12
2
Within three months of meeting Benny, I resigned from my
puppet theatre job, rented out my Brunswick terrace, sold my
car and couches, and was helping him finish work on his old
Landcruiser truck. I was going with him to Alice Springs.
Slipping into each other’s lives was effortless. Ben was
handsome and serious. His decisions were carefully and
sanely considered, and he took me more seriously than I
took myself. He had the best truck, and the best bum in
jeans. We were drawn to each other’s opposite qualities—his
reserve and deliberation, and my more spontaneous, heart-
on-sleeve ways. I made curtains for the truck from op shop
fabric in fire-engine red and, at my request, Ben trawled
wreckers’ yards for an original bench seat.
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I slid across to the middle of the seat and leant my head
on his shoulder. ‘Good one . . . much better for sitting close
on the road,’ I said happily.
‘True. Good call, Inky.’
Ben was in the process of converting the truck’s engine
to run on used vegetable oil. We were driving up a busy
street when he pointed to a gathering of forty-gallon drums
parked out the front of a Thai restaurant: ‘Veggie oil! Used
veggie oil! People pay to have it taken away . . . they’re ours!’
We pulled over and loaded them into the back, then drove
home victorious. That afternoon I held gauze over a bucket
while Benny strained out the chunks.
‘Mmm . . . smells like pad thai noodles and samosas,’ I
said, pulling the gauze tighter.
‘Yeah . . . it’s making me hungry,’ said Benny, holding
his gaze on the stream of slippery golden liquid.
Ben scrubbed the rust off an old camp oven. He attached
solar panels to the truck’s roof so we had power for the bush
fridge, the stereo and the reading lights he had fitted into a
wood panel over the futon. It was Melbourne winter, and
we wore beanies and jumpers over jumpers. In the evenings
Ben would disappear into a small office for hours at a stretch
to work on his master’s degree in renewable energy.
‘Your self-discipline impresses and baffles me,’ I said. He
prodded my ribs until I released my arms from around his
waist, then headed for the office without a word.
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Serenade for a Small Family
It had taken four months but Kelly the truck was finally
finished and we were ready to go. After farewell drinks
at a Richmond pub, Benny raised Kelly’s back to show
friends as I swooned with pride at his impressive work. I
showed off my curtains and pointed to a line of pop rivets:
‘I did them!’ That night Benny and I clambered into Kelly,
giggling with excitement, and slept there—parked in Ben’s
mum’s driveway.
The following morning Benny slipped the key into the
ignition. ‘Ready to go, Stink?’
‘Yeah!’
I was apprehensive about Ben’s plan to take months
travelling through the Flinders Ranges. I hadn’t been there
before, nor had I spent days, let alone weeks, camping in
faraway bush and desert places. I pictured shoving our
bodies through dense, thorny bushes or shrivelling under a
scorching sun. But scarier than that was the unmarked time
stretching ahead of me each day; I sure wasn’t used to that.
We spent a night at Wilpena Pound, then drove on
into the ranges, parking by wide riverbeds lined with
river red gums. We arranged stones in a circle for a fire
pit. Together we pulled out the bush fridge and opened up
Kelly’s back and side, then we hung towels, my ugg boots,
and a basket holding fruit and veggies from her clothesline.
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I N G R I D L A G U N A
We pulled out the crockery bin and the shower bucket
before heading off in different directions to collect logs
and kindling for a fire.
Relaxed and purposeful, I fussed around our truck home,
serving dinner from the back of Kelly’s tray and filling the
water bottle from the tank under her belly.
Johnny Cash, take beers out of the bush fridge and unfold
camp chairs. Benny pointed out every raucous kookaburra
while I laid out cheese, crackers, dips and nuts and was
labelled The Snack Queen. We would talk into the night,
staring and poking at the fire in the silences. (It turns out
I’m a pyromaniac.) I played guitar, and cooked roast veggies
with almonds and sweet chilli sauce in the camp oven.
From our bed in the back of the open truck, we woke to
the changing colours of the chilly early morning and took
turns to be the first to get the fire going and put on the billy.
‘I love camping!’ I told Benny.
For showers I had laid out soap and shampoo on a rock
among some trees.
‘Bathroom’s over here!’ I announced, and Benny heaved
the metal bucket of steaming water off the fire and set it
up with the pump and hose. We stripped and took turns
to soap up and rinse, balancing on a wobbly rock, one foot
at a time, to pull on undies and jeans without getting sand
and critters in our pants.
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Serenade for a Small Family
One night we sat by a dwindling fire, passing a block of
chocolate between us, the night sky thick with glittering
stars for miles around.
‘This is my last bit,’ I said, taking two pieces, and sitting
back comfortably. ‘I mean it.’
‘Hey, I want to do this eighteen-kilometre loop walk
around the gorge tomorrow . . .’ Benny snapped off a row
of chocolate while my heart quietly dodged a beat. ‘What
do you think?’
Here’s the thing: I like beer gardens with live music,
stand-up comedy, plays in small theatres, dinner parties, and
dance floors that lift off to live horns and percussion. I like
posh hotels, breakfast in bed, music festivals, and I would
love to go to New York. Things like that. I wasn’t proud of
the fact, but bushwalking was really not on the list.
The other thing was that scenery appreciation made me
impatient. I didn’t get it. I’m interested in people. In books
I skip over long landscape descriptions, relieved when the
dialogue kicks back in.
‘Um . . . actually . . . I think I’ll just stay around the
camp tomorrow. Play some guitar, read my book. I’m not
much of a bushwalker.’ (That was s uch an understatement.)
‘Really?’ said Benny, surprised. ‘No . . . You’ve got to
come. It’ll be good, and it’s a long day to sit around by
yourself.’
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In the end I agreed to go. I didn’t feel like a long
day by myself, and staying at the campsite was way too
unadventurous. So at dawn the following morning I
reluctantly pulled on my boots and packed sandwiches.
We found
the beginning of the track, and I took the lead,
walking briskly and with determination, nervous. As we
walked, the country around us started to change. Tall
trees leant over us and mottled the sun on the f loor of
the twisting, changing track. We walked through sandy
riverbeds and into bushy valleys, over steep, rocky sections
and along a wide-open dirt track. We stopped for lunch
by the spreading roots of a huge tree. Sitting cross-legged
under its shade, scratching in the dirt with a stick, I silently
mouthed the word— bushwalk.
Into the afternoon, with the motion of putting one foot
in front of the other, my mind wandered and I relaxed.
We finished the walk as the sun began to set, sighing out
loud as we landed in our camp chairs and happily pulled
off our boots. I was proud of myself for finishing that all-
day walk, for keeping up with Ben, and for letting that
stunning place into me. We clinked beers, and I rubbed
one weary foot with my free hand; grounded, content and
already looking forward to our next walk.
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Serenade for a Small Family
‘My waters have broken!’ It was 2 a.m. on day three in
labour. A midwife moved quickly to the sink to wash her
hands, at the same time pressing a green button on the wall
with her elbow. Bright light blinked and flooded the room.
A woman in a white coat appeared and moved to the foot
of my bed. My fear around the birth of my babies had been
building for three days and now the moment had finally
arrived. Although I was frightened, I was also relieved. But
things were moving fast and I did not have time to think.
It wasn’t hard to push out the first baby. He came quickly
and easily, feet first. ‘Can you call Ben? My husband . . .
can someone call him?’
A man had joined the growing crowd at the foot of
my bed. Facing away from them, tilted on my side, with a
pillow under my hip I only heard his voice: ‘What do you
want us to do with this baby?’
Word for word—that’s what he said. How do you make
a decision like that? Ben was still on his way. The small
crowd were poised at the foot of my bed. I smelt soap.
The lights were bright. I remembered our meeting with
the two doctors and Ben’s ‘quality of life’ words. What did
they mean now?
‘I . . . what . . . I don’t . . .’ I stammered. ‘What condition
is he in?’ No response. ‘What condition is he in?! We’ve
spoken to doctors . . . to a neonatologist. Can you talk
to him?’
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‘We have his notes.’ I tried to guess at the words he had
scribbled during our meeting.
There were footsteps exiting the room, and then down-
ward pressure as another contraction was beginning to build.
‘What’s happening? Should I push?’
Footsteps back into the room and the man spoke again:
‘He was breathing on his own . . . He was strong . . . He’s
on a ventilator.’
Benny appeared, calm and reassuring. I pushed out the
second boy, and he was whisked from the room.
The man returned again: ‘This baby was also breathing
on his own . . . He is also on a ventilator now.’
The first baby was five hundred and sixty grams, and
the second was four hundred and seventy—each was the
weight of a pat of butter and small enough to hold in the
palm of my hand. That doctor had looked at those babies,
one at a time, and thought: We will give you a chance. How
many breaths, unassisted, suggested each one should stay?
Three? Four? How long would nature have given them?
I didn’t know what other factors had inf luenced that
decision, but it didn’t matter any more. The decision had
been made.
After six weeks in the Flinders Ranges, just months from
the day we met, in 2002, Kelly rolled Benny and me into
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Serenade for a Small Family
Alice in mid-September, and we moved our gear out of
the truck and into a furnished granny flat on the north side
of town. The sun belted down all day, every day, and we
wore hats and sunglasses just to get the mail. The air was
so dry that we barely needed to hang out the washing, and
the skin on our hands and forearms was parched.
‘Buy sorbolene in bulk,’ said locals. Quiet and exposed,
the MacDonnell Ranges lumbered around us. I kicked off
my jeans and boots, and wrapped myself in a pink sarong
to write songs and play guitar while Benny studied in the
next room. His dusty relic of a solar radio sat on top of the
fridge, keeping me company with earnest ABC talkback.
The following month Benny was offered a job with the
solar program he had been interested in. He headed off to
work each day on a pushbike. We moved into a house in
a narrow lane close to town and the Todd River. It had
three tiny rooms off a long kitchen with a floor of black and
white lino squares. There were rickety louvres for windows,
which made way for a conga line of mosquitoes, mice and
giant cockroaches. Smoke from mosquito coils drifted under
our noses as we slept.
We lived mostly in the house’s paved front yard, with its
shade cover and garden of weeds, lemongrass, sunflowers and
abandoned ceramics. We set up our brand-new op shop and
tip shop collection out there—TV, stereo, couches, coffee
table and a hammock. We rubbed insect repellent into our
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bare skin before settling into armchairs to watch the news.
‘Lift your feet and your stir-fry,’ I cautioned. ‘Man-sized
cockroach coming through.’
I loved and hated Alice. Plenty of times I nagged at
Benny for a plan to leave town, and we fought. I couldn’t
escape for a day—the nearest town was Coober Pedy, over
seven hundred kilometres away, and a drive to the beach
was impossible, which I found suffocating. I hated the flies
and cursed when there was no shade. The tiny population
made for rampant gossip, and soon there wasn’t a pub, café
or supermarket where we didn’t know someone, or everyone.
But we found like-minded people, and swam and camped
at waterholes, dry riverbeds and gorges along the West
MacDonnell Ranges. I held onto the dash and the door
handle as Kelly hauled herself over rocky tracks in search of
the perfect camping spot, or sat in the middle with my arm
over Benny’s shoulders on the road out to Ellery Creek. To
survive the months of relentless heat, we crashed the local
resort pool, where the bar was luxuriously in the water.
We sat on bar stools in water up to our waists, in front of
foamy cold beer in tall glasses and baskets of salty chips.
‘Aah, heaven . . .’ I slid off my stool into a tipsy underwater
somersault, surfacing just in time for Benny to grab my ankle
and pull me back under.
The Territory suited Benny.
Maybe it was his serious
nature or his politics; maybe it was just his truck and the
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Serenade for a Small Family
way he wore his clothes. Whatever it was, they went well
together, and it was a good place to fall in love with him.
On Sunday mornings, if we weren’t out bush, we sat in
the laneway at Bar Doppio, brushing off flies as we did the
long wait for coffees, the weekend paper spread out on the
table in front of us. It was the footy season, and Benny’s
team was having a bad run.
‘Sheedy’s copping it,’ he said, shuffling the sports section.
‘Hm?’ I brushed a sticky fly from my face and turned
to the CD review section.
‘Official warning, Stink—the Essendon game’s being
televised on Saturday afternoon.’
‘I wish you’d revealed your football passion before I
jumped in the truck with you.’ I waved a hand vigorously
around my face. ‘Fuck off, flies!’
‘But then you wouldn’t have come.’
‘Exactly.’ The smell of frying bacon wafted towards us.
‘Well, you should have revealed your love of hotels,’
said Benny.
‘Mmm . . . clean sheets, soaps in packets, TV perched over
the bed. Anyway, what about my love of air-conditioning?’
I put down the paper to wrap my fingers around Benny’s
throat. ‘I’m in the middle of the desert in summer with a
man who’s ethically opposed to air-conditioning! Great!’
A girl in a singlet and boots sang with gusto as she strode
towards us, a milky coffee teetering on a saucer in each
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hand. She stopped at our table and held a note badly before
cocking her head with the question: ‘Soy?’
‘Me,’ I said, holding up a hand. ‘Thanks.’
‘No worries.’ She bumped the coffees down onto our
table and left us to it.
We waited out sunsets on a hill on the edge of town
and went to pub gigs where the Super Raelene Brothers—a
local pastor and his lawyer brother—got a crowd up and
dancing with a kick drum, fiddle and spoken rhyme:
Living in Alice
It ain’t a palace
Oo-ooo sunny weather.
It ain’t gonna get better
Than this hey yeah I tell ya
The days are long and the nights are stel ar.
The band was good and that crowd danced hard, flanked
by desert a long way from big cities.