“I’m feeling very tired. I sense that things are approaching the pointy end,” David whispers, as he lies on the daybed, set out on his shaded Darwin verandah, next to that quite rare, tropically-adapted cherry tree. We talk quietly for about 20 minutes, Uta in the kitchen, sensitively absent as we relive shared adventures, reflections now being squeezed into precious minutes.
He dozes, I leave, promising Uta that I will return tomorrow, an acknowledgement that time is limited, visits necessarily short, hopefully many more still to come.
Back in my hotel, lips tremble as the memories of those shared times swirl. It has only been eight years since we met. He and his partner sought advice about setting up a tourism venture on their traditional estates, Barabba country, south of Maningrida, east of Darwin. Since that first meeting, we’ve shared so much.
We walk extensively through the country. “I have the OK to bring small numbers of visitors here. But I have assured the senior mob that I will clear a suggested itinerary with them before we start. They instruct me to avoid several secret, sacred places; mortuary sites, that special mountain to the south of the camp.”
The tall rock outliers, many jutting directly out of the river’s wet season floodplains, house thousands of rock art galleries. “See that animal up there? A bit rhino-looking: it’s a diprotodon, died out tens of thousands of years ago, yet we used to hunt them. And that one, the one with the stripes, it’s a thylacine!”
Hand stencils, kangaroos, fish, snakes, crocodiles, and finely drawn, red-ochred human figures look out from the galleries. We walk and talk for days.
The small group safaris commence and quickly find an appreciative and lucrative audience. In particular, travellers from Europe and North America are making up a sizable proportion of the numbers. “We need to go into market and tell the travel trade about my tour.” Over the next five years, he and I engage with most of the major travel wholesalers in Germany, France, Italy, the UK, US, Canada and Australia. We both work the system hard!
David travels with a laptop, while Uta, at home, uses their PC to monitor bookings. His proficiency at engaging the travel trade grows exponentially; the tour descriptions win them over effortlessly. The forward bookings fill satisfactorily.
But then the diagnosis. We are at the World Expo, in Barcelona, when this yellow-faced man sits down at the breakfast table. “My back hurts. I’ve been up most of the night vomiting.” The promotion has one day to run and then we will be on the roadway home. He limps through that day, another sleepless night. I manage to buy pharmaceuticals to dampen the interminable flight.
That was eight weeks ago. I stay on in Darwin an extra week. I take the phone call three days after I get home; a whispery voice saying “Mate, I’m off. I’ll see you when I’m looking at ya.”
He dies the next morning!