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It was funny waking up under the tarpaulin without him lying there next to her. She wondered where he was sleeping and what he'd been doing since he got to Sydney. She had a pretty good idea, but couldn't be bothered thinking too much about it. She knew he'd be using heroin in the city and she had an intuitive feeling that he'd be sleeping with Muz. That didn't really bother her, although the heroin was a bit disturbing. But worrying about it, especially when there was nothing she could do, was a complete waste of energy, so she put it out of her mind.
The early morning sun shone in under the end of the tarp. The sunlight almost seemed to sparkle at that time of day, as it floated across the hills and valleys of the rainforest which stretched for miles in the general direction of the ocean.
Every morning she was woken at dawn by the birds. It was the most beautiful sound she'd ever woken up to. They were unbelievably loud, but their calls were musical and there was an incredible variety of different sounds. There must have been a thousand birds all singing out at the same time, or taking it in turns. The rain had stopped for the time being, so there was nothing to interfere with the clarity of the performance.
What a weird dream! Sally thought, sitting up under the mosquito net which covered the bed and looking out at the patterns of light and shadow which filled the tree-covered valley below her. Suddenly there was a loud rustling noise underneath the platform and she quietly extracted herself from the fine white netting and peered through the gap between the side of the tarp and the wood of the platform. A gigantic goanna was crashing through the undergrowth just below her. It must have been fully six feet from its nose to the tip of its tail and its large body was grey, with a strange lumpy-looking texture to its skin. It was walking in that weird lopsided way goannas have, almost flapping its clawed feet against the ground.
Sally watched it until it disappeared into the undergrowth again. Then she crawled back under the mozzie net and lay down.
The strangest thing about the dream she'd woken from had been the kangaroo. The way it just stood in her path and stared at her. Not aggressively or anything. It was almost as if it was trying to talk to her, to tell her something important. Then it had just turned around and hopped off into the bush. Sally had carried on walking and then woken up.
She'd never seen a kangaroo in real life. Certainly not since she'd been in australia. It was possible she'd seen one in a zoo when she was a child, but she had no particular memory of it. So, in a way, it was all the more unusual that she'd been dreaming about one now.
Sally didn't often remember dreams, but this one was as clear in her memory as if it had happened in real life. And it left a strong impression that there was something really important about it something she couldn't quite grasp. She lay there, listening to the birds and wondering what it was all about.
"You used to squat in London, didn't you?" Zara asked, as Sally put a pot of rice on to cook for breakfast. She had trouble lighting the one working burner of the bottled gas cooker, using the spark from a long-empty disposable lighter to ignite the flame.
"Yeah, we squatted for a few yers before we came here."
"Do you want to talk about it a bit on tape?" Zara asked. "I'm going to do a program on squatting for the radio station today."
"Oh, i dunno, i'm not very good at that sort of thing..." Sally replied, still trying to get the gas to stay alight. "You reckon we're out of gas?" she asked, giving up the struggle.
"Could be. It's been a couple of weeks since we filled it up last. Don't worry about it, i'm going to light a fire under the bath, you can cook on that when it's going."
*-*-* "Hi Julie! Haven't seen you for a few days!" Sally said, sitting down at the table Julie was at. The Starlight was almost empty that afternoon. There was only Julie, sitting with a couple of people Sally didn't know, and two other people at a table down the end.
"G'day. How're you going?" Julie shifted along the seat to make room for Sally. "I've been out of town for a couple of days. This is Ali and Liz, they live at Happy Christmas and they're over here visiting for a couple of days."
"Where?" Sally was confused by the name of the place they came from. She thought she hadn't heard it right.
"Happy Christmas." Ali said, smiling. "It's a community out west of here." She picked up a packet of rolling tobacco from the table in front of her and began to roll a cigarette.
"That's what i thought you said!" Sally replied. "It's a weird name."
Ali just shrugged and carried on rolling her cigarette. She'd obviously had a lot of practice at it, and made the most perfectly round and even rolly Sally had ever seen.
"You should come for a visit." Liz said, looking at Sally intently, as if she was thoroughly sussing her out. "It's a pretty amazing place!"
"Oh, i want to stay here for a while." Sally answered. "I haven't been here very long." She stood up. "Anyone want a coffee or anything?" They all shook their heads.
"So what have you been up to?" Julie asked, when Sally sat down again. "I hear Anton's gone to Sydney."
"Yeah, that's right. How did you know?"
"Somebody told me." Julie replied casually. ""With Muz, eh?" she grinned and gave Sally a knowing look.
Sally felt herself going red, but managed to cover it up and get it under control by drinking a mouthful of coffee.
"I haven't been doing much really." she told Julie. "Just sitting around listening to the rain and looking at the trees. You know, the usual. Just relaxing and getting used to being here!"
"We're going to get a goonie and go and get pissed in the park." Julie said. "Wanta come along and have a drink?"
"Uh... well," Sally frowned. "Iwas supposed to be doing some radio stuff with Zara. But... yeah, might as well!"
*-*-*
"Fruity Lexia, i reckon." Julie said picking up a cardboard wine cask. "Dont you?"
"Yeah, something classy, eh?" Ali answered sarcastically. "Anything's better than port!"
"Don't worry, we'll get a flagon of that next!" Liz nudged her. Just to keep you happy!"
They all walked to the counter of the bottle shop.
"And let's get some tailors, eh? I'm sick of smoking rollies!"
"And some chocolate. Look, this stuff's vegan!"
"Are you sure? It doesn't look vegan."
"Yeah, i've seen the box. It's definitely OK. let's have a couple of them, eh?"
The four of them walked out onto the street and headed for the park.
"There should be a few people down there today." Julie said. "It's Alien's cheque day. And Astro's too. Everyone'll be trying to get pissed on their dole cheques. It's always the same!"
All the drinkers were sitting in their usual spot, under the shelter in the park. Alien looked really well pissed. He could barely sit upright. And Astro obviously wasn't far behind him. There were about half a dozen others there too, all in similar states of outofitness. They'd obviously been hard at it all morning and none of them looked like they were thinking of stopping in the near future. The ones that could still talk said hello the the four women when they sat down at the table. The others just stared blankly at them, or eyed up the goonie hungrily.
"I'm collecting ear wax..." Astro was saying to a woman with glazed eyes and a bourbon bottle in her hand. "...i'm going to make candles out of it and sell them. It should catch on big, i reckon. Totally politically sound products. So if you want to start saving yours, i'll pay you a dollar a kilo for it..."
Julie made a face at Sally and they both laughed. Liz and Ali smiled.
They were a bit strange, Sally thought. A bit distant, but definitely all there at the same time. It was almost as if their minds were in two places at once. There was a certain manner to them that Sally had never really noticed in anyone else before. It was a sort of calm, down toearth feeling, but it didn't seem to stop them having a good sense of humour. She got the impresssion it was something to do with the place they'd come from.
"Tell us a bit more about where you live." she said to Ali, who was sitting next to her at the end of the table. She was being vaguely harrassed, in a friendly sort of way, by a drunken lunatic whose alcohol-warped mind seemed to be deluding him that he might get a fuck out of it, and Sally thought she ought to save her.
"Well, it's quite a big place." Ali began, grateful for the opportunity to completely ignore the idiot. "There's about ten thousand acres of tree-covered bush, with rivers and creeks and hills and valleys. The land is collectively owned and there are about half a dozen different villages there, with a couple of hundred people on the place altogether.
"It's a pretty good set up really, everyone lives basically the way they want. Some of the villages are nomadic, they wander all round the place, living off the land and not really leaving much of an indication they've been there after they've gone. And the rest are pretty well fixed in position. Although there's a rule that there isn't any permanent structures built there. No cement or bricks or tin. Most people's homes are small and built from materials that grow around the place. We never cut down trees, so any wood that's used has to either be already dead or to have fallen off the tree of its own accord."
"That's pretty unusual, isn't it?" Sally asked, intrigued by the picture Ali was painting. She'd never heard anything like it before.
"Yeah, it's totally different to anywhere else i've ever been."
"Why no cement and bricks and all that stuff?"
"Well, the basic idea in everybody's head is to do as little damage to the land as possible. And that doesn't only mean the land around there either. Cement comes from ripping great big hole out of the ground to dig the stuff up. Like, did you hear about Mount Etna?" Sally shook her head. "Well, it was this mountain in central queensland, where there were all these cave which were the only place in the world where Ghost Bats lived. These arseholes decided that the mountain would look better packaged up as bags of cement and that the Ghost Bats could get fucked. A lot of people went up there to try and stop them, but they blew it sky high anyway. Now an important piece of the land has been destroyed forever and the Ghost Bat is extinct. That's a good enough reason for me not to use cement!"
"Yeah." Sally nodded, "I see what you mean."
"And bricks and tin are basicaly the same thing. We don't want to do anything we don't have to that contributes to the destruction of the planet."
"What about food and stuff?" Sally asked, "how do you deal with the environmental damage done by food production?"
"Well, that's a tricky one. And the answer varies from village to village. There are people who live as closely as possible to traditional aboriginal ways of living. Hunting and gathering mainly. But of course it's not possible for everyone to live like that there, even if they all wanted to, which they don't."
"Why not?"
"Because that area of land couldn't really support that many people living off it in tht way for too long. All the animals would be killed and all the food plants would be exhausted. Ten thousand acres sounds like a lot, but in that part of the country it won't support that many people.
"So most of us live off a combination of cultivated food and bush food. There's an area which was already cleared when we got the place and we've re-forested part of it. But the rest we use for cultivating different foods. As well as that, we've planted a lot of local native food plants around in the bush, which not only provide food, but help with the regeneration of the bush. Dairy products are relly discouraged, as cows do so much damage to the land in this country. And there's no way we'll allow people to keep hoofed animals in the place. But some people still insist on buying milk and cheese and things, and that's ok, i suppose, as it's only a minority of people that want to. But the rest of us use a form of milk that we make from a mixture of soya beans and native nuts, like macadamias and bunyas. It's a really beautiful tasting drink and incredibly good for you too!
"So somehow, we're trying to find that balance between supporting such a dense population and maintaining the bush in its natural state. It's not so simple as it sounds, but we're slowly getting the hang of it. And we're the first people in this country to do it, as far as we know, so we're hoping others will look at what we're doing and follow suit. It's the only way the australian bush is going to survive - and maybe that applies to the rest of the world too. Whatever way you look at it, anyway, if you really want to save the forests you've got to live in them - so the people who don't want to can live in the cleared areas. It's no good trying to make them feel the way you do, it'll take centuries and then it'll be too late!"
*-*-*
"Bin on the piss, have you?" Phil laughed as Sally fell up the steps to the house.
"Uh... Just a mouthful of wine and a drop of port!" Sally gave him a crooked smile and fell on him, putting her arms round her neck to support herself. "We can't go on meeting like this!" she said and kissed him sloppily on the lips. Then she regained her balance and stumbled inside. Phil sat down on a rickety old chair that was on the balcony.
"Phil?" A few moments later, Sally emerged from the doorway again. "Do you think Anton's alright?" She sat down on a chair next to him.
"What do you mean?"
"You know, in Sydney. Do you think he'll be alright?"
"Yeah, of course. He's old enough to look after himselr, innit?" Phil smiled at the serious expression on Sally's face. "I'm sure he's having fun and enjoying himself!"
"That's what i'm worried about!" Sally laughed and then frowned "It's the heroin that bothers me."
"Well, you know, it's no good worrying about that. It won't do him any good and it won't do you any good. You just have to accept it and let him get on with it. I've never known a junkie who wasn't pushed closer to the drug by other people hassling them and worrying about them. Me included!" He'll survive. And if he doesn't there's nothing you can do about it anyway. Just offer him your support and leave it at that. Or fuck him off completely..."
Phil broke off and moved closer to Sally, who was crying quietly now. He put his arm around her and said: "It aint that bad mate. He'll be ok."
"My last boyfriend died of a smack overdose!" Sally sobbed. "And you're trying to tell me it's alright. It's not alright, it's fucking sick and it scares me. I found him dead. I'll never forget it..."
Phil was a bit shocked by this. He suddenly had a very different view of Sally. Up till then, he'd thought of her as a bit boring and straight - mainly, he now realized, due to her attitude to smack. But now he understood why she felt like that about it, and suddenly he saw her from another perspective.
"Really? I'm sorry about that. It must have been really bad. A few of my friends have o.d.'ed, but i've never been the one that found them luckily. It's still fucked though, eh?"
"I've never really got over it." Sally said quietly, leaning against Phil, glad of the comfort. "And i couldn't stand it happening again. I nearly went crazy for a while last time. Next time i'd end up in a nut house, i know it."
"It won't happen..." Phil said, trying to be reassuring. "not to Anton." He wasn't as sure as he sounded. He knew it could easily happen to anyone, even the most careful of users. The odds against dying from an overdose were good, but still lots of people did. Specially in the city. Up here the quality was much more stable, but in Sydney you didn't really know what you were getting half the time. Sometimes you'd barely get stined on fifty dollars, other time, very rarely, you could drop on twenty five. But as long as you were careful and didn't use on your own too much, the odds of dying weren't very high really.
In some ways, the risk to your health from the shit that smack is cut with is greater than the risk of o.d.'ing. That and not eating properly. All these would be eliminated, or at least reduced if it was leagalized. Almost every death from heroin is the fault of the government, Phil thought, because it was due directly to it being illegal. In pure form, with known strength, heroin was almost certainly less dangerous to your health than alcohol. But because it's illegal, users die every day.
But then the government doesn't give a fuck - nor does society, thanks to the media. Junkies are classed as scum, as people not worthy of life anyway. The government, the media and the police take away their humanity and back them into a corner where the only escape is more heroin. And an ignorant, irrational and self-centred society accepts it without question. Although if you really examined people's reasons for hating junkies, you'd find they knew nothing at all about the reality. It's just based on stereotypes - the lies that the papers and television feeds them. Not unlike racism really.
Phil wanted to say all this to Sally, but it seemed completely inappropriate and almost unrelated to what she was feeling. So he kept his mouth shut.
"Tell me about your friend who died." he said instead.
"We were together for a couple of years..." Sally said, feeling a bit better for talking about it. "He was always trying to kick the habit. And he'd always get really depressed when he failed. It was so frustrating watching it. He'd go through these cycles of wanting to give up and being unhappy because he was using. Then giving up for a week or so and going through all the pain of drying out. Then it would start again. Slowly at first, just every few days. And then every day. At that point, he'd get so depressed because he'd failed to give up that he'd have a really heavy binge for a few weeks, which of course would get his tolerance back up high so he needed more anyway. It used to drive me crazy. That's the worst thing about smack, it's so addictive."
"Hmmm. I'm not so sure about that theory really. That's what they always say, but i don't believe it's any more true than alcohol and cigarettes. When did you ever know anyone who had one drink and then never drank again? Everyone starts and then carries on all their life usually - or maybe gives up eventually with a bit of a struggle! The difference with alcohol is you never really have that pressure to stop, like you do with smack. So you never do stop. And you never find out how addicted you are to a drug till you try and stop.
"I know someone who tried to stop after fifteen years of 'normal' drinking - you know, getting pissed every night. He was amazed to find he couldn't, the physical withdrawal was so bad he couldn't handle it for more that a couple of days! It wasn't until then that he realized he'd been pissed every day for fifteen years and it wasn't surprising he was addicted. Most drinkers are like that - there's millions of them and they never even think about stopping.
"But with smack, the pressures of cost and persecution make people much more aware of their addiction. They try to stop much more often and, of course, fail much more often. You look at smokers for instance. Since it's become less and less acceptable to smoke cigarettes, more and more people have tried to stop - and they almost always fail. All drugs are the same."
"Yeah, maybe, but cigarette overdoses don't kill you!"
"Want a bet? Look at how many people die from lung cancer and heart disease caused by tobacco - millions more that die from junk. And alcohol too. It kills millions of people every year, a lot of them from alcohol poisoning - another name for overdose!@"
"Yeah, i know all that!" Sally answered a bit impatiently. "But it doesn't alter the fact that someone i was very close to died from junk. I can't help feeling bad about it."
The junkies around here are incredible! she thought. They've all got these long, well thought out rationalizations about heroin. And the just love preaching them to you! She couldn't disagree with what Phil said - or Julie - but something about the way they said it irritated her intensely. She almost felt they should have something better to do with their time than sit around working out ways of justifying their drug use. And they all seemed so fucking happy to be junkies! They didn't seem to suffer from the feeling of being 'victims' that most other heroin users she'd met had. They were so bloody self-righteous it was sickening. But she couldn't help the sneaking feeling that if Tony'd had that mentality he wouldn't be dead now...
"But if he drowned, you wouldn't hate the ocean, would you?" Phil said. "Have you ever tried heroin?"
"Yeah, a couple of times. But i never really got into it. I hate needles for a start. And i didn't want it to do to me what i saw it doing to people all around me, i suppose. Then, after Tony died, there's no way i'd ever touch it again, now. I just couldn't..."
"You know what they say about having an accident in a car. The best thing to do is get straight back in and start driving, otherwise the fear will be too strong." Phil said. Sally gave him a funny look. "I'm not saying you should get into smack, but i think everything in life should be faced up to. Head on, if necessary. Fear is the thing that fucks most people's lives. And conq1uering that fear is the only way to survive and be able to enjoy life."
"I don't even want to think about using smack!" Sally said emphatically. "Not in a million years!"
"Yeah, well, that's not the only answer. But you're afraid of it and you should try and get rid of that fear. Respect is ok. That's different. Respect for the dangers and the bad aspects of the drug. That might prevent you from taking it. But fear should never stop you doing anything. It rots your mind."
"What, like smack's rotted yours, you mean?" Sally laughed.
Phil frowned at first, then smiled. "Yeah, i suppose so!" He shrugged, laughing.
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