Trying to Escape
Tony
The sun edges over the western horizon as the small Rex airlines plane eases into the sky and turns its nose northeast, towards Cairns. I’m heading for a job interview. When I applied a couple of weeks earlier, both Beck and I had been open to the possibility. I’d fly back once a month for a long weekend, and Beck would also come to Cairns once a month, which would mean we’d be apart for no longer than two weeks at any one time. Beck likes Cairns, and maybe after Diana died we could live there for a while before returning to Melbourne. The job would be hugely interesting, working on native title business up and down the Cape.
The western sky has gone from yellow to red, and the shades of blue in the sky above are graded from a thin washed-out blue, through a rich navy, to a star-inflected purplish black. I try to imagine doing this flight on a monthly basis – FIFO in reverse, heading away from the mining town for work, not to it. There’s a romantic appeal. I conjure up a sun-filled bungalow in Cairns, set amid a tropical garden and raised off the ground to capture the breeze from the Coral Sea. I would put myself on small planes darting up and down the Cape, meeting with the traditional owners and drawing maps in the dirt. I allow the fantasy to meander as we fly through the darkening sky, accompanied by the steady hum of the engines.
We land, and as I wander through the almost empty terminal towards the taxi rank, I realise with absolute clarity that the plan will never work. I don’t want this lonely life. The feeling is compounded over the next couple of hours as I check into my hotel and walk the streets looking for food. It’s Monday night and the streets are even emptier than the airport. Eventually I find a Thai place that’s open, and order pad thai with fresh chillies to take back to my room. Rebecca, Diana and our cosy little Madang Street world seem so far away.
The next morning, despite my building misgivings, I bring my A game to the interview, which lasts nearly two hours. I know the job will be mine by the time I leave. When the boss, Peter, rings and offers me the job a couple of days later, I’m caught in a bind. The job appeals to me greatly. I really connected with Peter and the two traditional owners who interviewed me. I know the job will be interesting, and I want out of my current job. I play for time and tell Peter I’ll give him an answer after the weekend. I’m not sure what I’m hoping for, but perhaps something will happen in the intervening days that will somehow make taking the job the only sensible option. Perhaps we can make the maths work, and the frequency of my trips back to Mount Isa and Beck’s trips to Cairns will make the time apart less consequential. Perhaps Beck will decide that she and her mum will follow, and we’ll all live in Cairns happily until Diana dies. Perhaps I’ll conclude that it’s truly impossible for me to continue where I am and that I have no other option.
But I know none of these is likely. I also know that I could push and Beck would give her endorsement and try to make it work. But that feels like me getting my own way, a repeat of previous big decisions where my needs edged out Beck’s.
And when it comes down to it, I like our Mount Isa world. I don’t want to dismantle what we’ve got and what we’ve committed to. Furthermore, I don’t want to triangulate our centres of gravity by adding Cairns to Melbourne and Mount Isa. I’m sure I can manage the tensions with head office.
On Monday evening after work I call Peter. ‘I can’t take the job,’ I tell him. ‘I’m disappointed.’
‘I am too,’ he replies.
‘It just won’t work with the family. But thank you.’
‘I understand. We’ll find someone else. Good luck,’ he tells me.
‘You too.’ I hang up.
I take myself outside to water the garden. The sun is setting and the hills are aglow. Relief courses through me.
I put my head down at work and get on with it. Despite the fence topped with barbed wire that runs around the office, Bernice and I try to make the place as welcoming as possible to the various native title holders in the district. The local mob are the Kalkadoon, but in the area surrounding are the Pitta Pitta, Mitakoodi, Yulina, Bularnu, Waluwarra and Wangkangujuru, just to name a few. And many of them have made their homes in Mount Isa and are actively involved in managing their native title interests.
From time to time some will drop in on the pretext of getting the details of a forthcoming meeting or signing a form of some sort, but I know they really just want a chat. I often make a cup of tea and we sit out under the carport in the heat so they can smoke. I love listening to their stories of growing up on the stations. Many of the older generation were born on one of the stations in the area, such as Roxborough, Glenormiston and Headingly. Many of them were kids when they moved to Dajarra, the biggest town in the area at the time, and the focal point for the stock routes that ran from the west. Cattle were driven there and then put on trains bound for the east coast. The families followed the cattle and work, and sent their kids to school in town. Eventually, as trucks took over from trains, and more mines opened up, Mount Isa became the bigger town, and over time many families moved here. This and the granting of equal pay to Aboriginal stockmen in 1968 led to an exodus from the bush. The pastoralists were only prepared to employ white people, and closed down the Aboriginal camps. The dispossession which had commenced a hundred years earlier was now complete.
Today Lance has called in. He does so a lot, and this time I’m busy preparing documents for a meeting and so I give him short shrift. ‘I gotta get this document finished, Lance. What can I do for you?’
‘All I need’s the phone.’
‘No worries,’ I tell him.
He rings the works supervisor for the Boulia Shire Council and lines up a walk. This involves surveying an area where the council plans to do some work – widen a road, put in a drain, extract gravel – to ensure that no cultural heritage will be damaged.
Lance hangs up and gives me a nod. ‘Gotta do a walk at Headingly. Taking me nephew along.’ He leaves happy, knowing that in a couple of days he’ll be back out on country and getting paid for it.
Georgina and Lucille and my eldest sister, Anne, come to town to visit, and also to go camping at Boodjamulla (Lawn Hill) National Park. Diana’s little house bulges. I can see that Diana is shy around Anne, and retreats into her green chair and into herself. I know this upsets Beck and puts her on edge. She wants everyone to see the fun, smart and welcoming side of Diana, not this closed-off one. But Anne is very kind and capable socially, and is not easily deterred. Soon she has Diana back at the kitchen table, playing Upwords.
It’s fantastic to have the girls here – it’s the first occasion since we’ve been living here. This time with them is very important for us, but I realise when they arrive that it’s also very important for them. It’s easy for me to think that our move up here is having no impact on them. Beck and I both left home at seventeen. Our girls are in their early twenties, so what’s the big deal? I don’t think I’m prepared to admit that kids leaving home at the time of their choosing and circling back to the family home, which is static and known, is very different to our situation, where the parents have left the kids behind, thereby turning the natural order on its head.
With the nieces lined up to call in on Diana daily, and a solemn promise from Diana to wear her alarm, we load up the big four-wheel drive and take off for Lawn Hill. We travel west on the Barkly Highway for an hour, then turn north towards the Gregory River. An hour later we cross a cattle grid and I notice a sign: Undilla Station. I turn to Beck. ‘Remember that poster when we first came to town about the kid who went missing?’ Beck nods. ‘This is the place where he was last seen.’ Anne, Georgina and Luci in the back seat prick up their ears and I tell them the story, as much as I know it.
A little over two years ago, Kyle Coleman, seventeen, and James Coleman, twenty-one – not related but friends and work colleagues – came out here camping, shooting and drinking. Only James made it back. No one has seen Kyle since, nor have any traces of his remains been discovered.
The two had loaded up James’s ute with grog and guns and headed for an overnight camping trip along the Gregory River, three hundred kilometres away. Due to heavy rain they couldn’t get through to the river, and turned instead into Undilla Station. The manager gave them permission to camp but advised they wouldn’t get past the first creek crossing. The manager was the last person – other than James – to see Kyle alive. From this point on, the story gets very muddy, much like the rain-soaked dirt tracks the young men went down.
James returned alone to Mount Isa that night or early the next morning. He told the police they had hung around the station for a while, drinking and shooting cans with a .303 rifle, before returning to Mount Isa. In his statement, James said they drank the rest of the alcohol at his house, and then he went inside to go to the toilet and when he came out Kyle was gone. Four days later, James hanged himself in the back shed of his parents’ house.
I was able to tell the story in detail as the coroner’s findings had only just been released, and I had read the report with morbid fascination. The coroner found that Kyle was shot by James on Undilla Station, and that James burnt Kyle’s belongings, including his swag and his backpack, which contained his watch and his timesheet book. She found that James Coleman was deliberately untruthful when he said that he and Kyle had returned to Mount Isa together. Despite this, she found that they had been good friends when they left to go camping, and there was no evidence of animosity or a falling-out between them, or that James had any motive to harm Kyle. The coroner concluded that there was no evidence to infer the death was anything other than accidental.
As we drive along, I wonder what had happened out here. Was it merely a drunken accident or did they have a fight? Was James jealous of Kyle’s friendship with his girlfriend? Was there an unrequited attraction of one to the other? Did they argue about the car Kyle was buying from James, or something to do with work? I think of Kyle’s parents, who’ll never know what happened to their son, and of James’s parents, who not only have the sadness of their son’s death but also the guilt and shame of knowing he lied and died by his own hand, taking all the answers with him. I look out the window and imagine Kyle’s bones lying somewhere out here. Scattered by animals among the low hills, rocks and dry creek beds, or perhaps shoved down an old mine shaft.
We bounce along the dirt road, lost in our thoughts.
Back in Mount Isa, the camping trip and the family visit recede from my mind. I’m offered an interview for a senior native title job in the Torres Strait. I decline the interview for all the reasons I turned down the Cape York job, but not without first indulging a fantasy of laid-back island living, eating fresh seafood and snorkelling in crystal-clear waters.
I also interview for an Indigenous family violence legal job in Mount Isa. I like the people who interview me, and I’m attracted to the idea of travelling the circuit, flying in and out of remote communities, appearing in local courts. But at the end of the interview we discuss money, and the salary doesn’t come close to what I’m currently on so I withdraw my application. I put my head down and get on with my job.
I’m home for lunch with Diana. Beck is at work. Diana toys with her lunch and stands to make her way back to the recliner. She is suddenly immobilised, the colour drains from her face and her eyes roll back. I move forwards but I’m too late, and Diana crumples to the floor.
I immediately remember the time this happened with Beck alone, when Diana couldn’t get back to her feet. Then Beck had been forced to call an ambulance. Diana tries to get up. I tell her to wait and bring a chair close by. Together, with her climbing on the chair and me lifting, she manages to get on her feet and I escort her to the recliner. I make her a cup of tea.
‘Do you think you need to go to the hospital?’ I ask.
Diana shakes her head. ‘No, I’ll be fine.’
I text Bernice and I tell her what’s happened, and that I’ll spend the rest of the day working from home. She tells me she’s got it covered and to let me know if I need anything.
I also text Beck. First I describe what happened, then:
Beck replies:
Me:
Beck:
Me:
Beck:
Me:
Beck:
Me:
Beck:
Me:
Beck:
Me: