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  ‘What are we?’ he said, gesturing at her sunglasses, smirking. ‘The mafia? You going to leave a bird’s head in my tent?’

  She could feel heat spread across her throat; she was still catching her breath from her jog. ‘There is no way you’d ever get me anywhere near your tent,’ she said. ‘No way.’ She pushed her sunglasses up onto the top of her head, and there was a sharp pang of strain behind her eyes again.

  Tim laughed. ‘Alright, Goldilocks, calm down. It was only a joke.’

  She hated it when he called her that. Not too cold, not too hot, everything just right.

  ‘Can you simply get ready for work?’ she asked.

  He winked at her.

  She turned away and walked towards her camp. It’s just a joke, it’s just a joke, it’s justajoke. To her, none of this was a joke.

  She recalled a conversation she’d overheard in the faculty common room as she stood outside in the cool hallway of the biology building, a couple of weeks after she’d returned to work from her enforced break. Or, not enforced, according to Rod, but strongly recommended.

  She’d recognised Rod’s voice as she went to open the door. ‘How do you reckon she is?’ he asked.

  ‘Alright, I suppose. It hasn’t been very long.’ That was Tim.

  ‘Yeah,’ Rod agreed. ‘And who could blame her, you know, after what happened to her mother.’

  Does everyone know? she wondered, feeling a little sick.

  ‘She always wants things just so,’ Rod added.

  She heard no reply from Tim.

  ‘Though,’ Rod continued, ‘you have to be physically robust for fieldwork. Sometimes I’m not sure that women have it in them. It’s like this PhD student I had in my office the other day, bawling her eyes out, you know the one: Milly or Molly or something. I mean, we’re biologists, we know you can’t get around biological makeup and it’s just a fact that women, on average, have less physical capacity than men.’

  ‘I don’t know if that’s entirely fair,’ Tim said, unconvincingly.

  ‘Have you seen how she’s always tugging at her hair? I didn’t notice it before she came back. Always pick, pick, picking.’

  She had walked away at that point. Back down the hall, abandoning her lunch. She didn’t attempt to retrieve it for the rest of the day, just let her stomach rumble. Rod. She remembered being taken aback by her rage, her sense of betrayal. He’d always seemed so professional, so polite. Men were different behind closed doors, when they were only in each other’s company; she’d realised that long ago. It was exhausting to have been proved right yet again.

  When Tim had returned to the lab later on, he was sheepish, rattled. As though he’d known she’d been there outside the door and heard everything. She’d kept her focus on the computer monitor in front of her, spared them both the eye contact.

  Once back at her tent she changed out of her running gear. Filled the wash bucket with water and felt it raise goosebumps across her bare skin. As she was rubbing her hair in a towel, a wattlebird darted past and landed on a nearby branch. It watched her, then opened its throat and let out a guttural call. The bush was loud; sometimes it was all she could do to tune the sounds out, to make herself focus. Lately, she had been scattered, jumpy.

  ‘You’re a perpetually dissatisfied person,’ her sister had told her the last time she’d seen her. Almost two years ago now. It had stung; her eyes had watered when Caro had said it, as though she’d been punched on the nose. Caro had always known how to make her feel her smallest.

  There was so much to be dissatisfied with in the world. Too much for one person to tackle. If anything, she thought of herself as perpetually overwhelmed – constantly aware of the needs of the earth and incapable of doing anything significant. Other people seemed able to create a divide in their minds between what was happening directly to them and what was happening to the planet around them. They were able to find happiness and enjoyment. It was isolating to feel as if she were the only one who could sense the impending doom. The cockatoos were one tiny thing she could contribute, and even then it wouldn’t be enough.

  ‘Knock, knock,’ Tim called, walking towards her camp. His voice sounded serious, given a few minutes ago he’d been laughing at her. ‘I’m not getting a reading on the flock.’

  In the last couple of days, they had noticed the birds had been spending a significant amount of time outside their habitat range. The radio transmitter signals were faint or non-existent on the receiver.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, still holding her towel, her wet hair messy and sticking to her face.

  They stood there, as the bush crackled, both trying not to show what they were thinking.

  ‘There’s not really any reason for concern,’ he said. ‘Is there?’

  She fingered the damp, downy fluff along the base of her hairline and gazed out into the tangled wilderness. She shrugged. It was too early to tell.

  They drove towards Boney Point to restock their groceries and – while they were there – try to triangulate the flock’s position.

  She held the receiver’s antenna out the window as Pearl Point Track turned into the main street.

  ‘Anything?’ Tim asked as they drew closer to town.

  ‘Nothing.’

  She leant further out, thinking about the new voicemail Caro had left that morning when she’d been running. Her sister had sounded exasperated. Can you just give me a call back when you get this? I know you don’t want to talk to me but I want to talk to you. Over the years, she had become good at pushing away the things she didn’t know how to deal with.

  ‘What’s our responsibility to the Sol Petroleum blokes?’ Tim asked. ‘Do we have to keep them in the loop at all?’

  She watched the clouds of dust kicked up by the Land Cruiser’s tyres swirl behind them in the wing mirror. Their relationship with the oil company still made her uncomfortable.

  A few months before they’d left for Boney Point, she, Tim and Rod had participated in a sort of ceremony to mark the beginning of their partnership with Sol Petroleum. Two of the company’s representatives had met them at the university. There was a journalist to take an official photo. This was once all the paperwork had gone through and the deal had already been sealed.

  ‘We’re here to get on the same page,’ Matt, the company’s public relations manager, had told them. ‘I take care of making sure our true personality is expressed.’

  ‘Your personality?’ she’d asked.

  Rod glared at her. Always pick, pick, picking. She’d known she should probably bite her tongue; all she could think about was the smell of brand-new men’s suits.

  ‘We’re quite an environmentally focused company,’ Matt said. ‘Mining often gets mistaken for having a very conservative outlook, but we like to think we have an eye on what’s best for all our interests.’

  ‘What kind of guarantees can you give us for our particular interests?’ she asked.

  ‘She’s a straight shooter, isn’t she?’ the other, older Sol Petroleum representative commented.

  ‘We welcome direct questions.’ Matt stared unswervingly at Arianna. ‘We appreciate it.’

  ‘I don’t think she has another way of doing things,’ Tim said.

  She had wondered why men always felt the need to speak as though she wasn’t in the room, as though her words needed translating.

  ‘Sol Petroleum is invested in making sure that we have a big-picture view of the earth and its resources,’ Matt said. ‘We want to be able to put back into the earth and into our communities, so we’re pretty excited to invest in this initiative with the black cockatoos.’

  ‘It is very exciting,’ Rod agreed.

  ‘Just think,’ Matt remarked, ‘together we might even save a species.’

  Tim caught her attention and widened his eyes. Don’t react.

  ‘I understand you will be out in the national park for the duration of the project,’ Matt said to her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll be
stationed at the Sol site for some of the time. We might even bump into each other.’

  ‘It’s a small town. But I doubt it. We’ll be working.’

  Matt’s colleague laughed and slapped her on the back.

  As the oil company men left, Rod turned to her and Tim. ‘That went well,’ he said. Neither of them replied, and he added, ‘You’re in their pocket now and you’ll have to be gracious about it.’

  She’d walked back to her office and opened her mouth in a silent scream. Sometimes I’m not sure if women have it in them.

  As they drove towards Boney Point, the Land Cruiser rattled over the rough road, and her arm holding the antenna out the window bumped up and down uncomfortably. She knew she was supposed to feel excited; this was her first time as project lead. You’re a perpetually dissatisfied person. She had impressed all through her studies, and her appointment to the University of Canberra had been at the expense of a mountain of deserving applicants. But it wasn’t enough.

  She understood that it wasn’t the talented people who achieved great things; it was the hard workers. For the last four years she’d had her head down, earnt a reputation for herself. Tenacious, some might have said with admiration had she been a man. Her glossy black cockatoo program wasn’t glamorous or even that urgent – they were threatened not endangered, not like the regent honeyeaters or the orange-bellied parrots – but it meant everything to her. Black cockatoos were her mother’s favourite birds. Sometimes you didn’t need something to be almost gone before you tried to save it.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ Tim asked. ‘What do you reckon about the Sol Petroleum blokes?’

  ‘I don’t think we need to update them.’

  He sucked on his teeth. ‘You’re right, that community meeting was only a couple of weeks ago.’

  It had actually been almost two months ago now – she understood how someone could lose track of time in the bush.

  As he steered the four-wheel drive, she thought about how her office at the university, the workplace politics, and the crush of city concrete all felt very far away. The houses began to grow closer together as they approached the centre of town. Spread-eagled yards and low fences bordered the main street as it curled around to meet the waters of the inlet, which then continued alongside the right-hand side of the road.

  Tim parked in front of the sardine-tin supermarket, where she spotted Earl getting out of his truck and walking over to them.

  Great. Another thing she hated about small towns – apart from conversations about the weather – was that you couldn’t even go to the supermarket without seeing the handful of people you knew.

  ‘It’s warming up,’ Tim said, getting out and shaking Earl’s hand. ‘I’m going to need to buy a fan and a generator to run it.’

  She climbed out, too; stood back while the men conversed. They were easy with each other. People always liked Tim. She turned towards Earl’s truck; there was a boy in the passenger seat, headphones on, staring at the screen of his phone.

  ‘How’s it going out at Fresh Water?’ Earl asked, looking straight at her.

  ‘Do you mean Murrungowar?’

  ‘Murrungowar’s a big place. More than 11,700 hectares. Where you are we call Fresh Water. It’s all fresh water up there. This water out here’s salt.’

  ‘We’re fine.’

  ‘You seen those trucks heading out your way?’ he asked.

  ‘Yep,’ Tim said.

  ‘Look, I know you’re tied up with those blokes, but I don’t see how your interests and their interests align.’

  Tim crossed his arms, turning to her. You want to take this one?

  ‘Sometimes you have to do a deal with the devil,’ she said, her tone more dismissive than she’d intended.

  Earl nodded. ‘I suppose that’s true.’

  She sneezed, pollen thick in her nostrils.

  ‘Bless you,’ Earl said. ‘When the wattle flowers, that’s when we know the swan eggs are ready. You had swan eggs before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Taste like crap to me, too rich. But our old folks like them. Anyway, I’m glad I ran into you both. We just spotted one of your cockatoos out along Wallangamba Road.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked.

  Tim had leant forward as well.

  ‘Yeah, it’s got coloured bands on its leg.’

  ‘Did you see the code on the leg bands?’ Tim asked.

  ‘We didn’t catch any numbers,’ he said. ‘But we didn’t check that closely. Just saw it in the dog tree when we drove past.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Bruce Holloway hangs all the wild dogs he shoots from the same tree. We call it the dog tree.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Tim said, softly.

  ‘It’s not far. I can show you.’

  She felt her stomach grow heavy. ‘You go,’ she told Tim. ‘I’ll get the supplies.’

  ‘You sure?’ He seemed surprised.

  She nodded, and he grabbed the receiver’s antenna from the four-wheel drive before climbing into the back of Earl’s truck. The boy in the front seat peered out at her. She’d met him before, she realised, out at the site when the birds had been delivered. She tried to recall his name, but then Earl turned the truck around and they were gone.

  She wasn’t prone to superstition, but she had a bad feeling.

  14

  INSIDE THE SUPERMARKET, she walked past the bored girl behind the register, who didn’t take her eyes from the television mounted to the upper corner of the wall behind her. Some sort of daytime talk show was playing.

  I do not want anything to do with you anymore, the young blonde woman on the screen said. You have changed me from the normal woman that I wanted to be, to being scared for my life, Eric.

  The checkout girl tutted sceptically as the in-studio crowd broke into applause. The man sitting across from the blonde woman stared at her without blinking. Arianna had seen that gaze before. You bald bitch. The blonde woman was trembling visibly; her eyes were wild and flicking towards the exits.

  ‘Do you have cable ties?’ she asked the girl behind the counter. Her tarp was in need of more securing now that the night winds were picking up.

  ‘Nup.’

  ‘Well, do you know where I could get some?’

  The girl heaved the big mass of her chest up in a protracted sigh. ‘Don’t know. Maybe the nursery.’

  ‘Kelsey, I need you in here,’ someone yelled from the room behind the counter.

  ‘There’s no hardware store?’

  ‘Not unless you want to drive to Cann River. Hey, where’s that guy that’s always with you?’ the girl asked her. ‘The real tall one.’

  She had a strange way of speaking. She lengthened her vowels too much in some cases but then cut them too short in others. Arianna had to concentrate hard to understand her.

  ‘Kelsey. There’s boxes all over the floor out here.’

  ‘Customer,’ Kelsey shouted before turning back to Arianna. ‘You leave him in the car?’

  ‘He’s working.’

  ‘Shame. He’s cute, that one. You should bring him with you next time.’

  For fuck’s sake.

  She moved away from the girl and wandered down the closest aisle, picking out canned and dried foods, shampoo, other things on her list. Tim had been coming into town to drink at the Boney Point Hotel every couple of nights recently. He’d invited her a few times but gave up after she’d always turned him down. As far as she was concerned, they were here to work, not socialise.

  Caro had met Tim once, at a faculty function about a year after Arianna’s appointment at the university.

  Her mother had been there, too. ‘Proud of you, pet,’ she kept saying.

  ‘What for? I haven’t done anything yet.’ She’d been anxious, watching her family move about and interact with her colleagues. She preferred to keep her personal and professional worlds separate.

  They’d got on well, Caro and Tim. When they’d finished talking, Caro took her aside.
‘What’s the deal with him?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s cute.’ Caro raised her eyebrows. ‘Are you, you know?’

  ‘What? No!’

  ‘Have you even had a boyfriend yet?’

  ‘Please don’t start, Caro.’

  ‘He said very nice things about you.’ Caro had looked over to where Tim was then standing, tipped her head to the side and let her gaze travel downwards.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re staring at his arse right now,’ she hissed at her sister.

  ‘I don’t know when you learnt to be such a prude.’ Caro laughed loudly.

  ‘I’m not a prude.’

  ‘You are, too.’

  She caught Rod glancing over at them; he narrowed his gaze slightly.

  This is why I like to keep my two worlds separate.

  By the time she emerged from the Boney Point supermarket, Tim was already waiting for her on the steps. He was biting the nail of his thumb, tearing it with his clenched teeth.

  ‘Did you see the cockatoo?’ she asked.

  He looked up and came over to her, taking a couple of bags from her arms. There was something changed about him. A bad feeling.

  ‘Well?’ she asked again as they carried the groceries towards the Land Cruiser.

  ‘There was nothing there. No bird.’

  She felt nervous then, anxiety creeping up the back of her neck. It wasn’t so much what he’d said, but the way he’d said it.

  Tim was serious on the drive back to camp. He focused on the road with a concentration she had rarely seen in him.

  ‘Why’d you get into this?’ he asked her as they turned off towards Murrungowar.

  Black Mountain loomed ahead of them like a shark’s tooth.

  ‘Into what?’

  He didn’t seem to hear her question, instead kept speaking. ‘I wanted to make a difference. Real save-the-world stuff.’

  She kept very still.

  ‘I grew up in WA,’ he continued. ‘Did I tell you that? Emu Point, right on the coast. I was about fifteen and some blokes from a couple years above me went out fishing and found a melon-headed whale. They’re those small ones that are always beaching themselves. Usually they swim in pods of about a hundred or so. This one was by itself, and they killed it. We found it on the beach later, all sliced up. They went around the school telling everyone what they’d done. They had photos, too.’