Chapter One.

 

  Binky heard the plane go over and cursed it, she knew exactly where it was from and where it was going. She also heard the engine cough but thought nothing of it as it was well known that old planes did that occasionally, a bit like old humans she thought.

  It was not until the second and third ‘cough cough’ came from the sky that she became concerned and began to scan the heavens for the light aircraft.

  She did not know that it was a GA-8 Airvan, one of two that the mining company owned, the other one being grounded due to lack of maintenance.

  Binky also did not know that the single engine was not getting enough fuel and soon would conk out completely. All she knew was that it needed to be watched in case of the unthinkable.

  A crash, and worse, a fire.

  Some years ago, there had been a fire, one that wiped out most of the properties across the ridge and further, almost to the mine. One that could not be repeated as the loss of wildlife alone would be devastating.

  She did actually care about the men in the plane and whilst the threat of a large bushfire loomed foremost in her mind, she could not help feeling worried for their safety also.

  Binky knew some of the men from the mine personally, as over the years she had cause to visit either on practical reasons, like being part of the rural fire brigade or personal reasons when contacted to assist an animal or reptile that had wandered into the open pit and become injured.

  She loved caring for the local animals and home for her was also a haven for so many birds, marsupials and yes, even snakes.

  But today her focus was on the grey shape that flitted across the sky, gradually descending to the tree line in her direction.

  She could not see any smoke from the engine, but the coughing became worse, with the inevitable splut-splut-splut when the thing died.

  Her back groaned as she climbed the ladder to the lookout next to the house and she made it with enough time to see the plane glide into the trees not far away. She heard the crash and waited for the crump! Sound as the fuel tank went up.

  But no further noise came from the bush, just the usual chatter from the birds and the rustle of the gum trees in the breeze.

  What to do now? She asked herself. Too old to go tramping about the bush on a hot day, Binky decided that she would raise the alarm and then tell Madge, yes, that was the best thing to do, so she rushed inside and picked up the phone and started dialling before a startled Madge could get up from her chair and ask what on earth was going on.

   Binky was eighty-four, she was born Elsie Joanne Binks (but just about everybody called her Binky), in 1941 in London during the blitz. Evacuated at age one month with her mother to the west country, she spent the first six years of her life in St Austell, Cornwall, a picturesque seaside village where she spent her formative years before moving back to London where her returned from war pilot father had begun to rebuild their destroyed house.

  This proved too hard due to massive shortages in materials, food and ability, as her father carried an injury that he never spoke about, but she could see was holding him back.

  So, in 1946 they became ‘ten-pound poms’ and emigrated to Australia on the Chifley government’s “populate or perish” program.

  Australia would profit from the influx of these at first displaced people and due to the hardship they endured for five years previously would thrive in the burgeoning communities of the great southern land.

  Binky grew into a typical Aussie kid and enjoyed the free and happy lifestyle of the time. She married a carpenter and settled down in the Sydney suburb of Balmain. Two children came along, both girls with the same happy outlook.

  They lived well and raised the girls and looked forward to retirement when cancer came calling and took her carpenter husband away in 1996.

  Devastated beyond belief, Binky retreated to the point that she could not cope with everyday life, and although her daughters tried hard, she did not have the energy to live on her own and sank into a deep depression.

  It was then that she met Madge, also a widow and also in a hard grieving process as her policeman husband had been killed in a car crash and taken so suddenly that she too couldn’t cope.

  Binky’s daughters persuaded her to join a support group for recently widowed women and her friendship with Madge grew from there.

  So, within a year, both ladies found themselves in a position to move away from suburban Sydney in an attempt to put the past away and start again. But both were not ordinary women and they decided to make things hard for themselves instead of easy. That would be the catalyst that drove the grief away, the need to succeed in a hard place would hopefully re-start their lives.

  Both of their houses sold quickly and they had a decent amount of money to purchase a property, one so far away that it caused some consternation with their daughters at first, especially as it was up in Queensland where it was hot and dangerous they were told.

  However, all doubts were cast aside when they visited the property near Charters Towers as to the ladies, it was a veritable paradise.

  Four hectares of bushland that featured tree-lined ridges and lush valleys all presided over from a large homestead set on a high point where you could see almost 30 kilometres in every direction on a clear day.

  Binky fell in love with it straight away and within a year had a thriving animal refuge and guest house that gave them a small income…enough to be comfortable. Both ladies looked like everyone’s image of grannies should be, they were cardigan-wearing coloured-hair pensioners that, whilst their eyesight was fading (horn-rimmed spectacles were the norm) they could still perform most household tasks and both enjoyed rude health despite their ongoing years.

  But within ten years of arriving, they received some neighbours whose practices were not in line with conservation nor friendship with locals. A large mining company had been granted a massive parcel of land to the west of the property to mine bauxite, a principal of aluminium and whilst the ladies could not see it, they knew it was there and growing at a steady rate.

  As to Madge, she was not the driver, but the willing passenger, Binky was in charge of most big decisions and Madge was just happy to be along for the ride and have company, being childless and without any other family to speak of, so when she charged in and started dialling the phone, the old lady knew that something was up and that Binky was indeed on it.

                                                                                   ~

 

  Moments earlier, inside the stricken Airvan, one of the two passengers felt his blood run cold when the engine stopped coughing and the propeller also stopped spinning. Michael Robson (most people just called him ‘Robson’ and did not bother with his Christian name) braced himself. He stuck his feet down into the footwell and gripped the seat harness with all of his strength. He realised that it may be futile as they were certainly going to crash and die, but he did it anyway. Next to him, the pilot, Mack Carter was frantically trying to get the engine re-started and at the same time steer the stricken aircraft away from large trees and rocks as they rapidly descended.

  He grabbed at switches and pulled levers, but it was to no avail and he turned to Robson and said, ‘this is it, we are going in, just hold on, just hold on.’

  The strangest thing that both men noticed as the plane came in was the silence. No screaming siren-like noise or a frantic roaring, just silence as the aeroplane sliced through the air toward a small opening in the trees that Mack skilfully guided them.

  The GA-8 Airvan was a fat little plane with a belly for cargo and space for predictably eight passengers and due to not being overloaded with anyone else but the two people up front was comparatively light when it met the earth.

  Mack held the nose up and allowed the wheels to be the first contact, one snapping off on jagged boulders instantly. But as the fuselage cleared most of the large rocks and ploughed into dirt and broken branches, allowing some of the gravitational forces to be absorbed, he thought it looked like they would skid to a stop eventually, well; at least before they got to the edge of the looming cliff up ahead.

  Robson felt every jolt right through to his spine as the ex-aeroplane bounced and skidded along, making one large deviation when it struck a boulder and slewed sideways for some metres before its momentum brought it back into a straight skid that seemed like it would never end.

  This was not true as the ground ran out and the wreck (as that was now what it certainly was) sailed over the edge of a steep embankment and bounced from tree to rock like a silver ball in a pinball machine, finally coming to rest with its twisted propeller sticking out over an even steeper cliff. The shoulder of both wings crumpled up against two stout trees that had most definitely saved them from flying again (something that the Airvan would now never do).

  After the noise of the crash, the instant quiet seemed wrong. The only noises were the slow ticking of the metal parts in the engine as they began their long cooling process and the constant sigh of the wind in the trees.

  Robson opened his eyes and dared himself to move. He firstly looked to the left at Mack and he could see that whilst he did not look injured, he was not moving at all except for the slow rise and fall of his chest, indicating that he still lived, but as Robson was not a doctor he could not tell how well or for how much longer.

  Looking straight ahead, he could not see much as the windscreen was smashed and covered with a large branch, bright green gum leaves poking through in some places.

  Robson looked to his right and was frozen with surprise as he looked straight into the eyes of a man who stood about ten feet from the plane. Completely naked, save for a thin rope-like belt that was stuffed with weapons and two dead goannas that hung lifelessly staring at the ground, the man just stared back with no expression on his face.

  ‘Hello there, ah…can you help us do you think?’ Asked Robson, but the man just stared back with no answer.

  Robson looked across to Mack and poked his arm, ‘Mack, wake up, we have to get out, there is some-one here and I think he can help, but…’ Robson spun around and looked back out of the right-hand window to see that the man was no longer there.

  ‘Great,’ he said to no-one in particular, ‘just great.’

  At that moment, Mack began to groan and this spurred Robson on, as he realised that he may be injured, but had not checked himself, now expecting to see blood and bone as he glanced down. But it seemed that apart from a sizeable bump on the head he was unscathed, thanks to the seat harness and a very large chunk of luck he thought.

  Mack groaned and said, ‘what the hell happened? Did we crash?’

  No shit Sherlock, thought Robson as he unbuckled his harness and moved across to the pilot. ‘Are you hurt at all? I seem to have escaped serious injury but it looks like your leg has been trapped there between the rudder pedal and the outside of the plane.’

  Mack looked down and saw his left leg from the shin down was encased in bright aluminium and when he tried to move it, pain shot up like an electric shock.

  ‘Shit, mate, I think it’s broken, can’t seem to get it free,’ Mack groaned.

  Robson could see this from his angle and decided to act. He quickly climbed out of the plane after kicking open his door and scrambled around to the pilot’s side. The aircraft was a mess, with most of the front end crumpled against the tree that had stopped them from plunging over the escarpment. He could smell fuel and a cold knife of fear pierced his belly when he thought that an explosion was imminent.

  Getting Mack out was the priority though and he tried to free the pilot’s door by tugging on the handle, but it would not budge. The top part was bent open a couple of inches, so he found a tree branch, jammed it in and levered down. The door sprang open with a crash and revealed the situation within.

  Mack’s leg was indeed broken with the foot twisted up at the wrong angle to his shin and a small trickle of blood was pooling on the floor. Robson used his branch again to lever up the aluminium frame that pinned his friend and instantly, two things happened.

  Mack screamed and the branch snapped, but not before he managed to grab the leg and pull it sideways, away from the bear trap that the side of the plane had become.

  Mack was now free and as soon as Robson bashed the release on his harness, fell from the cabin onto the dusty ground, still screaming in agony.

  Knowing that he had to get them away, Robson wasted no time in dragging the stricken pilot as far from the plane as he dared, all of the time keeping an eye out for the mysterious man who had not yet re-appeared.

  Mack groaned and gripped Robson’s arm, ‘please get the first aid kit from the back and most importantly, you have to isolate the fuel manually, before it all leaks out, we had a full tank and that’s a lot of gas to be spilling on a hot engine. If it goes up, even here, we will be toast.’

  ‘Ok, but where is the isolator?’

  ‘I can’t see it from here, it’s on the left side of the cockpit dash and as you look at it, a red handle, that you have to pull out to isolate the fuel can you see it?’ Robson squinted and scanned the controls, he saw the red handle and sprinted back to the wreck, pulling the handle without hesitation. He stepped back and could see that the dripping fuel had already slowed and that was a very good thing indeed.

  He located the first aid kit and returned to Mack who looked very relieved. ‘We are not out of the woods yet as one spark will still send her up, but I feel better for what you did.’

  ‘Yes, we should get your leg splinted and start to get further away, but not too far away if people are going to come looking mind you,’ replied Robson.

  Robson did the best job he could splinting and bandaging Mack’s leg and he thought that if the break was clean, he could survive with not too much blood loss as that seemed to have been from a sharp piece of aluminium that caught his leg and not the actual break. He also found some pain killers and whilst they were not morphine they might take the edge off; he took two himself as his head was still throbbing.

  Mack lay still for a while and seemed to be finding a way to deal with the pain when he slowly sat up and asked, ‘I think you need to try the radio and see if we can get out some kind of message, also try and locate the PLB and activate it if you can, I managed to squawk “mayday” a couple of times but don’t know if anybody heard me.’

  ‘Yes, good idea, I think we have about ten hours of daylight left and maybe somebody could get here by nightfall, say, did you see that man who came up to the plane just after the crash?’

  ‘No, what man, what do you mean, I have not seen anyone, I mean, who would be out here?’ Replied Mack with surprise.

  ‘He was a blackfella I think, but not one from town, he had, well he was fully native if you get my meaning, you know…not many clothes and was holding a spear. I only saw him for a brief moment but then he was gone.’

  ‘Bumps on the head can cause all sorts of illusions my friend, perhaps you were seeing things?’

  ‘Don’t know, but I will take help from anything, person or animal right now!’

  Robson returned to the plane, found the radio to be dead and decided that trying to fiddle with the battery and get it going would be too dangerous what with the possibility of sparks and set himself to finding the elusive PLB.

  After ten minutes of scrabbling about, he found the bright yellow personal locator beacon and thanked Mack for being smart enough to purchase one in the first place. He activated it and it responded with a sharp beep! Tucking it into his shirt he continued looking through the wreck for food and water and was rewarded with some sandwiches and a large bottle of water.

  Instead of going back to Mack he decided to have a look around and see exactly where they had ended up. He gasped when he realised that the plane was poking out over the edge of a great escarpment with a drop of about twenty metres below where the twisted propeller stuck out.

  The two trees that it had hit were also the only two for about a hundred metres in both directions so it was not wasted on Robson that they were very very lucky. He began scanning the sky for any sign of life, hoping that emergency authorities were at that moment gearing up or on the way.