Her Name on the Side of the Truck

White Woman’s Waterhole caught Anth’s eye on the map for its name first. Then for the thing that mattered more: it was one of the few free camps in that part of Victoria, and it would bring us closer to Melbourne. Torrin had another outpatient appointment coming, and every kilometre we gained that week was a kilometre less on the train.

That was the whole plan. Get a little nearer, and keep him with us while we could.

The State Forest camp was busy when we drove in, under cloud and fourteen degrees. We kept going to the far end and found a spot with a single neighbour, a big blue removal truck. By the time the bus was level the king parrots had found us. They were everywhere, the males red through the head and chest, their green wings almost dull beside it until they moved. They landed on the awning without ceremony and walked its edge, looking down at us, close enough that we could nearly have touched them. They had met people before. They seemed to have decided we would do.

Torrin strung up his hammock. He had not been in it since the last time he travelled with us, though after months on Te Araroa a tent suited him just as well. The hammock was a choice, not a need, and it was good to see him make it. It meant he was settling in.

When Anth and Torrin walked a loop of the camp, they came back past the blue truck and Anth stopped. Set up outside it, printing, was a 3D printer. Not a similar one. The very same model that rode around in the bus with us and had never found a permanent home there. Anth wandered over to say hello, and that was how we met Tok, an old fellow who travelled in the truck, and his greyhound, Patch. Tok was in the middle of a print that was giving him trouble. Anth offered to help, and Tok was genuinely grateful.

Back at camp, Torrin took on Sal’s bike. The replacement rear brake rotor we had collected in Bairnsdale was still waiting, and he fitted it without fuss. He had worked at Anaconda for a while, and fixing bikes had been part of the job. Sal had spent years making sure he was looked after. It was a strange, good thing to have it turned around.

He cooked, too. The Pomoly came out in the evenings, woodsmoke drifting under the trees, and Torrin, a chef since he was seventeen, took over the meals with the ease of someone in his own kitchen. We had missed his food more than we had let ourselves notice. Sitting by the fire with a plate of it, Sal did the arithmetic she had been avoiding. Canada was coming. There would be a last meal like this, and then a long stretch without one. She set the thought down, the way you set down a cup, and kept eating.

We filmed that week as well. Sal had a talking head video to make for Both Sides of the Couch, the YouTube channel for the counselling business, and the proper tripod was still waiting to be collected. So the camera went onto the little GorillaPod, its legs wrapped round whatever would hold them, and we moved from one corner of the camp to another looking for backdrops that worked.

We pulled the shower out, too. Anth had one, and so did Torrin, who had never used the setup at all. He came out of it suitably impressed.

And nearly every day, Tok came over. The printer had a new problem, or the old one back again. Anth helped every time, patiently, and between them they kept it going. In the end Tok took it back to the shop and came home with a new one. Then he turned up at the bus with a part for Anth’s printer, worth four hundred dollars, as a thank you. It was a generous gift for a machine Anth had always meant to sell once the list of bus parts was done. He thanked Tok properly.

Sal booked her flights that week. In the new year she would go to New Zealand with Grannie and Sophie, three generations of them together. Anth had walked the South Island with Torrin in autumn; this trip was hers, and he would stay behind. Another separation written into the calendar, but chosen this time, and looked forward to.

On our second last day Tok invited us over for darts. The game was Killer, and he had played it hundreds and hundreds of times on the road. Along the side of his truck was an honour board, and whoever won a game earned their name on it. The four of us threw in turn, the thud of each dart into the board, and it stayed close right to the end. Then Sal won. She wrote her name on the side of the truck, in among all the others, strangers from years of camps who had stood exactly where she stood and thrown the same game against the same man. That truck would carry her name on down roads we would never see, long after we had driven away.

The morning of Torrin’s appointment came. We said goodbye to Tok and Patch and pointed the bus toward Traralgon and the train. Torrin was still with us. For now, that was enough.Read more