Have courage, take heart.
The force of her yearning for her mother, for her grandmother, and the women she’d left behind tore through her without warning or mercy. She gasped from the pain, biting hard down on her lip until she tasted blood.
Later, back at home, Alice showered and got herself ready for her first day in her new job. She took great care dressing in her green ranger uniform, studying the circular badges on the sleeves of her shirt in the mirror. She traced her fingertips over the desert peas in the centre of the Indigenous flag. How different from her Thornfield apron; she’d never felt the pride of wearing a uniform she’d earned on her own merit before.
She laced up her stiff new boots and gathered her backpack and hat. ‘Do not play with a snake, okay?’ Alice kissed Pip’s nose, locked her in the garage cage, and got into her truck. As she drove through Parksville she marvelled at the day. The sky was lapis lazuli, the morning light citrine.
When she parked her truck at headquarters Alice’s heart started to pound. She breathed steadily, trying to slow it down.
‘Wiru mulapa mutuka pinta-pinta,’ a soft voice spoke at her window.
‘Sorry?’ Alice shaded her eyes. A woman stood by her truck, wearing the same shirt as Alice. Her hair was wrapped in a black, red and yellow headscarf, under a full-brimmed Akubra. Around her neck hung strings of glossy, blood-red seeds. Her trousers were white, covered in green, yellow and blue watercolour budgerigars, such a random and joyful sight Alice couldn’t help but grin.
‘I’m Ruby.’ The woman held out her hand. Alice got out of her truck and took Ruby’s hand in hers. ‘I was just saying, I like your butterfly truck.’
‘Oh.’ Alice laughed nervously, glancing over at the butterfly stickers on her doors, thinking about everything they were hiding. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘I’m the Senior Ranger here, and I’m training you this morning. You’re out in the field with the other rangers this arv.’ Ruby walked off towards a park ute. ‘You can drive.’ She tossed the keys back to Alice.
‘Oh. Right.’ Alice hurried to catch up. She got into the ute and leant over to unlock the passenger door.
Ruby got in. ‘Head out onto the ring road.’
‘Sure.’
Ruby’s demeanour reminded Alice strongly of Twig. She tried to think of something to say but her words dried up, red dust on her tongue.
‘I’m a senior law woman,’ Ruby stated after a while. ‘I train new rangers like you. Teach you the stories that can be publicly told here. I’m also a poet and artist. I chair the Central Desert Women’s Council, and live between here and Darwin. My family —’
‘That must be such a huge contrast,’ Alice interrupted, leaping at any chance to contribute to the conversation. ‘Going between here and the city.’ She tried to pause, tried to take a breath. ‘So, you’re a poet? I love books. I love to read. I’ve always loved writing stories. But I haven’t done much of that since I was a teenager.’ To her horror, nerves were making Alice uncharacteristically talkative; she couldn’t shut herself up.
Ruby gave a polite nod but didn’t speak again. She turned her back. Alice bit her bottom lip. She shouldn’t have interrupted. Should she apologise? Should she try changing the subject? Was Ruby waiting for her to ask questions about Kililpitjara? What should she ask? Were there things she couldn’t ask?
Alice tried focusing on not changing the gears too roughly or going too fast. As they neared the main visitor car park, the radio crackled to life.
‘National parks nineteen, nineteen, this is seven-seven, over.’
Dylan’s timbre shot through her bloodstream into her bones. Alice gripped the steering wheel. Very casually, Ruby leaned forward and turned the radio off.
‘Pull up here,’ Ruby signalled to the car park. Self-doubt wormed through Alice’s mind. Was she that obvious? Did Ruby think she was more interested in Dylan than she was in doing a good job on her first day? Wasn’t that kind of true? Please stop, she begged herself.
Ruby opened her door and got out. Alice followed. At the beginning of the trail Alice stopped to read a group of information signs. Ruby came up beside her.
‘So tourists know the Heart Garden at the centre of the crater is sacred, and that you ask them not to pick any flowers, to make sure the site is protected?’ Alice asked.
Ruby nodded. ‘It’s in all the guide books, pamphlets and visitor information. We invite visitors to come and learn the stories of this place, but please, don’t pick our flowers.’
Alice remembered the conversation she’d heard the night before. ‘But they still do it?’
‘Uwa. They still do it,’ Ruby said as she wandered off, her hands behind her back.
They walked in silence. The red dirt trail followed the outer wall of the crater, passing fields of low-lying spinifex, emu bushes and buffel grass, through clusters of tall wattle trees and skinny desert oaks. After a while they came to a giant red boulder that sat like an open door at the entrance of a small cave. Ruby went around it, inside. Alice followed, panting from the heat.
‘You got kapi?’ Ruby looked at her in the dim light with an eyebrow raised.
Alice gawked blankly in response, her eyes adjusting. ‘Kapi. Water.’
Alice’s face fell as she realised she’d left her backpack with her water and hat in her truck at headquarters. She swore at herself under her breath, and shook her head.
‘You’re gunna want to carry that with you everywhere here in future.’ Ruby shook her head and turned away to look up at the ceiling of the cave. Alice rolled her eyes at her own stupidity. What sort of idiot went into the desert without water?
After a while, Alice’s thoughts quietened enough for her to realise Ruby was speaking in a whisper. Overhead, all around them, were ochre, white and red rock paintings. Alice listened as Ruby explained the symbols women had painted thousands of years ago, telling stories of desert peas, mothers, children and stars.
‘This land is where the women in my family have always brought their stories. To bear witness. To grieve. To honour what they have loved. It’s a sorry place. That’s why we don’t live here.’
Alice stepped closer to the paintings.
‘The trail into Kililpitjara follows the ceremonial path around Kututu Kaana, where malukuru grow from the star mother’s heart.’ Ruby’s voice was still low. ‘That’s why we ask people not to pick any of the flowers. Each one is a piece of her.’
Neither of them spoke. Ruby gave a closing nod, turned, and left. But Alice lingered, spellbound by the rock art, and overcome by gratitude for her chance meeting with Sarah in Agnes Bluff.
After she’d caught up to Ruby, Alice wondered what it was like for Ruby, constantly fighting to protect a place and its story, which had been central to her family’s culture for longer than anyone could know. Where did she find the strength to keep fighting? And who were the people that ignored her family’s stories of the place, and helped themselves to the desert peas, denying that they were tearing up pieces of the star mother’s heart? The signs were literally everywhere around them. No one could plead ignorance.