Chapter 2

Appendix: The Road of Roads

Before I tell you about the good year, I have to tell you about one day from an earlier one. Because everything I’ve said about the road being the real danger — I want you to know I’m not being clever about it. I learned it somewhere specific.

It was 2022. We were up in the Gulf country, out past a roadhouse called Hells Gate — which is named, precisely and without exaggeration, after the road it sits on. That should have been all the warning anyone needed. We were running northwest from there, out of Doomadgee toward Borroloola, on the Wollogorang Road: the worst stretch of Highway 1 there is. And when I say the worst, I mean the worst I have ever driven, anywhere — corrugated and rutted and scored all at once, a road that was dangerous at any speed, including stopped.

Every ten miles or so, a river crossing. And not a ford — a descent. Down four or five storeys into a canyon, through a river that was usually about knee height, and back up the far side. Knee height. Which sounds like nothing, until you remember where you are, which is crocodile country, properly — and the single rule of every one of those crossings is the one rule that matters out there: you do not get stuck in the river. Whatever happens. Whatever it costs. You do not stop in the water.

We had an off-road camper trailer at that point. Four-wheel-drive rated. Hardened for exactly this. Supposedly.

So we come down into a river — the Calvert, probably, though out there you’re a long way past maps and a longer way past phone coverage, and “probably” is the best anyone can do — at the end of a long, hammering day. And coming up out of the far side, I hit a pothole I never saw. An enormous bang. And in the mirror I watched the whole trailer leave the ground, briefly, and come back down.

There was a little camp spot just past the top, so we pulled in and looked at the damage. Plenty of it, all minor — except the fridge, which had torn clean out of its mounting rails, snapped the rivets, and everything inside was finished. Not just spoiled. Erased. Even the tins — the cans had survived, but the labels had all shaken off, every one, so we now owned a fridge full of anonymous metal cylinders and no idea what was in any of them. And we were a day from the nearest shop, minimum. We camped there. It was too late to push on once I’d patched what I could patch.