Kitabı oxu: «Strange Events Down Under»

Scene 2: Lena‘s Uluru Art

When Bob‘s expedition arrived with the rented Mercedes bus at the ‘viewing zone’ for the Uluru mountain, there was not much going on. Here in the middle of the Australian desert, clouds were covering the sun. Since a few days, unusual afternoon thunderstorms did not only bring quite some rain but also a lot of clouds. The parking lot was well selected: They had an exquisite view over lower lying brush areas towards the whole length of ‘Ayers Rock‘, as the white Australians used to call the mountain. At sun set, they should be able to see the changing colors of the red rock. The suspense was high: Would the sun break through the clouds on time?

Annoyed by the waiting time, the children started to play. Despite the interdiction to leave the parking lot, the boys tried to discover the brush close by, and Lena started to paint some circles into the red sand. With a stick, she added more circles into the big ones and filled in even more circles made out of sand. Finally she added many dots of different sizes into the remaining space.

The slow process of creating the picture with the Uluru in the background produced a strange fascination. For a moment it was as if a huge gate opened and a slow rhythmic swoosh could be heard. Bob shook his head because of this kitschy vision. He had to force himself not to stare at the picture anymore and suddenly he knew where Lena had seen these patterns of the Aborigines. In the reception of the hotel they had a little exhibition of local art and Lena was just reproducing the structures. Or was it just the simplicity of the visual elements that made her create the circles?

When asked where the idea came from, she just continued because she didn’t know.

Filming Lena’s Uluru art, Bob observed that almost every arriving tourist made the usual selfies, often in almost grotesque forms: “Myself in front of the Uluru”, or “Lucie with new hair-do in front of the mountain, what was its name?” The rest of the time, these people kept themselves busy with video games on their mobiles or their note books. Hardly did they have a look at the mighty mountain in this specific atmosphere. Bob felt as if it was a profanation even though he had not many background information on the mystical aspects of Uluru yet.

As if well managed, the sun fell under the cover of the clouds shortly before seven p.m. and the immense rock started to glow in a dark red color. The show of the changing reds on all 348 meters of the Holy Mountain of the Aborigines began. Rudely, Bob had to interrupt his two beauties in their conversation with some Australian families so they wouldn’t miss the few minutes of the event. All of a sudden, the total silence of the desert covered the area until the big klotz of a mountain seemed to become silvery. And then it turned dark within a few minutes.

Slowly the conversations started again, and the Horners learned that the weekend before, the thirty-year celebration of giving the territory back to the locals Anangu people had been held in their village. Not every Australian was happy about this, it seemed. One after another, the kids showed up, all except Lena.

Bob‘s alarms went on: He had lived already once through a similar situation and he didn’t wish to go through this experience again. At once, he took an Aspirin pill which he always had in his wallet and sent everybody into the car. Taking the two big boys with him, he went to Lena’s piece of art to start the search from there.

The picture in the sand was destroyed, and the parking ground next to it was already empty. “You guys ask all people you meet if and where they have seen Lena. If you get meaningful inputs you ask the people to honk three times. Then I come to meet you. In no case leave the parking ground!” Just a few minutes in the bushes made him aware that there was no chance to find his daughter this way at night. Also he was in danger to get lost himself. He stopped and forced himself to think carefully. Good decisions were needed! But he was lucky; he heard the honking signal he had agreed upon with the boys. Blinking lights from a camping car helped him to find the boys quickly.

With smiling faces, they were sitting on some camping chairs in front of a small camper and Bob introduced himself to a young couple of Australians who had a boy of a similar age as his. Then someone came running out of the bus and he knew at once who it was. Lena jumped up on him like always: “Daddy-Chéri, je t’aime!”

It turned out that the couple didn’t allow Lena, who was playing with their boy, to leave them. Lena didn’t find her bus when it got dark. They were sure that the parents of the girl would show up soon, exactly what had happened. Bob was angry at his little one but kept it for himself. Perhaps he should have watched her better!?

The outdoor dinner next to the reception was something exciting for the kids; only a big open fire was missing. They could choose what they wanted to eat and had to prepare it with the help of the adults. They were sitting on wooden benches, and alcohol, even wine was only sold when one could show a room key. But water was for free. All this was not Nouvelle Cuisine for the spoiled grown-ups and the flies were quite disturbing.

The drop in emotional tension and the heavy Shiraz wine forced Bob to go to bed soon. He caught the four younger kids who protested wildly but went back with them to their small lodge. The darkness on the way would stop them from running back to the others. The rest of the family showed up pretty soon in any case, and everybody, not only the children, fell asleep very quickly.

At breakfast next morning, Sandrine announced the program of the day and a few rules for the desert. She imposed that the four smaller kids should always stay together and everyone was responsible for his or her water bottle. Sun tan lotion was to be renewed every two hours and Lena was to go to the toilet always accompanied by a woman.

The first expedition was a tour in their little bus around mount Uluru. Bob asked Ahmed to explain to the smaller kids why it was dangerous to climb on the rock. His boy did a good job so they had no requests in this direction afterwards. Perhaps it was also the 35 degrees at ten o‘clock that closed this subject. In any case, they could not discover any tourist climbing on the slopes.

Their last stop was in the museum of local art where the many circular pieces on wood or tissue didn’t please Lena at all: “All this is far too colorful. You cannot even see the mountain in it!” The adults looked at each other: There was a lot of truth in these simple words. When they left the premises, they smiled about a small sign which read: ‘Last stop sign for 440 kilometers’. Bob knew that there was only one road towards Alice Springs, the only real town in this territory.

Because of the heat, Sandrine had ordered a general siesta and the evening tour was planned only for five p.m. So it became calm in the Horner lodge after lunch. Even the children went to sleep so that Bob found himself with his two women in the queen-sized bed in the parents’ bedroom. They all enjoyed the calm and went to sleep, too, after a while. They agreed: The atmosphere in the desert was casually erotic but not too strenuous.

After most of the members of the Horner clan had swum a few laps in the pool, they all drove to the second viewing point, namely the one for the ‚Nine Olgas‘, another holy site for the Anangus. It is the twin mountain of the Uluru, just close-by for Australian distances: sixty kilometers or an hours’ drive. While the Olgas with their Anangu name of ‘Kata Tjuta’ is highly structured into nine groups of mountains, the Uluru is one absolutely monolithic block. They found out that the Anangus consider both mountains as living, mythical pieces of art created several tens of thousands of years ago.

Sandrine, generally enjoying her role as number two in the clan after Bob’s wife Jela, took the driver’s seat as Bob gave the impression to be still exhausted. She got used to driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road; only when turning right Bob had to bring her back to the left side from time to time. And exactly like him, she used the windshield wipers instead of the blinkers when turning.

Turning onto the red sand away from the parking area for the ‚Walpa Gorge Walk‘, the Horners noticed that the Olgas were geologically quite different from the Uluru. Whereas the latter is just one pressed block of sandstone, the Olgas are formed of pressed cobble stones which make it very strenuous to even walk on the paths. They hardly noticed that several pick-ups of the locals were parked at one end of the parking lot.

As the ‘Valley of the Winds’ was closed because of the heat, they decided to walk up the Walpa Gorge cutting into a mountain in a V-shape. It looked like an easy walk but soon they found out that their shoes were not good enough for the cobblestones. The views, however, were offering a compensation for the aching ankles: On each side, the mountains in their rust-red color were going straight up into the sky for several hundred meters. Here and there, holes were visible which left the valley sprinkled with rocks of different sizes. On the left, a forest of desert oaks and Eucalyptus trees followed the lowest parts of the valley where the water was coming together when it rained. However, there was no sign any more of the rain of the day before. Looking back into the desert, a landscape of softly rolling hills covered with brush was to be seen. Bob knew that there were sand dunes under the hills.

Even though the valley path only moved up gently, after a kilometer the younger children were already tired and started to suck on their water bottles. So Bob decided to leave Ahmed with them and continued with the others. Because of the reflection of the sun from both sides of the rocks, the heat went up continuously. It felt like being in a baking oven. Only the wind offered some comfort. But to make it worse, the fly plague was especially horrible here.

Using his soft tropic hat, Bob invented a multi-task hit-mewhere you-can sequence of fast strikes against his body which gave him some relief of the aggressive beasts for a few minutes.

Hikers coming back from the end of the now canyon-like valley gave them news about the remaining stretch in the baking oven. But then Irina and Sandrine gave up, too, so that Bob continued only with Kevin who didn’t seem to suffer much. Bob started to like the German boy.

Then, just before the end of the canyon, Bob suddenly knew why the mountains have a woman’s name. A giant female being made out of stone was lying here on her stomach. They had climbed up between her thighs and were now in front of her ridge closing the valley vertically with a small forest at its bottom looking like a bush of hair. On both sides, beautifully shaped rock formations rounded up this picture.

The two managed the last bit and sat down in the little shade a meager tree provided for them.

The way back was sheer hell: Both drank a lot but their sweat attracted only more flies. A while later they finally saw the rest of their group but interestingly enough Sandrine and JP were missing! Jaim came running towards them. Bob saw that the boy was excited: “Lena has disappeared again. Sandrine and JP are searching for her.” Jaim was alarmed that something could have happened to his darling sister. Bob embraced his son.

Then he had to sit down, not noticing that the hot rock was almost burning away his pants. What was going on here? Who was after Lena? Why always his darling? He took two pills out of his wallet and swallowed them with the rest of his water. Pulling himself together, he went to meet the other children and arrived the same moment Sandrine and JP did. They came up from the woods down in the trough. Lena was not with them! Bob’s head seemed to turn; he almost fell down. Ahmed and Kevin put him gently down and stood in a way that gave him a maximum of shade.

“Down at the parking lot is a rescue phone”, Sandrine took the command, “From there we can organize some help!” and she asked the big boys to take Bob in the middle.

They all went down ‘quite calmly’ to their car. “Nobody runs. It’s ‘verboten’!”

The children were almost as shocked as their leaders and repeated Sandrine’s orders like little robots. Then she explained Bob what had happened. Lena wanted to ‘do pipi’ and had climbed down to the forest close by. When she didn’t come back, Irina who was just arriving and JP went to look for her but had no success:

“I don’t want to hurt you, Bob”, Sandrine told him, “But it is evident that someone took your daughter. She would never do something like this and certainly not under these circumstances. But who could be interested in something like this?”

Finally back in their bus and all of them sitting in the fan of the air conditioning, Bob came back to life. He wanted to get out when Sandrine came in: “We should wait here. The police will be here soon. JP, Bob, and I will have to stay here. Irina will drive everyone else back to the hotel and she is in command in our absence, is that understood?”

Now even the tough school master Sandrine was exhausted. She asked Ahmed and Kevin to go and fill up all water bottles because they would have to stop the engine pretty soon. Bob was proud of her. This was exactly the style in which she had helped Jela and him when Jela’s friend Dora was shot. He took her in his arms and noticed that she tried to keep her posture not to show in front of the kids how concerned she was.