It’s about 11 when I finally head out of my room. I’m over my little tantrum. I was being churlish. Of course Meg would be making plans to do something other than sit in a tin hut.
I’m over tin huts, too, so I decide to walk to town. Spinifex City is on the outskirts of Derby and there’s no bus at this time of day. I stroll off.
In forty-degree heat, absent a cooling breeze, I soon learn that one doesn’t stroll. One toils. I toil toward town, taking in the scrappy landscape, contemplating the fact that the first Dutch and English explorers who visited the region deemed it wasn’t even worth the cost of a flag. I don’t doubt there really is beauty and value here to people born to the land, but to the rest of us it is no easy place to like, let alone love.
Rather than imagining beaches and camel rides, imagine a giant Brobdingnagian Joh Bjelke-Petersen dragging a hulking great chain across a beautiful land, grading earth and life to dust, then Joh taking a big maroon shit on that land and after about a million years it crumbling like dry dog turd and blowing far and wide. Then Aborigines find that land and some of the life has returned so they burn it and burn it and burn it some more. Then some white fellers come and drag another big chain across the land then burn it and clear it and burn it some more, then tenderise it with cloven hooves, get bored and let it be. That’s Derby and surrounds.
After half an hour, I’m drenched in sweat. I reach the main road heading into the centre of town. Now I have an important decision to make. Which supermarket?
It’s not the decision itself that discombobulates me, more the fact this one-horse town has two supermarkets. There’s no way they can both be profitable. What did Woolworths think, that the refugees would be making daytrips to Derby to do some shopping? So now the big green monster is siphoning off the wages of Derbards and sending the cash straight back to city shareholders, whereas the smaller shops recirculate some of that cash in town. I say screw the big green monster. I’ll walk the extra half mile and go to the IGA.
As I toil onward I amuse myself by playing a game, trying to find the best demonym for the inhabitants of Derby. I start mentally listing candidates: Derbite, Derban, Derbit, Derbian, Derbler, Derbole.
So many possibilities, and now that I’ve started they come in a flood: Derburger, Derbirker, Derblett, Derbois, Derber, Derbophile, Derbiot, Derblodyte, Derbucker, Derbidian, Derbiac, Derbman, Derbesian. And Derb. I think I’ve finally exhausted Derby demonyms. They all seem plausible and sound good.
As I walk into the IGA supermarket, I notice that the indigenous population of Derbirkers are of a similar mind to myself, boycotting the corporate giant in favour of local entrepreneurialism. Good for them. I suppose that means that the white population shops at Woolies. But not me. I’m white and I’m at the IGA with six of my indigenous brothers and sisters. I am completely comfortable. We are all just shoppers, shopping.
I find meat. Big pieces of meat to cook — a pork roast, yes. And some mince, perfect. A few veges. Some tinned shit. Shit to boil. Gherkins. Peanuts. Sardines — love sardines. Bread. Cream. Couscous. Is that all? I should have written a list. I know there must be other things I’m meant to buy, but I can’t think.
I buy my groceries, plus a postcard of King Sound that I see at the checkout, stuff it all into my backpack, then head next door and buy a bottle of whisky. My load is ridiculously heavy. I didn’t really think this through. I trundle out of the bottle shop, head down.
I start walking on the sidewalk. Out of the corner of my eye I see two Aboriginal people sitting on the stoop of a shuttered shop. Probably gone out of business thanks to the green monster. But I’m not thinking of the green monster. I’m thinking about the black monsters I’ve been warned about — the ones who are high, unpredictable, violent. Best to just keep my head down, walk on.
But I can’t. I’m constitutionally averse to ignorance. Despite the alarm bells ringing in my head, I lift my sweaty mug and look over at the man and woman sitting on the stoop.
“G’day guys,” I say.
The man says something back to me. I don’t know what he’s saying.
“What’s that?”
“Merry Christmas!”
Well, fuck me. That’s about the last thing I was expecting, and not just because I’d forgotten it was that time of year.
“Yeah, Merry Christmas to you, too.”
I feel good. It is a nice moment. It puts a little pep in my step for all of two minutes before I’m reduced to toiling under the midday sun as meat incubates in my backpack.