CHAPTER ONE
Central Australia, October 1933
Like a mythical serpent from aboriginal dreamtime,The Ghan train slithered north through heat that shimmered over Australia’s arid heart. On the far horizon, which seemed to merge with the endless blue sky, the early afternoon shadows were beginning to creep over an almost featureless landscape, the monotony broken only by the occasional willie-willie that weaved and danced across the desert.
The train consisted of the locomotive engine, one car of seats for day/night passengers, a restaurant car, lounge car, two cars for first class passengers with sleepers, and at the back, two cars carrying freight and mail. It was journeying to Alice Springs at a pace barely fast enough to afford a breeze through the open windows. The train driver was proceeding cautiously as the tracks had been known to buckle in temperatures over one hundred and ten degrees Fahrenheit, derailing the train. This day’s blistering heat had reached nearly one hundred and fifteen degrees in the shade.
“Why are we slowing further down, mummy?” Arabella Fitzherbert pursed her pretty mouth petulantly. She was nineteen years old, but looked younger, especially in her nightgown as she sat on her bed in their first class compartment with her honey coloured hair falling over her shoulders. She hadn’t been able to wait until night fall to take off her dress, clinging petticoats, stockings and under garments in the privacy of their compartment and put on her loose nightdress.
Clarice strained to see what was up ahead.
“We appear to be coming into a small settlement, but from what I can see, it looks quite unsightly.”
A few moments later the train came to a jerky standstill at a platform made up of a pile of rail sleepers with a corrugated iron canopy. A sign, nailed to an upright post at a sad angle, read: “Marree; Population: 84 people and one billion flies”. Clarice grimaced when she read it, but she was thinking the folk that lived in the outback had a strange sense of humour.
There had been almost nothing to see for miles, but even so, the town aroused absolutely no excitement amongst the passengers on the train as a plume of steam cleared, giving them an uninterrupted view of the town. On the main street, little more than a dusty track, there was a two storey sandstone building with a balcony going around three sides known as The Great Northern Hotel, a post office alongside, a police station a bit further along, and three corrugated iron shops. In the distance, through the gusts of red dust, they could see a few fibro houses haphazardly placed amid a few scrawny trees. Clarice observed someone in uniform alight and exchange bags of mail with a man on the platform, but her attention was soon taken by aboriginals and dark skinned men in turbans who approached the train.
“Oh, my Lord,” Clarice said, recoiling from the window. “Will you look at those fearful beggars? We’re not getting off here. I don’t care what your father says.” She remembered her daughter’s state of undress as the curious onlookers outside strained to see in the windows.
“Cover up, Bella,” she said, clasping the sheet and lifting it to
