All the Troopies had a good smattering of dirt and dust, but none are as glorious as my Troopie with its ochred women’s hand-prints plastered on it during the Women’s Law Camp. I got to the airstrip to find others standing here and there about the collection of cars – most of which were the ubiquitous white Troopies of remote Aboriginal communities and UN camps in the so-called “third-world”. I jumped up with my half-drunk second morning cup of tea, made a mad exchange of skirt (always worn on the Women’s Law Ground) for trousers (always worn out in the world) and hat (an essential), grabbed the car keys and muttered something to the women about “going to Mail Plane”. It was 10.30 and thus the Friday Mail Plane. Then we heard another plane in the murky redness. The pilot was trying to find the airstrip in the soupy red darkness. It flew around overhead, buzzing Balgo, five times.
Not once, not twice, not even three times. We listened to the plane circling overhead in the red dust. Radar could always hear the approaching helicopters before anyone else. Payi Payi’s keen hearing reminded me of Radar, the army clerk in “M.A.S.H” the anti-Vietnam War show of the 1960s and 70s. The sound of a twin-engine plane flying overhead. Then Payi Payi said “Wurra (wait), aeroplane!” I listened for the sound of the twirling propeller engines but could hear nothing. We sat on the verandah and had breakfast. The desert’s distances had retracted, shrinking the world.īarely able to see the houses of the community, we could have pretended we were somewhere on Mars. Even the trees in our own Women’s Law Ground had changed colour to match.
It seemed that the Earth had taken up residence where the Heavens should have been. The endless hot-blue sky had been exchanged for a thick broth of red desert sands. We woke this morning to a world that had turned upside down. Meeting the Mail Plane with all its Mail Bags
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