The Crate Escape, page 12
I had already decided that I would leave both of those delights to Bob whilst I appointed myself as head chef and would do the cooking. The nearest I had managed before today to get to meat, was to eat it and so I foresaw some challenges just on the cooking side. Never mind the slaughter and butchering of poor old Larry the Lamb.
By now, we were about fifty yards from our proposed meal with both of us lying flat on our stomachs. I didn’t dare look at any of the targets on an eye-to-eye basis as eye contact would have put me off-eating meat for life. At the same time, I was hoping that Bob was not so worried and was using his eyes, as the thought of another kookaburra giving up the ghost to satisfy our hunger didn’t appeal to me either.
“Are you ready?” Bob whispered to me.
I should have replied, “About as ready as I’ll ever be,” but I took the easy way out and just whispered, “Yeah!”
I had no idea why he was asking me if I were ready, as it was, he who would be doing all the shooting.
Bang, bang, bang—about six shots rang out; he had no intention of missing this time.
The noise and I guess, the flying objects racing toward them startled the sheep which all made a run to get away from us. All, being the word! Using the word in English as a determiner, they had all gone, there were none left! I opened my eyes, which had been closed at the time of the shooting, just in time to watch them all running away, that was—except one!
About fifty yards away from where they had been standing, Larry had stopped running, he walked unsteadily for a few feet and then collapsed in a big ball of wool on the ground.
Bob was ecstatic; he had finally hit something that wasn’t a kookaburra!
With both of us yelling at the top of our voices, we ran toward dinner. In my mind’s eye I could see it surrounded by roast potatoes and two vegetables. When we arrived at the gravesite, I gave Bob the large knife that I had been carrying on the belt of my trousers and nodded, as if to say, “Okay, now cut it up!”
With me looking away slightly, he dutifully obeyed with his only question being,
“What parts do we want?”
“The edible ones,” I offered in return.
Bob should have studied to be a surgeon or, at the very least, a butcher as within ten minutes he had skilfully removed all the main parts and we were heading back to our campsite carrying between us more lamb than a butcher’s shop would have sold in a week.
Arriving back, and without wasting any time, we lit a roaring fire and laid the meat out next to it. After having a debate on the subject, we decided that we should cook it all as it would last longer if cooked than leaving it raw. Apart from the lasting effect cooking would have on it, it also looked a lot better after the flames had got on with its job. We started cooking the lamb until it resembled something that could be bought at a delicatessen and then we both ate our fill. It was delicious and tasted fresh.
What to do with the large amount that was left over? If we left it on the ground, it could be stolen by wild animals and even if no wild animal fancied it, there were always the ants; they would eat anything! This was one of those times we wished we’d bought a refrigerator with us, although carrying one of those things on our backs – and especially one made by ‘General Motors’ – wouldn’t have been easy and wouldn’t have given us the hoped-for ‘bushranger’ appearance.
Going deep into thought for a few minutes, we easily solved the problem! We would tie it all to the branches of a tree where it would stay cool and fresh and be safe until our next meal. Climbing the selected tree, we picked low branches, tied it all up and jumped back to the ground. The sun had gone down hours before, and with all that excitement plus a full stomach, all we could think of was sleeping. We crawled into our tent and within minutes were both fast asleep.
It was quite late the next morning when we woke up. We checked that our supply of roast lamb hadn’t been disturbed by anything before lighting a fire and reheating up a leg. We had large portions on our plates and were complimenting ourselves on just how delicious it was when a sudden noise attracted my attention.
It was the horse I saw first. I elbowed Bob to shut up and listen before pointing in the direction where the movement had caught my attention. The horse and rider then came into full view, barely five yards away from us. With our mouths wide open and agape, we stared at the guy.
“Good day, fellas,” the rider said to us. Standing up, we both wished him a totally hollow sounding “good day”.
“You fellas out camping?” he drawled.
“Yeah, we’re making our way to Darwin,” I answered.
“You’ve got a long way to go!” Bob and I just nodded our heads like a pair of muppets.
The guy, who was dressed a bit like Ned Kelly without the metal helmet the outlaw was famous for wearing, slung one leg over the horse so that he was sitting side-saddle; he fiddled around in his shirt pocket and, producing a pouch of rolling tobacco and a pack of Rizla papers, he proceeded to roll himself a cigarette. He lit it up without saying a word whilst Bob and I, both noticed that he kept glancing at our store of roast lamb that was still hanging from a tree only a few yards from where he was sitting on his horse. He took a long drag from his cigarette before he spoke.
“Say, you lads haven’t seen a flock of sheep on your travels, have you?”
Bob and I, both answered at the same time.
“No,” said Bob.
“Yes,” said I, “they were over there.” As I spoke, I pointed in the opposite direction to which we had seen the sheep. The guy kept glancing at our larder tree and the conversation came to a halt. He waited thirty seconds before he asked,
“Are you sure?”
“No, not really,” I answered before trying a grin to see if that would help the situation. The guy still sounded friendly, so I continued.
“Are you the station owner?”
“No, I’m a station hand, and I’ve got to find that flock before I can go on a seven-day holiday!” He was still glancing at the lamb.
“What would the owner say if he found out someone had shot one of his sheep?” I asked.
“Have to find out first, wouldn’t he?”
“You mean that you wouldn’t tell him?”
“I’ve got no real reason to do that this very minute, especially if someone helped me out!”
Bob and I relaxed a bit.
“They’re over there,” we both said at the same time, pointing in the right direction and grinning at him. He grinned back which, I felt, was a good sign.
“They’re only about fifteen minutes away!” I added for good measure.
“Why’d you shoot one,” he asked, still smiling.
“Because we had no food and were bloody hungry,” answered Bob.
“That sounds like a fair dinkum excuse.”
“That means you’re not going to say anything, right?” I ventured.
“A deal’s a deal mate, you told me where to find the flock, and in return, I’ll keep my word!”
“Jesus, thanks, mate,” said Bob, grinning, as if the three of us had been friends for a lifetime.
“How long are you planning to camp here?”
“Few days maybe,” I answered.
“Well, if you need some tucker, just come over to the station house; it’s a mile or so over there,” he said, pointing with his hand, “I’ll see you right!”
We both thanked him for his help, and he trotted off in the general direction of the flock of sheep.
“You think that we should visit the station house?” I asked Bob after the station hand had left us.
“Are you bloody joking, we’re getting out of here right now, in case he changes his mind!”
Chapter Twenty-One
Packing our stuff away quickly and not forgetting our lamb, we made a beeline for the dirt road with the intention of thumbing a lift. After waiting a few hours without even the sight of a vehicle but with the idea that at any moment, a group of mad horsemen might descend on us and, at best charge us with cattle rustling or some such thing, we started to walk.
We really weren’t prepared for this type of travel at all, and within minutes, our former friends (the herd of flies) joined us again. We had no idea how they knew where we were going but they always managed to find us. Constantly trying to flick them away with our hands, the flies thought that we were playing games with them, the more we flicked the more they tried and succeeded in annoying us.
Sitting down at the side of the road, we just gave up. With the sun beating down and the flies still buzzing around us, we just couldn’t take it anymore. This strip of dirt was the main road to Charleville, but it seemed to handle only three or four vehicles a day, hardly a traffic jam! About then, we had a sudden flash of inspiration. Why not sleep during the day and travel at night? No sun and even the flies would be sleeping! Putting this brainwave into immediate effect, we laid back and dozed off.
We woke up just as the sun was starting to set. The weather was much cooler and our friends, the flies, had all disappeared except for one who we managed to catch and squash. Perfect walking conditions, but we needed to implement our rule, only walk on the edge of the road and under no circumstances veer away from it even if we thought we could spot a short-cut. Many people had, in the past walked away from the road and within minutes managed to get themselves completely lost, many had even died. In a land where everything looked the same losing one’s way was an easy and dangerous thing to do.
With all the holes in the ground, walking during the night was not the easiest thing to do however, we plodded further and further on frequently looking behind us in the hope of seeing some form of transport. During one of these turns, I spotted a light maybe three or four miles behind us and obviously on the road. Finally, we had the possibility of getting a lift. We stopped walking and waited, and waited, and waited, but the vehicle didn’t appear to be getting any closer. After a while, Bob asked me if I had noticed anything unusual.
“Such as what?” I asked him.
“Such as any noise?”
We both struggled as hard as we could, trying to hear the noise of an approaching vehicle but, try as we may there was dead silence. Both of us knew that in the outback and especially at night the slightest noise would travel for miles and no driver would turn off his engine, even if he had stopped for a while for fear of the engine not starting again and yet, we could see the light from a vehicle but couldn’t hear it?
We slowly started to walk again constantly looking at the light behind us when Bob started to tell me about an Australian ghost story that apparently was pretty well known in these parts (how he knew that I’ll never know as he came from hundreds of miles away). The ghost looked like a car headlight and, from a safe distance away, followed lonely travellers never giving up until it had driven them mad! The story was accompanied by a few Woo’s and other weird sounds put in for good measure and affect by the storyteller.
“Well, it won’t change us as we must be mad for being here in the first place!”
“This is serious; I’m not joking, you know?”
“Neither am I,” I growled back.
We both turned around to look at the light; it was there and looked as though it was still about the same distance away from us.
“You made that story up, right?”
“No, it’s true; I swear, it is!”
“Let’s run and see if it follows us!”
We started running, but it was still behind us, we zigzagged across the road and back, it still followed. Running off the road and into the scrub, doing massive zigzags, stopping and starting quickly, whatever we did it was still following us, and the only result of all this exercise was that we were completely knackered. It was still behind us and the same distance away. We sat down with our backs to a tree; at least sitting like that, nothing could come up from behind us. We stared at the light, it stared back at us, and neither it nor we moved. After a while, Bob, remembering the rifle, loaded it and crossing his legs placed it across them.
“We’ll stay here for a bit,” he said, and I, not daring to move, agreed.
The torch that we had been using flickered and died, we had no spare batteries and were left in complete blackness except for the light from the ghost who kept staring at us and we scowling back at it. Finally, we did what all teen boys do when they can’t think of anything more positive, we fell asleep.
We were awoken with a start; something had made us both jump out of our skins. We checked the ghost, and it was still staring at us, but this time there was a noise, a thump, just one and then silence for perhaps thirty seconds and then another thump! I poked Bob in his ribs.
“Are you listening to that?” I whispered.
“Yeah, keep quiet,” he hissed back. We sat stock still, but the thumps continued. I could take the tension no more before shouting out, “sod off, whoever you are, we’re not afraid of you!” To which Bob added,
“And we’re armed; we got a gun!”
“My mate is a great shot,” I lied.
“Yeah, try us if you dare!”
We both stopped shouting and the echoes died away, the thumping also stopped, but the ghost was still staring at us. Everything was deathly quiet for a short while.
Thump! The same noise started again. Quickly thinking of an idea, I whispered it to Bob, and standing up, we stood back-to-back with him holding the rifle at waist height. Not being able to see in the dark, we had no idea what was going on, and we were starting to panic although neither of us wanted to show it to the other.
“We’re giving you one last chance,” I shouted, “then we’ll open fire!”
“Okay,” yelled Bob, “You’ve asked for it, you can’t begin to understand the amount of fire-power we have here!” He must have thought that our gun had the same power as a leftover battleship from the second world war.
Fifteen dark blue gun flashes lit the night sky, each one making a roaring, deafening, almost screaming bang! Bob and I, standing back-to-back, took one small step in a circle as he fired each round, and as the final shot screamed away, we had turned a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle whilst remaining back-to-back. We stood still whilst the echo of the gunshots died away and the quiet of the night returned. Whoever had been making the thumping sounds wasn’t in any condition to do it again.
“Do you think we killed him?” I asked.
“I don’t know, do I? Anyway, he asked for it, it was his fault, wasn’t it?”
We both sat back down against the tree with our knees pulled up into our chests and were completely silent, lost in our own thoughts for a few minutes until Bob shouted at the ghost, “and if you don’t go away, you’ll get the same!”
If he weren’t quite so scared, he’d have been in a real fighting mood.
After the silence returned, we gradually both dozed off again. Waking up as the dawn broke we noticed that the ghost had gone, and we went in search of who or whatever had been making the thumping sound.
About fifty yards from where we had been sitting, we found the culprit in the form of a dead kangaroo that had failed to take our advice from the night before! Unsure whether to hold a full Christian burial service for the poor thing we both returned and sat beneath our leafless tree feeling quite sorry for the poor animal.
Chapter Twenty-Two
After looking at the dead kangaroo, we found ourselves surprised that it hadn’t hopped off when we shouted at it.
“Maybe it was transfixed by the ghost, the same as us?” suggested Bob.
“The same as you, you mean,” I scoffed at him.
“Are you trying to tell me that you weren’t scared?”
“Never thought about that,” I lied.
“Still, it was strange though; I wonder where it went.”
“To heaven or, if it was a naughty little joey, to hell; do you want to eat something?”
“I meant the ghost.”
“Oh well, you should have said!”
Opening a backpack, I took the remaining lamb out and we started eating it. It was still tasty but the same as anything else; if you eat the same food every meal, it becomes boring.
“What do you miss the most?” asked Bob. I thought for a moment or two about his question before answering,
“Cheese!”
He laughed. “Cheese? We’ll need to find a cow to make some of that!”
“Cows don’t make cheese, people do” I giggled.
“No, but the milk from them does, doesn’t it!”
“Are all you Aussies mad or just you?”
“I’m just telling you that we’d need to find a cow to make cheese.”
“If I find the cow, will you promise that you’ll make it jump up and down until the cheese is ready?”
“Now, who’s mad?”
“Did you ever hear about that Brit and the Aussie who went fishing?”
“What Brit and Aussie?”
“Well, apparently a Brit and an Aussie went out one afternoon and decided to have a couple of cold beers. After a while, the Aussie said to the Brit, ‘If I was to sneak over to your house and make wild passionate love to your wife while you were at work, and she got pregnant and had a baby, would that make us related?’ The Brit, after a great deal of thought, replied, ‘Well, I don’t know about related, but it sure would make us even’.”
“Is that supposed to be funny?” Bob asked.
“Nope, it just lets us know the difference between Brits and Aussies—the Brit is always the first to get something done!”
“Including my wife?”
“Well, someone would need to keep her happy whilst you’re still learning exactly what you’re supposed to be doing! Anyway, who, in their right mind, would want to marry you?”
“Ha-ha, nutter!”
