In the southern reaches of the outback sits the small town of Coober Pedy. Much of the world's crystal fire opal is mined there, and nearly all of it is pulled out using hand tools. Individuals stake small claims and team up with one or two other people for safety. I drove the several hundred kilometers north of Adelaide into the red desert.

The flat plains wore the extravagance of distance and simplicity. Scattered scrubs crouched low beneath the sun. Groups of twisted mulga, eucalyptus trees, hunched over like sinners awaiting a papal viewing.  Tapered leaves cloaked the trunks and flashed whip-edged in the wind.

Here and there abandoned vehicles rested forever beside the road, stripped and rusted, sun-bleached and somehow haunted.  One had flipped onto its roof, clearly an accident; others sprawled on their hubs as if victimized by some mythic mechanical beast.

Long hours passed until the hypnotic landscape changed.  Coober Pedy sprouted in lumps from the horizon, looking as if an army of mutant ants had been very busy.  Mounds of pale dirt scattered on the opal fields marked abandoned claims.  The town exuded the final asthmatic wheeze of a bust farm community, gilded in red grit and vaguely ramshackle, much as California's towns must have been during the gold rush.  Dust puffed through the air.  Greenery disappeared entirely within the town limits and lawns were nonexistent.  Water was far too precious to waste on such vanities.
 
Mary's daughter Marie had sketched a mud map to her house. While working, she had cursed the fact that her street had recently been named.  She and her husband David grumpily conceded that the town might soon have a traffic light.

Their idea of urban blight, however, did not include paving the road. The talc-like dirt called bulldust became a pasty muck whenever it rained. During the Dry season, the dirt tracks shook loose every screw and bolt. Even machines spared the abuses of the rough opal fields fell to ruin from the insidious dust. 

Everything about Coober Pedy was rough and ready, and mining operations were no exception.  David and Marie shared a claim with some other folks and took me along one day.  Open shafts stippled the fields and the mine rescue squad spent much of its time saving shutterbugs who backed into shafts.  Groups were no longer allowed off the buses while in the fields but the rescue squad had already pulled three tourists out of the ground that year.  David fixed me with a bug-eyed stare, his handlebar mustache twitching even before his lips moved. 

"Every bloody one of them an American," he declared, "and a woman." 
One of the women they hauled out had been soaked in blood.  All the blood had come from a small cut and she was fine. Another young lady bawled non-stop for her mama during the rescue, leading the team to assume she'd be fine.  A minute after she reached the surface, she collapsed.  She was dead.  The fall had burst a vein near her spinal column and she'd bled to death internally. 
 
Experience in the fields didn't guarantee safety.  During my stay, a miner was working alone, crouched next to a compact rock driller. When shiny pieces appeared on the outside of the bit the machine was removed and mining continued by hand. When a large chunk of opal flashed in the bit, the miner snatched at the gem. 

The bit caught the miner's sleeve and pulled his forearm into the auger, twisting and crushing it off and shattering the upper arm.  Tucking the limb under his ruined arm, he hopped into the winch harness, rode slowly to the surface, and stumbled to the only nearby mine being worked that day.  The clinic could do little more than pack the arm in ice and prevent further blood loss.  The Royal Flying Doctor, an emergency airlift that provided the only ambulance service throughout the interior, arrived within an unexpectedly short two hours.  The Royal Adelaide Hospital reattached the limb and within 72 hours blood flow was miraculously reestablished. 
No one doubted that the miner would some day continue his quest for the pearls of the earth. 
 

Supper, also called tea, was served early the day of my departure so Mary could watch me eat one last hearty meal. Even though she was sending me to her daughter in Coober Pedy, Mary fretted and fussed, packing sandwiches and juice.

"Now you know not to stop for anyone, don't you?" She massaged her face and peered from her worrisome screen of cigarette smoke until I nodded.

"And you particularly don't stop for those black fellows, those Aborigines," she said. "They'll make you think they need help and steal your petrol. Bugger you! Leave you there!" she exclaimed, hands waving.

I'd already heard many fables of wily Aborigines stealing petrol; hitching a ride for themselves and eight friends hiding in the bush; even a story about a fellow who towed a car and seven Aborigines two hundred clicks into town to discover the car never had an engine.

"Oh, dear," she chaffed, alternately patting her neck and tugging her hair. She sprang to life again, as she was wont to do, and rushed to a cabinet.

"Here, you take this," she said, still rummaging. "Oh dear, where is it now, it's here, don't leave yet, ah!"  She beat the air with a shiny object and forced it into my hands.

"You take this and if any of those black folks try to pull you over, you wave this at them and they'll be scared and run away." 

I looked down and held my breath to suppress my laughter. She had given me a toy cap pistol.

Adelaide, South Australia welcomed me on a Sunday bustling with tourists and casual drivers. True to her matronly appearance, Mary twittered with relief at my safe arrival. "I'm so glad you're all right," she breathed, hands fanning the air as if to dispel any lingering harmful spirits. "I've been so worried." 

She and her husband Michael, originally from the United Kingdom, had lived in Australia half their lives before retiring. Before leaving America, I had worked with a distant relative of Mary's and had called for travel advice. Minutes into our first conversation she had declared, "You just forget about all that. I have an extra room and I'll take care of everything. When will you be here?"  By the third phone call the guest room had been repainted and Mary had rung my mother to assure her I would be safe.

Mary ran out for fast food and returned with a meal that rivaled the crab feast at my family's annual reunion. When the plate had been filled from rim to rim she piled food on top, occasionally spooning up more as I ate. I quickly learned to keep my elbows firmly planted on the table to shield my dish from her limitless benevolence. I had roamed thousands of miles to stay with someone who out-mothered my own mother.     

Since her children had grown up long ago, Mary regularly took in "orphans," destitute travelers who otherwise would be relegated to the communal rooms of hostels. Almost every foray to the shops was an opportunity to discover another stray. Once she returned from the grocers, all aflutter because she had offered her house to a Catholic girl's choir (yes, the entire choir) and she wasn't sure she had enough floor space.
 
The long cottage where she and her strays lived was ruled by Bobby, a rose-breasted cockatoo known as a galah. Bobby paraded in stiff, military strides before crawling up my pant leg. Unaware that he was scaling Mount Laine, I accidentally launched him across the linoleum. I learned exactly how unforgiving a cockie could be as I groveled before his perch every evening with mashed potatoes from my own plate. Bobby ignored my tithe even while greedily demanding the same food from my hostess.

"Maaary," he sang pleasantly with the first rattle of skillets in the afternoon.

"What?" she sang back, smiling and misty eyed. "My little Bobby. He knows I'm cooking." She abandoned the stove and scuffed to the cage.

"Come give mommy a kiss," she demanded, holding her arms wide. Bobby spread his wings and shoved his face against the bars. While Mary kissed the beak that could crack a pecan, Bobby's tongue wriggled. If only he had lips.

"Maaary," he warbled after she returned to the stove. Preoccupied by food and steam and smells, she did not hear his calls. Soon Bobby's tone became ardent.
"Mary!"

"What, Bobby?"  Mary's patience had also worn thin as she juggled the stove, oven and sink.
 
"Mary!" he called again. "Mary!  Mar-rink!  Mar-rink-rink!  Rink-rink-rink!"  He lapsed into a peculiar cross between a tinny note and an angry scream. He dangled from the rafters of his cage, flipping his pink crest.

"Stop that!" Mary waved her finger dangerously near the bars while Bobby nipped the air. "No bities. No bities!" When he was quiet Mary padded back to the stove. She stirred the pots, and through the silence and steam a small voice could be heard.

"I love you," Bobby muttered into his downy chest.

"You only love me because you want dinner."

"Mar-rink!  Rink-rink!" 

"Oh, all right!" She dished up a spoonful of mashed potato. "Here, you fool bird, now be quiet. Hot, Bobby, hot!" 

Mary's husband Michael had far less patience. He and Bobby waged an ongoing, low-level battle. Bobby was insanely jealous and, although only seven inches tall, attacked the six-foot Michael at every opportunity. Whenever Michael sat in his favorite spot, an overstuffed armchair near the cage, Bobby voiced his displeasure. "Move it! Move it!" he shrilled endlessly.

But Michael had long since shut off his hearing aid and enjoyed his evening paper in peace.
 

After arriving in Australia, a week-long search of the used car lots produced a twenty-year-old Ford Falcon. I was inordinately pleased with the metal mule, an ecstasy dampened only by the terrifying realities of actually driving the damned thing. I was ignorant of Australia’s traffic rules and the right-hand drive was nerve wracking. A Danish Kingdom sticker slapped on the rear window by the previous owner advertised my foreign status, so other drivers refrained from honking too often.  

Creeping into the nearest filling station, I noticed a chain padlocked to the pump and wandered inside for assistance.

"Sorry, we haven't any gas," the attendant replied.

"You've run out?"  I asked, thinking he should put up a sign.

"No, we don't sell that here."

"You don't sell gas here?"  

A small light flickered behind the attendant's eyes. "You'll be wanting auto gas, yes?"

"Yes," I breathed, relieved that the language barrier had crumbled, "I want gas for the auto."

"We don't sell that here," he said and turned back to his magazine. A numbness crept across my skull. A filling station open for business but with nothing to sell?  

"This is a gas station?"  I asked, feeling unbelievably stupid.

"Ooo," he exclaimed, eyes afire, "you'll be wanting petrol for your auto."

And so the adventure began.