ONE
As regularly as clockwork, once a year, Bette Medway and husband Sam have a fearful row, the tears flow from Bette as she races away in fury and within a couple of days the rains come, breaking several months of drought.
Bette returns home and she and Sam disappear into the bedroom for 24 hours, and so begins another annual cycle.
On this occasion, tears streaming down her sun-weathered face, Bette roared along their three-quarters of a mile private track to the highway where she paused, having to decide whether to turn left or right. Usually she turns right in the rugged 4WD vehicle and heads to the coast a day's drive away – one day to get there, one day to be there, one day to drive back home.
Boring!
She turned inland although having no intention of driving to the desert was more than a day's drive away, though where it really begins is a matter of speculation and drough patterns.
Her keen eyes spotted a figure perhaps a mile away – just a speck that had stood up waiting to thumb a lift. Company would be nice, but who can you trust these days? she thought. If it's a marooned motorist or someone injured she would stop, but not for a hitchhiker of dubious character and probably a foreigner as well.
She passed the figure on the roadside – it was a male, as to be expected, being solo. He'd thumbed but she ignored him and covered him with dust.
Looking in the rear vision mirror Bette saw the cheeky prick giving her the fingers. Right, mate, you're for for a tongue lashing. She braked to a stop on the road that continued on for another twenty seven miles, dead straight.
Let the cheeky sod come up to her, she'd give him a tongue lashing and be off. She locked the doors just in case he became nasty.
The traveller took his time walking the distance. Bette sighed and wondered why after her annual dust up with Sam it was she who took off – why couldn't that mean bastard of a husband take his turn and effect the necessary separation!
By the time the poor sod reached the 4WD vehicle, Bette had almost forgotten her reason for stopping. She unlocked the doors and told him to jump in, handing him a cool beer and unscrewing the cap off one for herself. It was hot, 92 deg inside the vehicle.
TW0
Hitchhiker Ewan Carson had spotted the dust plume rising above the road behind a speeding vehicle, the first vehicle to approach him since the last one dropped him off four hours ago.
Sun glinted on the windscreen of the vehicle as he rose to his feet, wishing for a ride with a very pleasant person who'd hand him a cold beer.
The vehicle flashed byand he caught the haughty look of the shelia who otherwise ignored him. So he stepped out on to the roadway, coughing dust, and gave the heartless bitch the fingers.
Unbelievably he saw the brake lights go on. She stopped, almost a quarter mile away, and made no effort to reverse towards him. The bitch!
Obviously she couldn't have seen his obscene gesture, otherwise she wouldn't have stopped. As he got nearer the vehicle the front passenger door opened so he went to that side.
"G'day," she said in a broad Aussie accent. "Going my way, which is straight ahead?"
"Well, I don't really know where I'm going, as I have yet to decide."
"Struth, join the club. Hop in."
Ewan had no idea which club he was about to join, but got into the vehicle and smiled gratefully at the angel, aged about forty, who'd stopped and handed him a dream cool beer. He could have kissed her.
"Thank's, my name is Ewan Carson."
"Hi, I'm Bette Medway off a station near here. Where are you from, Ewan?"
"New Zealand."
"Where's New Zealand?"
Oh shit, here he is miles from God knows where, and he has to meet the only female comedian in all of Australia.
"It's the land of intelligentsia when Australians go for their vacations and think they've arrived in Heaven."
"Oh, bless my luck, here I have picked up the only Kiwi alive with a humor," she giggled.
Ewan decided he liked this Aussie with her tear-stained face.
"Where would you like to be taken?" she asked. "I can offer Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide Perth but not Tasmania."
"Dunno, I was hoping you could take me to some magical place in this part of your region."
Bette was about to deny such a place existed, when she thought of one she'd visited as a girl – a fabulous place, etched deep in her memory.
"There's one such place if you don't mind a bit of a drive; it's almost 250 miles bearing a little north of here."
"Oh, I can't let you do that – that's a long way away."
Bette slammed the vehicle into gear and set off.
"We're on our way mate, first turn on the right fifteen miles down this road.
"We're fully provisioned and the old girl is carrying a drum a diesel, we've got two radio handsets that work so we're free to go ride-about. I need something to cheer me up, this adventure should do it."
They belted along and in less than four hours arrived at an ancient upheaval in the monotonously flat terrain that they had been driving at for the past half hour. The up-rise is split by a canyon, Bette had said, as she nursed the bucking vehicle over the very rough terrain sparsely covered in saltbush.
They arrived at 'the place' as she called it, being just as Bette had described it: on the floor on both sides of the narrow lake in the canyon was a thriving box ironbark ecosystem of grey, yellow and long leaf gums with a scattering undergrowth of what Ewan thought comprised mainly cat's claw, grevillea and wattles.
"Are there snakes?"
"Probably."
"Er, crocodiles?"
"No, they're way up north?"
"Stingers?"
Bette looked at Ewan and grinned.
"You Kiwis are paranoid about our less than friendly critters. You fool, stingers are saltwater jellyfish and they're only found in northern waters way up the Queensland coast, across the top and down a bit into Western Australia."
"Why don't you explore and look for some 'roos – should be at least a couple of species here and try to identify some of the birds – the ones with long legs in the water are called waders and the ones that scream at you are called whatever. Watch out for spiders."
"Spiders," gulped Ewan.
