Out of Time by Steve Hawke

Author:Steve Hawke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fremantle Press
Published: 2019-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

August 2005

THE GAME IS UP

It is a balmy night with a soft Broome breeze. Anne is waiting at their table. The ‘staircase’—the famed golden ripples made by the full moon rising over Roebuck Bay—was a couple of nights ago, and there is only a smattering of people on the hotel’s expansive lawn and the decking overlooking the bay.

He’s always wanted to see the staircase. But hey, he thinks, happily ignoring the jostle of the fellow in a straw hat pushing past him to the bar. That same full moon was glinting on us at Bullfrog Hole. Can’t ask for more than that.

It has been a magical trip. The first week in Karratha could hardly have gone better. Perhaps by design, Geoffrey was away for a few days at head office, and even when he returned the two men accommodated each other in almost friendly fashion. Joe had enough time with baby James to reprise his full repertoire of nursery rhymes and lullabies, and got to change his first nappy in twenty-five years when Anne talked Claire into a coffee at the beach. Then they packed up the four-wheel drive that Geoffrey had organised, and headed further north.

When Eric heard they were definitely doing the Kimberley trip, he’d got busy on email and even made a couple of phone calls from Sri Lanka to his mate Rosa Rider. He’d met her a couple of times, decades ago, when Lil had taken the Kimberley girl under her wing at the nursing college. Then they were reacquainted when he found himself supervising a housing project at Jimbala Wali, the community where she runs the clinic.

Rosa invited Eric one weekend to go camping instead of trekking into Derby and back. He’d caught his first barramundi there at Bullfrog Hole, down at the bottom end of Highlands Station that the Jimbala Wali mob owned; it is private community land, and remote as it gets. Rosa was happy to give the ok for Eric’s friends to visit.

Anne and Joe both liked the idea of settling in at the one spot rather than setting up and breaking camp and driving each day, and Eric had assured them they would not find a better waterhole anywhere in the Kimberley. It did not disappoint.

Following Rosa’s directions, they’d driven southward. A spectacular standalone mesa rose and then receded on their left, and the contorted sandstone formations of the King Leopold Ranges loomed ahead in ochrous shades. But before they could reach the range, the track came to an end at a belt of trees—bauhinias, a miscellany of eucalypts, and glimpses of taller river figs where the ground began to dip.

There was a shared sense of awe as they’d made their way down to the bank of the waterhole. A ribbon of deep-green water stretching into the distance, as still as a painting, drooping river figs draping its fringes.

Serenity. The word, and then the feeling, had seeped into him as he beheld the scene.

Anne slipped an arm around his waist, watching a pair of cavorting bee-eaters skimming the water’s surface.

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