To The Red Centre

14

To The Red Centre

    In the end they took Kyla with them. Trisha and Steve were dead set against her staying on at Sandy Cove by herself, and Joel also expressed doubts on the subject—though only to her aunt. Harriet did realise that probably the poor bloke didn’t want to be stuck as the nearest responsible adult to a kid with a crush on him, but to do him justice he didn’t let it show. Rather fortunately Kyla’s discovery of Ben’s “antique” camera had sparked off a renewed interest in photography, and she brightened discernibly when Harriet pointed out that she’d be able to take some lovely photos of the Outback.

    “Ooh, yeah! I’ll make a new album!”

    Phew. Harriet sagged.

    There was plenty of room for three in Hughie’s caravan—in fact for four, but luckily no-one suggested Joel could join them. And in any case, Hughie explained, “you girls” could have it to yourselves, he was gonna sleep under “the flap”. When this facility was demonstrated they got the point. In fact Kyla declared enthusiastically it was just like a verandah, and they could sit under it to have lunch, just like Erin did!

    The ute was left for Joel to use, the caravan was hitched up to the four-wheel-drive, Joel was reminded to feed “that bugger” and not to take none of his nonsense, Isabelle Bell’s last hopeful phone call was gleefully routed by Kyla, and off they went!

    There had been some argument about their ultimate destination, Kyla having expressed interest in the famous Pro Hart’s famous works of art in Broken Hill, but fortunately Harriet didn’t have to give her opinion of these beloved Australian icons: Hughie rubbished them with: “Huh! He’s the joker that chucks spaghetti an’ muck at the carpet in them ads! Well, okay, we can go that way, but it’ll only be a stop-off: head for Ayers Rock.”

    Kyla corrected him firmly to “Uluru, these days,” but didn’t seem averse to going there, so they headed for the giant monolith at the centre of the continent by way of Broken Hill. Harriet didn’t point out it meant traveling halfway across Australia—further, in terms of mileage, there was certainly no road that went straight there; but Hughie seemed confident of the way…

    It turned out that Hughie knew—or possibly knew of through a mate, it never became clear—a Mr and Mrs Ferguson who owned “a property” somewhere on the long and dusty route from Sandy Cove to Broken Hill. Er, somewhere off the long and dusty route, Harriet realised as they turned off.

    The track—it was hardly a road—went on and on and on, and after some time Kyla asked in a small voice: “Um, they are expecting us, are they, Hughie?”

    “Yeah. Rung them,” he grunted.

    “Oh, good!”

    Harriet could hear that she was sagging with relief. She did a bit of sagging herself.

    And they drove on and on and on…

    It was getting dark and Hughie’s headlights were on—on full, Harriet rather thought—and still there was nothing in front of them but dusty track amidst the vast flat stretches of dust…

    “Um, are you sure this is the way, Hughie?” ventured Kyla in a small voice.

    “Eh? ’Course!”

    “Oh,” she said, still in the small voice. “That’s good.”

    Harriet swallowed hard. “Um, we didn’t see any other turnoff, Kyla.”

    “No,” she agreed in the small voice.

    “It is the Outback,” Harriet offered valiantly.

    “Mm.”

    Oh, dear.

    And they drove on and on and on…

    “I can hear a dog howling!” gasped Kyla.

    “Be a dingo,” grunted Hughie. He lowered his window. “Yeah.” He raised it again, apparently unaware that his passengers were cringing.

    After an appreciable pause, Kyla ventured: “What about… I thought there was a dingo fence?”

    “Yeah: is,” grunted Hughie. “The Dog Fence. Whaddabout it?”

    “Um, nothink.”

    He sniffed slightly.

    And they drove on and on and on…

    “This can’t be the gate!” gasped Kyla.

    “Dunno whaddelse it’d be,” replied Hughie calmly.

    “But where’s the house?” she gasped, peering into the vista of dust plain lit up by the headlights.

    “Further on. You wanna nip out and open it? Or we could sit here all ni—”

    “No! There’s wild dingoes!” she wailed.

    “I must say I’m not too keen on the idea, either,” Harriet admitted.

    “They’re more scared of you than you are of them,” returned Hughie simply.

    “Right: like Foster! Not!” cried Kyla crossly.

    “Uh—let ya feed ’im, didn’t ’e?”

    “He let me throw his food at him, yeah! Don’t you dare get out, Aunty Harrie!”

    “Youse mob’d probably not shut it properly, anyway,” decided Hughie, clambering out.

    The manoeuvre of course involved opening the gate, getting back into the 4WD, driving it and its caravan through, getting out again and closing the gate…

    By the time he got in for the second time, Harriet’s face was very, very red. “Sorry,” she said in a stifled voice as they set off again.

    “Better than leaving the gate open,” Hughie replied equably.

    “Mm,” she muttered, subsiding definitively.

    And they drove on into the dark…

    Funnily enough by the time they got to the homestead both Harriet and Kyla were busting for a pee. Rather fortunately the friendly Mrs Ferguson didn’t seem to mind her youngest visitor saying the minute she’d been asked into the house: “C’n I use your loo, please, Mrs Ferguson?”

    “Yes, of course, dear. Down the passage at the en—” Kyla had disappeared.

    “I expect you’ll want to go too, Harriet,” said Mrs Ferguson kindly. “I’ll just show you to your room. Now, you and little Kyla are sharing, I hope that’s all right?”

    “Yes, of course. I—I’m afraid we’re putting you to too much trouble, Mrs Ferguson,” faltered Harriet.

    “Nicole,” she corrected her. “It’s no trouble, Harriet, dear, it’s a treat to have guests!” And with that Harriet was shown into a spacious bedroom—the house, though in the traditional Australian bungalow style, was large, there’d obviously been no reason for not building large and comfortable with all the space they had around them. There was both a queen-size bed and a single. Mrs Ferguson—pardon, Nicole—indicated firmly that the queen was for her. Neat piles of towels adorned the end of each bed: help, she was doing the thing properly, wasn’t she? Pale greenish. Avocado! decided Harriet, as their hostess bustled out telling her that tea’d be on the table as soon as they’d freshened up.

    Harriet looked round her dazedly. The room was very pretty; in fact she wouldn’t have minded owning it herself. The curtains were a heavy plain pale green fabric, slightly greener than the avocado towels, and the walls were off-white. The beds had duna covers, frilled pillows and gathered valances in a pretty pattern of frondy green leaves on a white background, plus extra pillows covered in a slightly darker, duller green. Plus, in the case of the queen-size bed, an extraneous small heart-shaped pillow, frilled, in the same pretty fabric. With some lace and ribbons as well. She’d have dispensed with it, but otherwise, the effect was lovely. The stool in front of the old-fashioned dressing-table was also covered in this fabric and so was the small armless easy chair which stood in one corner. The carpet was just a neutral sort of oatmealy thing, but it toned okay. The finishing touch was a tall bunch of pale mauve flowers in a glass vase on the dressing-table. Where on earth had she got them from, they hadn’t seen a plant for hours and hour— Oh. Artificial. Never mind, they looked really good!

    Kyla’s reaction was: “Ooh, this is nice!” So that was all right.

    “Um, Kyla,” said Harriet cautiously as her niece began unpacking her case, “she’s got tea ready for us, so, um, whatever it is, just, um, eat it up nicely, won’t you? I mean, I’m pretty sure Hughie’s wished us on them.”

    Kyla straightened, eyeing her tolerantly. “Yeah, ’course, Aunty Harrie. Hey, how old do ya think she is?”

    “Um, well, early fifties, maybe?” she groped. “Why?”

    “Nothink,” she said airily.

    Oh, God. She was figuring out if the woman was the right age to have an eligible bachelor son! Harriet grabbed her towels blindly and tottered off to the bathroom. This was gonna be terrible!

    Trisha collapsed in helpless giggles on an STD call all the way from Broken Hill.

    “You wouldn’t’ve laughed if you’d been in my place!” said her sister fiercely.

    “Don’t—set—me—off—again, Harrie!” she gasped helplessly.

    Harriet sighed. “Look, it was stupid—”

    “I’ll—say!” she gasped.

    She did finally recover sufficiently to take notice of the facts that they had reached Broken Hill at long last, that Kyla had gone off today for a visit to Pro Hart’s gallery, that Hughie had decided to go down a mine—it was “a thing for the tourists” but he’d apparently decided he could bear it—and that Harriet was simply having some time off with her feet up.

    Harriet was just about to ring off when Steve came on the line. “Hullo,” she said blankly. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

    “It’s Saturday, ya nana. In Broken Hill as well,” replied her brother-in-law rudely. “Listen, send the kid home if it gets too embarrassing. Put her on a bloody plane: we’ll pay ya back.”

    “Don’t be silly, I don’t mind if she makes a fool of herself over gorgeous young farmers.”

    “All right, if you say so. Listen, I just been doing a bit of research on the Internet. Didja know Broken Hill’s got a Big thing?”

    “A Big what, Steve?”

    “Bench,” replied her brother-in-law succinctly.

    “Eh?”

    “B—Ow!”

    Trisha must have wrenched the phone off him, because she came on the line again and said a trifle breathlessly: “Don’t take any notice of him, Harrie, he’s being silly. They have got a Big Bench, but no-one could possibly wanna look at it, it’s mad! We better let you go. Take it easy, eh? And give Kyla our love and tell her to ring us. –Shut up, Steve!”—to the remark about Madam Scrooge from the background.—“And listen, Harrie—” She made an artful pause that Harriet failed to spot as suspicious, after two days with the Fergusons and the very, very tedious drive to Broken Hill over the succeeding days. Exactly what route Hughie had taken was never clear to her from later consultation of the inadequate maps available on the Internet, but he certainly didn’t seem to have taken any direct roads.

    “What?” she said innocently.

    “Make sure ya discourage any more eligible farmers that want a wife!” choked Trisha ecstatically, hanging up quickly.

    “Hah, hah!” said Harriet crossly.

    It had turned out that Nicole and Ted Ferguson’s big comfortable homestead was graced—Harriet was to feel that graced was the right word—not only by Mr and Mrs Ferguson’s two stunningly handsome sons, Luke and Brad, both in their early twenties and built like young gods, but also by Ted Ferguson’s much younger brother, Havill. Presumably it was a family name? Harriet had never before heard of anybody called that but in the Australia of the 21st century all things were possible.

    Any red-blooded female’s heart would have beaten faster at the discovery that Havill Ferguson looked very like the famous Aussie actor Hugh Jackman, but Harriet, though not immune, felt hers sink right into her boots as he sauntered into the lounge-room and drawled: “Gidday. So ya got here, eh? Has Scrooge, here, disgorged a decent drink for ya?”

    Kyla went bright red and gasped. Well, who could blame the kid? Most of Australia had been drooling over Mr Jackman for years; males as well, he was terrifically popular as a—er, possibly not rôle model, exactly; more as an idol or, frankly, object of worship.

    “Me brother: Havill,” explained Ted Ferguson. He was merely one of those lean-jawed, lanky male Aussies, and paled in comparison—though up until two seconds ago Harriet had been feeling she wouldn’t half mind a bit and maybe it’d be worth being stuck out at the back of Bourke chained to the kitchen cooking up whatever that delicious smell was that was pervading the house. “Of course I have, ya flaming nana. Harriet didn’t want hard liquor: they been traveling all day and she doesn’t wanna drink on an empty stomach, so I’ve given her a shandy. Just don’t offer her that ruddy Scotch Mist muck ya bought Nicole, thanks. And the kid’s too young to drink.”

    “I am not, Mr Ferguson!” cried Kyla, going even redder, though Harriet for one wouldn’t have thought it possible.

    “Young enough to call Ted Mr Ferguson, apparently, though,” drawled the glorious Havill. “What’s your name, then?”

    “Kyla,” she managed, gulping. “And I’m nineteen, so there!”

    “Elderly,” he noted, inspecting the very nice sideboard and awarding himself a whisky. “Where’s ole Hughie? Drowned ’im already, have ya?”

    Whether this remark was addressed to Kyla, to herself, or possibly to his brother, Harriet couldn’t have said, but on consideration she was to decide that he’d meant it to have precisely that effect. However, Ted Ferguson replied shortly: “Don’t be a nit. The boys are showing him Fancy and Nancy: he thinks Harriet, here, might want a pup.”

    “What?” gasped Harriet.

    “You’d be Harriet, then,” Havill noted, strolling over to her. He smiled at her. “You could have a whisky, if ya like. Or a sherry, but it’s as sweet as the Scotch Mist muck, I gotta admit.”

    Harriet did manage to reply: “No, thanks very much, I really felt like a shandy,” but she couldn’t have said where the words came from. If only he hadn’t been wearing those gorgeous dark jeans and that completely captivating white shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled— No. Whatever he’d worn, he would have been  overpoweringly irresistible.

    “Do ya want a pup?” he asked kindly.

    “I—I dunno!” she stuttered. “I mean, I hadn’t really thought about it. It—it was Hughie’s own idea, I think.”

    Kyla seemed to be getting her second wind. “No, it was Joel’s, but Hughie mentioned it, um, well, not long before we left. A dog’d be company for you, Aunty Harrie! –Don’t you think?” she cooed, batting the eyelashes at Havill.

    “That or a ruddy nuisance, yeah,” he replied, unmoved.

    “They’re pretty well house-trained now,” put in Ted.

    “Not to the extent that Nicole’ll let them in the lounge-room,” he returned calmly.

    “What sort of dogs are they, Havill?” asked Kyla eagerly, batting her eyelashes again and sort of—ugh!—tossing her hair back over her shoulder with one hand. The hair had been scraped up for the trip, in consideration of the heat, but this evening it was combed out, possibly à la Ms Aniston, though Harriet was pretty sure the star was never seen with hers looking that scraggy. Had Kyla at one point had it layered, was that the problem? God knew, but what with Melanie Satterthwaite’s mum’s mall—and her aunty’s mall, come to think of it—and the delights of downtown Sydney’s beauty salons— Rats gnawing at it came to mind, alas.

    Havill didn’t even blink at the hair-tossing, so presumably he was used to being the object of adoration of dim bimbos who thought that hair-tossing as seen on overcoloured Yank media crap was immensely appealing to all heartthrobs. “Bitsers.”

    Kyla produced a very silly giggle. Her aunt cringed. “Not blue heelers?” she cooed. “Or lovely red ones like Red Dog?”

    Again not blinking—it was impossible to determine if the extremely contemporary, not to say up-to-date reference in this speech had meant anything to him—he said stolidly: “Might have a bit of blue heeler in ’em, I suppose.”

    “Not sheepdogs?” she asked hopefully—still cooing, alas. “They’re lovely! And very clever!”

    Ted cleared his throat. “This is a cattle station, love.”

    “Ooh! Cattle dogs! They are like Red Dog!”

    This could have gone on for some time, Harriet was beginning to feel, especially if Havill continued baiting her, but his brother said kindly: “Well, they’re not red, but we think their dad mighta been a cattle dog, yeah. Their mum’s definitely part spaniel, though.”

    “Really? They’re lovely dogs! My friend Melanie Satterthwaite, well, her aunty, she knows a lady that’s got a cockapoo! He’s really sweet!”

    There was a stunned silence.

    Finally the farmer croaked: “Eh?”

    “Cross between a cockie and a turd?” offered Havill, poker-face.

    Harriet choked.

    “No! A cocker spaniel-poodle cross, of course!”

    More stunned silence. Finally Ted croaked: “Ya mean they’ve given ’em a name?”

    “Of course!” replied Kyla in superior tones. “They’re a very popular breed.”

    Harriet blinked.

    Havill sat down beside her on the sofa. “You’ve spotted it, eh, Harriet?”

    “Um, yes,” she croaked.

    “Spotted what?” asked Kyla suspiciously.

    The bugger just looked bland, so Harriet croaked: “I don’t think a cross can be a breed, exactly, Kyla.”

    “Not until umpteen generations and they’re breeding true and been registered with whoever,” said Ted decisively. “Be the Kennel Club, I think. –Well, go on: you’re the one that spent megabucks on what was supposed to be a pure-bred blue heeler with all the certificates and la-de-da,” he said to his brother.

    Kyla gasped and turned a sort of purple shade.

    “Yeah, Kennel Club,” Havill confirmed stolidly.

    Could it get worse? Yes, it could, because while the poor kid still hadn’t recovered from that one, the door opened and in came Hughie accompanied by two young golden-haired gods, and Kyla dropped her glass of cranberry juice on Nicole’s very pretty cream rug.

    The fiasco of the rug having been forgiven and, according to the kindly Nicole, forgotten, Kyla was enabled to appear for breakfast bright and early next morning in her best pair of stretch jeans topped with a shoestring-strapped cotton knit in a dirty shade of ochre under a floaty thing in a leopard print. Unfortunately it hadn’t dawned that on a working farm the workers got up even brighter and earlier: all the men were out on the property.

    Harriet couldn’t but conclude that the impression she’d had last night, that the glorious Luke and Brad were as tolerantly amused by Kyla as were their uncle and father, was correct. Well, Luke was twenty-six and divorced, his mother revealed over breakfast—they’d known that Meriel would never settle, she was a town girl, it had been a disaster from start to finish—and Brad was twenty-four. Still much too old for the nineteen-year-old Kyla, quite, though Nicole had the tact not to say so.

    The men came back for lunch and things improved, as Nicole reminded her sons that they’d said they’d look after Harriet and Kyla if they’d like to go for a ride. Harriet declined this kind offer hurriedly, but Kyla accepted eagerly, though of course—batting the eyelashes and tossing the hair back, ugh!—she wasn’t an experienced rider.

    “Never mind, dear, the boys will look after you,” said Nicole comfortably. “Mind you don’t let her go too far, Luke.”

    “Nah, ’course not, Mum,” the young man agreed easily.

    “How about you, Havill?” she pursued.

    “Thought I might stay home and play backgammon with Harriet,” he drawled.

    “But I don’t know how!” gasped Harriet.

    “Teach you,” he offered—no, more like pronounced definitively.

    “Teach you to cheat, more like,” noted his brother.

    “Don’t be silly, Ted, of course he won’t,” said his spouse. “Yes, you do that, Harriet, he hardly ever gets a chance to play his silly old backgammon.”

    All the males of course remained completely unmoved by this patronising and pejorative speech, in fact it was doubtful if they’d even taken in a syllable of it. Nicole had a very pretty pair of blue budgies, and honestly, it might just as well have been the birds who had spoken, anything that proceeded from the woman’s mouth obviously meant as much to them! Harriet was aware that this attitude was a traditional norm in Australian society—as, indeed, was their female belonging’s—but experiencing the phenomenon close up made her feel sort of… dizzy. Boy, Germaine, ya had it right all the way!

    It seemed to be settled nonetheless, and so after lunch Kyla accepted the loan of a sunhat from Nicole and on Luke’s and Brad’s discovering she couldn’t mount, accepted a “leg-up” from Luke, the manoeuvre in fact entailing his lifting her bodily—she was quite genuine, even her aunt tacitly conceding the fact—and off they set, what time Harriet and Nicole retired to the kitchen with the promise of backgammon to come and Ted and Hughie retired to the farm office to look at Ted’s farm management program, or, as Nicole inevitably informed Harriet, “doze off on those old easy chairs he’s got in there.” God.

    Alas and alack, things did not improve. Kyla returned from the ride in the late afternoon to find Harriet and Havill cosily ensconced on the shady verandah over cold drinks and the backgammon board, giggling together like mad—he’d got two and a half strong shandies down her by this time and hadn’t hesitated to express blatant admiration of her figure, hair and eyes, added to which he was quite obviously an intelligent and witty guy who enjoyed the company of women.

    Kyla allowed Brad to lift her off the horse without saying a word, let alone batting the eyelashes or tossing the hair, and limped into the house avoiding everyone’s eyes.

    “How far did you two twerps force that poor little kid to go?” demanded their uncle.

    A certain amount of male whingeing and wriggling ensued but they eventually got the intel that Kyla had “just waited” while they rounded up those strays that—

    “Waited what on?” he demanded grimly.

    “Brown Betty, of course,” was the blank reply.

    “You ruddy tits! All afternoon?” he shouted. “Shut up!” he shouted. “Look, Harriet, she’ll be sore as buggery. You better pop in and see she has a nice hot shower, okay?” He added wryly before she could speak, let alone move: “I’d go meself, only I think she might take it better from you.”

    “Oh, dear. Yes, of course!” she gasped, scrambling up. She hurried inside to he sound of Havill shouting at his nephews to get out of his sight and get them horses unsaddled to the accompaniment of more whingeing “Aws” and “We nevers” and “We were gonnas.”

    Kyla was discovered face down on her bed, sniffling. “Kyla—”

    “They ignored me! I hate them!” she wailed, dissolving into sobs.

    Harriet swallowed a sigh. “Blokes are like that. If there’s a stupid male peer group job to be done they’ll hare off and do it, sure as eggs are eggs. You’d better have a nice hot shower, riding is notorious for making you awfully stiff.”

    Kyla sobbed some more but eventually limped off to the bathroom.

    Harriet collapsed onto the edge of the bed. Oh, God.

    Nicole’s subsequent: “Honestly! You boys! You shouldn’t have taken any of their nonsense, Kyla, dear. Never mind, you’ll learn, dear, they’re all the same”, really helped. Not.

    Harriet did have a nice rest in the caravan after the phone call to Trisha, but after it she felt quite refreshed and made the mistake of deciding to sit under the flap—October in Broken Hill being, of course, very warm. There she was immediately buttonholed by the Greenbergs. Monica and Ben. So far all the other grey nomads encountered in various camping grounds—the few Hughie had consented to patronise: there’d been a fair bit of “Just pull in here, eh?” in the middle of the Great Australian Bugger All—all of the others had been gentiles, as far as Harriet could tell, but it just showed ya, didn’t it? Their ancestral religious affiliation and racial descent were immaterial—there’d been Coral and Frank Di Nunzio as well as Susie and Alan Smith and Helen and Patrick O’Connor—grey nomads were all the same.

    “You can’t stay here all afternoon and not see a bit of Broken Hill.”—“Should never of let your hubby desert you, dear, they’ll get away with murder, you know!” (silly laugh).—“Pro Hart? Well, of course we’ve seen them already.”—“Yes, last time,” (the spouse actually getting a word in edgewise).—“Of course you won’t be intruding, Harriet!” and blah, blah, blah.

    So be it. Harriet was obviously fated for a tour of the delights of Broken Hill. So she went. Gee, on the way Ben Greenberg told her all about the mileage he was getting out of the giant SUV, so the male side were all clones, too.

    … And there it was!

    After considerable puzzled rumination Ben produced: “Can’t see why the Hell, frankly; I mean, do they make them here?” and Harriet, alas, exploded in giggles of the most agonising sort.

    Yep, Broken Hill had a Big Bench, all right: Steve had been right about that!

    By the time they got to Alice Springs Harriet was feeling very strongly that she didn’t care if she never saw another square centimetre of Outback Australia and its interminable long roads for the rest of her life. Every time she closed her eyes she got horrible visions of the endless rolling road coming towards her and vanishing under their wheels… Ugh!

    Hughie had capably found a camping ground that wasn’t full of Abos getting stonkered on meths and sniffing petrol, unquote. Harriet and her niece looked about them wanly.

    Finally Kyla offered: “It’s just the same as all the other places.”

    “Yeah. Full of grey nomads and their giant SUVs and giant caravans and campervans,” Harriet agreed heavily. Hughie was safely out of earshot mucking round with some sort of connection the thing was gonna have, possibly electricity, in which case they might be able to recharge their ruddy phones that had died on them yet again, so she said, trying to sound firm: “Look, Kyla, if I tell Hughie that you and me are gonna look for a decent motel here, will you back me up?”

    Kyla practically fell on her neck, so that was all right.

    They got “Whaddaya wanna do that for? Waste of money!” but Kyla, clearly at the end of her tether, snapped back: “Aunty Harrie’s got plenty of dough, she can afford it! And we’re going!”

    There was then the slight point that they didn’t know where to go or if a local motel would even be able to fit them in, Hughie’s phone being discovered to be dead as well, but they both glared at him and he shut up and became very busy setting out his folding picnic table and ditto chairs under the flap. Harriet did feel slightly guilty, but not enough to weaken. The last clean sheets they’d slept in had been Nicole Ferguson’s lovely flowery ones, what seemed like several lifetimes ago.

    Kyla’s phone was the first to get a signal, or heat up, as her aunt phrased it, so they rang Steve and Trisha. It was Sunday, so Steve answered—and where the intervening period had gone or how long it had been they had no idea, frankly. There had been a couple of sort of townships with large verandahed, one-storeyed country pubs in the traditional style, petrol pumps, and lots and lots of dust, these last two features not customarily being stressed in such highly colourised and, they had both silently recognised, highly bowdlerised TV epics as Getaway. But as to what they might have been called or how far from anywhere let alone each other they might have been…

    Immediately Steve looked up the Internet and gave them the good gen. Advising them to plug their phones in there, too. Right in the centre of town—yep. Handy to everything. Called itself a motel but it was actually a high-rise hotel, put on breakfasts in this poncy restaurant next-door, but don’t worry, only the bloody dinners were poncy—well, he’d be up for eating croc before it ate him, but you could keep your ruddy emu fillets, thanks all the same—

    “Steve! For heaven’s sake! Just tell them its name and number and let me speak to them!”

    “Hang on, Steve,” said Harriet quickly. “How far is it from the Alice to Uluru?”

    The answer being four hundred K, she passed the phone to her niece with a palsied hand and just sat there dazedly while Kyla competently took over. At any other time, true, she might have raised a pale smile at the further intel about the Fergusons that was then supplied. No, she’d already said, Mum: they were just ordinary. What? Oh, on their first night! A beef roast, and a really nice cheesecake, she was an ace cook. What? Nah, just a bit of riding, like she’d said. What? Aw—them. Yeah, they were nice pups but Aunty Harrie thought they better not while they were travelling. What? No—loftily—a cattle station, Mum, they don’t run sheep in those parts.

    “Aunty Harrie!”

    Harriet jumped. “What?”

    “Mum says the hotel’ll be sure to have some nice brochures and if there aren’t any in the rooms they’ll have some in the lobby!”

    “Um, ye-ah…”

    “And not to let Hughie just drag us out to the Rock and back without seeing anything else!”

    “Oh,” said Harriet dully. “All right.” She hadn’t thought there was anything else to see in the Alice, actually, but she felt too exhausted to say so. Another four hundred K—and back: that’d be eight hundred more kilometres of rolling roads! And how many more to get home? They were right in the centre of the continent!

    The hotel’s brochures having provided Kyla with the good gen, she decided that they’d just look round the mall this arvo and maybe find a nice place with dot paintings for Aunty Harrie to look at. Harriet cringed at the dread word “mall”, but it was all right, it was just the main shopping street. True, there was an immense supermarket down one end of it with the biggest liquor department she’d ever seen, but at least it wasn’t a Kyla-style mall, fully enclosed and air-conditioned and lined with boutiques and the dolly-birds that patronised same, not to mention the uniformed giggling schoolgirls that aspired to patronise— Yeah.

    There was a really nice-looking, casual-style large restaurant that Harriet thought must be the place Steve had rung them back about—their neighbours’ intel, apparently. It was infested by a fair number of middle-aged tourists all stuffing their faces, true, but still, it was a definite possibility. Several other nicer, smaller restaurants were spotted and mentally filed by Kyla, while Harriet just wandered along dreamily, breathing in hot, dry air and feeling very, very glad she wasn’t incarcerated in a moving vehicle with the rolling road coming at her relentlessly.

    Naturally there were plenty of souvenir shops. Kyla fingered the tourist tees these emporia featured, frowning. Very, very heavy cotton jersey-knit, the sort that ordinary tee-shirts were never made of. All in strong shades of—well, anything you cared to name, really. Some were a very harsh reddish-brown: possibly meant to represent the Red Centre? That was about as local as it got, however, because as well there were harsh dark green ones, harsh acid-yellow ones—ooh, bright sunflower-yellow ones as well!—hideous darkish teal ones, and glaringly bright orange ones and pink ones. They were all, without exception, decorated in so-called Aboriginal designs in lurid shades of a raised plastic paint-like substance that, whatever the colour of the background, clashed horribly with it. Often providing a sort of flickering effect when glanced at out of the corner of the eye. Very bright acid yellow on dark teal, very bright turquoise on harsh red-brown, screaming scarlet on sunflower yellow and, the pièce de résistance, at least as far as the flickering went, very bright turquoise again, on bright pink. Many of the patterns incorporated a little raised white as well, but this did not help.

    The frowning silence went on for some time. Finally Harriet said drily: “Ersatz.”

    Kyla jumped. “Eh?”

    “These tees. Ersatz. Uh—fake.”

    “But I’m almost sure these are real Aboriginal designs!” she hissed.

    Harriet pulled out one of the reddish-brown ones. Its bright turquoise leered at her. The design incorporated a turtle, her bet would have been taken directly off a bark painting from, quite possibly, Arnhem Land, which if you looked at the map was about as far as you could get from the Alice without falling off the edge of the continent. The largish oval eggs surrounding the turtle were possibly less genuine but there were plenty of dots, as well, too right. “Mm,” she agreed mildly.

    Kyla peered at the label. “Look! There’s nothink!” she hissed.

    Obligingly Harriet looked. Well, there was the name of the brand. And a tag with the size, quite possibly inaccurate if the things were manufactured in China, a ninety-nine percent probability in the Australia of the twenty-first—

    “It’s illegal to copy real Aboriginal designs without a licence!” her niece hissed.

    “And a royalty paid to the traditional owners of the design, yeah. Have you seen anybody round here likely to sue them?”

    Kyla glared. “We won’t buy anything without a credit to the traditional owners!” she declared loudly.

    That’d cut out the entire stock of the souvenir shops of Alice Springs, then. “Okay,” Harriet agreed mildly.

    They strolled on…

    Harriet’s jaw dropped. Didgeridoos? The local people were desert dwellers, they’d never had digeridoos, there were no trees suitable for—

    “Don’t you dare buy one of those, Aunty Harrie, they gotta be completely faked up, look at those great big coloured spots on them!”

    Put it well. Dulux high-gloss, would have been Harriet’s bet. The spots, ranging in size from about two centimetres in diameter to eight or so, were pretty, though; she’d have categorised them as gay, actually, if you could say that any more.

    “No, well, they’ve got to be faked,” she agreed mildly. “The local Aboriginal people have never had didgeridoos, they’re desert-dwellers, there are no suitable trees.”

    Kyla took a deep and angry breath. “Wouldja believe—! Look, I’m gonna tell him!” She marched into the shop before Harriet could grab her.

    Oh, God. She followed her numbly.

    The guy behind the counter—nicely placed so as he could see who was fingering the objets d’art placed around his open door—was large, something like five times Kyla’s fighting weight, more than twice her age, obviously completely Caucasian, and decorated by an unlovely unshaven chin, make that chins, he wasn’t slim, and an unlovely black singlet. The rest of him was mercifully shielded by his counter.

    Kyla’s outburst was met by a stolid stare.

    Harriet gulped. “I’m so sorry,” she faltered. “My niece is too young to understand that—that ordinary people have to make a living.”

    He sniffed faintly. “That’s right, lady. You gonna buy something, or not?”

    “Not!” said Kyla angrily.

    There was nobody else in the shop, in fact they hadn’t seen a single tourist buying anything, all the way along the street. Well, perhaps they were all in that nice big restaurant having afternoon tea. Harriet bit her lip. “Actually I wouldn’t mind a tee-shirt,” she admitted.

    “Aunty Harrie!”

    Harriet sighed. “Just shut up, Kyla. Can’t you see that they’re so awful that they’re funny?”

    “No! They’re an insult to the Aboriginal people!” she cried.

    Yeah, right. Harriet could just see George being insulted. Not.

    “I’m going,” her niece threatened.

    Harriet had just spotted some nice straw cowboy hats. “Look, he’s got those great hats you like, you could—”

    Scowling, Kyla stomped out.

    “Well, lady?”

    “Actually, I will buy a tee, if there’s one that fits me,” she admitted.

    “We got all sizes,” he said stolidly.

    Righto, then. Harriet went over to his racks of tees—the same as all the other places stocked, of course—and had a look. Ah-hah! They were all pretty irresistible, as exemplars of their kind, but the combination of bright sunflower yellow with brilliant scarlet paint was, actually, glorious. But on the other hand, that slightly flickering neon-bright turquoise on the glowing watermelon pink was bloody good, too… Oh, blow it! How many times was she gonna be in the genuine Alice with a choice of genuine ersatz Aboriginal tourist tees, for heaven’s sake? She bought the two of them—nice large ones. Most of the year Queensland would be too humid for them, but never mind, there’d be a couple of months when she could wear them!

    The shopkeeper accepted her credit card stolidly and parcelled the tees up stolidly without remark, let alone a thank-you, but frankly, Harriet would have been disappointed by any reaction. She thanked him, and went out, smiling.

    Kyla was discovered quite some way further up the street. She waved frantically.

    “Look!” she gasped, as Harriet came up to her without haste.

    Harriet goggled. It was an art gallery. That was, a real one, not like the several truly dreadful places they’d passed that featured either real oils of the sort of eucalypts that didn’t grow here alongside real oils of large bowls of roses and really nasty, in fact oily, real oil portraits, or high-gloss large dots in the style of those on the fake didgeridoos, on smallish pieces of hardboard.

    “Look!” repeated Kyla.

    Harriet was not only looking, she was irresistibly being led inside by it to stand in front of it. Possibly her niece then stationed herself at her elbow and burbled for a while but Harriet didn’t hear a single, solitary syllable. It was wonderful. A real dot painting. It covered most of the side wall of the little gallery—maybe two metres square? It was very abstract, at least to Harriet’s Caucasian eye, covered in small silvery dots, the background largely in soft, silvery grey with just a hint of fawn in it… Indescribable, really. She just stood there and drank it in.

    Funnily enough, by the time she came to her niece had vanished and at the far side of the shop a young man in a smart white shirt and tie was standing behind the counter not looking as if he expected her to ask the price. “Thank you,” said Harriet timidly. “It’s simply wonderful. Worth coming all the way to the Alice for.”

    “Glad you like it,” he replied simply.

    And Harriet tottered out into the hot, dry air of Alice Springs feeling… complete, really.

    The later demarcation dispute between Kyla and Hughie over where to go for dinner that evening barely impinged. He was adamantly against the place next to the hotel-motel, only partly on account of its tourist prices but very largely on account of having had kangaroo millions of times and not being interested in emu and he’d eat a bloody croc, yeah, but—again—not at them prices, added to which ya got really mingy helpings! In the end he went off to the big family-style restaurant and Harriet let Kyla take her to the expensive ethnic up-market tourist trap. Kyla defiantly had the emu fillet—oddly enough it didn’t look much different from ordinary steak, if a slightly different shape, but she declared it defiantly to be really unusual; and Harriet chickened out completely and had the lamb chops on sweet potato mash. Yep, the helpings were mingy, all right.

    Bright and early next morning Harriet was incarcerated in a moving vehicle and carted off 400 K to Uluru with the rolling road coming at her relentlessly.

    But it didn’t matter. Even the composting toilets featured at the very up-market tourist centre at the Rock, as warned about by Monica Greenberg, didn’t matter, undoubtedly frightful and stinking (Ben), as they were, not to say “not properly cared for, those people have no idea, really!” (Monica again). Nor did it matter that it was, as warned by Ben Greenberg “hot enough to fry a ruddy egg out there”. Nor that if you wanted to do that walk in the other direction—“Well, it’s interesting, I suppose, and he found the rock formations over there really interesting, didn’t you, dear?”—the flies were a real pest, and she had to say that those hats the overseas tourists always bought with the corks were silly, but she could understand why, and she could recommend the ones that had the heavy net instead, Harriet, dear. The fact that the carpark with the good view was always full of flaming great tourist coaches and it was almost impossible to get a decent shot of the Rock at sunset—you couldn’t rely on a decent sunset, mind you (Ben)—didn’t matter, either. Nor the fact that those awful tourists always jostle, Harriet, dear.

    Nothing mattered, in fact. Uluru was… Magnificent didn’t nearly cut it. Imposing? Not even close. Miraculous? It was that, all right, but… Overpowering?

    … No, there were no words in the English language to describe it. It just was. Uluru.

Next chapter:

https://trialsofharrietharrison.blogspot.com/2023/09/aftermath.html