Vic had spent a week mustering on Vanrook Station, way up towards Cape York on the eastern corner of Gulf of Carpentaria in North Queensland. It was a huge block, several adjoining stations under the same management running to over four million hectares with somewhere around a hundred thousand cattle. They had a few dry years but last wet and this had been good and they were now putting together lots of export steers to go out of Karumba for the South-East Asian markets, Indonesia mainly.
It was further east than he knew or had ever worked before, but beggars could not be choosy, he had a big loan to pay back for his new helicopter. So he grabbed at the offer of this block of work, ferrying across from Borroloola after two days of work for Macarthur River Mine, looking at prospective new mineral sites, alongside the NT border. Next week was booked to work in the Barkly Tablelands, the week after Buck had booked him to work in the VRD.
So he had two solid weeks of mustering after this job before he could take a week off to go to Darwin to meet with Anne and Alan and see how the investigation into Susan and the other missing girls was proceeding.
He had flown to Darwin for a week, three months before, in his helicopter, spending that time in the town for the memorial ceremony for five Lost Girls on a headland looking out over Darwin. It was a peaceful place with a beautiful view, but he found that day was absolutely gut wrenching. Five sets of parents and other friends crying over lost daughters, along with other families searching for missing sons and daughters too. Everyone had their own story of loss, every story told of devastation for those concerned. He felt for them all, pain on pain, though his heart really only had space for one missing person.
It was now about eighteen months since Susan disappeared. He still felt a raw ache in his chest every time he thought of her, one day she was there with him and it was wonderful, the next day gone, just utterly and totally vanished. It felt like a huge piece had been torn from his insides.
In his wildest dreams he could not imagine what had happened to her since that day when she had never come to the hospital, first him ringing Alan and asking him to go and check his flat for her, thinking she would be fine but he was just being safe. But the flat was empty, her few things were still there, but no her. It was like the movie “Gone Girl”
Then, a month later, they had found the pair flat shoes, borrowed from Anne, she had been wearing. They were beside the Mary River billabong, a bare kilometre from where Mark was eaten by that huge crocodile. Anne was sure, or at least as near as she could be sure, that the shoes were her own. If this was right it could only mean that Susan had gone back to the billabong where she killed Mark, a place full of lots of huge crocodiles.
After that discovery, other people said that Susan had deliberately gone there to return to Mark. They thought her body, if any of it remained, was somewhere there. Some thought she had swum out to meet him, some that she had been pulled off the bank. But there was no other trace, no footprints, no scuff or drag marks, just two shoes in a plastic bag lying in the dirt about ten meters from the water’s edge. Some said they should shoot the big local crocodiles and open them up lest her body was inside; some said they should search the bottom of the billabong in the same way they did to find bits of Mark. But as the shoes were found more than a month after she vanished, with no other evidence of her before or after, it had seemed pointless. So that never happened.
Instead Alan brought that old man, Charlie, the one who had first found Mark and had now found the sandals, back to the place and asked him what he thought, whether her body was here too?
Charlie sat by the water, with him, Alan, Sandy, Anne and some others all watching on. After a few minutes he stood up and shook his head. “Maybe, maybe not, She not here now, no crocodile spirit here,” was all he said. When they tried to question him further about what he meant he just shook his head emphatically.
Vic did not know what to think, but he felt a kinship with this old man. A small part of him felt relief Charlie could find no trace of her presence here. Vic could not be sure it was not true, that she had not returned to the crocodiles and Mark, she was pretty messed up from everything that had happened. But in his heart of hearts he refused to believe it and give up hope that he might one day see her again.
He did not really know what love was supposed to feel like, but he had spent four nights holding her body next to his. The wonder of that memory was burnt into his brain. Now there was just a great big empty hole in that memory place. He had been with plenty of girls over the years but it had never been like this. It was both her dependency on him and how her being had gone deep inside him, mind to mind and spirit to spirit, in a way which made him feel whole. It was as if, in the same way their bodies were joined so too were their souls, become a fused person. He had loved her totally; that body, her body, filled with another man’s children; that face with the laughing blue eyes, that smile that could charm angels.
So now, sometimes, he would dream of her but she was fading and it was getting hard to remember. So, mostly, he worked non-stop. Often he would have an extra beer of two to try to sleep and forget. And when he got the chance he would go to Darwin and meet with Sandy and Alan and see if there were any new leads or anything else he could do to help them find her. He would not admit to her being dead, he had rescued her once, he would do so again. But first he had to find her and he had no idea where to look.
No one else had any ideas either, endless dead end sightings. At first all had felt hope when these sightings came in. But soon they realized that these people, who saw a girl in her twenties with dark hair and an Englishy accent and would report this person as a new maybe Susan sighting, were never right. Too many people who looked vaguely like her were walking around the towns and cities of Australia. So, while not instantly dismissed out of hand, it was easier not to keep hoping through these false alarms.
But if Susan was alive she must be somewhere. Vic’s mind refused to contemplate the alternative therefore he must keep trying to find her. So he was looking forward to getting to Darwin even though it was still over two weeks away. The idea of this trip gave him hope and kept him going with all the day to day flying. He planned to finish here this afternoon and ferry home to Borroloola tomorrow before going down to Anthony Lagoon for a daylight start the day after, the beginning of his week of Barkly work.
But now, just as he was fuelling up and getting ready to leave Vanrook and fly to Normanton for the night, on the way home, a telephone call came in asking him to do a job further up the Cape tomorrow; nothing too big. It was an aboriginal station, out along the Staaten River somewhere. It had a few hundred cattle in a back paddock that he needed to put together then bring to the yards for their yearly branding muster, as well as some steers to muster for the boat.
He had been tempted to say no. If he took the job he would miss his day at home and have to ferry straight to Anthony from here. But it was hard to keep up with the bills for his new chopper when most months he took off a week in Darwin to continue the hunt for Susan. He could not afford to lose this chopper, it had been hard enough to get the loan for this new machine when the insurance came up short from the crash in the Fitzmaurice, and flying his chopper was the one thing that kept him sane.
For those few hours each day, when he was working his machine hard, he was too busy to think, living only on his reflexes. Then it was like the bad stuff got pushed away and he felt passion and joy again for a little while.
So he would take the extra day of work and the money even though it meant a whole month when he never got home. There was nothing at his home for him anyway, just a bush timber shanty at the edge of Borroloola, with a view down to the river.
So he accepted the phone call, booked the job and, as they did not seem in a great rush to get started, he told them he would ferry over first thing and be on-site, ready to start, about eight o’clock. Perhaps he would make a stop over there tomorrow night, see what the community, a former mission, offered before he did a long day of ferrying across the Gulf and black soil to Anthony Lagoon for the day after. The station manager, who had just booked him, told him they were having a barbeque tomorrow night and with the job came a bed for him if he wanted to stay on in town that night.
As he put the phone back on the hook one of the ringers came and tapped him on the arm, giving him the drink sign, beers in the station mess hall. So he followed him across and ripped the top off a barbed wire yellow stubby, savouring flavour as beer washed the dust out of his throat.
Next morning, with an edge of a headache, he walked over to his new machine. His leg was paining today, that place where the steel plate was bolted in from when they had cut and re-joined the crooked broken bone.
He felt a niggling resentment at this metal plate, he would rather have been hobbled with a half crippled leg than to have gone to hospital for the operation, only to wake up and find Susan gone. He knew if he had only stayed with her that night then she would still be here now, something bad had happened when he was not there to mind her. She had run off to God knows where. Now his leg was playing up today. It had not done that for a few days. He hoped it did not signify further trouble; it seemed to have a mind of its own and acted something like a barometer of change.
As he roared into the air, his helicopter blowing a huge dust eddy that the south-easterly wind picked up, he felt his mood lift. Today was a chance to see some new country and this country, as vast grass plains rose into the hills of the Cape, was spectacular. It gave him a buzz.
An hour’s ferry saw him at the station. A half white manager, Rick, a man much his own colour, greeted him. With him were six aboriginal stockmen who had horses saddled ready. They all sat round a table with a map and in five minutes a plan was agreed. The stockmen rode off, heading towards the back half of the paddock where he would start working, putting the mob together for them to walk back towards the yards.
Vic talked to Rick for a few more minutes as he topped up his fuel before they both headed out, the manager driving a bull catcher. Vic then flew to the south-east corner about ten kilometres away, it was a pretty big paddock and the manager reckoned there should be six of seven hundred cows with calves in it along with their yearling steers. They both figured they would have these cattle yarded up by about eleven and then there were another couple hours of work to be done after lunch help to muster the bullock paddock which had a couple hundred biggish size boat steers. They would join the Vanrook steers on the next cattle boat to Indonesia.
It was after three pm before the boat steers were yarded, and when done Vic knew he still had time to get back to Normanton before dusk. He was restless and was tempted to thank Rick for his hospitality offer and head away, to have a night in the pub at Normanton. But there had been too many of those pub nights lately and they gave little joy, the empty hole remained after a night of drinking, along with a new hangover.
There seemed something kind about these people here in this little place, like they had a sense of family and belonging. It reminded him of Alice Springs, with his aunts, uncles and kids all hanging around, and he felt the loss. Plus he loved the kids here, their chatter as they gathered around the helicopter, asking questions, eyes bright. They made him feel good.
So, what the hell, he would stop here tonight even if he thought this barbeque here would be a tame affair. He could get up early and head off to his next job in the morning.
So he walked over to the yards to watch the activity. They were drafting up the cattle. He climbed onto the top rail, sitting alongside ten or more school children. The excited screams and chatter, as they watched the cattle work, lifted his mood. Vic felt a wave of nostalgia for similar happy times of his own childhood, and with it an even stronger desire to go back to Alice again to see his mother and favourite sister, to play with her children.
One of the children sitting next to him turned around and shouted out. “Miss Bennet, Miss Bennet, Come and see the cattle.”
He assumed Miss Bennet was a school teacher, as school was out. He turned to see who this person was. There was a lady in her mid-twenties, with dark hair tied back, walking towards them along a dusty road. Two toddlers were walking beside her, each holding a hand. Her eyes were blank as she looked towards him but she was so achingly familiar.
Several of the children jumped down from the rail and ran towards her, two bigger ones taking up the two toddlers in their arms. She patted the black heads affectionately as her own children laughed with excitement at their new found playmates.