Skyquakers Read Online Free PDF

people made
him keen to pack up and go.
    He slept one last time in his fridge and then left at
sunrise the next morning. He wrote a note on the fridge door in black marker
and left it standing for his mother to clearly find:

 
    Mum,
    Left for Ivanhoe. The fridge can keep you safe.
    xx Ned

 
    When he finally said goodbye to Wyndham, it said nothing
back.

LAGOON

 
 
 
    Ned was not an expert hiker or navigator. Just because he
had lived in the bush surrounded by desert all his life, did not mean he was
any less invested in smartphones or Google Maps than any other
eighteen-year-old. Granted, he loved the outdoors: he spent his summers by
local waterholes, building a campfire on the endless beaches, and riding his
bike everywhere. But his survival skills were limited since he had rarely
needed to ever rely on them. He knew how to make a fire, how to pitch a tent
and how to sterilise water, but that was about it.
    Now it was different. This was no camping trip. He could not
treat the outside world as a joke anymore and the journey ahead could turn
fatal if he forgot these lessons. Ned had to be prepared for extreme heat in
the day, the cold of the night, and had to approach precious resources such as
water and sugar as the difference between life and death. He needed to find a
way to carry a litre of water for every day on the road, along with
non-perishable food with high protein content; he needed to choose his clothes
wisely, such as boots and a sunhat and even a jacket for when the sun went
down, and had to make drastic decisions about the many modern necessities which
had to be abandoned. With no digital navigational devices, he decided to wear a
pedometer to track the speed and distance he was covering, to make sure he
could get to his destination before he perished. Along with water and food, he
packed a flashlight and batteries, rope, matches in waterproof zip-lock bags, sunscreen,
a knife, a towel, toilet paper, and basic first aid pieces. No room for clean
underwear or shampoo or his Gameboy; this was not a holiday. Lonely Lily also
joined him, but he kept her switched off to conserve her batteries. He wore
long hiking pants for the journey, the type made of quick-dry material with
lots of pockets, a white t-shirt, an old Western Bulldogs cap, and thick hiking
boots. He ticked off everything on his list twice before he decided he was
prepared to leave.
    The journey from Wyndham to the farming establishment of
Ivanhoe started with the long, dusty Great Northern Highway. It led south and
would take him to the entrance of a national park, and there he would cut east
towards the wetlands and then on to the unruly desert of the Kununurra . In all, it would take two days to reach Ivanhoe,
according to his calculations. In practise, it would probably take three. He
kept his map close, keeping an eye on the pedometer as he went, using highway
signs to track himself and keep from getting lost.
    The highway alone was a test. By early morning, the heat was
already scorching and his back was sore from the weight. He took shade under a
bus shelter in the middle of nowhere only two hours in. He drank warm gulps of
water, trying to balance the need to preserve the resource with the need to
lighten his carry load. Back over Wyndham, storm clouds were beginning to brew
once again and more beams of pink light, bringing new things down from the sky,
could be seen in the far distance. The clouds lingered in a spiralling
formation, moving very slowly, making thunder without lightning.
    ‘Come and get me, ’ he teased. He moved on.
    A few kilometres down the highway was Wyndham Airport: a few
strips of flat asphalt and a shed, really. It was too off-track and, he
assumed, abandoned, to bother. Further on, the rolling sand dunes of the
approaching desert flanked him along his lonely path. The breeze blew grains
from their peaks in swirling patterns. The sands went on indefinitely across
the north. Thrill seekers went 4-wheel