Puree de Papillon

I have just returned from two weeks in Broome. It is a short drive up the road for us, of eight hours sans kidlets and about thirteen with these small and delicate creatures, especially those desiring frequent wee stops on saltbush and other crackled roadside paraphernalia (rusty cans, roo bones and the occasional dinosaur skeleton, according to our eldest daughter). For Pilbara dwellers, Broome is a love or hate escapade. Those here long enough to have known Broome BTB (Before Tour Bus) reminisce on the simplicity of this pearling village with its Asian flavours and infinite shoreline. I'm a bit like that with Coral Bay, five hours south of Karratha and home to Ningaloo Reef. But that's another story (involving heaving sobs on a previously Edenic shoreline now beseiged by signs like 'Swimmers watch out for boats'). I'll get there another day. Broome now has, as many a Paradise Found, been well and truly...found. Yet, as I didn't know this particular town before it became a backpackertourbuscruiseliner bumper-sticker-with-camel-silhouette, I'm an addict.

My husband and I had the fortune to be showered by a group of students with the gift of a meal out. Let me say, this was to be no ordinary meal. Well, the actual meal might be, but its significance cannot go unremarked. We had not been out to dinner, or on a date (ew...sounds freaky) since children. That's four and a half years ago. In fact, due to the complexities both everyday and ... completely out of left field, with family life, we'd basically been stapled to home since 2005. So, the experience was significant. The stepping over a deeply etched line in red dirt (or Cable Beach sand) meant we would be simply having dinner together. Alone. Just us and the meal on our plate. Whatever we dared.

And what did we choose?

Well...we were game. Or it was.

Let us step back to the drive up the road from Karratha; in particular, roadkill. Game. The meal, at the gorgeous Old Zoo Cafe as opposed to the stuff which litters the roadside, was divine. Entree, in particular, marked my virgin foray into the stuff which usually splatters windscreens at high speed. My husband and I shared a rather more delectable looking tasting plate which included roo and 'mu. ie. Kangaroo and emu. The other three weren't roadkill, but of the aquatic variety of exotic flavours: croc, barra and pearl meat. We sampled and savoured each bite, in turn analysing its flavours, textures, tenderness and colours. Astoundingly, the croc was the whitest of silky sweet meat and the bird, our humble emu, was a maroon, delectably grilled medium rare. I loved this feast and avoided, with surprising success, imagining the untidy ends these animals often come to in the wild, or out on the open road.

What the menu didn't offer up, however, was the most delectable of game I have ever encountered. Indeed, a fare the fairest of game. Let me take you back to Sandfire Roadhouse...

Sandfire Roadhouse is located about 300 kilometers north of Port Hedland, halfway to Broome. Three years ago, Sandfire was unfortunately, no matter how semantically fitting such a tragedy might appear, destroyed by fire. Finally, around Easter this year, the new building opened. Phew. Icecreams at Sandfire again! Maybe not quite Eftpos, but at least a fridge and freezer in operation along with these naughtily ironic caps for sale advertising the repeated failure and subsequent success of BP getting their roadhouse back into action after such a protracted demise: Something along the lines of 

Except there really needed to be a cross through the 9 and a '10 to finally finalise the rebuilding fracas.

So hurrah for Sandfire Roadhouse!

What DID survive the fire, fortunately, was a lovely area of thick trees and scrub through which wanton peacocks and peahens squander and ponder the relentless heat of this north west desert region. The trees are  reticulated, there's plenty of polkadot feathered parading and even a couple of albino peahens meander about. We have always loved spending a few minutes in this oasis, amongst the birds, if for nothing but to enjoy the sight of a tree. Or fifty. To remember shade with a hint of cool.

Well, this time we stopped at Sandfire, dug up enough change for me to buy icecreams and my husband to secure his ceremonial Sanfire cap, and headed yet again straight for the peacocks' den of serenity. But this time things were different. The birds had visitors. In their thousands. And evidently, the visiting cacophany of butterflies we encountered were multiplying, exponentially and insatiably in the heady shade. Next thing you know we're attempting to fob off four year old most keen to understand why a couple of butterflies were hugging. Yes, clearly, transfixedly, grappling with each other and holding on for dear life. Who ever would have thought?

What a wonder this sight was! Lurid golds and dusky yellows, pupil-black mirror spots all swish and flutter through the peacock sanctum. Nothing like it ever seen before. Not at Melbourne Zoo, Perth Zoo, in any butterfly enclosure purpose built to house and protract the procreative possibilities of this whisperlight lick of a creature. Sandfire needed a cap just for this butterfly extravaganza.

Still, with hours yet to travel (and many a wee stop yet to be had despite banning fluids and even Hi5 songs about waterfalls, rivers and baths) the inevitable departure ensued. We departed the roadhouse - itself now solid(ish), functional(ish) and prepared for any future fire, cyclone or attack by rampant tourbus (maybe not the latter) - leaving the beautiful butterflies to

SPLAT!

...  become Puree de Papillon. Like silken butter (how fitting their name quickly became), a splodge and drag across the windscreen. Just as one might apply an elegant smear of squash mash across fine china. Or carrot. Or sauteed and whipped sunflower petals. Except this time, it was just dead butterfly. Butterflies [pl]. By the time we reached Broome, our view of the encroaching Kimberly twilight was, to say the least, rather golden.

And so, that was all I was missing from dinner at the Old Zoo Cafe, from my crossing-over dinner, from my Broome experience. What a little dollop of that buttery butterfly delight upon my plate might have done for my palette I shall never know. But one thing is certain, puree de papillon is by far the most equisite roadkill I have ever been blessed to encounter.

Conversation with a cyclone

It is hard to believe your nerve. We thought you might be coming a little sooner. Now we believe you're not coming at all. You've simply piked. Yes, whimped out, taunting us with your little sidekicks forming somewhere around 90 degrees and sashaying about a little on the spot then drifting off in an always southwesterly directiong before fading, lost in ocean swell. You've had the power of a party popper. All poooof, pffft, a little spray of colour, a little tinkle of dust particles made to step momentarily sideways in the wake of the pithy flutterings of crepe.

This is north west WA, dear cyclone, grand whirling adventurer of the sea and threatener of the coast. It is our time. Aside the cruel fact that we're gagging for your rain, you rehydrate our bones. Mine are wizened now. Waiting, sucking on dry air and swallowing the occasional spit of some renegade cloud. Have you ever felt like a drybaked chicken carcas, cyclone? I am crisp to the touch, my nerves burning electric, singing through the air like power wires strung pole to pole across the landscape.

So, we charge you with negligence. For this is a place of climactic irony. We who choose to force ourselves upon this place accept the blessings of a mild and sunny winter as refreshment, payback for the heat and wildness of summer. But summer, oh summer, summer is God here. Summer is adventure. The true rejuvenation of spirit. Its dramatic contrasts, of thudding heat against the near orgasmic threat of cyclonic travesty, are the blood which thumps through us over these six months. Systole, diastole, dry heat, torrential salvation.

And so, I have a hole in my heart.

You have forsaken us, oh cyclone.

It's not that we necessarily want annihalation - yes, you came with Laurence before we'd had time to shift the calendar to greet you. You mashed a caravan park. You destroyed cows. You wreaked havoc on the unsuspecting and the unprotected before we'd had a chance to settle into your rhythms -but then you abandoned us.

Then again, writing in anger or self pity is never going to tempt you into our longitude now, is it? You always win the argument. So perhaps I should cajole you, tell you how we need and love you. Our backyard does, anyway, the local lopping company having quoted two kidneys to fell the many dead palm branches dotted around our place. You, oh great leveller of the north west, are our only hope. Sure, you'll be messy, but aren't kidneys important for something?

All this dry, dead air is sending me into a spin. Ironic, really. That's your job. But with Robyn faffing about somewhere in the middle of nobody cares where, nobody cares. We do though. We'll take your Robyn, or any STUVW you might cough up in the next 28 days. You know you're a chance. The meteorologists do even if you don't. They're still predicting, 'the possiblity of a cyclone by the end of April'. The clarity of vision is astounding. But, despite its hypnotic vagueness, the fact is, they're correct.

Patch up my heart and you will feed me until November. I need that here. Winter comes. It is long, blue, eternal and already we have lived under dehydrated orbit for near a year. Bruise our skies and stitch us up good before our blood runs dry, oh cyclone.

PS. I bought my daughter The Wizard of Oz to watch on your night of nights. You wouldn't disappoint a four year old now, would you?