How I Became the Mr. Big of People Smuggling by Martin Chambers Page A

said.
    Obviously the truck drivers knew what was going on. Probably the whole muster crew did too. Anyone who knew anything about how to run a cattle station would know that you couldn’t run a muster every month. Perhaps they all started out like me, innocent, doing odd jobs and legitimate business, slowly being drip-fed more about the real nature of it and by acceptance becoming complicit, or being threatened and being too weak to act, slowly in deeper until too far gone to get out. Perhaps that is how they all got involved.
    Must be that everyone was in on it at some level. The cops, too. The cops had come to tell Palmenter about the five who had perished out on the south track and I’d seen them take money and steaks from him. And some of Cookie’s dope.
    The imports paid thousands of dollars each and there were twenty or thirty each month. This was more than a few dollars earned as a bus stop along a people-smuggling route, it was a big business, a hundred grand or more a month, and we were the central point. Even if Palmenter himself was not the king pin, what happened at Palmenter Station was integral to the whole operation and now that I was doing the accounts I was becoming integral too. I had helped to bury bodies and I had witnessed a murder and I felt the real threat that if I tried to leave I would end in the pit next to Arif. I had to get away. Far away. I couldn’t trust any of them, not even Spanner who had been here with Palmenter from the beginning and was warning me, gently, to back off.
    It was about then that I decided that I had to leave no matter what. Palmenter was slowly giving me more office work to do and Simms was being sent on more of the bore runs. I realised that eventually I would not be sent on any bore runs so I’d have to act soon. I figured if I drove to the south boundary along the cattle road I’d only have to cross two creeks and some dune country to make one of the old desert tracks. They would be soft sand, but should be possible if I let the tyres down. Once I got to the main road I would drive slowly until a roadhouse where I would pump them up again. If I did it on a bore run I would be in Sydney by the time they noticed I was gone. I siphoned off small amounts of fuel whenever I could. It would have been easy to bleed diesel from the generator tank, or from the dozer or grader, but the vans were petrol so I hadto take a little each time I went out on the bore run. If I drove very carefully I could eke out the ration I was given, siphon off a few litres each time.
    I started a collection of two-litre milk containers that were easy to hide each time I did a rubbish run. I hid the full ones under the laundry where no one would ever look. Although Spanner was my friend I didn’t tell him. When I left I’d take one of the vans and he’d work it out. I told Cookie, saying I was heading off on a two-week bore run and needed extra food. I probably shouldn’t have done that.
    I was nearly ready to go when Palmenter came to me.
    â€˜Come for a drive,’ he said, ‘I’ve got something to show you.’
    He drove me in one of the vans towards the main road and I wondered what we were going to see. He was so casual and disarming that I didn’t suspect a thing until about halfway there.
    â€˜So you wanna leave, Son. Wish you’d told me. We could have talked about this.’
    I was stunned. I didn’t know what to say. I nearly panicked. If he had discovered my plan or found my secret fuel stash I would be about to join Arif. But of course he knew I wanted to leave. When I first asked he had said, ‘Okay, but work out to the end of the month.’ By the end of the month, another muster: ‘Not while the muster is on, Son, don’t leave us in the lurch.’ There was always a reason to stay a little longer and he either preyed on my sense of responsibility – ‘You did sign on for the year, Son, and we’ve