Chapter 11

Port Hedland 1989 — 1 day later

Richard got up early. He sat on the kitchen step and watched the last of the hermit crabs scuttling down onto the scrap of beach below the house. There was an empty ore carrier making its leisurely way down the shipping lane to the harbour. All was still. There was a chill to the air and Richard revelled in it.

He was going to Warralong today to see Blackie and the other elders about the agreement with Goldsworthy liquor store not to serve community members from Warralong with alcohol. He had spent most of yesterday drafting a legal sounding document. No matter how high sounding it was, Richard knew it would have no legal force because it offended the Anti Discrimination Act. It prevented Aboriginal people from having access to a service. But the lawmakers in Perth had no idea of the realities in remote areas of the state.

Dignified, deeply spiritual elders, like Blackie, were trying to hold communities together using traditional means. Many of the aspects of Tribal Law seemed harsh to white men’s eyes. But these laws were thousands of years old and had kept communities in harmony all that time.

Aboriginal people, in Richard’s experience, found White man’s law really harsh. People were locked up in jail and sent hundreds, even thousands of kilometres away from their land and their people for months and years. A spearing, for example, was over quickly and normal community relations started soon after.

Blackie, and nine of the other elders, had formed a committee called the “Ten Man.” They came into town at night and kidnapped community members who had joined the fringe dweller groups in Port Hedland and South Hedland. People only ever seemed to join the fringe dweller groups so they could get drunk at will. After the people were kidnapped they were taken to a community in the Great Sandy Desert called Punmu. There they would dry out and hopefully be rehabilitated back into sober life. Many stayed at Punmu and got on with their tribal lives. But many also found the lure of the grog too much and took the first opportunity to make their way back to Port Hedland.

The elders at Warralong were fighting a life and death battle with alcohol. This was the next stage in the battle. Richard wanted to help the elders. He could see the damage being caused to Aboriginal society by alcohol, although, ironically, he was blind to any damage it might be causing him.

So he got away early, in the cool of the morning, and drove the one hundred and fifty kilometres to Warralong. The first fifty kilometres were bitumen, along the North West Coastal Highway, and then the Marble Bar road. It was flat plain as far as Richard could see in every direction. Then in the distance to the South East, a range of desolate hills gradually became visible. Richard knew that range of hills marked the turn-off to Warralong.

He was barrelling along at one hundred and sixty kilometres an hour when he hit the end of the bitumen about seventy-five kilometres out of South Hedland. The ute went sideways but Richard was able to regain control. He slowed down to one hundred and forty. Most maps showed the Coongan River as marking the edge of the semi-arid area and the beginning of true desert conditions. Warralong was on the desert side of the Coongan. To Richard, the whole area just looked like desert. The Coongan was a river in name only; it was really just a sandy drain. Or it was until a cyclone hit and became a terrifying raging torrent. But as Richard drove the dusty track to Warralong, he knew that it had not rained for more than a year. The Coongan would be just sand.

The trip took just on two hours; it was late morning when Richard arrived. He went to the office first. They were expecting him. In the toilet he saw the sign reminding people to flush after using. The residents of the community were new to flush toilets and other accoutrements of western society.

The secretary gradually assembled the elders council, and they all went outside and sat in a circle in the red dust. Don Macleod did not participate in any of it. Richard was surprised but reasoned that Macleod probably wanted this to be all the elders’ work, not his.

Richard explained the document he had drafted. He explained that the document was probably unenforceable. Blackie then translated into Mardu for the elders who did not speak English. It was a slow process. But after lengthy deliberation the elders assented that they were satisfied with the document. It was taken inside the office and all ten signed it. Blackie was the only one who signed with his name. He laboriously traced out “Blackie” on the document. The other elders all signed with an “X.” Hands were shaken all around and Richard got in his ute to drive back to Hedland. The next stage would be to get the owner of the liquor store to sign it. That could wait for another day. The afternoon was wearing on. He was exhausted by the interactions with the elders and needed to rest.

The trip home was the same as the trip in: one hundred and forty on the dirt, then one hundred and sixty on the bitumen. Richard had joint in his shirt pocket which he remembered and lit half an hour into the trip. Driving a dirt road fast while stoned was a thrilling experience. The thrill was sensual, then sexual. Richard started to get an erection. It throbbed in his pants. He started to think about sexy women he knew. There had been a very pretty young woman in the office at Warralong. Soon his top button was undone, and he was playing with himself while driving on a dirt road at one hundred and forty  one-handed.

He came, and semen spurted out over his jeans and left hand. He didn’t want to dirty the steering wheel or gearstick, so he pulled into a rest area at the side of the road. The ute came to a shuddering halt because he could not touch the gear stick, and the car stalled. Richard managed to get out of the ute without touching anything and grabbed a towel from the backseat and cleaned himself up. He threw the towel into the rubbish bin at the rest stop, then took his marijuana stash from the glove box and rolled another joint.

As he smoked the joint he thought to himself,
“Well that was interesting, I will try not to do that again!” He knew, as he thought it, that he probably would do that again. He looked for water in the car and found none. He had driven two hours into the desert with no safety measures at all. He had not packed a jerry can of petrol either. He became paranoid that the ute would not start again. The second joint was taking effect. The keys were still in the ignition, hanging there after the ute had stalled.

“What if it doesn’t start?”
“I am stuck out here with no water waiting for the next car  going to Warralong.”
“That might not be till tomorrow.”

Richard got back in the driver’s seat and turned the motor over. The ute lurched forward. It was still in gear. He tried again. Nothing. Then on the third try the ute started and Richard started breathing again. It was not a hot day but he was sweating heavily. He drove off hurriedly, wanting to get back to civilisation as soon as possible. Richard remained paranoid on the trip back; he kept checking the oil light and the temperature gauge. But nothing went wrong.

Or nothing went wrong until he reached the nine-mile mission. It was then his paranoia made him check to see if his wallet was in his back pocket. Hand reached around to back pocket, no wallet was there. He checked again, no wallet. Panic set in. Real marijuana-enhanced panic. Richard did a one-eighty degree handbrake turn. He must have dropped it at the rest area when he stopped to clean himself up. He had just enough petrol to get back out and back. It would be dark in two hours’ time. But it would still be light in one hour when he got back to the rest area. So he started speeding back out along the highway. His mind raced, “what if the wallet is not there?” Lots of similar questions. He was travelling even faster than usual. On the bitumen he hit two hundred kilometres per hour, then he slowed slightly when he hit the dirt.

It was one hour of bitter recriminations and fear-based ruminations to the rest area. It was late afternoon when he arrived. The shadows were long and the sky was orange-gold as Richard looked back the way he had come. He pulled the ute up and got out and scanned the area. No wallet. His heart lurched. He went and looked in the bin where he had thrown the towel. Nothing.

Richard despairingly walked back to the car. It was Friday; he would not be able to see the bank till Monday. He would have to see Valerie and ask her for money to tide him over till Monday. He put his hand to his back pocket out of habit. He felt something. It was his wallet. It had been there all along. He had not checked properly in his panic.

Richard drove slowly back to Port Hedland, towards the setting sun, thinking, “Never again.”