messages without the chat between truckies and farm workers overwhelming them.
‘Do we use that?’ Nick asked, indicating the handset.
‘Only if we need to,’ she told him. ‘I don’t think there’s much point in just chatting to people. The truckies do it to keep themselves alert, but I imagine it’s only in here for emergencies as far as we’re concerned.’
‘This is Eileen at Murrawalla hospital—is the doctor’s car receiving? Are you new guys there?’
‘You must have wished that on us,’ Annabelle told Nick, lifting the handset to her lips and pressing the button to transmit.
‘We’re the new guys and we hear you,’ she said, then switched to receive.
‘Good! Where are you exactly? There’s a problem out on Casuarina, if you tell me where you are I’ll give directions.’
‘We’re only sixty kilometres from Murrawingi—slight problem at the airport,’ Annabelle reported.
‘Well, that still makes you the closest and at least you won’t have to backtrack. About another fifteen k up the road you’ll see a mailbox made out of an old bulldozer track, turn right there and follow the road another fifteen k to some cattle yards, turn left and about thirty k further down that road there’s a bloke in trouble in a washout. When you’re done you can follow that road— it eventually leads back to the bitumen about twenty k south of town. Casuarina is sending a tractor over to get the truck out but he’ll travel slow. Radio if you need the ambulance as well.’
‘A bloke in trouble in a washout?’ Nick echoed, as Annabelle checked the distances she’d written on a small notebook she’d found bound to the sunshade by a thick rubber band.
‘Sounds like a single car accident,’ she explained. ‘This is channel country. It’s dry now but when you get good rain up north, the water travels south and this area becomes a maze of small creeks that criss-cross the whole area. Once off the bitumen you drive in and out of these all the time, and some of them have steep drop-offs at the bottom. There’s the mailbox.’
Nick looked towards where she was pointing and was amazed to see that the mailbox had indeed been fashioned out of the track of an old bulldozer. He turned right onto a narrow dirt road, making a note of the kilometres, although he was fairly sure he’d recognise cattle yards when he came to them.
‘Better stop and lock the hubs just in case,’ Annabelle suggested, and he pulled up and watched as she walked to the front wheel on her side, bending over to shift the hub from free to lock. He went back to his side and did the same thing.
‘Are we now in four-wheel drive?’ he asked, wondering about the next move.
She shook her head.
‘No, but we can go into it if we need to now the hubs are locked. We should lock them every so often whether we’re using the four-wheel drive or not, to keep them lubricated.’
She passed him as she spoke and climbed into the driving seat.
‘It’s not that I don’t trust your driving,’ she said, ‘but we should get to this guy as quickly as we can so it’s not the ideal time to be starting your new driving lessons.’
Nick didn’t argue, although as he climbed back into the troopie and felt Bruce’s hot breath on his neck, he did feel entitled to a small grouch.
‘It’s a good thing I’m a modern man who isn’t fazed by women’s lib or the fact that one particular woman is outdoing me at every stage of this adventure.’
Annabelle turned towards him, as if startled by his admission, then she smiled.
‘Not at every stage,’ she reminded him. ‘You did rescue me from being trampled back there in the airport.’
She smiled again, though Nick was starting to wish she wouldn’t. She had such an attractive smile—the kind of smile that not only made you want to smile back but made you want to keep her smiling.
He shook his head, sure it had to be the heat—heatstroke—that had his mind wandering this way.
Although the vehicle was air-conditioned…
‘Hold on!’
The clipped order had him grabbing for the bar on the front dashboard, catching it just in time to stop himself being thrown forward against his seat belt.
‘That’s a washout,’ Annabelle explained as she eased the troopie into its lowest gear so it had to growl and grumble its way out of the creek bed. ‘I’m sorry, but going in it didn’t look as steep as that. I’ll take them all much more slowly in future.’
Still uncertain about the geography of it, Nick opened his window and stuck his head out to have a look. Clouds of red dust whirled in, but behind them he could see what Annabelle had meant. The road had seemed to ease slowly into the cry creek bed, but at the bottom it had been cut away so the last two feet of the descent had been abrupt.
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