Short cut

November 2005

As we were driving back from town today Maggie suggested to me “Lisa you should go short cut way”. Ominous words! A short cut out here is not always the shortest distance between two places. More often than not out here it means something quite opposite. Out here a shortcut could mean:
• Someone at another homeland needs a lift so let’s drive thirty kilometres out of our way to pick them up
• Someone from another homeland owes me money so lets go via there to collect it
• I owe someone money at that homeland so lets go the other way so that I wont bump into them
• I will be driving on that road soon but there’s been rain recently so lets go that way today in your 4WD to see if the roads are alright
• I feel like going hunting and I know there’s more chance of seeing perentie/goanna/kangaroos if we go that other road
• I feel like eating honey ant and I know where there’s a big mob of them if we go that other road

I suspect that these last two were the reason for today’s short cut because not long after we turned off the main road and began wending our way across some immense cattle station the call of “Perentie” came from the back of the Troopie. We gave chase, first by car, then on foot but to no avail.
“ Ah he was only small one anyway” Rosie chimed in as if to make the lack of success matter less.
Undeterred we continued on our ‘short cut’ which took us a good 20-30 minutes longer to reach our destination that the normal road would have. But what matter is time out here? The late afternoon sun made the red sand and the mulga trees glow, the mood in the car was light and a drive along a lesser travelled path seemed a good thing to be doing. Perhaps Maggie summed it up best. “I like to go that short cut way sometimes” she said “just for have a look round.”