We were sitting in our vehicle remembering how both of us thought it was overkill. Four tyres for one trip? Well, It can happen. Coming to terms with the fact that we had just blown the fifth tyre for the morning. 200km into a very long drive. Where we’d stopped was not far from a fork in the road. So we had a choice to, either head west for about 30–40 km to an aboriginal mission we knew was out there. Or to keep heading South.
Heading to the mission was probably not a great idea seeing as though they wouldn’t have many of the tools we needed and certainly wouldn’t have a vehicle that we could use. And if we just kept heading along the way we were. Well, that road just went on forever into a whole lot of nothing. So we just sat there for a while staring out the windscreen into the rocky desert ahead.
After a while, we realized we could see a ridge in the distance. It seemed to stretch directly North to South. Raising up like a giant snake. In this part of the country, it’s flat. Really flat. Even for a dessert. So we figured there was a good chance what we were looking at could be the Stuart HWY. I looked at Macky and he looked at me. He looked back out the window and then back to me. There’s a really good chance it is he said. If there was anyone I’d listen to in a situation like this (out there), it was Macky. He’d been born on this station. Had lived there his whole life. Apart from a few trips to Brisbane, it was his whole world. So together we broke the №1 rule when getting stuck out in the bush. We walked away from our vehicle.
We had been walking for about six hours. And the looming ridge was getting closer. We hadn’t been talking much and our shuffle of the last few hours had turned into more of a clip. The sun was about an hour from dropping completely and it was getting pretty cold. That was one detail that had not crossed my mind heading out on that walk. Carrying anything like a jumper or jacket. Spending the night out there was not something we had discussed. When the average temperature during the day is in the low 50’s a jumper or jacket is really the last thing on your mind. Macky was about twenty-five to fifty meters ahead of me and he’d started climbing up the side of the ridge. That was when another realization hit me. We hadn’t heard anything that resembled a car or a truck. When we got to the top of that ridge anything like surprise had already left us. And something more like horror had started to seep in.
No matter how far and wide you travel on a property that equals half the landmass of a small European country. It will always surprise you. We stood there on that big snake of rocks only to realized that was exactly what it was. As we looked out over a view that was like a mirror from earlier that morning. Now with the sun down. The reflection we had been watching all day bouncing of the vehicle we left behind, was no longer visible. The disorientation I felt nearly made me throw up.
It was freezing. And we were so dry. Our water had run out well before we got to the ridge. That’s when Macky turned to me with a very serious look on his face and started educating me on what he had been told about dehydration and exhaustion in the desert. He’d told me, that in this state the last thing you wanted to do was stop moving. That we needed to keep on walking. Because if you did stop. Whatever fluid that was left in our bodies would go directly to our vital organs for survival. Our tongues would swell so badly they’d fill our mouths and that would be the beginning of the end. Whether or not it was true. I was listening to my friend. Like I’d never listened before.
So now knowing that one of the worst things we could do was to sit and rest. We headed off again, into the night. We were both feeling a type of exhaustion that was very new to us. We would occasionally stop, for a brief moment and just lean against each other, but not for long. And we carried each other when things got really tough.
Nature has a wonderful way of giving you a little something when it’s putting you to the test. And tonight, it was the sky. There were no clouds at all. The stars were simply incredible. Although this made it freezing, we could see where we were placing our feet. So we could just make out the movements of the odd snake and scorpion. Giving us even more reasons to stay on our feet. Every now and then the thought of just sitting down and letting go was so inviting. so comforting. To shake that feeling off I’d tilt my head back and just take in the stars. They were so deep and vast. It was as if I could put my arms through them. They were falling around my shoulders. And I was breathing them in.
I think we had actually started seeing the odd set of headlights for a while before either of us said anything. Then we started seeing and hearing. The engines sounded really odd. Somehow Alien. There we were on the side of the road. We were still holding each other up as we tried to flag down one of those cars. The first few cars swerved away from us. Then they started using their horns a well. You see. Macky wasn’t aboriginal but he was dark, really dark. He looked just like a fit young Aboriginal fella. And there was a chance that none of these cars were going to stop for us. So after a while, we pretended that Macky had a broken leg. The sun was coming up and we collected a couple of decent sticks and strapped them to his leg with our belts. Macky would hide behind some scrub and I’d wave down a car. Nearly all of them stopped (for me). Until they could see through their back window, that I was helping my friend toward their car. Then they would take off in a shower of gravel.
I think this situation repeated itself half a dozen times before we let ourselves drop to the ground. We just sat there and held each other. A couple of nearly dead cowboys.
As the sun came up over that beautiful desert we cried.
