On The RoadTo Carie

IT WAS A wind-created hell in which the man who called himself Joe Fisher walked northward towards the small township of Carie, in the far west of New South Wales.

Somewhere west of Central Australia was born the gale of wind this day lifting high the sand from Sturt’s country-that desert of sand ranges lying along the north-eastern frontier of South Australia-to carry it eastward into New South Wales, across the Gutter of Australia, even to the Blue Mountains, and then into the distant Pacific.

Now and then the dark red-brown fog thinned sufficiently to reveal the sun as a huge orb of blood. That was when a trough passed between the waves of sand particles for ever rushing eastward. The wind was steady in its velocity. It was hot, too, but its heat constantly alternated, so that it was like standing before a continuously opened and closed oven door.

It was not always possible for Fisher to keep his eyes open. Although he could not see it, he knew he was crossing a wide, treeless plain supporting only low annual salt-bush. The track he was following could be seen, on the average, for about six yards. On his left ran a boundary-fence, wire-netted and barbed-topped-a fence which had caught a rampart of wind-quickened deadbuckbush, up and over which came charging like hunters the filigree balls of dead and brittle straw.

Quite abruptly, and without warning, a large touring car appeared in the red murk. It stopped at the precise moment that Fisher saw it, and from it the driver clambered, bringing with him a four-gallon petrol-tin.

“Good day-ee!” he shouted to the swagman.

“Let us hope we will have a good day tomorrow,” Fisher shouted back when he joined the driver. “How far are we from Carie?”

“ ’Bouteight miles. What a day to be on the tramp! I’d sooner be me than you. You aim to get to Carie today?”