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They both woke at the same time, out of identical dreams and looked up into the face of the person who spoke to them.
His short black hair topped a dark face with strangely blue eyes. He looked like he hadn't shaved for a couple of days, and there was a joint hanging out of the corner of his mouth. but it was his eyes that held their attention. He was smiling and there was a friendly look about them, but there was something else. The coloured parts of his eyes had a sort of unreal appearance to them - almost as if they were only half there.
Anton had seen this in people's eyes before, but it was something he preferred not to think about, so he looked away. He was almost surprise to see the inside of a bus as he lloked around him. But he was quickly wide enough awake to remember what they were doing there.
"Oh yeah." Sally mumbled, as she too recognized their surroundings. "Is it morning already?"
"'Fraid so." The man had moved away a bit now and was sitting sideways on one of the seats that filled the inside of the bus they'd been sleeping in. "My names's Raphael. I got in after you'd gone to sleep last night. But Yota told me about you."
"Oh, that's right." Sally sat up in the confined space she'd been sleeping in. "You live here too, don't you?"
Raphael gave her a look of amused resignation and said "Yeah, crazy, isn't it? But anyway, you'd better get up or you'll find a herd of screaming schoolkids jumping all over you! Don't laugh, it's happened to me before!"
They both dragged themselves off the floor and out of the narrow space between two rows of seats, where they had slept with their heads together in the aisle. As they picked up and folded their bedding, they both went over the bizarre events of the previous day in their heads. They didn't seem to make any more sense now than they had yesterday. Especially ending up here!"
It had begun to get late and there was obviously no hope of finding Max that day. Julie said she had to go home as she was really tired, but where she lived there was no space of any sort for them to stay, or she would have invited them back. They had resigned themselves to spending the night on the floor of the alkies shelter in the park - the one they'd slept in that afternoon was already taken - when Julie remembered somewhere else.
"It's only slightly better," she'd said, "but at least it's inside and off the ground, so you won't get quite so damp. Johhno and Tanya moved out of the bus the other day, so there should be some space there. The lucky bastards actually managed to find a house in the hills. No water, sewage or electricity or anything like that, of course. But they've got four walls, a roof and a floor, which is pretty good going around here!"
"A bus?" Sally asked, not at all surprised at this latest twist to their lives.
"THE bus." Julie replied. The local bus. The owner had this bright idea of renting it out to homeless people while it's not out on the road. Seeing as it only does four hours work a day, he thought it could do with a bit more use."
"Are you serious?" Despite everything else, Anton found this new story hard to take.
"Deadly serious!" Julie grinned. These two really did have a lot to learn. It must be a bit of a shock, she thought, migrating to australia. After being fed all the bullshit and hype overseas, about how it's the land of opportunity, to finally arrive and be hit full in the face by reality wouldn't be that easy. Of course, there were people that had an easy time of it - the rich ones. But she'd put money on it that most of the rest ended up wishing they'd stayed at home!
"There was five adults and two kids living there before, but now Johnno and Tanya have gone there's two less. They'll let you stay there for sure. It's not bad really, you just have to get up early and get out before the bus goes off on its morning run. It does the school run and then goes off to Ningwana Bay and back. Then it does the reverse in the afternoon. Four hours is all you have to be out for. The rest of the time you can use it as your home.
A bus as a home! thought Sally. Maybe, if all the seats were out of it. But one that was carrying passengers every day would be pretty strange. "What do they do with all their things?" she asked.
"They keep them in the luggage compartment under the bus. There's plenty of room there. The only problem is if you want anything while the bus is out, you have to wait."
Anton laughed at the vision of all these people's belongings constantly driving round the place without them. It was really crazy. His laughter threatened to turn into total deranged hysteria, but he managed to stop himself somehow.
Sally was getting to the point where she couldn't see the funny side any more. She just wanted it all not to be happening. But, failing that, sleep would be the next best thing. And to wake up in the morning and find Max. Then they could begin to get their lives in some kind of order and recover from the journey properly. "Alright, take us there." she said.
*-*-*
"Fares please." The driver smiled at his daily joke as they finished packing their sleeping stuff into the compartment under the bus.
"This is Sally and Anton." Raphael itroduced them to the driver.
"Arthur." He smiled and shook their hands. "I suppose they told you, it's two dollars a night each and there's a toilet and a small kitchen in that shed over there, which you're most welcome to use. Pretty reasonable, i think!" He didn't sound like he thought so at all, but he didn't really seem like the sort of person who enjoyed making money out of other people's homelessness.
"Oh, we won't be staying long" Sally said, handing Arthur four dollars. "We're going to stay with Anton's cousin Max as soon as we find him. Maybe you can help?"
He couldn't. He didn't know anyone fitting Max's description, but he told them he'd ask all his passengers for them.
They stood and watched the bus drive off with a strange feeling of insecurity. All their bedding and most of their possessions were on board. It was almost like getting off a bus and leaving your bag behind.
"Coming up the Starlight for a cup of coffee?" said Yota. And they joined the rest of the residents in a straggly procession up the road.
Living on the bus with Yota and Raphael, who was usually known as Rafa, was a woman called Muz who was in her mid twenties and dressed in a vaguely hippy style, with lots of different couloured patches on her clothes and long hair dyed a bright pink.
"You wouldn't get into the pub on two counts!" Anton had said to her as she was getting dressed.
"Three, actually!" she'd replied with a grin. He was mildly shocked by her apparent pride in having lice, but he tried not to show it. And to resist a strong temptation to scratch his head.
Along with the three adults was a five-year-old boy called Caradoc, who had jumped all over Anton as soon as he'd met him, and a two-year-old girl called Rainbow. It wasn't immediately obvious who the kids were with - if they were with anyone at all - as the three adults all seemed to treat them in the same way.
The seven of them managed to squeeze round a table in the Starlight after ordering coffee and things to eat for breakfast. Anton was relieved to see the skinny man who had served them yesterday wasn't there this morning. He said so to Muz.
"Neville the dirty devil, you mean? Yeah, he's a miserable old bastard. And don't let him get to close to ya, he's not particular about who he gropes!" She nudged him in the ribs and winked at him. "Know what i mean?"
Anton had taken an immediate liking to Muz and he was pleased that she seemed to like him too. He gave her a friendly smile as she nudged him, which didn't escape Sally, even though she was absorbed in conversation with Yota.
"You talk funny!" Caradoc said to Sally. He was sitting next to her and staring intently at her face as she told Yota about her first few days in australia.
"That's because she's english, Cara." Rafa said to him.
"You a pom?" the little boy chirped as soon as he heard this.
Sally turned and smiled at him. "That's right." she replied.
"Rafa's spanish!" he said with a serious look on his face. "He comes from spain!"
"Really? Do you know any spanish, Cara?"
"Si. Rafa taught me. 'Cara' means face in spanish." He looked pleased with himself as he picked up his curried lentil pie and took another bite.
"So how did you manage to get permanent residence here?" Yota asked Sally, who had just been telling her why they'd decided to come. "It's pretty hard getting into australia, isn't it?" "Anton's father's australian. His family were dutch migrants, but he ended up going to live in england where he met Anton's mum. So he's an australian citizen as well as a british one. That's why we chose australia to come and live in. I had to marry him so i could get in too. It would have been possible to come on the grounds that we'd been living together for over two years, but getting married seemed like it would be a lot easier. They like their official bits of paper in government departments!
"Max is Anton's aunt's son and he came to stay with us when he was visiting england last year. It was partly because of him that we decided to migrate here. And because he said we could live with him for a while we came to Goonabah. But, of course, he's nowhere to be seen!"
"Yeah, it's a bit of a worry that one, eh? I've been around here for a while now, but i don't know anyone who fits that description. He'll probably turn up sooner or later but. And in the meantime, you can stay with us as long as you like. I talked to the others on the way up here and they don't mind. Uh-oh, here comes the rain again! I thought it was too good to last."
Neither Sally nor Anton had really noticed the rain had stopped, but everyone else seemed acutely aware of the sudden dry spell. Now, as suddenly as it had stopped, it started again. And the whole mood of the town changed dramatically, influenced by the sound of heavy rainfall on tin roofs. It filled every corner and space and penetrated into the darkest depths of every building. After it had been raining for a while, you stopped hearing it, but when it first started up it dominated all your senses and those of everyone else in town.
"I thought it rained a lot in england!" Sally remarked. "But it's got nothing on this place. I feel like i've seen more water in the last twenty four hours than in the whole of the rest of my life!"
They sat in the Starlight for well over an hour, talking to each other and everyone else who came in. The people from the bus had taken up Sally and Anton's quest with a vengeance and they didn't need to ask anyone if they knew Max that morning. It was all done for them.
They watched the place gradually fill up as they sat there. All sorts of people came in in that first hour or so. Some really straight looking types were among them. A few with spikey, coloured hair and torn clothes. People with dreadlocks of all sorts - some dyed, some natural, some real, some extensions. A couple of people looked like they'd gone to sleep in the hippy years of the early seventies and had just woken up. There was a lone skinhead. A couple of women with tattoos, bleached, shoulder length hair and sunglasses. In fact, a surprising number of people were weraing sunglasses, considering it was pissing down with rain.
There were people of all appearances and age groups in there that morning, and they all seemed to know each other. But despite the friendly atmosphere, there was a really strong feeling of tension and anticipation in the air. And everyone seemed vaguely distracted - like they were waiting for something.
Both Sally and Anton felt strangely out of place in there with that crowd. It was almost as if there was something going on that everyone knew about except them. Neither of them could work out if it was real or if it was just their imagination and the fact that they were new to the town. But Anton had a strong feeling, which he tried to ignore, that he knew what was going on in there. He'd felt that same atmosphere lots of times and he'd been trying to forget about it for years.
His suspicions were made stronger when the cafe suddenly emptied. It went from packed to almost empty in the course of ten minutes. And they were just about the only ones left in there.
Raphael looked up at the clock and stood up. "I'll see ya's in a while." he said absently, and walked out.
A few minutes later, a loud whistle preceeded the sound of the train as it chugged its slow and rattling way into town.
"We should do some shopping i reckon, Sally." Anton said, "At least buy a bit of food. There's no point waiting till we find Max, he might not show up for week the way things are going!"
"Don't say that!" Sally frowned. "I bet we find him today. But you're right, we better get some food just in case. Anyway, we haven't really had a look at the town yet. What there is of it!"
They said goodbye to the four people they were sitting with and walked out towards the rain.
It really wasn't a very big town. There was one main street with a couple of dozen shops in it and that was about it. The railway station was at one end, the park at the other and the pub was in the middle, across the road from the Starlight cafe. All along both sides of the street there were wide, flat awnings above the shop windows. These had looked really odd when they'd first seen them in Sydney, but they were beginning to get used to them now. They were great for keeping you dry in this weather, anyway.
As they walked along the street, looking in all the shop windows, they talked about how different and, at the same time, how similar things were to britain. This somehow made them feel suddenly more sane. Almost as if they'd woken up out of a nightmare. This was the sort of thing you should be doing when you came to another country for the first time. Not all that deranged running around that they seemed to have had to do since they arrived. It was probably partly the jetlag wearing off, but the crazed confusion of yesterday quickly disappeared into the past.
"It's a bit disappointing coming to another country and finding everything's written in english, isn't it?" Anton said as they looked in the window of the hardware shop.
"They're really into all this 'australia' stuff, aren't they? 'Aussie' this, 'australia' that, everywhere you look. It's almost like they're afraid they'll forget where they are if they don't keep reminding themselves!"
"G'day. Been shooping?" They looked round from the window at the sound of the familiar voice. It was Julie with a man they hadn't seen before.
"This is Phil." she said, "he's a pom too, but he can't help it!"
"Alright?" He smiled, showing a mouthful of crooked teeth, with three or four missing. He looked about thirty and had short, vaguely spikey bleached hair which seemed to be thinning out a bit at the temples. There was a safety pin through his left ear.
"Do either of you play an instrument?" he asked, but they both shook their heads. "I'm trying to get a punk revival band together. But it's really hard to find any musicians that want to play in it."
"It'll come together in the end." Julie said to him. "Where are yas going with that shopping?"
"Back to the bus, i suppose." Sally answered. "We still haven't found Max."
"That's a drag. I'll walk down there with you, i want to see Yota, anyway."
"See you later on." Phil said, turning to cross the road.
"Catch you later Phil." Julie replied. "Don't forget what i told you now!"
"He makes me laugh!" she said, as they walked down the street. "He thinks he's still a punk from 1977! He's a really nice man, but it's like he get stuck in this time warp in London twelve years ago and can't get out of it. He's always talking about King's Road and playing at the 100 Club and all that stuff."
"This is where we get wet!" Anton said as they stopped just before the end of the awning. The bus was parked down a side street, near the railway line and it meant a hundred metre dash in the pouring rain. Beyond the shelter of the awning, just in front of where they stood, it was almost like a block of solid water that they had to dive into. Past the edge of the pavement, the gutter was full, almost to overflowing, making a lake nearly a metre wide of muddy brown water.
"Here goes!" Anton was the first one to run down the street, with the other two following close behind. It wasn't really worth running, you couldn't get any wetter if you walked. But it did get you out of the rain quicker, anyway.
In the bus, Yota, Muz and Rafa were all sitting on the back seat, leaning on each other, with their feet up on the back of the seats in front. They had their eyes closed and looked about as relaxed as you could get on the seat of a bus.
The kids were playing with some toys under one of the middle seats and Caradoc poked his head out as soon as they came in. A few seconds later, Rainbow crawled out into the aisle and looked up at them.
"G'day Anton!" Caradoc shouted. "G'day Julie! G'day Sally! We're playing greenies against the loggers! And i'm winning. I'm a greenie and Rainbow's a logger."
The three on the back seat had opened their eyes now and they said g'day to the others, but didn't move from their huddled, relaxed position. Julie went off to make some tea.
Shit! thought Anton, they're all stoned! Why do i have to end up staying with this crew? He and Sally sat down on the back seat next to them.
"Have you two done anything about getting on the dole yet?" Julie asked as she walked up the aisle with a pot of herbal tea and some cups.
"No." Anton replied, a bit puzzled. "I suppose we should though."
"We've got a bit of money saved." Sally said. "Enough to probably last a month if we don't have any big expenses. But we're not really used to how much it costs to live here, so it's hard to know for sure."
"Well you should get on the dole before you're desperate." Julie sat down on the edge of the seat in front of them and put the cups on the floor. "You never know how long they'll fuck you around for before they pay you."
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