She slowed the four-wheel drive and left it idling while Luke jumped out to read it for her.
‘It’s almost faded out,’ he called, swiping flies away from his mouth as he spoke. Had she packed more than one fly net for their hats? There was always something forgotten; hopefully it wasn’t that.
‘Starts with a P or a D maybe? And there was a lot of letters here once.’
She pulled the A3 sheet off the dashboard and unfolded it. There was the homestead, to the north. The regional highway, the jump-up that wasn’t in sight yet—she checked, lifting the brim of her cap and squinting in what she hoped was a northerly direction—but they had to be close. And the thin line that did a lazy zigzag up through Crown Land to end on the southern boundary of Corley was, according to the map, Doonoo Doonoo Road. The name on the sign had been long and had begun with a capital D.
‘I reckon this is it,’ she said.
‘It doesn’t look like much of a road.’ Luke was right.
He jumped back in the car while she pulled the sun visor down to read the instructions on switching the transmission to four-wheel drive.
‘Are you sure you should be doing this, Mum? I mean, we’re on our own.’
She smiled. ‘Honey, I’ve done plenty of off-road driving.’
‘If Dad were here, he’d be doing the driving.’
OMG, she’d raised a sexist child! ‘I can assure you,’ she said firmly, ‘I know a lot more about driving us out of trouble out here than your dad. I can change a tyre and I can dig us out of a bog. We’re fine.’
She hoped. Because now she’d said it, she realised being responsible for herself out here in these dangerously hot conditions was one thing. Being responsible for her son as well was another. What if she was bitten by a snake? What would Luke do, then?
‘Hey, maybe while we’re out here, I could show you how to use a snake kit,’ she said. ‘We could change a tyre on the four-wheel drive for fun. That’s a great skill to have.’
‘I guess,’ he said, looking out the window.
Leaving him to his grump for the time being, she turned her attention back to the road. It wasn’t boggy—not with water, anyway—but seasonal rain or flooding in the past had scoured out potholes the size of what she imagined bomb craters would be, if she’d ever seen any. But how deep was the loose, reddish soil?
She had a set of heavy-duty plastic tracks strapped to the roof, along with a long-handled shovel, but despite having just boasted about her debogging skills to Luke, she wasn’t keen to put herself to the test.
Spinifex had thrown up shoots through the red dirt, which was a negative in that it made the trail more of a track than a road, and narrow in parts, but a positive in that it stabilised the dirt. Long, dried-off grass thumped under the chassis of the four-wheel drive as they crawled along.
‘What happens if wedoget stuck?’ said Luke. ‘And youcan’tdig us out?’
‘Well, we won’t starve or go thirsty,’ said Jo. ‘I have enough supplies in the boot to keep us alive for weeks if we get truly bogged, and Maggie knows which way we’re heading. And we’ll have phone service again soon, so we just call for help. There’s a portable radio in the crate with the camping gear and spare batteries so we can listen to weather and news reports. We are very organised.’
She’d had three bars at the turn-off, which was walking distance away. Not even half a bar now. But she’d been able to drop a pin when they’d been hovering above the rock cairn, so she must have had phone coverage then.
‘If we don’t turn up at the library on Thursday, do you reckon the pub lady would send someone out after us? Because it does kinda seem like we’re the only two people alive out here.’
She grinned at him. ‘Exciting, isn’t it?’
He didn’t look convinced.
‘Luke, we’ll be fine, even if we do have a problem. You want to know the rules of survival out here?’
‘What?’
‘Don’t leave the vehicle. Have plenty of water on hand—which we do. Let someone know your plans. We’ve got this, trust me.’
‘We don’t want to go missing like that girl.’
‘For sure. Wait … what do you mean “that girl”?’
‘Gavin Gunn’s sister. You know, I told you.’
‘So you did,’ she murmured. One, perhaps, of the many things she’d not known about Hux.