The drive west from Southern Cross in the twilight was a delight. The coppery gums that stand like twisted sentinels on the roadside were taking on a rainbow of ever richer colours that changed hue every second, and the miles were flying by. They were coming off a few days prospecting out Leonora way, needing to be in Muntadgin that evening for an early start next morning. The fossicking had been fruitless and the weather just this side of miserable – the early spring had delivered some cold nights and cloudy days – but the two mates didn’t really care about that stuff anyway. They just loved the bush, the solitude, and spending quiet time with each other. They went everywhere together, shared everything straight down the middle, and were celebrated as one of the industry’s most outstanding teams. Everybody from the sheep to the station owners respected Bert’s quiet authority and profound understanding of ovine psychology, and Nugget was an all-round good bloke as well as a jet with the shears. Of course, in the rough and tumble of the sheds where they worked, Nugget as a shearer and Bert as Shed Supervisor and Livestock Manager, they copped a lot of ragging from the other blokes about their legendary bond. “Jeez, are youse two joined at the hip mate?” “Do ya ever go anywhere without each other? Crumbs, I bet ya go to the dunny together.” “Why don’cha just get married and be done with it?” But they took it all with quiet good grace. Everybody knew they were two peas in a pod, and their friendship was a treasure most of the others would never get to experience or understand. Nugget used to dig Bert in the ribs and say, “Don’t you listen to ‘em mate. They’re just bloody jealous.” The light was burnished gold and the paddocks crammed with growing stalks of wheat and barley were fairly glowing when they turned onto Moorine Rock Road South. Now, these days that road is a beautiful piece of smooth bitumen, but back then it was a bugger of a gravel track, and the old ute was a plateful for poor Nugget as he wrestled it over corrugations and dodged deep, perilous potholes. He’d driven that track a hundred times before, of course, so neither of them was in the least bit concerned. Bert, as usual, sat stately and self-assured, his eyes straight ahead, watching the road in confident silence. A careful observer might have detected a hint of a satisfied smile on his face. He was supremely comfortable with his lot, was Bert. A couple of miles south of Dulyalbin the road takes a sharp right, and then just a mile or so further a sharp left. For that short few minutes they were heading straight into the setting sun, and the bastard was just a couple of degrees above the flat horizon. They were staring straight into it, and it was a dazzling dagger of light. “Bloody great timin’,” mumbled Nugget. “Shoulda washed the windscreen back at that last roadhouse eh?” Bert didn’t even bother to turn his head. He was too busy watching, thinking grand Bert thoughts. As alert as they both were, they were never going to avoid the kangaroo that leapt out in front of the car about twenty metres away on the left. It was just too sudden. Nugget was quick, though. He wrenched the wheel to the left with a violent twist, which sent the car into a slide but at least averted a head on collision. The back end of the ute clipped the roo somewhere behind the driver’s door. Seeing the fence coming at them at a furious rate, Nugget jammed the wheel back to the right, but too hard and too fast. The vehicle flipped up and rolled three times, miraculously coming to rest on its wheels in a cloud of dust and single syllable words from the driver. Nugget, wearing a seat belt, was mostly okay. He had a deep cut on his head, and another on his right arm where the window had shattered, but he was in one slightly bloodied piece. Bert, who’d never worn a seat belt in his life, had bounced around the cab like a king-sized ping pong ball, and one look told Nugget that he was pretty badly broken. Not a scratch on him, but just a bloody mess all the same. Kind of crumpled and floppy. “Christ mate,” said Nugget. “I told ya you oughta wear a seat belt.” Bert opened his mouth, but the only sound that came out was an ominous gurgle from way down in his lungs. “Aw shit,” Nugget groaned. “What have ya done?” Outside the jagged remains of the windows and the cracked but somehow intact windscreen, the dust was settling as the night closed in. Nugget undid his seatbelt and got out of the car. Everything that had been in the back of the ute – their esky, clothes and sleeping gear, a box of tools and the prospecting kit and so on – was strewn along the road for a good hundred metres or more. Staggering a bit from his bleeding head wound, Nugget did his best to gather it all up and create a mound of debris beside the ruined vehicle, to be dealt with later. He extracted a couple of blankets from the pile and got back into the cab. The chill factor was rising with the wind from the east. “No sign of the bloody roo,” he said to Bert. “I reckon he mighta been lucky and just glanced off the side of the ute. So he’s doin’ better than us eh. I can’t say I’ve ever seen one that big.” He leaned past Bert, careful not to put any weight on him, and opened the glove box to retrieve the torch they kept there. Pointing it at the roof, which now looked more like the pitched roof of a tent than a car, he switched it on so a dim light illuminated the sorry scene. His own blood had been splashed about a bit, and everything that wasn’t tied down in the car – old choc milk cartons, snack wrappers, greasy brown paper bags and squeezy tomato sauce containers, dirty socks, empty cassette boxes and a few cassettes themselves – had found a new and unusual resting place. But Nugget’s attention was fixed on Bert, whose head was drooping. His breathing was becoming increasingly ragged. “Mate, you look pretty crook,” Nugget said. Bert, whose eyes had always done most of his talking anyway, stared at his mate with a look that somehow conveyed sorrow, pain and trust. Groaning, he shifted and slumped so he could lay his head on Nugget’s lap. Nugget spread a blanket across both of them, and began talking quietly to his friend. “You gotta pull through mate. If ya don’t, the bloody snag roll trade’ll collapse.” It was true that Bert was known in roadhouses and bakeries on every road between Broome and Esperance as a connoisseur of the sausage roll. In a lot of places, they just bagged one up as soon as he walked in the door, and handed it over. Having Bert’s endorsement was better than taking out a billboard advertising campaign, the lady who ran a popular cafe over by the coast once reckoned. “And who’s gonna keep the idiot sheep under control eh? Not to mention the nongs on the shearin’ team. We need your leadership, and you know it, mate.” Bert moved slightly, which caused him obvious pain, and he grunted. Once again he opened his mouth, but could make no sound. The rattle had become louder though, and Nugget knew there wasn’t much time. His head hurt and his arm was getting stiff, but none of that mattered right then and there. His only thought was to take care of Bert. “Remember that time we were up in Queensland in the off-season? Driving up through Barron Gorge in the afternoon, when the light was so luminous green it felt like we were looking at it through a wine bottle? Gawd that rain forest was so lush and rich, and the air so steamy and thick. It was bloody hot and we figured we’d go for a dip in the river – only I didn’t have any jocks or me budgie smugglers. There was no one around so I just stripped off me gear and went in, and strewth wasn’t the water bloody freezin’? A bit unexpected that,” he chuckled. “We were about to get out when a busload of Japanese tourists turned up, and we had to sit in that icy stream for half an hour. Well I had to. You coulda got out any time, but you stayed with me. That’s the kind of mate you’ve always been.” Bert sighed and looked up into Nugget’s face, and there was nothing there but love. He knew his time was coming, but he was fine with it, as long as he could see out the end with his mate. Nugget kept talking quietly, reminiscing about the jobs they’d done, the fights they’d almost had, the crazy sheilas they’d chased, the sights they’d seen and the unforgettable times they’d shared, and at some time during the night old Bert slipped away. In the morning, one of the shearing team blokes pulled up next to the wreck. He’d been sent out to find Nugget and Bert, and when he saw the state of the vehicle he feared the worst. Nugget was still sitting in the car, cradling Bert’s head and muttering. “Jesus mate,” said the shearer. “You’re only half a mile from the nearest house, why din’cha walk it?” “I couldn’t leave Bert,” said Nugget. “Brother, you’re bleedin’ and you look like a bag o’ manure,” said the shearer. “Don’t tell me you stayed out here all night because of the bloody dog?” “He’s not a bloody dog, he’s me mate.”