Foley & Rose Mysteries Collection - Books 5-8

Excerpt from Foley & Rose Mysteries Collection - Books 5-8

Forty-two-year-old Gordon Watson was the owner and licensee of the Mount Dare Hotel situated in South Australia, on the western edge of Witjira National Park in the Simpson Desert and just ten kilometres south of the Northern Territory border. The Mount Dare Hotel was about as far away from Adelaide, South Australia’s capital city, as anyone could be without being labelled a Territorian. Watson owned and managed the ‘Outback’ pub jointly with his forty-three-year-old wife Margaret, and their fourteen-year-old daughter Jacinta.

The decision to take the not insignificant gamble and buy the remote, extremely isolated hotel three years earlier was precipitated by the much anticipated and feared closure of the General Motors Holden vehicle manufacturing plant, located in the satellite city of Elizabeth, approximately twenty-five kilometres north-east of Adelaide.

Gordon and Margaret first met on the vehicle assembly line at the huge GMH plant when they were both in their late teens and had worked there, virtually side-by-side, ever since. It was a repetitive job, some would say mundane and boring but, after twenty-five years on the line, it was all either of them knew how to do. Their combined income was sufficient and adequate for them to enjoy a reasonably comfortable, middle-class lifestyle, but the upcoming plant closure meant there would be in excess of nine hundred former employees competing for just a handful of job opportunities in totally unfamiliar, unrelated fields of employment.

It was the Watson’s love of the great Australian adventure that motivated their ultimate decision. They had, ever since Jacinta was a toddler, enjoyed annual holiday sojourns into the great Aussie outdoors; and the more remote, the better.

At first it was in a tent, strapped securely on top of their conventional two-wheel-drive vehicle, a Holden of course, which was packed tight with all the necessary camping gear. Then, as their confidence and love of the Aussie Outback grew, they graduated to a four-wheel-drive, another Holden, and an off-road caravan.

They were good times and, at the end of a long day exploring the surrounding wilderness with Jacinta, Gordon and Margaret, while sitting around a camp-fire sipping wine, often talked of how wonderful it would be to live permanently in ‘the bush’.

Having worked so long for the company, both Gordon and Margaret received substantial superannuation payouts when their employment came to a premature end. This, combined with their slightly more than modest savings, left them not wealthy but reasonably comfortable, and confident they could survive financially for some time while they searched for employment opportunities they could enjoy together, as a family.

By pure happenstance, Gordon spotted a small article in the weekend newspaper reporting that the historic Mount Dare Hotel in the far north of the state had been placed on the market by the current owners. As a family, the Watsons had briefly visited the hotel a few years earlier on one of their more extended Outback getaways to the distant Dalhousie Thermal Springs. The Springs were a popular camping spot approximately seventy kilometres south of Mount Dare Hotel, and for those hardy travelers brave enough to traverse the vast distance over rough, corrugated dirt roads, it was an idyllic location to stop, camp for a while, and soak in the invigorating warmth of over one-hundred-and-twenty thermal springs.

Gordon remembered how he, Margaret, and Jacinta loved the history, remoteness, and sheer beauty of the Witjira National Park and, considering it was just a small part of the huge Simpson Desert landscape, for the Watsons, it put a whole new perspective on the term ‘desert’.

He remembered how, on continuing their journey, they talked for hours about how wonderful it would be to live in that part of the country. Now, by a strange yet fortuitous twist of fate, it seemed that all the stars were aligned, and this was their chance to finally live the dream.

The asking price for the hotel was in keeping with a potential purchaser’s expectations, given the geographical isolation of the place and, fortunately, it also worked in favour of the Watson’s budget considerations. They could afford to buy the pub without the need to take out a mortgage against their current home. It would knock their savings around somewhat but at least they didn’t have to spend a lot of time convincing their bank manager that buying into a remote hotel on the fringes of the Simpson Desert was a financially viable proposition. It was a bold career change by anyone’s standards, but they had lost the only job they ever had; they had reached the middle-age milestone and, sometimes in life, you simply had to look beyond the negatives and dive into the deep end.

***

Realistically, there were only two reasonably well-formed roads leading to the Mount Dare Hotel, one from beyond the Northern Territory border to the north, and one from Adelaide over thirteen-hundred kilometres to the south. Neither road was sealed over its complete distance and, regardless of the direction of travel, from the north or the south, traversing either was totally dependent on the prevailing weather conditions. There were other ways to move across Simpson Desert but such ill-defined, challenging tracks were generally used by the more adventurous and dedicated four-wheel-drivers, rather than the annual, family-orientated tourist using their annual leave for a brief, exciting, perhaps once-in-a-lifetime excursion to arguably one of Australia’s most remote desert attractions.

It rained rarely in the Simpson Desert, but when it did, it almost always rained heavily, sometimes for days on end without respite. The roads became impassable, even to the most enthusiastic four-wheel-drivers, and it was not uncommon to find the odd fool-hardy motorist bogged to the axles and stranded in the middle of nowhere, desperately waiting for help to arrive and save them from their own stupidity.

Tourist attractions like Dalhousie Springs and Mount Dare became inaccessible in the wet and were subsequently cut-off from to the outside world, sometimes for days, or even weeks at a time. After three years managing the Mount Dare Hotel, Gordon and Margaret Watson knew better than to try attempt to head south. The rain had not affected the southern part of the Northern Territory, however, and with the border just ten kilometres away, it was the best and only option if they were still determined to holiday back in Adelaide.

The Watsons elected to take the northern road, not because they preferred to, but because the southern road was closed. Ultimately, it was a decision that would cost them their lives.

***

“Look at that,” Margaret Watson said, pointing at a dust cloud on the road some distance ahead of them. “That’s the first car we’ve seen since we left the pub.”

“Someone else who doesn’t want to get stranded in the mud in the middle of nowhere,” Gordon suggested.

Fourteen-year-old Jacinta yawned and sat up from where she had been napping, leaning against the side window in the back seat behind her father. “What is it, Mum?” she asked sleepily.

“Just another car up ahead, darling,” Margaret answered. “Go back to sleep, dear.”

Jacinta fluffed up her favorite pillow she’d brought with her from home, laid back against the window and promptly fell back to sleep.

Although they were traveling at a sensible and cautious speed given the rough, corrugated road conditions, the Watsons seemed to be gaining rapidly on the vehicle ahead.

“He’s going bloody slow,” Gordon muttered.

“Probably being over careful,” Margaret offered. “It’s been a while since they graded this road.”

Accordingly, as the gap between them closed, the dust cloud thrown up by the vehicle ahead thickened considerably, offering little more than an occasional glimpse of the other vehicle and forcing Gordon to slow down to a much safer speed lest he run into the back of the car ahead. It was a four-wheel-drive utility he noticed through the swirling dust, with a soft, canvas canopy over the rear cargo bed and two spare wheels secured on a roof-rack over the cabin.