Because the bush camp is so close to town, Gary and I are in a halfway status between townies and bushies. Real bushies come in to town every few weeks looking like feral wild west extras from a spaghetti western and either talk too much in a disjointed "not used to putting sentences together but having a go" sort of way and ye olde traditional taciturn silence / occasional tiny head nod. Mostly men with extravagant beards and long scary Appalachian "squeal like a pig" hairstyles, they tend to be full-time prospectors, property caretakers or just bush camp hermits. Hopefully none of our bushies are the Snowy Rowles type (I'll explain that in a minute); the ones I've met are all perfectly all right, just not into living anywhere near other people. I reckon there must be hundreds, if not thousands, of people living out of range of the census-takers all over Australia - good for them!
Tonight as I was filling up our genny fuel jerry can at the roadhouse, I spotted a rain-soaked, bereft-looking bushie guy standing in the doorway with his jerry can - it turned out to be Adrian, a prospector with a 130 acre lease just on the other side of town, near Peace Gorge, and he'd run out of diesel on his way in on the bush track, which runs past the back of the aged care hostel. He'd been waiting ages hoping for someone local to pull in so he could cadge a lift, but being after dinner time it was just truckies coming through.
"Jeez mate just chuck your jerry in the bus, I'll drop you off on my way out" I said (I have the local lingo down pat). He was so grateful he pressed twenty bucks into my hand, which I tried to give back. "Nah, it'll make me feel better if ya take it!" he insisted. Adrian is in the "talking too much after being away from people for too long" category, so thankfully it was only a short hop back around the corner from the hostel to drop him at his ute. "Yer I seen this bus round town heaps, what size motor yer got in it?" "I have no idea," I said. "It's diesel," I added helpfully. I don't know why men want to talk with women about engines and stuff. But they seem to need to do it, so I feel sort of compelled to assist them in their conversational struggles as best I can.
Side thought: why do men always run out of fuel? The only times I have ever been in a vehicle that has run out of petrol has been with blokes. You look at the guage and say, "I think we should top up" and they barely glance at it and go "Nah it's still just above empty, there's heaps, we'll be right" and then of course you run out, but if you say anything about it they get all irritable and five year old-ish.
Anyway, it was a good thing that Adrian wasn't a Snowy Rowles type or you'd be sifting through ash heaps in the desert looking for my teeth. Snowy Rowles was a bushie hermit who lived out near the rabbit-proof fence area around Cue in the 1930's. He met the author Arthur Upfield around this time; Upfield, a prominent crime writer, was researching the perfect body disposal method, and he and a friend mentioned their latest idea - burning the body, sifting the ash, then dissolving the bone fragments - while they were with Snowy Rowles. A bit later, two guys go missing, then another. Turns out Snowy Rowles killed them to keep them away from his prospecting camp, and employed Upfield's disposal method! You could make a movie out of it. I heard this story from Rayelene, whose great-uncle met Snowy Rowles and had first-hand knowledge of the tale as it took place. You can look it up on Wikipedia.
So here I am, esconced in the bush camp with the fire cheerfully crackling away (tonight's wood is courtesy of DeGrussa Mines pallets), Smokey sleeping up in the cupboard, Honey sleeping on the bed (don't tell Gary), Ethel snuggled up under her favourite tree, and our faithful generator churning out power to the laptop and lights. After dinner I'll be enjoying a candle-lit hot bath in the wash house while poor Gary roughs it in his lonely motel room in Geraldton. I'm practising talking to Honey and Smokey so that I don't go all internal and mad like a bushie, and checking in the mirror regularly to make sure I'm not growing a beard and a lumpy old hat.
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