Cobar After Dark

“Some towns don’t greet you—they watch. Like they’re deciding if you’re meant to pass through, or disappear.”

We saw the sign just as the sun dropped below the edge of the trees.

It stood crooked at the side of the road, the metal bent at the corners like someone had tried to pull it down and then given up halfway. The faded paint caught the last copper light of day, edges rimmed in frost that sparkled faintly in our headlights like glitter someone had spilled and forgotten to clean up. Welcome to Cobar, it said in big, blocky white letters stretched across a rust-brown background. Beneath the words, a smiling miner held up a pickaxe like a trophy. His grin was all cracked paint and peeling edges, like even he had stopped believing it meant anything.

Mack squinted at the sign and muttered, “He looks like he’s trying to convince himself it’s not that bad.”

I gave a tired sort of smile. “Maybe he lost the rest of his face in a cave-in.”

“Fair,” Mack said. “We’ve all had a week.”

Mum slowed the car. The indicator clicked loudly as she turned off the highway without a word, her hands tight on the wheel. Her shoulders dropped slightly, like she'd been holding her breath too.

The tyres crunched over gravel, a sharper sound now in the fading light, like teeth grinding down to the root. The road curved gently, leading us toward a loose scatter of buildings that glowed faintly at the edges. In the dusk, they looked less like a town and more like a miniature village someone had forgotten to pack away. Warm light pooled in a few windows, but most of the houses and shopfronts sat dark and quiet, their shapes blurring into the shadows like they'd already gone to sleep.

Cobar wasn’t what I expected.

It didn’t feel like a town so much as a suggestion. There were buildings, yes, and utes with dented trays and faded bumper stickers parked out front of squat brick homes, but everything was spaced too far apart, like someone had drawn a town on paper, then let the lines drift before the ink dried. Even the street signs looked unsure of themselves, leaning at odd angles like they were trying to figure out what they were doing there. Dust clung to every surface, settling into corners and collecting in the rims of car tyres like the land trying to reclaim its own.

A bakery passed on the left, its windows dark, the glass dull in our headlights. Then a petrol station with a sun-bleached price board where the numbers had either fallen off or given up. A dog was curled in front of the newsagent—an old blue heeler with a greying muzzle, curled into a perfect doughnut on a scrap of hessian. It didn’t lift its head as we passed. Didn’t even twitch an ear.

“I think that dog might be a statue,” I said.

“Or it’s seen enough weird stuff to stop caring,” Mack said quietly.

A set of wind chimes rattled from someone’s verandah. There was no breeze. Just the car engine humming faintly, struggling a little as we eased up a shallow incline, and the soft tick-tick of hot metal beginning to cool.

Then I saw it.

A red neon sign blinked ahead, buzzing faintly through the gathering dark. COPPER POST MOTEL – VACANCY. The red letters flickered in uneven rhythm, bleeding colour into the sky like a wound. The “C” struggled more than the others—flicking in and out of existence, as if it wasn’t sure whether it belonged. The light cast long, uncertain shadows, dancing like figures just out of reach.

No one spoke.

Not yet.

Just the buzz of that sign and the quiet, waiting dark all around.

Mum pulled into the car park, gravel spitting from under the tyres like tiny bullets. The sound seemed too loud for the hush of evening, like we were interrupting something—a conversation the town was having with itself, paused now that we’d arrived.

The office stood squat at the front of the property, painted a tired shade of green that might once have been cheerful. Now it just looked sunburnt. A flyscreen door hung lopsided from a single hinge, its mesh torn in two places like someone had either tried to break in or break out—both possibilities equally unsettling. The flickering “Reception” sign above it buzzed faintly, casting a sickly orange glow onto the cracked concrete step below.

Beyond the office, the motel rooms stretched out in a long row, uniform and boxy, their doors painted dull blue-grey like the sky. Each one had a curtain drawn partway across a narrow window, slivers of yellow light spilling out like secrets that weren’t meant for us. They looked inhabited, but not necessarily lived in—like someone had checked in but never fully arrived.

The air outside smelled sharp—eucalyptus, red dust, and something else underneath. Metallic. Like rusted water pipes or the taste of blood in the back of your throat when you’ve bitten your tongue. A cockatoo shrieked from somewhere in the trees nearby, its cry splitting the silence in two. I flinched at the sound, a jagged echo of earlier beauty undone by the sheer force of volume. A reminder, maybe, that even the prettiest things here had claws.

The sun was gone now—completely. And with it, the last of the warmth.

That twilight settled over everything, the kind that makes the edges of the world go blurry. Shapes turned strange. Trees looked like people. Cars looked like animals crouched low in the dark. It was a time of almosts—almost night, almost safe, almost real. The kind of light where you could mistake something ordinary for something else entirely. Or worse: mistake something wrong for something normal.

Mack stirred beside me, rubbing a patch into the fogged window with his sleeve. His breath still lingered there—soft clouds that came and went in sync with the rise and fall of his chest. His reflection hovered ghost-like in the glass, layered over the motel and the sky behind it. He looked older there. Not just tired. Different. Like the trip was changing him in ways even he hadn’t noticed yet.

He didn’t say anything, but I knew he felt it too.

This wasn’t the end of anything. Just a comma in the sentence. A resting point before more words came.

The car’s heater hissed faintly, working hard against the cold that had crept in around us. The dashboard read four degrees, and it felt like every part of the night was made of sharp edges. I pulled Ribbons closer, tucked her under my chin. Her fur smelled of dust and car air and something else—me. The way childhood things hold on to you, even when you’re trying to grow up faster than you’re ready.

Mum turned off the engine. The sudden silence came with a click and a sigh. Without the low hum of movement, we were just three people sitting in the cold, staring at something none of us had chosen, and none of us could yet explain.

No one moved.

I glanced down at my notebook, its corner slightly bent, a smudge of pencil already on the next clean page from where my thumb had rested too long. I wondered what I’d draw tonight. Whether it would be the row of quiet doors, the crooked sign, or the shape of the sky just before it swallowed the last of the light.

Maybe nothing.

Maybe I’d just write words instead—try to capture how this place felt in ways pictures couldn’t.

The Copper Post Motel stood in front of us.

Not a destination. Not a refuge.

Just a placeholder between where we’d been and where we hadn’t reached yet.

“Stay here,” Mum said, unbuckling her seatbelt with a metallic click that seemed to snap the silence in half.

She didn’t wait to see if we’d obey. Didn’t turn to check, or give one of those Mum-glances that usually meant business. Just grabbed her bag and pushed the door open into the crisp night air, which rushed in immediately to take her place—cold and dry, edged with eucalyptus and the sting of oncoming frost.

The door slammed shut behind her with more force than I think she meant.

Mack unbuckled his seatbelt too. His snap was louder than Mum’s—sharper somehow.

“I’m not staying in the car,” he muttered, not quite looking at me.

He shoved the door open and stepped out. His breath fogged instantly in the night air, and mine followed soon after as I clambered after him, still clutching Ribbons and my notebook like they were permission slips to exist in this strange new place.

Outside, our shoes crunched over gravel in the deepening dark, the sound far too loud for the stillness that surrounded us. It made me want to tiptoe, but I didn’t. Neither did Mack. There was something bold in the noise we made—like we were announcing ourselves, daring the world to notice us.

A few crickets had begun their chorus, their chirping rhythmic and insistent, like a thousand tiny clocks ticking out of sync. It wasn’t loud enough to fill the silence—just loud enough to remind you it was there. High above, the stars had emerged fully now, each one needle-sharp against the deep velvet of the winter sky. They didn’t twinkle here the way they did back home. They stared.

We stepped into the reception office.

The air inside was warmer, but not welcoming. It smelled of lemon-scented fly spray and furniture polish gone sour. A chemical brightness layered over the old smell of dust, like someone had tried to clean away time but hadn’t quite managed it.

The door creaked shut behind us, followed by the half-hearted jingle of a bell so old and tired it sounded like it might give up mid-note. The sound echoed longer than it should have, as though the room were bigger than it appeared. Or emptier.

A desk sat at the back of the room—faux woodgrain worn smooth at the corners, a plastic bell perched on top like a relic. Its surface gleamed where generations of fingers had pressed it, though no one reached for it now. Beside it, a small desk heater glowed orange, humming softly, radiating heat in a small circle that didn’t quite reach our feet.

A yellowed fly strip hung above us, its sticky surface dotted with tiny corpses—mosquitoes, midges, a single moth with one wing twisted askew like it had died in surprise.

Brochures lined one wall, slumped in wire racks, curling like they were trying to escape. Bright colours dulled by dust and sun: Come fossick for opals! Sheep Shearing Championship! Discover the Real Outback! The smiles on the cartoon children were too wide, their fishing rods cartoonishly bent under the weight of invisible catches. I didn’t want to pick any of them up. They looked like they might crumble in my hands, like dried leaves.

The woman behind the counter didn’t move. She was just… there.

Older than Grandma, maybe. But not soft-old. Not the kind that smells like lavender and hums while folding laundry. She was the kind of old that felt carved—hardened by wind, not time. Her hair was long and iron-grey, tied into a braid that hung over one shoulder, a red elastic binding it at the end. The red stood out—too bright, like a drop of blood on linen.

Her sleeveless blouse gaped slightly at the buttons, revealing a beige thermal shirt beneath. Her arms were freckled and sun-marked, the skin tough like old leather. There was a mole on her collarbone, large and dark, almost too perfectly round—as if it had been drawn there on purpose.

She didn’t smile.

Just looked at Mum. Then at Mack. Then at me.

Not like a greeting. Not like we were guests.

Like she was studying us. Filing us away.

I tightened my grip on Ribbons without meaning to.

The light above flickered. Once. Then again. It buzzed with a kind of nervous energy, making the shadows deepen around her cheekbones, hollowing out her face so she looked like a character in a woodcut—rough and dark, but precise.

Her eyes were pale. Not blue. Not grey.

Ash.

The colour of something that had burned a long time ago.

“One night?” the woman asked, though it didn’t sound like a question—more like she already knew the answer. Her voice was low and rough, textured like gravel and smoke, with a worn country lilt that clung to the ends of her words like dust to boots.

“Yes,” Mum said quickly—too quickly. “Just the one. Two kids. One room.”

She shifted her weight slightly, boots scuffing against the lino in a half-step she didn’t finish. Her body held that too-familiar tension now—shoulders tight, neck stiff, like she was holding herself together with string. It was the posture of someone who didn’t want to stay long enough to sit down.

The woman nodded, slow and silent, then bent to open a drawer. The desk creaked as she moved, the sound sharp in the stillness. From inside, she pulled out a single brass key on a rectangle of wood. Room 6 was burned into it with neat, blocky letters, the edges darkened from years of handling. She placed it on the counter gently, like setting down something alive that might spook.

“Cash or card?” she asked. Her tone was flat, perfunctory, but her eyes never left Mum’s face. They didn’t blink. Didn’t wander. Just stayed fixed there, studying. Waiting.

“Cash,” Mum said, already unzipping her wallet. Her fingers hesitated just a second before pulling out the notes, newer and cleaner than anything else in the room. She counted them out with hands that were too careful, too precise—hands trying not to shake.

The woman took them without comment. She counted them slowly, lips moving silently, her fingers dry and papery. Then she tucked the money into a battered tin beneath the counter, the lid snapping shut with a metallic finality that made me flinch.

Only then did she look away from Mum—just slightly—to focus on Mack.

Not on me.

Not on Ribbons curled tight under my arm.

Just Mack.

“You’re a quiet one,” she said, her voice softer now. Not kind, but curious. Like someone testing a theory.

Mack didn’t reply. He never did, not when he was like this. He stayed just behind Mum’s shoulder, half in the shadows, his hand deep in his pocket where I knew he kept Grandma’s phone, still dead and useless but clutched like a charm. His other hand picked absently at the frayed hem of his sleeve, looping and unlooping a thread like he was counting something only he could see.

“That’s good,” the woman added, nodding to herself. “Quiet boys are smart boys.”

There was something too knowing in the way she said it.

The silence that followed felt thick, like walking through cobwebs.

Mack blinked. He opened his mouth, just slightly, like he might speak—but nothing came out. Like the words got stuck halfway up his throat, unsure if they were safe to be said aloud.

But the woman nodded anyway.

As if she’d heard them all.

Then she turned her attention back to Mum.

“You’re one of the smart ones,” she said, voice lowered, almost conspiratorial now. It wasn’t a compliment. More like a statement of fact. A tick in a column.

Mum frowned, the crease between her brows deepening. “Sorry?”

The woman leaned forward, just slightly, and pressed the key into Mum’s hand. Her fingers lingered, dry but firm.

“Getting them out now,” she murmured, the words barely more than breath. “That’s what matters. Before it really starts.”

Mum didn’t move. But I saw it—something subtle. A flicker at the corner of her eye. A twitch in the way she held her mouth. A tiny shift of her foot like her body was bracing for impact. She held the key a fraction too tightly, and the wooden tag left a faint red mark on her palm.

“Right,” she said. “Thank you.”

Her voice cracked slightly on the last word.

Her hand came to rest on my shoulder. Not gently. Not quite protectively either. Like she needed to feel my shape. Needed the reassurance that I was still here.

The woman gave a small nod, then turned her face to the window.

As though we were already gone.

As though she was looking for someone else. Or waiting.

Out there, beyond the glass, the car park was empty and still. But the woman stared through it like she could see further than that. Like she was keeping watch over something coming down the road. Something she couldn't—or wouldn’t—stop.

Behind her, on the wall, hung a large map of Australia. Pins marked towns and roads I’d never heard of. Some red, some blue, some yellow. They weren’t in neat lines. They made loops. Spirals. Shapes. If it was a pattern, I didn’t know how to read it. But I didn’t like the feeling it gave me.

Beside the map hung a calendar—July 2018. Nearly every day crossed off in thick black pen. Not a line through them. A big dark X. Heavy. Final.

We turned to leave. The bell above the door gave a single soft jingle, like it wasn’t sure if it wanted to say goodbye or sound an alarm.

The cold outside hit like a slap—clean and sharp. It closed over us fast, catching in our throats and making the stars above our heads feel even closer, brighter, more ancient.

The motel stood in shadow now. A row of squat shapes huddled under a pale strip of sky, numbers glowing faintly on the doors like weak lighthouses in the dusk. Room 6 waited at the end, the bulb above it flickering in a protective wire cage, casting broken light onto the gravel below.

Mum started down the path, key clutched in her fist like a blade, but then paused after a few steps.

“Grab your things,” she said without turning, her voice low and steady.

Mack nodded and veered back toward the car. I followed.

He opened the back door and pulled out our bags—the old school backpack that always seemed heavier than it should be, my pink suitcase with the unicorn sticker peeling at the edge. He slung his across one shoulder and held mine by the handle, its wheels catching on the gravel.

Mum didn’t take anything from the boot. She just stood by the car for a moment, scanning the road again, as if half-expecting someone—or something—to appear out of the night.

Then she turned back to us. “Come on.”

So we did.

Three figures moving through the dusk, our shadows stretching long behind us under the motel lights, breath fogging in soft clouds that vanished before they could reach the doors ahead.

No one spoke as we made our way to Room 6.

We were just shapes now, edging into the warmth of a place that didn’t ask questions. A pause in the dark. A breath before something else began.