Going Bush Read online

  I didn’t reply. It seemed safer. For all I knew, he might have just asked me to rob a bank, or get married, or both. I didn’t care. Bigbottom Creek didn’t look like much but I could have kissed every last lousy inch of red dirt because the place had one really, really MASSIVE thing in its favor: it was on the ground.

  I’d never noticed how totally awesome the ground was before. The ground was now my favorite place to be in the whole world. I was never going on a plane again. If that meant walking all the way back to Hills Village or swimming the Pacific, then that’s exactly what I was going to do. After Captain Johnno, sharks would be easy.

  THERE WAS NO ONE there to meet us, so Glen and I grabbed our stuff and headed over to the hotel. I have to admit I felt kind of disappointed.

  It’s not like I’d expected a marching band or anything—okay, maybe I had been expecting a marching band, or whatever the equivalent of a marching band was in Bigbottom Creek—but at least there could have been something.

  Bigbottom Creek Hotel wasn’t much of a hotel but, like most places in Australia, it looked friendly enough. The guy behind the check-in desk directed us to a room at the back.

  “The reception’s in there, fellas,” he said. “Just leave your gear with me and I’ll stow it in your room.”

  The back room was packed and noisy with people chatting and eating. A man carrying a notebook looked like he was from a newspaper. Someone else was setting up a video camera next to a small stage. There was a bunch of guys in business suits talking to a guy with a big bushy beard. Everywhere you looked there were smiling faces and those weird Australian accents and I began to feel a whole lot better. I remembered how much I liked Australia.

  A woman with purple hair sitting behind a table near the door slapped a name tag on me and Glen. “Grab a plate and dig in,” she said, pointing to a long table piled high with food. “You’re the last to arrive but there’s plenty there.”

  “Great,” Glen said, and headed for the table. “Ah’m starving!”

  I was hungry too but I hung back to see if I could spot Ellie. Of all the reasons I’d given Mom for going to the Cultural Campout, the only one I hadn’t mentioned—seeing Ellie again—was right there at the top.

  I began to get that pukey kind of feeling in my stomach. What if she wasn’t there? What if she’d decided not to come?

  “KNUCKLES!” SOMEONE YELLED from behind me. Suddenly, I felt the kind of pain you get when someone rubs their knuckles right on the crown of your skull.

  “OW!” I spun around, ready to defend myself, and came face to face with Ellie grinning from ear to ear, her right hand bunched into prime knuckling position. She hadn’t changed a bit—which, to be honest, was just fine with me.

  “Sorry,” she said in a voice that didn’t sound even a tiny bit sorry. “Did that hurt, diddums?”

  I rubbed the top of my head. It hurt like mad. “No,” I lied. (Have you ever been knuckled? It hurts like crazy.)

  “I must have done it wrong then,” Ellie said, and lunged at me again.

  I danced out of the way and knocked over a large ad for a TV show. It read: THE BRUSHES MCGARRITY (FAMOUS DISCOVERER OF THE ROCKY HILLS CAVE PAINTINGS) ALL-AUSTRALIAN PAINTIN’ AND FISHIN’ SHOW! EVERY MONDAY, 3.20 AM, NBNBBC DIGITAL LOCAL.

  “Easy!” someone said as I picked up the cardboard cut-out. “Don’t damage the publicity, mate.”

  I turned around to see the real-life version of the man on the cardboard cut-out.

  “Brushes McGarrity,” he said, offering up a massive, gnarled paw. “Welcome to Bigbottom Creek.”

  BRUSHES MCGARRITY SMELLED of paint and horses and looked like he’d been carved out of the ground Bigbottom Creek was built on: he was red, dusty, and wrinkled. He wore a full-length leather coat and a leather hat that matched his leather skin. His beard was made from wire and his teeth were a cheesy yellow. He couldn’t have looked more Australian if he’d been riding a kangaroo across Sydney Harbor Bridge with a koala on his back, waving a cricket bat and eating a vegemite sandwich. I shook Brushes’ hand and tried not to show any pain as he mangled my fingers.

  “Welcome to the best little outback town in the whole of Australia!” Brushes said. He peered at my name tag. “Ralph.”

  “Rafe,” I said automatically, but Brushes had already gone.

  He stepped up onto a little stage at one side of the annexe, put two fingers in his mouth, and blew a whistle that could be heard on the moon. “Gather around, everyone!” he yelled. “The last couple of blokes have arrived, so we can get this road on the show.

  “Now, most of you will know me from The Brushes McGarrity All-Australian Paintin’ and Fishin’ Show on NBNBBC Digital Local, or from my reputation as the bloke who discovered the best collection of Aboriginal cave paintings this side of Brisbane, or maybe as one of the Top End’s best-loved painters. I’m here today in another role. Now, I’m not much of a talker, but I’m prouder than a Parramatta parrot to be hosting this first-ever Cultural Campout. Thanks to the generosity of the Institute for the Advancement of Writers and Contemporary American Artists in Washington, and our own Northern Territory MegaGlobal Industries, Bigbottom Creek can now be …”

  For someone who wasn’t much of a talker, Brushes McGarrity sure could talk.

  THE REST OF the night was all kinds of cool. I got interviewed by the local paper and someone took a bunch of photos of us all. I caught up with Ellie and met the other Young Artists. Bigbottom Creek might not have been the best-looking town in Australia but it knew how to make us feel welcome.

  Six of us Young Artists—the guys (me, Glen, Thiago DaSilva from Brazil, Vloot Van Vlader from Holland, Denny Briggs from Australia, and Eric Okoh from Ghana … more on them later)—were sharing a dorm room at the top of the hotel. This had some good points and some bad ones. The good was that everyone was so jazzed about being on the trip that we felt like friends already.

  The bad part was that Thiago sounded (and smelled) like he was in training for the South American Farting Championships.

  In the end, though, I didn’t care. One farty Brazilian wasn’t going to get between me and eighteen hours of beautiful, uninterrupted shut-eye. I fell asleep to the sound of Thiago parping to a salsa beat from under his sheets. To be honest, if you took the smell away, it was kind of soothing.

  SIX SECONDS AFTER my head touched the pillow, I was being shaken awake by a zombie.

  “Time to go, bud,” the zombie said.

  I blinked and looked through the window at the black sky. “You’ve got to be kidding,” I croaked. “It’s still night-time.”

  “Tell me about it,” said the zombie, who, when I looked a little closer, turned out to be Denny. His skin had gone a funny green color. “I think I’m gonna puke.”

  “Parp,” farted Thiago.

  Ten minutes later, I was eating breakfast in a freezing-cold dining room with the rest of the Young Artists. It was four o’clock and the dining room at the Bigbottom Creek Hotel looked exactly how I imagine the world would look after a nuclear war.

  “Can you believe this?” I said to Ellie.

  Ellie glanced up from her bowl of cereal and held up her hand. “Can’t talk. Too early.”

  Eric, who was sitting next to her, wore the disappointed expression of someone who’d been given crummy information about Australia being hot. He was wearing every item of clothing he’d brought with him.

  “S-so c-cold,” he said, his teeth chattering. He stared at me like everything was my fault.

  Monique from Vietnam was in pretty much the same state as Eric. Only Glen, Linda from Latvia, and Yrsa from Iceland looked even slightly comfortable. Denny, who I’d thought should have known what the local conditions were going to be like, had his face flat on the table with drool pooling around his open mouth.

  “It’s a long drive out to the Rocky Hills,” Brushes said, shouting over the clatter of dishes and cutlery. “Eat up, campers, and let’s get this road on the show!”

  I have a thi
ng about people who say things like that. It’s bad enough in the middle of the day. At four in the morning it makes me want to put my head down on the table and cry.

  Still, I thought, things could only get better.

  THINGS DIDN’T GET BETTER.

  After breakfast, we were all herded onto the bus, which was pretty funny because the bus kind of looked like a cattle truck with seats. Hard balls of dried cow dung rolled around the floor. In a couple of places I could see the dirt road through rips in the rusty metal. In one corner of the roof was a bird’s nest. I was pretty sure at least two of the marks in the side panel nearest me were bullet holes. All our gear, and all the gear for the camp, had been strapped to the top and sides.

  Everyone found a spot and went to sleep, trying our best not to freeze to death while, up front, Brushes and his giant cousin, Vern, took turns driving. That’s right: this drive was going to be so long it took two drivers to handle it. Woohoo.

  Soon after we rolled out of Bigbottom Creek, the sun came up and I opened my eyes. Okay, even though my eyes felt like they’d been taken out in the night, dipped in grit, and then replaced, I have to admit my first outback sunrise was really something to see.

  It was awesome.

  Maybe because we were surrounded by all that nothingness, the sun seemed to be about three times bigger than it was back in Hills Village, where it had to compete with things like trees and hills and strip malls and gas stations.

  I fidgeted uncomfortably on the bone-hard seat and closed my eyes.

  I WAS DREAMING about Jeanne Galletta when Ellie tapped me on the shoulder.

  “How are you going?” she asked.

  I opened my eyes and saw Denny’s head resting on her shoulder. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. I mean, Jeanne Galletta is obviously the Most Wonderful Girl in the Entire Universe, so seeing Ellie with some random kid’s head on her shoulder shouldn’t have bothered me … but it did.

  Was it hormones? Stupidity? Discuss.

  “I was doing okay till you woke me up,” I said in a croaky voice. The bus went over a particularly nasty bump and I almost hit the roof. If I hadn’t already gotten used to the road I’d have bitten my tongue clean off.

  “Whoa,” Denny said, jerking awake. “Intense.” He stretched and yawned. “So where are you from, Rafe?” He’d asked me exactly the same thing last night but must have forgotten. I told him and he nodded like he knew exactly where Hills Village was.

  He was from someplace called Kyogle. Besides Ellie, he was the only other Australian on the trip, unless you counted Brushes McGarrity and Cousin Vern.

  “Where’s Kyogle?” I asked him. It sounded exotic.

  Denny waved his hand vaguely over his shoulder. “Northern New South Wales, about two and a half thousand kay from here, mate,” he said. “Walked the whole way, barefoot. Took me six weeks.”

  I looked at Ellie to check if Denny was putting me on, but she looked impressed. Denny was an Aboriginal Australian, after all. From watching movies about Australia, I figured that all Aboriginal Australians knew a lot about surviving in the outback. Denny didn’t look much like someone who could walk two thousand miles across baking desert, but what did I know? I was from Hills Village. The nearest I ever got to a desert hike was getting caught in the Sahara Sand Trap during a round of putt-putt.

  “Lived off the land, bro,” Denny explained. “Ate witchetty grubs and snakes, the odd lizard. Drank from ancient springs buried deep in the ground. Slept in the day, walked at night. Used some phozzies to see where I was going.”

  “Phozzies?” I said.

  Denny spread his palms wide. “Giant phosphorescent bush moths this big. Get a few of those fellas and tie a string to their knees. It’s better ’n a Bunnings torch every time.”

  “Wow,” I said. I didn’t even know moths had knees. “That’s amazing.”

  Denny tapped a finger against the side of his nose and nodded wisely. “Bushcraft, mate.”

  Listening to Denny, I finally felt like I was in touch with the real Australia. He might even show me how to trap some phozzies, I thought. I could learn to live off the land, maybe ride some wild kangaroos, milk a wombat (or whatever it is you do with wombats), lasso a lorikeet.

  Denny and Ellie looked at each other before they burst out laughing and bumped fists.

  “You idiot, Rafe,” Ellie said, wiping away tears.

  “Hook, line, and sinker.” Denny curled a finger inside his mouth and imitated a fish being caught, then sank back into his seat and laughed like a demented hyena.

  There was no such thing as phozzies. Denny hadn’t walked any further to get to Bigbottom Creek than from the terminal at Kyogle to the plane. He’d never set foot in the outback. He specialized in digital photography and would sooner eat his own ears than scarf down a witchetty grub.

  “Very funny,” I said in a voice that meant I thought it was the opposite of funny.

  “Yes, it was!” Ellie wheezed, holding her sides. “Phozzies!”

  Denny was laughing so much it looked painful. “No more,” he gasped. “Please!”

  I turned my back to them and slithered down in my seat.

  Sometimes it was hard to like Australians.

  I DIDN’T SULK for too long—maybe two hours, three tops.

  And all that time, the sun got a whole heap hotter. Remember how cold I said it was when we set off? Scrub that. Now it was hotter than the inside of Swifty’s grill. If I was a burger, I’d be done.

  “You blokes okay in the back?” Brushes shouted.

  I tried to answer but my tongue was too dry. We were cooking. I was pretty sure Glen had died or at least fallen into a coma. He hadn’t made a sound since we’d set out. Hadn’t these people heard of air-conditioning?

  Sure, the windows of the bus were open, but all that meant was that the thermo-nuclear desert air streaming in baked us just that little bit quicker. Before we were halfway to Rocky Hills, you could have fried eggs on my head.

  The only good thing about the marathon drive was: (a) it was a long way from Miller the Killer and My Life As a Dishpig in Hills Village; and (b) we had plenty of time to get to know all the other Young Artists better.

  Most of them couldn’t speak great English and I couldn’t speak a word of Latvian, Vietnamese, Portuguese, Dutch, or Scottish, but with a bit of sign language and lots of facial expressions, we managed to get by. Like I say, it was a very long drive.

  I GUESS NOW’S as good a time as any to introduce all the other guys on the trip:

  ALL BAD THINGS come to an end eventually—even The Bus Ride from Bigbottom Creek. Vern pulled the bus to a halt in a part of the desert that looked exactly like every other part of the desert we’d passed on the journey, and switched off the ignition.

  “Okay, folks, look lively,” Brushes said, sounding way too cheerful for someone who’d just gone through what we’d gone through. “We’ve got a camp to set up!”

  I tried to stand, but after bouncing around in the back of the Mars-temperature bus for about a year, all feeling had gone from the Khatchadorian gluteus maximus. I’m not kidding—my rear end had totally disappeared. I no longer possessed a butt. I was buttless, bootyfree, bunloose, sans derrière.

  While big Vern started dragging our bags off the bus, I managed to peel myself off the vinyl seat and stagger out as my butt made a reluctant, gradual reappearance.

  I stepped outside to get my first glimpse of The Real Outback and the place that would be our home for the next couple of weeks. Here’s what I saw:

  It was hotter out there than a Mexican chilli with extra chilli on the side. There was scrub, a few rocks with a bigger heap of rocks in the distance, and then a great big heap of nothing. The nothingness stretched toward the horizon in all directions. It was the most nothing I had ever seen in one place.

  And I’ve been to East Texas.*

  “What were you expecting?” Leo whispered.

  I don’t know why he was whispering, seeing as he’s imaginary, b
ut he was. Go figure.

  Leo’s my imaginary brother, by the way. Kind of. I mean, I did once have a brother called Leo but he died when I was too small to remember him. He shows up occasionally and I talk to him. I know it sounds kind of wacko, but having Leo around helps me figure things out sometimes. This is Leo:

  Anyway, when Leo piped up, I didn’t reply. Mainly because I didn’t want to look like a nut in front of Ellie and the rest of the Young Artists by talking to my imaginary brother, but also because I didn’t really have an answer.

  What had I been expecting? Guitar-shaped swimming pools? Shopping malls? The Taj Mahal?

  Well, no, not exactly, but I suppose I thought there might’ve been a hint of civilization. A toilet block, maybe. A tent or two. Something.

  “GRAB YOUR SWAGS and bags, Cultural Campers, and find a spot,” McGarrity said, smiling. At least, I think he was smiling. It was hard to tell behind all that face fungus.

  “What’s a swag?” I asked. “And where’s the campsite?”

  McGarrity picked up what looked like a sleeping bag. “You’re standing on the campsite, Ralphie, mate. And this is a swag,” he said. “It’s a little bit different to your double-sprung king-size at the Hollywood Hilton, eh?” He threw the swag in my direction and walked back to the bus, chuckling to himself.

  I had never felt so foreign in my life, and one glance at my fellow campers told me that they were feeling the same. It was like we’d arrived on the dark side of the moon. A lizard about the size of a labrador scuttled past and gave us a long disgusted stare before disappearing under a rock.