to Mount Isa’. It meant something to their family for a few reasons. All Kylie’s siblings were born and raised and still living there and her Dad had often joked that he would end up being planted at Sunset Lawn, the Mount Isa Cemetery. The stubby cooler was part of a tourism campaign to promote travelling west to Mount Isa to experience the Outback, the Barra fishing, camping and also a working tourist mine called The Hard Times Mine, a volunteer-operated, working underground mine model that gave tourists the opportunity to have the full underground mine tour after Mount Isa Mines ceased public tours at the MIM mine. The Hard Times Mine was a fantastic example of hard work and community passion and a tribute to the town’s lifeblood of over ninety years.
Her dad took the beer and said, “Thanks Baby, now what else did the Tar-rot lady tell you?”
“Rargee, I wrote it down. Let me tell it to you word for word, to be sure to be sure.”
“Wrote it down? Ha. Didn’t want to forget it A Baby?”
“Nope. Thought I might look back on it one day when I’m old and shit, like you are now.”
“Easy.” He stared back at her with a stern face trying to be serious. “I may be old but I’m not shit. I am da shit! Ain’t that right dat Nigel?” he said and pointed the hose at the dog that was rubbing his undercarriage on the lawn, getting grassily aroused in his own dry, testicle-less little world. When the stream of water hit him, he sprung up on all fours with a quick bark as if he was a guard dog on duty and someone had just walked past the fence. Roger laughed his high pitched laugh in response.
Kylie sipped her beer and, with her father’s full attention, read out the card reader’s words.
“A Baby might have to leave town to find so much water, this place is a desert!’
“Yeah, I was thinking that, or maybe get a job at the dam?”
Roger turned on his serious voice, “No love. The water treatment plant part of the dam has been owned and operated by the same family for 35 years. You won’t get a job there. It’s like a caretaker set up. And you live here for free so why would you move?”
“True dat! Free living and free beer Rargee!”
Roger laughed, “These are The Face’s beers you know.”
The Face was Kylie’s name for her eldest brother as he had a unique talent for giving face, for example, he could pull a ‘who just farted face’ even when no one had expulsed a love puff or let fluffy off the chain. He could laugh, then cry, then become serious within seconds if a story he was telling required it. Kylie thought the only people that had good face were entertainers but both her Dad and she found him very comical.
“Cheers to getting off our face, compliments of De Face!” Kylie proposed with her beer in the air.
“Cheers to that,” Dad replied.
“So what are the papers for A Baby?”
“I’m looking in the job sections. To see what I can see.”
“Geez, you’re taking a lot of direction from this card lady. How much did she charge ya?”
“Fifty bucks.”
“Fifty bucks! Crikey! I coulda told you all that shit for free baby, then you could have bought two cartons of beer instead.”
“Yeah, and put them in the bar fridge so every bastage could pilfer them,” Kylie replied.
“Yeah, like we are,” her dad said with a laugh.
‘Yeah, like we are, I’m not that silly Rargee.”
“No, A Baby, you’re the smart one! Now get me another one please so I can wet my whistle just like how I wet that damn darling dawg Nigel before,” he said raising both eyebrows to Kylie then laughing his signatory laugh to himself.
“What are you doing tonight A Baby?”
“I am working from 5 to 10 pm and then, I am changing my outfit, touching up my war paint and catching up with Sophia from
Cloncurry.”
“Sophia? Have I met her?”
“Ah, no. You would remember meeting Sophia, Rargee. She’s the hottest little biscuit I know.”
“Hotter than you A Baby?”
“Shit yeah, next to her I look like a hairy armpit.”
Her dad burst out laughing. “Oh baby, don’t sweat it, you’re lovely.”
“Mmmm, spoken like a true jaded father who has to endorse his own kid’s attract–ability,” she replied sarcastically.
Kylie’s dad walked over to the washing line and picked up the long-handled tongs and started picking up dried dog turds from around the yard and putting them into a plastic bag. He chatted to himself in his character voice, “Dried, yep, fried, yep, shale yep, stale yep, all of the dags, into the bag, pick up the stools from your pet, whoa, hang on, this one’s still wet!” He turned to Nigel the dog and while pointing at the fresh and glistening brown mess on the lawn yelled, “This one’s still wet Nigel. It’s still got steam drifting off it ’cause you only just laid it, fresh for me to step into, damn darling dawg.” Nigel’s ears and chin pricked up as he looked at Kylie’s dad. When he saw the brown-tipped tongs pointing at the steamy heapy he had just disowned, he looked down and put his paws over his eyes, figuring if he couldn’t see nobody then nobody could see him and perhaps he could just get on with his life.
As her dad muttered about the messages the mutt had left him around the lawn, Kylie casually flipped through the Townsville Bulletin and continued to laugh and talk with her father. During any silence from chatter while he was out of earshot as he shifted hoses around the yard and moved beer bottles into the garbage bin, she would scan the employment pages a little closer from the top left column down to the bottom of the page and back up to the top again. Her whole head would move to follow the page as if she was painting a squiggle using an imaginary brush on her nose. She wasn’t even sure what she was looking for but she had an intensity of wanting to find something, something that stood out and grabbed her attention. Suddenly, something caught her eye. In the middle of the paper was a large advertisement, a quarter of the page in size, with the proudest logo she had ever seen. Even though it didn’t have any proximity to water, it caught her eye and made her gasp.
The company logo was BHP. “Ahhhh! The Big Australian,” she said.
The logo was in a pattern of Australia. It made her heart swell with pride. Maybe it was because it was a company that had small beginnings but now ranked amongst the world leaders, maybe because Kylie had no ties to them and it all seemed glossy and new compared to the old mine she could see from her house and during her daily commute and from her current place of work in the middle of town. BHP was starting a mine only three hours away from Mount Isa and had taken the name of the cattle station that the mine was located on. Cannington. It even sounded prestigious to Kylie. The job ad listed positions from Site Administrators, Above Ground Operators, Under Ground Operators and Site Support Staff. Maybe they had a job at their new tailings dam for her? It was clutching at straws but she would apply anyway.
She read the advertisement then re-read it remembering every detail, then ripped it out and put it in her handbag. Her heart
