The Silent Country (14 page)

‘Too much time gone. No action. No film.’ Then he glanced at the red dirt dunes, clumps of spinifex and the stark silhouette of a dead tree beside the road and called a halt. ‘We make picture with Marta. She lost. No water.’

‘What is this, a drama or a documentary?’ asked Drago.

‘Colin, write something. We make docu-drama. Drago, put up big camera.’

They had taken shots of Marta, alone, driving the Jeep with its top off. Topov now wanted her to drive the Jeep through the sandy soil, leaving tyre tracks that headed towards the deserted horizon shimmering in the heat, the dead tree to one side, the blue cupola of sky above. It took several takes, with Colin and Johnny sweeping away the tyre tracks each time to leave unmarked sand. Drago then took shots with the small camera from the Land Rover as Johnny drove it beside the Jeep over the bumpy trail.

‘Drive slowly, this is a shaky tracking shot,’ complained Drago to Johnny as he steadied his arm on the back seat of the Land Rover to film.

Then Topov had them set up the big camera and told Marta to drive towards him and stop in front of it. From behind the camera he called out directions. ‘You stop, stand up, look ahead. Look frighten. Look worried.’ Topov turned to Colin. ‘What she see, Mr Australia?’

‘Oh. Goodness. Um, a kangaroo? A storm? An Aborigine?’ suggested Colin.

‘Good, good. Now we must find, kangaroo, storm, Aborigine. We do close-up,’ said Topov.

Everyone laughed until they realised he was serious.

They set off again with Helen studying the map and trying to work out where they might camp that night. She had taken the map away from Topov who had no
navigational skills at all. They had stocked up on more supplies in Bourke but with no way of keeping food cold, they had to rely on tinned foodstuffs, rice and potatoes and hoped to supplement their supplies as they came to other towns along the route. They realised that water could be a problem and so Johnny bought several jerry cans for water as well as others which would hold the petrol. They tied as many as they could to the roofs of the Dodge and the Land Rover.

‘I think we should camp anywhere we can before dark,’ sighed Helen. ‘Really, this is frightfully boring scenery. I do hope things pick up when we get into the Northern Territory.’

As they drove across the flat gibber plains, Topov became excited by the rocks they passed and stopped the cars.

‘Many fossils here. This place would tell great old story,’ said Topov.

‘How do you know about fossils?’ asked Colin.

Topov put several stones in his pocket. ‘My father great geologist. Teach me many things.’

As they came closer to Tibooburra they saw strange granite rock formations. Several camels wandered across the track. Topov insisted on stopping to examine the rock formations, which looked like the detritus of some massive eruption aeons before. ‘You film camels,’ he told Drago. ‘Wonderful rocks,’ he exclaimed. ‘I take picture.’

‘Will we stop for supplies in Tibooburra?’ asked Helen.

‘No,’ said Topov. ‘Next town close, get food there.’

After Tibooburra they pressed slowly on to Innamincka. But they were shocked when they arrived. Topov couldn’t understand how a place could be named on the map and then turn out to be a ghost town, but in Innamincka everything had shut down. There was a closed pub
and thousands of empty bottles in a great dump next to it. Their idea of purchasing more food was now impossible. That night they camped near Cooper Creek eking a supper from their dwindling supplies.

‘I feel like a character out of Dickens,’ muttered Helen, lifting her spoon out of the pannikin of watery soup. ‘Dry bread and gruel.’

‘We were supposed to be stocking up along the way. How was I to know everyone has left the countryside and turned out the lights,’ muttered Johnny. ‘There’s nothing wrong with soup and toast.’

‘I’m accustomed to slightly better fare,’ snapped Helen.

Colin couldn’t help noticing the contrast between Johnny’s cockney twang and Helen’s upper-crust vowels. ‘I’m sure we’ll be able to get supplies in Birdsville,’ he said, trying to keep the peace.

Peter was silent as he wolfed down his food. It had been a stressful day’s drive with yet another breakdown. He’d made repairs as best he could but was concerned about the old Dodge surviving the rough unsurfaced track. He had complained enough to Johnny about the poor choice of vehicles and he just hoped he could keep them going until they got to a town with a repair shop. The responsibility of keeping the vehicles functioning in this remote country made him more morose each day.

Topov appeared oblivious to the mutterings in the camp. He got up and said to Drago. ‘Camera, please. I go take sunset picture. Very beautiful.’

Drago gritted his teeth but said nothing. He was getting used to Topov’s demands to use the Bolex camera. Topov would just take it and walk off, not allowing Drago to have any input into the shots he was taking.

Drago took the camera, checked it and adjusted the settings. At first he’d let Topov set the aperture but after a
brief discussion with the director, he’d quickly ascertained that they had very different ideas when it came to using the camera. Drago liked to use natural light, setting the stop low to overexpose the film to create a look of shimmering heat, while Topov used a standard exposure for everything regardless of the prevailing light. With a choice of three lenses, Drago liked to experiment, whereas Topov used only the wide-angle lens and talked about his studio days with the big thirty-five millimetre cameras, a lighting cameraman, a grip and two assistants. He did a lot of striding around looking through his director’s lens pretending not to notice as Drago readjusted the camera settings.

‘Well, we have no control over the natural light here,’ said Drago. ‘But it can work to our advantage.’ Quietly he decided that where possible he would double up on scenes Topov wanted to film, knowing that his would look better and if it made the finished product better and saleable, that would help them all.

Topov was gone some time and the light was fading. Colin and Drago walked down to the great serene sweep of water, euphemistically called a creek. Drago hoped that Topov had taken shots of the flocks of birds swooping low over the water on their way back to their roosts in the trees along the river bank. After the harsh and flat country they had been travelling through this expanse of water was a refreshing change.

‘This place is quite famous, sadly so. Burke and Wills were explorers who wanted to cross the continent from south to north, but they died here,’ said Colin who’d been reading his little book about central Australia.

‘They were lost?’

‘No, they ran out of provisions. It’s said they died of arrogance because they refused help from the local Aboriginal tribes. They thought they were superior, even out here when they were starving to death. The third member
of the party survived because he accepted help from the Aborigines.’

Drago gave Colin a small smile. ‘Perhaps there is a lesson for us.’

They reached the edge of the water but couldn’t see Topov. As they walked further through the gnarled coolibah trees they caught sight of him. He had put the camera to one side and was scrabbling among the roots and rocks at the edge of the creek. When they called to him, he rinsed his hands in the creek, straightened up and picked up the camera.

‘Tomorrow we send Johnny to catch fish for breakfast,’ he announced.

‘That’s a good idea,’ said Colin. ‘Maybe we can all have a go. It’d be fun.’

‘You got some good shots? The birds coming in?’ asked Drago.

Topov shrugged. ‘So-so. Not so exciting.’

‘It’s good to have some scenic cutaway shots,’ said Drago.

‘Sure, sure. You do postcard pictures. Topov make exciting film.’

‘I think Drago likes taking the pretty pictures of the scenery,’ said Colin, but neither of the other men answered him as they all trudged back to the camp where everyone else was settling down for the night.

By the time Colin woke up, the sun had risen and the shriek of the birds made sleep impossible. The campfire had been reignited and the billy was nearly bubbling. He presumed Drago had headed out to take his early morning pictures of this tranquil setting and as he sat by the fire he spotted Marta coming from her tent wearing a bright red swimsuit that showed off her shapely figure.

She smiled at him. ‘Coming for a swim?’

‘Great idea.’

For the first time in what now seemed an eternity since they’d left Sydney, there was a sense of enjoyment and a spirit of adventure. Marta and Colin swam and floated in the water of the creek while further downstream Johnny flung in a fishing line with furious energy while Drago wandered off into the distance.

When Colin and Marta returned to the camp, Helen and Peter were sitting by the fire talking as the smell of toast gave the scene a comforting sense of normalcy, almost bonhomie. When Johnny triumphantly returned with a fish to throw into the pan over the fire with a can of tomatoes and the last of the onions, spirits lifted again. Everyone was in a good mood as they packed up and set out for, what they hoped was, the metropolis of Birdsville.

But within a day, the buoyant mood changed to dismay as the rough dirt track they were following led them along the fringes of the Simpson Desert. Suddenly the red dirt ruts they’d been driving over became sliding drifts of orange sand obliterating the road in places. Rolling dunes studded with grey-green spinifex were the only landmarks.

Drago commented to Colin, ‘It all looks the same. How easy it’d be to get lost out here.’

‘There’s no shade. Nowhere to get water,’ said Marta.

‘Or food,’ added Drago. ‘There’s not much of anything left.’

‘We all thought we’d be going through towns with shops,’ said Marta.

‘Let’s hope we can buy things in Birdsville,’ said Colin.

Topov, however, was revelling in this adventure. He called a halt and decided they’d take more film of the desolate setting and had Marta collapse beside the Jeep then flounder through the sand. ‘For your story,’ he said to Colin, who looked perplexed.

There was no shade but Peter, seeing a spindly small
skeleton of a tree, took a tarpaulin and flung it over the top braches, turning the stunted dead tree into an abstract umbrella. The others settled under the shade and shared a meagre lunch of tinned beef and very stale bread as Topov, Marta and Drago conferred on the filming sequence. Johnny and Peter were directed to set up the big camera. Drago would be ‘second unit’ with the Bolex.

Colin stood with Marta, holding a large black umbrella that Helen had produced from the caravan. He shared his water with her and handed her his clean handkerchief to mop her face as her make-up ran in the heat.

She sighed and shook her head. ‘Why are we doing this, Colin?’

‘For the adventure,’ he grinned. ‘And, hopefully, to make money.’

‘What do you think of Topov’s film? It’s crazy. There is no story. What are you writing?’

Colin was uncomfortable. While he agreed with Marta, he didn’t want her to think he was incompetent. ‘Oh, I know it seems disjointed, but when we get to the real outback with the wildlife and Aborigines, there’ll be more exciting scenes.’

Marta gave him a shocked look. ‘The real outback? What is that?’ she asked, pointing at the endless waves of sand rolling towards the horizon.

Colin had to chuckle. ‘Yes, it’s pretty empty isn’t it? Yet Aborigines can live in places like this.’

‘I wish I could meet some,’ sighed Marta.

‘Marta!’ roared Topov and she rolled her eyes, as he added, ‘On set.’

Drago, with a bandanna tied around his forehead to keep the sweat from running into his eyes, took the shots that Topov requested of Marta slumped next to the Jeep which, supposedly, had broken down leaving the heroine stranded in the desert.

But when it came to the scene where Marta staggered down a sand dune, Topov wanted Drago to film it from the Jeep. ‘Topov drive. You take picture, Marta beside Jeep in sand.’

Marta, looking and feeling exhausted, waded down the slope of the sand dune next to the track, followed by the Jeep with Topov driving and Drago filming from the driver’s side of the back seat. Topov was screaming instructions to Drago while he waved his arms at Marta, so he didn’t see the sudden build-up of sand blown across the already sandy track. The Jeep ploughed into the deep sand and slewed, then spun, then, as Topov wildly struggled with the wheel, it tilted and rolled onto its side in a thick bank of sand.

Fortunately it fell onto the empty passenger side slamming Topov and Drago across the seats. Drago curled into a ball, hugging the camera to his body to protect it. Topov was bleeding from his shoulder and a small cut on the side of his face, which was flushed and furious. He started shouting at Johnny about the stupid car he had bought.

The group under the tree leapt up and raced to the Jeep, pulling the two men free. Marta sat down in the sand and put her face in her hands. Drago was dazed, still clutching the camera to his chest and Peter had to prise his fingers open to release his grip on the little Bolex. Helen was more concerned about the state of the Jeep.

‘We will all have to fit into the other vehicles if we can’t get it going again. This could cost a lot of money!’