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CROCODILE CREEK

Valerie Parv

What did he really want from her?
After six years away, Keri returned to the vast Australian cattle station of Kinga Downs to study the dangerous giant crocodiles. She was happy to spend time with Robyn, a dear friend, but seeing the arrogant station owner, Ben Champion, was another matter.
Because of her long-past relationship with his ne'er-do-well brother, Ben had once labeled Keri a gold digger. Unfortunately, his opinion hadn't changed.
And then he came up with a startling proposition. One that made the threat of crocodiles seem mild in comparison.

For Paul and all the crocodiles

Was
she glad to be back? Keri Donovan let her gaze meander over the broad expanse of brown river as it wended its way through the paperbark swamps and flood plains. She searched for signs that the land had changed as much as she herself had, but found nothing. There was a world of difference between eighteen and twenty-four, but it was a mere speck in the aeons by which change was measured in the outback.

The spear grass which grew taller than a man had probably been burnt out a dozen times since she left, but its lushness gave no sign. Like the shapely lancewoods and Messmates crowding the water's edge, the grassland looked unchanged.

Across the river, a Jabiru skated over the surface of the water, building up sufficient speed to lift its heavy body and long legs into the air. Holding her breath, she willed the bird upwards, not releasing her breath until the Jabiru was safely airborne. It was a game she and Robyn had played as teenagers, as if their combined willpower could be transmitted to the struggling birds.

Above the drone of the mosquitoes came the whir and splash of the giant barramundi and the hoarse roar of a bull crocodile, a reminder that the Top End of Australia held its terrors as well as wonders. In spite of that, she was glad to be back. How could she
have thought she could be happy living in a city, even Darwin?

Rolling the sleeves of her khaki shirt up above her elbows, she slathered mosquito repellent on to her arms. It hadn't taken long for her suntan to deepen, she noticed. What other changes could be taking place in her? She leaned out across the billabong and sought her reflection in the dark water, keeping her balance with a hand clamped around an outward- leaning tree trunk.

Staring back at her was an oval-shaped and strangely piquant face which looked greenish in reflection, where her usual skin tone was golden and glowing. The green tint made her look ethereal, an effect which was heightened by the halo of honey- coloured hair fluffing out around her head.

Foolishly aware of what she was doing, she smiled and the reflection smiled back. The effect was a startling mix of teenager and temptress, hardly the effect she wanted. She pulled back and shook out her hair, combing it with splayed fingers. It was just as well that there was no one around to see her. Smiling at her reflection, indeed!

But she
was
under observation, she realised as she felt a warning prickle between her shoulder blades. She spun around. 'Who's there?'

The swamp grass parted and a tall, wiry black man emerged. He was dressed in the khaki and denim near-uniform of a stockman. His teeth flashed whitely in his dark face. 'G'day, miss.'

'Good day. You startled me. I didn't know anyone was around.'

He held out a hand to her. 'It's me, Nugget, Miss Keri. You don't remember me, do you?'

Her brows came together as she concentrated then her smile widened. 'Nugget! Of course. It's good to see you again. Are you still at Kinga Downs? What brings you to Casuarina?'

Her barrage of questions finally halted and he looked at the ground, shy in the face of her enthusiasm. 'I've been head stockman on Casuarina a long time. Since you left Kinga Downs I've been hoping you'd come back.'

Nugget had been a staunch friend when she was a regular visitor to Kinga Downs, the centre of the Champion cattle empire. Now he was head stockman at the outstation, Casuarina. She was pleased to see he had done
so well.
He had taught her much about bush lore and influenced her choice of career. As a teenager, he had been gangly with hands and feet seemingly too large for his wiry body. Now he had reached full manhood and he stood proud and tall, a modern man in his western clothes but still with the mysterious aura of the Stone Country about him. 'I've been away studying,' she explained. 'I'm a ranger now.'

He inspected her uniform. 'So I see. You're a proper-good ranger, too, I'll bet.'

She laughed. 'You always took my side, Nugget.'

'You needed somebody. You were so lost in the bush. But not any more, huh?'

'I hope not. I've learned a lot since I went away.' She perched on a lightning-blasted tree stump and crossed a slim ankle over her knee. 'What brings you
out
here, Nugget? Chasing stray stock?'

He pushed his bush hat far back on to his head and scratched his forehead. 'We've been losing cattle for days. I'm betting a big kinga took 'em.'

'Big kinga?' she wondered aloud. 'You think a crocodile took your strays?'

He gestured towards the- river, innocently quiescent under its blanket of waterlilies. 'You bet. There's maybe two big crocs in there. No good to swim. No room.'

To the native stockmen, 'no room' meant that the crocodiles had first claim to the waterhole. Knowing what the huge saurians could do to anyone who invaded their territory, she was happy to give them all the room they needed. 'I think you're right about two big crocs living in there.' She gestured towards the waterhole. 'They're the reason I'm here, to survey them for the Conservation Commission.'

His eyes widened at the endless kinds of craziness her people exhibited in this timeless land. 'You got a gun?' he demanded.

She shook her head, 'I won't need one. I'm here to observe and take photographs. I won't be doing any shooting.'

'Maybe I'd better stick around,' he said solemnly.

This was the last thing she wanted. Nugget Malone was one of Ben Champion's most valued and trusted men. His absence would bring questions and she didn't want it generally known that she was back. Robyn Champion knew she was here. It was for her sake that Keri had agreed to come. And because Robyn had assured her that Rick was safely married by now. Just thinking of Rick Champion chilled her blood. Not for any of the Champion men would she have returned to the scene of so many bitter memories.

The stockman's eyes on her brought her out of her reverie. 'Don't worry about me,' she assured him. 'My camp's up there on the high ground.'

He looked approving when she showed how she had made her camp more than sixty feet above the high-water mark, well clear of the mud slides made by the giant crocodiles. Her supplies swung from a tree, out of reach of wandering buffalos. 'You haven't forgotten what I taught you,' he said, his gravelly voice echoing his pleasure. Then he frowned. 'Still, you'd be safer staying at the homestead. There's too many dingo, buffalo, snake and crocodile in this place.'

She held up her hands. 'Stop, please, before you have me heading for the homestead in fright. I've
taken plenty of precautions
.
I
have flares, safety equipment and I'm in radio contact with my group.'

Pulling aside the flap of her tent, she revealed a stretcher festooned with gear. In her vehicle was the radio which kept her in touch with the other members of the Crocodile Task Force in this region. Added to which, her training and field experience protected her, provided she didn't take any stupid chances. Unless she counted leaning out over a crocodile-infested waterway to admire her reflection, she thought ruefully. She hoped Nugget hadn't seen that.

'OK,' he conceded. 'I'll head off. But I'll come back tomorrow to make sure you're all right.'

'Very well.' She knew that he wouldn't be put off by her arguments. As he turned to leave, she noticed his bush horse tethered to a tree in a clearing and she touched his arm. 'You won't tell anyone you've seen me, will you?'

His expression was one of disgust, as if she had no need even to ask. 'My family know you're here. They told me,' he explained. 'The Boss maybe find out but not from me.'

'Thanks. I appreciate it.'

He favoured her with a wide grin which revealed his sparkling white teeth then swung himself on to his horse and was soon swallowed up by the spear grass.

With a feeling of regret, she watched him go. It had been good to talk to him again, after spending the last couple of days on her own. The squawk of the radio was no substitute for face-to-face contact. And Nugget had always been special to her> instilling in her his own love for this wild land.

She let the tent flap fall from her fingers. It was as if Nugget had brought the past with him. She felt it crowding in on her, however much she tried to shut it out.

She had been sixteen when her family came to this area, over three hundred kilometres south-east of Darwin. Her father had been stationed here with the Aerial Medical Service, the former Flying Doctors. Steven Donovan, known as Doctor Donban by the aborigines, had wanted Keri to remain at school in Queensland, near her sister, Louise, but had given in to her pleas to come to the Top End, provided her studies didn't suffer. She had been so anxious for the chance that she studied even harder by correspondence and passed all her exams with flying colours.

Unable to fault her academic performance, her father had taken her with him on his far-flung medical Founds. On one of these trips, she first encountered the Champion family. Jake, the head of the clan, hadn't yet succumbed to the faulty heart valve which eventually claimed his life. Then, he was still King of the Outback, unusually tall in or out of the saddle, and honed to a formidable toughness by his years as a Northern Territory cattle baron.

His daughter, Robyn, had been the reason for Doctor Donovan's visit to the head station, Kinga Downs. Keri's first meeting with Robyn had come as a shock, despite her father's words of preparation during the flight.

'Robyn Champion suffered a brain-stem injury at birth which meant she was born with cerebral palsy. Her muscles don't always do what she wants them to do so her movements are often jerky and uncontrolled. But her brain isn't affected. She's intelligent and full of life. You'll like her.'

His words proved prophetic. Once Keri overcame her initial shock at seeing Robyn's pixie-like form in her special wheelchair, Keri became fascinated by the other girl's use of an alphabet board to communicate.

'Why can't you talk?' she asked with a teenager's typical directness.'

Instead of taking offence, Robyn had appreciated Keri's candour and spelled out laboriously on her board that her throat muscles didn't work well enough to enable her to speak.

'Then how do you manage to eat?' Keri asked curiously.

'Well enough,' came the spelled response, then the wheelchair rocked with Robyn's laughter as she rubbed her stomach. 'Don't want get fat,' she added on her board.

From then on, the two teenagers became fast friends. Keri flew out with her father at every opportunity and often stayed at Kinga Downs while he completed his rounds. With Keri acting as her voice, Robyn could participate in the School of the Air sessions and they soon became popular members of the scattered class, keeping in touch with the other students by radio.

Robyn's brother, Rick, was an occasional visitor to the lessons. The eldest in the family, he was twenty-two then, and Robyn explained that he was really her half-brother. Rick's natural father had died of a heart attack and his mother had married Jake Champion two years later.

Keri gained the impression that Rick resented not having been born a Champion, unlike Ben, whom she only saw from a distance since he was usually working around the property.

Robyn was the youngest of the three and told Keri through her alphabet board that she had never known her mother. 'She died when you were born?' Keri queried.

Robyn nodded jerkily and stabbed at her board. 'Mum died having me. My fault.'