Cassie’s car, an old troop carrier, is parked next to Matts’s car in the hotel carpark. By the time I’ve run to my room and brushed my teeth, she’s behind the wheel. As I throw my bag into the back of Matts’s car and he slams the boot, Ray appears. He takes off his hat before pulling the strap of his satchel over his head.
‘I want to pick your brains about the Ramsar criteria,’ he says to Matts. ‘And while I’m at it, I can answer your questions about the waterbird breeding cycle. I’ll fill you in on the Australasian bittern too. It’s been on the critically endangered list for a number of years now.’ He opens the front passenger side door and throws his bag on the floor. He smiles. ‘Cassie says she’s happy to go on her own. Okay if I hitch a ride with you?’
‘No,’ Matts says.
Ray’s smile disappears. ‘Why not?’
‘Sapphie gets car sick.’
Blunt. Misleading. I put a hand on Ray’s arm. ‘We’d like to have you with us, Ray, but would you mind sitting in the back?’
‘No problem,’ he says, smiling again as he scoops up his bag. ‘One of my daughters gets car sick.’ He opens the back door as I climb into the front. He sits in the seat in the middle and fastens his seatbelt. ‘Have you tried nibbling on a piece of ginger? Joy swears by it. Or drinking lemon and ginger tea before you set off?’
‘It’s a recent thing.’ I clip up my belt. ‘I hit a kangaroo last year. It’s made me anxious on the roads.’
‘Valerian will do the trick then. That’s a relaxant, but not on the prohibited substances list as far as I’m aware.’
Matts looks into the rear-view mirror. ‘She doesn’t need advice.’
I attempt a smile. ‘I’m much better than I was.’
‘Wind down the window,’ Matts says quietly as he releases the handbrake. ‘It’ll take over an hour.’
As soon as he pulls out of the carpark, I tip back my head and take deep breaths. The anxiety is much better than it was. Matts is helping with that. He takes note when I swallow more than usual, or link my fingers so my hands shake less. He slows at the blind corners and on the crests of the hills. He follows my gaze when he can, as if to communicate that he’s also aware of the dangers out there.
After a couple of failed attempts, Ray leaves me out of the conversation. ‘The Macquarie River doesn’t run out to sea, it runs inland,’ he tells Matts. ‘And fifty kilometres north of Wilson, depending on rainfall and environmental water allowances, it runs into watercourses that create thousands of hectares of wetlands, a nirvana for birdlife. At the northern end of the wetlands, the channels unite to form a river again, and the Macquarie meets the Barwon, which eventually flows into the Darling, and then Victoria and South Australia’s Murray River system.’
Ray’s vowels are long and drawn out and his syllables and sentences run together. When Matts occasionally gets a word in, he speaks precisely, his sentences short and direct.
‘The sheep and cattle farms up here do quite well,’ Ray says, ‘and other agricultural interests such as cotton farming give a boost to the local economy.’
‘Irrigation is unsustainable,’ Matts says.
Ray’s smile falters. ‘We need a certain amount of it.’
‘Without policies to guarantee environmental water for the wetlands, you lose the reed beds, essential for birds and other wildlife. Thousands of hectares have already been lost.’
I hold my breath and grip my belt when a four-wheel drive with a loaded trailer thunders towards us. Matts veers onto the side of the road. He glances at me.
‘Okay?’
I nod jerkily. ‘Yes.’
Ray leans forward. ‘How about tourism?’ he says brightly.
Matts mutters under his breath. ‘Not without water management.’
‘But surely—’
‘The river’s flow is fucked—upstream and downstream.’
I look for Ray’s reflection in the visor mirror. ‘I suppose that’s one way of putting it,’ he says, his lips tightly pursed.
When the road narrows to a strip of bitumen, not wide enough for two cars to pass without one moving onto the reddish earth, Matts slows even more. We pass a dead kangaroo. Within a kilometre, there’s another one and then another two.
Ray whistles through his teeth. ‘For a road barely used, there’s a lot of road kill.’
‘People shouldn’t drive through here at night,’ I manage.
Matts glances at me. ‘Do you need a break? Should I stop?’
I remind myself that the country is where I belong. And that means dead kangaroos at the side of the road are a part of my life. The sadness and regret I’m feeling is natural. I didn’t hit these kangaroos and whoever did hit them didn’t do it deliberately.
My mother died in an accident on the road but this has nothing to do with her.
‘I’m okay,’ I croak.
Coolabah trees with thick straight trunks throw circles of shade on the ground. The grasses are greener here, and the low scrubby plants more numerous. Handsome glossy cows—cream, russet and chocolate brown—look up cautiously up as we pass. Many have calves by their sides.
Matts slows even more. ‘Ray,’ he says, ‘look up ahead.’ He points to two white, black and grey birds swooping in front of the car.
‘Black-shouldered kites!’ Ray exclaims. ‘Magnificent!’
Within a few kilometres, Matts checks his odometer and turns off at a nondescript gap in the fence. Driving over a cattle grate, he heads towards a group of grey gums. Cassie’s car and another four-wheel drive come into view. A tall, well-built man, dressed in a khaki shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows, sits on the bonnet and chats to Cassie. He tips his Akubra forward and ties his curly black hair into a bun at the nape of his neck.
‘Hello, mate,’ he says, as Matts steps out of the car. ‘Rory Ablett. Welcome to the marshes. My boss tells me you’re a big shot.’
Matts returns Rory’s smile as they shake hands. ‘Not out here. Thanks for taking us out.’
I’m undoing my seatbelt when Rory crouches and looks through Matts’s window. ‘Sapphie Brown, right?’ His white teeth sparkle. ‘Thought it must be you. My niece was in your class a couple of years back.’
‘Georgie Ablett? Is Missy your sister?’ When I get out of the car, he offers his hand. ‘Georgie never stopped talking about her Uncle Rory.’
‘Only good stuff, right?’
I laugh. ‘Teachers get to hear a lot of things they shouldn’t. Missy moved to Brewarrina to be closer to your mum, didn’t she?’
‘You got it. Georgie still wants to be a teacher because of you.’
‘Give her a hug from me. I’m looking forward to seeing Missy at April’s wedding.’
After Rory opens the gate marked STRICTLY AUTHORISED ACCESS ONLY, we drive single file along a roughly graded and increasingly soggy road, past hectares of reeds and grasses as tall as the car. There are gums and coolabahs dotted around us, with thick stands of trees in the distance.
Ray leans forward in his seat. ‘In the eighteen-twenties, the white settlers followed the river up from Bathurst. When they saw the water stretch out in front of them, they thought they’d found an inland sea.’
We drive away from the reeds onto an expanse of floodplain. Water laps around the tyres of the cars in front. Matts glances at me. He smiles reassuringly as he stops the car.
‘There’s a mob of emus to your left.’
At least twenty emus sprint across the shallows, their strong and sturdy legs supporting thickly feathered bodies, long straight necks and small heads with broad dark beaks. Silver spray shoots into the air behind them. Smaller birds, adolescents and larger chicks, run along behind.
I unbuckle my belt and rest my arms on the dashboard to watch, only straightening again when there’s nothing left of the emus but a blur in the distance.
I turn and smile at Ray. ‘They looked like they were running through a cloud.’
He rubs his hands together. ‘Over a hundred species of birds can nest here. Wait till you see the eagles, cormorants, brolgas, snipes and spoonbills …’ He recounts the highlights of his visits to the wetlands, interrupting his narrative only to point out birds. He asks us questions and answers them himself. He sets out scenarios and posits solutions. When we turn off the track and follow a path to higher ground, I glance at Matts and smile.
When he smiles back, it’s not a formal smile or a fake charming smile or a stiff and censuring smile that doesn’t meet his eyes. It’s not the world-weary smile he picked up as a teenager, a cynical lift of his lip on one side.
His smile lightens the grey of his eyes and creases the sides of his mouth.
My heart flips.
He smiles again.
Watery plains and channels and reed-covered swamps surround the raised clearing where we stop for lunch. Matts and I brought water bottles, sandwiches and fruit from the pub. Cassie, Ray and Rory have thermoses of tea and coffee, as well as their lunchboxes. It’s after midday and the temperature has dropped; steely clouds block out the sun and hover low over the wetlands. I take the teabag out of my cup and put it in our rubbish bag before perching next to Cassie on a log.
She blows steam from her coffee. ‘I can’t believe I’ve lived within a day of this place most of my life and never been here before.’
‘It’s like a secret garden.’
Her eyes widen and she points. ‘Which ibis is that?’
Long-legged birds with black heads, dark-feathered bodies and long thin legs wade through the water.
‘If I were Ray …’ I look over my shoulder. Ray is peering through binoculars at a flock of birds flying in formation above us. ‘I’d go through the ibis options.’ I count on my fingers. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s not the white ibis, because we get them in the park at Dubbo and I know what they look like. It could be the glossy ibis, but their feathers are a shiny bronze shade, and I think they have different-shaped bodies to the others. That leaves the third option, the straw-necked ibis.’ I tip back my hat. ‘I believe the fluffy feathers on the birds’ necks clinches the matter, but we could ask Ray for confirmation.’
Cassie laughs. ‘Let’s leave him in peace with his—’ She looks up, trying to identify the birds he’s watching.
‘I think they might be plumed whistling ducks. Don’t quote me, though.’
On the far side of the ibis, hopping in a helter-skelter line, are a small band of grey kangaroos. When the leader stops, the others stop too, their long tails laying flat on the ground behind them. The lead roo lowers his head to graze and the others follow suit.
When I turn back to Cassie, she’s looking thoughtfully at Rory and Matts, their heads close together as they study a map. Rory is nodding intently at something Matts is saying. Matts takes a different map out of his backpack, snapping the folds into place before spreading it out. He looks across the wetlands and gestures to the map on Rory’s lap.
‘He’s concerned,’ Cassie says quietly, ‘isn’t he?’
‘Things have got much worse in the past few years.’
‘Only someone who cared passionately about the environment would do this type of work. The Ramsar connection is prestigious, but I imagine he could make more money doing something else.’
‘He seems to spend a lot of time lobbying.’
‘Chasing funds from governments that refuse to acknowledge how bad things are and how much worse things could get.’ Cassie drains her cup. ‘Beneficial outcomes from significant environmental projects are almost impossible to cost. Convincing governments to think long term, let alone challenge established interests or look outside their borders, is inherently difficult.’
‘It’s all politics, isn’t it?’
‘A lot of us care about the planet, and in sufficient numbers at grassroots level we can make a difference. But achieving major structural change to climate policy is difficult. Matts plays that game well. He got the briefing to advise the federal government. He’s working on the state government via Douglas Chambers.’
‘The parks authorities are on side.’
‘Which is telling in itself.’
‘Doesn’t it make sense they want his input?’
‘Yes, and no. In the original Ramsar listing, these wetlands were more extensive, and in much better shape in terms of number and diversity of species. Matts’s report will not only highlight the decline, but will likely point the finger at what a mess the government, and at times the parks authorities, have made of the rivers and catchments.’
The wetlands below us are a mosaic of swamps and billabongs, reeds, grasses and shrubs. Thick trunked gums grow either side of the channels.
‘Matts is worried about the flow of the river,’ I say.
‘We had good rain last year, but what happens if we don’t get rain next year?’
When she holds out her hand, I pass my cup. ‘I’ve always looked at Horseshoe’s immediate needs. We have to go beyond that, don’t we? We need long-term solutions for the river and the wetlands.’
Cassie glances at Matts again. ‘What do you think of him, Sapphie? In a personal sense?’
‘I … I’m getting used to him.’
She laughs. ‘He made no effort to hide his displeasure at seeing Ray and me at breakfast this morning.’ Her brows lift. ‘That’s unusual. He’s generally so self-contained.’
Matts wasn’t always self-contained when we were growing up. Sometimes, particularly when we spoke about Inge, he found it impossible to hide his emotions. Mr Laaksonen couldn’t hear Inge’s name without his eyes misting over, so Matts had no chance of talking to his father. Thinking about Inge upset Mum too, but when we were in Buenos Aires, she answered whatever questions he had.
Did Äiti like champagne with strawberries? Yes, darling, but not as much as I.
What was her favourite book? I’m not sure, something Finnish, I think. Her favourite play was Romeo and Juliet.
Was she happy? When she was with you, always.
What about when she was with Isä? She loved your father very, very much.
Why don’t I have a brother or sister?
Even at twelve and thirteen, I knew about the miscarriages Mum’d had, and I’d told Matts about them. When tears filled Mum’s eyes, I put my hand on Matts’s arm. ‘Shh,’ I hissed.
Ignoring me, Mum took Matts’s hand. Had she lived, Inge would have loved another baby.
Matts nodded stiffly and walked outside to the courtyard. He wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.
I’d been making gardenia petals and had scraps of white crepe in my pocket. ‘You can use this,’ I said.
He scrubbed at his eyes.
‘It’s not a tissue, Kotka. It’s crepe paper. You’re rubbing much too hard.’
His voice was thick with tears. ‘Go back inside, Kissa.’
‘No way.’ When I threaded my arm through his and leant against him, he found my fingers and linked our hands together.