The Boys from Binjiwunyawunya

The Boys from Binjiwunyawunya Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: The Boys from Binjiwunyawunya Read Online Free PDF
Author: Robert G. Barrett
all things on earth — time. Pools of crystal-clear water and equally clear streams and billabongs teeming with fat white-necked herons would appear at the bases of these ochre ridges and redstone cliffs. White-barked cedars, flooded gums and monstrous green tree ferns were everywhere. Stinging trees and squat cabbage palms, their delicate fronds spread out like a Spanish senorita’s fan, were also in abundance.
    Murray spun the wheel violently to avoid two huge and plump stumpy-tailed lizards asleep on the dirt track. ‘It’s been a while since we’ve been out here mate, eh?’ he grinned at Grungle, bouncing madly all over the front seat. ‘Still the grouse though, ain’t it?’ The bushman’s dog appeared to nod once more in agreement as if he too loved and appreciated the rugged, remote beauty of these parts.
    Vine-tangled trees full of birds overhung the narrow track, and banks of colourful wild flowers grew everywhere. Blue, wild tomatoes edged alongside pink and mauve hollyhocks. Golden spur valleias, looking almost like orchids, intertwined with orange quandong, or native peach. Purple fan flowers grew neck and neck with coral and yellow drumstick shrubs while more bursts of orange desert pea kept scrambling across the track, looking like tongues of flame.
    The laughter of kookaburras echoed off the cliff faces along with the screeching of galahs, cockatoos and parrots and the screaming and arguing of the channel-billed cuckoos that have a rotten habit of laying their eggs in other birds’ nests. Murray had turned the radio off ages ago; the screeching and squawking of the dozens of varieties of birds, although at times unbelievably raucous, was all the music he needed.
    Just across the small but beautiful Diamantina Lakes, where the Mayne and Diamantina Rivers meet, Murray stopped again to check his map, the odometer and the compass on the dashboard.
    â€˜Not much further now, Grungle old son,’ he smiled, running his finger across the map. He gave the dog a rough pat on the head and they lurched on their way again.
    Another ten kilometres or so past another dot on the map,Springvale, Murray found what he was looking for — a row of a dozen cycad trees lined up along the side of the road like a column of tin soldiers. Even through the dust-covered windscreen Murray could clearly make out the hundreds of tiny red-backed wrens hopping nimbly amongst the protection of the trees’ bayonet-sharp leaves.
    â€˜There it is mate.’ Murray grinned at the dog and swung the Land Rover off the track at the last cycad. He drove back to where the cycads hid the start of another trail and followed it for about five kilometres till the bumpy trail suddenly opened up into a landscaped clearing of approximately one acre with a huge old rambling homestead. At just on four-thirty Murray switched off the motor and smiled happily at Grungle. They were there. Roughly 250 kilometres in from the Northern Territory border and right on the Tropic of Capricorn. Binjiwunyawunya. Place of plenty of water and a full stomach.
    No matter when it was, every time Murray pulled up at Binjiwunyawunya and the old house built out in the middle of nowhere he never ceased to be amazed at the strange beauty of the place and the sheer incongruity of it all. The white wooden homestead, with a wide verandah running around the front and the two sides, was built right into the red-ochre table-topped mountain that loomed over it. Part of the verandah was shaded by white, wooden lattice work with vines, fruit and different coloured bougainvilleas growing through and around it in a haphazard display of magnificent colours. Pink, gold, blue, crimson, white. More vines and flowers spread across the green, galvanised-iron roof in the middle of which was a large disc-antenna for picking up satellite TV signals. Flower beds, shrubs and small native trees dotted the landscaped clearing in front and to the sides
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