Page 62 of Wings Above the Mallee

‘Have you flown before?’ Amelia asked minutes later, as they pulled up alongside the hangar.

‘Not in something this small. Not meaning to be rude or anything. But, you know, commercial airliners. A Rex flight to Mount Gambier would be the smallest, and that was a while back. Bit of a wild ride. But everything I’ve flown in had at least two engines.’ He regarded the single propeller at the front of the plane dubiously. ‘Is thatwood?’

Amelia chuckled. ‘I reckon that’s the most words I’ve ever heard you spill at one time. Nervous?’

‘Be lying if I said I wasn’t.’ But not necessarily only because of the flight.

He helped her push the terrifyingly light aircraft out onto the runway, then stood to one side, taking deep, calming breaths as Amelia did what he assumed was a preflight check.

‘Okay. All aboard,’ she called. ‘Just be careful getting in. It can be a bit awkward to lift your leg high enough to clear the ledge.’

Great. At about thirty years older than him, Gavin had evidently managed the manoeuvre just fine, yet Amelia thought Heath was an invalid because of his slight limp.

The walls of the aircraft were terrifyingly thin fibreglass, and the door looked no thicker than an eggshell.

‘All good?’ Amelia asked as she idled the engine.

‘Just thinking it’s probably lucky Sophie nagged me into keeping my will up to date.’ That wasn’t entirely true: he hadn’t updated it since well before Sophie had died. But his awareness of Amelia’s presence, her arm brushing his in the tiny cabin, made him feel he should acknowledge his wife. He fixed his gaze on the high windscreen above the array of technical dials and meters.

‘You’ll be fine. She’s pretty basic. There’s no on-board alerts, so situational awareness comes down to the pilot.’

‘No alerts?’ Heath looked at the instrument panel in concern. ‘Surely everything is covered by that lot?’ He’d thought flying in a light aircraft was risky, but he’d not expected quite this level of pilot nonchalance.

Amelia grinned. ‘Don’t panic. There are the regular gauges. Just no fancy bells and whistles. We’ll be right.’

The aircraft rattled and jounced along the runway between the mallee scrub.

‘We should get this graded. I hadn’t realised how rough it’d got since that bit of rain.’ He felt compelled to make conversation, even though Amelia seemed to be concentrating on the dirt strip in front of them, her hands playing over the controls. The faster they taxied, the louder he had to talk to be heard over the rattle and crunch of the gravel beneath the wheels.

‘It’s okay. The Jabby has modified tyres, they’re bigger than the standard, so she can take a bit of rough. Just sounds like she’s about to give up the ghost because there’s basically no suspension.’

‘Is this the same kind of plane that Gavin has, then?’

She shook her head, and he realised with surprise that the bouncing had stopped. The angle of the dash meant that all he could see in front of them was sky, but he looked sideways and found they had already smoothly left the ground.

As they climbed, Amelia banked the plane to the left and he fought the instinctive urge to clutch at his seatbelt to prevent himself from falling through the lightweight door.

‘Gavin’s is both larger and newer than my old girl. But she’s all I need.’ Amelia patted the control console fondly. ‘Gets me where I need to go, every time. Look down now.’

He did as she instructed, rewarded by a hawk’s eye view of the serpentine twists of the Murray River upstream of Settlers Bridge. He watched for a while in silent awe as theyskimmed the broad olive satin ribbon bordered by naked willow trees. Beyond them, green flood plains studded with dairy cattle stretched for acres across a river valley. Nearer the town, the rust-coloured bridge tied a bow across the river. The plane’s nose tipped up and cottonwool puffs of cloud, starkly three-dimensional against a flat pewter sky, cascaded like snowflakes beyond the windscreen.

Heath let out an audible breath, part relief, part wonder. ‘It’s amazing how a ground-level view of the river doesn’t even hint at its magnificence. I’ve seen pictures, of course, but I had no real concept of how vast either the river or the valley is.’

‘It’s even more spectacular if you head toward Gabrielle’s inn. The most amazing red cliffs border the river there. Like I said, the whole world is different when you’re up here,’ Amelia said. ‘It’s like a reset, even if it only lasts until my wheels touch the ground.’

‘You don’t worry about the danger?’

She glanced sideways at him. ‘I don’t care. Do you?’

He hesitated, then let go of his grip on the rough fibreglass edges of his uncomfortable seat, his knuckles aching. There was something incredibly freeing in giving himself over to the moment, allowing his mortality to be in someone else’s hands.

‘Though you have someone to live for,’ Amelia added softly.

‘I’m not sure anyone else actually feels that way.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Amelia said firmly. ‘You’ve got Charlee. Your dad.’

He grunted. ‘Anything that made me worth being around died along with Sophie. Now my family get this.’ He slapped his bad leg. ‘I’m permanently angry and more a liability than anything else. I couldn’t even take Dad to hisappointment today. So, no, I don’t think anyone genuinely wants to be around me. And that’s fine.’

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