Page 104 of The Pearl Sister
‘It sounds amazing. I’ve always loved that sort of stuff.’
‘Look!’ Chrissie shouted suddenly. ‘There’s a buncha ’roos!’
Chrissie steered the car onto the dusty verge of the road and slammed on the brakes, flinging our heads backwards into their rests.
‘Sorry, but I didn’t want ya to miss them. Gotta camera?’
‘Yup.’
The kangaroos were much larger than I’d been expecting and Chrissie encouraged me into silly poses in front of them. As we walked back to the car, swatting away the interminable flies that investigated our skin, I couldn’t help remembering the last time I’d used my camera and what had happened to the roll of film inside it. Standing in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of kangaroos and Chrissie, Thailand seemed a world away.
‘How far now?’ I asked as we set off again.
‘Forty minutes, tops, I reckon.’
And it was at least that before we finally turned off a dirt track and saw a cluster of whitewashed buildings. There was a hand-painted wooden sign telling us we’d arrived at Hermannsburg mission.
As we climbed out, I saw that we – and the occupants of a pickup truck parked close to the entrance – were the only humans that had arrived by car. I wasn’t surprised. The small cluster of huts was surrounded by miles and miles of nothingness, like the surface of Mars. I noticed it was almost completely silent, not a whisper of a breeze, just the occasional buzzing of insects. Even I, who liked peace and wide open spaces, felt isolated here.
We walked towards the entrance and ducked inside the tin-roofed bungalow, our eyes slowly adjusting after the blinding sunshine.
‘G’day,’ said Chrissie to the man standing behind the counter.
‘G’day. Just the two of youse?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’ll be nine dollars each.’
‘Quiet here today,’ Chrissie commented as I paid him.
‘Don’t get many tourists out here in the heat this time a’ year.’
‘I bet. This is my friend Celaeno. She’s got a pic she wants to show you.’ Chrissie nudged me and I pulled out the photograph and gave it to the man. He glanced at it, then his eyes swept over me.
‘Namatjira. How did you come by this pic?’
‘It was sent to me.’
‘Who from?’
‘A lawyer’s office in Adelaide. They’re in the process of tracing the original sender for me as I’m trying to find my birth family.’
‘I see. So, what ya wanna know?’
‘I’m not sure,’ I said, feeling like I was a fraud or something. Maybe the guy faced possible ‘relatives’ of Namatjira here every day.
‘She was adopted when she was a baby,’ put in Chrissie.
‘Right.’
‘My dad died a few months ago, and he told me I’d been left some money,’ I explained. ‘When I went to see his Swiss lawyer, that photograph was in the envelope he gave me. I decided I should come here to Australia and find out who’d sent me the picture. I spoke to the lawyer in Adelaide, but I’d no idea who Namatjira was, hadn’t ever even heard of him before and—’ I rambled on until Chrissie put a hand on my arm and took over.
‘CeCe’s basically come here ’cos I recognised Namatjira in the picture. She thinks it might be a clue to who her parents originally were.’
The man studied the photograph again.
‘It’s definitely Namatjira, and I’d say the pic was taken at Heavitree Gap, sometime in the mid-1940s, when Albert got his pickup truck. As ta who the boy is standing next to him, I dunno.’
