The Nullarbor

In the sad dry shade the Aboriginal man sits, under the Victoria Bitter advert, old and peeling in the sun, and everything about him is heavy: matt-black skin and waves of excess flesh; thick dull hair and eyes cast down as though some invisible yet cumbersome force pulls forever on his gaze.

From the highway, then, a road train roars, and crows, scattered black in the pale blue sky, circle and return, scavengers, to the road, picking at the bits of kangaroo that are still of use; intestine perhaps, or lung. And the dead animal rots, and putrefies the air with a stench so thick you can taste it when you breathe.

Above the man, nailed over a window, a plywood sheet crumbles and flakes - the word 'CLOSED' scrawled across it in big black letters. And then, in smaller ones, 'NO FUEL. NO WATER. NO NOTHING.'

On the man's black skin, the light grey dust of concrete, old and dry and falling slowly down. The weight of the man fills all space it seems, even right angles, as water fills a glass. Perhaps only his efforts keep the wall from collapse. Perhaps that is why he is here.

Flies around him buzz, and around us too. They crawl over skin and settle, parasitic, to feed on the moisture in the corners of our eyes. We eat inside the van where at least there is an end to the attritional warfare with these tormenting flecks of little hell! Through the window I offer unseen and stupid, apologetic smiles. For the flies? Or the 19th century? Or the 20th? For the obesity that sags around his bones perhaps and anchors him to the ground.

A caravan pulls in, slows, surveys the scene. A closed pub. A boarded-up roadhouse falling into dust. Two sad old petrol pumps, their metal stripped of paint. A fat black man sat nowhere. Us. Tourists tricked into visiting this desolate, horrible place. The caravan pulls away without stopping, and soon we follow.

A bicycle bumps in potholes and out of the disused gas station and becomes tiny, one supposes, to the man we never spoke to if he tears his heavy eyes from the dull and dusty ground.