Henrik's Shrebergarten

Opal sleeps underground. Long ago, silica flowed between the cracks of sandstone filling empty spaces. Poured into molds of shells and fish, hardened. Opal waits for light to kindle the colour in it; ignite the fire.

An oblique winter sun gilds the pyramids — thousands of mullock heaps surrounding the town. Danger Deep Shafts signs portray a medley of stick figures falling down holes. On the main street metallic folk art abounds — old mining machinery and hard rubbish transformed into robots, animals and extravagant entrance pieces. Here in the dry, stony desert, with searing hot summers, people work underground, live underground. Coober Pedy’s raison d'être is to wake the opal. For travellers on the Stuart Highway it’s a stopover with some quirky tourism on the side.

On the pub’s verandah leans an unnerving Leave Explosives Outside sign. Inside, I am monologued by Jack.

“When you hit a seam. You crack a fat,” he says.“You work slow then chipping the pitch; don't wanna hurt that big'un. And when the light strikes the fucking colour — Ooh God — well, you’ve just got to have a wank. `Scuse me.”

Next he starts badmouthing aboriginal people, but Bess working behind the bar overhears, flashes her eyes, stops his flow.

Jack wanders off, trailing words, “That’s Bess. She’s okay.‘“

Bess winks at me. ‘This place is a bloody dump. We never lived here. It's got no water.’

Drunken Jack is back. Invites me to join tomorrow’s explosion. “First stone we see is yours.” He's after a red one burning like his blood-shot eye.

Morning — awakened by a siren from Mine Fire and Rescue in the Oasis Caravan Park. Thank God — no Jack. Sparks of opal glint from the dust on the sides of the road. I put a few parings of green, red and orange to sleep in my pocket. The 'look-out' on a slight rise boasts an old office chair minus cushioning and an orange plastic one melted by heat placed about a cable drum. I can't help but pick more colour out of the bleached dust with my fingernails. Net a pearly shell, its ridges cast in opal, a glimmer of purple in one corner when I move it from side to side.

Following a dusty road I find Henrik's Shrebergarten, a plot fenced-off by posts, barbed wire and boulders. A ‘44’ in each corner crowned with rocks. Zebra stone arranged about a cactus, iron stone pebbles sown between. A pillar of gypsum like a giant's striated tooth. Even a well, hallucinated from mirrored sheets of mica circled by glass bottles and stones.

I picture Henrik digging the arenaceous dirt, searching for fire. How long did he strive? Yearning for the garden, here, where plants grew a while, shriveled and powdered, till he came to admire an arrangement of stones and ugly rocks. Added rusted topiary and planted cutlery. Sat on his bench, waiting for the desert pea to bloom in a year it rains.

The Stuart Highway continues north — giant shreds of truck tyres imitating snakes, goannas and perenties — dark, coiled shadows awaiting metamorphosis. Now and again a line of river red gums, fat and gnarled, tracing the edge of a what would be a river when the rains come. Wedge-tailed eagles evolved to a highway life-style, feed on road kill — the victims of the hissing and roaring, smoke-belching night dragons. A rare tall, slender whiter than white ghost gum, from time to time — turns my head in admiration. The soil reddens, the spinifix clumps, the generous sky blues.

Gibber desert —

one raven

mourns the dawn.

Julie Constable

© 2016