Darwin Steam

The conversation was lagging, again. She smiled awkwardly at her husband across the picnic table.

'Would you like to go for a walk?'

He shrugged indifferently and made a witty comment about the barramundi they were feasting on. The others laughed. Kara hesitated, then climbed over the bench and started strolling away. It felt good to have air on the backs of her legs, which were sticky with sweat. Soon the voices faded, left behind in the shadows of the glade. The corroboree was very interesting. Touristy, of course, but it was another aspect of Australian and Aboriginal culture she hadn't known about. So much newness, and the feel of Darwin excited the senses - steamy, tropical, more Asian than she'd expected.

She mused over the strange Aboriginal words as she strolled. They rolled on the tongue, another thing to process in this new country, along with their meanings. Çorroboree: a ritualised performance. Barramundi: a large and tasty fish.

She walked out onto a headland, looking out over the glistening water they had covered just a few hours before in a wide open boat they'd come over on.

The water was so blue, so inviting. It seemed impossible that a dangerous jellyfish made the ocean here unswimmable, right in the middle of summer. Thank goodness Sydney was not so hot, and you could swim there all year round.

The house they had just bought in Balmain flashed before her. It could all be so wonderful: the house, the dance group she had just joined, the lushness of Sydney's plants. If only, the bitter thought intruded, if only your marriage wasn't breaking up. Just a few hours before, her husband had made excuses to leave and make a not very secret call to his lover in Sydney. Professors screwing their students was nothing new, and in the wild days of the 1970s open marriage was almost de rigeur in their social set. And he hadn't taken it very well when she had initiated an affair of her own.

Forget it, let the sun in. She was perched on a rock contemplating how wild and dangerous it would be to strip off and dive into the sea. No one would be able to account for it. Would jelly fish with deadly tentacles get her? Or maybe sharks? The shiver of fear made her smile. The surface of the water, very quiet, glowed like machined steel.

But these dark thoughts couldn't hold her for long. At last, Kara rose, a twang of guilt calling her back to the rest of the group. It would be interesting to explore further, but she didn't know her way around this island, and weren't there wild boars in this part of the country that attacked people? Perhaps she'd better go back, and laugh politely at her clever husband's jokes.

Then, the corner of her eye caught movement, a tall man. Yes, it was that Norse god who'd been standing at the helm of the PT boat that had transported them here. What an extraordinary sight he had been. There was no inkling then of how powerful that first image would become, growing to become an icon, worshipped in her memory. At that moment, the power of his presence had fallen like a net, soundlessly around her.

He was at least six feet, blond hair streaming over a very red but handsome face, a leather vest tied with thongs, revealing well-muscled arms and a bare torso. One silly tattoo. And leather trousers - how warm they must have been.

Now he was wearing Stubbie shorts and ankle boots, just as she was. He still had no t-shirt on. He was definitely coming in her direction. She turned towards the sea again, ignoring the momentary increase in heart rate. She must have known it was caused by the subsconscious surge of panic and thrill.

'Good day' he said as he neared.

Turning, Kara registered that his voice was as Scandinavian as his appearance. She noted that he held a beer can in a Styrofoam holder.

'Hello' she replied, attempting to sound both polite and disinterested.

'Do you enjoy the corroboree?"

'Yes, I've never been to one before.'

'You come with the tourists?'

'What? Oh yes, we're traveling around in a bus.' His accent was so heavy, it was hard to follow him. 'You are from Sweden?'

'Nah", he answered disgustedly, 'I am from Denmark, that is the best country. And where do you come from?'

'Guess' she said, since every man Jack so far had picked her as a Yank.

'Guess? That one I do not know. Is it in the Northern Territory?'

Kara laughed lightly, realizing she was being unfair. 'No, I don't mean guess is a place, I meant, to take a guess. Anyway, I come from Sydney. But I'm not Australian. '

'No? You are English maybe?'

'No, I'm American. I've been in Sydney for a year. And how long have you been here?'

'Oh, I have been here eight months already. My friend Niels give me this good job.'

'Darwin certainly is an interesting city.'

'Sydney is a good place?'

'Yes, I like it now.' A certain sad hesitation in this.

'And you work in Sydney?'

'I'm a dancer.' She tried to suppress the pride she felt in announcing her occupation.

'Ah, you dance on your toes?' Was that a hint of derision in his voice?

'No, modern dancing.'

'Oh? What is that? Yeah, is good, to dance. Make you strong.

She was looking at the water and missed his quick but intense glance at her legs.

Attempting to change the subject she asked, with what she hoped was the same calm tone, with an effort to compensate for his English learning: 'Is it true that the water is dangerous because of the jellyfish?' It must be awful to not be able to swim in this heat.'

'Ah, we go swimming all the time. When I see the blue bottles, I just swim the other way.' His grin was overly confident.

'Really?'

'Yeah, but at night it is the best. The jelly fish are all sleeping. We go diving from the boats. Come, I show you.'

He was indicating the way down the headland, holding back a bit of bush. She hesitated, but he was smiling reassuringly. It would be nice to see a bit of the island, and with a guide it wouldn't be so forbidding. Anyway, the picnic table alternative was bound to be boring. She followed.

Down on the beach, he chucked his beer can into the scrub.

'Hey, you shouldn't do that. It'll be there for hundreds of years.'

'Nah, in this place, one year and it will be gone.'

'Maybe for steel cans that's true, but that's aluminum, and they don't break down.'

'Ah, you are silly.' The can stayed. This didn't sit well with her, but the observation was clouded by his physique and smile. How could she know that down the track, when they briefly lived together in Annandale, that silly would be one of the more polite names he called her.

'This boat is from World War Two. Neils, he bought it for $200. Now it carries tourists, before it carries soldiers.' He stated this as if there were a underlying philosophical implication. Kara smiled politely.

'Do you use this boat to go into town with?'

'Nah, I take the motor boat, very fast. We be in Darwin in 15 minutes.'

Darwin Steam Page 6

This was accompanied by a cutting motion of his arm, to indicate the speed of the motor boat. 'But I don't go into Darwin much.'

'You don't like it?'

'Yah, I like Darwin very much, but I get drunk every time, then I lose all my money, and fight with the Abos. So I stay here, and I get drunk anyway.'

'So you live here all the time?'

'I live just here, with my mates. It is just here, it is in the jungle. He obviously expected her to want to see it. In fact, 'jungle' was like a magic word to Kara. She'd never seen a jungle. Was it even more jungly than this? As they walked along a narrow dirt path, she wondered if poisonous spiders fell off the vines.

'Velcome to my house'. He was holding the door open. After the brightness of outdoors, it took a moment to adjust her eyes. It was a shack of the sort Australians called 'fibro', a slap dash series of panels. There was a smell of beer and cigarettes.

'See, I told you I live in a jungle.' He snapped off a piece of brilliant purple flower, whose branches were forcing their way through a chink in the walls. The net tightened very slightly as she touched the fragile petals. She didn't know then that for the rest of her life she would think of him when she saw bougainvillea.

An older man, perhaps in his later 30's, came into view. He was reclining with a plastered leg propped up on a chair. The Dane spoke to him, getting each of them a beer. He offered Kara one, but she declined.

He closed the door on the ailing friend, leading them into a smaller side room. 'He is named John. My name is John also. We are all called John here.' He said it like an apology, but his smile was wide and very happy.

Suddenly he reached around her and pushed her backwards onto a narrow cot. He was perhaps a bit rougher than necessary, and added to the surprise. Before she could close her astonished mouth, he was upon her, pressing his advantage. 'And what is your name?'

Only at that instant did Kara consciously grasp their meeting, the walk, her compliance. His chest was heavy, and his sunburn passed into her. She threw back her head and laughed, then answered matter of factly, 'John'.