2.

A backyard bigger than a sheep paddock

When I think of my childhood I see images of red dirt and spinifex, bulbous boab trunks and termite mounds — red, brown, yellow and black. I hear the whistle of the wind, the sound it made when rushing between the stalks of cane grass that grew next to our house in Kununurra. I spy the silver grey flash of the lizard and the blue spark of its tongue as it disappeared under the wire fence of our backyard. I dream of rows of white cotton, red machines harvesting their virgin buds. I see the swirling waters of the Ord River at my feet, the gentle tap of the billabong water against the tinnie’s sides: the yellow eyeballs of the crocodiles that lurked beneath the muddy wake of our boat, winking at me. I hear the buzz of insects outside the mosquito net, draped over my bed where I slept as a kid on the verandah at Argyle Station. I sense cool, grey flagstones beneath my feet. I feel the wind tap my cheek as a friend would.

I was five when our family of four, Dad, Mum and my toddler brother completed a 4000-kilometre road trip from Perth, Western Australia, to Kununurra. In 1965 this was considered epic. Most of the miles we travelled were on dirt highways, Dad placing his closed fist on the inside of our window screen to fend off random stones. Gravel shrapnel shot from passing road trains, reticulated trucks on a time schedule. Dad raised his index finger as they passed and nodded. My brother and I bounced on a mattress covering the floor of our grey custom-fit Land Rover. A cross and ‘Anglican Church’ in a Gothic-style font was painted on the doors, a canvas water bag swung from the front bull bar, and Dad wound down the windows for air conditioning. Everyone sang, ‘ten green bottles hanging on a wall … and if one green bottle should accidently fall there’d be …’ as the miles glided by. Dad was the only one who didn’t sing off-key.

My father was appointed the first Anglican priest in North West Australia in 1965. When we arrived in Kununurra it was a one petrol stop, general store township of a thousand people, the site of the first diversion dam of the Ord River irrigation scheme, built between 1963 and 1967. After a gruelling journey north through Carnarvon, Onslow and Broome, Dad pulled up to an empty block. Our Kununurra prefab house lay in pieces on the wharf in Fremantle, a port city on the fringe of the Perth metropolitan area. Dad turned around and drove his family of four, my sisters not yet conceived, 112 kilometres down the road to the neighbouring coastal town of Wyndham. We spent our first night on mattresses on the lounge-room floor of a stranger’s house. Later, in a reflection piece for ‘Over-Ord: People with a past in BCA’, my father would write:

Driving the 2500 miles from Perth to Wyndham convinced us of one thing: Australia is a huge, old waterless expanse. Nearly all the river beds we crossed were dry, even though the ‘wet’ had just finished. Nevertheless, the beauty of the land is breathtaking.

Our time there would also be captured in a double-page article inThe Australian Women’s Weekly in February 1969, which led with ‘His Ord River parish — 20,000 square miles’. The article was illustrated with a picture of our family: Dad rocking an Elvis hairstyle and my mother, incognito under a layer of makeup, with the four of us kids.

My father had a range of religious duties in his new job, including monthly parish visits to remote cattle stations, and to the town of Halls Creek in the East Kimberley, 480 kilometres from Wyndham. He spent nights away from our family, driving solo, off the grid with no radio or satellite phone contact. Sleeping on the roof of his Land Rover at night to stay safe from freshw