CARAVAN PARK
Broome: Night
on the road out of town: not a quiet park: the nights dogged
by engines, televisions, and singalongs, shouting into phones,
but you have to be somewhere and you are where you are
and that is how things work and you take it on the chin and
you make the place work for you and you hope that it won’t
be as bad as it could be or you pack up again and you travel
on to another place, to some other site in some other park
and you take your chances there, but the chances are that
the chances even out and that in the end you’re nowhere
better wherever you are and that where you are is about
as good as things get, you know what I mean? and so we
shrugged and carried on there where we happened to find
a site to perch after the roads from the north and the roads
from the east and the roads from the south and we set up
the Kmart Stockman tent and washed the dust from skin
and hair and clothes and paid our visits to the sights, the
attractions, the diversions, the excitements, the beaches
and pearls and camel rides and the dinosaur tracks and
the staircase to the moon and the pioneer cemetery, and
every night, deep into the night, we sat at a fire nursed by
a rigger from Port Hedland who opened his esky of beers
to us and slung out stories of the red dirt and the flies and
the heat and the sweat of the yakka and he told of a time
when his ute broke down in the bush and he walked all
night under the frost prickle of the stars to get help and as
he walked he heard nothing but the slog and the plodding
of his steps and soon they started to say, they seemed to
keep saying over and over, ‘where are you, mate?’, ‘where
are you going, mate?’, ‘what are you doing here, mate?’ and
whenever he stopped the voice would stop and so he soon
stopped stopping as the silence made him think that that was
what it was like when you were dead and that in fact he was
as good as dead if he did not keep walking on, he said, and
so he kept going, he kept on walking on, though he didn’t
know where the hell he was going but he had to keep on
going, he said, and ever since that night of walking he had not
looked up at the bloody stars, he said, and we asked him
how it had all ended but he never told us, we never found out,
because Bill stepped from the ring of light and he spread
his arms and he cracked into song, singing, and he sang,
singing for his life: ‘show me the way to go home … I’m
tired and I wanna go to bed …,’ he sang, and he sang it
again, and sang it yet one more time, ‘…wherever I may
roam, on land or sea or foam … you will always hear me
singing this song …’, he sang, and soon the rigger ground
his teeth, jabbed at the fire with a stick: ‘shut yer bleedin’
GOB, mate!’ he yelled, ‘or I’ll shut it FOR ya!’ and Bill’s
mouth snapped shut since you don’t argue with riggers
however much you need to sing, and our tongues turned
to places and to roads to places, to the Karijini, and the
Burrup, and Purnululu and the Gibb River Road and the
road to Kalumburu and the road to Burringurrah and the
roads to the north and the roads to the east and the roads
to the south: we tongued, talking, talking, as Bill peered
intently into the fire, he peered, he stared, and he stared:
‘yes!’ he shouted, ‘Heraclitus was right!’ he shouted, ‘all
is fire! all is flux, and nothing stays!’ and he peered, and
grinned, and waved his arms like the bloke that marshals
a plane to its docking bay: ‘you’ve had too much, mate,’
the rigger growled, ‘go put your head down somewhere
quiet, NOW,’ and Bill, his arms still guiding in a plane
from KL or Brissy or Bali, stumbled away to the tent,
muttering about fire and rivers that flow and we looked
about and wondered what could be said, whether there
was anything left to say, whether there was any point in
talking any further, but no, and we damped the fire and
flung onto the thin foam mattresses tossed down in the
tent where Bill lay, still muttering, and Jeano plugged
her ears to a music player and Martin grunted as he took
a shot of insulin in his thigh and Steve wrapped himself
in a sarong and Marilyn wriggled into her smiling angel-
faced pyjamas and Chrissie dug deep in her bag with her
mascot bear Wellington beside her: ‘that rigger bloke’s an
up-himself bastard,’ Bill hissed: ‘yes, mate,’ I said, ‘but
we’re all bastards, so what’s new?’ and he thought for a
moment: ‘s’pose we are,’ he said ‘and we’re like gypsies,
you know, like nomads’ : ‘yes, mate,’ I said, ‘not just
bastards but bastards in tents and vans,’ and he thought
for a moment: ‘it’s funny, isn’t it,’ he sighed, ‘it’s kinda
weird,’ and he thought for a moment: ‘and we’re movin’
on tomorrer? you know where we’re goin’?’ ‘who knows,
mate? does it matter?’ I said, ‘where would you like to go?’
and he thought for a moment: ‘home,’ he whispered, ‘but
not, like, tomorrer, there’s stuff I still have to do,’ he said,
‘have to think of the fire, you know’: ‘yes, mate, the fire,
I know, and the river, sure, but we can only do what we
can, yeah? let’s see where the road takes us, yeah?’ but
he was suddenly asleep and the tent was quiet under the
trees hanging over us, the leaves and stars fluttering, they
tapped together, and teased through the screens of the tent,
and somewhere voices talking and a station playing bush
music and a bloke yelling into a phone to his woman in
Joondalup or Joondanna or wherever: ‘I’m standin’ here
talkin’ to ya,’ he shouted, ‘where else would I be? I’m
still workin’ the fuckin’ road, aren’t I?’ he shouted, ‘I’ll
get home when I can fuckin’ get home,’ he shouted: but
late, at last, at last the night’s billowing dark throated the
tents, chalets, caravans, cabins, struck dumb all tongues,
all accommodations, all being made still, all being still
but for the leaves that patted and ticked as they breathed
out oxygen upon the bubbles of metal and nylon and poly-
cotton where travellers hid from the night as they blinked
as they sprawled as they twitched and kicked in the tread
of the wanderings, the flimsy scribblings of sleep, all else
being still but for the scratching of a possum as it clawed,
scrambling, eyes bright, foraging in the bins, bags, and
spraying its country, making and remaking its place, and
watching the night, for the possum is a thing that knows
the night and that knows that the day will break and that
before the day breaks it must hurry home, it must hurry
back to the tree where it makes its home in a leaf-lined
hollow, for the day is what lays bare, brings all to light:
and the night lay above us and about us and with us and
all was still, waiting, and waiting, waiting for the day to
show, unfold, reveal the emptied tinnies and the bones
of lamb cutlets and the sticky-thumbed WHO magazines
and the loitering sweat-stained trainers and the tissues
that clung weeping to the grass and a curling, fading
shot of a woman holding a baby and the tea towels of the
road, of the travelling, of the places of coming and going,
of Marble Bar, of Meekatharra and Shark Bay and Bremer
Bay, that slouched, drying, and a Nokia phone dumped
at the side of a plastic chair where a bloke lay dead asleep
as he dreamed of his woman in Joondanna or Joondalup or
wherever who was still waiting for him to come home to
her but he was still working the road, he was always on
the road, stopping in this park, in that park, and phoning,
and drinking at a fire with other voyagers, other visitors
far from home, so far from home, and moving along and
keeping on going on and travelling on, pushing on to find
himself somewhere for the night so that he might front the
day, and home but a flickering word, a heat-fuzzed horizon
like that lake you almost see that shimmers and beckons,
calls, promises water sweet and cool: and that is how things
work and you take it on the chin and you sleep as you can
and you get up with the sun and wipe your eyes and pack
the ute and hitch the van and move on, steering on to some
other park along some other road and you catch the white-
grey of the smoke of a bush fire or the smell of its burning
as you steer and you hear the singing of the wheels as they
spin you across the land: ‘where are you, mate?’, ‘what are
you doing here, mate?’, ‘where are you going, mate?’, and
your guts tremble when you stop and get out to stretch your
legs, stepping into the silence, stepping into the distance, the
elsewhere, always, and it's kinda weird but you feel you
need to sing and cry but your mouth locks and your eyes
dig in their heels and you hurry on, passing along, travel
on, journey on, voyage on through the spiky gaping country
not of your sleeping or making and you turn up wherever
the road sends you and you rent a place for the night or the
week or however long it takes for you to do the stuff that
is to be done and you drink a few beers and you toss the
snags on the barbie and you nod to pilgrims who roll in from
Esperance, Kununurra, Kalgoorlie …. and that is how it is:
and so we shrugged and carried on there where we chanced
to stop after the roads from the north and the roads from the
east and the roads from the south and we set up the tent
and lay down to sleep in the park on the road out of town