“I’ll send my family a message now then. To let them know I’m on my way.” Just in case things went awry someone else would know where she was.

A signpost indicated Cape Leveque and Gabe turned north, the bitumen stretching out long and straight ahead of them. Natalie typed a message, deleted it, retyped and re-read it then pressed send and watched the signal fade from her phone and change to emergency only. For the first time in her life she wondered how that actually worked.

The vehicle bounced and this time, when she looked up, the road had changed to red dirt. It billowed around them, a stark contrast to the green vegetation and the brilliant blue of the almost cloudless sky. The car had been coated in red dust inside and out when she’d got in. Now she knew why.

The vehicle dipped and then continued to bound up and down, giving the feeling they were in a boat zooming over waves. She glanced across at Gabe, who was focused on the road. Too late to turn back now, she thought, and gripped the armrest tightly.

“Do you go home often?” she asked.

He took his time answering and she thought perhaps he hadn’t heard her. Finally he glanced her way.

“No. Most of my family’s in Perth.” His look was reflective then he grinned again. “I told you. Too quiet for me up here. Maybe when I’m an old man I’ll come back to stay.”

Natalie considered that. She guessed he was around fifty. A long way from being an old man.

“Are you on holidays from work or just getting away from your family?”

“Both,” she said before she had time to think.

“What’s your work?”

“I’m a teacher.”

“Little kids or big?”

“Year three.”

“I loved school when I was that age.”

She glanced at him. “But not when you were older?”

“No. Didn’t want to be there.”

“Well, you seem to have done okay.”

“Thanks to Aunty Rosie.”

She waited for him to go on but he didn’t elaborate and they lapsed into silence. Roadworks slowed their progress intermittently.

“The bitumen will go all the way from Broome to the Cape soon,” Gabe said while they waited at a stop sign to let traffic pass in the opposite direction.

“That would be an improvement, wouldn’t it? Easier access?” Natalie thought of the dirt roads at home she had to drive over and how happy she would be if someone bitumenised them but it was unlikely to happen.

“Better access is good for the people who live there – they can come and go more easily, especially in the wet – and good for the tourists.” He kept his gaze focused ahead as they bounced over corrugations. “At the moment this road is really only four-wheel drive access and not many caravans try it, only the true off-roaders.”