Chapter 8: Desert Highway

I broke the connection with Sergeant Shona Matthews of the South Australia State Police based at Port Augusta and pondered her suggestion to continue onto the next town about three hours’ truck drive from where we were. I looked at the scene some thirty metres from where my truck and trailer were parked. The scene was one of both frantically active or static onlookers with little in between. I climbed back into the cab and grabbed my camera bag from behind the seat and threw it around my neck. As I was about to descend the steps again, I drew out the camera and screwed in a medium wide angle lens to include all the crowd scene initially and started shooting images.

The early crowd of about twenty, mostly Aboriginal girls and women, had by this time swelled to over fifty of mixed Australians. It looked as though the pub must have chundered its clientele of mostly tourists enjoying a Christmas break in the Outback. Immediately ahead of me, three Aboriginal blokes were cheerfully rolling Powell over onto a stretcher, their blindingly crystal enamel tombstone smiles in stark contrast to the sickening sight of what looked like a bloated shrimp left on the barbie for too long. From my vantage point I zoomed in on the body and took a series of shots. He looked dead to me, I thought, with a sinking feeling in my guts. As he settled down in the stretcher after rolling, though, he groaned and coughed. He was breathing! He was alive! Phewie! That was a relief. At least he hadn’t carked it yet, anyway.

I took shots of the crowd from my high vantage point and zoomed in to take close-ups of certain people who interested me. Bonnie was principle among them, of course, and I took quite a number of her, mostly with her arm around Junie, who was about 20cm shorter. They were talking animatedly and smiling sometimes at their exchanges, while around their tiny oasis of calm was the bustle of local staff moving the two injured men on stretchers into the restaurant out of the burning sunshine. I realised that, despite everything, I felt calm too. Probably calmer than I deserved.

The two henchmen, that had originally grabbed us and run off towards the road, were dragged back unceremoniously onto the far back of the scene by a handful of mixed Australians taking part in holding onto each assailant. I changed to a telephoto lens and closed in on the pair and took a dozen shots of their terrified faces and their exultant captors. I got the impression of the apparent cheerfully competitive banter between the two sets of captors and imagined that they skited about how they gathered up their respective captives and exaggerated the efforts involved, and the prowess required, to trap and contain their captives in what had transpired in their back yard. In the foreground of the scene in front of me, there was still smoke streaming from the front seats of the limo and the windscreen was blackened with soot and partially riven by a crack running about halfway down the middle.

Satisfied that I had enough overall images recorded of the scene, I walked down towards Bonnie, seeking to reassure myself that she was as chipper about what had happened to us as she appeared through my viewfinder to be. As I passed a couple of the local blokes they smiled with their own immaculate tombstone smiles and slapped me on the back in friendly support. These blokes had a frontier mentality, they knew or at least had found out from the resto staff what Bonnie and I had faced and recognised my reaction and devastating response as typical frontier justice; even though I was a stranger, those slaps on the back were for a job well done, not in fear of some murdering maniac, but someone who could have been in their shoes and who’d responded as they imagined they would have hoped to have done in the same threatening circumstances.

I found that I was able to smile back at them, even though I felt the cold stab of fear of the consequences deep in the pit of my stomach.

Shona, a professional policeman, was also on our side, she knew what we faced, these powerful people with deep pockets and influential pollies behind them. Fuel and violent men who were prepared to do each other favours, so that those with influence could flout the law on a whim and not pay the consequences. I thought I knew where I stood. I did not have the wealth, contacts and influence that people like Powell clearly had. I could easily find myself on trial for the results of a few seconds’ response to what to me was a very real threat to both our lives.

But, with cool hindsight, and backed up with rehearsed transcripts from Powell and Max in a calculating court of law, my reaction could easily be turned against me to show that my actions were excessive and could be twisted to make me look the guilty party. Yeah, I could see their slick Adelaide lawyers in their thousand dollar suits tying my testimony in knots and ending up with me fighting for the honour of my virgin brown eye every night for the next ten years, while Powell gets the best skin grafts his millions can buy while rooting any prozzie prepared to submit to him without the aid of two paper bags over their heads.

“Good arvo, Knighty,” Bonnie warmly welcomed me, breaking into my dark thoughts with a beaut ray of sunshine, gripping me tightly to her as if our very lives still depended on it and pressing her lips to mine in a pash that would curl the toes of a pair of wooden clogs, let alone my flexible runners. She broke off her kiss but held onto me tightly and gazed into my eyes with an intensity that burned like the Aussie summer sun beating down on Bondi sand.

“What I love about how this is turning out is that everyone’s always told me ‘don’t gamble because Bookies never lose’, and I have always followed that advice,” she breathed. “‘You can’t beat the Bookies’, they said, because ‘the Bookies decide the odds’. Well, Mark, my dear brave no-nonsense shining knight, whatever impossible odds the Bookies may throw at you, you beat them at their own game. You came through as the odds-on favourite and took these Bookies to the cleaners once, and then you did it all over again. Well, Mark, you’re my odds-on favourite, and I’m gambling everything I have, all my heart’s riding on you.”

And then she kissed me again and this time it seemed like she would never break it off. All around us, the staff and guests, hardly anyone that really knew us, were barracking us on. In the end, before my bloodless lips dropped off and my tongue was wrestled into a knot that would defy a three-times winner of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race winner to untangle, I held her off by my hands gently but firmly around her upper arms. Despite my breaking our kiss, her smile was undiminished; it was a smile I could look at forever in preference to any sunset and never tire of. I didn’t know how to react to what she said, with all the feelings coursing through my head and heart. I decided that the only thing I could do was defer that until we were in private, and play safe in the meantime.

“Hey now, you two beautiful girls,” I croaked, referring to Bonnie and Junie, “let me get a photo of you two together?”

“Why not, Knighty?” Bonnie said, grabbing Junie, “let’s pose in front of the limo, especially while it’s still smoking!”

I knelt low and snapped away at them, with Bonnie playing up to the camera, winking, pouting, laughing and looking as if she could effortlessly out-smoulder the smoking limo with no worries, using fill in flash to illuminating their laughing faces against the blue sky. Then I called over some of the local girls, waitresses, cooks, store counter clerks, to join the pair of them. Some kneeled, some stood, all intimately squeezed in to get them all in the frame, while I was busy snapping away more photos than you could shake a stick at. Then I was easily persuaded to call for the rest of the station staff, mostly males, who were barracking throughout to join in. They needed little cajoling, as keen as any Melbourne Cup crowd to get in on the action before the inevitable finish. Those who held on to the captives, handed over to additional tourists, only too pleased to take part, to contain them. Those other onlookers from the pub swiftly necked their pints in their anticipation of participating. Mind you, those prisoners looked so sullen that they had already accepted that they were going nowhere under their own volition and looking at a long stretch as the pleasure of the State of South Australia.

“Where’s the driver?” I asked of one of the smiling tombstones posing for one of my photos, which made him laugh as he tapped his broad nose in the universal gesture of sharing knowledge among blokes, “in the Bush, mate, but he’ll be back when he’s good and toasty, and if he don’t come back, hey it’s no worries, right, mate?”

“Right, mate, no dramas,” I agreed. What else could I say? These are people that live on the edge not only of civilisation but the very fringe of human habitability, with a determined foot in both camps. If you cannot live here and adapt to survive in both sides of their world, you wither and die. This missing limo driver, and I had no idea if he was an Aussie or Seppo, was certainly a townie taking part in the crimes committed by his guv’nor and he had to bear the consequences of their and his own actions.

Lastly, after a cheerful staff bloke fetched a chair for me to stand on from the Woolshed, I took a number of wide angle shots of everyone joining in the celebration of the collective joy of being part of what for them was going to be memorable and the subject of kitchen, lounge and pub bar counter banter for a long time to come.

I had them pose with the mid-arvo sun lighting up their faces at an angle, comfortable enough to light them up and give excellent facial detail without them squinting uncomfortably. They were shots I was proud of.

Suddenly, free frosted beers flowed from the pub, trays of chilled plonk, coffees and snacks appeared from the restaurant and the nearby Roadhouse and everyone was in a ragie mood. A scene I was sure I would never forget as long as I lived, certain in the knowledge that I was not alone in this feeling.

It was the arrival of the Flying Doctor that gave Bonnie and I a chance to be relatively alone, watching as the locals headed like sheep for the tiny landing strip near the blinding white salt lake. The plane circled once then lined up to land, all the while in conversation with the radio operator on the ground. We followed the crowd behind at a distance as I stopped from time to time and took photos of the plane as it circled and landed.

“You ever experienced anything like this before?” Bonnie breathed in my ear as I pointed my 600mm lens at the sky then the ground, before squeezing my shoulder and slipping an arm around my waist.

“No, never,” I replied and, for the first time I expressed my deepening feelings for this delightful woman, I kissed her briefly on her forehead, “I have never experienced anything like this.” My free arm squeezed her to me around her slim shoulders. She snuggled in deeper, her right arm squeezing around my waist while she rubbed my chest with her left hand.

“Mmm are you finally warming to the idea of having me around?” she murmured into my throat.

“Well, my humdrum existence has certainly been given a beneficial boost since you’ve come into my life, Bluey. I’m just wondering whether the alien invasion of earth will come next or the universal declaration of world peace...”

“Ha! Someone needed to be cute enough to break the powerful spell that your horrible ex-wife had inflicted on you. I want you to be the happy, outgoing, charming and talented man, respected as you were meant to be and loved by everyone you meet, as you fully deserve. Just look at how you have charmed all these people here today and got them posing for you like one big happy family. All these strangers, guests and servers alike, all one for the day. The lives of everyone here has been touched by you and what you have done here. You, one extraordinary individual, standing up against unbelievable odds of numbers, wealth and power, and beating them soundly, not just the once, but twice.”

“I dunno about that, Blue, anyone—”

“Don’t come that with me, Knighty,” she laughed softly, “I’ve been with you on this adventure every step of the way. Now it seems even one of the top politicians in the state of South Australia can’t stop you, and Don has just a few minutes ago arrested him for conspiracy to attempted murder.”

“You’ve been speaking to Shona?”

“Yes, she couldn’t get you on the ... sattie, is it?” She continued after I nodded, “So she rang the service station here. The manager Mary Ann has the calls transferred to her mobile, so she passed Shona over to me. Apparently this big politician is a leading member of the government in the State House of Assembly, which will cause a political stink that could even bring down the present government. Plus he has a big interest in another online betting site called something like Bonza Bonanza Betta Betting and is probably another front for Powell’s world wide gambling empire. That’s the corrupt politician’s limo that you’ve just written off and, as it was knowingly used by the said politician in the pursuit of a violent crime, the damage will not be covered by his insurance policy. And,” she added after nibbling my neck, “Shona says that Don’s current workload is so busy that both of our recorded statements are more than acceptable and we do not need to stop at Coober Pedy or anywhere else in the state, we can proceed to Darwin and are free to leave the country. Mary Ann has checked the CCTV and it has recorded the limo arriving at the service station. The Hotel will be checking the camera trained on the truck park, but she’s waiting until it has finished recording the current scene, but assured me and Shona that it was covering both the limo and the space in front where we were standing when the attempted abduction took place.”

“It’ll be a while before the Flying Doctor has done his business and we can leave. And from here, the distance is vast and will take us at least 25 hours of solid driving between us to arrive in Darwin by Thursday evening.”

“We can do that between us, can’t we?”

“If we are determined enough, Blue, we can do anything.”

“Where my Knight wants to go, then I’m with him all the way.”

“I think this is where I have to put my arse on the line. Blue. I need to tell you ... oh hell, this is not the time and place for this, we really need moonlight, lit candles, violins in the background—”

“The time and place is right whenever you are ready to ... to say what you want to say to me, Mark.”

“I want to say ... that I love you Bonnie. You are—”

“—And I love you, too, Mark. I felt something for you that very first night. Just hearing you stand up to that bully Max, made me want to meet the man who made these people stop doing things they thought they could do without question. These bullies feel they can do anything they want, that they are above the law, let alone bothering to consider other people’s feelings.”

“I thought you were brave too, standing up to all those blokes, when it would have been so easy to have given in.”

“It would’ve been far easier for you to have folded and moved on too, but you stood up to be counted. It was your resistance that gave me both hope and a haven to escape to. Before then I was in despair, with almost a whole day and night to think without coming up with a plan to escape. Before you came along, the only friend I thought I had there was Teddy Tanaka the photographer. And he was clearly part of the plot to lure me here, as he was waiting in Powell’s RV where you saw me being dragged, ready to take his own crack at me. The disrespect towards the girls had been building for days. Without you being there, I know I would have been hurt, perhaps even killed if I had put up the resistance I was considering. They would have made it look like an accident, to hide their crime against a helpless woman.”

“You think that?”

“Yes. Shona does too. I may be less well known by the public than I once was, but they’d know that if I kicked up a stink about being raped after we returned to civilisation, the media would take it up and demand justice. I think that is why the first six months of that damned calendar were shot in the Rockies while the crew were in isolated cabins surrounded by snow. Those girls couldn’t get away even if they tried. Then they’d be too traumatised and powerless to pursue justice. So they decided to use this area surrounded by bushland with no escape route for any girl who didn’t want any part of their shenanigans. I wouldn’t have considered coming here at all but for the fact that I’d worked with Tanaka before, and hadn’t heard anything negative about him. He showed me shots of another calendar, of topless Japanese geisha girls, which was very tastily executed, quite high art. This was clearly something that they’d done before, probably lots of times, after all, those matching RVs don’t come cheap.”

“I’m not a betting man, but it looks odds on that the Assembly member is behind it all and there’s going to be a ripe political scandal, which is why we should get away from here and into the Northern Territory as soon as we can. I know a bloke at the vehicle licensing department in Alice, who would issue you with a provisional licence to drive this truck, make us legal.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, The Sentinel is a regional newspaper, it covers the whole of NT, not just Darwin. The editor, my father-in-law, knew I was a qualified truck driver, so he assigned me to shoot the photos and write an article about truckies. This bloke Alg, chief motoring licence inspector in Alice Springs, was an enthusiastic interviewee, especially when he found out the dumb geek journo he was expecting to be forced to work with was only a fellow truckie. To get the provo licence you have to demonstrate you know the basics of truck driving, once he sees you reverse and manoeuvre our rig like you already do, Alg’ll give you the licence quicker than a shark tucks into a tourist bather.”