We are camped just north of Rockhampton, just off the Bruce Highway. It’s down near a scrubby gully that sings with birdsong in the dawn, but close enough to the highway to hear the hum and grumble of truck exhaust brakes overnight.
The entire aural composition is punctuated by a rooster, hidden from view, whose signature cock-a-doodle-doo sounds like he is running on a dying battery. It starts with perfect pitch and composition, but then fades to a disappointing, trailing squeal that must surely frustrate the hell out of him. Perhaps this is why he persists. He also has no idea of when the day actually starts, clearly having a guess every twenty minutes or so. He’ll be right eventually. I only hope he is festooned with luxurious plumage and struts with purpose, despite what appears to be significant failings in the other key areas of being an effective cock.
The camp is on a farm and run by a bloke named Dave. He lives in a ‘shed that turned slowly into a house’, which despite having a ramshackle feel, still has a certain order.
I call Dave from Gin Gin to confirm things and he is up for a yarn, basically repeating in detail the directions he has already sent to find the place, but this time adding some history. The key is in the freezer section of an old fridge that is the mailbox, ‘a hell of a thing that was only going to be there for a while, but it’s done the job so, well, it’s still there’.
He then mentions something about his wife, who is the photo with him on the website we book the camp through. Her name is Pat. There is something about the way he mentions her, in the past tense, that makes me feel like she is either away or they may have split up. Something about Pat used to do this or that, but I look after that now. It’s a tiny moment, I take little notice.
As we drive down the white gravel road towards what is obviously Dave’s place, we see an older man come out the door and limp towards his ute. He gets in and indicates the way to the site. It’s only 50 metres from his shed and he gets out, dressed in a faded high-viz shirt that has the name Colin embroidered on one side and some engineering company on the other. Maybe a hand-me-down from a relative I wonder.
I first see Dave on side profile, but when he turns towards me I notice that about a third of his skull has been taken away on his left side, leaving his head appearing unbalanced and making him talk slightly through the side of his mouth. It’s almost like someone with a giant ice-cream scoop has taken a piece. It’s a shock but of course Dave is used to it, and probably the reactions he sees in people trying to pretend they haven’t noticed anything.
‘I wanted to get down here and get the fire going for youse, so it’d be nice and warm but you beat me’ he chuckles.
Despite this, he still gathers some sticks and uses something like WD-40 and sprays his lighter that creates a improvised flame thrower that completely fascinates the boys. This is the new standard in fire lighting in their opinion.
We have a chat. He is interested in our set-up and vehicle. He knows a few things. The day is closing in, a light coolness sits on my shoulders as shadows stretch across the camp. Dave and I do that thing of men, where we turn our backs to the main camp, wander away a few metres and gaze back over the paddock.
‘Yeah, me and Pat have been here for a while. Pat used to look after most of this stuff’ he says, nodding his head backwards over his shoulder towards the campsite. There’s that past tense thing again.
‘She died’ he says, not without emotion, ‘about five weeks back’.
A deep sympathy overwhelms me as he says this. Here is a man who already seems to have had some tough cards in life and now it appears he has lost the best bit of luck he had run into. I have no idea of what sort of relationship he and Pat had, but I can sense this a genuine man and I imagine theirs was the simple but full love.
My mind runs through the classic possibilities – cancer, maybe she smoked, a recurring disease.
‘Yep, bit by a domestic pig’ says Dave, staring at the dust.
‘What?’ I blurt out.
‘Yeah, we was feeding the neighbours pigs and one just jumped up and grabbed her here’ he says, making a biting shape with his hand and grabbing just above his waist, ‘barley scratched her, but massive internal injuries. Well, about five visits to Brisbane and $60,000 later, that was it’.
He is matter of fact, in that way people sometimes are when something so dramatic has happened so recently. But he pauses, almost embarrassed and scrubs around in the dirt with his dried out work boot.
‘I guess I’m still getting over it, or something…’ he then wavers a little, and I suddenly understand there is more than one meaning of ‘losing’ someone.
You lose them, they are lost to you, but you are left lost as well. You are lost.
‘We had the funeral right here’ he says ‘she said she wanted to be bought down in a $40,000 horse float and the coffin be popped straight on that log over there, which we did’.
‘Anyway, I better be getting out of this cold. I’ll leave you lot to your own devices’ and he hobbles off, followed by two fox terriers who have appeared and nimbly jump in the cabin of his ute and he idles off, exhaust smoke lazily floating from the back, into the approaching dark.
They say comedy is tragedy plus time, and this story needs plenty of time because right now it just feels tragic. I hug my boy who is closest to me and we all go to bed early.
Big Country 