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Pavarotti.’
    â€˜Pavarotti? You’re kidding, right?’
    â€˜There’s nothin’ wrong with old Luciano, mate. No bastard believes me, but Wagner is perfect for the outback. No other music can match the grandeur.’
    â€˜And no other truckie can match your bullshit.’
    He threw his head back and guffawed again. It was a slightly hoarse and high-pitched sound, but wonderfully hearty.
    â€˜It’s why I like drivin’ the Stuart,’ he said. ‘It’s pretty much straight the whole way. You turn on cruise just outside Darwin and turn it off at Port Augusta. Too easy! The rest of the time you’ve got to yourself.’
    â€˜Presumably you’ve still got to keep your eyes on the road.’
    â€˜Aw, sure. Occasionally.’ He peered at my bottle in the gloom. ‘What are you drinkin’?’
    I showed him the label of my beer.
    â€˜Let me buy you one. In return you can listen to me latest poems.’ Col spent many of his Stuart-cruising hours composing haiku. He’d even published a couple on badhaiku.com under the pseudonym Road Train of Thought.
    â€˜Don’t know if you can buy that with just one drink, Col.’
    He went inside and returned a couple of minutes later with a Coopers for me and what looked like a scotch for himself.
    â€˜I’m stoppin’ here for a few hours,’ he said. ‘Reckon I can have one stiff one.’
    â€˜Sure you can. Anyway, it’s just an antidote for all those No-Doz you’ve been popping.’
    He guffawed and dug a crumpled piece of paper out of his hip pocket before sitting down. He had to move the trestle to accommodate his gut.
    â€˜What do you think of this one?’ he asked, looking at the paper. ‘Pink and grey galah/As pretty as a sunset/Against my windscreen.’
    â€˜Well . . .’
    â€˜I thought it was a nice juxtaposition.’
    â€˜Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.’
    We sat in juxtaposed silence for a while, but I didn’t want it to last long enough for him to spring another haiku on me.
    â€˜Did you hear there’s been a bit of trouble at the detention centre?’ I asked.
    â€˜Yeah, I heard on the two-way. Can’t say I’m surprised. You lock innocent people up for years on end and eventually it’s gunna turn ugly. Poor bastards. Fucked in their own countries, fucked on the way here, and fucked when they get here.’
    â€˜Bleeding heart.’
    â€˜Proud of it, mate.’ He clinked his glass against my stubby and we tasted our drinks. ‘You know that Afghans first arrived in this area in the eighteen thirties? Camels ’n’ all. They used to carry goods from Oodnadatta to Alice Springs – there was ’undreds of ’em here once. Helped build the railway and the telegraph.’
    â€˜Aren’t you a font of useless information.’
    â€˜Here’s somethin’ else I bet you didn’t know. The country’s first mosque was built in Maree. In the middle of the South Australian desert, Westie. That was more ’n a hundred years ago. How much fucken terrorism have we had in this country all that time? They can’t be that much of a worry. Nah, I feel sorry for the buggers. If I see one on the road I’ll probably give ’im a lift.’
    â€˜Did you go through a roadblock just outside town?’ I asked.
    â€˜Yeah, but what a joke. They didn’t search me trailers; I could’ve been hiding a hundred suicide bombers and those stupid cops wouldn’t’ve known. They told me there was another roadblock on the other side of Pimba, too, but they’re about to pack it up.’
    â€˜Is that right?’ I thought about the woman – I realised I didn’t know her name – and her Afghan friend stumbling around on the gibber plain in the moonlight, maybe for no reason.
    â€˜Yeah. Apparently they’re gunna set one up just this side of the Gutter