Nardoo

By Chris Wolsey

After their adventures on the excavations of Kara Tepe in Iran and Ayios Petros in Cyprus Rosalind Bernaud has persuaded Philip Trevasco to come to her uncle’s property in the Australian Outback. His archaeological expertise is needed to solve the riddle of her grandfather’s death. Philip’s faces raw bush life to understand wha

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Wolsey
• Release date: Jul 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9780995409453

Chris Wolsey

Chris has written much of this book from personal experience. Born in Stafford, England, he studied Archaeology and Fine Art at Edinburgh University. During the 1970s Chris worked on excavations in Italy, Cyprus, Turkey and Iran. His last excavation was at old Kandahar in Afghanistan, just before the Russian invasion. It is this excavation life that he has reworked into historical fiction. Chris discovered Australia after Kandahar, and moved there in 1978. Since then he has taught Ancient History, English and Philosophy in Brisbane. Along the way he completed post graduate diplomas in Russian (Strathclyde university in Glasgow), Teaching (London university) and a degree in Journalism (QUT in Brisbane). He has always thought of life as an adventure. So his gaining a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, and a stint of hang gliding, would come as no surprise. Life is so rich that one needs several lifetimes to catch a part of it. How does one limit oneself to one interest, one existence, when there is so much out there for the next challenge? `Kara Tepe', and `Ayios Petros', drew on experiences in Iran and Cyprus. `Nardoo', the third in the series, reflects his fascination with the Australian bush. After raising two sons, their greatest adventure, he and his wife now live in the hills north of Brisbane.

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NARDOO

CHRIS WOLSEY

Copyright © 2014 Chris Wolsey, all rights reserved.

Map by Joha Coludar

ABOUT THE BOOK

After their adventures on the excavations of Kara Tepe in Iran and Ayios Petros in Cyprus Rosalind Bernaud has persuaded Philip Trevasco to come to her uncle’s property in the Australian Outback. His archaeological expertise is needed to solve the riddle of her grandfather’s death. Philip’s faces raw bush life to understand what is special about Nardoo Spring and the nearby Bluff. The secrets of Aboriginal lore and ancient Gondwanaland connect in this third adventure. Can Philip survive the modern and primeval forces ranged against him, and still keep the love of his Australian beauty?

PERSONAL BACKGROUND

Chris has written much of this book from personal experience. Born in Stafford, England, he studied Archaeology and Fine Art at Edinburgh University. During the 1970s Chris worked on excavations in Italy, Cyprus, Turkey and Iran. His last excavation was at old Kandahar in Afghanistan, just before the Russian invasion. It is this excavation life that he has reworked into historical fiction.

Chris discovered Australia after Kandahar, and moved there in 1978. Since then he has taught Ancient History, English and Philosophy in Brisbane. Along the way he completed post graduate diplomas in Russian (Strathclyde university in Glasgow), Teaching (London university) and a degree in Journalism (QUT in Brisbane).

He has always thought of life as an adventure. So his gaining a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, and a stint of hang gliding, would come as no surprise. Life is so rich that one needs several lifetimes to catch a part of it. How does one limit oneself to one interest, one existence, when there is so much out there for the next challenge?

‘Kara Tepe’, and ‘Ayios Petros’, drew on experiences in Iran and Cyprus. ‘Nardoo’, the third in the series, reflects his fascination with the Australian bush.

After raising two sons, their greatest adventure, he and his wife now live in the hills north of Brisbane.

Dedication

As a teacher I was sent out to South Western Queensland for two years. For me and my family it was a hard time, but made more than bearable by many friends. In particular Donald and Kay Blanche, and Russell and Donna Thornton, showed us that it can be ‘God’s own country’ when seen in the right light.

I have often found that out of a negative comes a positive. During this time I wrote ‘Kara Tepe’, ‘Ayios Petros’, and ‘Nardoo’. Without the actions of an iniquitous transfer system, and a rather unchristian lady, this might not have happened. Therefore I thank them.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Sources

CHAPTER 1

Beneath the cold of the lake, enclosed in subterranean darkness, something moved. The dripping walls touched the phosphorescent water with tear-drop rings, steady and timeless. But in its dark clarity a presence stirred, a long time in the waking. She surveyed her domain, the quiet, the pool, her long-dead companions.

Her quicksilver mind became alert, aware of events taking place beyond her ordered realm. She rose from the lake and entered the enveloping cold of the late afternoon air. There was a disturbance, a quiver in the land that was hard to comprehend. The voices of alien men and their strange actions were a desecration of the ancient rings of the old ones.

She watched unseen, as she read anger, panic and greed in their minds. She saw their eyes search the sky, their listening, their fear feeding on itself.

An unnatural noise, like an insect’s drone, rolled across the red rock. The strangers moved quickly, finished their actions. Glowing lights were laid in lines upon the earth. The noise in the sky came close. It came down to earth and rested.

But another sound, like the first, reached out and travelled across the sky. Closer until close, so that she could see the light of its strange eyes above the rock, hear its echoes around the ancient layers of sand and amongst its windy hollows.

A crack: an ugly sound, like lightning in anger. The sound and light toppled from above, slowly like a whirling moth. It struck the earth and was consumed like a dying sun. Soon the sounds stopped, and her presence was left to brood in the all-pervasive quiet.

Philip Trevasco opened his eyes to the flashing tumult of boiling cloud outside the cabin window. The storm bubbled up like an angry Indian god, pouring its wrath upon the Himalayan peaks below. His forehead dripped tepid sweat, gathering around his eyes and nose before dripping off his chin. The Swedish beauty next to him seemed unaware of his developing scenario.

Shut your eyes to sleep. Relax your stomach. He tried hard to talk himself out of the juggernaut.

Thoughts didn’t stop the plane dropping three hundred feet into a hole. His stomach rose to meet his acid-burned throat. Beyond caring if the Queen of Sheba personally studied his every movement, he buried his head in the waxed receptacle.

‘I know you’re worth it, Ros, but I wish you didn’t live on the other side of the world,’ he said to himself.

He slept fitfully to Bangkok. At the airport transit lounge he sipped Miguel beer, its cold bubbles restoring order to his strained stomach. He thought of the dark, cluttered office in the Strand where he’d bought his cheap student ticket. There was still money left from the $2000 Ros’s uncle had sent. Australia would be expensive from what he had heard.

The G force pushed him deep into the foam seat as the Jumbo took off. It was exciting, travelling again, with that reassuring pinch of the body belt with passport, traveller’s cheques, and a few US dollars in cash to get out of trouble. Being alone had never worried him particularly, until he’d met Rosalind Bernaud, the Brisbane art student he’d worked with in Iran and Cyprus. He’d always been by himself, a long way from home, and people around speaking another language he’d learn the requisite two hundred words of. Travelling to foreign digs turned British preconceptions on their head. He enjoyed this real life, which was anything but the mundane drudge to gain cash.

During the continuous night of Malaysia, Indonesia and Northern Australia he thought of her, his tall bronzed beauty, the lion’s mane of golden hair, her voluptuous but trim figure, independent mind and refreshing honesty. They’d taken crazy chances together, but had spent little time curled up close in the evening firelight. Maybe this academic summer, their Australian winter, would give them those quiet times.

It was strange not to be digging, but her letter and the cheque could not be refused.

8 am Brisbane time. The jumbo circled sprawling subtropical suburbia just above roof top. The grey-brown snake of the Brisbane River meandered past the tight pocket of high-rise office blocks, on to docks, oil terminals and into luxuriant blue Moreton Bay. The monstrous hull banked before the ‘Fasten Seat Belts’ sign lit. Brakes tugged at the ground coming up to meet him. Which garden were they going to land in? Just before final descent he saw the runway, sheets of puddles, the wind flailing palms and bananas.

The wheels touched gently. Were those tyres aquaplaning? An awful length of runway flew past at blurred speed. When it finally stopped stewardesses walked down the aisles with large fly spray cans, pouring mist over people and things, as though they were cockroaches. People coughed and wiped the muck from glasses and lips. Did it really stop the world’s bacterial vermin penetrating Australian shores?

‘Philip Trevasco. Thai Airways flight 427. Contact the Qantas Desk,’ the red ticker tape urged.

‘Hi. Here’s your ticket and taxi fare to Archerfield. Catch the first flight. See you at Birdsville. Love, Ros.’

A light plane overhead was his first indication of Archerfield. With sinking realisation he guessed Birdsville must be a small town, and that plane was a damn sight smaller than the one he’d just stepped off.

The fit bronzed face at the counter noted his footsteps in the empty tiled shed.

‘Can I help you?’ as he wrote figures in a flight manifest.

Philip smiled wanly and handed over the ticket.

‘Ah, good. You’re the last,’ ticking the name off the clipboard.

‘I’m David Bloomfield,’ his hand stretched confidently.

‘Trevasco. Philip Trevasco.’ Firm handshakes seemed important here.

David bundled the last papers under the counter and tucked the tickets into an elastic band. As he zipped them into the Italian leather bag now placed under his arm, Philip noticed the pressed navy shorts, long garter socks and grey leather shoes.

‘The others are at the plane. If you’re finished we’ll be off.’

He took thirty paces to a scratched red Cessna six seater. Beside the single engine stood a large Australian male, in uniform shorts, long socks and leather shoes. Inside was the shadow of someone else.

‘What do you weigh, Philip?’ this slightly built, moustachioed Biggles asked him.

‘Seventy kilos.’

‘Good.’ The mental note fitted previous calculations.

‘Meet Mac.’

The bulky torso turned, revealing the prescribed gut and red face of Alistair ‘Mac’ Macdonald, the Gunya doctor returning from his monthly break.

‘Gooday, Philip.’ Again the crushing handshake.

‘Good morning, Mac,’ Philip pronounced deliberately. First names seemed as important as the handshake.

The tightly-crinkled, greying hair, bagged eyes of too many long shifts, opulent manner that enjoyed the material benefits of expensive car, fine food and alcohol, this was a man used to work and play in equal measure.

Philip drank the cold morning air, pungent with aviation fuel and diesel. Sunlight threatened to break through the low ceiling of cloud.

David climbed through the flap door beneath the wing and directed Philip to the back beside the small dozing figure of Chris Whitlock, a teacher returning from leave. Mac distributed his weight over the middle pair of seats behind the pilot.

As the door slammed Chris sat up like a startled weasel.

‘G’day,’ before he returned to the steamed glass beside him.

Philip looked around at the red leather bucket seats anchored to the floor, three bands of windows, and the front windscreen split between pilot and navigator. Today that seat had clipboard, a radio code manual and a folded flying map. The whole interior was no larger than a family saloon.

Clipboard aside, the engine spat into life as David pressed the starter button for the second time. Words to the tower via the hand-held microphone touching his lips, and they began to move. First there was a tight turn on to the runway, then taxiing gently before the stop, that moment Philip knew so well.

Engine speed increased to a roar that rattled the fuselage windows, so that he couldn’t look out through the toughened glass. He swallowed as David released the brake.

Philip prepared for the forward surge and the pounding of wheels that would continue for an age, but in seconds the nose tilted and the ground disappeared. Someone had let the elastic band go.

As they levelled out at 5000 feet David passed a tourist map to Philip. His usual stopping points were circled. Inwardly Philip groaned: Toowoomba, Goondiwindi, Saint George, Cunnamulla, Thargomindah. At last, following the arrowed pencil north was Birdsville. God, it was a long way inland.

‘Where are you going?’ Chris eyed the map.

‘Birdsville.’ He minimised speech against the noise.

‘Not a bad place. Next to the Simpson Desert. Here, you can see the sand hills,’ he pointed to lines on the map, hundreds of miles long, north to south.

‘Mac and I go on to Quilpie. Here.’ He paused. ‘It means a drive back through Eromanga and to base here at Gunya.’

Philip waited, wondering why the pilot didn’t land there, since it was circled.

‘The blackfellas have trashed the air terminal again. There’s no one to turn on the lights and clear the roos off the runway. The Flying Doctor gets special treatment, of course.’

In the now clear sky above Toowoomba David banked the plane with the casualness of a milkman dropping off one pint instead of two. Words into the black handpiece in reach of his tongue, the familiar tug of stomach muscles, rapidly followed by the hard thud of the wheels touching, a bounce and the correction of a wobble from left to right. As though driving into a supermarket he pulled into a numbered bay.

No one moved as David pulled on the hand-brake, and climbed out with two small parcels. Within minutes he was back with a young boy, his travelling bag jammed under the seat, who climbed into the co-pilot’s seat. A sturdily built, broad-shouldered twelve year old with close-cropped blonde hair, he clipped in as of habit, on his bus home.

The endless patchwork of grain and fodder crops gave way to vast areas of grazing land. Flocks of sheep were small grey dots scattered across the spreading brown land. Its flat was only punctuated by mesmeric snakes of water and the contoured buttresses that fed them. Always the horizon was hazy, straight and featureless.

Ten minutes out from Thargomindah they entered the Channel Country, an enormous network of rivers and creeks which spread across the low grey plain as far as the horizon, like a satellite photograph. It was so flat the water channels, marked by trees and shrubs, fanned across this enormous river basin. And the only water was Lake Yamma Yamma, which took ten minutes to fly over.

‘The only place where two rivers, the Barcoo and the Thompson, feed into a creek, the Cooper,’ David said.

‘And where does the Cooper go?’

‘It flows into the Strzelecki Creek and ends up in Lake Eyre. That only fills a few times a century. So the water really just dries up in the desert.’

It was all back to front. Rivers were supposed to start inland and flow to the coast. Cattle fed on grass, not rocks and trees. And sheep should graze poorer country than cattle. It was a desolate wasteland above and a vast Artesian lake beneath. Distances were measured in hours not kilometres. No wonder Ros was different.

And why was he here? What skills did he have that were worth $2000?

Just as his pummelled stomach reverberated for food David pointed to a tiny dot in front of the first line of advancing sand dunes. It looked no larger than one house.

A pub, I suppose.

He’d been watching a wall of black, lightning-flecked cloud billowing over the sand lines. This was where he came in, and they were flying straight into it. There was moving energy enough to toss this puny bird right out of the sky. He swallowed rapidly as the plane lost height. They might just slide under its menacing shadow. Mac was still asleep.

‘Should be a fast run to Quilpie,’ Chris said. ‘A good tail wind’ll cut twenty minutes off the trip.’

Now the plane banked into a left hand spiral, lost height and lined up on the gravel runway, all at the same time. White-painted tyres marked out the landing strip like a garden border.

David stood the plane on its left wing before he levelled out and slowed the engine.

The tumultuous breaker was high above their heads now. The little plane slewed left and rocked its wings as a slap of air hit it. David’s hands on the steering column corrected.

The engine pulled back metres off the ground. There was that floating, rising over an eddy of ground heat, before the wheels bounced noisily, once, twice. The third time kept their grip on the rattling stone. A final rotating wobble at recklessly gliding speed, then greater control, the weight of gravity binding them, as motion fell away.

Mac stirred. ‘Not bad,’ stretching the cramp from his confined limbs.

The bored schoolboy moved for Philip to climb out.

‘See you next time, Philip,’ as David handed him his bag.

‘Thanks. Good trip,’ he waved.

David checked the passenger door. Within moments he’d taxied to the southern end of the runway. The tiny plane shuddered along against the crosswind. Moments later it was miniscule as it veered up and right, ahead of the violence on its rear.