Chapter 2
Pilbara 1989
Kenneth was sentenced to two and a half years for the wounding with an eighteen month non parole period when the court resumed on the Tuesday. Richard explained to Kenneth that he would have about one year to serve taking into account the six months or so he had served on remand. Kenneth was not upset by this nor was he joyful. Richard was far happier than Kenneth about the outcome. He had feared Kenneth would be sentenced to something like ten years, or even more. Kenneth’s non reaction to his sentence was not unexpected to Richard. Most of the Aboriginal people had represented were totally baffled by the white mans law and just accepted what happened to them with a shrug of the shoulders.
Richard also made sure to tell Kenneth that he needed to do something about his alcohol use. “None of this would have happened if you hadn’t been drunk.” Kenneth said nothing. Richard suspected he just wanted this annoying white man to go away. Not a thought crossed Richard’s mind about his own alcohol use.
Richard drove back to Port Hedland that afternoon feeling exultant. The win in the case was a miracle, but also he had cleared his calendar for the week for it so he had three days to what he wanted. There were a number of things he could do, and as he drove across the empty plain he debated them in his head. He could not help thinking that he was special lawyer for getting the outcome that he got.”Nobody else could have done what I did” he grinned to himself.
It is a two and a half hour journey from Karratha to Port Hedland. Half an hour to Roebourne, then two hours of nothing except for the Whim Creek pub. There is a grandeur to the emptiness, though. The blistering heat, it was forty two degrees celsius, the endless plain, the red dirt., the grey spinifex And here and there, heartbreakingly fragile in this harsh environment, the sudden black and red flash of Sturt’s Desert Pea.
Richard had decided on his activity for Wednesday at least. He would drive to Warralong station and see a witness about an appeal case that a barrister in Perth had been hounding him about.
Immediately he saw five wedge tailed eagles circling in an updraft. He took that as a good omen for His decision. He continued driving east along the coast but inland. He drove at 160 kilometres per hour which was close to the fastest his Mitsubishi ute would travel. He drove with his left hand holding the steering wheel and his right arm out the window gripping the door arch. The combination of the air conditioner on full and the air rushing in the window seemed to keep him coolest.
He arrived home at his nor wester weatherboard home at about five pm. Too late to go to the office. Valerie, the field officer and Celeste the secretary would have gone home. His house, like his ute, was provided by his employer, the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia. The ute was fantastic, but the house was a mixed blessing. It was an old Port Hedland house, built before the mining boom hit in the 1970s. It was old and dusty. It was only a few hundred metres from the ore crushers that dominated the skyline in the centre of town. In 1989 there were no regulations to govern how much dust an industrial site gave out. BHP ignored the health of the residents of the town and the dust just permeated everything. It covered the inside and the outside of the house. Luckily there was an air conditioner in the main bedroom, so Richard spent a lot of time holed up in there avoiding the heat. The rest of the house was un-airconditioned. Sometimes Richard would smoke marijuana in the bedroom and in his confused state when he walked into the kitchen think he had left the oven on.
But there were massive positives to the house as well. It was built on the top of a sand hill on the waterfront. There was nothing between the house and the Indian Ocean. Richard could stand in the front room and see the ore carriers as they ploughed in and out of the ports at Port Hedland and Finucane Island. Sometimes as many as ten different ships in a day, some empty and heading into port and some fully laden and heading off to China or wherever.
He was also privileged to see the sunset every night (it was almost never cloudy or rainy). The sun sank into the ocean in fiery red blaze of glory every night. Richard was awestruck by it every time. It evoked a yearning inside him for something that he just could not put his finger on. He knew there was something out there that was powerful and good, just like he knew that that there was something powerful and bad.
The hermit crabs were also an important part of living in this house. Most nights of the year hundreds or even thousands of hermit crabs would invade the yard. They would creep from the mangroves lining the reef in front of the house as night fell. You could throw any old rotten meat out into the yard and by morning it would be gone. A half eaten barbecue chicken would be reduced to bones. This was helpful to Richard because he was not a guy who enjoyed cleaning up. He would leave the plates in the yard to be cleaned up.
Richard knew he was not an alcoholic because he never had alcohol on his own at home. He never had alcohol in the fridge unless there was a barbecue or something like that. So that evening after he pulled in from his big two days in Karratha he just made a peppermint tea and sat on the step to watch the sun go down. He probably needed a few nights off after his big one on Sunday night.
The hermit crabs had started their ascent to the yard and he watched them idly, as they inched their way across the sand. Loneliness hit after a while and he went inside to air-conditioning and watched TV. He ate dinner (Cold Pizza from Saturday) in bed and drifted off to sleep early.
