Vanishing Point

  Katherine unbuckled the safety belt, not found in most cars but put in at Alec’s insistence. She scrambled between the two front seats and across the open space to sit on the back seat, which could fold out to convert to a double bed. She leaned over and gently lifted the baby from the bassinette. Alec instinctively slowed the vehicle. Once Katherine had made her way back to the front, re-seated herself and buckled up, he relaxed slightly and pressed a little harder on the accelerator.

  ‘Okay?’ Alec asked.

  ‘Yeah, okay. She’s wet through, though. Can we pull over somewhere so I can change her and give her a feed? I think we both need that!’

  The track was located on the south side of a very remote and rarely visited area, the Yumburra Conservation Area. It was one of several such areas recognised by the State as having some plants and an ecology worth preserving, but not important enough to be a fully-fledged national park. Like most of the vegetation in outback Australia, the plants had adapted to their harsh environment, in this case the southern limit of the Great Victorian Desert. To the north lay the true desert, to the south the marginal wheat and sheep country of Eyre Peninsula.

  ‘I’m surprised that this so-called desert has so much plant cover. I would never have believed it if we hadn’t been on this trip,’ Katherine commented.

  ‘Well, of course it’s only technically a desert based on the low rainfall. The plants have really adapted to dry conditions so it looks lush. Even so, there are not many trees for a good campsite. They’re all too stunted.’

  ‘Speak of the devil. There’s one!’ Katherine pointed ahead. ‘Pull over there. It’s an almost perfect place.’ A large, white-barked eucalypt with grey-green foliage grew just north of the dog fence and cast a shadow over the scrub between the fence and the two gutters of track. Alec slowed the Kombi and eased it over the ridges into the shade, its front hard against the netting of the fence. Some of the lower supporting wire strands were broken and lay useless on the ground.

  Alec turned off the engine, stretched, opened the driver’s door and slid out. He wiggled his bottom and leaned from left to right.

  ‘I hope I’m not going to get back problems so early in life,’ he quipped. ‘This driving is not all that comfortable for long stretches on this track.’

  ‘You should let me do more of the driving.’

  No reply. Once in the driver’s seat Alec was not easy to move. On the one occasion Katherine had driven she found it very difficult to control the vehicle in the sandy track and a frustrated Alec had taken over after only a short distance.

  Katherine picked up the baby and moved to the back of the Kombi to start the automatic process of nappy changing. Almost without looking she took out the necessary items from the cupboard on the side and put them on the seat, ready for use. While she started to undo the nappy pins she glanced up to see Alec filling a plastic bowl with water. They worked silently as a parental team, each knowing what was needed. Alec opened the central side doors and put the bowl on the floor.

  ‘We’ve plenty of water. And, thinking positive, in this hot weather we don’t have to warm the water for washing her.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Look, it’s so late and I’m tired of driving. Why don’t we just make camp here? I know it’s close to the track but we’ve not seen another vehicle since we came up here, so we’re unlikely to have dust storms from passing traffic.’

  ‘Sounds like a good idea to me.’

  ‘Great. We can set off early tomorrow, fuel up in Ceduna and be home by tomorrow night.’

  ‘Okay. Why don’t you make a fire for the evening meal and we can finish off most of what’s left of the food? I’ll change and feed Carolyn and we can have an early night.’

  Now that the excursion was over Alec relaxed slightly. He had been a little nervous about taking his family on this rock collecting expedition. However, Katherine insisted on coming with him, much against her widowed mother’s wishes. Her mother felt it foolish and dangerous for such a young baby to be carted all over the country and remote country at that. Always the protective mother, she had shielded Katherine from the harsh realities of life so that Katherine remained naive about many issues. Her time at the university had been a real eye-opener.

  Alec tended to agree with his mother-in-law’s reservations, but Katherine was adamant. She was almost as stubborn as her father had been, and made up her mind that she would not be left behind nursing a baby in their small rented flat at Henley Beach while her husband explored the country. In any event, it was a short field trip. Alec planned to be back in Adelaide within ten days.

  It wasn’t even the best time of year for outdoor travel and camping in this part of the world. Freezing cold nights followed uncomfortably hot days. However, the timing was determined by the fact that Alec had to squeeze his collecting in to a period between the end of lectures and the start of examination marking. So it was October when they left Adelaide. The fact that this year good winter rains had broken the prolonged drought leading to an abundance of wild flowers made the trip very worthwhile as far as Katherine was concerned.

  To collect his rock samples, Alec had been north of the track into the scrubby bush as far as his vehicle could travel. Then he set off on foot to collect samples of exposed granite for his research. The Kombi roof rack contained several boxes of samples and others were sitting on the raised luggage compartment above the rear engine. Normally a four-wheel drive vehicle, well equipped with radio and extra water, would have been used for a trip into such a remote area but University funding was limited. Alec decided to take his own second-hand Kombi even though he recognised that his lack of mechanical skills was an added risk.

  Katherine, busy with her baby, thought back on the trip. The whole adventure had been wonderful. Once in the bush they slept out under the stars, near the glowing embers of the campfire, while Carolyn slept in the Kombi. In spite of the hot days, the nights had been very chilly, but they had been comfortable in the vehicle or, more commonly, in their down sleeping bags on collapsible stretcher beds. Katherine enjoyed reading and playing with Carolyn, who behaved perfectly, while Alec wandered off to collect samples and take notes. Typically he would be gone most of the day and return toward evening. He was confident of his bush skills and armed with a compass and the aerial photographs she knew that he never felt lost.

  The daily loneliness did not bother Katherine. She had grown up on a farm in the Adelaide Hills and had spent much of her childhood on her own. It allowed time for reading the small collection of paperback books in the old farmhouse spare room. Apart from the musty classics bound in old leather, inherited from her grandfather, she had read every romantic paperback novel in the collection. These had been left by more worldly-wise visiting cousins and Katherine had her impressions of love and romance formed by these stories. She was shocked at fourteen when friends at school told her how babies were made. Her parents had been too embarrassed to raise the subject. Even when her periods started her mother bundled her off to the doctor. It was from this stranger that she learned the true facts of life framed in clinical accuracy and emotional sterility. She came to believe that periods and sexuality were more of a medical complaint than a fundamental part of life. Sex and romance lived in different compartments.

  Late each afternoon she collected firewood from the abundant dead mulga and mallee trees and make a campfire to prepare Alec’s evening meal. There was always plenty of dried timber, partly because the prolonged drought had an impact even on plants evolved to endure the harsh Australian environment. Alec never seemed to tire of the potatoes wrapped in aluminium foil baked in the embers, and she loved the billy tea with her damper. It all felt very domestic, very primitive and almost pre-historic with the woman and child keeping the camp and waiting for the hunter to return. Katherine revelled in it.

  She felt the trip had brought them even closer together. She regretted it was coming to an end so soon and within a couple of days they would be back to the routines of
domesticity in Adelaide. She was pleased that she had insisted on coming, travelling across a remote part of the country rarely seen by most Australians who knew only crowded cities. Here she was able to forget about the realities of life, which seemed to crowd in when they were in the city. The war in Vietnam, the daily news bulletins of the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation, even the excitement of the space race seemed a distant memory. Carolyn had been the perfect baby and had no difficulty in sleeping, day or night, and waking only for feeding and changing.

  Alec strolled along the track to collect some firewood. He thought the sidelong glance Katherine gave him as she said ‘an early night’ sounded like a suggestion of something hopefully more sexual. Since Carolyn’s birth that aspect of their lives had taken a substantial dip. He partly understood it, especially since the baby provided so much more work for his wife. She seemed more tired than before the baby was born. He enjoyed the moments of just holding and cuddling but he missed the sex!

  Unfortunately, Katherine seemed to be incapable of regarding any sex other than straight, conventional ‘missionary position’ as a possibility. They, or more precisely Alec, even bought the new marriage manual, Sex and Marriage, only recently taken off the banned list in conservative South Australia and now available in bookshops throughout Adelaide, affectionately termed the ‘City of Churches.’ Alec used it to try to introduce her to the joys of other forms of sexual activity, such as oral sex, but she always drew away. Perhaps it was the influence of her strict upbringing. He was aware that her parents had never discussed sex and she had always been a shy girl and sometimes wondered if her unexpected pregnancy made her feel guilty. In any case, he was not going to make her do things she did not want to do, but he wished she would be a bit more adventuresome. Especially after Carolyn was born and she looked so radiantly desirable.

  He sighed aloud as he climbed over the fence and started collecting some of the dried, scattered wood. The sun cast long shadows now and the decision to camp seemed a good one. He turned, looked at his footprints. Aloud he said, ‘I wonder how many white people have walked this way before. It seems so far from anywhere.’

  A lizard, soaking up the last fragments of daily warmth, scampered under a tuft of grass, which had left circular ridges around it in the red sand as the wind blew its elongate leaves around the central root. It looked a bit like the concentric circles so common in Aboriginal art. Alec looked back at the parked Kombi. Katherine was sitting on the floor in the space of the open side doors, her feet on the ground. She held Carolyn close to her chest, obviously feeding. Her head was bowed, watching the life force flow from her to her suckling daughter.

  ‘What a beautiful sight.’ Alec felt the deep warmth of love and pride as he looked back at his wife and child. ‘I love them both so very much.’

  It wasn’t Carolyn crying that woke them, but the sun creeping through the thin curtains surrounding the dusty windows of the Kombi. Alec was first to wake. He stretched and crept out from under the double sleeping bag on the extended back seat. He tried not to wake Katherine but the central side doors made such a noise that she immediately stirred. After the baby’s birth her sleeping pattern changed and it took very little to rouse her. Alec sauntered over to relieve himself a short distance from the vehicle and rubbed his stubbly whiskers. They had grown exceptionally fast over the past two weeks. It no longer looked as if he had merely forgotten to shave but more like a deliberate attempt to grow a scruffy beard. He faced the rising sun and stretched upwards as if welcoming its arrival before climbing over the fence to collect wood for the breakfast fire.

  By the time the blackened, battered billy was boiling and a frying pan with the last of the bacon and eggs was crackling over the glowing wood coals, Katherine was up and dressed. Even in this isolated area and the presence of only her husband, her modesty prevented her from being too exposed and she wore a floral blouse partly open to nurse Carolyn, all clean and washed. The couple sat down in silence on canvas folding chairs and gazed into the smoke and fire. The chirruping, trilling calls of birds broke the quiet of the morning. A pipit flitted from branch to branch, aggressively defining its own small territory in the vast remoteness of the outback with pretty birdsong. It was otherwise still: not a leaf moved in the surrounding scrub. Both Alec and Katherine were silent, lost in their own thoughts as they breakfasted, the last of the trip. Tonight they would be back in Adelaide, their little adventure over.

  ‘Right then,’ said Alec decisively, suddenly standing and going across to the plastic bowl of water, ‘let’s get these things washed up and packed then hit the road.’

  He started briskly washing and packing, while Katherine slowly folded up their sleeping things. They worked well together, each taking on a task without the need to communicate. Once everything was in place Alec climbed into the driver’s seat, Katherine beside him and Carolyn gurgling in the bassinette, once more secured in the back.

  ‘Right-O! Let’s roll,’ said Alec as he turned the ignition key and pressed the starter. The starter motor gave a weak grunt and then lapsed into silence.

  ‘That’s odd …’ A slight frown crossed his brow. He tried again. And again. This time there was not even a grunt. Not a hint of noise from the engine itself. Alec undid his safety belt, got out and went to the back of the Kombi to open the engine hatch. He peered inside but in reality he had no idea why the motor was not responding. Perhaps it was the battery connections or possibly the starter motor. He regretted his lack of any mechanical ability and a slight worry started nagging in his brain.

  ‘What if we can’t get the damn thing going? Ma is just going to love this. She said we were silly to come out here in this old Kombi. Probably just a loose wire to the starter motor.’

  He double checked the battery connections and wiggled the spark plugs. As far as he could tell everything seemed in place and firmly connected. Alec clambered back into the driver’s seat and again tried to start the Kombi. His efforts were once more rewarded with total silence. Now he was really worried but he didn’t want to make Katherine anxious. In spite of all the distance driving he hadn’t once thought of the possibility of a flat battery and didn’t have a spare. After all this battery was almost new. It shouldn’t be flat. And the Kombi had been thoroughly serviced before leaving.

  After several more tries at starting and more fiddling in the engine compartment, Alec gave up. He stood beside the open passenger door and angrily said to Katherine, ‘The damn engine won’t start no matter what I do. I think it’s probably a flat battery. I don’t know how that’s happened; it was new a month ago.’

  ‘Why don’t you leave it a while and then try again?’

  ‘Okay. I’ll do that. But my intuition tells me it won’t change anything. In the meantime, we may as well make ourselves comfortable and organise some shade for Carolyn. If I can’t start it we may be stuck out here for quite a while.’

  ‘Good idea. It gets hot so quickly,’ Katherine said as she climbed out of her seat.

  ‘Can you check our supplies, especially water? How much have we got?’ he asked, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

  ‘I think we have about twenty litres.’

  ‘That’ll last a while if we go carefully, but I’ll see if I can organise a way of collecting water for a safety margin.’

  Katherine taped newspaper against the windows to reduce the amount of sun getting into the Kombi, which was already beginning to feel hot. A short distance away, on the other side of the fence, Alec started digging a pit in the red sand. Once it was completed he broke off some branches and put them in the hole, with a small bucket in the centre. He covered the pit with the sheet of plastic that served as a waterproof for Carolyn’s bedding and held it in place with heaped sand. Once in place he weighed down the middle of the plastic sheet with a small piece of granite from his collection.

  Katherine, finished in the Kombi, curiously watched his activity. ‘What’s all that for?’

  ‘It’s a way to ge
t extra water. Dehydration is going to be our biggest danger if we’re here for a while.’

  ‘How will that get us water?’

  ‘The branches in the pit transpire in the sun. Hopefully, the moisture will form drops on the plastic and they’ll collect in the bucket. That way we can get clean water. In the meanwhile, we’re going to have to be very frugal in terms of what we use. Early in the morning we can replace the branches.’

  ‘Clever!’

  Alec pointed to some large, heavy-duty plastic bags he used for wrapping rocks and holding soil samples.

  ‘We’ll tie those sample bags around some of the leaves of the bushes and they’ll collect moisture as well.’

  He left Katherine tying bags on the bushes while he put a few branches on the roof of the Kombi, to help keep it cool through the day. Alec tried to sound confident as he spoke while working, ‘I’m sure there’ll be a vehicle along before too long. There must be a ranger or someone who monitors the fence and the reserve. Even if we have to wait all day someone is likely to be along here tomorrow.’

  * * *

  The sun rose higher and the temperature crept up as morning progressed. Alec and Katherine played cards, liar dice, read their books and talked. Carolyn woke, was fed and wiped clean, and nursed.

  While Katherine prepared lunch Alec watched her silently. He felt terrible about their situation. He broke the silence with an apology saying, ‘I’m really sorry I got you into this mess, Kath. Your Mum was right. I should have listened to her and not brought you out here.’

  Katherine put down the paring knife and looked him in the eye.

  He continued. ‘I feel really stupid, I was so keen to get up here and start collecting that I didn’t even tell the police in Ceduna that we’d be here. Noone knows where we are except the folks in Adelaide and they have no idea when we’re due back.’