Anne read of the barrenness in this man’s soul and the empty land in which he had travelled and felt a need to see it for herself, so as to help understand. It was now the start of September and after a month away discovering two people who lived in Europe and parts of a third who came from Scotland she felt a need to come home and be with David again.
In her mind Australia was now her home as David was there, even though all her roots and most of her possessions still remained in England. She needed to both spend time with him to replenish her own emptiness and also to travel and visit the places of which the diary told, the places to which Mark had travelled in his empty existences, so as to try and understand, to allow the telling of his story to merge with the places.
David found the time to take three weeks away from work. So they flew to Uluru and hired a car from there, retracing in part the journey that Susan and Mark had made, without trying to find all the back roads. They spent a night in Kings Canyon then on via Henbury Meteorite Crater and Chambers Pillar for a night in Arltunga before heading up to the Gulf via Heartbreak Hotel and Borroloola. They did not try and relive the trip of Mark and Susan but still seeing the places brought the words of Susan on tape and Mark in writing to life.
In Borroloola Vic met them and took them on a helicopter flight to give them a sense of the sort of country he had shown to Mark and Susan. From there the came back across to Top Springs from where after some hours talking of Mark and Susan with Michael Riley, then continued on to VRD station where they stayed the night with Buck in a stock camp and a half day out mustering cattle with the other stockmen. Anne rode an older quiet horse, she did not have Susan’s riding flair though David had been instructing her on their farm behind Sydney. David rode a spirited gelding which he handled with confidence.
Then it was on to Timber Creek where a boat owner took them on a night trip spotlighting crocodiles of the Victoria River giving them a sense of the silent power of these creatures.
They travelled on west towards Kununurra, accompanied by the local Timber Creek policeman. Just before they crossed from the Northern Territory into Western Australia they stopped and parked on the side of the highway at a small turnoff heading north. They then travelled in the police vehicle to the likely campsite of Mark with the shadow of J.
From here they walked the return trip from campsite to highway, following the twists and turns of this road in its winding course through the valleys and low hills. It was a clear dry September day, hot in the sun, but with a light breeze in their faces. For a while they walked side by side down the dusty track. Then Anne said. This does not feel real. It did not play out like this. Anne backtracked walking to the side of the road and retraced her steps trying to make out the footprints she had left in the dusty soil. She pointed them out to David and he agreed that it was a similar sign to what J may have made.
It was something but not enough reality. Anne said, “I need to imagine I am her with someone following. I need you stop for half an hour and then for you to try and follow me from my tracks. So sit still and wait for thirty minutes and then follow using only my footprints.
Anne walked ahead, rounding a curve between hills until she was out of sight. A hundred yards further on she stepped off the road and walked across to the side where the hill rose up. She found her way up between the rocky boulders and found a space between two boulders with a bush in front where she was hidden from view from the road but could survey the traffic below. She sat and waited with a nervous anticipation, wondering whether it was possible to hide from a follower. At last David came into view, moving slowly, regularly checking the ground as he came forward. At the point where she had left the road he went on for a few yards before stopping then coming back and retracing her last steps. She could see he was searching for the place where her steps had vanished. He cast around on both sides of the road in increasingly wider arcs until he finally found something who prompted him to walk towards her hillside. She could feel her heart pounding as he approached. He did not know where to look but she must have left enough clues to suggest she had come this way. Even though she was not being hunted she knew a moment of real fear before she stood up, called out and waved to him.
David had a look of relief on his face when he saw her and she felt her own delight in his smile. But now Anne finally had a sense she could try to tell a real story of the person known only as J, having lived a part of her last journey as the hunted prey pursued by the hunter Mark.
They returned to their car, thanked the Timber Creek policeman and went on their way, stopping for a night in Wyndham where they surveyed the crocodiles, mudflats and vast steamy ocean inlets.
From here the travelled on towards Derby and Broome, via Halls Creek with a side trip to Tunnel Creek and Windjana Gorge. Anne said she needed to travel part of the road of Belle and Mark so as to tell their story with her own sense of truth.
She and David had camped next to Tunnel Creek Cave and swam in the pool where Belle had first shown her body to this man and that night they had made love under the stars of a Kimberley night sky, and then talked of how it might have been for this other couple, whose story lived in their minds from the pages of a diary. It felt much closer to reality when experienced thus.
As they lay in night stillness the cry of hunting dingoes sprang out across the night air. There was a predatory sound to their music, they would hunt, kill and feast, that spoke to them of the many journeys of Mark in a way that no words ever could. And as their song passed out of hearing all that remained was the endless empty night in which has soul had travelled.
In that place she could see with his eyes to continue her story