The Girl in Steel-Capped Boots (2 page)

His smile broadened. ‘You’ll be given your own place.’

She studied him with narrowed eyes but he said no more, confining his attention to starting the ute. It made a gurgling, choking sound before roaring to life, almost as if it were coughing out the red dust first. Soon they were turning onto the main road. Mike adjusted the music volume just loud enough so they didn’t have to talk. She was quite happy with that and focused on the view out the window.

It was the outback.

Harsh, unforgiving and seemingly barren.

Lena was too much of a city dweller to find the stark flat redness inspiring. It was shrubs not trees that dotted the landscape beside the road. And the greenery was not lush. It was a dry green that looked parched – the colour of army personnel uniforms. The soil beside the road was red and pebbled. The only thing that was nice was the sunshine: bright and unfettered by a single grey cloud.

She was disappointed that the main road that led out of the airport took them past Karratha without entering it. Wickham was supposed to be a lot smaller and it would’ve been nice to have a benchmark.

Her first glimpse of the ‘camp’ was a bit of a shock, though Mike’s unmistakable enjoyment of her horror kept her from mentioning it.

She decided that she didn’t like Mike Hopkins, and set her face. He wasn’t going to have the satisfaction of disconcerting her.

I am perfectly okay with this.

‘This’ was a grid of identical white boxes sitting on weed-ridden rock and soil. There were hundreds of them in neat rows making up a giant rectangle. Lena had seen these types of buildings before – at outdoor concerts. Her skin crawled. In her experience, they functioned as toilets or first aid offices, not bedrooms. Mike parked the ute, grunted and got out. He walked around to the rear of the vehicle so he could retrieve her bags from the open loading tray, but she jumped out after him and grabbed two bags before he could get to them. He simply shrugged, took the last bag and told her to follow him.

They entered the maze of boxes, gravel crunching underfoot. Lena looked around in vain for any sign of life, but empty, grimy cabins stretched as far as she could see. When they reached a T-junction, Mike pulled a key out of his pocket and examined the tag attached to it.

‘You’re number E32,’ he said and handed it to her. Turning away, he went left down one of the roughly hewn paths that cut through the maze. She followed him, trying to remember each turn they took.

He stopped. ‘This is it: your donga.’

Donga?

She looked over at what appeared to be no more than a garden shed on stumps and decided it was an apt name. Under Mike’s smug grin she climbed the two concrete blocks that led up to her front door. Unlocking it, she pushed it open. A gust of dry heat whooshed out and fried her. Bracing herself, she stepped in.

The box was smaller than an average bedroom for one and filled to capacity with mismatched furniture. She turned on the air-conditioner that was clumsily fitted into the window and then took a step back to take stock as it rattled into noisy life.

The plasterboard walls were covered in an ugly paper that she wouldn’t line a drawer with let alone a whole room. The glass window above the air-conditioner was barred by security mesh which made her feel like she was in a cell. There was a single bed against one wall, a tall thin wardrobe at the foot of the bed and a small desk and plastic chair against the other wall. In the corner beside the front door was a bar fridge. The thin strip of space she was supposed to move about in was only half a metre wide. Unfortunately this small area was completely covered once she unhooked her bags from her shoulders and lowered them to the floor. She knew one thing for certain: the wardrobe was not big enough to contain her clothes.

A snigger sounded behind her. ‘Do you want this one as well, or should I just leave it outside?’

She spun around and held out her hands. ‘I’ll take it.’

‘You better hurry up,’ Mike informed her as he dumped the bag at her feet. ‘There’s still a lot to do this afternoon.’

Lena stashed it in the wardrobe and then stepped outside, closing the door behind her. Again, she followed Mike through
the maze, struggling to remember the way as they weaved between the dongas.

‘How many people live here?’ she finally asked.

‘About three hundred and fifty, give or take.’ He paused. ‘Your amenities are directly in front of E block. There’s only one toilet and bathroom block for the ladies.’

‘Why?’

‘There are only four ladies,’ Mike said. ‘You’ll make a fifth.’

Lena’s mouth dropped open. She was used to being in a workplace minority. But five out of three hundred and fifty? For every female on the job, there were seventy guys! She chewed her lower lip. The gap was much narrower at head office –
and
she could easily escape the odds after work by stepping out into the street. She
lived
in this camp now.

There was no escape.

Oh crap.

Mike seemed oblivious to her alarm. ‘I’ll take you to meet Ethel,’ he said without stopping. ‘She’s in charge of the camp. She was the first female we ever had living on site.’

The endless dirt track widened to reveal a larger dark brown brick building on the edge of the plain of dongas – the only permanent building on the entire site. They entered a small room with a long white counter against one wall. The place was clearly an office but it reminded Lena of a hospital. The decor was all white and plastic. A woman seated behind the counter looked up when they entered but continued to talk on her phone. She had bad hair, bad make-up and horrendously yellow teeth.

‘I’m sorry but it’s not our policy to try and position brothers next to each other,’ the woman was saying. ‘Yes, I realise the donga next to yours is empty but it’s not our policy to reserve them, especially not for two weeks. This is not a motel.’

Clearly, the woman was neither tolerant nor flexible. Ethel’s half-veiled eyes remained fixed upon Lena the whole time she
was talking. It was a move, Lena realised, that was deliberately made to intimidate her. So she pulled back her shoulders and stood taller, not keen to be bested at this game.

Ethel hung up the phone without a goodbye and raised a pair of impatient and poorly pencilled eyebrows by way of greeting. Unabashed, Lena came forwards.

‘Hi, I’m Lena Todd. I just arrived –’

‘I know who you are,’ Ethel returned without warmth. ‘You look far worse than I expected.’

Riled and still sore from Mike’s insults, Lena couldn’t stop herself saying, ‘So do you.’ This impulsive rejoinder seemed to amuse Ethel. Lena was privileged with the first glimpse of what could’ve been a smile but was more like a cross between gas and a sneer.

Mike interrupted and for once Lena didn’t care. ‘I’ve just finished showing her her donga,’ he said.

‘I see.’ Ethel swivelled in her chair to the shelving behind her, grabbing forms out of pigeon holes. ‘Breakfast is from five am to seven am. Dinner is from six-thirty pm to eight pm. Do not come outside those times because the mess hall will be locked and you will not be fed. A packed lunch will be provided for you to take to work at breakfast time. The door on your right leads to the mess hall, the door on the left leads to the games room. There is a gym next to the car park.’ She slapped the forms on the counter. ‘On these, fill out your details and who we are to contact in case of emergency. These others are a map of town, a map of the camp and a form for television hire.’

Lena nodded and Ethel slapped a pen on the counter, sat back and began to file her nails.

Lena glanced at the television form. ‘Surely the dongas aren’t big enough for a television as well.’

The file stopped moving and Ethel’s eyes flicked upwards, though her chin didn’t follow. ‘Do you have a problem with the accommodation?’

Lena decided to be honest. ‘It’s just a little smaller than I was expecting.’

Ethel snorted. ‘And no sweet-smelling soaps or chocolates on the pillow either. Welcome to the real world, honey.’

Lena stopped arguing and started on the personnel form – she didn’t imagine she’d want to watch the limited television channels the outback offered anyway. In any case, she was in a rush: she needed to get straight to the office so she could reassure herself that she hadn’t left Perth in vain – that there really was an opportunity to prove herself in this godforsaken place. That the Pilbara, for all its warts, would teach her something about being a good engineer. An engineer who was
built
for this sort of work. No pun intended.

She checked her watch. It was four-thirty. If she went to the office immediately, she’d catch the staff before they clocked off. She turned back to Mike. ‘Shall we go to site?’

He looked her over. ‘Do you want to get changed?’

For half an hour, she couldn’t be bothered. Her khaki shorts and collared shirt were casual, but neat. ‘No, I’ll be fine.’

Ethel and Mike exchanged a look. A look Lena didn’t trust, but didn’t have time to worry about. She was desperate for good news before the day was over. She had to get to the office before she lost control and begged to be taken back to the airport for the next flight home.

The Cape Lambert work offices were located about two kilometres off the main highway, at the end of a lonely gravelly track that stopped right on the beach. The first thing that struck Lena when the sea came into view was that it didn’t look right. She had never seen a beach where the sand was red almost right up to the water’s edge. Here, just where the water lapped, it changed to a light yellow colour. There were black jagged rocks everywhere. It wasn’t the kind of shore she’d want to wander along in bare feet. Opposite the coastline were three giant office dongas. One was labelled with a dusty sign:
Barnes Inc
. In the background she could
see the giant stockpiles of iron ore, plant and other port facilities. Mike pulled the ute to a halt next to some others parked outside one of the office dongas. They both alighted and Lena held a breath as she made the last few steps to meet her fate.

There was no way she had intended to make an entrance, but the second she strode into the donga everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at her. Gooseflesh broke out on the back of her neck as she stood there, rooted to the spot, uncertain what to do. Everyone in the room was male except for two women operating a photocopier. They were also dressed in the same uniform as Mike.

Suddenly her perfectly respectable shorts felt inappropriately short and her smart business shirt much too fitted and much too pink. Many pairs of eyes raked her from head to foot more thoroughly than an MRI scans for cancer.

‘Well, blow me away and send me to the crazies,’ said a bald gentleman sitting closest to her. He stood up and held out his hand. ‘I’m John Lewis. Who might you be?’

Relieved, Lena smiled warmly at him and shook his hand. ‘Lena. Lena Todd. I’m the new engineer.’

‘The new
engineer.
’ The Tone was unmistakable. Once again she cursed her outfit.

‘I better take you to see Carl,’ Mike said, clearly enjoying the situation. ‘Come on.’

Lena smiled tightly at John Lewis and followed Mike past the clutter. The office donga looked roomy from the outside but wasn’t on the inside. It was broken up into cubicles and filled to capacity with cheap furniture and computers, all of which were covered in a film of red dust. The Barnes Inc staff continued to watch her.

There was a kitchen tucked away in a corner. It was filthy, as though it hadn’t been cleaned in months. Both the bin and sink were overflowing and the counter was red and black at the same time with a zillion handprints all over its surface. Just as the ‘why me?’ questions started bubbling up, Mike gestured
Lena towards an office. It was the only one in the building with proper dividing walls and a door that opened and shut. Lena was eager to make the project manager’s acquaintance. Maybe someone as senior as Carl Curtis would bring some sanity to her arrival. She stuck her head tentatively through the doorway.

‘What the fuck do you want?’

At first she thought he was talking to her and almost jumped back. But then he waved grumpily at her to come in and she realised he was talking on the phone.

‘No I don’t have a fuckin’ spare crane driver.’ He pointed at the chair in front of the desk. ‘Greg, you’ve got twelve fuckin’ blokes out there, for fuck’s sake. What the fuck are they doing?’

Lena swallowed as she sat down and looked around at his messy desk, over-filled bookshelves and squeaking desk fan. The man behind the desk looked to be in his early forties and was in dire need of a shave.

‘I don’t fuckin’ care, Greg. Surely one of the fuckin’ bastards can drive a fuckin’ crane!’ He paused. ‘No worries, Greg. I’ll just pull a fuckin’ crane driver out of my fuckin’ arse.’ SLAM.

He ran two giant paws through his dark brown hair and rolled a burly set of shoulders. ‘What can I do you for?’

Lena smiled and tried for a cheery note. ‘I’m your new engineer.’

His eyes flickered over her. ‘Fuck.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Don’t,’ he warned, ‘’cause I sure as hell ain’t begging yours. And you may get offended by what I say next.’

She didn’t doubt it but raised an eyebrow with what she hoped was haughty discouragement. He merely grinned. ‘You think that expression makes you look highly superior, don’t you, little lady? But let me burst your city bubble for you. The blokes out there, they don’t care. They don’t care about you.
They don’t care about me. And they don’t care about this job. This is the Pilbara. And it’s the Pilbara that makes the rules.’

Lena folded her arms and sighed. ‘It seems to me,’ she noted, ‘that all the Pilbara seems to make is rude people.’

He gave a short sharp laugh. ‘Been treating you to a bit of home brew, eh?’

She nodded. Carl was offensive on so many levels but for some illogical reason she liked his abrupt manner far more than Mike’s underhanded comments.

‘How old are you?’ he asked.

‘Twenty-three.’

‘Almost fresh out of university,’ he mused.