Ugh! Mac had sweaty armpits. In fact, she had sweaty everything.
Every, single, thing.
Sat in the passenger seat of Felix's enormous monster-like white truck, or ute as they were called here, she fiddled with the vents in the dashboard hoping to find some breath of relief from the air conditioning before the beads of perspiration that were rolling down her back collected in her knickers and left a wet patch on the seat that she'd need to explain.
"It doesn't work," Felix barked his first words since they'd set off from the hotel half an hour ago, "Wind your window down if you can't take the heat."
"How can anyone take this heat?" Mac glared at him. He of course didn't look bothered that there were little dots of sweat forming in the fine layer of pale hair covering his forearms. How was it that men could make the 'sweaty look' so much more appealing?
Tearing her eyes away from the line of glistening muscle between his elbow and his wrist she fought with the handle to lower the window, realising immediately that she was no better off. Now, instead of the hot air hanging lifelessly around her, it rushed in lifting her hair wildly, and stinging her face as they sped along the road. Silently she took back her words of last night, of how she thought she liked the warmth, and comfort that it brought her. That opinion had been formed from a couple of hours beside the beach at sunset and the air conditioned comfort of a five star hotel, not from the confinement of a small steel box in full view of the sun and it's incredibly angry rays.
"How long will the drive take us?" Mac shifted in the seat hoping her dress would mop up the wet slick on her back. In hindsight, skipping breakfast for the sake of clean skin and smooth glossy hair had been a foolish choice as her stomach let out a loud and indignant growl.
"The drive? Only another half an hour, why?" Felix glanced sideways and frowned at her.
"I'm hungry that's all."
"Didn't you eat breakfast?"
"No... I was running late," Mac didn't dare add that she had shaved and exfoliated her legs, as well as conditioned her hair twice instead. The moon had both waxed and waned, and probably even waxed again, since the last time her body had seen this much action.
Slamming his foot on the brake, Felix yanked the steering wheel left and pulled the ute over to the side of the road with a dusty skid. Shocked by the emergency stop Mac looked around her to see what had necessitated it but couldn't see anything obvious, they'd not hit any wildlife and she hadn't heard a tyre pop. Beside her, he flung the door open and, jumping out of his seat, stomped around to the back of the vehicle where he did something with one of the several large blue and white boxes that were lined up neatly in the open top tray. She was about to lean out her window and ask what was wrong when he reappeared on the driver's side and climbed back in, slamming the door shut.
"You should have made time for breakfast, you're not in London now, there's no café on every corner," he snapped scornfully and thrust a plastic bag at her with one hand while pulling the ute back out onto the road with the other.
"I know that," Mac snatched the bag from his hand and glowered at him.
Taking his eyes off the tarmac he turned his head and looked slowly from her shiny yet windswept hair all the way down her body and over her silky legs to her sparkly sandals, before returning his attention straight ahead, "Do you really?"
Indignant, Mac wanted to put him straight, to tell him how until just days ago her armpits had taken on an extreme feminist life of their own and her favourite outfit of choice had been of the flannelette variety. Yet she didn't. It was embarrassing enough that she'd let herself go as far as she had without the additional shame of admitting it to someone like Felix. He probably looked beautiful in anything, or nothing.
Diving in to the bag he'd given her, she ate her way irritably through two pieces of fruit and a muesli bar.
#
As he had said, almost exactly half an hour later, Felix slowed the ute and turned off of the main road on to a dirt track that led directly towards a thick row of trees.
Not really knowing what she should have been expecting for the setting of her father's beloved childhood home, Mac tried to push down her initial, negative, opinion. It was definitely 'rural', it'd been a good twenty minutes since she'd seen the last turn off, presumably to another property, however, without any particularly defining features on the landscape it was difficult to see why anyone would want to drive this far out of town just for B&B style accommodation, especially when there were hotels, the likes of the one she had stayed in last night, on offer back in Darwin itself. A night's stay out here would have to be almost a giveaway for it to entice anyone in, regardless of the 'outback experience' they may be seeking.
Sitting up straighter, hoping for a better view, and to steady herself against the bumping and rolling of the ute as it juddered its way along the track, Mac braced herself for whatever was on the other side of the trees.
So far, Mackinley River Downs wasn't living up to its name at all.
She couldn't hide her disappointment as they drove out onto a vast and dead level clearing. Other than an enormous tin shed, which looked as though it might house pieces of farming equipment, where Felix pulled up alongside, it was just lots and lots of dry grass, almost as far as the eye could see, "Is this it?"
"The airport? Yes."
"The what?" Mac twisted in her seat to look out in all directions.
Swinging open his door Felix stepped out and stretched his arms above his head, causing his faded black t-shirt to lift momentarily, revealing an inch of smooth tanned skin just above where his belt was threaded through the middle loops in the back of his equally aged jeans. Mac dug her nails into her thighs. Turning back around and leaning across the seat Felix flipped open the glove box in front of her knees and took out a blue plastic folder. Inside the front cover he grabbed a small set of keys and shook them at her as he repeated his words more slowly, "Air. Port."
Relieved to know that she wasn't where she initially had thought she was, Mac jumped out of her side and slammed the door shut, joining Felix as he walked over to a set of two storey high double doors on the front of the shed, "So, what are we doing here? I thought we were going to Mackinley today?"
"We are," with the keys he'd taken from the folder, he undid the industrial sized padlock securing the shed and passed it to Mac to hold while he dragged first one, then the other of the enormous doors open to reveal not farm machinery, but an aeroplane, "We're flying."
Astonished, Mac took a step back, "We're flying to Mackinley?"
"Unless you fancy another six or seven hours in the truck then yes, we're flying," he grumbled impatiently. The look on Mac's face must have painted a picture of mild panic as Felix softened his expression a fraction, quickly adding, "Don't worry though, this way, it's only an hour and a bit."
#
By the time they had finished loading the plane with the contents of the truck, which Mac discovered was mostly groceries and other household essentials, they were both dripping in sweat. The t-shirt Felix was wearing was now dark with moisture and clung to his torso, while Mac's short floaty dress took on the same sticky manner, and hugged itself obscenely to her bottom and thighs. Until now, she had thought her old job had kept her reasonably fit, decorating venues and moving banqueting furniture had always provided her with a fair amount of exercise, but the lugging of incredibly heavy packed-out cool boxes and fitting them like jigsaw pieces around the plane's four back seats in such extreme heat and humidity had been more akin to running a marathon.
With the plane rolled out well clear of the doors and the truck moved inside in its place, Mac secured the shed with the padlock again while Felix completed his final round of pre-flight safety checks. Not game to disturb him as he worked in moody silence, she figured she'd save her growing list of questions, about what the hell she was meant to be doing out here, for the journey.
#
"You can open your eyes now," Felix's voice, tinted with a hint of amusement, came through the headset he'd given Mac to wear.
Although not exactly fearful of flying, she had never experienced anything quite like the sensation of taking off in something that was really no bigger than a large car, and as they'd hurtled down the sun-bleached grass runway ten minutes earlier, she'd closed her eyes and gripped on to the seat either side of her legs for dear life.
"Holy shit!" Mac opened her eyes slowly and leant to her right. Peering tentatively out of the window by her side she let go of the seat and clenched the safety belt instead.
"Quite something isn't it?"
Captivated by the most spectacular view Mac just nodded. Below them, the landscape stretched on and on. Miniature trees clung to rocky outcrops and dry creek beds left their silty evidence in twists and turns, still visible despite many of them not holding a drop of water. Wherever there was still moisture in the ground, along the banks of bigger rivers or deeper rock holes, great blotches of vibrant green foliage grew lush and un-tamed, providing a home for flocks of native birds that scattered in beautiful formation as the plane buzzed past way above them.
"I've never seen anything like it," she finally looked back up from the scenery and across at Felix.
"I'm surprised Mac senior never brought you out here, this place is his pride and joy."
"He hardly ever mentioned it as I was growing up, any time he came out here he always did it when I was away, either on school trips, or holidays with friends. He doesn't like mixing business and pleasure and I never pushed him on it," Mac watched on nervously as Felix let go of the controls and marked their current position on a map folded neatly and clipped to a board resting on his knees.
"You lived in London your whole life?" he glanced briefly at her then fiddled with one of the many dials in front of him.
"Pretty much. What about you? Are you from the Territory originally?"
"Mmm hmm," Felix shifted in his seat, clearly uncomfortable with the direction of the questioning.
Not wanting him to shut her down before she got more information out of him, she deftly changed the subject, "So Dad called the place a kind of Bed & Breakfast, what exactly does the 'kind of' bit mean?"
"Well, the homestead itself is over an hour from the main sealed road that runs between the Territory and Western Australia, so we don't tend to get the traditional passing trade that other B&Bs would get. The people that come out to Mackinley are usually the kind looking for the real outback experience."
Mac felt her face colour at her own naivety in thinking an hour's drive out of Darwin had meant she was 'outback', "What kind of people are they?"
"We get a few backpackers, the more adventurous types that is, plus there's the grey nomads," Felix looked out of his window and dipped the plane slightly to the side before bringing it level again and writing something on a slip of paper under the map.
"What are grey nomads?" Mac quickly turned her expression of terror, caused by the plane's sudden movements, into one of query as he looked across at her.
"Basically, they are retirees with a motor home. Some of them just come travelling up here when the weather down south gets too cold for them, others sell their kids' entire inheritance in bricks and mortar and spend years on the road, visiting every last inch of the country."
"Wow," Mac smiled to herself as she thought of the UK retirees all jumping in their caravans at sixty-five. It'd be like August bank holiday every day of the week. "So can people camp at the homestead as well as stay in the house? There's enough space for them?"
Felix looked at her, pulling his lips into a restrained smirk, "Yes, there's enough space."
"How many visitors are you getting in say... a month?" Mac was trying hard to work out exactly what the problem was that had necessitated the urgent need for her to fly half way round the world when there was already a manager here, on site, and presumably doing a perfectly ok job.
"Umm... in the last twelve months, I think there have been, umm... seven," Felix said this figure so quietly Mac wasn't sure she'd heard right.
"Did you say seven? Or seventy?"
"Seven."
"Jesus! Why the fuck did it take you so long to tell Dad?" Mac felt the blood drain from her face. She wondered if her father really knew exactly how dire things were out here.
"Listen," Felix hissed into the mouth piece connected to his headset. His words rang inside Mac's ears, "I wasn't the one employed to run the business here after the last steers left Mackinley several years back, that was... someone else. My job has always been the manager of the property and the land. I called your father the minute I was left alone out here and he had no problem letting it sit quiet for months, using it as a tax write off, but then when the dry season came, and it was time to start looking for someone new, to get the business back up off its knees, well lets just say there wasn't anyone willing to take the job on."
"Not willing? Did you even conduct interviews?" Mac's head was spinning with questions.
"Of course I conducted interviews," he snarled, "You... you grew up in London, you have no fucking idea what it's like out here. Six months of the year we're lucky if we get a day of rain, then the other half a year we get so much of it the roads are closed and the only way in and out is in this. It's harsh out here Mac, there's no Starbucks, there's no nail salon, there's nothing. It's just you, and nature. There are very few, if any, people willing to stick around."
The vitriol in this last comment was so palpable Mac chose not to respond to it, deciding instead that she'd go back to looking out the window at the beautiful environment below. Felix had done such a good job of criticising it, she wondered if he'd been giving the same speech to the prospective candidates. After half a day with him, it was perfectly understandable why no one had wanted the job.
#
Giving him a while to calm down Mac waited until she knew they'd been in the air for a little over an hour before she spoke again. Taking the camera out of her handbag she asked, "Can you tell me when we're nearly there please? I thought I'd get some pictures for Dad."
"We've been over Mackinley for the last ten minutes," Felix began fiddling with the various dials and switches in the bank of instruments in front of him and Mac felt the plane begin a slow descent.
"We have? How bloody big is the place?"
"Exactly one million acres."
#
Doing the calculation in her head Mac worked out the size of the place to be just over four-thousand square kilometres. How the hell had her father managed to keep something so big, a relative secret for so long?
As the ground grew closer she turned as far as the safety belt would allow, leant against the side window, and began clicking away, "Is that Mackinley River?"
"Yep, but you might want to save some of that memory," he looked at the camera then nodded straight out the windscreen in front of them.
Just ahead, built right over the very edge of a red-stone ridge on the high side of the river, an enormous house came into view. The main section, a large square lowset stone home was flanked on all four sides by a wide wrap-around verandah. Leading off of this, a covered walkway joined the main home to a long, straight timber section that looked at one end to be almost suspended out over the river below. The entire property was surrounded by a carpet of perfectly manicured lush green lawn, and a mix of gum trees and palms provided some shade from, and a border to, the baked dry environment outside of the oasis.
Breathtaking was the only word that came close to the effect it had on Mac, and even that didn't do it the justice it deserved.
"Oh. My. God. Is that it?"
Felix glanced across at Mac, his eyes flickered over her illuminated face and pushing down the familiar stirring he'd felt the first time he'd seen her he nodded slowly, "Welcome to Mackinley River Downs."