Grove of Love, thought Caro, her imagination running in one direction.
She met Mrs. Dixon, the manager's wife, and took tea in the cool enclosed
veranda of the old stone homestead. Then a lanky booted and spurred
roustabout was sent to the horse-paddock to get her a horse to ride.
He came back with a neat black gelding, saddled and bridled, which
stood quietly but showed the whites of its eyes in a way Caro did not quite
like.
"He's got no real bad habits, doesn't pig-root or buck," said the young
man. "Just watch, though, if he puts his ears back; he'll nip your arm or
shoulder if he's in the mood."
While the others sat on the veranda, Caro, with a nervous eye on the
horse's ears and the wicked white of his eye, hastily mounted and gathered
up the reins.
The others watched while she put him through his paces in the yard.
She found that he had a lovely gait: a brisk, even trot and a rocking-horse
canter, and a soft mouth that responded to the lightest touch on the reins.
"What's his name?" she called.
"Satan!"
The roustabout opened the yard gate for her. She held him at a walk
for a while to establish who was boss, then gave him his head. They
galloped along a well-marked track that followed the river bank. Satan
seemed to want to go down to the water, so she let him make his way
down the steep bank where there was a break in the dense green growth.
She let him walk in till the stirrups were just above the water. He pulled
at the reins and drank deeply. She sat idly with loose reins, absorbing the
peace of leaning trees and calm reflections. The water was not as clear as
the Mataranka pools.
There came a sudden clap of thunder, and Satan started nervously.
Looking up, she found the sky half-covered with blue-black clouds rolling
down from the north, though here the sun still shone from a blue sky.
She gathered up the reins and turned for the homestead.
Satan put his ears back at the next thunder-clap, and bolted for home.
But Caro kept her seat and gradually slowed him down. At the yard gate
she dismounted and led him through.
"What, did he toss you?" drawled the roustabout, strolling over from
the shade of a tree. "I forgot to mention, he gets a bit skittish in a
thunderstorm."
Caro suspected that the lapse of memory was deliberate; her horseriding
ability was being tested.
"He did not. He behaved like a perfect gentleman, and hasn't even
tried to bite."
David drove her back to the hotel in pouring rain.
"I see you have a good seat on a horse, apart from your other accomplishments,"
he said. "I'm a bit scared of the things, especially ones that bite.
And you drive a car like a veteran, too."
"Well--I've been driving since I was seventeen. I had my own little
car in Adelaide."
"You must use mine whenever you want, to drive over to the station
or out to the Gorge. They've given you an open invitation. They like
you," he said.
Chapter Fifteen

Late in the afternoon of the next day an urgent call came for the doctor
from Daly Waters: a drover on the stock-route from Nutwood Downs
Station had been kicked by his horse and had his ear torn off. He couldn't
leave the cattle, but he'd sent a blackfellow thirty miles back to the
homestead with the message, and the ear wrapped in a clean handkerchief.
It was now in the kerosene refrigerator at the Downs.
Dr. Trenowith set off into the gathering storm, after telling Caro that
he would need the passenger seat to fly the drover back to the homestead
to be reunited with his ear.
"Don't worry, the storm won't extend as far south as there," he said.
"But I must leave at once if I'm to make it before dark."
He arrived back at lunch-time next day, his mission accomplished.
The ear had been sewn back in place, covered with a dressing, and the
drover had been flown back to his mob of cattle to continue the drove
the very next morning.
"He'd never been up before, and he gripped the edges of his seat all
the way there and all the way back. We caught the edge of the storm
taking off, and it was pretty rough.
"'By cripes', Doc,' he said when we landed, 'she's quick, I'll give you
that, but she's a beggar to buck.
"That reminds me," said Caro, "I had another ride on Satan this
morning. Mrs. Dixon has asked me to drive out to the Katherine Gorge
with them tomorrow, if I'm not needed."
"It's spectacular, but you really need a boat to see it properly. You'll
see plenty of crocs, but they're the small freshwater ones."
"I don't really like them, any size."
While David took his morning clinic of the air, Caro went for a
delightful picnic out to the gorge with Mrs. Dixon and the station
bookkeeper, an Englishman with the unbelievable name of Wigglesworth.
On a trailer they towed a small boat with an outboard motor. Soon
they were cruising slowly along the waterway under vertical yellow
cliffs. Where there was a level bank below the cliffs, crocodiles sunned
themselves or slipped into the water, leaving only their prominent eyes
showing. On one low outcrop, Aboriginal designs in red ochre had
been painted. The bare, jagged edges of yellow and orange rock at the top of the cliffs contrasted with an almost purple sky at the zenith.
Caro felt her neck growing stiff from holding her head back, as she
stared and stared.
Here the gorge was wide and deep, with calm water reflecting the blue
of the sky. They returned to where the bank flattened out and picnicked
on cold chicken and hard-boiled eggs under the shady pandanus palms.
Only two hundred miles to the south-west, a man could perish in the
sand-hill country.
When she arrived back in Katherine a message was waiting at the hotel:
"Called to Anthony Lagoon; will pick you up at 2 p.m."
It was nearly a quarter to two. Caro flung off her damp swimsuit and
shorts and put on her skirt and blouse with a linen hat. Fortunately her
hair had dried on the way back. She powdered her nose and dashed on
some lipstick, grabbed her helmet and goggles and leather flying-jacket,
and she was ready.
He pulled up at the door as she was telling Mr. O'Shay not to expect
her back that night; it would be dark or nearly so by the time they reached
their destination.
"Good. I thought I'd have to go without you," said David with a big
smile. "I'll need you to do some nursing out there; no hospital, just a
police station and a store. But you'll find the people interesting."
Anthony Lagoon had radioed Cloncurry first, but the doctor was away.
One of the few inhabitants had been seriously injured in a road accident.
He was unconscious and had some severe lacerations.
The usual afternoon storm was building up as they took off on the
three-hundred-mile flight. David was in the pilot's seat, and for once
Caro was glad; pelting rain began, and though they were flying below the
cloud, visibility was restricted, and he knew the way better than she did.
It was nearly four in the afternoon when they landed at Newcastle Waters,
having flown out of the rain. He arranged for a wireless message to
Anthony Lagoon to park a car with lighted headlights beaming along the
runway if they should not be in before dark.
"You take her in," said Caro when he looked a question at her. "I'll
fly on the way home." Her helmet and the shoulders of her calfskin jacket
were darkened with rain.
They were still about fifty miles from their destination when the engine
began missing. It could not be a vapour-lock, the temperature at two
thousand feet was not high enough for that. David tapped her on the
shoulder and passed a note. "Will try landing at Eva Downs." She looked
back and nodded, as he pointed downwards. They were following the
stock-route to Anthony Lagoon, and below and to the left appeared a
small cluster of white roofs. David dived steeply to make the engine turn
over faster, and it picked up, then faltered again. He circled the homestead,
looking for a cleared space. The horse-paddock, dotted with trees, lookedthe only possibility. He skipped over the roofs of the outbuildings, then
the high fence, banked sharply to get between two trees, landed on an
even keel and pulled up just in front of another tree. A truck, its tray
covered with black children hanging on anyhow, came tearing over the
bumps and through the trees towards them.
In half an hour they were ready to take off again. Caro had diagnosed
oiled-up spark-plugs, and so it proved.
"My fault," she said. "I should have been giving the engine an overhaul
instead of going on a picnic."
"I could have done it for that matter," said David. "I haven't got a
ground engineer's ticket like you, but I've had to learn to service my own
bus."
Resisting the urging of the hospitable station people to come in for a
cup of tea, they took off again in failing light.
A vast Himalaya of cloud spread along the western horizon, its snowy
peaks back-lit by the declining sun. Keeping low to make sure of not losing
the stock-route, which was their only guide, after an anxious hour of flying
they picked up the wide, level gleam of water, and then the few scattered
buildings of the tiny township of Anthony Lagoon. But there was no sign of
a headlight or a burning smoke to indicate the landing place. As they circled
lower, they saw something moving below--the roof of a van. They kept it
in sight till it stopped and the headlights flashed on.
David skimmed the roof of the van and landed in the beam of the lights
on what was a fairly good airstrip. They were taken at once to see the
patient, who had come in from a nearby outstation of Anthony Lagoon
Station for a celebration of the storekeeper's birthday. They had celebrated
all too well, and on driving home afterwards, he was thrown off the back
of the truck when the driver cornered too fast. They'd taken him to the
police station where Mrs. Simmons, the Constable's wife, had put him
on a couch and placed a cold compress on the great swelling bruise on
his head, before calling the Flying Doctor. The radio tower and transceiver
were at the police station.
The doctor administered a stimulant but said he could not assess the
damage until the patient recovered consciousness. Meanwhile Caro
bathed and dressed his lacerations, and the doctor gave him a tetanus
shot just in case. They spent the night on folding canvas stretchers,
borrowed from the store, in the little sitting-room.
Before turning in they visited Count Belyondi's home, which was
attached to the store, at the request of a plump middle-aged lubra, who
came to the police station with the message.
"That's the Count's wife," said the Constable. "He lives in dread of
his brother and sister-in-law finding out he's married to a black gin. His
brother is something important in the Italian Consulate in Sydney, I
believe."
"At least he's married her," said Caro. "This sort of thing goes on all
over the north, as you know; or there wouldn't be so many half-castes.
But up here it seems to be regarded as more respectable not to marry the
woman concerned. It's an upside-down morality, if you ask me." She
thought of Grandpa Manning and Jenny, who was his faithful wife in all
but name and status.
Maria, the black woman, had informed them, "Him cut bad longa
him head. Him fall off tchair larse night, we bin celebratin'."
"It must have been some celebration," said David as they walked to
the store. "Two wounded, one seriously, and I would say several bad
hangovers."
The Count, a small dark man with greying curls and a luxuriant black
moustache, stood up to greet them and bowed low over Caro's hand. His
bright eyes flashed from one to the other as he smiled.
"This is my nurse, Sister Manning," said David firmly. "She is assisting
the Flying Doctor this month; that is her plane we flew in from Katherine."
"Ahh! Un'aviatrice, si? E bellissima, non e vero? A signorina both
brave and beautiful!"
"You'd better let me look at this cut, if you want us to treat it."
The Count was wearing a bright handkerchief tied round his head, which
gave him a rather piratical air. Maria, in a clean print dress, hovered in the
doorway but did not enter. David untied the handkerchief and revealed a
nasty gash over the right eye, filled with dried and blackened blood.
"You bin bathe-im?" he asked over his shoulder.
"No-more. Jus bin tie-im up."
"I no want-a spoil the festa del mio compleanno, you onderstan'? So I
hold a cushion to my head till the bleeding stop."
He indicated a cushion on the couch where he had been sitting, which
was soaked with darkened blood.
"Not the most aseptic dressing, a cushion," David muttered to Caro as
they washed their hands with yellow soap in the kitchen. "I'll clean out
the wound and put a couple of stitches in, and then you can show off
your bandaging."
"Yes, Doctor," she said submissively. Her heart was beating high at
having him stand so close beside her.
"This won't need an anaesthetic," he told Count Belyondi. "But
perhaps a hair of the dog--"
"Ah, si! Maria! Fetcha me the whisky."
He swigged down a neat tumblerful, sighed, and closed his eyes.
"Bene, Signor Dottore. I am ready. Avanti!"
As soon as the operation was over, Maria brought coffee, three cups
on a tray.
"And where is your cup, Mrs. Belyondi?" asked Caro as she took hers
and sat down.Maria shook her head and smiled. "No-more!" she said.
"She has not learn-a to drink the coffee," said the Count. "But the red
vino--ah, si!"
All the same, Maria did not sit down with them but faded away. "Just
like a servant!" Caro said indignantly to David afterwards. "Afraid to sit
down in her own house as an equal."
"You were the trouble, my dear. She wouldn't have been shy of me,
but a young, smart white woman was too much."
Before they left, Count Belyondi offered to sing for them in gratitude.
His head did not ache in the least, he said. Accompanying himself on
the guitar, he began to sing "O Soave Fanciulla" in a tenor voice full of
Italian bel canto.
"What about some more Puccini?" asked David. " 'Che Gelida Martina' --your tiny hand is frozen? I know that one."
And to Caro's delight he joined in, singing the Italian words in a light
but sweet tenor.
"You amaze me," said Caro as they walked back to the police
station with the tin of biscuits the Count insisted on their taking
from the store. "I suppose you'll tell me next that you play the
piano?"
"I do, as a matter of fact. That's one thing I miss in Katherine. Must
ask Tim O'Shay if he wouldn't like to get one for the pub."
"I suppose it's the Cornishman in you," she mused. "Cornish people
are supposed to be musical, aren't they? And with a name like
Trenowith--"
"Yes, my grandfather was a Trenowith and my grandmother was a
Pascoe, from Truro."
"They're also great Methodists, I believe."
"Not me!" he said fervently. "The war knocked all that religion out of
me. I saw too many young men die; now I say 'Take no heed of the
morrow,' and 'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.'"
"You see! You're quoting the Bible."
"Oh yes, it was church twice a day and Sunday school in the middle
when I was little."
"I know the Presbyterian hymn-book off by heart, from my schooldays.
But my mother was not a church-goer, though my grandmother used to
try and drag me there."
Back at the police station they found their other patient conscious, but
complaining of a headache. The doctor tested his reflexes and his vision,
and diagnosed concussion.
"Keep him in bed for a couple of days, on a light diet," he told Mrs.
Simmons. "The lump has started to go down. I don't know why he was
blacked out for so long, but I think partly he'd passed out from a large
amount of alcohol. Would that be right?"
"That'd be right," said the Constable. "They'd been celebrating all day
and half the night, on wine, whisky, and home brew."
"I'm glad it didn't happen when Bill was away," said Mrs. Simmons.
"Sometimes I'm here on my own for weeks on end when he's out on
patrol."
"You're only a radio call away from help, don't forget. You can call
us or Cloncurry, whichever has a doctor available."
He told Caro afterwards that Bill Simmons, together with Constable
Muldoon of Newcastle Waters, had made the round-trip journey of a
thousand miles in twenty-five days to Darwin, taking two prisoners for
trial.
"I knew Constable Jack McGuinnes at Marree," said Caro who had,
in fact, met him only a few weeks before at Innamincka. "He used to
patrol the desert with camels. He saved my mother from perishing out
near Lake Eyre."
"Yes, they're remarkable men. Like the Canadian Mounties, I suppose,
who 'always get their man.'"
Flying back along the same course they had come, Caro was studying
the map when her eyes lighted on Lake Woods, a large blue expanse
south of Newcastle Waters and to the west of the O.T. line. Dry salt-pans
were often marked in blue on maps, misleadingly; yet it might be full of
water.
By making a slight detour, she would come out over Lake Woods, and
have a look at it from the air. As the Line disappeared beneath them,
David turned inquiringly. She held up the map inside her windscreen,
drew a circle in the air, and pointed downwards, jabbing her finger at the
edge of the lake, now coming into sight as a sun-reflecting sheet of blue
against the red-brown earth.
He nodded comprehension. Starting to circle downwards, she thought
what fun it would be to have a plane with floats, and be able to land on
the water like a pelican. She swooped low across the lake and back again.
The shores were lightly wooded, mostly stunted trees and low shrubs.
Perhaps the water was salt after all? She longed to go down and explore,
but did not dare. It would look as though she were suggesting another
swim together; and the consequence of that last swim was still vivid in
her mind.
Reluctantly she turned, banking steeply with one wing pointing
down at the water, then turned north and began following the track of
the O.T. line towards Katherine. A peculiarity of the motor-track as it
threaded in and out below the wires was that it twisted like a snake in a
loop around each post. This was because the track had been made by
camel teams carting the first posts (now replaced with metal poles because
of white ants) which dropped a pole off the load first on one side, then
on the other.When they landed at Daly Waters to refuel David said, "I thought for
a moment there that you were going to try a landing at the lake."
"No, I just wanted to look at it."
"It's hard to find a clear space to set down. You weren't thinking of
another swim, then?" he asked, looking into her eyes. There was a smile
lurking in his.
"Certainly not!"
"Because I wouldn't advise it. The mosquitoes there are like swarms of
bees, and almost as big. They're starving for blood. I once tried camping
there in an emergency. The mossies were like a grey fluff over my arms
and the backs of my hands--standing room only, and they were standing
on their heads to bite me."
"I thought it might be a freshwater lake."
"Brackish. And it often dries up with evaporation. There'd be settlements
all round if there were that much permanent fresh water in this
country."
Back at Katherine he drove her to the hotel and stayed to dinner. They
had been greeted on the veranda by the tame brolga and Mr. Tim O'Shay
himself, who said "Shure and it's glad I am to see ye safely back. For we
had the father and mother of a storm afther ye left in that flimsy machine."
Caro was pleasantly tired after the four-hundred-mile flight home. Her
last thought before drifting off to sleep was of David Trenowith and his
smiling blue eyes. She felt that their friendship ripened with each flight
they made together.
Chapter Sixteen

Milingimbi Mission, set on an island off the Arnhem Land coast about
250 miles east of Darwin, had sent an urgent message to the N.T.M.S.
at Darwin, relayed to Katherine for the Flying Doctor.

8YM to VID. I have an urgent medical to C.M.O. Darwin. Native
female age ten years. Fall from tree, fracture of both forearms. Some
deformity. Much pain. Have immobilized forearms in splints, aspirin
and codeine for pain. Please advise.

Dr. Trenowith wired back that the message was received, and he would
leave first thing in the morning. He asked them to light a small smoke-fire to give wind direction.
David and Caro were on their way at first light. The morning was fine,
a heavy downpour and thunderstorm the afternoon before having cleared the air. David was the pilot, as he explained that he knew the way; it was
near two other missions on the same coast where he had called before.
"The kids for some reason loved canned sardines. I gave them a couple
of tins of rations I had on board, and they wolfed them. There was only
half a tiny fish each. We'll take two dozen tins with us to Milingimbi."
They flew up the railway line and then headed east of north. They had
refuelled at Pine Creek but carried a can of petrol just in case. They
crossed Deaf Adder Creek, and as they came to the East Alligator River
they flew low along the channel so that they could see the crocodiles. Big
salt-water ones, though they looked small from the air, basked on the
banks or slid into the tidal river. They flew over green swamps which
never burned brown, not even at the end of the dry season. Water
buffaloes looked like grey slugs, and white birds, ibis and egret and corella
cockatoos, flew up from the billabongs. Oenpelli Mission passed beneath,
set on one of these. The rugged scarps and deep ravines of the Arnhem
Land plateau they crossed at its narrowest tip, then headed for the north
coast, which they would follow round to the Crocodile Islands, passing
Maningrida Mission on the way.
By now David was giving anxious looks at the horizon ahead, which
appeared to be blotted out by a thick grey curtain of cloud and rain. He set a compass course north-east to cut the coast well west of their goal.After fifty miles, peering down through occasional breaks in the low grey
cloud, he made out a curving yellow beach fringed with dense green.
Then a blinding rain squall blotted it out. They still had almost a hundred
miles to fly to their destination.
David scribbled a note and passed it to Caro: "Will have to land.
Visibility soon nil." He jabbed his finger downwards at the swirling mist,
now thinning to show another crescent of dull yellow beach. There was
no clear space except on the sand, and in places mangroves came right
down to the water.
Caro closed her eyes and came close to praying. She would have liked
to have been at the controls of her plane, but knew she couldn't be in
better or more skilled hands. David had a light but sure touch on the
controls, and the machine responded almost like a horse to the hands of
a skilled rider.
He circled down to a thousand feet. He knew the land was perfectly
flat here, but wanted to keep some height and possibly glide in, engine
throttled right down. There was not much room between water and jungle
edge. To land on the beach would probably mean getting bogged. The
blinding rain closed in again.
He circled twice more till the rain thinned. Seeing an open patch in
the cloud below, he dived through it, and turning over the sea, came
back to land with nose pointing up the slope of the beach. There was a
thump, a jolt, then they were upside down.
Caro hung in her harness while medicine bottles, luggage, and cans
of sardines showered over her. There was a deep silence and a feeling of
suspended time. She felt disinclined to move; yet the can of petrol might
have broken and it was imperative to get out quickly.
There was a scrambling noise ahead of her, and David dropped to the
sand. He should have been behind; but the plane had gone completely
over, nose first, and the tail now pointed up the beach. In a moment he
had her harness unbuckled and she slid head-first into his arms.
"Caro! Dearest! Are you all right? You look so pale."
"Really? I thought all the blood was running into my head."
"No, you're white as a sheet. And there's a bruise on your cheek--"
"I think I'm bruised all over."
He set her gently on the warm, damp sand well away from the plane
and went back to examine it. Not badly damaged, except for the prop.
The wheels had dug into soft dry sand above the high-tide level, and
locked immediately, flipping them over.
He brought back the square can of petrol, only slightly dented, and
from the back of the beach collected driftwood. It was saturated, but with
the help of petrol he was able to get a fire going under the shelter of the
big tamarind trees, grown from seed brought to this coast centuries before
by Macassar seamen looking for beche-de-mer.
The rain poured down again. Caro, who in the heat had not been
wearing her flying jacket but some new white overalls, was already soaked
to the skin; but it was not cold. Her shoulders and underarms were bruised
from the harness; besides, she had several grazes where things had fallen
on her. She moved stiffly towards the fire through the soft, yielding yellow
sand. At least they were alive, she reflected, even if they had only a vague
idea of where they were. And Circe was not badly damaged, though
undoubtedly grounded until help came.
Because of course a search would be mounted as soon as their disappearance
was known.
While David tended the fire, she peeled the foil top from two tins of
sardines. It hurt to use her right arm.
"Of course they'll find us before long," said David, reading her thought.
"We were on course for Milingimbi, and Maningrida can't be far
ahead--"
"Unless we passed it in the rain."
"That's possible, but anyway we're still on the coast. What worries me
is that poor kid at the Mission with two broken arms, waiting for me to
come. No doubt they'll radio Cloncurry for a doctor if we don't turn up."
Cloncurry! Caro suddenly realized what their disappearance would
mean to her mother. Alix always worried when Caro was in the air.
She lifted an oily sardine from its tin and bit into it without tasting it.

The news of the missing doctor and his flying nurse was soon spread by
radio all over the north and was relayed to Cloncurry, which flew a doctor
out to treat the injured girl. The plane went on to search the coast between
Milingimbi and Maningrida, but did not go far enough west to find the
lost pair. It was supposed rather that in poor visibility they had overshot
the mark and were now somewhere east of their destination, among the
maze of bays and waterways on the Arnhem coast. They might have run
out of fuel, or landed to wait for better weather. Dr. Trenowith had always
turned up unharmed from groundings and accidents, and the mood was
optimistic.
But Alix feared the worst. She could not sleep until she dosed herself
with sleeping tablets, and would wake woolly-brained and depressed. She
asked to go on the roster for night duty. She might as well be in the wards
as lying in bed worrying.
The young Aboriginal girl was brought in to hospital for treatment, as
the A.M.S. doctor had a plane equipped to take a stretcher. On the way
back to Cloncurry they followed the coast eastward as far as the Goyder
River, but there was no sign of the little Moth.
When Alix heard this she became convinced that Caro and the doctor
had crashed into the sea.
Within days there were four planes out searching, one from Qantas,one from the A.M.S., and two from the R.A.A.F. base at Darwin, and
all missions and pearling luggers in the area with wireless had been
alerted. It was such a wild, deserted, deeply indented coastline, the only
settlements those of Aboriginal missions, that it would take weeks to
search every bay and river mouth. But the missing pair were unlikely to
stay near a river mouth because of crocodiles. And as for drinking water,
even after rain the tidal rivers would be salt.

David Trenowith had wrenched off a curving piece of engine cover
and set it to catch rain-water. "There will be water in those rocks at the
other end of the beach," he said, pointing. "Even if it doesn't rain any
more."
"Shouldn't we walk till we find a river mouth?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because river mouths are muddy, with mangroves. And saltwater
crocs love them."
"Oh!"
Caro had enjoyed her first meal of sardines. The fish were oily and not
dry. (By the time they had consumed half the tins, she never wanted to
see a sardine again.)
Since she had been sitting by the fire, her bruises and bumps had
stiffened up. She said she would go down to the point and have a swim,
for the sun had come out, and let her clothes dry on the rocks.
"No, you won't!" said David. "At least not unless I come with you and
keep a look-out for crocodiles."
"Are they really as bad as that?"
"They are very, very dangerous."
Caro looked about discontentedly at the curve of deep yellow sand
backed with green trees, the clear sea of turquoise water breaking in small
waves. It was such a lovely beach, the water was so inviting. . . .
"I don't care," she said, getting to her feet.
He brought a water-container and followed after her, both walking in
the firm wet sand at the water's edge.
"You don't have to come."
"Oh yes, I do. I don't want to be a lone survivor."
She had a delightful swim; she didn't believe crocs really liked lovely
clear water like this. But when he called her peremptorily to keep closer
to shore, she obeyed. In her underthings she sunbathed while her overalls
dried on the rocks. It was early afternoon and the tropic sun was at its
warmest. They were only twelve degrees from the equator. At the far end
of the beach a dark clump of mangroves clothed the point.
As they walked back to the plane, a decorous distance between them,
the sand was so hot that she walked right at its edge, where the tide was fast running out. He still had his shoes on, and moved up to the jungle
edge to collect firewood.
Suddenly he stopped, peered at the sand, and walked back towards
high-water mark. "Come and look at this!"
She was carrying the still-damp overalls across her shoulder. By treading
on this garment, then picking it up and throwing it ahead and jumping
on to it again, she made her way over the burning sand to him.
He gripped her arm so hard that he nearly made another bruise. "D'you
see that?"
Distinct above the high-water mark were the tracks of a crocodile: its
clawed feet, the groove made by its tail. The tracks led up into the
greenery. She looked at him wide-eyed.
"Yes; a big one, too."
She stared and shivered.
"Let's get back, and get plenty of firewood. We'd better keep the fire
going all night. He'll probably go back into the sea before morning."
Caro kept very close to him, on the seaward side, for the rest of the
walk.
Back at the camp he had rigged a tarpaulin, only six feet square, sloping
from the wooded edge to the beach, to deflect the large drops. Rain-clouds
were massing out to sea again. The fire was lit under a tree where a
downpour would not extinguish it. They made a swag from their spare
clothes and after another meal of sardines huddled under the tarpaulin
as the rain came down again and doused the last embers of the western
sun. Caro had gone a little way down the beach for a pee rather than
trust herself among the dark trees.
It would seem romantic if there were stars, and a moon, and a silver
sea, thought Caro. She was not cold, for her clothes were dry, but
she shivered slightly. But rain, and c-crocodiles, and sand-flies--! The
irritating specks had begun biting at sunset, but now the rain seemed to
have subdued them.
David had a big pile of firewood handy, some damp so that it made a
smoke to ward off mosquitoes, and a heap of dry underbark to keep it
going. They sat on their swags, huddling closer together as the rain poured
down again.
"You know, you'd be more comfortable if you'd lean on me," he said,
and they sat almost back to back while she leaned against his broad
shoulder, and talked. It was too early to go to sleep. But both were tired
after their long flight, and bruised from the crash. He gave her a chaste
kiss on the cheek and said, "Good night, dear girl. Go to sleep. I'm just
going to stoke the fire up."
She lay and listened to the groaning croaks of tree-frogs and the sharp
cry of some nocturnal creature, bat or bird. What sort of noise did
crocodiles make, apart from the snapping of their jaws? She shuddered,and curled into a foetal position, hands and feet drawn up close. She was
glad when David returned and lay beside her on the other swag. Did she
want him to hold her in his arms and make love to her? Of course she
did. But he was evidently determined not to "take advantage" of her, or
to be faithful to his wife or something. She was not going to make the
first move. Her heartbeat and breathing slowed, and soon she was asleep,
in spite of the odd sensation of lying up- and down-hill, due to the steep
slope of the beach. But the sand beneath was soft and warm. Her last
thought was of David's words, in the first shock of their crash: Caro, dearest!
Some time later she woke. The rain had stopped, the tree-frogs were
silent, there was just the drip, drip of water from the trees on to the canvas
roof. Something had awakened her, in spite of the quiet. She lay rigid,
straining her ears.
Ah, there it was! A scrunch, scrunch, scrunch in the coarse sand. A
crocodile's footsteps? And then something took hold of a strand of her
hair, and pulled. She sat up with a scream.
"David!"
He was instantly awake, and groping for the torch he had brought from
the plane. He flashed on the beam and swung it in a semi-circle. There
was a papery rustle, and a small army of ghost-crabs with eyes on stalks
sidled away. They were pale, stilt-legged, and about the size of a hand:
obscene-looking creatures that fixed their little black eyes on the light
until they melted into the ring of blackness beyond.
"It's all right--just crabs looking for a feed."
"They actually pulled at my hair!"
"Testing to see if you were dead or not. They don't have the courage
to attack living creatures."
"They are revolting!"
"Queer-looking, I agree." He got up and put some more wood on the
dying fire. Low over the ocean a few stars showed, glowing with a steady
yellow light, quite different from the diamond sparkle of the frosty inland
nights.
"It may be fine tomorrow. More chance of our being seen from the
air," he said.
"You think they'll be looking for us, then."
For the first time she felt a twinge of doubt about whether they would
be rescued; not when, but whether.
It was long before she slept, for under her ear she could hear the ghost
crabs digging, scrunch, scrunch! to undermine her.

Cloncurry kept in touch by voice with Darwin, Elcho Island, Milingimbi,
and Maningrida. Darwin had made contact with luggers in the Arafura
Sea. They would search for wreckage between Elcho Island and Cape
Arnhem. Milingimbi had sent out the small Mission launch, and from
Maningrida black trackers were moving along the east bank of the Mann
River and the beaches of Boucaut Bay. None of them was looking far
enough to the westward; yet neither Mission had heard an aircraft overhead
during the thick weather when the plane went missing.
Alix, on duty during the night, spent most of the day haunting the
radio base for scraps of news. Her distrust of small aeroplanes had been
reinforced. In spite of her fear she even offered to go as an observer in
one of the search planes, but was gently told that an experienced navigator
would be of more use. Also most of the passenger space was taken up
with rolls of mosquito nets, bedding, and food, cream for insect bites and
citronella repellent, and waterproof sheets. The missing pair were unlikely
to be in need of water at this time of the year. If their plane was more or
less intact they would have plenty of medical and first-aid equipment. If
it was not--this alternative was not spelled out, but if the plane should
be sunk or burnt there were unlikely to be any survivors.
Alix wished she could pray, but she no longer had her childhood faith
in the efficacy of prayer. After Mab died she had decided that either God
was not aware of the terrible things that happened to people; or that he
knew, but was unable to stop them. Either he was unknowing and
uncaring, or omniscient but impotent.
Not long before Caro disappeared a child had been brought in from a
station suffering from tetanus, too late for the antitoxin to take effect. The
little girl died from exhaustion after a few days, but not before Alix had
seen her suffer the terrible spasms, as her jaws clenched and her head
curled back towards her heels; and fully conscious all the time in spite of
strong barbiturates.
Alix, sitting beside her, had clenched her own teeth in sympathetic
agony. She tried singing old Presbyterian hymns to herself to calm her
mind. She came to "All Things Bright and Beautiful. . ."He made them
one and all. Yes, but he also made the bird-eating spider and the deadly
stonefish, the bacteria of diphtheria and cholera, and the tiny viruses that
caused such misery in the world. It was the conundrum which had
puzzled William Blake about the tiger:

Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

No, Alix thought, she would not pray for Caro's safety. But with all her
strength she willed that her daughter might be alive.Chapter Seventeen

Caro woke sweating. The air was close and humid, but no rain was
falling. Her first thought was of a swim in that beautiful clear sea,
crocodiles or no crocodiles. She felt much safer in daylight. Her second
thought was breakfast, till she remembered there were only sardines. If
only they had a bit of flour to make a damper! David appeared and
dropped an armful of wood near the fire.
"Good morning!" he called cheerfully.
She sat up, rubbing her eyes, and looked down the beach. The sea was
gone. In its place spread acres of grey, glistening mud almost to the
horizon, where there was a thin silver streak.
"The sea!" she squeaked.
"Is gone until the tide comes in. They have twenty-foot tides up
here!"
"Blast it! I was looking forward to a swim."
"What about breakfast instead? There are sardines au naturel, sardines
in oil, or sardines without toast."
"Erkh! I'm losing my taste for sardines."
Her youthful appetite was strong enough to overcome her distaste,
however. There was a roll of toilet paper, something she had always
carried in the plane since her first long flight, so she rolled them in paper
and removed most of the oil.
After breakfast they walked a little way out in the mud and found some
whelks, but most of the shells were empty ones, appearing to be walking
about on the surface but actually home to tiny hermit crabs. They had
thin, spidery legs and Caro did not fancy them to eat even if they'd been
bigger. But the live whelks they took back and cooked in the ashes till the
operculum opened, and Caro provided a bobby-pin from her hair to
extract the mouthful of shell-meat.
"We'll have to keep a small fire going as a signal to a boat or a plane,"
said David. "I'll have some oil-soaked rags handy, which will make black
smoke. They wouldn't see a small fire through the tree-tops. We might
have to burn the propeller, nice dry wood."
Caro sat on the sand under the shadow of a wing while he smashed
off pieces of the splintered wood. She was wearing her uniform of
white cotton, buttoned up the front, but not the white starched apron and cuffs that completed it, and nothing underneath for coolness. In
her white cotton hat she felt like a lady bowler, dressed for a tournament.
David
set aside a long piece of broken wood with a sharp point. After
carrying the rest up to the fire, he said, "I'm going to walk along to the
mangroves and see if I can get a mud-crab or two. They're number-one
tucker." And barefooted, in his shorts and shirt, he began walking down
to the firmer sand at the beach's edge.
Caro stared in disbelief. "Wait! Don't leave me!" She ran, stumbling
in the soft sand, after him.
He stopped. "You can't come with me. Someone has to be here to
build up the fire if a plane comes over. And to be seen near the wreck. I
might be hidden in the mangroves."
"But a crocodile will get you!"
"Not in daylight, I hope. And I've got a weapon" (a piece of brittle
wood that a croc's jaws would snap like matchwood). "Go on back. I
won't be long."
In the pocket of his shorts was some twine for binding the formidable
claws of the "muddie" for carrying. He was getting as heartily sick of
sardines as Caro, and wished there were enough length of twine to make
a fishing-line. Crab-meat would make good bait.
His tall figure with its broad, hunched shoulders dwindled away into
the distance as Caro watched, till it was swallowed entirely by the
mangroves. She felt suddenly intensely alone, somewhere on the top of
Australia, on the shores of the lovely-sounding Arafura Sea.
Caro pottered along the muddy edge, looking for more whelks, then
took them up to the camp. She sat down in the shade and gazed towards
the mangrove point. Nothing moved there. If there were any passing
boats, they would be out of sight, where the sea had gone. Her watch was
still working, hanging on a twig for safety. An hour passed with incredible
slowness. . . . She was too scared to walk along to the red rocks at the
other point, where she could have washed her panties in the water David
had found among the rocks. There was more than one hollow, he said,
with a good supply.
Out of boredom she was becoming drowsy in spite of her worry about
David, when a rustling and a breaking of twigs in the thick bush behind
her made her leap to her feet. She glared in terror, but could see nothing.
As soon as she could force her petrified limbs to move, she ran down the
beach to the machine and climbed up, sitting on the bottom of the
fuselage between the wheels. Would a crocodile, if hungry enough, tear
at the wings and fuselage with its great jaws? The plane was only of fabric
and wood construction, but she felt safer sitting up here with a good view
of the empty beach. The silver streak of water along the horizon had
widened. The tide was coming in.She stared along the yellow sand towards the mangroves. Nothing
moved but a shimmer of heat. Oh God, what if he never came back? She
forced herself to look away, to watch the slow advance of the tide. She
counted a hundred slowly, and scanned the back of the beach for crocodile
footprints. If he wasn't back before dark, could she sleep up here without
falling off? If only the plane had been right way up!
She looked once more towards the wooded point. A dark shape detached
itself from the dark trees, was moving along the edge of the glistening
mud towards her. . . .
It was him, he, it was David! She tumbled to the ground and ran
towards him along the damp sand at the edge of the mud. The soft sand
by the plane had burnt her feet, but she did not notice it.
In the wide, flat perspective of tidal flats he looked impossibly tall, a
god, a hero of some marine legend. . . .
As she came nearer he waved his stick, and she saw something large,
a silver fish, impaled on it. Then she saw that he was carrying another
object in his other hand--a trussed crab.
"Oh, darling David!" She began to sob with relief. By the time she
reached him her face was wet with tears. She flung her arms round his
waist and buried her face in his shirt.
"Dear, what is it? I thought you'd be so happy to see I'd caught some
real food."
"I am, I am, but oh! I thought you were dead, and I heard a
cro-crocodile in the scrub just behind the camp, and I've been frightened--"
"Darling!"
He dropped the fish and the crab to the sand, and folded
her in his arms, rocking her. "Darling, darling, darling, I'm sorry! But I
bet it was only a wallaby, or a big cassowary or something."
He kissed her tear-wet eyes, her cheeks, her throat, and then her lips,
a series of light butterfly kisses, until she reached up and drew his head
fiercely against hers, and they were lost in a long kiss, lips, tongues, and
teeth all mixed up together. He stood with his feet wide-braced and she
clung to him.
She felt him harden against her thigh. But even in the grip of desire
the successful hunter remembers his catch. After a few moments he
released her and picked up the fearsome-looking crab, still making
restricted movements of its huge claws.
He handed her the pointed stick with the silver fish impaled on it, and
with his arm round her trotted up the beach, half-carrying her over the
red-hot sand nearer the trees. He broke some green branches and laid his
catch on them in the shade. Then he drew her down on the swag spread
under the canopy and began undoing the buttons down the front of her
single garment, kissing each breast as it was exposed.
"Oh God, Caro," he muttered, "I was mad not to do this earlier. I've held myself back, and held myself back, when I wanted you so
much--"
"Don't talk," she whispered. Quivering, molten, receptive, she had
not felt this way since Malcolm. And even with him she had not known
the complete union, the intense and perfect climax at the same moment,
which she was to reach so easily with David. It was, no doubt, due to some
physical characteristic, some natural compatibility of their organisms, but
at the moment she put it down entirely to love. And the tide came
flooding in towards the yellow sand.
He stayed within her and they fell into a light sleep still joined, arms
and legs intertwined. It was as though two seeking halves had met and
made a perfect whole. When they woke they were bathed in sweat. As
they drew apart their torsos separated with a loud thwacking noise.
"The middle of the day's too hot for love-making," he laughed, rubbing
his chest with his discarded shirt. "The next priority is--food!"
There was plenty of water, as he had placed the container so that any
rain ran off the tarpaulin into it. But he went down to clean the fish in
the sea, using his pocket-knife. He built up the fire and let it die down
to coals to grill the fish.
"We'll have the crab cold for tea," he said. "I don't fancy eating them
when they've been alive minutes before."
The fish had been trapped in a tidal pool, by the greatest good luck.
Grilled on green sticks, it was rather dry, but a great improvement on
canned sardines.
But when he would have put the crab, still sluggishly moving, on the
coals to cook, Caro objected.
"You can't cook it alive!"
"But we have to--there's no container deep enough to boil it in.
Besides, you know, a crab's nervous system is fairly primitive, you can't
compare it with a human being's suffering in the same--"
"I won't eat any!"
He shrugged. "All right." He put the crab down, fetched a piece of
wood, and bashed in the shell about its head. He complained that it
would let out the juices and the crab-meat would be dry. "You're
inconsistent," he said coldly. "You put the whelks to cook, still living."
"Y-es. But. . ."
It was a small rift between them.
She knew that doctors could not indulge in too much empathy with a
suffering subject; some nurses too--she remembered how she had begun
to be impatient with screaming women in the labour ward. She had said
to Betty that doctors were hard, and here she was madly in love with one!
And the cold crab was delicious after all.
That night she cared not for crocodiles or ghost-crabs. It was too hot
for sleeping in each other's arms, they lay apart with feet touching andhands clasped. She said, "If it weren't for my mother, who will be
worrying herself sick, I would wish them not to find us yet. It will never
be quite like this again."
"I know. It's a kind of enchanted place, outside of ordinary life."
"I believe time can expand to an extraordinary degree in extraordinary
circumstances. How long do the minutes seem to a man while he's drowning, or plunging towards the earth with an unopened parachute?
They can't be measured. And if we can cram enough living and loving
and joy and excitement into a few days, they will expand into a month
of ordinary time."
"Yes, I believe it's a matter of heightened awareness. We felt it in the
war, knowing we had to leave on a dangerous patrol at dawn; and during
the attack all sense of passing time was suspended. Let's cram in a bit
more loving while we can," he said, reaching out his arms for her.
It couldn't last, of course. David Trenowith, who had been several
times lost with his little plane in the bush, without wireless, confidently
expected their rescue. Caro was not so sure. She knew their disappearance
together would by now be in the newspapers throughout the land. It had
not occurred to her that not only Alix, but her grandmother in Adelaide
must be worrying about their safety. And David's wife. . .
On the fourth day after their forced landing, a Darwin-based plane,
brought in by the Medical Service of the Northern Territory as a replacement
for the Flying Doctor since he had gone missing, saw the wreck on
the beach in one of the scallops of Junction Bay. The plane was on its
way back, taking a more northerly course than usual, from a search
between Maningrida and Elcho Island. Circling lower, the pilot saw two
figures .run out from under a shelter at the back of the beach, and a plume
of smoke rising from among the trees. He waved, dropped parcels of food
and mosquito-nets, pointed in the direction of Darwin, and waggled his
wings in farewell. With radio on board, he sent the welcome message:
"Plane found. Both safe", which was soon to be relayed round Australia.
Alix heard it at the Cloncurry wireless base and clasped her hands in
gratitude to Fate, or whatever controlled the destinies of human beings.
As the days stretched on with no word, she had found herself wringing
her hands together in anguish as she paced up and down, unable to sleep.
Then came the news that a Mission lugger from Maningrida would sail
round to pick them up tomorrow and take them back to the Mission,
where there was an airstrip from which they could be lifted to Darwin.
David and Caro had waved to the plane with muted enthusiasm.
Rescue meant the end of their beach idyll, albeit an idyll somewhat
marred by ghost-crabs, mosquitoes, and sand-flies. But as the parcels fell,
burying themselves in the soft sand, they ran to retrieve them like children
welcoming gifts from Father Christmas.
The mosquito-nets would make their nights more comfortable, but it was the bread they welcomed most. They each tore open a loaf and
munched it eagerly, before they had even found the canned butter with
(thoughtfully) a can-opener fastened to it.
"I've noticed," said David with his mouth full, "that it's not the exotic
things to eat that you dream of when you're stranded. Not roast turkey
and smoked salmon, but good old bread and butter."
There was a small bag of self-raising flour as well, perhaps in case the
bread package fell into the sea. David proceeded to make a damper and
set it to cook in the hot ashes. When it was done he tapped it on the
bottom and it gave out the authentic hollow sound of a well-cooked round
of soda-bread. They broke off pieces of crisp crust and ate them with
butter, but not before they had wolfed some fresh bananas and juicy
mangoes, which their systems had been craving for the last four days.
It was early afternoon, and the once-daily tide was getting later each
day.
"If they send a lugger for us," said David, "by the time they get here
and wait for the tide, it will take until late afternoon or early evening for
us to board her."
"So we have another day?"
"Yes; one more day together."
He interlocked the fingers of his right hand with hers and drew her
close for a kiss.
"Your lips taste of butter and they don't smell of sardine oil. It's a
pleasant change."
They finished that most satisfying meal with a big enamel mug of tea
with sugar, brewed in the quart-pot that had been included in the pack
of grey blankets and mosquito-nets. Then they lay under the trees, replete,
and watched the tide come in.
"Tomorrow," said David lazily, "we will have to get all the things left
in the plane, and stack them ready on the beach. If they get here late,
there won't be much time. You've seen how fast the water can drop."
In the time since they'd come together on the second day, they had
talked and talked, exploring each other's past and hopes for the future,
their ideas about life and time, tastes and dislikes, prejudices and beliefs
and memories. She had told him about Malcolm, and also that he was
the first man who could make her forget that unhappy first love. Then
she asked him, diffidently, about Margaret, his wife.
"Do you still love her?" she asked painfully.
"No, and haven't for some time. I'd been thinking about you ever since
the time I met you in Burketown."
"Really?" She was pleased. "You made an impression on me, too. I
even flew up to Normanton, hoping I might run into you. Remembering
what you said: The area is immense but the people are few.' It seemed
a non sequitur at the time, but I see now what you meant. Sydney ismuch smaller in area, but you'd be more unlikely to run into someone
you knew in the street there than you would in the Territory--because
you know most of the inhabitants here."
"Something like that."
He told her he'd been married ten years. His wife didn't want children
and was addicted to playing bridge, which he found boring. She always
kept herself looking nice, even in the heat; but at night the ritual of getting
ready for bed took half an hour or more. She had to wash out some
panties in the bathroom, brush her teeth, roll her hair in two curlers in
front, rub cold cream into her face, then skin freshener, then a moisturizer,
put on hand cream, push back the cuticles of her nails with an
orange stick, and brush the back of her hair, which she wore long below
her shoulders. Then, clean and shining, smelling of face-cream and
toothpaste, she would at last climb into bed.
"I still wanted her," he confessed. "Love and sex are two branches of
the same tree, but not necessarily the same thing. There's affection, and
gratitude, and habit, and shared experience; all help to keep a marriage
afloat. But since this happened--this has knocked me completely off the
rails, and I don't think I can go back to calm domesticity. I've been hit
by a hurricane."
"A few mixed metaphors there," said Caro judiciously. "Trees and
branches and railway lines (branch lines. . . ?) and boats and hurricanes.
But I take your meaning."
He grinned and gave her a kiss. "Don't be so pedantic. In short, I love
you, and I want to be with you always."

Chapter Eighteen

The lugger crew had managed to get the aircraft righted, then covered it
with tarpaulins, tied it down well, and left it there. Caro hated to see poor Circe crippled and abandoned, but David said that when a new propeller
had been obtained, a pilot and mechanic would be brought by boat with
spare fuel and rolls of matting for a temporary runway. The pilot would
be able to take off along the beach, it was hoped, and return the Moth
to Darwin for overhaul. When that had been done, he promised that he
would personally ferry it to her in Queensland.
Meanwhile the castaways were taken back to the airstrip at Maningrida,
from where they were flown to Darwin to be met by the local press with
cameras. David's wife was not there, but he rang her at once. The Medical
Service car would take him straight home. He asked Caro if she would
like to come to his house for lunch, but she did not want to meet his
wife, and he looked relieved. A mail-plane was leaving shortly for
Cloncurry, so Caro booked a seat with Qantas. She and David were
forced to say goodbye in public without even a last kiss.
David would send a radio message direct to Cloncurry Hospital to let
Alix know what flight she would be on.

Alix waited at the airport, scarcely convinced even yet that her daughter
was coming back. After all her anxious imaginings, even after the tremendous
news of the pair being found safe and well, she could not quite
believe it.
As the Qantas flight came in and the plane taxied towards the little
waiting-room, and stopped, Alix broke all the rules and ran out to meet
it. Down the steps came a slender girl in white overalls, her straw-gold
hair fluttering in the breeze.
"Caro! Darling! Dear child." Her arms were around the warm, living
flesh she had feared never to hold again. "Let me look at you! You're all
right?" Tears ran down her face.
"Perfectly all right, Mum," said Caro, returning her kisses but a little
embarrassed. "You shouldn't be out here, you know."
It occurred to her that David's wife had not even bothered to come to
the airport, let alone greet him with open arms.
Grounded in Cloncurry without a plane, Caro fretted and moped forthat lost enchanted beach, for her damaged craft, and above all for David
--now presumably back living with his wife. She did not tell her mother
why she was so depressed, but Alix guessed, seeing the change in her face
when a letter arrived with a Darwin postmark. She wanted Caro to be
happy but also she did not believe in divorce; and she knew that Dr.
Trenowith was married. She could only hope the child would get over it
without too much pain (the "child" being nearly twenty-two years old).
Matron had recently retired, and Alix had been appointed Matron of
the Cloncurry Hospital, a position of responsibility that she enjoyed. The
former Matron had been rather old-fashioned in her ideas, and now Alix
began instituting a few reforms. The first of these was that nurses did not
have to stand at attention with hands behind their backs when addressed
by a Sister. They were even encouraged to express opinions.
Loose white flowing caps had to be worn, but uniforms were much
freer and more suitable to a hot climate than when she had trained: gone
were the scratchy starched collars and cuffs, and she allowed nurse's aides
to wear a light-blue uniform with short sleeves. She enrolled one bright
Aboriginal girl as an aide, which scandalized some of the older patients.
On her days off Alix and Caro sometimes went on picnics, to the
permanent waterhole in the Cloncurry, or even farther afield to the upper
Leichhardt River; but in winter the rivers were dry, and in summer the
blacksoil became impassable and the roads a quagmire.
She made friends with some station people and sometimes spent a
weekend on their property. The daughter had been a patient for a long
time with poliomyelitis--she had recovered, fortunately without any
paralysis. Their station was set on a mixture of red loam and blacksoil
country about fifty miles north, covered with small but shapely whitetrunked
gums and acacias, or with stunted spinifex; and after rain the
Mitchell grass made splendid cattle feed.
Alix enjoyed her work and did not think she would marry again.
She'd had one proposal, from an elderly grazier who was a patient for
a time. He was a widower in poor health, looking for a nurse in his
declining years.
Then there was a doctor relieving at the hospital who had pursued her
with some tenacity. She had a mild flirtation with him, but did not really
find him attractive and was glad when he departed. Sometimes the three
years of her marriage seemed like a dream. But Caro was the living proof
that Jim had existed. Sometimes she looked at his photograph in the Light
Horse uniform, and it seemed unreal to her. What she remembered most
was their first meeting at Hergott, and the first year of their marriage, on
Cappamerri Station.
Caro wrote to the Queensland section of the Aerial Medical Services
Council, suggesting the provision of a Flying Nurse to supplement the
work of the Flying Doctor, one with her own aircraft who could visit lonely women on isolated stations, act as a midwife, and inaugurate a
regular clinic for both white and Aboriginal children for immunization
against diphtheria and tetanus. She would also be available to fly with
the doctor and to pilot the A.M.S. plane, as well as to help with seriously
ill patients being operated on in the field or transported back to base
hospital.
The branch had recently received a substantial bequest. John Flynn
had already been planning to establish a sub-base at Normanton, to
service Cape York Peninsula and the little inland towns of Croydon and
Georgetown, former gold-mining centres set among rocky hills about a
hundred miles inland from the Gulf. Qantas did not like its chartered
planes to fly there from Cloncurry because of the rugged and mountainous
country.
As it happened, when the Committee sent Caro's application on to
John Flynn, he was travelling west of Alice Springs with "Skipper"
Partridge, who had roamed the outback for years as a "patrol padre" for
the A.I.M. Skipper had seen how his wife, who usually travelled with
him, brought comfort to lonely station wives who had not seen a white
woman for years; and she was not a nurse. He urged Flynn to give Caro
the job.
"I feel inclined to," said Flynn. "She's Sister Manning's daughter, you
know, at Cloncurry; used to be at Birdsville and Marree in the early days.
I know the daughter is a strong, resourceful and independent person, as
well as being a good nurse and a good pilot. And she's young and has a
sense of humour."
"Sounds ideal," said Skipper. So instead of them advertising for a pilot
for the new Flying Doctor base at Normanton, Caro was appointed. She
would also be on call to transport the resident Flying Doctor, who would
be a part-time resident at Croydon. There would be a mileage allowance
for her plane as well as her salary. When not needed to answer emergency
calls, she would conduct regular clinics at the larger cattle-stations and
the Aboriginal missions scattered about the north.
Elated, she radioed Darwin base to ask when her aircraft would be
delivered. The reply was, as soon as Dr. Trenowith's plane was back in
circulation; it was nearly repaired, but meanwhile he was using hers for
urgent cases.
Caro was speechless. So Circe was already back in the air, and he was
risking her over heaven knew what dangerous territory in the Wet; and without even consulting her! And instead of flying immediately to see her
while delivering her machine as he had promised, he was using it to carry
on his practice! She wired grimly:

KINDLY INFORM DOCTOR TRENOWITH MY AIRCRAFT NEEDED CLONCURRY
IMMEDIATELY. IT IS NO LONGER UNDER LICENCE TO THE N.T.M.S.How devious! He had never mentioned in his passionate, longing letters
that Circe had been repaired and was safely back in Darwin, and that
there was nothing to stop him taking off tomorrow for a reunion, however
brief. No, because he wanted to use the plane himself! He could not bear
to be without one, and the Northern Territory Medical Service had none
to spare.
When a letter arrived giving a post-office box number in Darwin, but
no mention of returning her plane--for it had been written before she
sent the wire--she wrote a blistering letter accusing him of deviousness,
selfishness, thoughtlessness, male arrogance. . . . "You obviously believe
your work is more important than that of a mere woman. But as I now
have a permanent appointment--well, for a year anyway--with the
Queensland branch of the Australian Aerial Medical Services, I will thank
you to return my craft as you should have done as soon as it was ready.
And to think. . ." And so on and so on.
No reply came in the next week, and Caro began to panic. She had
not read over what she wrote in the heat of her anger, and now she
wondered if she had said something unforgivable. What if he never got
in touch with her again?
When a message came at last it made her almost as angry as relieved.

DARLING I AM TRULY SORRY ARRIVING WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON WITH
CIRCE IN GOOD CONDITION. LOVE DAVID.

How could he be so thoughtless as to send an intimate message by
telegram? Did he think telegrams were private in a small place like
Cloncurry, where she knew the radio operator, and the man who typed
the message out, and the man who delivered it to the hospital? Now
everyone would know that she was having an affair with the glamorous
and much-publicized flying doctor from the Northern Territory, with
whom she had been marooned for five days on a lonely part of the coast.
For of course the story had appeared even in the southern papers.
She happened to be on duty on Wednesday, but Alix offered to stand
in for her.
"Thanks, Mum," said Caro, hugging her. "You know how it is--I'm
longing to see Circe again, and perhaps take her up for a quick flip around
the district. . ."
"Yes, I know how it is," murmured Alix with an inward smile. "You
can take my car out to the aerodrome if you like. I won't be needing it."
So on Wednesday afternoon Caro was waiting at the airport, hair
washed and shining, wearing a fitted white linen dress with a black
patent-leather belt--something between a nurse's uniform and a smart
day-dress. They were having an extremely hot late summer, with such
strange weather that pilots reported flying between rain on one side and a dust-storm on the other. Instead of being humid, the heat was dry and
burning, the temperature standing at over 110 degrees Fahrenheit day
after day.
When rain did come down from the north to cool the air, the flies
appeared in swarms. That was one advantage about the north coast,
thought Caro: sand-flies and mosquitoes, yes, but at least there were few
flies.
Today it was hot and dry. A dust haze was beginning to spread over
the town, and Caro watched it anxiously. Should it get worse, David
might not be able to land; but if a dust-storm was going to be bad it had
usually reached its greatest intensity by now, at two in the afternoon.
That was why the doctors preferred to make early-morning flights in
summer when possible.
The drone of a small aeroplane sounded from the sky. There was no
mail-plane due in and the airfield was deserted. Caro, hatless, shaded her
eyes with her hand and stared up into the dust-hazed blue. Then she saw
the little shape she had been watching for, the stumpy fuselage, the
double wings, the tapering tail. . . . Her two loves, David and Circe, were coming in together. She swallowed, feeling her throat go dry with
excitement.
He banked, turned, came in upwind in a long, controlled glide to land
and taxi almost to her feet, where she stood just beyond the Qantas
hangar. He kept the nose carefully towards her so as not to spray her with
dust from the slip-stream. She rushed forward and patted a wing. Her
craft looked as good as new.
Then he was climbing out, in long trousers, shirt and tie, more neatly
dressed than she had ever seen him. (He explained afterwards that it was
because he thought he might be meeting her mother.) He had pushed up
his goggles and undone the chin-strap of his helmet. In two strides he had
her in his long arms, holding her close, and everything was suddenly right.
There was no need for words between them.
She took him to meet her mother. They had a hospital afternoon tea
on the veranda before Caro announced that they were going up for a
short flight while she got the feel of the controls again after the break.
Alix liked the doctor, and could see why her daughter found him attractive,
with his thick, untidy dark hair, his narrow hips and wide shoulders and
those startlingly blue eyes. It was obvious to her that they were lovers. It
was in the way they looked at each other, in the lingering touch of a hand
as they passed a saucer or a spoon. She was surprised to find in herself a
feeling of something like envy. Yet it surely could only end in unhappiness
all round. It was a pity; he had a nice smile.
"I hope you appreciate all this man has done," said Caro half-seriously.
"First he managed to land in an impossible place without injury to either
of us--""Only to the aircraft," put in David.
"--and then he found food for us on the beach, and saved me from
being eaten by a crocodile--"
"Here, hold on!" he protested. "All I did was warn you against
swimming too far out, in case."
"And we found tracks of a big one on the beach just afterwards, didn't
we?"
"Ye-es." He had been rather horrified at the newspaper stories, aided
somewhat by Caro's imagination, of their "terrifying ordeal on a
crocodile-infested beach in the far north."
"I do appreciate it. I worry about her," said Alix, looking into his eyes
and letting him understand her double meaning.
Caro set down her cup and said they must go. After the flight David
was taking her out to dinner to have two of the biggest barramundi steaks
obtainable, the sort of food they'd dreamed about while living on canned
sardines.
"So I'll say goodbye, as I'll be leaving with the mail-plane tomorrow
for Darwin," he said, shaking Alix's hand.
"And don't wait up, Mum," said Caro. "I'll probably be late."
Caro picked up a warm jacket and her flying helmet and gloves before
they drove to the airport. "I want to go up to seven or eight thousand
feet," she said, "and be alone with you up there, above the dust."
"I want to be alone with you in bed," he answered, kissing her, one
arm round her as he drove.
"We could drive up to the Kajabbi Hotel. Kajabbi is a former mining
town, but it still has a pub and a railway station. I couldn't book in
anywhere in Cloncurry till late; I'm too well known."
"Does it matter? Do you care what people think?"
She explained about her new appointment as Flying Sister to the
A. M.S.; if gossip should get back to the strait-laced John Flynn, her job
might be in jeopardy. But when she said that Kajabbi was sixty miles
away over a bad road, he objected.
"Let's fly out along the McKinlay road, and find the first town out of
Cloncurry," he said. But they would still have to drive, as most small
places near town did not have an airstrip.
That was how they ended up at a little place called Leila Vale on the
main road. As they drove, with her sitting as close as possible beside him
in the front seat, she told him again how angry she had been at finding
he had delayed returning Circe when she was ready, and how he'd
embarrassed her with his telegram, and all the other things she had been
saving up to tell him. He pulled off the road and took her in his arms.
He had wired her because a letter would hardly have got to Cloncurry
before he did. He had kept the plane for two weeks, because there were
several serious cases he had to follow up, people who had been waiting for treatment while he had been lost. ". . .And there'll be a cheque
coming to you for mileage from the N.T.M.S."
Caro said she understood, but she still frowned.
"You didn't actually need your craft for anything, did you?" he asked
reasonably.
"No, but you might have asked. Why didn't you ask?"
"I don't know. I should have. I'm sorry, darling."
He kissed her, and put a hand inside the front of her white dress with
its black buttons, and she ceased to care what he had done.
"Oh hell! I'll try and find a side-track," he said breathlessly, driving
on. Soon they found a dirt road, and as soon as they were out of sight of
the main road they fell together like two waves mingling. He opened one
door and laid her along the back seat and in spite of the confined space
in Alix's little car they managed somehow to find a consummation all
the sweeter for being unplanned.
There was only one small hotel in Leila Vale, for most travellers,
having come so far, would go on to Cloncurry to stay. They were shown
to a small dark room with a white honeycomb quilt on the bed and a
rickety wardrobe. For dinner there was the inevitable roast, and steamed
pudding.
"What about our barramundi?" whispered David. "We should have
eaten in Cloncurry; they probably never see fish here." (Fresh barramundi
from the Gulf came down to Cloncurry by air once a week from
Normanton.)
There was a rather old upright piano in the hotel lounge, which was
empty of other visitors. David sat down and played her favourite aria,
"Your tiny hand is frozen."
"Che gelida manina. . ."he sang, and Caro remembered Malcolm's
gramophone, and how he'd been rather superior about her liking Italian
opera. David launched into "The very thought of you," and Caro thought
what a nice voice he had, and that whatever Malcolm had said she still
liked Puccini.
David closed the piano and sat her on his knee, murmuring that he
couldn't wait to get her into a real bed, if it wasn't too soon after dinner.
But when they got between the rather musty-smelling sheets they found
that the wire mattress sagged in the middle like a hammock, so that they
rolled together helplessly in the hollow. It also gave forth a rusty squeak,
so they ended up putting the mattress on the shiny linoleum floor and
sleeping there.
The pair left in high spirits next morning, having paid their bill as
"Mr. and Mrs. Carson," a name invented by Caro. But the nearer they
got to Cloncurry the nearer they came to parting. Nothing had been
resolved. David had not made up his mind to leave his wife; he explained
that she was rather conventional and would probably never consent to adivorce. When she saw Caro's photo in the Darwin paper--young, fair,
and attractive--she had immediately become suspicious. But when he
tried to confess what had happened she had covered her ears. "I don't
want to hear; I don't want to know about it" was all she would say. And
as long as he was at home, she seemed to shut all idea of his infidelity
from her mind. He was still fond of her and did not want to hurt her; but
now that his plane was repaired he was determined to go back to Katherine.
"She doesn't want an open break; she wants to keep up appearances;
but I'm determined not to live at home," he said.
As she saw him off on the late-morning mail-plane, Caro said bravely,
"This is goodbye for a long time, then."
"I'm afraid so. I'll write. And somehow we must arrange to meet. Next
time I have a call to north Queensland, perhaps you could fly from
Normanton, or we might meet on the Territory border, anywhere. I have to see you. And I'll try again for an A.I.M. appointment, even if they
won't let me fly."
She knew how much that meant to him. More than wife or home.
They had both worried about the consequences of those few days of
love on the beach, but she was beginning to feel that there was no need.
She did not feel pregnant, and she'd had a normal period. So far all
seemed well.
Chapter Nineteen

In Normanton in April 1938, the wet season was coming to an end. At
1 a.m. each day, after having gone to bed in sweltering heat under an
airless mosquito net, Caro was awakened in her bed on the hospital
veranda by a dry, comparatively cool south-easterly. She would pull the
sheet over herself and sleep soundly till dawn.
Normanton had a delightful winter climate, she had been told, with
crisp cool mornings and clear sunlight every day. It never rained, and it
was never cold enough for a fire or blankets. Summer clothes, with a warm
jacket for early morning, lasted all the year. Dust and flies disappeared; but
unfortunately the crocodiles that swarmed in the river were still active,
and made the water out of bounds for swimming.
But there was barramundi on the menu; she ate barramundi or trevally
every day without getting tired of it.
It had taken some time to establish her clinics among the Gulf stations
and on Cape York. A supply of serum and antivenin was kept at the
hospital, and Caro carried it with her in a special kit. She always carried
some butterscotch or barley sugar in her pocket, as Alix used to do for
her children's clinics on Cappamerri station. But when it came to
injections for diphtheria and tetanus, the subjects often had to be held
down by their mothers. She would give them a boiled sweet afterwards,
but still smarting from the needle they were not always ready to make
peace.
Two wild little girls, sisters, lived on one station--unable to read or
write except for the station's cattle-brand, which they could scratch in
the dust. They were almost white, with a white stockman father and
half-Aboriginal mother. After the first sister had been inoculated and
retired bawling, the second refused to come forward. She had to be
dragged by her mother and then sat on by Caro while the needle did its
work. Let go, she retired to the doorway and, glaring at Caro, yelled,
"You bloody bugger!"
"Oh dear! I dunno where she get them words," said her mother
apologetically.
There was a big event in Normanton soon after Caro's arrival. The
Governor-General, an English Peer, was making a tour through northern
Australia. Along with Matron and the resident doctor of the hospital,Caro was invited to sit on the official dais where His Lordship was to be
welcomed.
The Mayor of Normanton was a large cattleman. Sweating and nervous,
he tore off his broad-brimmed hat, grasped the printed Address of Welcome
in his huge fists, and began haltingly to read. He was only a quarter
of the way through when he gulped, turned to the dignitary and said,
"Here you are, your Governorship, read the bloody thing yourself some
time. What about a drink?"
Mrs. Brown, wife of the storekeeper at the large Burns, Philp store in
the main street, had provided a meal made all of local products. But not
content with baked barramundi, she had cooked dugong soup--a great
delicacy--and the visitors had two helpings each. Unfortunately this dish
was known locally as "Carpentaria Dynamite," and the result was that
the Governor-General and his aide made a track to the Gents all night.
It was, as he told the locals before he left in the specially chartered Qantas
plane next day, "a memorable visit."
There were only two hotels left in Normanton since the days when it
was the port for exporting gold from Croydon, and importing stores for
the scattered stations, who now ordered their goods by train from Townsville
and had them carried from the railhead by motor-truck. Even cattle
were beginning to be transported by truck in some parts; but "up north"
the roads disappeared each Wet under sticky black or sandy red mud, and
bullock-teams and cattle-droves were still in use.
It was during the Wet that the Flying Doctor planes proved their worth,
when rivers were up and roads impassable.
A new Flying Doctor, Dr. White, had been installed at Croydon to
co-operate with the sub-base at Normanton. As there was no pilot stationed
in the town, the doctor drove to as many calls as possible, or radioed
Normanton for a pilot. The first time Caro was called by Dr. White, she
had a shock. Dr. Jean White--not "John" as she had mis-heard--was a
young woman.
Dr. White was plump and good-humoured, with a head of golden
curls and a pleasant personality--"You could have knocked me down
with a ring-spanner," Caro wrote to her mother. "We get on very well,
and have our own little jokes about things--she had never even been in
an aeroplane before she took the job--and she trusts me as a pilot and
consults with me as a nurse. I am delighted."
Caro was particularly pleased that the A.I.M. had appointed a woman
as Flying Doctor, and it gave her great pleasure to fly to a new place and
see the hastily hidden looks of stupefaction when two women climbed
out of the plane.
She told Jean White how she had hesitated between medicine and
flying as a career, but had felt that the medical course would take too
long; so she had settled for flying and nursing. "At least you can get a job in a big hospital in spite of your sex," she said. "But there's no chance of
my being employed as a regular pilot with any commercial airline, even
though I'm fully qualified."
"Things are gradually getting better, you know. Adelaide was the first
university that even admitted women med students. But you won't find
any women as medical superintendents of big hospitals. Perhaps the
Matrons prefer it that way."
"You mean they don't want another woman over them? You may be
right," said Caro.
She and Dr. White were soon on first-name terms. They had few
arguments, though sometimes Caro had to point out that the weather in
Normanton was such that it was impossible even to take off, let alone fly
farther north.
What social life there was, centred at the hospital, where the Sisters
sometimes gave a party, and the Albion Hotel. It was here that Caro
heard the northern version of "Click Go the Shears," beginning "Up in
the Gulf, where the Norman River flows," its hero a drunken drover's
cook:

He raises up his glass, and drinks down his beer,
Then he starts a-yelling in a voice that grates the ear,
"In all this bloody country, wherever you may go,
I'm the best, the best, the best at anything you know.

"The best at cooking corned beef, the best at cooking stew,
In fact there isn't anything that I cannot do.
I can bake a damper standing on my head,
I'm the best, the best, the best, Oh! enough said. . ."

The doctor's role at Croydon was to work part-time at the Croydon District
Hospital, hold radio consultations in the surrounding districts, and attend
regular clinics. Normanton would be her base at times.
Caro's first flight with Dr. White was to Vanrook Station on the west
of Cape York, where they were called to an urgent case of a child suffering
from diphtheria. Caro took along her vaccines to immunize any other
children at the station who had not had the disease.
The landing-ground was a good one, according to reports. Hundreds
of large white-ant mounds had been levelled and beaten into a hard
surface over an area four hundred yards long. It was the only cleared
space in a landscape of timber, lagoons, and creeks, and swamps now full
of water, which in the Dry would be covered in lush feed for cattle.
The homestead was built on stilts above the reach of flash floods from
heavy rain. In the Wet, the Gulf stations would be cut off by water for
up to three months, and the cattle walked about in water up to theirbellies. There were no bridges over the rivers, as they would only be swept
away, and the roads were impassable bogs.
As they landed on the cleared strip with its puddles of rain-water, a
utility truck came out from the house and stopped on the far side of a
running creek. Rolling up their trousers, the station manager and the
station cook (whose daughter was the patient) waded across and gallantly
carried doctor and pilot across on their shoulders. The cook went back
for the doctor's medical kit.
They rushed doctor and nurse to the homestead, where Dr. White
performed a tracheotomy just in time, as the membrane was closing over
the child's trachea, and inserted a breathing tube. Though it was rather
late, she injected antitoxin direct into a vein.
Caro took this dramatic example as a help in convincing the black
mothers that they should bring their young children to the clinic for
diphtheria shots. She explained that she would have to come back in a
month to give a second booster shot. But since there was obviously a
carrier on the station, it was imperative that all groups at risk should be
immunized.
They stayed all the next day while the doctor checked the patient's
condition, and Caro gave the mother lessons in nursing procedure, for
the child was very sick. A storm came up in the night and the following
day there was a continuous downpour, so they stayed yet another day,
calling in from the station's radio to make sure they were not needed
elsewhere.
In spite of the Wet, Vanrook was an attractive place. It had a frontage of
miles to the Vanrook Creek, which the homestead overlooked from a high
bank. The sleeping quarters were upstairs, to get every breeze. Underneath
were rooms open to the outdoors, and floored with concrete, the wooden
piles treated against white ants. There were no curtains or carpets; all was
simple and uncluttered. Large old mango trees shaded the house, and
papayas and brilliant flowering creepers grew in the garden. Lying on a path
was the skull of a crocodile, with tooth sockets big enough to admit two
fingers. The visitors were told that up to two hundred head of stock were
taken each year, and some of the horses had scarred necks and shoulders
from near escapes. Though so far from the sea, the river was brackish enough
for the big salt-water crocs, known locally as "allygators."
Caro and Jean enjoyed fresh roast beef and fresh fruit, mangoes running
with juice, and plump papayas.
The little girl was showing marked improvement by the time they had
to leave on the fourth day, recalled to Normanton where the doctor
wanted to consult with Dr. White over a patient who had been shockingly
mauled by a crocodile when trying to swim to his boat in the Norman
River while he was drunk. His mates had pulled him out, but his shoulder
and part of his chest had been torn away.
"To think," said Caro with a shudder, "that I actually swam in the
coastal waters up here, when we crash-landed on the beach! I wouldn't
do it now."
When next a call came for the Cape York area, Caro took her vaccines
along.
The call was urgent, to a young boy with symptoms that sounded like
meningitis. The message had been sent through from Dunbar Station by
way of a blackfellow riding a horse and crossing five flooded creeks to the
nearest radio. The message did not arrive till early afternoon. By the time
Caro had flown the leg to Croydon, the northern horizon was looking
threatening, with black clouds massing. They did not take off again till
after three. More cloud was working up from three directions as they set
a compass course for the Gilbert River.
The farther north they went, the thicker the cloud became. They flew
into heavy rain, then out again into momentary sunshine. Dodging round
one towering cloud they came to another, and soon there were only a
few gaps in the cloud masses. Below spread a great swampy plain with
here and there a creek or a lagoon--if they landed there, the plane would
have to stay there for ever. Caro was nervous: she'd had enough of
wet-season flying and she longed to pass a note to the doctor suggesting
they return to Normanton.
But a child was ill, a mother was waiting in an agony of suspense for the
sound of the doctor's plane. Caro came down low, knowing there were no
obstructions on this course, and watched for the winding channel of the
Gilbert. A welcome break in the weather showed a clearing and a group of
buildings on a big river. Caro kept the river in sight till she picked up the
road, hidden at times in heavy timber, winding tortuously but tending
steadily northwest--this was the route she had followed before to Vanrook
Station. Flying at only two hundred feet, for miles she skimmed above the
tree-tops, fearful of losing this only guide. Then a ground fog began to close
in. As it became thicker she saw through a break in the mist the clearing of
Vanrook. She circled, passed a note to Dr. White, and pointed urgently
downwards. The doctor nodded. It was better to land than be faced with a
possible loss of all landmarks. Water lay all over the ground as before, and
more rain threatened. She borrowed a big canvas sheet from the station
store and pegged it down over her aircraft.
By this time the light was failing, and it was obvious that to go on
would only have been courting trouble. The manager of Vanrook gave
them careful directions for Dunbar, another hundred miles of flying if
only the weather cleared. At four in the morning Caro and Jean surprised
each other on the veranda peering anxiously at the sky for stars; and by 6
A.m. it was obvious that it would clear. A breeze had come up from the
south. The cook, whose daughter was quite recovered, got up early to
make them a special breakfast.Before they left Caro rounded up the children to have booster shots of
diphtheria antitoxin, for it was nearly a month since she had been there.
Then, with the sun just breaking through the last of the clouds, they took
off for Dunbar.
The little boy at the station was very ill, too ill to be transported to
hospital even if they'd had room. Dr. White confirmed meningitis, and
managed to bring his temperature down. She had brought analgesics for
the headache, but they were not very effective for the sharp stabs of pain
which caused the characteristic yelping cry from the patient. A spinal
injection of meningococcus vaccine, and complete quiet and rest, were
the best she could do. They took off with instructions to send for the
doctor again if there was any deterioration.
The father smiled wryly. "It took four days to get the message through
last time. We can only pray. But thank you for coming, Doctor. I believe
you have saved his life."
Two months later a letter came through to the hospital for Dr. White.
The boy had recovered, though he was still weak. "God bless you and
the A.M.S.," the letter ended fervently. The doctor showed the letter to
Caro, saying, "This sort of thing makes it all worthwhile. I have begged
them to install a radio transmitter as soon as possible. Apparently the
local telephone link-up stops working in the Wet."
Sometimes Dr. White would come to the base at Normanton by
the quaint little rail-motor that rocked slowly over the ninety miles of
narrow-gauge track from Croydon. Caro made the trip there and back
just to see the countryside, which was thinly covered with scrub among
which plains turkeys and tall grey brolgas stalked. The train did not turn
round when they got there; the motorman just walked up to the other
end, which had the same controls in reverse.
In days when the gold-field near Georgetown was producing, it had
been an important daily train carrying large quantities of gold under
escort, to be shipped from Normanton wharf. As it entered the Gregory
Range the country became rocky and inhospitable-looking, but Georgetown
was now the centre of a beef industry.
"We get plenty of beef there," said Dr. White, "but I long for lamb,
or even mutton or pork, for a change. But all we get otherwise is goat.
There's only goats' milk and goats' butter. . . . It's all right, you get used
to it, but it's an acquired taste."
"I know," said Caro. "We lived on roast goat and goats' milk at
Birdsville a lot of the time, when I was at school."
Usually Caro flew down to get Dr. White, and they would visit stations
on the way back for regular clinics. At one station an Aboriginal child
was brought in with a festering ear that had been "fly-blown." A fly had
laid its eggs inside the ear. The eggs had hatched into larvae which had
burrowed farther in, and then hatched into adult flies.
Dr. White looked rather sick as she probed among the running mass
of suppuration, after giving a local anaesthetic. The child made no sound,
just looked at them with her big brown eyes. Caro fetched the long-nosed
pliers from the plane's tool-box and probed behind the perforated eardrum.
She had seen this condition before, though not so advanced. There
was a pocket of dead flies behind the ear-drum, which had hatched and
been unable to emerge. The doctor cleaned up the ear, syringed it out,
and dusted it with phenyl powder, while Caro washed her pliers in a bowl
of antiseptic. The child would be permanently deaf in that ear.
"How could the parents let it get to such a stage, without seeking help?"
said Jean White afterwards.
"I've found the natives are very stoical about pain. I've seen a man
walking around on the stump of his leg, which was covered with old scar
tissue, after he'd lost his foot in some accident. In the old days, if he
couldn't keep up on a walkabout, he'd be left to die."
(She hadn't actually seen this case, which had happened west of Alice
Springs; her mother had told her about it once. But Caro preferred to tell
her stories in the first person.)
Chapter Twenty

The interest of her new job and her new surroundings helped to ease the
pain of parting from David. Already it seemed long ago, but so as not to
forget anything, Caro went over and over in her mind the five days they'd
had together on the beach, and his even briefer visit to Cloncurry. Their
innocent swim in the thermal pools at Mataranka seemed light-years
away.
A letter came from Darwin, airmail all the way. David had been called
to Borroloola on the Gulf for an urgent operation: an old identity,
maddened by the heat and humidity, had quarrelled with his mate over
a game of cards, and emptied a shotgun into his chest. There was no
doctor or hospital, but the local policeman had made the call for help.

Dearest, I can't be so near you and not see you [wrote David]. I'll
hold a clinic for the few inhabitants and any blacks who are around,
and then leave for Doomadgee Mission, then Mornington Island to
the Aboriginal Mission there. I expect it's on your regular route for
child clinics. What if we just "happened" to meet there, say in four
days' time? I'll stay overnight at Mornington in case you can't get there
till the next day, or are called away on an emergency. (I presume you
don't want me to come to Normanton.)
If anything goes wrong I'll send you a wire--don't worry, it will be
circumspect. I leave first thing in the morning for the Gulf, so you
can't reply to this. I'll just keep my fingers crossed for us both. And
you could send a message to the Mission to have the children ready
for a clinic--that will tell me you are coming. How I long to see you!
All my love for always. . . .

Fortunately Dr. White was spending a fortnight at Croydon, so after
checking with her that the plane was not needed, Caro told her over the
radio that she was taking a clinic on Mornington Island, as she had not
called there yet, and would be back some time next day.
It was now four days since the letter had been posted. Terrified that an
urgent call would come before she could get away, Caro notified the
hospital that they could get in touch with her at Mornington, and took
off in mid-morning. By good fortune the sky was clear but for a few fluffy white clouds, the horizon ringed with soft blue. As she skirted the brilliant
turquoise waters of the Gulf in a westerly direction, she was singing to
herself, "Ah, sweet mystery of life! At last I've found you. . ." She felt
intensely alive, high on excitement and youth and love and the joy of
flying on a clear blue morning such as this. Beneath her the shallow
waters of the Gulf were marked by swirls of orange sand marking the
undersea currents, looking like wisps of wind-teased cloud in a blue sky. It was only about 120 miles direct across the sea to Mornington, but she
preferred to keep the coast in sight for the first fifty miles, so she flew in
a wide arc.
Then ahead she saw the first of the islands, with shallower green water
around them. Mornington was forty miles long, and she was aiming for
the southwest corner.
As she crossed the scalloped coast, each curving bay was lined with a
meniscus of yellow sand and backed with a line of greenery. Sparse open
forest covered the land. She dropped lower as she came over the Mission
buildings and native huts nestled in a beautiful bay, some on the beach itself.
The airstrip had been cleared on a small island just across a narrow
strait from the Mission. Her heart leaped as she saw the little N.T.M.S.
plane on the ground--the Tiger Moth with which David had replaced
his little Avro Baby.
A group of black children waved from the beach as she was rowed
across.
"Isn't that Dr. Trenowith's aeroplane?" she asked disingenuously as she
was met by Mr. Wilson, the Superintendent. She was told that he had
just flown in that morning, and was even now performing an operation
on a woman who had fallen down the steps of her high-set house and
almost severed her ring finger.
"So the doctor arrived opportunely," he added.
"What a happy coincidence," said Caro with a smile.
"We thought we'd give you both lunch first, if you would like to hold
the clinic afterwards."
Caro had a cup of tea that she didn't want; her throat was constricted
and her pulse uneven. When she and David met, they were constrained
to a warm handshake and a formal "Hello, Sister!" and "How are you,
Doctor?" She returned his smile, which brought out the deep laughter
lines in his cheeks and the fine lines etched around his blue eyes. She
had known prim smiles, "hearty" smiles showing a lot of white teeth,
smiles of spurious friendliness in which the eyes were crinkled and the
lips smiled, with no human warmth behind them. His was lighted from
within by his love of life and his natural friendliness.
Caro was soon at ease, chatting to the missionaries and remarking on
the verdant setting and the attractive garden. They explained that duringthe Dry it was the children's task to keep the vegetable garden watered,
as well as the grass around the buildings, which were set among flowering
oleanders and poinciana trees. The men caught dugong and fish and
turtle and tended the fowl-runs and pig-pens, so that the Mission was
self-supporting and the fine-looking, mostly full-blood people well
nourished and healthy.
After a splendid luncheon of turtle soup, baked fish, and fresh salad,
followed by sliced papaya with lemon juice--she liked to see how David
enjoyed his meal, the gusto with which he ate, like a starved schoolboy-- the children were lined up for Caro's clinic in the little hospital building.
While the doctor stood by to examine ears and throats, Caro prepared her
syringes and vaccines and treated any new cases of trachoma with eye-drops
and ointment. David was good with children, talking to them and reassuring
them. A shame his wife refused to have a baby!
After the clinic they at last had a chance to talk in private. She asked
him about his trip to Borroloola; she had thought he looked tired when
she first saw him, with his rough dark hair uncombed and his thin cheeks
hollow.
"It was a bit exhausting," he said. "I operated to remove as many pellets
as possible, while the Police Constable held the lamp and insects kept
falling into the wound. His liver was as full of holes as a colander. He
didn't survive the op. It was so hot we had to bury him straightaway, and
as the white ants had eaten all the wood around, we buried him in an
old tin tub. His mate who shot him was sober by then, and cried at the
funeral. The policeman was upset because he'll have to take him all the
way to Darwin to be tried."
His hand touched hers as he helped her pack her medical kit. "I can't
stand this," he said in a low voice. "Even if we stay overnight, and they're
sure to ask us, we couldn't even go for a moonlight walk along the beach
together without causing comment. I love you. I want to kiss you. . . .
But I have an idea."
He had thought of a plan whereby they both flew off together, ostensibly
in convoy back to the mainland for the sake of safety; and then circled
the island and met on one of the beaches on the north-west corner, "in
the lee of Thabugan Point," said David. "I'll choose a beach which looks
possible for landing--the north shore has no mud and mangroves, and
hopefully no estuarine crocodiles--and I'll land first. If the surface is all
right I'll wave you down. If not, you just keep flying, and report that you
saw me make a forced landing, and the Mission will send round their
launch. We must just hope no one is fishing round there who'll spot us.
What do you say, darling? Are you game?"
"I am if you are. You're the one who'll be risking your craft."
It all worked as he had planned, and even the weather cooperated.
Their two little aeroplanes parked in tandem on a long golden beach, they rigged up a shelter under one wing, and spent an idyllic afternoon swimming in the emerald-green, glass-clear water close to shore,
sunbathing and making love, and nibbling on the fresh fruit and tomatoes
from the garden that the kindly missionaries had pressed on them both.
They had both filled their water-bottles before leaving.
"It's just like the garden of Eden," said Caro, lying back luxuriously
and peeling a banana.
"You make a beautiful Eve, without fig-leaf," he said. "Have you ever
heard the Mission version of Genesis given in pidgin by a Binghi? It goes
like this:
'"Me bin savvy that old man Cod. Him bin look-im-out that feller
Atom, bin talk, Dis-one good place allabout, plenty water, plenty everting
make-im tucker along you. You bin sit-down dis place longa you missus,
call him Eba.'"
She laughed, then sighed.
"It's sad, you know, they did have a Garden of Eden, before the white
man came. Except for the desert natives, and even they had their oases
and rock-pools. But now, at least in the south, every river and lake and
waterhole and billabong--all their favourite camping grounds have been
taken over by white men and their sheep and cattle."
"Don't worry, these islanders had a hard time in the dry season, with
strong south-easterlies so they couldn't fish; or during cyclones in the Wet
with no cover but grass or bark. On small islands there were always killings
over women and food. The Bentinck natives are still wild men, they've
resisted being Christianized or civilized, and they'll try to kill anyone who
lands there. Two of them speared a Mornington man, and the missionary
sent for the police. The murderers were rounded up and taken to
Burketown gaol, and kept there till the Constable could take them down
to Cloncurry for trial. They didn't understand; they thought they were
going to be killed straightaway.
"Next thing I was called in--the Cloncurry Flying Doctor was away
down the Diamantina--to sew them up. The black tracker who took
them their food had given them a tin of jam and showed them how to
spread it on their bread. When he went back the first man put his hand
through the bars, holding two bloody testicles wrapped in the jam-tin
label. The other man was busy sawing away at his second ball with the
lid of the tin."
"Whyever would they do such a thing!"
"Nobody knows. Perhaps they thought if they punished themselves like
that, the police would let them go. No one could speak their lingo."
"What a horrifying story! Like Van Gogh and his ear."
"They were sent off to Aurukun, or Palm Island or somewhere eventually,
far from their own country."
"Their own country means everything to them; perhaps that's why theymutilated themselves," said Caro. "Fearing they'd never see their island
or their wives again. . . . But even those who haven't broken the white
man's law have been pushed out, haven't they, into land we don't happen
to want? And even that will be taken if it's found to contain gold or
something else of value."
"We have given them something, though--they didn't have anaesthetics
or modern medicine in the old days."
"Perhaps they didn't need them."
"Well, the first op performed at the Alice Springs Hostel when it
opened was on a blackfellow, for removal of a cyst as big as a football on
the back of his neck. A doctor just happened to see him while travelling in
the Territory, and persuaded him to come in. He thought the white-feller
medicine was pretty good."
"Yes, that's true. But . . . my mother was depressed by Alice Springs
when she lived there. The attitude to the black people who'd been
dispossessed, who were forced to live outside the Gap away from the
springs. I'd like to see it, though; it must be a beautiful area."
"I believe there's to be a full-scale hospital built there soon; the place
is getting too big for the Sisters at the hostel. And a new Flying Doctor
base, the first one in central Australia. Why don't we try to get work
there? You know I'm leaving Margaret. She won't divorce me and it can't
be helped. But I'm not going to live with her any more."
Caro kissed him. "There'll be a scandal in Darwin."
"Oh, she'll cover up somehow. I've always been away a lot, with my
job. But it means I can't marry you."
"Do you want to?"
"Of course I do!"
"It doesn't matter, you know. It's only a ceremony and a piece of paper.
I feel married to you already."
"Then why are we hiding on the far side of this island? Because society
won't let us live together openly."
She sighed. "I know. And if we get a job, any sort of public appointment
in a small town, it's going to be difficult."
"Perhaps she'll find someone else, and decide she wants to be free."
"Perhaps."
She was drawing idly in the sand with a piece of white shell. He took
it from her and kissed her sand-dusted fingers. He said he would give her
a ring anyway; it would be a private bond between them. "Are you
superstitious about opals?"
"No, I love them. Particularly the ones with green and blue fire."
"Then I'll get you a ring set with Queensland boulder opal. Outback
Queensland is the place for opals. Did you know that south of Winton
there was a rush last century? An old fellow was found dead, sitting with
his back to a tree. And he was sitting on a flat tobacco-tin full of beaut opals. No one knew where he had dug them! Then someone found
Opalton."
They lit a very small fire that night for fear it might be seen--it was
just the opposite of their situation at Junction Bay, where they were
signalling their whereabouts. Their one night here seemed all too short,
though they slept little.
They woke to a perfect morning, with an orange sun lifting from a silky
sea of lucent pale-blue. (There were not the enormous tides here that
carried the sea away out to the horizon on the far north coast, in Darwin
and the north-west.) Against the sea a frieze of twisted pandanus palms
and feathery, drooping casuarinas was outlined like a painting in Chinese
ink. Each footprint in the soft sand was a pool of blue shadow, the ridges
between seemed made of rosy gold. The tide had fallen in the night, and
the sea was shallow, exposing the coral rock.
Naked as one of the first original black men, David went out on the
reef at the point looking for oysters, taking his pocket-knife with him. He
came back with four fat black-lipped oysters, "each one a meal in itself,"
as he said gleefully. He opened them, assuring Caro that once open they
were "already dead." They ate them with some of the bananas from the
Mission to follow.
"What, no pearls?" asked Caro in mock disgust. She took one of the
shining mother-of-pearl-lined shells for a souvenir.
It was time to go. They dressed, exchanged a last desperate kiss, and
departed. He spun the prop for her and she took off first--heading for
the sea and the firmer damp sand. Circe lifted sluggishly from the beach
and circled while he swung the propeller to suck in fuel, climbed back
and switched on, climbed out and swung it again until the engine came
to life, then quickly dodged the turning blade and strapped himself in the
cockpit. Caro held her breath till she saw him safely in the air. They both
flew north over the sea so as not to be seen from any Mission boats, then,
with a last wave and a dip of their wings, turned away in opposite directions
--he towards the north-west, she to the southeast.
Though they wrote to each other regularly, they were not to meet for
nearly a year.

Alix wrote that she was going, down to Adelaide to see her mother, who
was, according to her own account, "not at all well." She was still in the
same house, with a live-in housekeeper who, she felt sure, "cooked the
accounts" and was lining her own pockets. Alix was actually going to fly,
in a Qantas plane with three engines and an enclosed cabin, to Brisbane
and Sydney; then she would travel in comfort in the MY "Manunda"
round the coast to Adelaide. "I am rather tired of life," the first page of
the letter ended. Caro felt a shock. Her mother! With all her energy and
strength--surely not! She turned over the page ". . . in a bush town, andit will be nice to visit theatres and the Art Gallery, and above all, the
shops. You know Grandma and I could never get on, but I expect we
have both mellowed with the years. Anyway, she wants me to come. And
I don't think I'll be coming back here."
Caro flew down to Cloncurry for a quick visit to her mother before she
left. It was one advantage of having her own plane; she could not have
used the Flying Doctor plane for such a trip. She noted the grey threads
among Alix's soft curls, but they scarcely showed against the light-brown
mass. She still had not cut it; she said it was cooler pinned back away
from her face.
"I've been thinking of leaving Cloncurry for some time," said Alix.
"I've enjoyed it since I've been in charge of the hospital, but now that
I'm nearly fifty I'd like a change. The trouble with Cloncurry is that it's
too big--it's neither Sydney nor the bush. I'll either stay in the city or go
somewhere far out. I saw an advertisement from the Bush Nurses for a
Matron at Forsayth."
"Forsayth! That's really at the end of the line. We don't even fly in
there, the Gregory Ranges are out of bounds."
"Yes, well, it's just a thought. And I could pop up to Normanton in
that funny little rail-motor from Croydon, to see you."
"Oh, I fly into Croydon. The Flying Doctor is based there part of the
time."
"Well, there you are!"
"But I was only appointed for a year. I may not be at Normanton next
year."
Caro flew back--it was a little over a two hours' flight to Normanton.
Unlike her mother, she was not tired of living in a bush town. Now that
the Dry had set in, the climate was monotonously perfect. And the
hospital on its gravel ridge, its wide verandas shaded by palms, and with
louvered walls to let the breezes through, had been a pleasant place even
in summer.
The wide main street was almost empty of traffic. A few dogs slept in
the shade of the wooden verandas supported by posts which the dogs
seemed to think had been installed for their convenience.
The large Burns, Philp store held few customers, and there were only
two hotels left, the National and the Albion. There were no Aborigines
about the hotels, for they were not allowed under the law to drink alcohol.
Remembering David's story about the Burketown gaol, Caro asked
about the Normanton lock-up when she met the local Sergeant having a
drink at the Albion, asking him if he had many native prisoners.
"I have three Abos in at the moment," he said.
"What are they in for?" she asked the Sergeant, who was large and
red-necked but quite affable.
"Murder. Some tribal business."
"And what proportion of prisoners would be natives?"
"Aw, I'd say about seventy--no, eighty per cent. They're brought in
from the smaller settlements round, our mob are fairly law-abiding.
Mostly get run in for being drunk or being in possession of liquor."
"And what about the white men who sell it to them? Do you run them
in too?"
"Not often," he said with a grin. "Not writing a book, are you, Sister?"
asked the Sergeant as she walked away.
"No; just curious."
Caro was not a member of the hospital staff but, like an honorary
medical officer, she helped out when they were busy with no payment
but for her board, and an unofficial bed on the hospital veranda. With
calls to all points of the compass, and fishing trips and picnics on the
river, even a hair-raising expedition after wild pig, her life was full and
interesting. There was just an aching void at the centre of it that David
had left when he flew away.
A beautiful opal set in an antique silver ring arrived in the post. Pleased
that it was not of traditional gold and diamonds, Caro wore it defiantly
on the engagement finger of her left hand. Interested inquiries about its
significance from Matron and Dr. Jean she turned away with a laugh,
saying it just happened to fit that finger. She would gaze into its shifting
fires of purple and green, peacock-blue and orange as in colder climates
she might have gazed into a wood fire--dreaming and seeing pictures of
a possible future. She decided to take the piece of opal Alix had sent her
from Cloncurry years ago and have it made into a matching silver brooch.
Chapter Twenty-one

Frances MacFarlane died in October 1938, in the home where she had
lived for more than fifty years. Alix nursed her with professional skill,
reluctantly noting the progressive stages of kidney failure until it was
obvious the end was near. The doctor wanted her to go to hospital, but
Frances refused. She wanted to die in her own bed. Her mind was clear
almost to the end.
Alix saw her become disorientated and finally sink into a coma. She
was seventy-six; but when Alix, who had been sitting by the bed, got up
to close her mother's faded blue eyes for the last time, she thought how
youthful and unlined her face looked as it relaxed in death. Alix had
thought she was used to death after years of nursing; but this was her
mother's, and she could not watch it unmoved.
She walked to the window and looked out at those close and friendly
hills she remembered as a child. Their turf was still green at the end of
winter, though they would soon bleach to pale gold in the burning
summer months. The colour was made more vivid by the yellow light of
the declining sun. She remembered how, more than twenty-six years
ago, she had built a cairn of stones on top of the nearest hill and dedicated
herself to nursing. How idealistic she had been!
And yet, looking back, Alix knew she had brought comfort and help to
many. Why then was she so dissatisfied with her life? The trouble was that
Cloncurry Hospital had not provided a challenge; though far out west, it
was no longer isolated with two passenger trains a week and a mail-plane
every other day.
At Cloncurry she'd not had enough responsibility; perhaps she should
have applied for one of the little Bush Nurse places, such as Julia Creek,
where the Matron used to pull teeth on the hospital veranda, and had only
one nurse on her staff.
At twenty-three, thought Alix, she would have taken on anything: even
Marree--bare, hot, and dusty, at the start of the Birdsville Track . . . but
in those days she'd had Mab beside her; Mab who was buried in that tiny
cemetery half-way to Alice Springs. Between them they'd had to be doctor,
midwife, dentist, cook, laundry worker, and spiritual adviser.
She was tired of western Queensland, had not liked the Alice; she was
close to fifty and felt she was not young enough to take on a desert outpost again. Yet she did not want to live in the city, especially one so far from
Caro's field of operations.
Meanwhile she was in no hurry. She would take a holiday, and next year
apply for a nursing position in the far north, in what was known as the "Top
End". That was Caro's territory, too. At present she was two thousand miles
away from her daughter.
After the funeral and all the chores of sorting her mother's personal things
and giving away her clothes, Alix dismissed the housekeeper and enjoyed
the luxury of being entirely alone. She rose when she felt like it and ate
when she was hungry, and hardly ever looked at the clock. But from habit
she was usually up early, when the hills were still silhouetted against the
clear eastern sky, their stark outlines softened by a delicate fringe of gum
trees as fine as black lace. She would wander round the garden, watching
the light grow and listening to the glorious carolling of magpies, their voices
clear as dew. As the sun rose, the dew winked from the lawn in jewel colours
--ruby, topaz, sapphire, and emerald.
It was years since she'd seen a heavy dew on green grass!
Though she would be comfortably off and did not have to earn a living,
Alix did not intend to stay indefinitely in her mother's house. She was no
gardener and would soon become bored with nothing to do. Nursing had
been her life, and she had no intention of retiring, although from much
standing and walking the wards she had developed varicose veins.
What about Darwin? It was isolated enough, a frontier town with a three-to-four-month-long
Wet, then months of perfectly dry weather. A supply
vessel called once a fortnight, and the weekly train service ended in the middle of nowhere, still seven hundred miles short of the Alice Springs line
from Adelaide; and it was completely cut off by road--if you could call it a
road--during the Wet. These days it was connected by air with Brisbane,
and Darwin Harbour was a base for the big Qantas flying boats bringing
airmail from overseas. She remembered how as a child she had been taken
to the Outer Harbour to meet some relative arriving by mail-boat from
England. The huge ship's side had towered like a cliff above the wharf.
Those ships were then the only link with the other side of the world. Now
Darwin, with its small white population far outnumbered by Chinese,
Malays, Aborigines, and islanders, was to become Australia's front door.
Frances had died just after Caro's twenty-third birthday. When Alix wrote
to tell her the sad news, she added that Frances had left her five thousand
pounds. "So Grandma has given you a very special birthday present. And I
hope," she added, "that you will not spend all the money on an aeroplane;
but I expect you will. At least you will be safer in a bigger machine with a
second engine."
When probate was granted on her grandmother's will, the solicitors sent
a bank draft to Caro's account with the Bank of New South Wales at Normanton.
She looked at all those lovely noughts after the five, and realizedthat now she could buy a brand-new cabin aeroplane and be free of helmet,
goggles, and flying-suit forever. Good old Grandma!
Her year's contract with the Aerial Medical Service was nearly over.
Though Jean White was staying on for another year, Caro did not apply for
an extension. In two months she would be free to leave.
She wrote to David to tell him her news, and that she was planning to
buy a new aircraft. It must have an enclosed cabin, a self-starter and brakes,
twin engines, and a cruising speed of more than a hundred miles an hour.
She preferred a biplane, which she had been used to. By removing half the
passenger seats, there would be plenty of room for a stretcher and a mobile
transceiver, making a complete ambulance plane. A DH 84 Dragon would
cost her between 4,000 pounds and 4,500, pounds and she hoped to get 500 pounds for Circe.
David wrote back delightedly:

This should clinch your getting an appointment as Flying Doctor pilot
at the new Alice Springs base. You know work has already started on
the hospital and they should open early in 1939. The South Australian
branch is to be responsible for the new Flying Doctor radio base, and the
Commonwealth Government will pay for the doctor's salary and the
charter aircraft. As I'm already on their payroll up this end, I shouldn't
have any trouble getting a transfer to the Alice. You know Flynn doesn't
like doctors to fly themselves, but I'll be flying down in my Moth anyway.
(Perhaps you'll let me be pilot sometimes while we're out in the bush!)

Of course, he wrote, she could always get a position on the staff at the Public
Hospital if she didn't get the A. M.S. appointment. But he knew how much
flying meant to her. He ended:

It would be marvellous if we could both be posted to the same town, and
legitimately fly round the country together like we did in Katherine. That
was the happiest time of my life, though all too brief. My darling, I can't
wait to see you. . .

Caro wrote back:

You know how it is. Flying is my life. But I suppose I could go back to
nursing in order to be near you. Though with a beautiful big new kite,
how could I bear not to use it? Perhaps I could set up a charter-flight
business in opposition to Connellan Air. No, there wouldn't be enough
work for both.
I expect the positions will be advertised by the A. I. M. Board in Sydney.
We should get priority by offering to bring two more aircraft, an ambulance
plane and a back-up plane, with us.

She made some inquiries of the A.I.M. Sisters stationed there about the conditions at Alice Springs. She knew it had grown considerably since her
mother's term there, but would like to know more about the town today.
They wrote back that the Alice was still a one-pub town, but the work of
the A.I.M. hostel had increased beyond the capacities of the present three
Sisters and the limited number of beds. Apart from the locals, there was a
stream of transients, disappointed prospectors who had been lured to the
Territory by false reports of the Granites and Tanami gold finds, or tales of
Lasseter's lost reef, supposed to be fabulously rich. Then there were the
fettlers who worked to keep the 'Ghan line in repair, or rebuild it when it
was periodically washed away in floods or buried in sand. Others, who
fossicked for gold on worked-out fields, wandered in for treatment for everything
from sandy blight to cirrhosis of the liver. Then there were the mica
miners in the Harts Range, and the Aborigines at Hermannsburg Mission. There would be plenty of work for the new hospital, apart from the cases
brought in by the Flying Doctor.
So the change was inevitable, the Sisters wrote, though it would be sad
in a way to see the end of the work after more than twelve years. They sent
their regards to her mother, who was still remembered there.
Caro had ordered a new DH 84 Dragon from De Havilland in England.
It was a twin-engined biplane with enclosed cabin for a pilot and six passengers,
and even an on-board lavatory. What luxury it would be after the
Moth! With greater speed and reliability, yet not too large for landing on
small station airstrips.
Caro decided to advertise her Moth in the Brisbane Courier and in the
larger-western newspapers. By luck she found a buyer in a wealthy grazier
near Winton; nearly twenty years had passed since Qantas brought aviation
to the town, and the locals were becoming quite air-minded.
Caro took a day off and flew down to Winton by way of Cloncurry, where
she stopped to refuel. She took the buyer up for a flight, explaining that
she could not deliver the machine until she'd finished her stint with the
A.M.S. in Normanton. He was delighted with the Moth's performance
as she took him through some mild aerobatics, steep banks, side-slips, and
dives.
He paid a deposit at once, and asked her to fly the plane down to Brisbane
when she was ready and deliver it to him there. He had enrolled for a course
at a flying school. This suited Caro very well.
When she had word, late in February, that her aircraft would arrive
in Sydney in three weeks, she said goodbye to Jean White and her other
Normanton friends, and left the steamy north with relief. She hoped to be
going to Alice Springs, in the dry heart of the continent, where the average
rainfall was less than ten inches a year, and nearly all of that in the summer
months.
Caro had some sentimental regrets at handing Circe over to her new
owner in Brisbane, but was borne up by excitement at seeing all the aircraftat Archerfield, including the Avro 10 airliner in which she would fly down
to Sydney.
In Sydney she watched breathlessly through the big square windows as
they flew above the magnificent harbour, with its extended waterways and
wooded promontories, the ferries criss-crossing the blue waters, and the
giant single-span bridge which now linked the north and south shores. She
was still holding her breath as they glided down and landed at Mascot
Aerodrome. There had been no amenities on board for passengers except
for chewing gum, and paper bags in case of airsickness, but Caro had
thoroughly enjoyed the flight.
She spent a week being a tourist, enjoying the city sights. There had still
been no word from the A.I.M. Board about an appointee to the Alice
Springs base, so she called at their office in Sydney. It seemed a letter had
been sent to Normanton just after she left. She had been given the job of
pilot. "As you were already an Australian Aerial Medical Service pilot in
Normanton who had given satisfactory service, your appointment was the
obvious choice." They would charter her new plane at 6d. a mile, with a
retainer of 1,650 pounds a year, and provide her with accommodation in Alice
Springs.
"Er . . . could you tell me," she said casually, "do you know who the
new Flying Doctor is?"
The man consulted a piece of paper with maddening deliberation, while
her heart seemed to stop beating with suspense.
"Yes," he said at last, "it seems we have appointed a Dr. David Trenowith,
formerly of the Northern Territory Medical Service in Darwin."
The next day she took delivery of her new silver Dragon, with its gold and
maroon stripes running from nose to tail. She thought it the most beautiful
thing she had ever seen, and she christened it Fafnir, after the Wagnerian
dragon.

Chapter Twenty-two

After she had got the feel of her new craft, flying down the coast and
inland over the rugged scarps of the Blue Mountains, Caro decided to
get the unwanted seats removed, leaving three for doctor, nurse, and
passenger, as well as a patient on a stretcher. Though, as she was a nurse
as well, they would hardly need to take one. She could fill the stretcher
space with extra fuel and provisions for her long flight to the centre, and,
most important, an emergency supply of water. She planned to fly in a
wide arc, from Sydney, north-west and west and finally south down the
Telegraph Line, so as to avoid the worst deserts like the Simpson.
Across the seemingly endless blacksoil plains she flew, out beyond
Bourke and the Darling River, to the red sand-hill country beyond
Windorah. But when she came to her old friend the Diamantina,
she could not recognize those parched and sandy plains. The whole
countryside was covered in water--or if not exactly covered, it was
patterned over most of its surface with winding channels full to the brim
and flooding over their shallow banks. A late monsoon in the north had
sent an almighty flood down into the Channel Country. For the first time
she was seeing all its vast spread of braided channels filled and flowing,
which she had known only as shallow sandy depressions with lignum
scrub or an occasional long waterhole lined with reeds and trees. Only
from the air was it possible to comprehend the size of the flood. No need
to worry about perishing for lack of water!
The country would soon be covered with a new growth of annual
saltbush, daisies, crimson desert pea, and yellow billy-buttons.
Too late for Cappamerri, denuded as it was of its perennial shrubs and
nearly buried in sand-drifts. She felt a temptation to make a diversion
down-river to see her grandfather, but she resisted it. Her last sight of the
place had been depressing. And David would be in Alice Springs by now,
impatiently awaiting her arrival.
She made an overnight stop at Bedourie, then followed the flooded
Georgina--though its channel in parts was fifty miles wide--up to
Urandangie. She was back in familiar country, and soon crossed the
Northern Territory border, to follow a stock-route to the Overland Telegraph
Line and the track to Alice Springs. It was when she saw this
landmark at last, not far from Tea Tree Well, that she relaxed. She hadnot realized how tense she had been on this long solo flight over so much
inhospitable territory. She should have installed a radio in her Dragon
before leaving. But flying it was much safer than flying the Moth, with
two reliable British engines to keep her airborne, new navigational
instruments, and a better speed over the ground. She had twice the
horsepower in each of the two engines than in the Moth's one; and the
range was greater.
There was no need for anxiety; she had not even used up her spare
fuel. It was just that life had become so precious, she had a foolish dread
that she would not live to see David again.
Because she had come down the track, Caro had to cross the narrow
rampart of the Macdonnell Ranges, which stretched across the land from
east to west like a wall of orange-yellow rock. The Alice airport was south
of the range, outside the town.
Below were white roofs and the green of gum-trees, a patch of
blue water in the sandy, tree-filled bed of the Todd, and there was the
railway line from the south, with the road and the Telegraph Line
all passing through the narrow Gap like threads through the eye of a
needle.
The Dragon bumped heavily up and down in the thermals coming up
from the heated ground, the wings quivered like those of a living creature.
The air was thin because of the high altitude, for the Alice -Was two
thousand feet above sea-level and in hot weather heavily laden planes
had difficulty in taking off. Caro banked and turned below Mount Gillen
into the south-east wind for landing.
Someone from the A.M.S. base, where the radio tower and power
units were being installed, had seen her coming in from the north and
was even now driving out to meet her. She sat quietly and let herself
relax, after taking out a mirror and touching up her lipstick. It had become
a habit; she felt vaguely undressed without it. Besides, it kept her lips
from cracking in the dry air. She still was amazed at the comfort of her
new aircraft--no rush of wind, no roar of noise, no helmet and goggles.
She had worn her white overalls for practicality and comfort, laundering
them at overnight stops. In Sydney the shops had gone to her head, and
suddenly realizing she had plenty of money, she had bought a whole new
wardrobe. At last there was plenty of room for luggage. And then after all David was not there.
The person who came to meet her was an old friend of her mother's,
Maurie Anderson, who had been in charge of the Cloncurry radio base
station for years. He had come to supervise installation of the Alice
Springs base in its handsome new building.
It was a project of the newly formed South Australian section of the
Flying Doctor Service, still called the Australian Aerial Medical Services.
He told Alix he intended to stay to run it. "So there'll be at least two of us from Queensland," he said. "But Dr. Trenowith from Darwin is to be
the Flying Doctor, did you know?"
"Yes," said Caro.
"He'll be paid by the Commonwealth to service the whole of the
Northern Territory," said Maurie, "or at least the southern part of it, with
a four hundred mile radius from the Alice, well over the border into
South Aus."
Adelaide, he explained, had always been the closest capital city to the
centre, because the early explorers like Sturt and Stuart had started from
there, and because the thousand-mile 'Ghan railway joined it with Alice
Springs like an umbilical cord. The Alice's Adelaide House, the A.I.M.
hostel, had been financed greatly by South Australian contributions.
"I know," said Caro. "I went to a Presbyterian college, and every week
we had to give some of our pocket-money to the A.I.M."
"Your mother's connection with the Mission hostels goes back to 1912,
I believe--at least twenty-five years."
"Yes, before I was born."
He drove her to see the new base, its big building completed, next door
to Adelaide House.
"You can make yourself known to the Sisters when you've unpacked.
I'm afraid they've been rather overworked with transferring their patients
to the new hospital, and the hostel is no longer the social centre that it
was. We're putting you up at the Stuart Arms for a few days while they
are furnishing your rooms at the new hospital building. We thought Dr.
Trenowith's wife was coming with him, so a suitable house was bought;
then we'd thought he might share with his pilot--until we found that the
pilot was to be a lady."
He gave her a bright, direct look. Caro, who'd had a wild desire to
laugh at these explanations, straightened her face. How much did he
know, or guess? After all, he had been a radio man in Cloncurry when
she and David were lost together, and when David flew down to return
her plane.
"He's not here yet?" she asked, forcing her tone to be casual.
"Not yet. He had some engine trouble, and is waiting for a spare part
for his plane to be flown up from Brisbane. He should be here in a few
days."
A few days! What were a few days compared with the months of
separation that had passed? And yet, after all her excited anticipation, she
felt a bitter disappointment.
The resident doctor's wife hailed Maurie from her front step as he was
passing. She welcomed Caro to the town, saying she'd heard all about
her, and invited her to take a meal with them that night. Caro was pleased
to see that Mrs. Reilly--she judged her to be in her early thirties--was
wearing casual garb of shirt, shorts, and sandals, but no doubt she wouldchange for dinner. Caro decided to wear one of her pretty new dresses
from Sydney.
Already she liked her new home. There was a clear freshness in the
air, and as the shadows lengthened, she noticed a faint tinge of blue, too
thin to be called a haze, which softened the ocherous colours of Heavitree
Gap. It was as though the air itself were tinted with sky-colour. The driest
months were beginning, and from horizon to horizon the sky was clear
of cloud.
When the sun set there was an instant drop in temperature, as
though a giant radiator had been switched off. The stars began to sparkle
frostily. She found she needed a long-sleeved jacket over her light summer
frock.
The Reillys even had a small fire going, more as a decoration than
because it was needed.
"Firewood is so cheap," explained the doctor's wife, who was a small,
neat, dark-haired woman with a ready smile, her hair cut unfashionably
short. "Our house-boy collects it for us; he enjoys going 'bush' for a day
or two. He has a little camp in the back garden and cooks on his own
fire."
Caro listened, feeling she must be in Africa. A part-Aboriginal maid
in a clean print dress had brought the pre-dinner drinks and waited at
table.
"And how old is your 'boy'?" asked Caro.
"He doesn't know. I'd say about twenty-six."
"And what is his name?"
"He's called Pumpkinhead, or Pumpkin for short," said the doctor. His
face was brown, but he was indubitably a "White."
Caro was familiar with this way of putting down the Aborigines, as
though they were less than men--by calling them "boys," at whatever
age, and by using belittling or comic names--Goggle-Eye, Snowball,
Sunny Jim, Charcoal--to emphasize their non-status.
"Pumpkin wanted me to take his sister on as a house lubra," said Mrs.
Reilly, "and when I asked if anyone would recommend her, and whether
she could cook, he said 'No-more, Missus, but him bin in gaol!'"
"Yes, most of them have been in gaol at some time," said her husband.
Dr. Reilly had been until recently Deputy Chief Protector of Aborigines
in Alice Springs, a position with rather vague duties.
"Before there was a doctor at Tennant Creek," he said, "I sometimes
had to travel by car to Tennant to see a patient too ill to be moved. Nearly
seven hundred miles there and back."
They'd had to carry a barrel of water and forty gallons of fuel. At the
sandy creek crossings they would let air out of the tyres, and then pump
them up again after they'd crossed.
"I used to go with him," said Mrs. Reilly. "It took us fourteen hours to get there; and once, with a very sick boy, we had to make the trip three
times in one week."
"Having an ambulance plane stationed here, and a Flying Doctor, will
make a wonderful difference," he said. "I know Dr. Trenowith; he's a
fine doctor, and a most resourceful man. I'm looking forward to his
arrival."
Caro glowed. "So am I!" she said.
"Of course you know him, as you've been working in the far north.
I've never been in the Gulf country. What were the flying conditions like
there?"
And for the rest of the evening they exchanged stories of their various
adventures in the more isolated parts of Australia.
"We'll have a little dinner party to welcome you and Dr. Trenowith
when he arrives," said Mrs. Reilly as Caro took her leave. "Nothing big
--just a few friends who'd like to meet you. I don't think we've ever had
a woman pilot here before, certainly not one who's a trained nurse as
well."
A message came to the base the next day from Katherine, saying
David would be arriving on Thursday. The doctor's wife organized her
welcoming party for that night; Dr. Trenowith was used to long flights
and she was sure he would not be too tired.
So on the first night of their reunion, when they'd had time for only a
few hurried words before he was borne off by the officials of the town, he
and Caro found themselves seated at a table with eight other guests,
making conversation and longing to be alone.
David almost ground his teeth. Where he sat, on the same side as
Caro, he could hardly hear her voice for the buzz of conversation; he
could not see her face to signal his love with his eyes. They might as well
have been a thousand miles apart still. Caro, seated on Dr. Reilly's right
by the head of the table, wondered if Mrs. Reilly had done it on purpose:
placing Dr. Trenowith at the other end, on her own left. A new man in
a small town was always of interest to the local women.
After dinner Caro managed to speak with David, who hastily told her
where his house was.
"I'm at the Stuart Arms Hotel," she murmured. "Room Ten."
"Your place or mine?"
"Mine, I think."
It was nearly midnight before they were at last alone. There were two
single beds in Caro's room. They squeezed into one--"It beats the back
seat of a Morris Minor," said David. "Oh, darling! Isn't this wonderful?
I've dreamed of you so often."
After, as they lay twined under the blanket (for the night was chilly,
the sky frosty with stars) he asked, "Was it as good as the first time?"
She shook her head. "No.""No?"
Then at his disappointed look she laughed, and said, "Better."
He kissed her neck. "That dinner party! I thought it would never end.
And you looked so lovely in that greeny-blue thing.
She had not known whether she was expected to wear a long dress, and
the other women had done so; but she'd compromised with a new silk
frock with a low-cut back and a finely pleated skirt, in the new fashion
colour of teal blue. It went with her opal ring and she wore the matching
opal brooch at the neck.
She looked over the side of the bed now and laughed to see the
expensive dress crumpled on the floor where she had stepped from it,
beside her scattered underwear.
They talked aeroplanes until far into the night, and he approved of Fafnir as a name, though he thought it sounded rather masculine. He
felt that aeroplanes were feminine--"unpredictable, with lovely lines,
and responsive to skilled handling"--and he was longing to try her--
him--it--in a short flight if Caro would let him.
"Of course I will. And sometimes, when we go out on a call, it will
be better for the nurse to stay with the patient while the doctor flies the
machine, don't you think, Doctor?"
"You darling!"
He left well before dawn, meeting no one in the hotel, and found that
the town was asleep.
John Flynn arrived by air for the official opening of the new base on
April 19. Flynn's "mantle of safety" was spreading in overlapping rings,
soon to include Broken Hill in New South Wales as well as the Western
Australian bases, while Queensland was to get a second base at Charleville.
Caro moved to comfortable rooms at the new hospital, a bedroom and
small sitting-room. No one worried about what time she got in, so she
was able to visit David in his house, which was in walking distance. She
could hardly believe that everything had turned out so well.

Chapter Twenty-three

Their first medical call together was from a station north-west of Alice
Springs, almost half-way to the Western Australian border. This had been
some of the last land taken up, for the Aborigines were implacably hostile
until they had been "subdued," that is, shot into submission.
Old bushmen could describe narrow escapes, when they had slept away
from their roll of blankets, and in the morning found the bedding riddled
with spears. There was still an occasional murder on both sides; but white
men were not supposed to take the law into their own hands these days.
Those who did so were actually brought to court by the local police and
charged with murder; but they were never found guilty and it would be
unthinkable that they could hang.
At Coniston Station a boy had come off a motor bike, landing on a
rocky outcrop. His people had radioed for advice, being afraid to move
him in case his spine might be injured. David ascertained that it did not
sound like concussion, but the boy had vomited blood.
"We'll come at once," he said. "Keep him warm and give him nothing
but fluids."
He called Caro, who went ahead of him to the airstrip to warm up the
engines and check fuel; then they clawed their way up through the thin
air and circled for height to cross the Macdonnells. It was early afternoon.
The ground had begun to heat up and the flight was bumpy.
The airstrip turned out to be dusty but with a fair surface. The injured
lad was out near Brooks' Soak, his mother with him. The station hands
who came to meet the plane would drive the doctor there at once. Caro
went along to help.
Mrs. Royston, the mother, was a typical battler, daughter of a pioneer.
She was widowed and now acted as housekeeper to old Randal Stafford,
who had been at the station since the early days when it had been one of
the farthest west. Mrs. Royston had not panicked, but she clasped Caro's
hand in a convulsive grip that showed her controlled emotion.
While the station hands lifted the empty stretcher out of the truck, the
Flying Doctor was testing for reflexes, and told the mother there seemed
to be no spinal injury, or concussion. But the boy was grey-faced and
complained of pain in his lower back. David, listening to his sighing
breaths, suspected internal bleeding:"I'll give him a shot of morphia and then we'll get him into the utility,"
he said. "Don't worry, we'll have him safe in a hospital bed by tonight."
While they were loading the boy into the back of the station truck,
Caro caught sight of a marble monument enclosed by railings, half-hidden
by silvery grass. She walked over and read a short memorial verse, and
the inscription:

In memory of Frederick Brooks
Murdered on 7th August 1928
--a true and staunch mate . . .
His old mate,
Randal Stafford

"Only ten years ago!" remarked Caro.
"Yes, this is the spot where Fred Brooks was speared," said the boy's
mother. "It's been called Brooks' Soak ever since."
"And what happened to the Aborigines? Were they caught?"
"Oh, Constable Murray went out with a posse and rounded them up.
I believe they shot at least twenty, probably a lot more. A big inquiry was
held, but it found that the shooting was justified."
As they drove back to the airstrip Mrs. Royston asked if she could come
with her son to the hospital.
Caro looked at David, who nodded. He was checking the boy's weak
pulse.
Back at the hospital it was found that he was passing brown urine. He
had ruptured a kidney and would have died without speedy treatment.
When he was on the mend Mrs. Royston sought out Caro and once
more pressed her hand. "Thank God for the Flying Doctor's plane!" she
said. "In the old days, he would have died. It's such a relief to us poor
mothers who worry about our sons."
They had a few days without any calls, so David and Caro explored
the town and climbed Anzac Hill in the early morning; then and at sunset
there was deeper colour in the landscape. "It's a land of opal and iron
oxide," said Caro, looking at the fiery rocks glowing through the misty
blue atmosphere. Hundreds of kites, as always, circled high in the blue,
like black cinders rising above a fire. The town's white roofs and green
trees spread below.
"Look!" said David, pointing away from the town.
She stood within the circle of his arms, and leaning back against his
shoulder followed the direction of his pointing hand. A pair of wedge-tailed
eagles was circling into the sky, in wide, sweeping arcs. Their wings were
outstretched, unmoving, as they rose effortlessly on the thermal currents
as the bare rocks heated up.
"Wonderful flyers!" he said. "A seven-foot wingspan!"
"Yes. And pelicans--I used to watch the pelicans climbing like that at
Birdsville when I was eight or nine. I think that's when I decided I wanted
to be a flyer, too."
He kissed her. "What a dear little girl you must have been."
The next day they went out to Emily Gap and had a swim between the
leaning walls of red rock, where centuries ago an Aboriginal artist had
drawn patterns in yellow ochre. When no calls had come by 4 p.m.,
David asked if she'd like to "come for a spin" with him. He thought she
might like to see Barrow Creek, where the old original Telegraph Repeater
Station was still standing. It had been built like a fort, but the two men
stationed there had been speared to death in 1874.
It was only about a 170-mile hop, he told her, and his little Moth
could land beside the Telegraph Line, though there were stony jump-ups
all around. The Line had for many years been the main stock-route, with
wells at regular intervals, and a strip on either side was bare of vegetation.
As they flew above the vast Burt Plain, for sixty miles they seemed to be
passing over a field of yellow wheat, with clumps of grey mulga.
"That was spinifex," David told her afterwards when she asked about
it. "Spinifex in seed. It grows higher than the bonnet of a motor car."
They passed Tea Tree Well and Connor's Well, following the Telegraph
Line, then circled above the tiny township of Barrow Creek and
landed beside the old stone buildings of the station. There were a single
small pub, a police station, and the store. The sun blazed down on the
treeless red soil, and they made for the dense black shade of the station
veranda. The Constable came over to see if they were in trouble, but they
explained they were just skyborne tourists.
"We're starting to get quite a lot of vehicles through these days," he
said. "The centre's not what it used to be. Next thing I'll have to go on
point duty to direct the traffic."
After warning to the policeman for a while, they walked over to look at
the memorial stone marking the graves of the Telegraph Station master
and the linesman who had been speared. The Constable told them that
the place was built in the shape of a fort, with the buildings in a square
facing inwards and large iron gates that could be closed. They had not
been expecting an attack and were caught outside; one fell dead in the
doorway and the other managed to get inside, but died that night after
sending a Morse message for help up and down the line.
"Of course, there was a punitive expedition under the Superintendent
of black trackers in central Australia; they went out and they shot every
black person they came across. For years no blackfeller ever came within
miles of Barrow."
"I think I could do with a beer," said Caro as the policeman left them.
"I wonder how many really died?"
David shrugged. "In northern Queensland years ago a man was spearedand mutilated; they left his severed head in the camp oven at his camp.
It was said to be some trouble over a gin. . . . His mate who found him
was so moved that he wrote a poem of vengeance:

For every bone in this poor corpse,
A Kalkadoon shall die!

"Do you know how many bones there are in the human body?"
"No. But I'm sure he was being rhetorical."
"More than two hundred. . . I don't know how many Kalkadoons there
were, but they were never any problem again. They were 'dispersed,' as
the term was in Queensland for wholesale slaughter."
"Yes. I definitely want a beer."
In the dark little bar of Barrow's only pub they drank with three miners
in from the copper mines to the east. The miners had heard the plane
come in, and learning who the pair were, insisted on buying them a beer.
"A mate of mine was out at the wolfram mines," one of them said.
"He fell down a shaft and broke his pelvis, and the doctor from Cloncurry
flew over from Queensland and took him back to hospital. The Flying
Doctor Service is all right, I reckon."
As they left the bar David explained that wolfram was in demand
because of the rumours of war now shaking Europe. It was used to make
tungsten for hardening steel, used in armaments.
"There won't be another war!" said Caro. "I just don't believe the world
could be mad enough to go through that again."
"I don't know. The League of Nations proved pretty useless in the war
in Spain--though that was ostensibly a civil war--and in its attempts to
stop Italy invading Abyssinia. The Germans and the Italians have been
having a practice run in bombing techniques. If it does come, the
aeroplane will be far more important than in the last war."
Right behind the Telegraph Station building the small rocky hills rose,
their sides divided by gorges down which the marauding natives had
poured when the station was attacked. David and Caro, now that the
afternoon was cooler, climbed to the top of one, and as they stood looking
out at the view saw a movement on the far side of the level top. A
yellow-coated dingo, with a white tip to his tail, was hastily departing
down the opposite side from where they had climbed up.
When they took off again the rocks were painted by the richer yellow
light of the declining sun. Distant red walls had clefts of deep cobalt
shadow, and the trunks of ghost-gums stood out starkly white against
them. From the air the ground was yellow, orange, and red, with patches
of grey mulga like dark shadows. They landed south of the Gap just after
sunset, when the western sky was banded with apricot and pearl, and the
blue-misted ridges shone a ghostly red in the afterglow.
They ended their sightseeing the next day, when there'd been no calls
by late afternoon, with a picnic out to Simpson's Gap where there was a
permanent scenic waterhole among the ranges fifteen miles to the west.
They walked far up the white sandy bed of the stream which over the
millennia had cut this mighty slice through the Macdonnell Ranges, but
which now rarely ran. Because it was a weekday they felt safe from people,
and making their way along a little branching gorge, made love in the
warm sand in the shade of a pure-white ghost-gum topped with green.
"Strange to think we're in the very heart of Australia," murmured
Caro. "A hundred years ago no white man had ever seen it."
"Not quite the centre. Central Mount Stuart is near enough to the
middle of the continent. We flew quite close to it near Barrow Creek."
Feeling a need to go behind a rock, Caro walked on farther and squatted
behind a smooth overhang of yellow stone. There were no Aboriginal
paintings, but a few graffiti. Some idiots had carved their initials, even
as they had defaced some of the ghost-gums, for this was a popular picnic
spot. Seeing some writing scrawled higher up, Caro stood to read it. The
message had been drawn with a piece of orange ochre stone.
She came stumbling back through the sand to join him, her face stiff
with shock.
"What is it? What's up?" asked David, taking her hand. She turned
her face away. "You look as if you'd seen something nasty up there."
"I have! Something so revolting, I've scratched it off with a stone and
sand. In this lovely, peaceful place! How could they?"
"What was it?"
"I don't think I could repeat it. Have you got a pencil?"
He took a small notebook out of his shirt pocket, with a pencil attached.
She sat down and wrote:

Near this spot the Mayor of Alice Springs had his first gin. He said
afterwards that he'd as soon have fucked a black dog.

"Pretty low!" commented David.
"It's hateful! The utter contempt of it--the denial of humanity--"
"That's just it, I'm afraid. The blacks are not regarded as human beings
by some of the locals. I don't think a tourist did it. You've heard it--
'Murdering niggers' . . . 'You can't trust a nigger,' and so on."
"Anyway, let's go back to the car. I feel sick."
That night, under the frosty stars, they went to the open-air picture
theatre, taking a rug against the chill air and the thin canvas deckchairs
in which the white patrons sat. At the very front of the theatre, which
had walls but no roof, the Aborigines sat on straight chairs in the worst
seats. A piece of rope was stretched across to mark the boundary betweenthe races. Their seats were cheaper, but no European, not even children,
sat in them.

On the wolfram field near Hatches Creek a miner had been taken ill with
acute appendicitis. His mates had taken him into the township and called
the base at Alice Springs.
It was afternoon by the time they got the message and Caro and David
set off to transfer the sick man to the nearest hospital at Tennant Creek.
He would need an immediate operation.
Caro sat with the patient, who was in great pain, while David flew the
aircraft. At the hospital he consulted with the local doctor, but did not stay
to help; it was a straightforward operation. He left, ostensibly to fly back.
Outside, he looked at the declining sun, and then at Caro. "We'd
better stay the night, don't you think?"
"Yes, Doctor," said Caro submissively.
Wandering about the town, which had known a mushroom growth in
the last few years, they saw outside a store a large wire cage.
"Oh no!" whispered Caro.
A great wedge-tailed eagle was sitting hunched in a corner, its fierce
yellow eyes glaring through the netting at the unattainable sky. He did
not show any awareness of their presence.
"Oh, the poor thing!" Caro was near to tears. "How could anyone cage
such a magnificent bird?"
Its sturdy legs were feathered right down to the grasping talons; its great
wings were folded, useless, by its sides.
David stood beside her. "People, on the whole, have no imagination.
You and I have a fellow feeling for birds because we know what it is like
to fly far above the earth--"
"If a robin redbreast in a cage, puts all Heaven in a rage,' the sight of
a caged eagle should cause pandemonium up there," she said. "I'm going
to let it go!"
"No, wait. You can't." The storekeeper was peering out at them
through the door. David pulled her away.
"We'll have to come back after dark," he said.
They managed to book two adjoining rooms in the single small hotel.
Someone was celebrating a good crushing with a high yield to the ton,
and the party went on in the bar until well after midnight. When all was
at last quiet, David and Caro tiptoed out into the cold, clear night. The
air, which had been full of dust, smelt clean and fresh.
"We should have gone out to the airstrip and brought the toolkit
back," whispered David. "What if there's a padlock?"
"I didn't see one." Caro felt inclined to giggle. They were like two
children on a midnight adventure.
Quietly they made their way along the tremendously wide main street to the store. As they passed one house a dog started barking, and they
froze in their tracks, already feeling guilty. They went on quietly in the
light of a waning moon. A dark shape in the cage, the glint of an eye,
showed the eagle still hunched in the same corner. David examined the
lock of the door. There was only a hasp and staple, but no padlock. A
second bolt was pushed home higher up the door. Stealthily he opened
them both, and set the wire door ajar. It jammed on an obstruction on
the ground and would not open fully.
Caro was at the other end talking to the eagle, which ignored her.
"What if he doesn't even notice the door is open?" she whispered as
David joined her. "What if he doesn't escape?"
"I could go in and try to chase him out," he said doubtfully.
"No! He would panic, and try to tear you to pieces." She said the noise
would wake the storekeeper, whose house adjoined the store.
"We can only hope he'll notice when it starts to get light."
Pleased that it had been so easy, that no one had caught them--
"They'd have accused us of trying to steal the bird!" said David--they
went back to their rooms to sleep until dawn. They were leaving first
thing for the Alice.
In the cold, clear dawn, the town's only taxi picked them up. The way
to the airstrip led past the store with the cage in front.
"Er--just go slowly along here," said David. "We've hardly had a
chance to see the town."
As the ancient Buick chugged past the store they craned their necks,
dreading to see the bird still hunched in its corner. The door still stood
ajar, and the cage was empty.
Caro was bursting with delight; they clasped each other's hands in silent
congratulation. Soon they'd be on their way back to Alice Springs, and
no one would know who'd opened the cage.
As she opened the throttle and roared up into the blue, Caro felt both
gratefulness and joy. To leave the earth far below, painted in its soft
morning colours, and fly off with the man she loved! She felt she had
struck a blow for freedom and against the dead hand of society.

Early next morning while the medical session was on, David received a
call from 8TG, Cappamerri Station on the Diamantina. The voice was
very faint; this might have been due to atmospheric conditions, although
these were usually clearer in the mornings.
"I'm crook, very crook, doctor. Over." He sounded breathless.
"What are your symptoms?"
"Pains in the chest. I can hardly breathe. Over."
"Right. Lie down and rest, or prop yourself up with pillows if it will
help you breathe. Try not to panic. Stay absolutely quiet till I get there.
I'll come at once. Over.""Thanks, Doc."
"Better get someone to pack your things, I may be bringing you back
to hospital. How is the airstrip?"
"It's--all right. A bit rough. Over and out."
David rang Caro at once. "Can we be ready to take off in half an hour?"
"Where are we going?"
"To Cappamerri Station. It's Big Jim Manning. Your grandfather."
There was a silence while Caro caught her breath. She had not thought
of her grandfather since the day when she had flown here, when she'd
consciously decided not to call and see him. She hadn't even called him
on the radio, as she might have done, using the powerful voice transmission
from the base.
"Is it--is it serious?"
"Sounds like heart. I said we'd come right away."
"Did he speak himself?"
"Yes; sounded a bit breathless. Probably someone else doing the
pedalling for him."
"Jenny!"
"Eh?"
"No matter. I'll go and check the engines and the fuel."
Chapter Twenty-four

When David arrived at the airport he found his pilot poring over a map.
"You know the Simpson Desert lies directly between us and the lower
Diamantina," said Caro. "If we go around it by way of Boulia, it will be
about a six-hundred-mile flight, and it will take us six and a half hours,
with stops for fuel. By cutting straight across the desert we could cut off
more than a hundred miles."
"And save an hour and a half."
"Yes. My grandfather may be dying."
"Well, dear, it's your machine and your life. I'm ready to go where
you are."
"I'm not afraid when you're with me. Coming up from Sydney I was
scared of the desert, and went the long way round, but now I'd like to
take the direct route."
The plane was packed with tins of water and emergency fuel supplies.
Caro had brought iron rations of dates and chocolate, besides a thermos
of coffee and sandwiches.
She had mapped a course along the dry bed of the Todd, and then due
east to the Hale River, which petered out in sand somewhere to the south.
This was the last known map point before the edge of the Simpson,
which lay between them and the salt Lake Caroline and the dry Hay
watercourse 140 miles away--the only reference point before the far edge
of the desert near the Queensland border. Bedourie was another 135
miles to the south-east. With a range of four hundred miles, they should
make it without having to land to refuel.
"If only the Tropic of Capricorn were visible, like the O.T. Line," said
Caro, "we could simply have followed along it right to Queensland."
Caro flew Fafnir while David navigated. She claimed that poring over
maps while on long flights gave her a headache, though she'd never had
a headache on her long solo flights. She knew he longed to do the flying,
but she wanted to make this adventurous flight herself--the first woman
to fly across the notorious Simpson Desert.
They picked up the Hale without trouble eighty miles out. In less than
half an hour they were over the edge of the desert
They stared down at the long, perfectly parallel sand-dunes, reddish
pink in colour, instead of the dark mulga that had covered the earthbefore. Between the sand-ridges were long pink stretches of bare sand,
here and there mottled with patches of spinifex and grey shrub. Apart from
a few bare clay-pans breaking up the regularity of the long sand-ridges, the
ground was featureless as far as they could see. It was like flying over a
weird, frozen sea of which the waves were pink and red and yellow instead
of blue, like something that might be seen on Mars.
Caro looked at David with shining eyes. She swooped down and down
to only five hundred feet above the desert, where they could feel the hot
breath of the desert coming up to them. Surprisingly, from this height
the country looked less desolate; they could see patches of shade beneath
the occasional acacias and desert oaks, and clumps of spinifex. But it was
too hot and bumpy for comfort; she was just climbing for height when
David gave a shout and pointed downwards.
"Tracks!"
"Where?" And then she saw them, the rounded marks in the sand of
two camels travelling side by side, at an angle to the dunes. They appeared
to have come from the north, and now began to turn back again. With
visions of lost explorers, Caro wanted to follow them, but David said they
would be wild camels that had entered the desert to browse on the herbage.
She climbed again to the cooler air at three thousand feet. Then they
saw ahead and to the south a large salt lake, and beyond it the dry channels
of a wide watercourse at right angles to their route.
"The Hay," said David. "Now it's just over a hundred miles to
Sandringham Station."
Caro set a compass course due east. At last the true desert ended. As
they crossed the Queensland border another salt lake passed below; then
the bed of the Mulligan--a winding strip of white sand bordered by
eucalyptus. The sand-ridges were more scattered, with stony gibber flats
and saltbush and mulga between.
Then Sandringham Station showed up, on a waterhole in a dry
watercourse. They turned south-east for Bedourie, only another thirty-five
miles. In her relief Caro began to sing. They landed at Bedourie airstrip;
with a cruising speed of over a hundred miles per hour, it had taken them
three and a half hours.
Caro was exultant. "I just wanted to fly non-stop from Alice to
Bedourie."
"Well, now you've done it, what about letting me fly the last hundred
miles to the station?"
She hesitated. "All right. But will you let me land? I know the terrain;
I've landed on that clay-pan before."
"Okay. We'll change over when we reach the Diamantina."
After a welcome wash and a meal of their remaining sandwiches and
coffee, they refuelled and set off on the last leg of the journey with David
at the controls, looking happy. He still hated to be a passenger.
As she resumed the pilot's seat over the Diamantina, Caro was surprised
to see no water in the channels, only the usual waterholes near Duthie.
The flood had already sunk away into the sand. But the gibbers were
covered in saltbush and wild flowers. Soon the drovers would be moving
down the stock-routes with mobs for Birdsville and Marree. But there
would be none from Cappamerri.
As they circled above the station, losing height, they saw a team of
Aborigines with straw brooms assiduously sweeping the clay-pan landing
field. The trouble was, they didn't move, but after waving a welcome
stood where they were, leaning on their brooms.
"Damn!" said Caro. "I'll just have to give them a fright!"
There was nowhere else to land. Two great hills of salmon-red sand
had converged on the homestead from each side, threatening to engulf
it. Several of the outbuildings were already buried.
Caro circled, then dived straight at a group of three men. One fell over
backwards in his fear, two of them ran wildly, holding their hands over
their heads for protection. The others stood transfixed a moment, and
then fled. At the last moment she pulled up and away.
David was chuckling. "You sure put the wind up them!"
"It was that or land among them, and risk chopping off an arm or a
leg."
"It's very hard to judge something like that. I once tried to frighten
some cattle off a runway, and I got hooked in a cow's horn. I nearly
crashed, and the cow took off for the horizon."
Caro banked and turned on her landing approach, then came down
on the clearest patch she could see. After taxiing a short way the wheels
bogged in soft sand, and slewed them to a stop. The blacks hovered
nervously in the distance till the propellers stopped turning. Then the
older ones crowded round, greeting the "Young Missus" by the title they
had used for her mother, when Caro herself was a child. By now a group
of children had come up from the camp, straggling over the sand-hill,
and all tried at once to hold Caro's hand. She was not wearing either
nurse's uniform or flying gear, but a sleeveless green frock, the colour of
a pale breaking wave, for coolness.
"Pretty!" said a chubby little girl, holding Caro's skirt in sticky fingers.
Caro had brought her usual paper bag of barley sugar for the children.
"This is Dr. Trenowith, the Flying Doctor," she introduced David,
who smiled at the children. They looked remarkably healthy, Caro
thought, perhaps because, as the station supplies of beef, tea, flour, and
sugar were giving out, their parents had gone back to living off the land.
With fish and birds' eggs and ducks from the lagoon, lizards and small
marsupials from the sand-hills, and their traditional lily-roots and berries,
they had a healthier diet. The usual running noses and suppurating ears
seemed less apparent.The escort of children stopped at the gate of the garden enclosure. As
they walked up the two steps to the veranda, a figure hovered just inside
the front door, half in shadow.
It was less than four years since Caro had called on her first journey to
Cloncurry, but Jenny, she realized, had put on even more weight and
was now quite shapeless, while her face had become more Aboriginal in
appearance. There was no trace of the lithe and attractive girl she
remembered as a child, when Old Lucy was still running the place. The
house now had the same neglected air, with sagging curtains and dusty
floors, as on her last visit.
Caro clasped Jenny's hand in both of hers. This was Big Jim's faithful
companion.
"Boss very sick?" she asked, as David introduced himself.
"Him very sick. Might-be close-up finish."
Big Jim Manning lay on the double bed in his room off the veranda
--the mosquito-net looped up above his head--and propped on some
very dingy white pillows. Caro felt sure Jenny would have changed the
covers for the doctor's visit, but no doubt they had been washed in
discoloured river water from rains that fell hundreds of miles to the north,
and the rain-water tanks would be empty.
"Ar there, my girl." He spoke gaspingly. "G'day, Doc. They told me
--I was speaking to Monkira Station--there was a new Flying Doctor at
Alice--and his pilot was a girl. Guessed it might be you, Caro."
"I should have made a call to check that you were all right." Caro was
contrite. "But I haven't been long in the Alice." She leaned over and
kissed the weathered cheek, whose deep reddish tan from a long life in
the saddle in the centralian sun seemed out of place on a sickbed. His
eyes, blue slits set among leathery wrinkles, lingered on her face.
"Good to see you," he said.
"Don't talk now. I want to take your blood pressure and have a listen
to your heart," said David.
The skin of Big Jim's torso was creamy white. Above the line of
rolled-up shirt-sleeves and below the edge of an open front collar, the
brick-red of his arms and neck ended in a sharp line of demarcation. Big
Jim had never gone outside without a shirt, or worked in just a sleeveless
singlet as many did.
"If you don't need me, I'll just go and see the plane is tied down
properly," said Caro, feeling that her grandfather might feel constrained
in front of her, seeing her as a girl rather than a nurse.
When she came back Jenny was setting teacups and a covered teapot
--incongruously swathed in a smart tea-cosy which "the Old Missus"
had knitted long ago--on the table of what used to be the dining-room.
Caro tried to recall what elegancies there had been when the grandmother she scarcely remembered was still in charge. With the tea went a wedge of baked damper, no butter. They still had flour, then, but probably no
yeast for breadmaking.
There had been no sign of any stock from the air, only a few goats
nibbling at the saltbush, which out on the gibber plains had regenerated
in part now it was not grazed by thousands of head of cattle.
David, joining her for tea, looked grave. He said Big Jim's pulse was
weak, his legs were swollen with oedema, and there was a murmur
suggesting a blocked ventricular valve.
"It's progressive heart disease," he said, "leading to heart failure, which
is affecting his liver and his kidneys. Hence the retention of fluid."
"What is the prognosis?"
"Not good, especially at his age. I can't do much, except give him
diuretics and digitalis, but he has to have complete rest in hospital "
"I don't think he'll go."
"You'll have to persuade him to come with us."
"Well, I'll try."
After a meal of roast goat and damper with tomato sauce, Caro tried
to reason with her grandfather.
"I'm not going to any hospital," said the old man obstinately. "Always
thought I'd die with me boots on. At least--I'm gunna die--here at
Cappamerri--not in some strange town."
"But it's only a small town, Grandpa, and I'll be there, and there are
lots of old bushmen from the stations round, cattlemen like yourself."
"No. Once you got me there--I'd never get back. I want to be buried
here--on the sand-hill above the waterhole--next to Danny's grave. It
was Jenny made me call the doctor, I should--never have bothered you.
Coming all this way."
Jenny appeared in the shadows just beyond the lamplight, outside the
fly-wire door on to the veranda.
"Come in, Jenny, see if you can make the Boss see sense. He has to
go to hospital. There's room for you in the plane, if you'd like to come
too.
"No-more, Missus. This me-country. Me no leave here."
"Me neither," said Big Jim.
When David tried to persuade him with no more success, he began to
get annoyed at the old man's obstinacy.
"Look, Mr. Manning, we've made a flight of nearly a thousand miles
here and back to see you. But I can't help you if you refuse to be helped.
You have heart disease, which will lead to complete heart failure unless
treated."
"How long--'ve I got?"
"A few more years, with treatment. Without it--less than six months,
with increasing disability and discomfort. Jenny, you pack the Boss's
things for hospital."He did not argue any more, but shut his eyes in seeming indifference.
"I'd like to 'we seen eighty," he muttered. "Never mind--I've had a pretty
good innings."
In her bedroom, Caro flung herself on the bed and covered her eyes
with her upflung arm.
"I feel we've bullied him," she said. "He doesn't want to go."
"Well, he can't stay here with just a black woman to look after him."
"He has his sons."
"You mean her sons? Half-castes?"
"Yes. She's been with him for twenty or thirty years."
After a while Caro got up and went back to the old man. Jenny had
helped him to sit on the side of the bed, with his swollen legs and feet
resting on the floor. His breathing was less laboured. He could still get
to the bathroom unaided.
"You go and get some sleep, Jenny," said Caro. "I'm a trained nurse,
remember? I'll sit up with him. Did your daughter go on with her job at
the Birdsville Hostel?"
"No-more, Missus. Him bin have whitefeller's baby. Go to Birdsville
school now, doin' orright."
When Jenny had gone, Caro helped the old man back into bed. David
had given him a light sedative, and Caro propped him up with extra
pillows.
He grasped her hand in his big gnarled fist that had held the reins and
guided many a horse on long droves and musters. "Thanks for coming,
girl"
"Good night, Grandpa."
"Goodbye." He was half asleep.
In her grandfather's room a stretcher had been made up, and Caro,
still tired from the long flight, lay down on top of the grey blanket. Big
Jim had dozed off. She went over to him once, and found he was sound
asleep, so she lay down again.
Some time in the night she woke to find David standing beside her.
She started up.
"It's all right, darling. He's sleeping still, and his breathing is easier.
Why don't you come to bed?"
"I told Jenny I'd stay with him."
"Please, Caro. I can't sleep for thinking about you."
She said she would come for a little while, and then come back "on
duty."
"You know, even if he was in hospital," said David in his room, which
was next to hers along the veranda, "there wouldn't be a nurse at his
bedside all night. He's only a few doors away."
She had meant to come back within an hour, but she fell asleep in his
arms. "Do you realize," she murmured sleepily before doing so, "that I was probably begun in this bed? About Christmas 1914. The same time
as the Great War. . ."
She was awakened in the early morning by some loud noise, like an
explosion. She had been dreaming about war, and at first thought it part
of her dream. But David was already out of bed, pulling on his trousers.
"It sounded like a shot."
She followed him along the veranda to the other bedroom. Big Jim
Manning was slumped sideways against the pillows. His eyes and his
mouth were open, and a shotgun muzzle rested against his side. Bright-red
blood flowed from a gaping wound in his chest. David was feeling for a
pulse in his neck, while trying to stanch the blood with a bunched-up
sheet. The bedside lamp was still burning.
There came a quick patter of bare feet along the veranda, and Jenny
came running in, her eyes and hair wild. She gave a great wail and cast
herself on the body, regardless of the blood. "Boss, Boss," she sobbed.
David gently detached her, and closed the eyes and mouth and covered
the dreadful wound with a sheet. Big Jim had shot himself through the
heart at point-blank range. Jenny stood by like a character in a Greek
tragedy, with her blood-stained shift and straight, tangled long hair,
emitting high-pitched wails. Caro was crying quietly.
David put his hand on her shoulder. "I'll sign the death certificate,
and we'll have to bury him without waiting for the police to get here.
When she is calmer, ask Jenny to get her boys to dig a grave."
Caro fetched a bowl of water and asked Jenny for some old towels or
cloths. She used absorbent pads and bandages from her first-aid kit to fill
the wound. She could get no help from Jenny, who flung her arms about
and tore at her hair and face while Caro washed the body.
"Jenny, listen. How Boss want to be buried?"
"Boss tellem me, 'S'pose I die, you bury me longa box, longa big
sand-hill.'"
"Right. Where this-feller box?"
"Longa back 'randa." She pointed with her lips towards the back of the
house.
Caro asked her to fetch her sons (living in the sand-drifted station-hands'
quarters) to put the Old Boss, their father, in his coffin, and then dig a
grave for him.
Jenny went away, and soon a loud chorus of wails broke out in the
camp.
When David came back, Caro leaned her face against his shoulder.
"It's my fault. I should never have left him."
"Nonsense. He'd have done it anyway, as soon as we'd left."
"No. He was afraid we'd force him into going back with us. It's my
fault."
"Caro, be realistic. His heart wasn't going to get better. He hadn'tmuch of a life in front of him. This way it was a quick and certain
ending."
"I suppose so," she said doubtfully.

At 6 a.m. David had spoken by radio to the police constable at Birdsville,
the nearest centre. He said there had been an accident with a gun, that
the owner of Cappamerri was dead and that he would sign the death
certificate and supervise the burial. For obvious reasons the funeral could
not be delayed. He would leave the papers all complete.
Caro was standing by the bed where he had left her, with her arms
crossed and her head bowed. "David, he said 'goodbye', last night. Not
'good night', but 'goodbye'. He'd already made up his mind."
Jenny's two sons came in, both big men, one of them much lighter in
complexion than the other. Each went up and touched the dead man's
shoulder before lifting the heavy body, wrapped in a clean sheet, into the
coffin. Caro shook hands with her half-uncles, and went to look for some
flowers in the neglected garden.
Chapter Twenty-five

The weather was hot and it was advisable not to delay, so the funeral was
held late the same morning. Caro wanted to be present and asked David
to conduct the service. They could not stay longer, for an urgent call had
just come from the Alice base. The doctor was needed as soon as possible
at Woodgreen Station on the Sandover, where the station manager had
badly injured his hand in the gears of a boring plant.
Big Jim's two sons arrived at the homestead with a cart, to Caro's
surprise, pulled by a pair of black horses.
"But I thought there were no livestock left on the place!" she exclaimed.
"Well, Barney and me, we broke in a few brumbies--made a trap for
'em by the second waterhole. Got a coupler pack-horses as well. Brother
Joe, 'e rode orf and got a job on another station."
"And you're staying on? I know the Boss wanted you boys to have the
place."
"Yair. Might as well 'ang on long as we can."
"Y'never know, some drover feller might lose a few beasts, an' they
might just wander on to Cappamerri," said Barney, looking innocently
at the ceiling.
Their mother looked at them proudly.
"They's good boys," she said.
Big Jim was no light weight, and David helped his two strong sons to
lift the coffin from the table and get it out to the waiting cart. A stream
of natives from the camp followed as they drove to the base of the
sand-hill, the women tearing their hair and inflicting "sorry cuts" on their
scalps, so that blood ran down and matted their hair. The wailing reached
a crescendo as four men lifted out the long box and took it on their
shoulders for the arduous climb up and over the loose sand to Danny's
grave. But when, after three changes of bearers, they came over the top
to the other side, the little gravestone could not be found. It had
disappeared under the drifting sand.
They fixed on an approximate site from what the older people remembered,
and with shovels had soon excavated a hole in the soft sand in a
spot overlooking the home waterhole, now sadly diminished in size as far
as Caro remembered. The lowering of the coffin into the grave was the
signal for a fresh outburst of wailing. (That night there would be acorroboree to farewell the Old Boss. His name would never be mentioned again.)
David read the Burial Service from an old Church of England prayer
book they had found in a bookcase. Caro stood with her head bent, staring
at the wave-patterns made in the coloured sand by the wind; and, beyond
the trampled area, the tiny marks, the tracks of hopping-mice, lizards,
and small snakes that came out at night and sheltered by day in burrows
from the scorching sun. She had picked some everlasting daisies, papery
white and gold. In the garden had been nothing but a few hardy sunflowers.
She and Jenny, who stood beside her with swollen eyes, dropped
the gaudy sunflowers onto the coffin, jenny and the old women wailed
again as the men filled the grave and stamped down the sand with their
feet. Then three heavy paper-bark logs carried all the way from the river
were laid crosswise on top to keep out dingoes.
There was no further sound from the dark people. Apart from Jenny,
they showed no emotion but chattered among themselves as they ploughed
back over the sand-hill, pausing to examine small excavations and pointing
to tracks of lizards or kangaroo-mice. Caro paused to stick her bunch of
daisies upright on the grave. Everlastings--but nothing lasted forever
here, only the endless shifting sand. She intended to have an engraved
stone sent up from Adelaide, but it too would soon disappear.
There had been no old friends of Jim Manning at his funeral, for
Duthie Station, the nearest neighbour, was nearly a hundred miles away
over a track half-buried in sand. It would probably take till tomorrow for
the Constable to drive up the mail-route from Birdsville.
Caro and David had to leave at once for Woodgreen.
Because the Sandover River was north of the Alice, they would have
to take the long way home. This meant flying back to Bedourie and then
north to Boulia before turning west for the border. David was disappointed;
he had been looking forward to flying himself back over the desert.
It was nearly midday when the Flying Doctor plane took off. The
ground was heating up, and the little craft lurched and bumped in the
thermal currents. Four pelicans circled high in the blue.
Caro had the map, but she did not look at it. She sat with her long
legs twisted round each other, her arms folded and her shoulders hunched
--a defensive posture against the unhappy thoughts and guilt feelings
caused by her grandfather's death, and the manner of it.
At three thousand feet the air was smoother. David surveyed the
horizon; blue and clear as far as he could see, the sky blended into the
darker blue of distance so that they seemed to be ringed with a surrounding
ocean. The land directly beneath was bleached with heat, but there was
no dust and every detail was clear. He could see for sixty miles in every
direction. And the terrain was perfectly flat.
He picked up the channels of the Georgina, still with water in them, and continued north, following its braided channels, to Bedourie, where
he landed to refuel. Caro had still not spoken a word. He knew she
blamed him for having enticed her away from the sick-room, just as she
reproached herself for having gone with him.
"Could I have a look at the map?" he said politely as to a stranger. He
followed the course of the Georgina with a long brown finger. "We could
keep going north to Boulia, but if we make straight for Glenormiston
Station from Marion Downs it cuts off this corner and we get the benefit
of the tail wind all the way to the border."
Caro shrugged. "Obviously that's what you intended to do, or you
wouldn't have landed here for fuel."
He did not answer. He decided to ignore her mood; he was not going
to quarrel. He talked with the Shell gasoline man who had brought the
fuel out to the airstrip. They should not need any more before reaching
Tobermorey Station over the Territory border, where they could top up
with their own emergency supplies.
Listening to the engines running sweetly, looking down at the glinting
channels of the remains of the Georgina flood, and around at the wide
horizon, David relaxed in his seat and began to sing, "O sole mio. . ." Then he remembered and stopped. Hell, ought he to whistle "The Last
Post"? He hadn't known the old man, and he rather admired what he
had done. Better to go quickly and cleanly. At least he'd had the
consideration not to blow his head off; a shotgun made a terrible mess at
close range.
"Would you like some coffee?" Caro was making overtures of peace.
"Thanks, darling. I was thinking, what a lovely clear day."
"Yes. No day for dying."
She came forward and handed him a mug of coffee, resting her hand
on his shoulder. A cluster of buildings showed up to the left of the main
channel: Marion Downs. They followed the river, before leaving it at
Glenormiston and following a stock-route towards Tobermorey along a
dry watercourse lined with trees. They were more than half-way when
David, checking the instruments, cried: "We're nearly out of fuel! It's not
possible!"
"Perhaps the gauge is faulty."
"I don't think so." He immediately climbed for height while he still
had power. To the left were rocky hills, but ahead appeared to be a red
plain covered with sparse scrub. Then the engines faltered and died. With
the tail wind he hoped to get close to Tobermorey Station and find some
country eaten bare by cattle. They glided silently, steadily losing height.
As they came lower, the ground which had looked smooth and flat from
above showed itself scored with small dry creeks and dotted with gidgee
and needlebush. At least there were no giant termite mounds. And he
had no choice."Hold on!" he said quietly as the ground seemed to rush up towards
them. "It's going to be rough."
He was nearly down, skilfully aiming for a clear patch among the
scattered timber, when a great mound of clay loomed up in front. Though
without power, he managed to lift her up and over, and they came down
with a bump on the other side, bounced into the air, and landed again,
to roll on until brought up short by a shallow runnel in the red sandy
soil, filled with wiry lignum bushes that held them without damage.
They sat in silence for a moment, scarcely able to believe that they
were down safely. Then Caro, who had been thrown forward by the jolt,
came and hugged his neck from behind. "Dr. Trenowith, you are a very
good pilot."
"I know," he said, laughing. Then he said soberly, "Caro, do you
realize that if your grandfather hadn't died, and we'd left early this
morning before the call came from base, we'd now be down in the
Simpson Desert?"
"Golly!" said Caro in a small voice.
They found what had caused the trouble. A fuel line had broken, and
the petrol had leaked away. They still had their spare fuel on board, but
they didn't have any spare pipe. And their radio would not work without
power from the engines.
"Let's have a snack, anyway," said David, unperturbed; he had been
down in the bush so often before. They gnawed at their slices of damper,
and chewed some dates. The chocolate was rapidly melting in the
afternoon heat. All round was utter silence; not a bird, not an insect
stirred.
There was no way they could repair the break, but if they filled up
from their spare tins and took off again for Tobermorey they could make
it before the tanks were empty again. The danger was that if an off-balance
landing, or an unseen obstruction tipped them sideways, friction with the
earth would cause a spark to reach the flowing petrol before it was all
used up.
"It would be safer to walk to the station for help," said Caro. "Perhaps
a station truck could get through to here."
"Let's toss for it."
"What a gambler you are, David! You call, then."
"Heads."
The penny came down tails. They started to walk.
David carried a water-bag just in case, though if their navigation was
right the dry watercourse was Pituri Creek and by following it up they
must come to the station. Though winter was well begun, the sun was
hot and the red soil gave off heat like an oven. Caro had brought a hat,
but David with his thick thatch did not seem to feel the need of one.
They stumbled through gullies and prickly shrubs, where possible taking advantage of shade from the thicker timber lining the creek; there was
little from the thin gidgee scrub and the occasional "whitewash gum"
with its pure-white trunk.
Caro was beginning to feel tired and anxious when David gave a shout.
"The border fence!"
There it was ahead, a post-and-wire fence of rabbit-proof netting, a
fence that stretched in various stages of repair for seven hundred miles.
They went along it till they found a gate, where the earth was trampled
to dust by the hoofs of cattle, for although Tobermorey land lay over the
state border all its stock were droved into Queensland railheads. To the
west the nearest centre was Alice Springs, more than three hundred miles
away over rugged country.
Though the sun was declining, Caro was unbearably hot and took
frequent drinks from the water-bag. She was also footsore, for her shoes
were not sturdy enough for a long walk. She looked enviously at the kites,
wheeling effortlessly high in the air.
"Only one mile to go," said David cheerfully, consulting the
map.
Once through the gate they began to see some cattle, half-wild beasts
that stood with their white faces and sharp, curving horns all pointed
towards the intruders, then bounded away through the scattered trees.
The homestead could be seen across a perfectly bare stretch, two-storied
with the sleeping quarters upstairs and a fly-netted enclosure below. But
only the Chinese cook was home. He said the men would be back soon.
Meanwhile, "Missie like bathee and cold dlink?"
The sun was sending long blue shadows over the red earth when the
three young brothers who worked the station rode in. It was too late to
go out tonight, but they were ready to drive David and Caro to their plane
at first light and help clear the ground for takeoff.
By mid-morning they were on their way down the Sandover, having
radioed the base that they'd been delayed by a forced landing. The station
people had happily put them up for the night, robbed a petrol pipe from
another engine, and sent them off with a good breakfast under their belts
and full fuel tanks. After two hundred miles they reached Woodgreen,
with a landing almost as rough as the one in the bush.
The injured man was lying down with his arm and hand resting on a
blood-soaked pillow. What had been a clean cotton singlet was wrapped
around the hand. His face was drawn with pain.
"How did it happen?" asked the doctor as he unpacked his bag. A basin
of hot water had been brought for him, and he began to remove the
covering from the man's wound.
"We were sinking a new well, ten mile out," said the man's brother.
"Bob here got his hand dragged by a steel rope into the big heavy plant
and the bones and flesh and everything were mangled in the crown wheeland pinion. It took his whole hand in, and the teeth were worn sharp as
razors--"
He began to look sick at the memory.
"Yes," said Bob in a faint voice, "and the silly galoot thought he was
winding it out, but he was winding it back in! 'Hey! The other way,' I
yelled."
"I was that upset I didn't know what I was doing. We got him back
here in the truck and poured pain-killer and disinfectant all over it, and
wrapped it up."
"And he didn't even faint?" asked Caro.
Bob grinned. "No way! I'm tough. They call me the Sandover Alligator."
"Well,
we'll see," said David. "I'm going to have to clean this up and
have a look at it. Do you want a shot of morphia?"
"I don't like needles, Doc," said the tough man, looking anxious.
When David informed him that he would be having an anti-tetanus
shot anyway, he groaned. "All right. The morphia first."
Caro held his good hand and had hers nearly mangled as well as he
convulsively clasped it in his strong fingers. "Don't look," she said quietly
as the bloody mess was revealed.
"I'd rather look at you, any day," said Bob Geddes with the ghost of a
leer.
His brother Geoff had not stayed to watch, but when David sought
him out while Caro fixed a sling to support the injured hand, he found
him sitting in the big airy central room with its walls of open louvers
through which the south-easterly blew, warm but refreshing.
"We'll have to take him into Alice for an operation."
Geoff nodded. "Have a beer, Doc," he said. "Kerist, was I glad to see
you. They told us from the Alice you were down in the bush somewhere,
and I thought of gangrene setting in or blood poisoning or something
before you got here."
He brought two cold beers from the kerosene refrigerator.
"I hope they've got plenty of tucker at the new hospital," he said.
"I believe it's good. Why?"
"Well, they call Bob the Sandover Alligator because of the amount he
eats. A leg of lamb between two loaves of bread is a sandwich for Bob,
they reckon."
When Caro came in he did not stand up, but pushed a chair towards
her with his foot. He removed the large-brimmed felt hat that had seemed
glued to his head. She noticed that his forehead was paler than the rest
of his thin brown face.
"Have a drink, Sister. . . . Here's to the Flying Doctor, the A.I.M.
Sisters, and the kero fridge--the three best things ever to come to the
outback."

Within two hours Bob Geddes was in bed in the hospital at Alice
Springs. Dr. Trenowith and Dr. Reilly conferred over his hand. It was
so long since the injury that the hospital doctor feared gangrene might
have set in, and it would be safer to amputate. But David felt sure it could
be saved.
"I wouldn't like to take the risk," said Dr. Reilly.
"Then I will," said David. And tired as he was, after a short rest he
performed an operation with Dr. Reilly assisting, which took two and a
half hours. The nearly severed thumb was sewn back, the ragged flesh
trimmed away, each suture dusted with antiseptic powder, and the whole
carefully bound up with sterile bandages till it resembled a white football.
As the hand healed, the doctor unwound the bandages and sent Bob
Geddes to sit out in the sun once a day, letting the wounds dry while he
chased away the flies with his other hand.Chapter Twenty-six

In July the Governor-General, Lord Gowrie, and Lady Gowrie arrived
for a visit to Alice Springs, travelling in the 'Ghan all the way from
Adelaide. They had a special carriage to themselves. When the train
pulled in, the whole town turned out to witness the arrival of the King's
representative, though for once it was pouring with rain in the middle of
winter.
Houses had all been decorated by the patriotic owners. Even the gaol
joined in the festivity, and Caro was amused to see two crossed flags, the
Australian and the Union Jack, over the entrance with a large sign saying WELCOME.
Before they went on by road to Tennant Creek, the pair were
taken to visit the Flying Doctor base. Lady Gowrie spoke to the listening
women over a radius of hundreds of miles, and made their day. The
Governor's wife had a gentle manner, but she was not young; and when
Caro was introduced to her she noted the dark, tired shadows beneath
her eyes.

When war was declared in early September, Caro would not at first
believe it. Yet she had heard quite clearly on the radio the clipped tones
of the South Australian Governor, saying "This means War!" He was a
military man, and he sounded almost pleased.
"How can they--how can they start another war!" she cried. "Not that
I remember the last one, but my father died in it--a young man with
everything to live for. And now all that suffering is starting over again!"
"It had to come, I suppose," said David. "Hitler couldn't be allowed
to get away with any more. And the world governments must have
known it was coming. No doubt that's why they sent the poor old
Governor-General all the way up here, to stir up a bit of patriotism."
"I only feel patriotic about Australia, and I don't see why we have to
be involved."
"And if Hitler conquers all Europe, and then England? Where would
we be then?"
"A colony of Germany? Well, let us fight them then, when we're
invaded."
"Without the British fleet, and British armaments and aeroplanes, we'd get nowhere. Germany has ten times as many people as we have, and
millions of troops."
"I still hate it. David! You won't have to go?"
"It depends how tough things get. At present I'm needed more here.
A lot of younger doctors, and young airmen, will be joining up, and the
Aerial Medical Service is going to find itself short of pilots and doctors.
And nurses too, perhaps."
"My mother would have gone to the Front, as it was called, if she
hadn't had me. But I won't. I'm not going to do anything to 'help the
War effort.' I won't roll a bandage, I won't knit a sock--"
David smiled tolerantly. "We'll see."
The war did not affect life in the centre very much. Naval and Army
headquarters were being established at Darwin, and a small Air Force,
but as there was neither road nor rail across the continent, Alice Springs
saw little of them. Then an Army officer arrived and announced that an
all-weather road was to be built from Tennant Creek to Birdum (the
southern-most end of the Darwin railway), while the road already in use
between the Alice and Tennant would be upgraded to the same standard.
The first section would be built in ninety days, before the Wet set in.
Medical and communication services would be provided by the Army,
and the construction would be done by the civilian road-construction
workers.
The locals were sceptical. They felt that the Army did not appreciate
the difficulties of the terrain and the climate, with its alternating droughts
and floods, sand-hills and mud-slides. An advance party of workmen
arrived on the 'Ghan from Adelaide, with truckloads of tools and roadmaking
equipment from tractors to steamrollers. It was the beginning of
irreversible change for the centre and the far north, and the start of a
trickle of motor-borne tourists which was to become a flood in the next
twenty to thirty years. Meanwhile a pioneer air service from Adelaide to
Darwin was started, crossing the continent in a series of six or eight hops.
The Faith in Australia made a forced landing on a tributary of the Roper;
the passengers had to live on crocodile meat until rescued.
Territorians were more interested in the case against a well-known
station boss and his head stockman on a property near the South Australian
border. They had been arrested by the officer in charge of the police
station at Abminga Siding on a charge of murdering an Aborigine. The
officer had eyewitness evidence from several Aborigines, who showed him
the body of the dead man. They claimed the man had been dragged for
about five hundred yards behind a truck, with a length of wire round his
neck.
The two white men were brought to Alice Springs by the Constable,
who had been shown the body of "Lucky Legs," and brought his skull
back as evidence. (This was usually done in the case of murderedAborigines, the flesh removed by boiling to make the Court sitting less
unpleasant.)
At the Coroner's inquest he produced the skull which he had personally
detached from the body. The five witnesses had to be kept in custody to
prevent them from bolting. On the evidence the two white men were
committed for trial.
The sergeant in charge at Alice Springs then took the witnesses back
over the ground to re-check the evidence, and somehow let them escape.
The Constable, who had gone back to Abminga, was asked to go out and
recapture them, but they knew they were being looked for; it was a
hopeless search.
As he was returning to Alice Springs for the trial he met the two accused
men on their way home. The Supreme Court had considered the case
before a judge and jury. It had been dismissed for want of evidence.
Caro and David, like everyone else in town, had watched the progress
of the case with intense interest. Sides were taken and bets made on the
outcome, most being in favour of the accused. Even those who doubted
said that old Perce had only been trying to teach a troublesome blackfellow
a lesson, and would not have meant to kill him.
There were plenty of witnesses for the defence to give excellent characters
for the two well-known and respected cattlemen.
Caro's interest was more personal, for the Constable who had laid the
charges was her mother's old friend Jack McGuinnes from Marree and
Innamincka. Before he went back down the line to his police station she
asked him to come and visit her at the hospital, and took him round to
meet David.
"Wasn't there something peculiar about that case, Jack?" she asked.
"This business about the skull--the doctor certified that it was a lubra's
skull, so it couldn't possibly have been Lucky Legs's. Is that right?"
Jack McGuinnes burst out, "The skull was not a lubra's. At least the
one I brought in wasn't. The blacks showed me where they'd buried
Lucky Legs, and I dug him up and removed the skull from his body."
"I know Dr. Reilly," said David, "and he wouldn't falsify evidence in
a Court of Law."
"Well, I'm not in any doubt that there was some funny work went on.
When I first got the report of the killing I went out there and made
inquiries. The story was obviously a dinkum one. I got hold of several
witnesses, three men and two women, after a bit of a search--they were
scared stiff and reluctant to come in with me. I had to keep them locked
up at Abminga, while we waited for the next train."
"But you weren't here for the trial?"
"No! Yet I was the chief police witness. And the witnesses, who had
all gone bush, weren't there either. I was sent out to look for them, and
so kept out of town till it was all over."
"And you think the lubra's skull was substituted?"
"Must have been. It wouldn't be difficult to get hold of one."
"So you reckon they were guilty," David stated.
"They were guilty as hell. It was an open-and-shut case. If I'd been
present with my witnesses, they'd not have got out of it. That native was
dragged behind a truck till he was dead."
The three of them were silent. Caro, feeling depressed, got up and
said, "I'll get us some supper," and went out to the kitchen; not realizing
that she was showing a familiarity with the doctor's house--and the
doctor--that was not lost on the observant policeman. He had heard of
Dr. Trenowith's exploits, and liked the look of him. But he'd had an idea
the doctor was married.
Afterwards they talked about Alix, and Jack asked hopefully if she might
be coming up for a visit. But Caro told him that Alix was bent on nursing
in Darwin, and had decided to take a commercial flight all the way from
Adelaide to the far northern port.
"The planes land at Alice for fuel, and to give the passengers some
lunch," she said. "There's a fly-netted dining enclosure built out at the
airport. So I'll see her briefly on her way, I hope."
"Remember me to her, won't you? I've never forgotten her."
The big man was as sturdy as ever, his face as brown and weathered,
but his hair was quite grey. It made Caro realize how time had passed
since the policeman asked her mother to marry him.

Alix left Adelaide before dawn on the two-thousand-mile flight across the
continent. She was a little apprehensive, but no longer really scared of
flying. Excitement built in her as she climbed up the slope of the cabin
floor, tilted as the big metal plane stood on the tarmac, with its nose
pointed up-wind as if sniffing the air, eager for takeoff.
There were about nine other passengers, but no such things as air
hostesses or in-flight refreshments. They would land at Mount Eba Station
for fuel and morning tea, and at Alice Springs for lunch.
The powerful engines, which at take-off seemed to be straining to get
the heavy bulk airborne, settled down to a steady vibrating hum. The
window vibrated in concert as Alix pressed her brow against it so that she
could look straight down at the landscape unwinding below. The sun rose
on the right as they flew steadily north; she was on the shaded side.
From Mount Eba onwards the land below appeared like a great sheet
of wrinkled orange paper. They were well to the west of Lake Eyre and
her old home of Marree; and now they crossed into the Northern Territory
and she saw from the air the land she had journeyed by train. The
white sandy bed of the Alberga, the intricate dry channels of the Finke
flood-plain, unwound below like a map on rollers. There appeared to be
not a single cloud over the whole of Australia; and at five thousand feetthey could see for a hundred miles all round, to the dark ring of blue that
was the ever-receding horizon.
Though the vibration in the glass was beginning to give her a headache,
Alix could not stop staring down, watching the cross-like shape of the
plane's shadow flitting over the landscape. Nowhere was any sign of water,
not even a dam. She thought of Mab's grave at Marree, and how Caro
had said her little Moth's shadow had for a moment painted a cross upon
it as she took off for Birdsville. She watched the endless barren ribs of red
sand passing beneath. How many travellers, explorers, prospectors had
perished down there in the heat and glare, while here they were flying
over it in cool comfort at five thousand feet.
They were slowly descending; the ground did not look so barren; there
was a sprinkling of trees grey-blue against the red soil. Then a wall of
orange rock--they crossed it, circled, and came back over white roofs set
among green clumps of trees. Alice Springs! They landed south of the
range and taxied towards the hangar, sending a cloud of dust flying back
from the exhausts.
Caro, in a cool white dress and no hat, was waiting. Alix had worn a
blue crepe de Chine dress and a hat, and even--she admitted she was
mad--a suspender belt and a pair of silk stockings. She climbed down
the steps and flung her arms around Caro, forgetting to hold her hat,
which blew off and went dancing and rolling over the tarmac. An aircraft
engineer chased it and brought it back, laughing.
"I've asked them to let me have lunch with you in the passengers'
enclosure," said Caro. "There isn't time for you to come into town, I'm
afraid. You wouldn't know the place, it must have grown enormously."
"There certainly seem to be a lot more roofs, from the air. Caro, I'm enjoying this flight! It's so interesting and the air is so clear! It's like a
wonderful geography lesson--we're going right across the centre of the
continent."
"Yes, I wish I'd been game to come this way when I flew up to
Cloncurry. But I didn't have the range, it's too empty. Even the flyers
who came all the way from England alone never attempted to fly straight
down to Adelaide, but went round the coast from Darwin. One day I'll
do it."
When they'd finished lunch--having entered through two lots of
fly-netting to shut out the ubiquitous sticky flies of the centre--and could
talk freely, Alix looked straight at her daughter and said, "And Dr.
Trenowith? You said he was the Flying Doctor, and you're his pilot again.
Is that all you are?"
Caro's face became remote. She looked over Alix's head at the sky.
"Why? What else would I be?"
"I believe his wife is still in Darwin."
"So? She happens to like Darwin."
"Caro, don't fence with me. It was always hard to extract the truth
from you; but we may not see each other for a long time, and I wish
you'd confide in me. Is he in love with you?"
Caro's expression warmed. She looked down at the ground, and then
smiled into her mother's blue eyes. "Yes, he is."
"I thought so."
"Oh, Mum, I'm so happy! At least we can be together here. It's not
perfect, but--"
"Don't forget this is a small community--oh, I know it's a lot bigger
than the ninety or so people when I was here, but it's still small enough
for narrow-mindedness and gossip. There could be scandal, a messy
divorce--"
"David wants a divorce! He wants to marry me!"
"But his wife won't agree? Apart from anything else, you could lose
your position with the A.I.M. It's a Church organization."
"I know." Caro looked stricken. "We are being very discreet."
"Well, I can't say I approve. But I hope for your sake that it all works
out. Perhaps he'll join the Air Force."
Caro made a face. "By the way, Jack McGuinnes wanted to be
remembered to you. He was up from S.A. on a court case."
"Jack McGuinnes!" Alix looked startled. "I'd almost forgotten him."
"Well, he hasn't forgotten you."
Passengers were climbing back on board. Alix hugged her daughter for
a long moment. "Goodbye, darling."
"Mum--you won't become an Army nurse, will you?"
She laughed. "I expect they'd think me too old. No, I'll be working in
the civilian hospital, with a great big Red Cross painted on the roof-- just in case the war ever comes to Darwin. But it won't."
Caro watched the silver aircraft climbing for height, turning and flying
north over the rampart of the Macdonnells, and being bumped about in
the thermals. She had a feeling of unease. But of course these big metal
craft with their powerful engines were ten times as safe as the flimsy
wood-and-fabric kind with one engine she used to fly.

In David's Moth they had made a brief expedition out to Ayers Rock and
back, flying in a line due west over Mount Conner, the Rock, and the
Olgas; and had even landed on the red sand among the stunted saltbush
long enough to take in the stupendous size and presence of the great red
monolith which the local tribes called Uluru. It was inside an Aboriginal
Reserve and their landing was illegal.
"I'm glad I have seen it," said Caro. "It's extraordinary."
"They say the colour is intensified at dawn and sunset," said David.
"Then it seems to be on fire."
They skimmed low over its naked dome in the little Moth, seeing thestriations of water-runnels made by occasional heavy thunderstorms, the
gleam of a rock-hole at its base. Then they flew on and circled the bare
red domes of the Olgas, like the heads of pachyderms buried and thrusting
up from below. Mount Conner was different, a residual mountain with
a flat top and a "skirt" of talus slope all round. But it was the Rock that
compelled the imagination most: with its isolation, the way it rose abruptly
from the surrounding plain, its glowing colour, its smooth contours as of
a giant pebble thrown down by the gods. In its ancient, mysterious
apartness it seemed to symbolize the red centre of Australia.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Looking down through the small window, Alix saw that the painted desert
was left behind as they continued north. The sun now came in the port
side and made her hot. At Tennant Creek they landed on a strip between
low stony hills covered with spinifex and stunted trees. From now on,
high above the heat-bumps at seven thousand feet, she looked down on
a land hazy with grass fires. At Daly Waters, a fuel stop, the heat hit her
in the face like a blow. From Katherine on they flew low over the last leg
and could even see the giant red termite mounds standing above the
yellow grass. The orange sun began to sink on their left as they circled
above Darwin Harbour, drifted with smoke from the twelve-foot grass
burning all round. She saw the silvery gleam of the Arafura Sea beyond;
she had crossed a continent in one day.
Alix had seen something of the coastal cities, but she had never been
out of Australia. Now, in Darwin, she felt as if she were in a foreign
country. It was different, exotic. It smelt different, warm and spicy, of the mysterious East, which lay just across the silver sea, closer than any
Australian city.
Once, there had been ten thousand Chinese in Darwin, and there was
still a Chinatown with colourful Chinese characters painted on the
shopfronts.

In Darwin the houses were nearly all raised on stumps to get the breeze.
Instead of windows they had louvers of corrugated iron or wood that
deflected the straight downpours of the Wet without having to be closed.
People lived on their front verandas; at night, if they were inside, there
were no curtains or closed windows so that from the road the interiors
appeared like a lighted stage. And the air was scented with frangipani,
coloured with bougainvillaea and flowering shrubs in front of an always
present background of brilliant, milky-turquoise sea. Darwin on its peninsula
was like a tropical island with its groves of coconut palms and
poincianas in brilliant bloom.
In the streets a multi-racial population mixed peaceably--white and
black Australians, Javanese and Malays, Chinese gambling-house keepers
and Japanese pearlers from Broome; Moluccans, Kupangers, and Torres
Strait Islanders, and every mixture between. Alix found it fascinating.The Civil Airport was out near Fannie Bay, to the north of the town; the
civilian hospital was at the other end of town, on high land above Doctor's
Gully and overlooking the port area. Now, nearly two years after war had
been declared, Darwin was at last being put on a full war footing, and a huge
anti-submarine net of steel mesh was being installed by the Navy across the
entrance to the large sheltered harbour--an opening six miles wide.
The Army was gradually building up to a force of five thousand men,
billeted at the barracks on Larrakeyah Peninsula, at Bagot, and Berrimah,
where a new Army hospital was being built.
Alix took all this in while installing herself at the Darwin Hospital--
an ancient building that was something of a shock to her. It was soon to
be replaced, because it was considered to be dangerously situated in case
of air attack.
The old hospital was a ramshackle collection of corrugated-iron and
concrete buildings, ill-equipped and generally out of date and unsatisfactory.
The gate to the Larrakeyah Army Barracks was only a few hundred
yards away, an obvious target if the war came close. Morale was low
among the nurses, who used to spend all their spare time having parties
for the younger doctors and disappearing with them down into the shady
walks of Doctor's Gully. But most of the doctors in Darwin now were
older men, for the younger ones had joined the Air Force or the Army
Medical Corps.
Alix learned that a new modern hospital was to be opened in the new
year. It would have 130 beds, an operating theatre and obstetrical wards
of the latest design, and an open plan with wide corridors and thousands
of fibro louvers in the walls that could be opened to allow maximum
circulation of air.
"My dear, we've put up with conditions that they wouldn't believe in
the south," said the Matron, a tall, pleasant woman near Alix's age. Alix
had taken to her immediately. She had what Alix had only read of--
"luxuriant" hair, thick and of a deep, rich red. She wore it in two shining
plaits swathed around her head.
"How can you find time, Enid, "Alix asked when she knew her better,
"to arrange all that hair? I just shove mine into a bun, and I'm tempted
to cut it off--it would be cooler and easier to manage."
"I like plaiting my hair," said Enid Mackay (like Alix, she had some
Scottish ancestors a generation or two back). "I find it soothing to both
my hands and my nerves, brushing it out and braiding it. And as for
easier to manage, short hair has to be combed all the time, whereas mine
stays put all day, even in a strong wind; even when I pull my cap off."
"But if you go swimming--"
"I never go swimming. There are all sorts of nasties in the water up
here. Crocodiles up at The Point beyond Fannie Bay, and sea-wasps
anywhere in the summer--they can be deadly if you're stung."
Alix was determined to swim in that turquoise sea with its twenty-foot
tides. She went with some younger off-duty nurses one afternoon for a
picnic to Mindil Beach. Carrying beer and sandwiches, they climbed
over the sand-hills, and once out of the shade of the bushes, even though
it was now July and mid-winter, the yellow sand burnt her feet in her
flimsy sandals. The tide was coming in, milky with stirred-up sand, but
as it began to fall again the water cleared to zircon shallows.
Then as the sea gradually retired beyond Myilly Point, and the sun set
over the water in an orange ball coloured by the smoke of grass fires, and
the swift tropical dusk came down, the nurses and their swains disappeared
into the shadows at the back of the beach. Alix was left feeling foolish
and alone.
Stark against the sea stood the gaunt shape of Vestey's meatworks--
an investment of the beef baron, Lord Vestey, which had never got off
the ground. Standing empty and unused, it had been taken over by the
Army for a supply dump. The farthest point to the south was the tip
of the Larrakeyah Peninsula where some of the A.I.F. troops were
stationed.
As the troops built up, and the Air Force and Navy headquarters
expanded, Darwin became more of a garrison town. Bored troops roamed
the streets at night, sometimes throwing bottles and smashing windows
for amusement.
The top end of the highway to the south was still not completed. From
Adelaide River to Birdum there was only the railway line, and supplies
such as beer (regarded by all inhabitants of Darwin as a necessity) had to
come by ship.
As Army canteens ran out, there were near-riots. Soldiers roamed
Smith Street, breaking windows and shooting out street lights, and
chanting their disenchantment song:

The bloody town's a bloody cuss,
No bloody trams, no bloody bus
And no one cares for bloody us
So bloody, bloody, bloody.

The bloody flicks are bloody old
The bloody programmes leave me cold,
You can't get in for bloody gold,
So bloody, bloody, bloody.

And everything's so bloody dear--
Three and six for bloody beer--
And is it cold?--No bloody fear!
So bloody, bloody, bloody.The men had been too long with nothing to do, in a place which they
regarded as a sort of Army Siberia; they would rather have been fighting
in Europe or North Africa than kicking their heels in this outpost. The
A.I.M., which was Presbyterian, had recently built a club with billiard
tables and a library; but because many soldiers were shy or suspicious of
"sky pilots" it was not as well patronized as it might have been. John
Flynn had been present for the opening ceremony organized by the local
minister, who hoped, when beer was short, that servicemen would
patronize his tea and coffee bar.
There was little other entertainment in the town, apart from the
Chinese gambling dens and opium joints in Chinatown. A visit to these
narrow streets with their bright red signs in Chinese characters, their
entirely Asian population, was an entertainment in itself.

There was a Services section at Darwin Public Hospital, in addition to
the two Army hospitals and the Air Force Hospital. Naval surgeons lent
their skills, and some Naval personnel were treated. It was also the only
hospital to treat Aboriginal patients, but they were kept in a separate ward.
Alix was nursing a sick baby whose mother had no milk. The child
had been on a patent dried baby-food, supplies of which were interrupted,
so Alix was trying ordinary dried milk powder mixed with boiled water
and sugar. The baby was losing weight, had diarrhoea, and was so
apathetic that Alix feared he would die.
Surgeon-Commander Clyde Evans, coming through the ward when
Alix was trying to soothe the whimpering child, paused to examine the
skinny mite in her arms.
"What he needs is fresh milk," she said. "I can't get his patent food any
more, his mother has no milk, and he's not thriving on ordinary powdered
milk."
"I can get you some," he said at once. "The Naval mess usually has
fresh milk for breakfast; we've got a couple of cows down the line, where
there's still some grass left, and there's even been some hay ordered by
ship for them. I'll bring you some milk in the morning."
Alix had always liked the distinguished-looking grey-haired Commander;
she did not get on with Army types, not the top brass anyway;
but the Navy was different. The Commander was solidly built, with a
broad head--dependable, Alix thought.
"It's very kind of you, sir," she said, smiling up at him, and he went
away wondering why he hadn't noticed before what beautiful blue eyes
Sister Manning had. He was lonely, missing his wife and family in
Melbourne--but a Naval man should be used to that. It was this place;
the heat, the isolation, which was different from the isolation of a ship
that moved from port to port. Bloody Darwin! Only the old-timers liked
the place, and the Chinese, who could make a home anywhere.
True to his word, he brought her two screw-top lemonade bottles of
milk the next morning.
"I pinched them from the mess," he said. "A baby's life is more
important, even if the late risers have to drink their coffee black."
She thanked him and made up a mixture straightaway, the formula
with added water and sugar that was nearest to breast milk. The second
bottle she stored in the refrigerator, with a notice, "not to be touched.
By Order, Matron." She knew Enid would not mind her using her name
as authority.
Little Jimmy--was it because his name was Jim that she felt such a
personal interest in the baby?--began to put on weight at once, almost
growing visibly. Every second day Commander Evans brought a supply
of fresh milk, and though she sometimes had to supplement it with milk
powder, it was enough to make his little wizened arms fill out and his
eyes brighten. Soon he was a healthy, bonny baby. A ship came in with
plenty of stocks of Glaxo, and Jimmy was able to go home to his mother.
There were twenty-two nurses at the Darwin Hospital, most of them
younger women, though one had been an A.I.M. Sister at Wyndham,
and with her Alix struck up a friendship. She was a rugged individualist,
plain-faced and blunt-spoken; Sister Ellie Rowan reminded Alix a little
of Mab Kingston.
They ventured together into Chinatown, and went out to Fannie Bay
in a taxi, passing the gate of the notorious Fannie Bay gaol where
Aboriginal murderers and European criminals were incarcerated together.
The difference was, according to the taxi-driver, that the white prisoners
were allowed out by day to forage for themselves, as long as they came
back at night. If they were too late getting back, they would be locked
out.
"Locked out of gaol?"
"That's right. So they miss their free breakfast, see?"
They had passed through the green Botanical Gardens where the
luxuriant coconut palms had to be watered through the Dry, when no
rain fell for months. They drove past the Civil Aerodrome at Parap, then
along the cliff-top road to the Bay, which ended in East Point, where the
Air Force barracks were.
The taxi left them and they climbed over the low yellow sand-hills
festooned with purple-flowering convolvulus, keeping their shoes on, for
the sand was burning hot. The tide was receding, but there was still
enough depth of water for a quick swim.
Two Wirraways droned overhead towards the Air Force station beyond.
"I heard an Air Force man talking to a friend of his in hospital with
appendicitis," said Sister Rowan. "He says they've got nothing but a few
Wirraways, and five of those are grounded. He said there were plenty of
aircraftsmen and airmen and Air Vice-Marshals, but not enough aircraft.They've got eight Hudson bombers, some of them down at Batchelor,
and no decent fighters at all."
"Evidently the people running the war don't think Darwin is very
important."
"Then why are they building up the Army here, and opening a new
Army hospital?"
"I don't know. But the troops are bored. They hate it."
"Yes, an Army Sister was telling me that they are getting a lot of
psychiatric cases--it's unofficially known as 'going troppo.' Disturbed
soldiers who talk to themselves or walk imaginary dogs, and generally
behave oddly."
"Couldn't they be malingerers, trying to get sent home?"
"I expect some of them are. But apparently it is a real problem."

Alix missed Baby Jimmy after he went home with his mother.
"So the little man was well enough to leave?" asked Surgeon
Commander Evans when she told him the supply of fresh milk was no
longer needed.
"Yes, he's thriving, thanks to you. He's been putting on about seven
ounces a week."
"Well, you might as well keep the new lot I've brought for yourself. I
expect you'd like some fresh milk in your coffee for a change."
"I would, thank you."
"And what about a change from hospital fare? I'd like to take you to
dinner at the Hotel Darwin when you have a free night. I can't guarantee
that they'll have any wine--"
Alix hesitated. "It's very kind of you, sir. But--"
"But you don't want to mix work with socializing, right? Look, Sister,
I'm not trying to make a heavy pass at you. It's just that I'm lonely, and
it would be nice to have a meal with a woman for a change, instead of
my fellow officers. What do you say?"
She smiled suddenly. He really was nice. She liked his calm voice, his
air of self-sufficiency without the arrogance that some surgeons developed.
"All right," she said. "Tomorrow night, then?"
Chapter Twenty.-eight

After their first dinner together, which they both enjoyed, Clyde Evans
and Alix decided to make it a weekly date. On taking her back to the
hospital he got out of the Navy Jeep and escorted her to the door of the
nurses' quarters. There he kissed her lightly, and said, "Thank you, dear
girl, for a most enjoyable evening."
Alix told herself that it was a perfectly innocent relationship, there was
no comparison with Caro's situation. Certainly he was a married man,
but that need not stop them enjoying each other's company. She found
him very attractive, but he had assured her that he was not looking for
an extra-marital affair, and she believed him.
Sister Rowan teased her a little about it, for of course she soon knew.
"Lucky you!" she added. "He's gorgeous, isn't he."
"He is rather. But there's nothing like that between us. A strictly
platonic friendship."
When she met him again on duty his manner in the wards was
impeccable, though he smiled at her warmly. She looked at his firm
well-cut mouth and thought of that other doctor, at Cloncurry Hospital,
with his sensuous mouth and wandering hands and his habit of trying to
kiss her behind screens. The Commander would never do that, would
never force his attentions upon her. And yet, to be honest, she rather
wished he would kiss her again.
She'd had a disturbing letter from Alice Springs, warning her of the
scandal Caro and Dr. Trenowith were creating, and had written at once
to Caro, a stern letter she now rather regretted.
Meanwhile David and Caro were happy, seeing each other every day
and very often at night, unaware in their new-found content of the scandal
that was about to break.

By November of 1941 the civilian road crew, with back-up from Army
vehicles and supplies, had completed the section of highway from Tennant
Creek up to the rail terminus at Birdum. It was now an all-weather
metalled road, though unsealed and dusty. They were still working on
upgrading the existing track from the Alice to Tennant Creek.
It had deteriorated from extra use as troops and Army equipment and
road-grading materials were taken over it, then up the dusty highway toLarrimah, just past Birdum. The final section to Darwin was by the slow
little train called Leaping Lena.
Because of the sudden concentration of men in the empty north, the
Flying Doctor at Alice Springs was busier than ever, visiting the road
camps and bringing back sick or injured men to the hospital. David and
Caro were out nearly every day. They now worked smoothly as a team,
David sometimes piloting the Dragon on the way back while Caro gave
support and comfort to the stretcher case. Sulphonamide drugs were in
use and had proved effective against venereal diseases common to the
Army, and in helping the rapid healing of wounds and the cure of blood
poisoning.
Just as the two of them felt secure in their relationship, Caro first
became aware of a coolness in acquaintances such as Mrs. Reilly, the
resident doctor's wife, and the Matron of the hospital. At first it was
nothing she could put her finger on; she noticed that Matron no longer
invited her to afternoon tea in her rooms, and that she had not been asked
to dinner at the Reillys' for a long time. When she ran into Mrs. Reilly
at the post office one morning, her greeting seemed perfunctory, and she
hurried off after a few words, saying she had a hairdresser's appointment.
This was surprising, as her hair appeared as if it had only just been washed
and set.
Caro was a little puzzled, but thought no more of the incident until
David remarked casually as they met at the airport one morning,
"It seems that people are talking, darling."
"Talking?"
"About us. Our names are being linked together, as they say."
"Oh dear! That explains it... I mean, I've noticed a certain coolness
in the air."
"Yes. I was having a drink with a friend at the Stuart Arms, and he
gave me the tip. ... As a matter of fact, he said 'Half your luck,' or
something similar. Apparently it is generally believed in the town that
you and I are having an affair."
It was such an understatement that Caro smiled ironically. "Surely
not, Doctor!"
"I'm afraid so, Sister."
"Well, I suppose it was bound to get known in a place this size, and
where people haven't much to do but gossip. My mother warned me
about the possibility. I said we were very discreet."
"I thought we were. The trouble is, when I look at you I can't help it
showing in my face--that I love you."
"Me too."
He went to kiss her, but she stepped back. "No, not here, David! I feel
we're being watched. And that something beautiful is being pawed over,
besmirched by grubby little minds--"
"It was inevitable, I suppose. What now? We can stop seeing each
other alone, or we can say to hell with them and live together openly,
since the secret is out."
"You know that's not possible. Not if we're staying with the Aerial
Medical Service. It's all administered by a Federal Council now, you
know. Either one or both of us will be sacked."
"Of course I could join the Air Force. In fact I've been feeling that I
should, most of the younger men who can fly have joined already.
I couldn't stay here and never take you to bed. If you mean to give me
up--"
"David! Darling, you know I couldn't bear it either. But I'd better not
come to your house any more. As soon as we get a break, let's fly off in
your Moth together, just for an hour. And when we're coming back
from a routine immunization flight, there's nothing to stop us landing
somewhere on the way back. It will be like the early days when we had
to meet on beaches and in the bush. But in town, we'll be strictly on a
professional footing."
They flew off together to pick up a patient. At least they still had an
excuse for seeing each other. Caro was glad her mother's friend Maurie
Anderson was no longer in town to join the chorus of disapproval. He
had left to enlist as a Wireless Air Gunner with the R.A.A.F. He might
even, she thought, have written to Alix to warn her of what was going
on. She didn't want her mother worried.
She and David were being very circumspect, and suffering for it, in
the next week. Caro began to feel that perhaps she had imagined the
coolness among her women acquaintances. Then a letter came that
shattered her complacency.

I warned you about not causing a scandal [wrote Alix], but it seems
that is what you have done. Sister Bettens [a former A.I.M. Sister who
had married and stayed on in the town] has written to tell me of the
situation, and to beg me to use my influence to get you to stop this
affair with Dr. Trenowith. She says you are doing harm not only to
yourself, but to the image of the A.I.M. Sisters held by outback
people. ... It is only a matter of time, she says, before Sydney hears
about it, and either one or both of you will be dismissed. Most likely
the doctor, as he is a married man. But either way, you will be
disgraced, and will bring disgrace to your profession. I am sorry, Caro,
I know how much he means to you, but if you value your career--
and my peace of mind--you will end this liaison at once.
Perhaps you could get a posting to a different town, or something.
But I beg you to think seriously about it.
Your loving mother.p.s. Would you like to come to Darwin? I think I could get you on the
staff here, but only as a nurse, of course, not as a pilot.

Caro sat staring at this innocent-looking bombshell. So, everyone knew!
Her mother knew, and her mother's old friends in the A.I.M., and of
course the Matron and the doctor's wife and probably most of the nurses
at the hospital. David saw that she was troubled when they met again in
the course of their duties. She told him of her mother's letter.
"So! The cat is out of the bag!" he said. "I'm not going to stay to be
dismissed; I'll resign. I can always get another job flying, or join the Air
Force, but it will be much harder for you to get another pilot's position."
"Because I'm a woman!" said Caro bitterly.

After her mother's letter Caro became increasingly sensitive to the sly
looks, the smiles, and the whispers that accompanied her visits to the post
office or Pettit's Store.
"It's all very well for you!" she said when David told her to ignore
them. "You like notoriety; you told me so. But I feel exposed, like a snail
without its shell. Even at the hospital, though no one has said anything,
I feel the chill in the atmosphere."
"My dear girl, it doesn't matter what people think, as long as you are
comfortable with your own conscience."
"I am. I'm not ashamed of my relationship with you. Just I wish it
didn't have to cause gossip, and upset my mother. . ."
Caro rarely cried, but her bottom lip began to tremble.
He held her head against his shoulder and stroked her hair, soothing
her like a child. "There, there! It's all right, dear. It will all blow over,
you'll see."

On one occasion when Alix and Commander Evans shared a bottle of
red wine from pre-war stocks at the Darwin Hotel, Alix found it went
straight to her head. She was over-tired after a busy day in the ward. "My
heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my limbs as though of Lethe
I had drunk," she thought, but not aloud. She had tried her steak and
found it good. She began telling him about Cappamerri Station, and how
they used to have steak for breakfast, but no eggs.
He raised his glass and smiled into her eyes. "I like to hear you talk,"
he said.
On the way back to the hospital he parked the Jeep above the sea and
turned off the lights. There had been a heavy thunderstorm earlier and
the air was humid, but the sky was clear of cloud. The setting moon
made a golden track across the sheltered waters of the harbour.
"How many hundreds of thousands of years," said Alix dreamily, "that I

moon has shone across the water here. Before there were men, or
wars. ..."
"Alix," he said, "I'm giving you fair warning--I'm going to kiss you."
"Oh!" she said, rather breathless, and next moment his firm cleanshaven
lips were pressed against hers. Her head sank against his shoulder
and for a long moment she was lost in a sensation she had almost
forgotten. He lifted his head and looked into her eyes in the moonlight.
She said nothing, but he had felt her response.
"I told you, when I first asked you out, that I wouldn't be making a
pass at you. But you're so nice, and understanding, and kind, and pretty,
it's very hard for me."
"Are you going to tell me you are married, and your wife doesn't
understand you?"
"No. My wife is a very understanding woman, and I love her. I
promised myself at the beginning of this war that I wasn't going to cheat
on her, whatever happened. She trusts me. But . . . Oh hell, do you
mind if I kiss you again?"
"No."
This time he pulled her right across into his seat, and she clung to him
fiercely. But he soon put her firmly back in her seat on the other side of
the four-wheel-drive gearbox, and started the engine.
"I'd better take you back, Sister. On duty in the morning?"
"Yes . . . seven a.m." Her voice shook a little.

Back at the hospital he kissed her once more, but said firmly, "I'm sorry
about tonight, Alix. . . . No I'm not! I'm glad. But it won't happen again,
I promise."
Alix went to bed in something of a daze. Her own response to Clyde
Evans had startled and shaken her. She'd lived for so long without a man,
become so used to it. ... But she wished her letter to Caro unwritten.
She had forgotten what it was like to be young. What a pompous, pofaced
missive it must have seemed to the poor child!
And as for herself, she realized she'd been only half alive. So when
Clyde asked her to go on a picnic one Sunday to the Dripstone Caves,
she hesitated only a moment. They'd not had another dinner date-- apparently he thought it wiser. But a boat trip round the harbour in the
daytime--there was no risk in that.

He cast off expertly from the long jetty and reversed the light open boat,
which, Alix thought, looked large enough to carry twenty ratings.
"I don't know much about boats," she said over the noise of the engine,
"I've lived so much of my life inland."
He brought out a small map and showed her where they were going,
north around the various points to Casuarina Beach."It's about sixteen miles by sea," he said, "and inaccessible by road.
You see this tidal creek here, Rapid Creek? The area is all mangroves and
crocodiles, and there's no bridge."
They chugged across a turquoise sea towards the smoke-hazed north
shore. Alix wore white cotton slacks and an open-necked shirt of pale
blue, with a shady hat. At eleven the sun was already hot enough to burn.
She went back to sit beside him in the stern, to ask about the caves
they were going to see.
"I don't know much about them," he said. "They sound interesting,
though--Dripstone probably means they are limestone caves, with stalactites.
I believe there's a little sandy cove where we can beach the boat at
high tide."
As high tide was around 2 p.m., they would have to get there in time
for an early lunch, and leave again no later than three in order to get
back around the rocky headland before the sea went too far out. They
rounded the last point and saw ahead the long sweep of Casuarina Beach.
A small double headland of limestone jutted out into the sea; at its apex
was a perfect little cove with a sandy beach.
"This is it!" said Clyde. "The caves are at the back of the cove, or so
I'm told."
They scrunched softly into the sand and he cut the inboard engine.
Alix, eager to see the caves, was over the side and scrambling up the
beach before he had the kedge anchor fixed in the sand. When he followed
he found her staring at two little caverns, about six feet deep and less than that high, in the low cliffs.
"You mean those are the famous Dripstone Caves?"
"Er--apparently, yes." He looked apologetic, but suddenly he saw the
funny side of it and began to laugh.
"And I brought a torch and spare batteries, and a length of twine so
that we could find our way back to the entrance!"
They both sat in the sand and laughed. "Well, at least they're big
enough for us to sit in the shade to have our lunch," said Alix cheerfully.
Higher up the cliff were a few little hollows from which water dripped
down the face of the rock. "Dripstone, you see," he explained.
"And you said there would be stalactites," said Alix in mock reproach.
They made a pleasant meal of cold salmon mousse, which Alix had
begged from the hospital kitchen, with salad and a half-bottle of hock.
He climbed up to the first of the damp hollows and collected some of
the sweet, clear water for them to drink.
"It would be very handy if you were marooned on the beach around
here," he said, "to have drinking water on tap."
"Don't talk about being marooned!"
"Which reminds me," said Clyde, "that we must watch the tide. The
given times are not always accurate. In fact I'll take the boat and the anchor out a bit now, in case the water falls and we can't launch her."
They scrambled around the rocks to the next beach, and Alix looked
wistfully at the sparkling sea and the clean sand. No chance of having a
swim. There were not only Portuguese men-of-war, called bluebottles,
but the deadly box jellyfish whose sting could be fatal in minutes.
Both came close to shore in the summer months, with the northerly
winds.
Clyde had put a stick in the sand at the edge of the water in the first
cove. By the time they returned from their walk the tide had started to
drop. He had been circumspect; he had not touched her hand until now,
when he helped her into the boat. But just through the touch of his warm
fingers Alix felt the electric attraction between them.
And then the engine would not start. Clyde swore, and tried the starter
over and over, until he had to stop or flatten the battery. He took out
spark-plugs and looked at them helplessly. He was no mechanic. But he
methodically searched for a loose wire, a loose battery connection,
anything. And the sea steadily receded.
"I could push her out into deeper water," he said, "but if the engine
doesn't start? She's too heavy to row."
Alix sat petrified. She could not offer any useful suggestions. She could
only think, her imagination leaping ahead, of their being forced to stay
together in this little cove till someone rescued them--perhaps not before
tomorrow. The scandal if they stayed out all night would be as bad as the
one brewing in Alice Springs.
The tide fell. The boat tilted on dry land.
"Could we--could we walk back? At least as far as Fannie Bay?" she
asked.
"My dear girl," he said rather testily. "There is no way we could get
across Rapid Creek even if you could wade it at low tide; it's infested with
crocodiles. Then miles of mangrove swamp. ... If we walk round the
coast, it's a lot further, and we'd still have to cross the tidal creeks."
When she suggested lighting a fire as a signal for help, he explained
that the Aborigines were lighting fires all the time on this coast, and no
one would take any notice. Once it got dark he could signal with the
torch, but when the tide was out, no passing boats would be close, and
they couldn't come in anyway. There were no other trippers here because
of the wartime rationing of fuel.
"This bloody engine!" he said, and gave it a kick. The tide was running
out fast, but he tried the starter again, and suddenly the engine burst into
life. It must have been something simple, he said, a flooded carburettor
or a damp distributor, or perhaps some loose connection that his kick had
fixed. But the boat was immovable on the damp sand. He switched off
the engine. "I'm sorry, Alix. This is all my fault."
The boat was tilted uncomfortably, so they went back to the caves."There is one each," he pointed out, "in case we have to spend the night
here."
Indeed, it seemed there was nothing else they could do. There was a
little bread and butter left from their picnic, and there was plenty of water,
so they made a frugal meal.
"The next high tide is at two-thirty a.m.," said Clyde. "We should be
able to get the boat off by two. Say two hours to get back, and half an
hour to tie up and walk to the hospital. There'll be a moon from ten
P.M., and I have the torch so we won't be run down. With luck we might
get in before anyone is awake."
"I only hope so!"
"Of course, if the engine refuses to start again. . ."
She didn't want to think about that possibility.
He collected some driftwood and made a small fire. The night was
clear and starry, but it was not cold. He spread the thin checked rug
which before they had used as a tablecloth.
"You don't really want to wait in a separate cave, do you?" he asked.
"At least we can talk."
She was silent, sitting with her face averted, looking at the dark sea.
"Alix? You blame me for this, don't you? I swear it wasn't planned.
But since we're here. . ."
He put his arms around her and pressed her head down on his shoulder.
The neat bun that she wore was coming loose, and curling strands strayed
down her neck. He kissed her ear, and turned her face till he could reach
her lips. At first she responded, but when he pushed her back on the rug
she turned and buried her face. "You promised. . ." she muttered.
"I know, I know. But it's so wonderful to have a woman in my arms
again. I've been thinking about you ever since that night. Alix, I want
you so much, you're so sweet, such a dear--"
She sat up, a little apart, and mechanically tidied her hair.
She said in a low voice, "You don't understand. Apart from everything
else--and there's your wife, you know that you still love her, and you
would regret this afterwards--there's my daughter. Caro is involved with
a married man, a doctor in Alice Springs. I wrote to her just the other
week, scolding her for causing a scandal, and telling her she must give
him up. And now, here am I. . . I You see? Even if we do cause a scandal
here, whatever people think and say, I'll know it's not true. I couldn't
face her otherwise; I'd be such a hypocrite."
"But when you wrote, you couldn't have known--"
"That I was going to fall in love with you? No, but that doesn't alter
anything. Let's go for a walk around to the next beach now the tide's out,
and watch the moonrise. Then I'll have a few hours' sleep, on my own."
"My dear girl, you'll be quite safe with me, now that I know how you
feel. You are right, of course. And I would never pester you."
By the time they came back from the beach beyond, they could see
the tide had already started on its way in, though it was still four hours
to high water. Clyde insisted that Alix should have the blanket under her
on the sand in the larger cave. He persuaded her to let him hold her
quietly in his arms until she fell asleep. At 2 A.M. he called her. The
moon, past full, was well overhead.
The boat was now afloat. Alix held her breath while he tried the engine,
but it started almost at once. They set off over the sparkling sea towards
Darwin Harbour.
On the way Clyde explained that he'd decided not to go round to the
wharf, but to run the boat into Doctor's Gully. From there they could
climb quickly up to the hospital grounds.
"She'll be all right on the sand," he said, "and I can take her round to
the wharf at three or four tomorrow afternoon."
Soon after 4 A.M. Alix, with her heart beating painfully, crept into the
nurses' quarters, using her own key. Back in her room she was overcome
by relief, but immediately began to feel hungry. Fortunately she put on
pyjamas before going to raid the pantry, for on the way back she met
Sister Ellie Rowan on her way to the toilet.
"When did you get in?" she asked. "It must have been pretty late."
"Yes, we ate out, but I woke up feeling hungry."
Alix was surprised at how easily the lies slipped out.
"You look wide awake. Your cheeks are flushed and your eyes are
shining. Are you sure you're all right?"
"Perfectly all right. Go to bed, Ellie."
Alix realized how lucky she had been. She could have met Ellie as she
was creeping in, fully clothed, with the bottoms of her slacks wet with
seawater.Chapter Twenty-nine

The British, American, and Australian governments had for some time
been aware of the possibility of war with the Japanese, who had been
building up their navy and air force and behaving with increasing arrogance.
The French Vichy Government had yielded to their demands for
bases in Indo-China, and conceded them the use of eight air-bases there.
This left Malaya open to attack.
Just before midnight on December 7, 1941, the Japanese began a series
of surprise air attacks across the width of the Pacific, from Shanghai to
Hawaii, from Hong Kong to Pearl Harbor, and the United States Pacific
Fleet was decimated.
A few days later the pride of the British Fleet, the battleships Prince of
Wales and Repulse, were sunk off Malaya. The Australian High Commission
in London received a cable on Christmas Day, which read:

WITHOUT IMMEDIATE AIR ASSISTANCE SINGAPORE MUST FALL. NEED FOR
DECISION AND ACTION IS A MATTER OF HOURS, NOT DAYS.

And Churchill announced with fine rhetoric, "Singapore will be defended
at all costs."
Yet the island was left defenceless, its guns all pointing uselessly out
to sea, while the Japanese advanced rapidly down the Malay Peninsula.
The British sent a consignment of Hurricane fighters in crates, still not
assembled, which arrived when the bombs were already falling.
There had been vague fears of expansion by our northern neighbours
for years past. This had been referred to ironically as "the Yellow Peril,"
but now the peril was real. In mid-December the government in Canberra
issued instructions for the evacuation of Darwin, with a list of priorities:
women and children first, and each household to take only one suitcase,
two blankets, eating and drinking utensils, and a water-bag. Pets were to
be destroyed.
Thousands of soldiers spent Christmas and New Year putting barbed
wire entanglements along the beaches. Concrete gun emplacements were
manned and armed. As the apparently invincible Japanese moved steadily
southward, there was fear not only of aerial attack, but actual invasion.
David told Caro that he was going to join the Air Force immediately.
Her face fell. "David! But--"
"Caro, I must. It looks as if we'll be fighting the Japs in our own
country, and I'll have to be in it."
"But there are plenty of young men joining up--"
"Yes, but they need some experienced older men. Besides, I'm a doctor
and they'll need medical men in Darwin. Perhaps they'll keep me on the
ground, though I hope not. . . . Cheer up, darling!" he said, looking at
her woebegone face. "I won't be leaving until they get a replacement,
and with so many young doctors joining up, that'll take some time.
Come, dear, it was you who said we must stop seeing each other. It will
be easier this way."
"It will be easier for you, with all the excitement of being in the war,
and new powerful aircraft, and travel, and danger--"
"I promise to be careful, and to come back to you."
"Hah! Your middle name is danger. You thrive on it. Promise me,
promise me you won't get killed." She clung to him, weeping.
"I promise."
Caro was relieved for Alix's sake, and desolated for her own.
She worried about her mother, who might soon be in the front line.
She wrote to Alix to reassure her that David was leaving to join up.
Meanwhile, until he was called up, she meant to enjoy every moment
with him that she could.
David wrote to ask his wife if she was going south to Adelaide--worried
that she might turn up in Alice Springs. But she replied that there was
no panic in the town, and she was in no hurry to leave.
She wrote that many women wanted to stay on with their husbands,
but unless they were in essential services they would be forced to go
eventually. There was tension in the town, but also a sense of unreality.
People could not believe that they were in danger from the Japanese,
those polite little men seen around the port, or on the pearling luggers.
Of course, it was said that they had all been spying on the north coast for
years. . . .
Meanwhile Alix had learned from Dr. Evans that there were only five
Wirraway fighter planes in Darwin, and they were unserviceable. The
other nine were down the line at Batchelor, sixty miles away. As Wirraways
had already proved useless against Japanese Zeros, there was in fact not
a single fighter to defend the town against an air borne attack. There were
anti-aircraft gun emplacements, but no modern Bofors guns. And morale
in the Army and Air Force was low.

The new hospital opened in January, when patients and staff moved into
comfortable modern quarters at Kahlin. But it still had the drawback of
the old hospital, if it came to war; it was just as near to Larrakeyah
Barracks, an obvious enemy target. But there was a large Red Crosspainted on the white roof. There was also a hospital ship, the former
coastal passenger ship Manunda, in the harbour to ferry injured patients
out of Darwin.
The new twelve-hundred bed Army hospital at Berrimah, nine miles
away, was no safer, for it was only a mile from the end of the main
runway of the R.A.A.F. aerodrome. It was not yet finished and was only
partly occupied when it opened in January.
Alix had been relieving the Theatre Sister in the new Kahlin Hospital,
so that she was frequently brought into contact with Surgeon-Commander
Evans. He became increasingly worried about the Japanese advance, and
predicted that it would not be long before Singapore fell.
The victorious Japanese swept down the Pacific, landing in the Dutch
East Indies and taking Ambon Island, from which they could fly to
Darwin. "You girls shouldn't be here when the Japanese troops land. You
should go south, even if only as far as Katherine," said the Commander.
"We can't go and leave all our patients," objected Alix obstinately.
"And surely we can defend Darwin, with a bit of help from our friends."
"We can't rely on the protection of the British Navy any more," he
said gloomily. "Their whole Far Eastern empire is falling apart. We can
only hope that the Yanks will regard Australia as a great unsinkable aircraft
carrier and base for their operations in the Pacific, and therefore worth
defending."
During the first week in February, Alix was on night duty. Towards
midnight she went out on the hospital veranda for a breath of fresh air.
The night was oppressively humid and the sky heavy with storm-clouds.
The black clouds were broken into ugly, angular shapes along their edges,
and among them she saw the pallid moon, past full, which seemed to
her distorted, out of drawing. In spite of the heat Alix shivered. She felt
there was something hateful about the night.
She was just turning to go inside when the air-raid siren shattered the
quiet.
She rushed to the Surgical Ward she had just left, where some of the
patients, being sedated, had not stirred. Others were sitting up in alarm.
"All right; keep calm," said Alix. "If the bombing comes close, I'll get
you all to lie under your beds. But we'll wait and see."
Matron came in in her dressing-gown. "Yes, better not do anything
yet. It could be just reconnaissance planes," she said. Her hair fell down
her back in a long, thick, shining red plait.
They all strained their ears but could hear no sound of aircraft engines
or ack-ack guns. After a while they relaxed.
It was more than an hour later when the all-clear sounded, and
meanwhile half the population of Darwin--white, Aboriginal, and Chinese--had
been sheltering on the beach below the cliffs. Some had
brought pillows and blankets. After an hour huddling on the beach, the people decided that a Japanese attack could be only marginally worse than
the ferocity of the sand-flies and mosquitoes, so they went home. Not a
single aircraft had been heard. The air-raid alert had been a false alarm.
But Darwin was now wide open to air attack, and still without proper
defences. Those residents left in the far north felt cynically that the
Commonwealth Government, safe in Canberra, had decided to abandon
them to the Japanese while they concentrated on strengthening the
populous cities to the south.
On February 15, 1942, Singapore fell, and seventeen thousand Australian
troops disappeared behind the bamboo walls of prison camps. The
Japanese had already moved into the islands north of Australia. Timor
would be next, and then Darwin.
Sister Rowan was just on her way to the theatre when Clyde Evans said
to her seriously next morning, "I hope you've got plenty of dressings ready
in the theatre, Sister. It's only a matter of days before we're raided. I hope
the R.A.A.F. knows what it's doing. . . . They've only got those little
stumpy-winged Wirraways--home-built jobs. They'll be no match for
the Jap Zeros. And they don't have enough range with their Hudson
bombers to worry the Japanese bases."
Two days later the anti-aircraft guns nearly shot down some transport
planes (bringing troops back from Japanese-occupied islands to the north),
mistaking them for enemy aircraft. This incident added to everyone's
edginess and did not improve relations between Air Force and Army
administrations. The last civilian women had now been evacuated, in
theory; but in fact there were still sixty or so in the town, some working
in the post office, some part-Aboriginal or Chinese women who had not
been counted.
Some of the older men for whom the "Top End" had been home for
many years, had practically to be carried, kicking, to the railway station
or wharf. Some went south by air liner, but the commercial services to
Adelaide were infrequent, while Qantas flying-boats round the coast to
Brisbane and Sydney were not considered safe from Japanese attack.
The Administrator's wife and all of her household staff were still at the
Residency.
On February 17, a convoy of troopships on its way to Timor turned
back after being attacked by Japanese bombers. They steamed into Darwin
Harbour on the eighteenth, and those who were expecting the Japanese
to arrive any day shook their heads. The enemy knew where the fox had
gone to earth. They would inevitably follow and try to finish it off. Among
the ships was the American destroyer U.S.S. Peary, which would be a
prize.
Then on the morning of the nineteenth, a squadron of United States
Air Force P40 Kittyhawks, which happened to be in Darwin, returned
from an abortive flight to Timor. They confused the issue so that asimultaneous warning from the look-out at Casuarina Beach that a large
formation of Japanese planes was approaching was all but ignored at
R.A.A.F. headquarters.
"How do you know they're Japanese?" asked the control room "They
could be the P40s."
"Because they've got bloody great red spots under their wings!" came
the reply. Within a minute the first bombs fell on the harbour, and the
air-raid sirens belatedly began to sound.
The P40 pilots made a desperate, valiant effort to get off the ground
again, but most of them were shot down and destroyed before they could
get any height. Only one, still in the air, was above the Zeros and
managed to bag two. The Japanese had thrown in twenty-seven low-level
dive-bombers and twenty-seven high-level bombers, with an escort of
Zero fighters that were fast and manoeuvrable. The squadron of P40s was
lost, along with the useless Wirraways destroyed on the ground, and the
lives of several American airmen.
Darwin and its harbour full of forty-five ships at anchor was a sitting
duck.
Chapter Thirty

It was a beautiful warm morning with a gentle breeze off the sea, when
the Japanese force of eighty-one war-planes arrived over Darwin. The sun
shone, a few steamy white clouds patterned the sky.
The radar warning system was not yet operating. Through a series of
bungles and plain incompetence, a radio warning from Bathurst Island
twenty minutes before went unheeded. Though a raid had been expected
for weeks past, the town was unprepared; people were going about their
morning shopping, banks and post office were busy, the Court was sitting,
when without warning the bombs began to fall on the harbour.
Inexorably the explosions marched along the jetty to the shore, over
the administration buildings, the Administrator's residence, the police
barracks. A direct hit on the post office sent up a black cloud of dust and
smoke, and ten people, including several women postal clerks, died in
the slit-trench where they had just taken shelter. The post-master's body
was found sitting grotesquely in a tree, while his wife and daughters had
all the clothes blasted from their bodies.
Then it was the turn of the Darwin Hospital, while the Army barracks
nearby were not touched. (It was thought afterwards that the enemy pilots
had mistaken the hospital buildings for the barracks.)
Sister Rowan was in the theatre preparing for an operation to be
performed by Surgeon-Commander Evans. The nurse assisting had gone
along the veranda to get the patient from the Surgical Ward. She came
running back, shouting that she had seen Japanese planes dropping bombs
on the harbour. The sound of the sirens reached them at the same time
as the noise of the explosions.
Alix had been transferred that week to Casualty. There she was to have
one of the busiest days of her life. First she ran to her quarters to get her
steel helmet, then went to help move bedridden patients under the beds
and pile mattresses on top for protection, while those who could walk
took to the bush or the beach below the cliffs.
Six huge explosions shook the hospital. Concrete and glass were hurled
through the air, part of the ceiling fell in, but no patients were hurt. The
naval ward and the laundry were demolished, and the theatre was
damaged, though it was still usable.
The nurses crouched half under beds. A huge rock came crashingthrough a window on to an empty bed, bounced off the mattress and
rolled away without causing any injury. Alix shut her eyes; her steel
helmet felt heavier every moment, but she had little faith in its protection.
The noise was terrifying. The roar of planes, the explosion of bombs, and
the sound of falling masonry filled the air.
Then suddenly it was over. The sound of aeroplane engines faded into
the distance, the explosions sounded farther and farther away. The nurses
got up from the floor and began putting the ward to rights, settling patients
back in bed, sweeping up broken glass and debris, and dusting bedside
lockers.
Within ten minutes of the first bombs falling, casualties began to arrive.
The Medical Superintendent told Alix to carry on alone, as the casualty
officer was needed elsewhere. She was to give anti-tetanus injections,
suture what wounds she could, and send on to the doctors only those
cases she was unable to treat herself.
Her courage rose to the occasion. It was many years since she had
sutured a wound, and nearly thirty since she had stitched up Jim's
abdomen gored by a bull. But her hand was steady and her voice calm
as she reassured shocked and burnt patients. The first case, a badly
smashed leg, she had to send on to the surgical team. She heard afterwards
that it had been amputated.
The first casualties were brought along by Constable McNab, the
Reverend Chris Goy of the A.I.M.--he still had shaving soap dried on
his chin--and Sergeant Bill McKinnon. Injured seamen were groaning
in pain, their bodies blackened by burning oil in the harbour. Eight ships
had been sunk and many others beached and burnt. The U.S.S. Peary had been blown out of the water, killing eighty of her crew and her
captain; but the U.S. seaplane-tender William B. Preston, though hit in
the stern, put up a smoke-screen and somehow got away to sea.
One Catalina flying-boat managed to escape destruction. Perhaps she
was hidden from the Japanese by the pall of smoke from the ammunition
ship Neptuna, which was burning nearby. The two Qantas captains raced
down to the wharf and had themselves ferried out in one of the launches
bringing oil-covered and desperately wounded men from the sea. They
managed to take off in the flying-boat before the Neptuna, glowing
red-hot, went up like a giant bomb. Without a crew, they were able to
fly the machine to safety at Groote Eylandt. Next day they came back to
shattered Darwin to pick up the crew--the same day the Japanese occupied
Timor, the last link of the Australia-England air route.
Even the hospital ship Manunda had been hit by bombs. Afterwards
Alix learned that a nurse she knew had been killed, and another seriously
injured.
In Casualty, Constable McNab remained to help Alix by receiving
patients, taking their details if they were fit to give them, and presenting them to her in order of urgency. He cleaned the blood off the floor and went for extra bandages and splints. Alix treated some horrifying wounds;
one young sailor had his face split open from forehead to chin. She gave
him an injection and sent him on to Surgeon-Commander Evans without
delay.
She and the theatre nurses had been on their feet for seven hours when
they left for a hurried meal in the nurses' quarters. They had not eaten
since breakfast. On the way Alix and Ellie Rowan met the Medical
Superintendent, who told them that an evacuee train was leaving for the
south with all the women remaining in Darwin, as a Japanese landing
was imminent.
Alix and Ellie looked at each other. "We can't possibly go, and leave
all these patients to look after themselves," they said. With eight other
nurses, they volunteered to stay on.
In the nurses' dining room a young Sister rushed up to them.
"Oh, Sister Manning! Have you heard the dreadful news?"
"What, have the Japs landed?"
"No! They've let all the prisoners out of Fannie Bay. And most of them
are in for rape!"
"Good," said Ellie, "if the Japanese are coming tomorrow, then give
me an Australian tonight."

Half an hour after the all-clear, the warning sirens had sounded again.
The Japanese had come back with fifty-four bombers, and this time they
concentrated on the Air Force Station, criss-crossing it with precision
fire-bombing until every building was a smoking shell and every aircraft
completely destroyed. But only six men had died.
The greatest damage was to morale. Airmen and aircraftsmen, clerks
and administration staff wandered about dazed and bewildered. Then a
message began to spread from group to group: "We've been ordered to go
into the bush south of the town, and regroup."
Exactly where, nobody seemed to know--in fact the order, though
vague, had specified "a mile out of town and into the bush." A stampede
began, and soon the station was deserted. Some of the men turned
up at Adelaide River, some at Batchelor, some even managed to get
to Daly Waters. After two days there were still three hundred men
missing.
Immediately after the second raid an attempt was made to move out
all the women and children left in the town. A party of nuns from the
Catholic Mission at Garden Point shepherded a flock of part-Aboriginal
girls and one boy, who were given transport in an open coal-truck to the
south. But Aboriginal women were given no such priority; they were
simply told to go bush. Many of them had children at the missions or
the official Half-castes' Home, where they could at least visit them, butnow they were to be separated by a thousand miles. One old black woman
keened to herself as the train departed, with unconscious poetry:

My kid Ruby leave longa train,
Missus, she gone longa plane.
Me can't stay Darwin, me go bush.
Maybe I die. All-a-same.

Passenger planes leaving were full, and at the airstrip at Adelaide River
there was the spectacle of young civilian men elbowing women aside and
offering double price for their seats.
The one idea was to put as much distance as possible between themselves
and the murderous Japanese. In what became known as the
"Adelaide River Stakes," hundreds hurriedly left town in whatever vehicle
they could commandeer, including the two town night-carts. It was a
panic flight.
Chapter Thirty-one

At eleven o'clock the night of the raid, the flow of casualties ceased.
During the afternoon an urgent request had been sent to the A.G.H.
Army Hospital at Berrimah for some relieving nurses, and four were sent
at once. But the back-up team of surgeons which had been promised in
an emergency never materialized.
Alix, having taken an hour off for supper and put her feet up on the
table in the nurses' dining room, volunteered for duty in the theatre,
where Sister Rowan had been on her feet for sixteen hours.
Clyde Evans, his eyes bloodshot but his hands as steady as ever, was
still operating. He gave Alix a nod and his eyes smiled at her over his
mask. She was startled to feel a surge of love move in her as she watched
his sturdy figure. She felt happy standing shoulder to shoulder with him
and passing instruments, double-counting swabs with the theatre nurse,
and exchanging a few words with the anaesthetist, a younger man who
was showing signs of fatigue. The strangeness and tension of the day had
somehow speeded up reactions and intensified her feelings.
Watching those sensitive hands with their spatulate fingers moving so
deftly, cutting and tying off, probing and stitching, she remembered
something she had not thought of for years; her first love, Dr. Hamilton,
the god-like surgeon she had worshipped from a distance: a pure and
hopeless love, unrequited and unconfessed, yet she had never forgotten
him.
Clyde Evans was probing with forceps in a mass of torn flesh, extracting
angular pieces of metal.
"Bloody Japs are using daisy-cutters," he muttered. "Antipersonnel
bombs, they're called. They whizz along a few inches above the ground
after they explode, and can cut a man to pieces."
'"Anti-personnel!'" said Alix. "Wonderful, isn't it, how armies
have jargon to reduce their horrors with reasonable-sounding phrases.
Like 'over-kill' and 'fire-power' and 'optimum casualties' ... I hate
war."
"I suppose I am trained for it. But I hate it too."
"My husband was killed in the last one."
His tired eyes left his task for a moment to flash her a look of sympathy.
"Well, at least you have your daughter to remember him by.""Yes ... I used to worry about her flying, but of course it has become
much safer since she first started."
She scarcely knew what she was saying. She could only think, I love,
I am in love, and nothing else matters.
It was one-thirty in the morning when they finished. The last patient
was slowly waking up in the recovery room, unaware that he had lost one
ear and part of his left cheek. The surgeon tore off his mask and theatre
cap, and Alix helped him out of his bloodied gown.
"You go and get some sleep, Nurse," she said to the young theatre
nurse. "I can clean up here."
For the moment they were alone. He pulled off Alix's cap and took
her in his arms, pressing her curly head against his shoulder.
"Dear girl," he murmured. "Thank you for your help."
Alix smiled dreamily against his shoulder. "Do you know," she murmured,
"that when I was about eighteen I was in love with a surgeon.
He was an honorary at the North Adelaide Hospital where I trained. I
loved him dearly. And he was hardly aware that I existed."
"He must have been blind," said Clyde, stroking her hair.
"No--he was much older; I suppose he'd be an old man now. And he
was married, you see."
"I see." She felt him grow tense.
"And now I am in love with you. After all these years. It's as
though--"
"Oh God, Alix. I'm so tired, I'm not thinking straight. But you know
that I still love my wife, whatever I feel for you. You mustn't expect--"
"I expect nothing." She smiled at him serenely.
He kissed her eyes and her mouth, and put her from him.
"Go on, get to bed. You must be dead on your feet."
She had accompanied the patient to the Surgical Ward and checked
that his breathing passages were clear, when she heard an altercation in
the corridor.
The Medical Superintendent had just returned from a summons to
Larrakeyah by the Director of Army Medical Services, which now controlled
all hospitals in Darwin. He announced that the Army wanted the
Kahlin Hospital evacuated, and all patients removed to Berrimah Army
Hospital "for safety."
Surgeon-Commander Evans exploded with anger. He had been under
stress for hours, making life-or-death decisions, straining eyes and nerves.
Now he insisted that his patients should not be disturbed when some of
them were recovering from major surgery.
"I won't allow them to be moved," he said obstinately. "They're under
far less risk from being bombed than from complications caused by being
moved too soon."
But the Army Medical Director was adamant, and the doctors at the hospital had no choice but to comply. "And let it be recorded that I do
so under protest," said Clyde Evans angrily.
"Well, Alix," he said, putting a hand on her arm. "No rest for the
wicked, eh? The Army trucks will be here soon, and we've got three
hundred patients to get ready for transport."
Matron Mackay began to supervise the move, her head swathed in
plaits, not a hair out of place, her uniform spotless.
Sister Rowan, who had just got to sleep, was called and told she had
to start work again. "The bloody Army!" she said to Alix. "I wouldn't be
an Army nurse for quids."
The walking wounded got themselves to the trucks; the rest, some of
them unconscious or still in a state of shock, were carried outside.
Fortunately the night was clear.
When they arrived at the A.G.H. in the early hours of the morning,
they found that it was full. There were no beds; but the unflappable
matron had mattresses spread on the floor in wards and on verandas. The
weary civilian nurses stretched out fully dressed on mattresses in the Army
mess.
They were not reassured by hearing that one patient had died from a
machine-gun bullet while under his bed that day. Looking up, they saw
that the roof of the supposedly "safe" military hospital, nine miles from
Darwin, was as full of holes as a colander.
Later in the morning nearly two hundred sick and wounded were taken
to the harbour and embarked on the damaged Manunda, hoping to reach
Perth. As they were loaded on the tender, they saw the piles of dead lying
on the beaches like stacks of firewood.
There were so many dead, some quite impossible to identify, and the
weather was so hot, that something urgent had to be done. It was Clyde
Evans who gave the order for them to be placed on a barge and taken out
for burial at sea.
Beached and broken ships; smoking hulls; pieces of metal debris from
the Neptuna, all littered the foreshore. Half the jetty was gone, and the
water was choked with shattered craft which were exposed as the tide went
out. Many of the wharfies who had been unloading ships at the jetty were
dead.
The gaol had not been hit by a bomb but had been strafed and shot
up. The eighteen terrified Aboriginal prisoners, some of them on ten-year
sentences for murdering the crew of a Japanese pearling lugger, were told
to go bush.
"And if you see Japanee-man, orright you kill-em this time. Japaneeman
no good."
The bemused natives set off at a run, and probably didn't stop till they got to their own country. Of the European prisoners, at least one had
distinguished himself that day in tireless rescue work in the midst offalling bombs and burning oil on the harbour. He later received a pardon
and a citation for bravery.
In contrast, by the following morning there were nearly twelve hundred
refugees at Adelaide River, the end of the road. They were milling about
the railway station where the evacuee train was about to take off for
Birdum, one long step on the way to the south and safety. Some of the
civilians tried to rush a railway truck and had to be stopped by Army
officers firing over their heads or at their feet. The commanding officer
then conscripted them into a labour force. Everyone believed that martial
law was in force, though in fact the Army had not been given this power.
Nor did the Army do anything to stop the looting of empty houses by
their own men in the next week.
Bands of Military Police, with no authority but for their armbands
and pistols, began systematically looting; first the liquor stores, then shops
in the main street, and then private homes abandoned by their owners.
Men working in key positions in radio transmission or helping at the
hospitals went home to find their houses stripped bare.
By now the M.P.s were nearly all drunk, shooting wildly with pistols
and threatening owners who protested. Soon everyone joined in the
free-for-all: officers and men, Australian and American, Air Force and
Army. The nearly new Darwin Hotel was stripped of furnishings, after
all the liquor had been taken from the bar and cellars. Even Government
House was not exempt. A valuable grand piano belonging to the Administrator's
wife simply disappeared.
Senseless destruction went on for days. Many upright pianos were
ruined by having beer poured inside the lids. Sheets and curtains were
ripped, rifle-bullets were put through ceilings, drawers of papers and
clothing were emptied on floors, fibro walls kicked in.
Not only portable goods were taken. Men commandeered trucks to
transport refrigerators, sewing-machines, and radios to the wharf to be
sent south or sold to ships' crews.
Perhaps it was release from tension, combined with alcohol, and the
frustration of not being able to hit back at the Japanese airmen. The
ferocity of the two raids had paralyzed the town, but no troops invaded
--which was just as well, in the first week of looting, panic, and
disappearing down the track.
As the Medical Superintendent at Kahlin Hospital said disgustedly
to Surgeon-Commander Evans, "Two hundred Japanese armed with
frying-pans could have taken the town yesterday!"
Chapter Thirty-two

Caro heard of the bombing at the same time as the rest of Australia:
through the morning paper. Though the country had never been attacked
since the British landed their occupational forces in 1788, the newspaper
headlines were not unduly large.
Darwin bombed, they announced. "Fifteen dead, twenty-four wounded. Enemy planes shot down."
Even as the truth began to filter through, as refugees reached the south
with their tale of destruction, the government clung to its lie. Accounts
of American losses began to appear in the United States press, which did
not tally with the official figures; but Canberra was still bent on playing
down what had happened. In fact, 250 people had died at least. The
final figures were never certain, and could have been nearer to a thousand.
Four days later the first refugees since the bombing began to arrive in
the Alice, with a very different story. Meanwhile the Flying Doctor
Service--as it was to be known officially from this year--had been asked
to lend any available ambulance planes to fly out women and children
still not evacuated, including children from the island missions to the
north and a very pregnant Chinese woman.
"My God, I hope those bastards didn't bomb the hospital," said Caro
to David. "I hope Mum is all right. What if the Japanese land in the
north? Everyone knows it's not properly defended."
Caro asked the Council in Sydney for permission to fly to Darwin. It
was known that the road beyond Adelaide River was unusable, and the
few commercial airliners could not cope with the numbers of refugees.
She could bring back half a dozen passengers sitting up, and Connellan
Airways had offered to make a plane and a pilot available to Dr. Trenowith
in an emergency until her return.
It was two days after the raid when permission came through, and she
then had to get a clearance from the Army to fly north. The fact that she
was both a nurse and a pilot helped. She arranged to refuel at Army
depots along the way, and set off at dawn on February 22.
Compared with some of her cross-continent flying, it was easy--no
navigation problems as she followed the wide new clearing for the road,
even easier to follow than the old Telegraph Line.
Daly Waters had become a back-up Air Force station, and at Katherinethere was an Army hospital. She reached Adelaide River, seventy miles
south of Darwin, in the early afternoon. She had been directed to land
there to pick up refugees because the Darwin airports, both civil and Air
Force, had been so torn up with bomb craters and littered with burnt-out
aircraft that they were unusable. Caro ignored the direction and flew on
as far as Batchelor, eight miles farther north, where the R.A.A.F.
Wirraway unit was stationed.
It had just occurred to Caro that she would not be able to see her
mother, or even speak to her, for the Darwin Post Office and Telegraph
station were gone and so far communications had not been restored.
Radio messages from Air Force Command in the south were being
intercepted at Batchelor, and then flown on in a little Moth training plane
to the R.A.A.F. base in Darwin, as there was no radio communication
with Headquarters. In fact communications between the two bases were
so poor even before the raid, that the first news the Batchelor unit received
of what had happened came over the railway telephone line.
The messages-by-Moth were not much faster than a pony express, the
men told her, but they were being flown as fast as possible by the squadron
leader, an ace pilot. When Caro heard his name she asked to see him.
Caro had caused a bit of a stir by landing out of the blue in her little
Dragon. The Squadron-Leader was intrigued.
She introduced herself: "Caro Manning. Sister Manning, actually. I'm
the Flying Doctor pilot stationed in Alice Springs, and I need to get to
Darwin."
"Civilians are definitely not allowed to fly in that direction," he said,
but he smiled under his luxuriant handlebar moustache, admiring her
trim figure in khaki overalls.
"Not even in the Flying Doctor plane? I've been asked to pick up
refugees and fly them south."
"Yes, from Adelaide River airstrip, not Darwin."
Caro tried another approach. "You know, she mightn't remember me,
but I used to go to the same school in Adelaide as your wife, in fact we
were contemporaries. She and I were two of the lucky ones who rode
horses to school."
"Caro Manning! Of course, I've heard Maisie speak of you. She's still
mad about horses."
"Well, now I'm mad about aeroplanes."
"Yes, I remember hearing about your exploits. You trained at the Aero
Club, and bought your own kite."
"I just want to get to Darwin Hospital," she explained. "I want to see
if my mother is all right--she's on the nursing staff there. I hope to
persuade her to leave Darwin before the Japanese arrive. If you were
flying up there with a radio intercept--"
"H'm." He looked at her consideringly. "You look fairly professional in your flying gear, but no one could mistake you for an airman, with
that figure. If anyone asks, you'd better be an Air Force nurse flying in
as a replacement. The Air Force hospital was badly hit."
He had a reputation as a rather flamboyant character, and unconventional.
Caro was not disappointed. An hour later she was seated in the
second cockpit of the Moth and skimming over the long yellow grasses
and the red ant-hills on her way to the bombed port.
He had explained that he would be landing at Berrimah to deliver his
message, and she could inquire at the 119th A.G.H. there, which was
near the R.A.A.F. airfield. They would know the position at Darwin
Hospital.

Though she was enjoying being in an open aircraft again--she had
borrowed helmet and goggles at Batchelor--Caro could not relax for
worrying about Alix. Had any nurses been killed?
She could not believe afterwards how well it had all worked out. The
little Moth taxied almost to the entrance of the Army hospital; and Alix
was actually there, and off duty, resting on her bed.
"Caro! How on earth?"
"Mum! You're all right, then!"
They were both talking at once, laughing and crying and kissing each
other. Caro explained how she'd hitched a ride from Batchelor, and had
flown from the Alice to pick up refugees: "And I wish I could take you
back with me, but there's no room for you in the Moth. I wish you'd go
south, though."
Alix explained that she had been offered a place on the last train, but
had decided to stay. "Someone has to," she said reasonably. She asked
about David, and Caro told her he had joined the Air Force.
Alix looked down and turned a little pink. "As a matter of fact," she
said, "I've done just what I was scolding you for, in my letter--fallen in
love with a married man. And he will never be divorced, and doesn't
want to be. Oh, Caro! I feel so alive, so young again. We're both doing
important, necessary work here. Why would I want to go south?"
"Good for you," said Caro. "After all, you're not much over fifty."
Alix told of the exhausting day and night of the raid, and how hundreds
of casualties had been treated, but things were easier now that so many
had been shipped away in the Manunda. "Many of them will never make
it to Perth, and will have to be buried at sea. But at least it has relieved
the pressure on us here."
"But you promised me you wouldn't join an Army hospital."
"I didn't! The Army Medical Director made us all move here, with
our patients, in the middle of the night, in case there was another raid
on Darwin."
"So you were bombed?""Yes--red crosses on the roof notwithstanding."
"Is he--this man--a doctor, by any chance?"
"He's a naval surgeon. We worked together in the operating theatre.
He's a fine surgeon."
"I'm sure he is. Let's go out in the grounds, shall we? I have to be
ready when the Moth comes back to pick me up. Ten minutes, he said."
It was then she noticed the bullet-holes in the ceiling.
"And this is the 'safe' hospital, is it?"
"It was only strafed. And they were probably aiming at the antiaircraft
guns on the Air Force base--it's so close."
"That was completely flattened, apparently. We flew over the harbour
coming in. It's horrifying, the tide is half out and there are all these
skeletons of ships sticking up out of the water."
"Yes. And so many sailors were caught in the burning oil that day. I
was in Casualty. There was so much suffering, that after a while you
became numb. They were still being brought in until nearly midnight."
They heard the noise of a single-engined aircraft, and the yellow-painted
Tiger Moth came trundling towards them, taxiing all the way from the
base, dodging craters. Caro hugged her mother. Alix looked bewildered.
"I won't be able to believe this, afterwards," she said. "Here for ten
minutes! From nearly a thousand miles away! It's ridiculous."
"Yes, I know. But I just wanted to find out if you were all right. There's
no telegraph or mail, and there've been rumours that more than a
thousand people were dead. Officially we were told fifteen."
"Hah!" said Alix. "Fifty times that, I would say. And they're still dying
of wounds. One nurse has been killed, but not in our hospital."
"Well, you take care."
Caro dodged the turning propeller, climbed into the cockpit, and pulled
on her flying-helmet. She waved goodbye as she looked down from the
air at her mother in nurse's uniform. Suddenly Caro was blinded by tears.
That small white-clad figure looked so vulnerable standing there between
the bombed airfield and the strafed hospital.
By the time they got back to Batchelor the sun was setting. Caro was
given a service hut with a bed, but got to it late, as the airmen decided
to celebrate having such unexpected female company by holding a party.
At Adelaide River next morning, she circled round and pretended she
was just coming in from Alice Springs.
Fortunately the pregnant Chinese woman had already found a seat in
a passenger plane; Caro would not have been able to attend to her as well
as pilot the Dragon if the woman started giving birth. There were four
young part-Aboriginal girls and two Catholic nuns and an Italian woman
who spoke no English. The nuns tried talking to her in Latin, without
much success. The children sat on the stretcher side by side, wide-eyed
and silent. They had seen a plane land and take off, but they'd never been inside one. They sucked quietly on the barley sugar that Caro had
distributed all round as a precaution against airsickness.
The South Australian Government had been adamant that it did not
want a flood of Chinese and part-Aboriginal refugees in its tidy little city,
so probably only the Italian woman and the nuns would get as far as
Adelaide.
They stopped at Katherine for refreshments and a walk in the fresh air
for the Italian woman, whose plump pale face had begun to turn rather
green as the ground heated up and the little Dragon began to bump up
and down in the thermals. When they landed she explained that the noise
of the engines was giving her a headache, or so Caro understood it: "Ho
mal di testa--il rumore dei motori," she moaned. It was a wonderfully
expressive phrase, Caro thought.
Back at the Alice that afternoon, she handed over her passengers to the
authorities. The girls were taken to the home for half-caste girls, and the
Italian woman took a job as a cook, while the Catholic Church paid for
the nuns to go on by train to stay with a religious order in Adelaide.

As the American presence in the Philippines became less tenable, it
seemed that President Roosevelt realized the full importance of Australia
as a base for U.S. forces, land, sea, and air. Troops began arriving in
Sydney and Brisbane, and much-needed aircraft, from Flying Fortresses
to Kittyhawks.
The Australian Air Force was so short of suitable aircraft that the
government had been impressing privately owned planes, even DC
84s and little Fox Moths, for transport requirements or conversion for
ambulance work. Caro realized that if Fafnir were not already in an
essential service, she would have been taken by the government--not
without some financial compensation, but nothing could compensate her
for the loss of her precious plane.
David had not been called during the two and a half days she had been
away, except for a consultation with the Tennant Creek Hospital doctor.
For that he was able to fly himself in his little Gypsy Moth.
Caro told him about her adventures when they met for dinner that
night, defying gossip. Now that he had decided to join up, knowing that
they were soon to be separated, they didn't care if they were seen alone
together.
"She's so obstinate, she won't hear of leaving, though one nurse has
already been killed," said Caro of her mother.
"Now I know where you get it," he said teasingly.
She made a face at him. She had been talking without stop, telling
him about the flight, losing no opportunity for drama as she described
how she had wangled a flight to Darwin, and the squadron party:
"They're so young, none over twenty-two, and they know how shorttheir life-expectancy is. It makes them light-hearted and reckless, not
depressed."
"I know. I was young and reckless in the last war, remember?"
"David! Can't you let younger men fight in this one?"
His face darkened. "I'm not all that old, for God's sake! I'll only be
forty next birthday."
"And I'll be twenty-seven. My mother was married and a mother by
now. When I was little and asked, 'What did you do in the war, Mummy?'
she would answer, 'I had you!'"
"And a very commendable achievement, too. She should have got a
medal."
"I'm talking too much. Someone once told me that I could talk the
hind leg off a donkey. Whatever that means."
"I like to hear you prattle."
"prattle!"
"Just a joke. It's been most interesting to hear about Darwin at first
hand. Obviously the evacuees are going to have a very different story from
the official one. And try not to worry too much about Alix. Now that the
Japs have devastated the place, perhaps they'll leave it alone."
Chapter Thirty-three

For three weeks bodies continued to be washed up by the sea, burnt and
decayed beyond recognition, and were quickly buried without ceremony.
The beautiful turquoise waters of the harbour were choked with sunken
ships, the sandy beaches littered with burnt-out hulls that had drifted
ashore. For a week the smouldering jetty sent up a column of smoke
which hung in the humid air.
Though later there were to be some night raids, it became apparent in
the first weeks that the enemy preferred daytime take-offs and landings,
so that raids tended to occur in the late morning or early afternoon. At
first there was a lull, though Japanese planes continued to appear, and
the skies were made uneasy with the sound of high-level reconnaissance
planes. One day ten Zero fighters circled overhead, but there was no
attack. Nor was there any sign of a Japanese landing.
Nerves were beginning to unwind. Nurses no longer hurried patients
into slit-trenches or under beds. Then on March 4, eight Zeros came
screaming in over the roof at low level for a machine-gun attack on the
R.A.A.F. Station. A Hudson bomber was destroyed on the ground, but
there were no casualties.
The Kahlin Hospital staff were still quartered in the A.G.H. at Berrimah,
though it seemed to be one of the most dangerous places since the
enemy were no longer interested in bombing the town or the harbour.
The Army in another about-face decided that the A.G.H. staff should go
inland and establish a hospital at Adelaide River, admitting at last that
their new hospital was badly situated.
Three days later the evacuation began. A convoy of ambulances with
fifty patients and twenty-two nurses set off on the sixty-mile journey down
the road, to set up a camp hospital in tents, with no proper washing
facilities for the nurses and a makeshift operating theatre in a tin shed.
This left much more room at Berrimah for the Kahlin nurses and doctors.
A second convoy was to go south in a week or two, for there were still
patients, some of them elderly, who had been brought in as refugees from
Malaya. One old lady, Mrs. Wilson, had spent all her married life there.
Having been used to a retinue of Malay servants, she was rather imperious
in her manner of demanding a bedpan. But once she was on her feet she
offered to help the nurses, who humoured her though in fact she rather
got in the way. She kept mislaying the steel helmet issued to all walking
patients.
Then on March 16 the Japanese made a determined attack with
fourteen bombers. Again the R.A.A.F. base seemed to be the target. As
the air-raid sirens sounded, Alix, hurrying through the front hall, saw old
Mrs. Wilson pushing open the fly-wire door. She wandered out on to the
veranda, calling, "Has anyone seen my tin hat? I can't remember where
I put it. . . ."
Alix followed her and tried to bring her inside, but she stopped by the
door like a balky horse.
"Come, Mrs. Wilson, come inside."
Looking towards the R.A.A.F. Station, Alix saw the smoke and debris
go up from a direct hit and she knew there would be casualties this time.
Then she saw an enemy bomber, hit by a lone anti-aircraft gun. With
his plane on fire, the pilot immediately headed back towards the sea,
jettisoning his bombs.
Alix could see them; she was sure they would fall short of the hospital.
But she gave Mrs. Wilson a solid push that sent her through the door.
She heard the explosion; fearing the approaching shock wave, she went
to throw herself into the hall. But before she could do so, something hit
her in the back and knocked her flat. At first Alix thought it was just the
blast that had hit her, for she felt no pain. But when she tried to move,
she found that she could not. Her legs were paralyzed; there was no
feeling from her waist down.
She thought, My spine, and knew it was serious.
Then a nurse with short red hair under her cap was beside her, and
shouting for orderlies and a stretcher. Alix looked at her vaguely, thinking
she was back at Kahlin, and that Matron Mackay had cut off her plaits
of long red hair.
"My back ..." she murmured. She had been flung on her face and
rested her cheek on the floor. The nurse reached across her. Alix felt no
touch, but saw that her hand, when she drew it back, was covered in
blood.
A blanket was pulled under her and then she was slid sideways on to a
board, with as little movement as possible, and from there on to a bed in
the Surgical Ward. She still lay partly on her face. Sister Ellie Rowan
came and touched her hair, with a jocular remark about "that old trout
Mrs. Wilson. You saved her life, worse luck, and now she's complaining
that you pushed her." But rolling her eyes up and sideways, Alix saw that
her friend's face was stricken. Then she heard Matron Mackay's voice.
"Surgeon Evans is coming," she said. "Sister Rowan, you'd better
prepare theatre, there may be several cases. An ambulance has just
brought two R.A.A.F. ground staff in, but one died in Casualty and the
other was dead on arrival. There are sure to be some more casualties."
"Yes, Matron."
Then Enid Mackay was gently touching her hand as it hung limply
over the side of the bed. Alix smiled against the low pillow. "You didn't
cut your hair off after all," she murmured. Enid patted her hand.
Shock and loss of blood, she thought: Alix's mind was wandering. Alix
murmured, "I'm thirsty." A nurse was setting up a drip bottle beside the
bed.
Enid gave her a small piece of ice to suck.
"Ri-dic-u-lous," enunciated Alix clearly, her mouth feeling less
gummed up. "Here am I being a patient, when I should be nursing the
wounded."
"There are plenty of nurses," said Enid. "This wouldn't have happened
if we'd been back in our own quarters. Damn the Army!" And then,
"Here is Surgeon-Commander Evans to look at you."
"Hallo, Alix. What have you been up to?"
He came round and stood by the bed where she could see him, then
sat down and began taking her pulse. His strong jaw was painfully set.
But the touch of those long fingers was infinitely soothing.
He asked to have the clothes cut away from her back, and drew in his
breath sharply as he saw the jagged hole in the white skin. A large piece
of shrapnel must have done that, and some of it would still be inside,
perhaps resting against the spine. Removing it would be dangerous; yet it
couldn't be left there.
"I want the patient prepared for surgery," he said to the nurse, "but let
her rest a little and recover from shock. Nil by mouth, and plasma
intravenously."
He sat down again and lifted Alix's hand. "Can you close your fingers
on mine? Good. Now tell me what you feel."
He stuck a needle into her right leg, then her left; she did not react.
"Which foot am I touching?"
"I can't tell. None."
"Mm. Any pain?"
"Not really. I just feel numb. It's my spine, isn't it?"
"I'm afraid so. If it's just pressure from a piece of shrapnel, I may be
able to remove it. We'll see."
He held the back of his hand against her cheek in what could have
been construed as feeling if she was feverish, but which Alix knew to be
a caress. Then he left her and conferred privately with Matron Mackay.
Enid could see by his face that the prognosis was not good.
"There is no sensation in the lower limbs," he said. "The spinal cord
is evidently damaged, which probably means she can never walk again.
But the wound is so massive, I fear there may be other internal injuries
--kidneys, ruptured bladder, the peritoneal cavity. I can't tell till I have
a look. As soon as the B.P. stabilizes, I'll operate.""There's already an urgent case in theatre, Doctor. An American
serviceman, caught in machine-gun fire. Six others with less serious
injuries are on their way in."
"Why don't they send us some fighter aircraft?" he cried angrily. "Do
we just have to sit here and take everything the Japs care to throw at us?
The Top Brass don't seem to care what happens to us up here."
"Of course not," said Enid Mackay with a grim smile. "This is 'The
Top End,' Capricornia, the land fit only for goats. Heaven knows why
the Japanese should want it."
"They don't. They just want to stop the Americans using it as a
base."
Half an hour later, Alix was wheeled into the theatre. Clyde Evans was
disturbed to find that her temperature was up and her pulse had risen.
Lying half on her side, she smiled at the anaesthetist, whose wife had
stayed on to work the hospital switchboard and had been hit in the leg by
shrapnel on the day of the big raid. She had now been evacuated to the
south.
Clyde, in gown and gloves, his iron-grey hair hidden by a surgical cap,
leaned over and looked into her eyes.
"Alix, I'm going to try and remove the piece of shrapnel that caused
the wound. If it's lodged against the spine it won't be in very deep. You'll
be out of here soon."
She smiled at him dreamily. They had given her some pre-operation
sedative, hyoscine hydrobromide or something, her mouth was dry and
her thoughts floated. She felt no fear. She remembered how when she
was about eighteen she used to lie awake fantasizing that she had tried to
kill herself for love, and that Dr. Hamilton was attending her, too late to
save her life, and full of sorrow at her approaching end.
Silly girl that she had been. To have even thought about suicide, when
life was so interesting, such a challenge. Who would want to leave it
voluntarily?
A little later the surgeon gave a subdued oath. "Christ, look at this!"
he muttered. Inside the jagged hole the spine was broken, the left kidney
pulped, the piece of metal lodged somewhere in the peritoneal cavity.
The smell told him that the bowel was pierced.
He could only do more damage by probing about in there. There was
nothing to be done but sew her up again.
When Alix slowly woke in the recovery room, Sister Rowan was by her
side.
"Well . . . was it very . . . big?" she asked, her voice slow and halting.
"Can I see it--the bit of shrapnel?"
Ellie Rowan shook her head. "It's still in there, Alix. He couldn't
remove it."
"Oh." Her breathing was laboured now. Rowan's face was moving in
and out of focus in a most peculiar fashion. Alix squinted in an effort at
concentration. "That's--bad, eh?"
"It's not good. Don't try to talk now. Commander Evans asked to be
told as soon as you woke up. I think he has a soft spot for you."
"Think . . . so?" Alix smiled. She felt her cheek move against the
pillow. "Ellie--turn me a bit. So I can see him. It doesn't . . . hurt,
honest. I feel . . . strange. Floating."
"You've lost a lot of blood."
But Alix was not fooled. "No. I'm dying, aren't I?"
"Don't talk like that."
"Please--fetch him."
If she still had any doubts, she knew as soon as she saw his face. He
tried to smile at her, but his lip trembled, and he bit it fiercely. He took
her hand, and lifted it to his cheek.
Sister Rowan discreetly withdrew.
"Tell me ... It's bad, eh?"
"I couldn't do anything. The wound is too massive. There is extensive
damage--" He stopped and covered his eyes with his other hand.
"It's all right. I've had a good life, an interesting life. It's just ... I
wanted to see ... my grandchildren. Write to her, Clyde. You tell Caro
Tell her. . ."
"Yes, yes. Oh, my dear! Now it's too late, I wish we hadn't been so
high-principled. I wish we'd been lovers."
"No. You'll be glad . . . when you go home."
"I suppose so." Her hair was loose, spread in light, soft curls about her
shoulders. He twined a curl round one finger. "Such pretty hair!"
She stared up at him. He was gently stroking her forehead. Instead of
grey, his hair looked fair, his forehead smooth and high. Dr. Hamilton
was at her bedside, taking a regretful farewell, just as she had imagined
it. Her pale lips moved in a contented smile. The room seemed to be
growing dark, but she could still see his face. Clyde Evans bent his head
and kissed her mouth before it became cold.

It was ironic that the very next day the first of three squadrons of No 49
American Fighter Group arrived in Darwin. Two more squadrons of
Kittyhawks finally arrived in April, flying from Brisbane by way of
Cloncurry, Mount Isa, and Daly Waters. These aircraft had been promised
for some time, and when they failed to appear the airmen at Batchelor
began to refer to them as "Tomorrowhawks" and "Mythhawks." Once
the three squadrons had arrived, a Japanese attack force came in, as usual
expecting little opposition, and thirteen of their planes were shot down.
General MacArthur arrived in Australia, flying from the Philippines
by way of Darwin, and set up his headquarters in Melbourne. Soon he
was to be appointed Commander-in-Chief of all forces in the southwestPacific area, and begin an offensive against the Japanese to north and
east.
By now the United States Army Air Force had many transport planes
at Amberley in Brisbane and American troops were arriving there daily.
The Royal Australian Air Force had four squadrons of Catalinas in
Townsville, Queensland, with sufficient range to reach Rabaul, in the
Bismarck Archipelago, and return.
Since the March 16 raid all nurses, except the few male nurses in
Darwin, were sent down to Adelaide River. The raids continued, but now
not without cost to the enemy. Commander Evans, back at Kahlin, looked out and shouted in triumph as he saw two Zeros twisting seawards,
the red round suns glowing under their wings as they turned, smoke
pouring from them as they plunged into the harbour.
He shook his fist. "That'll show you, you little yellow devils!" he
shouted.
He felt a personal hatred for the Japanese since they had got Alix. And
he had seen so many terrible burns and wounds. Yet in the past he had
treated Japanese pearl divers suffering from the bends, and had admired
their courage when they said they intended to go down again.
Darwin had become hateful to him, with its shattered buildings, its
beaches strewn with oil and stinking decay. He longed for a shipboard
posting, somewhere far away from there, on the clean ocean.
The hardest thing he had to do, next to attending the funeral, was
writing to Alix's daughter. He had asked the authorities to let him break
the news first, before she was officially informed.

Dear Caro [he wrote]. We have never met, but I feel that I know you.
Perhaps your mother told you that in the last few months we had
become close. Therefore it is with a particularly heavy heart I write to
tell you that on March 16 Alix was caught by a piece of flying shrapnel
from a Japanese bomb, and died about an hour later. I tried to operate
but found such massive internal injuries that it was impossible to do
anything for her.
She felt no pain. This is not the usual reassurance handed out to
relatives. She felt no pain because her spine had been severed and she
was paralyzed below the waist. She talked to me of you; she even
smiled. She died peacefully in my arms. . . .

The A.I.M. padre, the Reverend Goy, conducted the service, and
spoke of her years of work in isolated posts in the outback. He quoted
a little prayer of John Flynn's: 'God, give me work till my life shall
end, and life till the work be done.'
Your mother was a brave and beautiful person, and a gallant comrade
through that dreadful twenty-four hours after the first raid. She refused

to leave for the south, and worked to the end as she would have wished.
Now she is gone, but many will remember her as a friend and a fine
and dedicated nurse.
Chapter Thirty-four

Within three months the armada of aircraft carriers and war-planes which
had caused such havoc at Pearl Harbor and Darwin was at the bottom
of the Pacific Ocean.
At the Coral Sea Battle in May 1942, with combined U.S. and
Australian naval vessels, and air squadrons from Townsville and Cairns,
the Japanese suffered their first defeat. In the following month at the
Battle of Midway they lost four aircraft carriers; 280 planes went down
with the ships, and 52 aircraft and their crews were destroyed in combat.
It was a loss of ships, aircraft, skilled airmen, and "face" from which they
never fully recovered.
Caro rejoiced as she read of this major setback to the hated enemy.
The British Government had left Australia to sink or swim while it got
on with the war in Europe and the Middle East--aided by Australian
troops and airmen--and America had come to the rescue.
Caro's first reaction on receiving the news of her mother's death was
one of disbelief, then grief, then anger against the Japanese airmen who
had done this. At first she read the letter uncomprehendingly, her mind
simply refusing to take in the stark fact. When the full impact hit her,
she beat at the letter lying on the table, until she bruised her fists.
"No, no, no!" she sobbed. "Not Mum! It can't be. They've made a
mistake. ..." But slowly she realized that it was true, that she would
never see her mother again. She went and lay down on her bed, staring
out at the perpetually blue sky, that sky from which the bombs had fallen
in a lethal hail.
"Those bastards!" she shouted, bounding up again and pacing round
the room. "Oh, I wish I could fly up to New Guinea and have a crack
at them!"
They had killed an innocent nurse on the Manunda, and now her
mother, besides all those girls in the post office at Darwin. Somehow,
vowed Caro, she would get into the Air Force in however lowly a position,
and help in the defeat of the Japanese Empire.
The official letter from the Army Director of Medical Services was so
full of cliches about "the supreme sacrifice" and "our glorious dead" that
it was almost meaningless.
Letters also came from John Flynn; from the Flying Doctor administration, as it was now for the first time officially called; from the hospital
staffs in both Cloncurry and Darwin.
Matron Enid Mackay sent a moving tribute, but the letter Caro
cherished most was the one from Surgeon-Commander Evans.
"This is the man Mum told me about," she said as she showed it to
David later. "You can see what a nice bloke he is. But he was married,
and there was no future in it, so she said."
"She didn't believe in divorce."
"No; but she didn't judge you and me. She is very fair-minded ... I
mean she was." Hot tears scalded"her face. "God! I just wish I could join
the Air Force and help beat those bastards!"
"You! You're the one who said you wouldn't even roll a bandage."
"That was before they started raiding us. Perhaps we should just let
them land in the north, and try to march across the continent. They
wouldn't have a clue, in their green little rocky islands, what the heart of
Australia is really like. They'd disappear like the Roman legions in the
deserts of Persia."
"I don't know. They're tough little men, and adaptable. ... I suppose
you could join the W.A.A.F.s."
"The Women's Auxiliary? No, thanks! It's only for clerks and telegraphists
and washer-uppers--jobs that are regarded as 'suitable for women.'
I want to be a pilot."
"Dear girl, you haven't a hope. They won't even allow W.A.A.F.s into
forward areas."
When David's call-up came through in May 1942 they went for a last
picnic in his Tiger Moth, which he was handing over to the Air Force as
a trainer. He piloted her north up the highway to the spinifex-covered
Burt Plain, then they turned west. Just as some stony ridges began to
appear ahead, he circled lower, and there, lying like a perched lake in a
rocky hollow, appeared a clear blue pool.
"Anna's Rockpool," he wrote on a slip of paper and passed it to Caro,
pointing downward as he did so.
Yes, it looked inviting, but surely he didn't propose to land in this
country? He circled again and swooped down past a ruined stone hut.
Here the scrub and spinifex fell back and a bare, eaten-out area surrounded
it, which had never recovered though the place looked long-abandoned.
He came in low over the crumbling walls and, while Caro held her
breath, did a side-slip to lose height and touched down in the red dust.
The tail-skid bit into the ground and they pulled up just short of a rocky
outcrop.
"Scared you, did I?" he asked complacently as they climbed out. "I
checked this place out years ago, when I had a call to Napperby Station,
about thirty miles further west. This hut is the remains of Old Napperby."
They walked hand in hand to a second rocky hill and he led the way

in a steep climb to the top, by way of an overgrown track. It was hot; she
was wearing shorts, and the dry silvery grass pricked her legs.
The south-east Trades had begun to blow for the Dry season, and on
top of the hill there was a delightful breeze. And among the rocks, like a
natural reservoir, lay a round basin of water, so sheltered that the rocks
on the far side were perfectly reflected. It was hard to tell where water
ended and air began. Leaning above the water was a group of ghost-gums
with pure-white trunks.
Caro stood entranced. It was the most beautiful swimming place she
had seen since Mataranka. They left their clothes on the rocks, and swam
and sported like two young dolphins, making love in the water. A second
time they came together on their spread towels on the strip of red sandy
earth. Afterwards David carried her back into the water for a wash: even
her hair was red with dust. Then they lay and dried off on the rocks,
partly in the gum-trees' shade. High above, kites circled endlessly against
the clear blue sky.
"Remember how we let the eagle go?"
"Mm." She felt too lazy and filled with well-being to talk.
Back at the hut, a flock of white cockatoos was perched like a frieze on
the ruined stone, perhaps waiting for the intruders to be gone so they
could return to the rockhole. They took off in one shrieking, cursing
mob.
"Perhaps they're the ghosts of the people who've died round here."
"Have people died round here?"
"That's why the old homestead is deserted," said David. "It was back
in the early days, 'when the blacks were bad.'
"The two men who took up Napperby were resting inside, with their
guns in the wagon out the front. A mob of blacks crept up and threw
lighted sticks and set the spinifex roof on fire. You know how fiercely it
burns. One man ran outside and was speared; the other tried to shelter
under his bed and was incinerated."
"And the blacks?"
"Oh, the locals organized a big 'nigger hunt.' There were not many
left around here after that."
"Of course," said Caro softly. "They were defending that beautiful
permanent rockhole--as precious to them as life itself. . . . And then
the whites went away and abandoned it after all."
She handed him an apple from the picnic basket, and shook out the
crumbs of cold Camp Pie and bread. Instantly some big black ants arrived
and fell on the bits of meat and demolished them.
"Meat ants," said David. "They're ravenous."
Caro looked at them soberly, keeping her feet well away. Between the
eagles and the kites and the ants, there would be little evidence but bones
within a short time of any massacre around here.
In June David left for R.A.A.F. headquarters in Brisbane. When the
new Flying Doctor arrived, Caro could scarcely keep from staring, as they
met for their first flight together and she drove him out to the aerodrome.
Except for a dark tie, Dr. Ray Cantor was dressed in shining whites
from the solar top on his dark curly head to the shoes and socks on his
feet: white shirt, white duck trousers with a white belt. Caro was wearing
a hat with a thick fly-veil to keep out the swarming flies, so she was able
to hide her expression of amused astonishment. He was a young man not
long out of medical school, but so enthusiastic, so keen on his work and
interested in the people and places of the centre, that she soon grew to
like him.
Caro was feeling depressed after David left, but his first letter from
Brisbane brought some good news.

You'll never believe it [he wrote], but my wife has fallen for someone
high up in the Army. Apparently he helped her to get away during the
last panic in Darwin, and she wants a divorce! Of course it could take
years, but she's going to start proceedings in Melbourne immediately.
Needless to say I won't contest it, but for one thing--I won't have you
named as co-respondent. I've written to tell her so, and that I'll give
her evidence of adultery. That should be easy enough; I'll get one of
the "Brisbane Ladies" down the Valley to earn an easy hundred pounds
by saying I spent the night with her. So we'll be able to get married
properly after the war.

His next letter came from an undisclosed address in the Northern Territory,
because of security regulations. He wrote in disgust that they would
not let him do any fighting or even medical work in New Guinea, but
had made him Squadron-Leader of an Air Force Ambulance Unit. Some
of the planes, he said, were only Dragon Rapides, not much better than Fafnir, and one was a Fox Moth, but he had been given a converted
American DC2.

I have to get used to having a co-pilot sitting alongside me [he wrote].
It's hard, after so many years as a loner. I wish you could be my
co-pilot. We are stationed somewhere near my old field of operations.
Maybe I'll get as far as New Guinea. But they won't let me fly a fighter
plane. That's for boys of nineteen and twenty.
There are lots of refugees arriving from there and from the Philippines
and New Britain, who need ambulance transport down to the A.G.H.
at Adelaide River. Just as well the Americans are here. Apparently
Prime Minister Curtin begged for just one aircraft carrier, or a few fast
planes--thousands of our own airmen are fighting over there for
Britain. But they "couldn't be spared." Now the British have offeredsome squadrons of Spitfires, next year. Talk about too little too late!
Churchill said, "We will not let Singapore fall." It fell because of
British complacency and unpreparedness. You should hear the men
who got back from there describe the British Air Force Base: "Acres
and acres of playing fields, tennis courts, golf courses, swimming pools,
clubs and bars." Oh, it was well organized--for a pleasant peacetime
bash.

Caro put in her resignation for the end of the year, and started making
inquiries about the Air Transport Command's ferry service for aircraft.
She knew that women pilots were employed in Britain by the Air Transport
Authority. Her childhood idol, Amy Johnson, had been killed while
ferrying an aircraft to England.


Chapter Thirty-five

For months Caro beat her head against a brick wall, trying to get through
to Australian Air Force authorities that she was just as competent to ferry
aeroplanes as a man, and that she could free a male pilot for combat
duties. She was advised to join the Women's National Register, and the
Women's Auxiliary Air Force. But women pilots were not wanted.
There were now twelve thousand "airwomen" in the W.A.A.F.s--none
employed in flying. She went to Brisbane for an interview with the
R.A.A.F. officer in command of Air Transport, a man of nearly fifty with
many years' experience as a commercial pilot in Australia.
He informed her briefly that women were not allowed into combat
areas nor any farther north than Cairns. She could join the W.A.A.F.s,
many of whom were stationed in Townsville.
"I don't want to be a W.A.A.F.," she explained. "I'm a qualified pilot
and aircraft engineer, and I want to use my skills for the war effort."
"My dear girl," said the officer, "you may be quite a good pilot, but
one reason why we don't have women in the Air Force is that as soon as
we had trained them to be of use, they would go and get pregnant."
Caro got up and left him. She had heard there was an American Air
Force transport unit commanded by a legendary flyer, Captain "Pappy"
Gunn, formerly manager of Philippine Airlines. She sought him out at
Archerfield Aerodrome in Brisbane, where the unit was based. With a
handful of officers and men, and a strange assortment of aircraft from
Dakotas to ageing C39s, three Liberators that had just arrived from the
States, and a twin-engined Commando, he was organizing the delivery
of men to planes without pilots, and spare parts to planes needing
repair.
After some hesitation Captain Gunn agreed to take her on, giving her
the honorary rank of Flight-Lieutenant, and agreeing that in the present
shortage of aircraft even her little Dragon would be of use.
"We're building up an aircraft engine repair base at Townsville," he
said, "and they urgently need spare parts transported up there as soon as
they arrive from the States."
Caro would have to do a conversion course in flying larger and heavier
aircraft. She was issued with a man's khaki U.S.A.A.F. uniform, which
fitted quite well after she had turned up the bottoms of the trousers andlet out the seams under the arms of the jacket to accommodate her bust.
Fortunately her hips were boyishly narrow.
Caro had now learned that David was stationed at Manbulloo, Northern
Territory, where an American Mobile Works Squadron was based. They
had prepared a series of airfields right down the highway from Darwin to
Katherine and Daly Waters, with runways big enough to take heavy
bombers.
It was not until August of 1943 that Caro managed to get an assignment
delivering a new C47A Dakota to Manbulloo, flying as second pilot in
the two-man crew. David was there with his unit.
He looked well, but older, thinner, more serious with the responsibility
of leading the Ambulance Squadron. But when he saw her his face folded
into its old laughter lines, and he lifted her right off the ground as he
hugged her.
"I must say you look terribly smart in your Air Force uniform," she
said, inspecting him in his neat dark blue and his peaked officer's cap.
He'd always been inclined to fly around in an old crumpled pair of shorts
and an open-necked shirt. The fitted uniform enhanced his lean figure.
"We're still transporting refugees to hospital, some are very weak,
they've been holed up in the hills of Timor for more than a year," he
told her. "And men are still getting killed and wounded in Darwin raids."
He was upset about the numbers of young airmen who had been killed
in New Guinea in the last year and a half because their planes were
outmoded and outclassed, or their bombers did not have sufficient air
cover. Most of them were not more than twenty or twenty-two.
"A chap back from there told me of three Wirraways chasing a heavy
Jap bomber, and it simply speeded up and left them behind. Bombers
outpacing fighters! It's pathetic."
He took her to dinner at Manbulloo Station, where he said he was
always welcome. She could see that it was true. The station people were
aware of his many years as a doctor flying his own plane, and more
recently as the Flying Doctor at Alice Springs.
They spoke optimistically of the progress in the Pacific War, for the
Japanese no longer held superiority in the air, and were being forced back
to the north coast of New Guinea. Crack Australian troops, who had
fought and sweltered in the desert, had been brought back to fight in the
rain and mud of New Guinea jungles.
Caro had to fly back to Townsville in the morning. David put her up
for the night in his own hut. The briefness of her visit after so long added
a special poignancy, as did the fact that they were back in the Katherine
area where, as David said, "it all began."
He took her with a sort of desperation, as if it were for the last time,
feeling that one or the other might not survive this war.
After a night of love, David and Caro had fallen into a deep, exhausted sleep towards dawn. She felt filled with love, fulfilled in a new way, as
she walked with him to the big Flying Fortress, going back to Townsville
for overhaul, in which she would be a passenger. Clinging to his lean,
strong hand, she wondered momentarily, What if I conceived last night?
She had taken precautions, of course. It was unlikely.
He sent her off with a mock warning: "You realize that you might end
up in Brisbane instead of Townsville? These guys are not noted for their
navigation. One U.S. pilot turned up in Townsville, stepped out briskly
and asked, 'Say, is this Milne Bay?' He was only in the wrong country!
He thought he was in Papua."
David did not tell her that now we had our landing fields back, he was
flying regularly to New Guinea for wounded men.
When Caro arrived back in Townsville, she was sent north to deliver
a spare engine to a Catalina flying-boat just arrived in Australia from New
Guinea. With one engine shot out and losing height, the pilot had
directed the crew to bail out while still near the coast, then set a course
for Cairns, but had been forced to land at Cooktown.
The flight up the coast in clear weather, at only five thousand feet, was
beautiful. She flew over the sea for most of the way, looking down at the
Great Barrier Reef and its lovely islands, each one surrounded with a
shallow coral reef covered in emerald water, and set in a sapphire sea.
Cooktown had only a small airport, but the Catalina had landed in the
calm sea inside the Barrier Reef.
The policy of the R.A.A.F. was not to allow women to serve north of
Cairns, but as Caro was not a W.A.A.F. she got away with it. But she
would not be allowed to leave Australia.
She enjoyed her work; she had always liked working with men, and
had found the almost exclusively feminine world of hospitals (except for
the lordly honorary surgeons) rather stifling. The only problem was in
coping with the advances of some very attractive young American airmen.
She was tempted more than once, for she was missing David physically
as well as in every other way, but she remained faithful. Then, towards
the end of November, she realized that she would soon have to resign.
Her premonition or instinct had been right. In six months' time she
would become a mother.
The first thing she did was write to David to tell him the news. The
second was to think about names. Caro had no preferences in boys'
names, but she decided, if the baby was a girl, to call her Alexandra.
There was no need for anyone else to know about her condition as yet.
She meant to keep on working, and leave for Adelaide in plenty of time
to have the baby in her mother's old hospital. Sad to think Alix would
never see her grandchild. . . . But Caro realized there could have been
worse deaths than that from a random piece of shrapnel.
From stories being brought back by survivors who had escaped fromthe islands, it seemed that death was preferable to being a prisoner of the
Japanese, starved and beaten by brutal and ruthless guards.
Caro was worried because she had not heard from David for two
months. Though in her mother's case she had been informed at once,
she was not David's next of kin. Instead his wife would be told. He must
have got her letter about the baby by now. Then in February 1944, just
as she was preparing to leave Brisbane for Adelaide, a long letter came.
He was delighted by her news.

This has made me incredibly happy, and given me a new interest in
the future, just when I was feeling very depressed. The bad news,
darling, is that I am in hospital in Port Moresby, have been quite ill,
and not able to write.
Our ambulance plane was shot down, and in the crash my right leg
was badly shattered. The Army got us out, carried us through the jungle
on our own stretchers, but I was in a bad way. Gangrene had set in by
the time I reached hospital. In short, darling, they had to operate, and
I lost my leg. The stump is healing well, but I wish I had you to nurse
me. I'll be invalided out of the Air Force, and as soon as I'm discharged
I'll make a bee-line for Adelaide to see you and little Alix or Omega
or whatever you decide to call him/her.
I wanted them to give me a local anaesthetic so that I could watch
the op, but I had to have a general. The nurses and orderlies up here
are all men, no pretty nurses to hold my hand.
So, dearest, you'll have a one-legged husband to look after. Not that
I mean to let it ground me. I can fly perfectly well with a tin leg. . . .

Caro was swept by a mixture of feelings on reading this letter. Relief that
he was alive and comparatively safe, joy that he was returning to her,
horror and pity at the mutilation he had suffered. And how he must hate
it, while learning to live with it. Such a vital, active man, striding about
on his long legs, clambering in and out of his little plane! But at least he
had not been killed, he was coming home to her. And the baby would
be born in May.
She foresaw the difficulties ahead. For some time he would be in pain,
and there could be problems with the artificial leg. He had not said, but
she felt sure the amputation was above the knee. That was all right, she
was used to nursing, but there would also be a young baby taking much
of her time, and David was not the most patient of men. It would be a
long time before she was back in the air.
Flying her own little Dragon, Caro left Brisbane at dawn, circling once
over the sub-tropical city with its steamy heat and great flowering trees.
It was an attractive city, but over-full at present with American troops
spending money like water. The bars, the brothels, and the taxi-drivers were making small fortunes by charging ten times their normal rates for
alcohol, sex, and transport.
"The Yanks don't know the difference between a pound and a dollar,
and what they don't know won't hurt them," said the taxi-driver who had
taken her out to Archerfield.
With the sun behind her, Caro flew away from the coast, heading for
the Diamantina. Her course was almost due west to Charleville, four
hundred miles inland, now a big Air Force refuelling depot and airport
for American planes on the ferry route to Darwin. After refuelling she set
off for the Cooper crossing at Windorah. The far west of Queensland was
baked and dry, in contrast to the lush green of the coastal strip. But
there was water in the long billabong at Windorah, shaded by drooping
coolabahs. She stopped for lunch and a beer in the little pub. She had
been flying for six hours, but she wanted to reach Birdsville that night.
It was only a short hop now, 120 miles to Cappamerri, and then a mere
80--though it was longer by road--to Birdsville.
Soon she was crossing long red sand-hills intersected by patches of bare
gibber plain. She took no risks, but followed the mail-route by way of
Betoota, mindful of the growing life within her. She dropped lower to
feel the heat and fill her eyes with the subtle reds and pinks of the
sand-hills, the blue-grey foliage of the desert-loving saltbush and eremophylla. Fafnir was lurching and bumping in the heated spirals of air.
She climbed again until she could see the channels of the Diamantina
ahead, dry but marked by a growth of lignum bushes, and here and there
a long permanent waterhole lined with trees.
Caro turned and followed the river down towards the South Australian
border. She felt that she was nearly home, though it was still another
eight hundred miles to Adelaide.
She flew over Duthie, and on down the river channel to Cappamerri,
or where Cappamerri ought to be.
Where was the station, and the clay-pan airstrip? Could she possibly
have passed it without seeing it? She came down to five hundred feet
above a long waterhole almost choked with red sand.
And then she saw it, the gable at the end of the house sticking out of
a sand-hill. There was no sign of any buildings or fences--nothing was
left but the homestead, and it was more than half buried in sand.
She circled, staring down in disbelief. This was all that remained of
Cappamerri Station, its thousands of stock and all its inhabitants, white and black. Even the Aborigines' camp was gone.
"Well, look at that!" said Caro, who on the long trip had begun talking,
for company, to the six-month-old being she carried. "Somewhere down
there lie the bones of your great-granddad, and your great-uncle Danny,
and possibly some black cousins-once-removed as well."
The clay-pan airstrip had disappeared. She did not dare try to land,though she would have liked to have a closer look at her old home. Caro
flew on towards Birdsville, leaving behind that empty haunted place
where the bones of the white usurpers and of the dispossessed tribes lay
crumbling together under the shifting sand.