you’re there? The advantage of getting one out there is that she’ll know what it’s like. It’s when they don’t know what it’s like that you run into trouble.”
“It can wait,” he said.
The supervisor nodded. “Fine. But remember that any honeymoon is going to have to depend on our having somebody to relieve you for the duration. So the job comes first, understand. Then the honeymoon.”
ANDREW LOOKED INCREDULOUS. WHAT DID PEOPLE marry for in those days? To have somebody to cook forthem, if they were men? To have somebody to pay the bills, if they were women? Bizarre. It was so different now. You married for love. You married because it was comfortable for two people to live together—on terms of equality—and share everything. Of course they didn’t have the internet then and you had to go off somewhere to meet people. You had to write to them. How strange life must have been. Unwired. Cut off. Lonely. Off-line.
There would never be loneliness again, he thought—it was simply unnecessary. We had eradicated smallpox and polio and a whole lot of other diseases, and now we were eradicating loneliness. Except that was simply not true. The more we spoke to one another electronically, the more information we bombarded one another with, the easier we made it to move from place to place—vast distances sometimes—the more detached from one another we seemed to become. Loneliness had a long future ahead of it, after all.
HIS SIDING WAS ON THE GHAN LINE THAT IN THOSE days went from Adelaide in South Australia up as far as Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. Hope Springs was not far from a point of confluence of two major Outback tracks—rough dirt roads that were the only route throughthe vast dry plains of the continent’s parched heart. The Oodnadatta Track came down from the north-west, skirting the western side of Lake Eyre, while the Birdsville Track struck north-east towards Southern Queensland. These roads could trap cars in sand or, if it rained, in mud. Great ingenuity was required to get out once trapped, and people could be stuck for days. Travellers also had to stick carefully to the track; any straying off the route was potentially fatal; a wrong turning, a loss of a reference point, and one would quickly perish under the unrelenting sun. Tales were common of cars and trucks being found just a few hundred yards off the track, their drivers dead from thirst and heat; told to warn people of the dangers of thinking they could flout the rules of survival in the Outback. “A few hours and it’ll have you,” people said. “Just a few hours is all you’ve got.”
The pastoral properties scattered along these tracks were immense. It was common for one house to preside over a stretch of land that ran fifty or sixty miles across. Such land supported cattle, but only just, and each animal needed a vast area of grazing to survive. Here and there, marked by patches of green in the predominantly brown landscape, artesian springs brought water to the surface, allowing the cattle and dingoes to slake their thirst.
There were occasional isolated towns—collections of simple houses, a country pub and store, a police post. Then there were the sidings, which were one step down from the towns. These consisted of a railway office, a water tower for the replenishing of the steam locomotives, a station-master’s house and a bunkhouse for railway staff passing through. The bunkhouse might also be used for people from the big cattle stations who might for some reason arrive to catch a train a day before it was due in. It might also occasionally shelter the men who drifted through the Outback in search of work: stockmen or shearers, mechanics, men who had tried everything else and who were now prepared to take on any job in the most inhospitable of surroundings.
Hope Springs had the benefit of ample water. There was an old well, dug in the eighteen-nineties, not far from the railway siding, and a rough
“It can wait,” he said.
The supervisor nodded. “Fine. But remember that any honeymoon is going to have to depend on our having somebody to relieve you for the duration. So the job comes first, understand. Then the honeymoon.”
ANDREW LOOKED INCREDULOUS. WHAT DID PEOPLE marry for in those days? To have somebody to cook forthem, if they were men? To have somebody to pay the bills, if they were women? Bizarre. It was so different now. You married for love. You married because it was comfortable for two people to live together—on terms of equality—and share everything. Of course they didn’t have the internet then and you had to go off somewhere to meet people. You had to write to them. How strange life must have been. Unwired. Cut off. Lonely. Off-line.
There would never be loneliness again, he thought—it was simply unnecessary. We had eradicated smallpox and polio and a whole lot of other diseases, and now we were eradicating loneliness. Except that was simply not true. The more we spoke to one another electronically, the more information we bombarded one another with, the easier we made it to move from place to place—vast distances sometimes—the more detached from one another we seemed to become. Loneliness had a long future ahead of it, after all.
HIS SIDING WAS ON THE GHAN LINE THAT IN THOSE days went from Adelaide in South Australia up as far as Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. Hope Springs was not far from a point of confluence of two major Outback tracks—rough dirt roads that were the only route throughthe vast dry plains of the continent’s parched heart. The Oodnadatta Track came down from the north-west, skirting the western side of Lake Eyre, while the Birdsville Track struck north-east towards Southern Queensland. These roads could trap cars in sand or, if it rained, in mud. Great ingenuity was required to get out once trapped, and people could be stuck for days. Travellers also had to stick carefully to the track; any straying off the route was potentially fatal; a wrong turning, a loss of a reference point, and one would quickly perish under the unrelenting sun. Tales were common of cars and trucks being found just a few hundred yards off the track, their drivers dead from thirst and heat; told to warn people of the dangers of thinking they could flout the rules of survival in the Outback. “A few hours and it’ll have you,” people said. “Just a few hours is all you’ve got.”
The pastoral properties scattered along these tracks were immense. It was common for one house to preside over a stretch of land that ran fifty or sixty miles across. Such land supported cattle, but only just, and each animal needed a vast area of grazing to survive. Here and there, marked by patches of green in the predominantly brown landscape, artesian springs brought water to the surface, allowing the cattle and dingoes to slake their thirst.
There were occasional isolated towns—collections of simple houses, a country pub and store, a police post. Then there were the sidings, which were one step down from the towns. These consisted of a railway office, a water tower for the replenishing of the steam locomotives, a station-master’s house and a bunkhouse for railway staff passing through. The bunkhouse might also be used for people from the big cattle stations who might for some reason arrive to catch a train a day before it was due in. It might also occasionally shelter the men who drifted through the Outback in search of work: stockmen or shearers, mechanics, men who had tried everything else and who were now prepared to take on any job in the most inhospitable of surroundings.
Hope Springs had the benefit of ample water. There was an old well, dug in the eighteen-nineties, not far from the railway siding, and a rough
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