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  'True.' The last sentence is what Virginia expects from Maria. 'That's it, she doesn't share my art, but I don't choose that happiness. You disappear in the morass of the patriarchy, like one of those kids' games where you have to find Mickey in the picture.'

  Maria, long past her own menopause, listens to VeeDub's account of her ups and downs with sympathetic humour. She doesn't bother to point out that she has never seen the kids' game she's talking about.

  Virginia confesses, trying to understand herself. 'She says I get violent, in cycles. She says she sees it coming on. I get depressed, anxious, the darkness descends, then, she says, I let her have it. Not physical, I just get intimidating. Something inside starts to curdle. It feels like gastric juices gone awry, souring in my guts, right up my gullet so that I want to spew bile but I don't, I spill it in language. Dump it. Drop it. Like a hot pan of boiling fat. I am swearing at the same time, am furious that it has all got so out of control. I try to blame myself but that does no good whatsoever. Then I see her shivering in fear, spitting out defensive aggression like some lizard, crouched in the corner, threatened. I am not a violent person, Maria. I hardly know myself.'

  Maria smiles. 'So, what's wrong with the wine-tasting?'

  Virginia does not have to explain to Maria that Cybil is a sensualist. She recognises it as well as the fervour for art. Her passion is for politics. Maria can see their conflict with the clarity of one who is not involved, then, perversely takes the conversation to a different relationship situation.

  'If a rescuer is in a relationship with the rescuee…'

  'If the lesbian is a rescuer in a relationship with the rescued?' Virginia echoes and arches her heavy eyebrow with irony. 'The rescuer is killing herself. You get a mutual dependency situation where she has a stake in the other's illness.'

  Maria goes on, regardless of Virginia's analysis. 'And, at the same time, she can't get sick.'

  'But, she can get domineering. Or self-destructive,' Virginia puts in. 'Don't punish yourself.'

  Maria tears her chicken leg. Virginia swigs her mineral water. A toddler runs ahead of a mother pushing a pram hung with bulging plastic bags.

  'If the lesbian is working, preferably in one of the worthy fields, where she is paid, she can afford a partner, often a younger prettier one, who doesn't have to do anything except pursue hobbies of an artistic sort or a useless sort,' Maria says wistfully.

  This, for Maria and Virginia, is funny. They laugh.

  'Then they can be equal, as one is kept and the working one has an economic sort of power. The other one has emotional power.'

  'Sounds co-dependent,' Virginia implies Maria has lost her. 'I'm spending far too much time in town staying at Cybil's. I have to go out home and work.'

  Virginia, although she is not aware of it, reminds Maria of the good old days. The demo days. The roneoed rags put out with a lusty zeal to change the world. The dances. The music. The days when common purpose among women led to easy friendships.

  'Hey, the dance the other night was good fun. Should be more of those!' she enthuses, sadly.

  Virginia wants to give Maria something. Hope? 'Nevertheless, it's good to be us,' she says heartily. 'I wish you could see the work I'm doing. You are a woman who might appreciate it.'

  Maria lies and smiles beatifically, 'Some day, some day.'

  Virginia knows that with the obese state of her body now, Maria could not walk on the uneven ground to her house, let alone up a rainforest goat track through a rocky gully to get to her sculpture. 'I would make a great effort to get you there, you know that. You only have to ask.'

  'Well, I will then,' Maria says firmly.

  Virginia tells her where it is, how she found the tree on one of the steepest slopes, then flashes fire. 'But that is the weird part of it. There's this tremendous thing I have to do, but it's a ten-tonne secret. Even I cannot answer why it's inaccessible. It just is. And I'm free enough to make the choice. But only there. In the heart of Lesbianlands.'

  Maria's eyes express polite regard for Virginia's words on the matter of her sculpture. But, as she truly does want to see it, she asks, 'When?'

  'Wednesday? Why not Wednesday?' Nostalgia takes up no room in Virginia's emotional arena whatsoever. It's action, or nothing.

  'I'm busy this week, but soon. Soon,' Maria promises. She sighs, and says, 'I have to go to the library.'

  Goodbyes said, Maria pulls the remaining chicken leg out of the greasy bag and watches Virginia skip over the little chain fencing off vehicles from the lawn as if her stuffed back-pack was no weight at all.

  At the municipal building, faced with prospect of a frantic Sofia, she knows why she came to the larger town. Maria decides to score for Sofia. It is, she rationalises, the lesser evil. Maria chooses seven fantasy novels to take herself into another reality, then drives up to the Hornets' Nest, where deals are done.

  In the morning I could walk, but I couldn't train. Well, I had other work to do.

  My visit to the property of William J.Campbell was unproductive in the extreme. The road off the Warrumbingle Highway is called Campbell Road and many mailboxes at the junction sport the same surname. There were also several Williams. After the first couple of cattle-grids, the land rose steeply. Conditions deteriorated quickly and my four-wheel-drive seemed to putter into the backwoods locale of some savage splatter-flick. The first house I found had twenty-odd starving, barking, under-sized cattle-dogs chained to the tank stand. It was difficult to figure which of the roofed structures was the residence. The canine chorus would surely have signalled the presence of a stranger. However, no show. I noted the address to report them to the RSPCA.

  The second dwelling I came to was hardly bigger than a pump-housing with a tin chimney. There was a mountain of beer cans and bottles within throwing distance of the single door. Dogs, here, roamed free among rusting wrecks of cars and tractors. A man in shorts wet with recent piss staggered out. 'Got a beer?' was the only full sentence. All my questions were answered with a negative or positive grunt.

  My third stop was a group of buildings. There I spoke with grossly overweight women of different ages. Willie, I discovered, was probably out on the 'lease'. As the place we were standing was ringed with close hills, still in damp shade, I had no idea where her gesture indicated. A loose arm movement was all the explanation I was going to get. I hoped to hell Lesbianlands bore no resemblance to this. 'Crown land?' A shrug. 'Wilma?' They stared back at me. 'Barb?' The fat women closed ranks. Or didn't know where they were.

  The track called Campbell Road was a travesty of the synonymous magnificent river. My clutch was lucky to survive it. Let alone my person. Younger male members of the family emerged from a side track in a ute chockablock with glossy rainforest ferns. Fancy footwork impelled by pure survival instinct on my part got me out of that situation.

  I said, and I didn't stop talking, 'Hey fellas, I heard around these parts there was the—um—lesbians' land? I must be lost. Like heck, I'm always getting lost. I thought I could take a bush-walk? I'm just passing through the district. Like, hey, what's the name of the shire? How do I get to Stuart? Left or right down here. All these bush trails look exactly alike to me. It's nice to take in nature, get some air in your lungs. Actually, I was looking for some hippies, greenies, just to see how they live? Like I come from Adelaide. South Australia's dry. Like so different?' Et cetera. They were identical to the women in their dumb approbation of me, and let me go without moving.

  Along the highway on the way back to the coast, I passed a butcher shop which had no companion businesses within close walking distance. A couple of kilometres further on was a cluster of houses and a general store. Pearceville, an old timber town. I pulled in to pick up a paper and a bottle of mineral water. As I was leaning on my car gulping, I noticed, set back from the road, the nice wooden architecture of the pub and a beer garden shaded by big trees. A deep verandah overlooked the river.

  Still gazing around, I recognised some of the cars; the La
rrikin's motor bike, Alison's Ford, a van and a big old-fashioned four-wheel-drive flat-back. I strolled within view. Rory, my client, waved. She called in tones to recall an obedience dog, 'Come here, Margot.' I reached into the car for my wallet and plucked out of the ignition the jingling keys. Half-way across the car park I hobbled back for my notebook.

  The beer garden, with a view of the water rippling over pebbles, glamorous river-rocks and sparkling rapids, had equal access to both bar and car park. The lesbians were sitting around a table with a couple of empty bottles on it. Alison was there, being intense, curled up as if someone had punched her in the ribs.

  The Larrikin, who had picked me for a cop the moment I stepped into the love-life of the community, to whom since I seem to have proved my credentials by doing under-the-counter work while being honest, treated me as her buddy. A rough diamond, probably common quartz, she thrives in company. I have never seen her alone. Tattoos trumpeted down her freckled arm and finished off at the wrist like a cuff. The paisley skin showed naked females on winged horses and wonder women in suspenders slaying dragons amongst the swirls. She wore a plaid shirt with the sleeves ripped out, her unwieldy hair knotted into half-worked dreadlocks. Known as anything from Larrikin, the Larrikin, the Rik to Rik, there were strict levels of formality with her: steps of familiarity, whereby you eventually earned the right to call her Rik. If you try Rikky, your continued health depends on her famously unstable mood. She was drinking with another who might have shared membership in the same Bikers' Club, who had one tattoo per arm and a number-four-blade haircut. Alison ignored my arrival but she looked drunk or sick. Possibly stoned. The Rik, with sudden and unusual largesse, offered to buy me a drink. I looked at my watch.

  'A bloody mary wouldn't be too bad at this hour. Yeah, okay,' I said. There was no way Rik was going to pay for my drink, but she fancied the effect of saying it. I handed her the money. Everyone except Alison watched with ironic eyebrows until the exchange was complete. These women knew each other like family and controlled each others excesses with similar mechanisms. Rory's image blended lesbian butch and hard-bitten country woman. I wondered how much effort went into it. Maybe none. She spoke with rugged toughness, which could have been genuine, and wore a sweatstained, weather-beaten Akubra covered in campaign badges. She seemed so much a caricature of herself, that I smiled. She grinned back.

  She, thoughtfully, inquired, 'How's your foot?'

  I said it wasn't too bad. Considering.

  Then she asked, 'When are you going to come and do my job, anyway?' She was not aggressive-sounding, rather a little urgent. 'You've lost your crutches I see.' All I had got from my trip up Campbells road was a vow in my vigilante self to notify cruelty to animals. But before I could expand on the immediate past, and tell them, gurls interrupted.

  'Scared of the bush, Margot?'

  'Frightened the cute Suzuki might get scratches on it?'

  'Been too busy, have you?' The Rik was always sarcastic to me.

  'It's the wild west up there. They've got guns and things.' Laughter.

  Their shots were hitting close to the mark. 'I believe you,' I responded, recalling the farm ute with its illegal load of luscious orchids and ferns, and I said, 'Well. I better get around to it, hadn't I?' I picked up my notebook and went around behind Rory with my pen poised. 'Tell me how to get there. I don't want to get lost in them there hills, never to be seen again.'

  They thought it was a joke.

  'Here. Give those to me,' Rory commanded. She reached out for my implements, found a clean page and began a map. When she had finished, I registered surprise with wide-open eyes. This map was a piece of art, with roads and houses and bridges drawn and beautiful handwriting. Not remarking on that, I wanted to be sure I knew exactly where to go. We went over it together.

  'This anywhere near Willy's Campbell's lease?' I pointed to the line she'd drawn where the bridge damage was done.

  'Hell no. That's way over there.' Her hand went over the edge of the book to the west. There was more Rory wanted to tell me, but all she said was, 'We have a real mystery on our lands, Margot.'

  As we settled the appointment, I planned to take my off-road mountain bike and go into the hinterland that way. Rik was right, I didn't want scratches on the Sierra. I sat down next to her.

  Booze. Drinking was a culture in the Police Force. Ironically, it was seen to be liberating for a female to get as blind as the blokes. The pressure to be a hard-drinking mate was enormous. If you didn't drink, you couldn't be trusted. If you were a woman, you had to drink twice as hard twice as fast to prove yourself. Drinking somehow saved you from being harassed verbally. Like any drug of addiction, alcohol has corrosive effect on the moral fabric of any group or individual. I know. I've been there. There were some bad car accidents. We knew what was to blame, but we kept our lips buttoned. That was part of our code, our pride. To be able to drink and do the job was a measure of your physical fitness, another contradiction in terms. You were hardly hale, but you had a kind of strength in numbers. The myth of mateship. Bonding. Tell me another.

  When I was a teetotaller, I became pretty ineffective as a police officer because I couldn't get decent co-operation. In cleaning my act up I was distrusted, used, played with and finally moved sideways into the NCA. That was a two-edged sword but I am alive and I have memory. I didn't like getting drunk, but here I sat among another bunch of dedicated drinkers quite at home, opining about the nature of existence around a collection of empty beer bottles and dirty glasses. Philosophers all, the problems of the world imbibed then forgotten. I watched the light on the rippling river and sipped my tomato juice, taking a look at myself. Having a background in the pub scene, I know the ethos. Instead of leaving on rattling the pink ice cubes, I sat for a few moments, half listening, half thinking.

  Alison spoke intensely about a film. 'Old man, Robert Redford, with yet another young female lead.' Conversation turned to the familiars of witches. Sofia had a toad. Laughter. The Rik was performing in the way Jill had aped the other night, but not nearly as well. Vienna at the turn of the century, a thickening of the voice.

  'Sofia puts on the Austrian accent because she wants to be part of a milieu of intellectuals. Sad really,' said Alison.

  Suddenly she looked at Rory, and asked, 'Do you think it was aliens?' Men, I supposed she meant.

  'I don't know,' Rory shrugged. I was intrigued by her lack of censure. In an aside to me, she explained, 'The explosions.'

  'Before I never believed in them, now I do,' a big, taciturn gurl called Bea stated.

  'Before what?' I asked.

  'Before I nearly died, but in my near-death experience I saw them. Glistening beautiful creatures. Standing about three foot tall in cloaks made of bats' wing.' She spoke adamantly. 'They said I could join them if I wished.'

  The Larrikin expounded, 'Xena says they can transform themselves. From people to wolves, birds, mythical creatures with wings and four legs, to slithering snakes.'

  Bea said, 'The Lands is a known landing ground. Plenty of dykes have seen them. Or lights. Just say, "Excuse me, I mean you no harm" and keep walking.' She laughed in an easy-going way.

  'The black holes in space are portals,' supposed Alison, speaking with difficulty, 'They say black holes absorb matter. I say material transforms in the interface and you enter another reality. Virtual particles.'

  The nature of aliens and the speculations of outer worlds with ghostly rapists, the Holy Spirit and Zeus as a swan over Leda and so on bored me. My mind wandered. I remembered Tilly's bruises, the phone call from Maria about Sofia killing her, then the second one, and dancing with Sean dressed as the Elizabethan queen, the tedium of the Meghan Featherstone job, two boys in the mortuary. I did not have time to be here. I had wasted my morning going to Campbells, I'd be lucky to be paid. These gurls were certainly crazy, talking about how dogs see extraterrestrials and ghosts and elementals, spirits of all sorts.

  'Because Sofia has a toad she is a witch,' Bea f
inished complacently.

  'Why?' Milt, the short-haired biker, demanded to know. 'They're fucken poisonous.'