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.
"For fuck sake, Ewan. Go! Oh, don't drink the water."
As soon as he was out of sight the near-bursting Bette squatted behind the vehicle, urinated and felt very much more relaxed.
She grinned, thinking about her young man walking in trepidation through the only decent bit of bush for almost three hundred miles.
There was a lake surrounded by bush quite near where she picked up Ewan, but she'd not wanted to go east, and anyway other people would be around, some of whom probably knew her. When she'd driven by Ewan and then stopped, the thought of possibly making some use of him popped into mind and her crotch flexed in anticipation.
Ewan returned disappointed.
"I didn't see any 'roos hopping about."
"They would have seen you – they will be lying down in the shade at this time of day, resting."
"The water looks crystal clear."
"That's correct, Ewan, but it's likely to contain water-borne parasites that perhaps are best left in the water."
"Why is this place called McGinty Springs – is it named after the guy who found it?"
"Women also do more than cook and make beds, Ewan. A Mrs McGinty discovered this natural phenomenon in 1886.
"Very few people have visited here because it's so remote, the landscape too rugged to support any kind of farming. It is believed to be fed by an underground river draining flood plains which eventually resurfaces to feed into the Darling River."
Ewan smiled, and chirped: "The Darling River is 860 miles long and feeds into the Murray and that combined river systems drains and waters a basin covering more than 400,000 square miles - or about fourteen percent of Australia."
"Oh my, don't tell me they have schools in New Zealand," grinned Bette sarcastically.
Ewan chose to ignore that.
"I feel privileged to have being bought here, Bette. I guess there are no shops or accommodation within cooee, like for hundreds of miles."
"Well said, but I am carrying camping gear and food. You shall be my guest."
"That's very generous of you Bette."
Now that they were standing in the shade, relaxing, Ewan took a close look at his hostess, with her sun-bleached multi-colored fair hair and khaki shirt wet with sweat under her armpits and between her breasts. She was tall and a tad plump and overall she looked, um, sexy despite her baggy khaki shorts and sandals. He wondered why she was out here alone and with him with no apparent purpose.
Was she on the run?
THREE
Bette looked at the strongly built young man who was probably in his mid-twenties. She'd never been unfaithful to Sam and wondered if that was about to change, as the more she looked at Ewan's wide chest in his white polo shirt the more she felt aroused.
She'd taken a risk bringing a man she didn't know to such a remote place, she knew that, yet didn't feel afraid. He had a sensitive look about him. If she wanted something to happen it was up to her to make it happen.
"I'm changing into my bikini to go in and cool off," she said.
"Right."