After five years of high school the final November arrives and leaves as suddenly as a Biggie must have

must have secrets. Everyone dreams of things in private. There must be stuff he
spring storm. Exams. Graduation. Huge beach parties. Bigge and me, we’re feverish with doesn’t tell me. I know about the floggings he and his mum get, but I don’t know what he
anticipation; we steel ourselves for a season of pandemonium. But after the initial wants deep down. He won’t say. But then I don’t say either. I never tell him about the
celebrations, nothing really happens, not even summer itself. Week after week an endless Skeleton Coast in Africa where ships come aground on surf beaches and lie there broken-
misting drizzle wafts in from the sea. It beads in our hair and hangs from the tips of our bellied until the dunes bury them. And the picture I have of myself in a café on the Piazza
noses while we trudge around town in the vain hope of scaring up some action. The San Marco leaving a tip so big that the waiter inhales his moustache. Dreams of the big
southern sky presses down and the beaches and bays turn the colour of dirty tin. world beyond. Manila. Monterey. Places in books. In all these years I never let on. But
Somehow our crappy Saturday job at the meatworks becomes full-time and then then Biggie’s never there in the picture with me. In those daydreams he doesn’t figure,
Christmas comes and so do the dread exam results. The news is not good. A few of our and maybe I’m guilty about that.
classmates pack their bags from university and shoot through. Cheryl Button gets into After a while we pull over for a leak. The sunlight is creamy up here. Standing at the
Medicine. Vic Lang, the copper’s kid, is dux of the school and doesn’t even stay for roadside with it roasting my back and arms through the heavy shirt, I don’t care that
graduation. And suddenly there we are, Biggie and me, heading to work every morning in picking guavas and papaya doesn’t pay much more than hosing the floor of an abattoir. If
a frigid wind in the January of our new lives, still in jeans and boots and flannel shirts, it’s outside in the sun, that’s fine by me. We’ll be growing things, not killing them. We’ll
with beanies on our heads and the horizon around our ears. move with the seasons. We’ll be free.

By the last weeks of February Biggie’s starting to come around. He’s talking wide open The Kombi fills with smoke again but this time it’s bitter and metallic and I’m halfway to
spaces now, trails to adventure, and I’m like this little urger in his ear. Then one grey day asking them to leave off and open a bloody window when I see the plume trailing us
he crosses the line. We’ve been deputised to help pack skins. For eight hours we stand on down the highway and I understand that we’re on fire. I pull over into a tottery skid in the
the line fighting slippery chunks of cow hide into boxes so they can be sold as craybait. gravel at the roadside and jump out to see just how much grey smoke is pouring out of
Our arms are slick with gore and pasted with orange and black beef-hairs. The smell isn’t the rear grille. When Biggie and Meg join me we stand there a few moments before it
good but that’s nothing compared with the feel of all those severed nostrils and lips and dawns on us that the whole thing could blow at any moment and everything we own is
ears between your fingers. I don’t make a sound, don’t even stop for lunch, can’t think inside. So we fall over each other digging our stuff free, tossing it as far into the samphire
about it. I’m just glad all those chunks are fresh because at least my hands are warm. edges of the saltpan as we can. Without an extinguisher there’s not much else we can do
Beside me Biggie’s face gets darker and darker, and when the shift horn sounds he once we’re standing back out there in the litter of our belongings waiting for the VW to
lurches away, his last carton half-empty. Fuck it, he says. We’re outta here. That explode. But it just smoulders and hisses a while as the sun sinks behind us. In the end,
afternoon we ditch the Sandman idea and buy a Kombi from a hippy on the wharf. Two with the smoke almost gone and the wiring cooked, it’s obvious we’re not going
hundred bucks each. anywhere. We turn our attention to the sunset. Meg rolls another spliff and we share it
standing there taking in the vast, shimmering pink lake that suddenly looks full of
To get past Perth we navigate the blowsy strips of caryards and showrooms and crappy rippling water. We don’t say anything. The sun flattens itself against the saltpan and
subdivisions on the outskirts. Soon we’re out the other side into vineyards and horse disappears. The sky goes all acid blue and there’s just this huge silence. It’s like the
paddocks with the sky blue as mouthwash ahead. Then finally, open road. We’ve reached world’s stopped… Right then I can’t imagine an end to the quiet. The horizon fades.
a world where it isn’t bloody raining all the time, where nobody knows us and nobody Everything looks impossibly far off.
cares. There’s just us and the Love Machine. We get the giggles. We go off; we blat the
horn and hoot and chuck maps and burger wrappers around the cabin. Two mad southern
boys still wearing beanies in March…. We get out into rolling pasture and granite country
and then wheat-lands where the ground is freshly torn up in the hope of rain. The VW
shakes like a boiling billy and we’ve finally woken up to ourselves and sheepishly
dragged our beanies off. The windows are down and the hot wind rips through our hair.