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The rain had filled the shallow claypans between the
dunes, and water had run into the deeper depressions along
the verge of the Nullarbor Plain. On the lower dunes the
young buckbush attracted the camels, but even so soon after
the rain the wind crested the high dunes with red feathers.
The rain provided independence of rock-holes, but it was
also disadvantageous in that it wiped smooth this page of the
Book of the Bush, and thus much valuable information would
be withheld until time enabled the new printing to be done.
Bony remained in camp at The Bushman s Home for two
days, scouting on foot, when he chanced on a group of
kangaroos, and bagged one. Wild dogs were here, and rabbits
were numerous, and all this world was kind and protective.
But inland from this northern coast the country rapidly
deteriorated. Penetrating it for three miles, he found that the
dunes dwindled into a sea of spinifex slopes and naked gibber
flats, the gibber stones so polished by the wind-driven sand
particles that the upper surfaces reflected the sun with such
power as to torture the eyes. Far to the north lay a line of flat-
topped residuals, red and bare, and onward for two thousand
miles it would be just the same as this picture of the Great
Inland Desert, populated by aborigines never in contact with
the white man, and so dispersed that for one to be killed by a
rocket would almost be an impossibility.
Bony wondered who the heck would want to open this
back door to Australia s atomic secrets.
From this point he travelled along the verge of the Plain
where the going was easy, making to the east to cut the line
of flight of the aircraft he had heard when at Dead Oak
Stump. Fortunately the surface water held. Kangaroos were
numerous, and the rabbits promised the summer, if it
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behaved, to make of themselves a plague. Bony passed
colonies of jerboa rats; the roofs of the houses well secured
from the wind with stones. Bell birds mocked from the scrub
trees, and at night wedges of ducks lanced across the sky. The
crows were busy too, and altogether Bony found these days
most pleasant.
When the camels first became restless, he attributed it to
their normal dislike of unfamiliar country, there being
nothing else to account for it. The country was open. The
weather remained perfect. He found no tracks of wild
aborigines nor any other indication of their proximity. Lucy
was neither restless nor suspicious, and normally a man can
place full reliance on a dog to inform him of anything
unusual.
On being confident that he had actually cut the aircraft s
line of flight, he camped under a most ancient box tree
growing on the edge of the Plain. This night he pondered on
his next move, squatting beside his fire, and, as men of all
nomadic races have done, he drew with a pointed stick a map
on the ground, and marked on it the railway, the stop named
Chifley, the homestead at Mount Singular, and the imagined
course of the aircraft.
When he had heard it at Dead Oak Stump, the destination
of the aircraft was at one of two points: either to the north of
his present camp, or short of his present camp between it
and some place out on the Plain. His position was not less than
two hundred miles from the nearest known homestead,
Mount Singular. Having recently been able to live off the
country, the food in his bags would support him for seven or
eight days, when supplies could be replenished at Bumblefoot
Hole.
Before sleeping, he decided to prospect the desert for four
days, after which he would be compelled to turn back and
travel south along that imagined line of flight of the aircraft.
Having to cover as much country as possible in those four
days, he was leading his camels off the Plain and high into the
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dunes before the sun was up, and luck favoured him, only to
withdraw the gift within two hours.
He was prompted to halt his camel train and look rear-
ward over the great Plain, the sun not yet risen, and the
morning air like crystal, the far edge of the Plain like the lip of
a tall cliff one sees from a mere hundred yards back. Then his
roving eyes abruptly stilled, to become a stare to annihilate
distance.
Crows, a dozen of them, so far away as to appear to be ink-
blots. A dead rabbit? A dead kangaroo? Neither. Oh! for a
pair of binoculars! Something was surely moving out there,
the opposite of the black crows. It was white. Like a white
crow but couldn t be. It was like a white handkerchief, being
waved to attract his attention.
Down again on the lower elevation of the Plain, he could
no longer see even the crows. This mattered not at all. Lucy
went ahead as usual, thrusting into the gentle south wind. The
camels followed the walking man, happy to have their faces
turned homeward.
Yet the happiness continued not for long. They had
proceeded for a mile, and now Bony could see the crows and
the white object of their interest when Millie tugged back on
her noseline, and he halted to see what was wrong. He could
find nothing wrong. He could see nothing to excite them. The
ground was firm. Impatiently he called to them and went on.
Another half mile, and they did come to an area indicating
subterranean cavities. He had to select a twisting passage to
avoid the bare rock and to keep to the close growing saltbush.
The white object fluttered above the ground. It wasn t a
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