The Opal Desert (8 page)

‘Walker Smith. He's my solicitor. My husband died recently and Walker suggested that I get away for a bit, take a trip out here and look you up.'

Murray nodded. ‘Sounds like Walker. Sorry to hear about your husband. Walker and I went to uni together.

I was supposed to be doing law but I dropped out. I knew a collar and tie job wasn't for me.'

Kerrie glanced around at the two large rooms. ‘Your work is very strong. Do you paint in the field or take photos? Where are these places?'

She walked up to the wall hung with brilliant oil paintings of dramatic arid lonely landscapes. Some featured an uncoiling rusting wire fence or a rotten slab of wood that was once a small hut and was now a home to lizards. The remains of a half-buried old truck abandoned to the sand years ago caught her eye. In a small detail she noticed the tiny animal tracks in the sand, and a shadowy shape and a pair of wary eyes peering from beneath a splintered mudguard. ‘Makes you wonder, who lived in the old hut, who drove the truck, and what happened to them. Now they're homes to little animals,' she said.

Murray looked at her with a half smile. ‘Very observant. You paint?'

She shrugged. ‘I studied art, wanted to be an artist, but didn't stick with it. I married an artist instead. A sculptor.'

‘Who's that?' asked Murray. ‘Would I know him?'

‘Milton Faranisi.'

‘Of course. I read that he died. All of a sudden wasn't it? I'm sorry about that. So Walker sent you to see me. You must come out to the camp, meet the wife and see what I'm doing. The stuff I really enjoy doing.' He pointed to the second showroom. ‘That's what the tourists like. Not big works, they like the more fun stuff.'

‘Quirky sense of humour!' said Kerrie, looking at his paintings of native animals and birds. ‘You use them instead of people to make political statements.'

‘Yes, I get away with bloody blue murder that way,' Murray said.

Kerrie smiled at three galahs that bore a striking resemblance to some well-known politicians. ‘I think I like the picture with the kookaburra and the frog best. You really like living at the Ridge do you?'

‘I leave as little as possible. Fiona goes to Sydney regularly, as our son is at uni. But the art scene in the city doesn't much like what I do. I'm not sophisticated or adventurous enough. That's fine by me. I enjoy my art and why try to be something you're not? I've been here almost twenty years and can't imagine living anywhere else. It's a great place. I love the air, the scenery, the people, the lifestyle.'

As they returned to the front of the gallery where several tourists were flipping through large colourful prints of his paintings, Murray added, ‘Hasn't always been a piece of cake. Had a rough patch or two, but that can happen anywhere. I think staying here saved my life. But that's another story. Are you staying in the Ridge for a bit?'

‘I thought I might stay a couple of days. Billy mentioned a few places . . .'

‘I'd say come and stay with us, but the spare room is chockers with furniture – we're renovating. Building actually, adding a room and a deck. But can you come to dinner tonight?'

‘Please, I don't want to be any trouble . . .'

‘No trouble at all. I'll take you round to Denise's place. She rents a very comfortable cottage and I'm pretty sure it's vacant.' He turned to the tourists who were now strolling round the gallery. ‘I just have to duck out for a minute.'

‘Okay,' said the man. ‘But can you help my wife?'

‘I'd like a couple of those fridge magnets, the frog and the galah,' said the woman, delving into her purse.

The sale was swiftly concluded, and when the tourists left Murray hung a sign that said ‘Back in 5 mins' on the door and turned the key.

‘Took me a long time to agree to those bloody fridge magnets but I tell you what, they keep turning over at five bucks a pop. Amazing. Not easy to spend five grand or even five hundred on a painting but five bucks? No worries.' He grinned. ‘You'll like Denise, she's a real treasure.'

They strolled to the corner and turned down another road.

‘Is this how it is everywhere out here? People being so friendly and helpful?' Kerrie asked.

‘If they're not trying to kill you,' joked Murray. ‘It's a small place, so you learn to rub along together. Even though the tourist industry is growing. But everything still rides on opal. It's the reason for our existence.'

‘And the lifestyle? Would you stay here if there weren't tourists and opals?'

‘That's a thought I'd rather not contemplate, but frankly I think there's still a lot more opal to be found. And everyone loves the lifestyle. This is Denise's place,' he said as he led Kerrie down a small lane behind a building housing a hardware and camping store and next to an empty block of overgrown land.

To Kerrie's surprise several flowering trees and shrubs protected a small fenced garden containing a little cottage with a bull-nosed verandah. A eucalyptus tree behind the cottage offered some shade and at the rear of the block stood a modern house with a small shop attached.

A woman came out of the shop to meet them as they crossed the garden.

‘Hey, Murray. What's new?'

‘Cottage still vacant, Denise? This is Kerrie, she wants to stay a couple of days or so.'

‘Nice to meet you. Yeah, last lot left last night. Haven't stocked the fridge yet, but it's all clean and tidy. Just you is it?'

Kerrie nodded. ‘What a sweet little place.'

‘Used to be an old miner's shack, must be eighty to a hundred years old. Been dolled up, and my old bloke added the patio and the barbecue. It's pretty quiet here, even though we're right in town. And if you need anything, you can just give us a shout.'

When Kerrie saw the spotless cottage, freshly painted in cheerful colours, she knew she'd like it far better than a motel.

‘Looks like everything I need,' said Kerrie. ‘I'll get a few supplies. My car is back by the café.'

‘I'll leave you to it,' said Murray. ‘How about I give you directions and you can come out to our camp and have a drink at sunset and meet Fiona.'

‘Sounds great. I can't thank you enough, Murray. How about I give you my mobile number, in case I get lost.'

Settled in to her little cottage after a trip to the small supermarket, where she'd been shocked by the high price of the wilted vegetables and tired fruit, Kerrie poured herself a cold mineral water. What on earth was she doing here? she wondered. This was so remote. She couldn't imagine Milton in such a place. She wished there was someone she could ring to tell them about this unusual town that had sprung up on the back of opals.

Perhaps she could call Walker and thank him for the introduction to Murray, who seemed so nice. But she didn't know Walker well enough to chat about such inconsequential matters. Who else could she call? The three girls certainly wouldn't care about Lightning Ridge. Wendy? Kerrie was very fond of her, and their relationship had always been cordial, but there was no more to it than that.

Suddenly Kerrie realised that there was not a soul in the world, now that she no longer had Milton or her mother, who was the slightest bit interested in what she did or where she was. How could she not have any close friends? She knew the answer. Milton had absorbed her life to the exclusion of everyone else. Tears of loss and self-pity began to trickle down her face. Then she shook herself to stop this train of thought and, locking the cottage door, she set out to tour the streets of Lightning Ridge.

It was early afternoon and there was now a laziness to the place. Shops were empty of customers and sales assistants read their newspapers beneath slowly turning fans. Kerrie told them that she was just browsing as she went from opal shop to opal shop. Some were small jewellers, others just tourist souvenir shops displaying inexpensive opal pieces. One large store was designed as a cave filled with all manner of displays of uncut opal, great chunks of rock showing the opal seam within. There was lavish jewellery as well as polished opal ready to be set.

A cheerful man with a loud Slavic accent pounced. ‘Lovely miss, are you looking for a special opal? Let me show you some pieces. You have a favourite opal? The fire? The green? The blue and red flash?'

Kerrie shook her head. ‘I'm just looking. This is all quite dazzling and I need to take it in.'

‘Ah. Here try this on, see it against your skin. This is a beauty.' He lifted a necklace featuring a huge pendant shot with hot flashes of colour against a turquoise background. ‘This is a gem-quality harlequin. Very rare, very beautiful.'

‘It is stunning,' admitted Kerrie. ‘I hadn't realised the variety . . . This looks expensive,' she added, pointing to a large ring.

‘Oh, yes, this piece is not for sale. Very unusual colour. Did you have something special in mind? A colour? A price? Set? Unset?'

Kerrie held up her hands. ‘It's my first day here, I'm still looking.'

‘How about a DVD about opals? We have a very interesting one here. Or what about a tour? We can take you to a mine and there is another display room. We have pieces you won't see anywhere else. And our opals are not just from Lightning Ridge. We have high-quality opal from Andamooka, Coober Pedy, other fields round here like the Grawin, plus Yowah nuts, White Cliffs pineapples and opal from Quilpie . . .'

‘Enough. Too much information. Thanks. I'll just wander round a little more.' Kerrie found the man's enthusiasm overwhelming and she made a quick exit.

Just the same, she was quite bowled over by what she'd seen. Her knowledge of opals was very limited and she had always associated them with the gaudy, overlit pieces displayed in duty free stores. Now she felt as though she was in sensation overload with all the beautiful pieces she'd seen on her short walk. She wandered back towards her cottage, pausing outside a small restaurant where the window had posters for an extraordinary range of sightseeing events and places to go in the Ridge. There was a weird castle made from bottles, entertainment in a cave, a ghost tour, all manner of mine tours, cactus gardens, a fossil museum, lots of art galleries. At the end of Pandora Street was a hot artesian bore baths. Lightning Ridge, Kerrie thought, had a lot to offer.

When she arrived at Murray and Fiona's camp another surprise awaited her. From what Kerrie had seen, most of the local houses were simple boxes with shade cloth awnings, struggling gardens and sheds housing hardworking dust-covered trucks, four-wheel-drive vehicles and earth-moving machinery.

But Murray's place was quite different. He had built a quaint rustic home from wood, including pillars of dead trees and old wooden railway sleepers, as well as stone slabs, sheets of corrugated iron and even stained-glass windows. A pergola, draped in a grapevine, shaded a long wooden table with church-pew seats. Bright red geraniums grew in all manner of containers from old kerosene tins painted in bold designs to roughly made ceramic pots. In the kitchen, pots, pans and interesting jugs and teapots were suspended from the ceiling above the workbench. Everything was colourful and practical.

‘Welcome to our camp,' said Murray. ‘This is Fiona.'

Fiona smiled at Kerrie. ‘I'm glad you came. Though this place is still a work in progress.'

‘It's amazing. I can honestly say that I've never seen anything like this before. I love it!'

‘Want to see my favourite bit?' asked Murray as he took Kerrie outside to the patio.

Kerrie shaded her eyes. ‘What an enormous expanse of water. Is it a lake, part of river?' she exclaimed.

‘Nope, it's my dam,' said Murray proudly. ‘Looks a bit muddy at present, but she settles down. I stock it with yellowbelly so occasionally we can have a fish feed. When I first camped out here it was a massive natural hollow, and we got one of the miners to bring his earthmover and dig it out.'

‘Find any opals?' asked Kerrie.

‘No, wrong kind of rock. Found a lot of fossils though.'

‘What a fun home!' exclaimed Kerrie as they went back inside.

‘It's kind of grown like Topsy,' laughed Fiona, who was a warm, curly-haired woman with freckles and a big smile. ‘Every time Murray wants to take on a new project he builds another room. You should see the new bathroom.' She led Kerrie through the kitchen and showed her an outdoor room, with a claw-foot bathtub open to the sky. ‘Doesn't rain most of the year,' she explained. ‘Though it's quite nice to sit out here when it does.'

‘We kept the old shed, and it's now my studio,' said Murray. ‘Come and see it. Can you pour us a drink, please, Fee?'

The old slab shed with its iron roof looked as though termites, spiders and possibly snakes could be in residence but when they stepped through the door Kerrie laughed.

‘It's a real studio!'

The lined walls were painted white. There were no windows but it had large skylights and an air conditioning unit, which, Murray explained, was powered by their generator. Scattered around the studio were paints, canvases, jars of brushes, easels, bits of driftwood, a coil of rusting barbed wire and the flotsam and jetsam of an artist at work.

She drew a deep breath and closed her eyes to block the tears. ‘This seems so familiar,' she whispered.

‘If you want to use it any time, feel free. There's plenty of room,' said Murray. ‘I'm working outdoors at present at various locations and trying different textures, adding the sand, soil, bits of scrubby bush, mixed in with the paint. You know the sort of thing.'

Kerrie drew breath to compose herself. ‘Sounds interesting. Thanks for the offer. But I'm just here . . .' She paused before she finished, ‘For a short time.'

‘What brought you out here?' asked Murray as he led her outside to the patio where Fiona had set out drinks with cheese and bread.

‘White or red wine?' asked Fiona.