CARAVAN PARK
Tom Price: Sunset
they’re following the sun, they’re travelling north on the bitumen and leaving it all behind:
and the red dust tumbles, tumbles, and the pee wees flounce and shadows lengthen
and Norm turns the snags on the barbie, adds mushrooms, tomatoes, a sliced onion,
shovels them with a spatula, gulps at an Emu Bitter as the gore of the dying down
sprays, trumpets the sky, falls on the rump and loins of the rock wallaby mountain,
falls on the vans and the park cabins and the roofs and the roads and the ore train
loading and the trucks that fuss at the pit and falls on the banded iron formations,
on the white-barked snappy gums, on the rings and domes of the hummock grass:
all is rich, red with sun and iron as the snags blister, as the veggies steam: he once
worked on diesels but now he’s on super and short of breath and is happy to tinker
in his Wanneroo shed and go with his mate to the TAB: ‘a flutter here and there
on the ponies never hurt nobody,’ he says, ‘and a bloke likes to reckon he’s up for
a win,’ and he shovels, and he shovels: ‘ya ready?’ he yells, ‘I’m almost done here’:
they follow the sun, travel north on the bitumen in a Coromal pop-top van in April
every year after Easter when the days shrink fast and the nights begin to loom, cool:
‘we go walkabout,’ Aileen says, ‘stop here, look in there, move on, or stay a while:
the time’s our own now, ya see,’ and she sets a bowl of salad on the foldaway table
and picks up a metal detector: ‘if ya don’t try, ya’ll never know, will ya?’ she says,
and swings the head over the grass and the fine red-brown sand, she scans, scans,
but nothing, nothing in the sand, nothing in the grass: ‘maybe tomorrow,’ she sighs,
and she stands at the table to watch the passing, the going, going, the soon-to-be-gone
that reddens the iron land, that touches, strokes at her face, blooding the slack skin
mapped by the tyre-busting tracks, the dried creeks, the camps of the moving on:
‘what are ya waitin’ for?’ Norm shouts, and they sit to eat in the last light of the burn
as the red dust tumbles, tumbles, that takes no rest, that clings, soaks deep the stain:
they’re following the sun, they’re travelling north on the bitumen to Roebuck Bay, and beyond