Dust Trails

“Some places don’t let you leave—they just hide inside you until you realise you took them with you.”

We left Broken Hill without going home. Without checking on Grandma. Without saying goodbye.

The town shrank behind us, slipping into the rear-view mirror like a mirage stitched from metal and dust and memory. The mining headframes stood rigid against the pale winter sky, jagged silhouettes watching us go with blank, industrial indifference.

Up on the hill, the “Line of Lode” monument cut a dark line across the horizon—a scar in the earth raised for the dead. It marked the names of men who never returned from underground, names chiselled into stone because the land swallowed them and didn’t give them back. It felt like a warning left standing on purpose. A reminder: this place has always taken people.

Mum never said we were leaving. Not really.

She came back from the servo while the cold morning sun hit the metal roof, making it ping softly as it shrank in the chill. She didn’t say much—just handed Mack several bottles of water, still fridge-cold, condensation clinging to the plastic and freezing in tiny diamond-like flecks around the neck.

She passed me a warm sausage roll wrapped in a brown paper bag. The grease had already soaked through in spots, turning the paper translucent. The smell of it—meat, onion, pastry—hit me like a punch. My stomach folded in on itself with a hunger so sharp it felt personal.

Then, without ceremony: “All right. Let’s go.”

Her voice was flat. Final. Like a door clicking shut.

No “buckle up.” No “one last look.” No “we’ll be back.”

Just the engine turning over with a reluctant cough, like it didn’t want to start either. A few seconds of mechanical hesitation before it gave in, shuddered once, and caught.

The tyres crunched over the loose gravel with a brittle, glassy sound. Everything sounded sharper in the cold—crisp air cutting around us like knives through cloth.

I twisted in my seat and looked back.

My breath fogged the window, little puffs of white that vanished almost as soon as they formed. Through the glass, Broken Hill slipped away—first rooftops, then fences, then chimney lines. Then nothing.

Just earth and sky and the long, empty road stretching out behind us, fading into the kind of distance that feels bigger than it should. The land didn’t wave goodbye. It just watched us go — quiet and unchanged, like we’d never been there at all.

The last thing I saw was a flock of galahs rising out of a clutch of ghost gums. They burst up in a flurry of sound and colour, their pink underbellies flashing like bruised petals. They wheeled once in the pale blue sky—then scattered. Gone.

We took the Silver City Highway eastward.

The road lay ahead in a long, unbroken strip of bitumen, straight and certain, like someone had laid a ribbon of black across the rust-coloured earth and told it not to look back. The highway shimmered faintly in places, even in winter, heat rising from the surface in gentle ripples that blurred the edges of the world.

The sun hung low already, even though it wasn’t yet late. That strange winter trick—light but no warmth. A distant sun that didn’t bother trying.

It cast long shadows across the road, stretching the shapes of mulga trees into crooked fingers reaching for something just out of reach. The clumps of spinifex lining the roadside caught the sun on their frost-tinged tips, giving the land a brittle halo, as though it might shatter if touched too hard.

The car heater hissed softly, blowing warmth across my face and fogging the windows in slow, creeping ovals. It smelled faintly of metal and dust—like the ghosts of all the roads we’d driven before.

I drew a face in the fog with my fingertip. Two eyes, a round mouth. It smiled at me sadly for a moment. Then disappeared as the glass cleared. Then reappeared as my breath fogged it again.

Outside, the sky stretched endlessly, a pale canvas that made everything seem exposed. Honest. Too big to lie.

The colours of the landscape felt sharper in winter. The reds of the earth deepened to rust in the shadows. The sky wasn’t the brilliant blue of summer, but a softer, sterner shade. Thinner. Cold and high and watchful.

No one spoke.

Mack drank his water slowly, holding it with both hands, the condensation smearing against his fingers. He stared straight ahead, face unreadable.

Mum drove with her lips pressed into a tight line. Not frowning, not smiling. Just... sealed.

And me?

I leaned my head against the window, the cool of the glass sinking into my skin, and tried not to think about the building behind us. About the girl. About the empty-eyed man who had stepped through the world like it was made of paper.

About how easy it had been for it all to break.

Eventually, I opened my notebook. Its cover had gone soft at the corners from handling, the pages cool and smooth beneath my fingers. I flipped past the drawings I’d done back at Grandma’s—the kitchen with the too-loud clock, its hands forever stuck at ten past three in my scribbled version. Grandpa’s chair, too, captured in crayon—the sag in the cushion still visible even though it was just paper and wax. The lines felt childish now. Ghostly.

I didn’t want to look at them. Not now. Not with Grandpa sick and Grandma not answering the phone.

So I started a new page.

The pencil felt cold in my hand, the lead leaving neat, dark lines on the blank paper. I drew a road—long and straight like the one outside—stretching toward a vanishing point that fell off the edge of the page. Then a sky. Big, empty, impossible. I added a wedge-tailed eagle, its wings spread wide, gliding on invisible air, because they always seemed to be there, watching.

Then us—two stick figures in the back of a wobbly car, swallowed by the landscape. I gave myself a bow in my hair, and drew Ribbons next to me, even though she was tucked under my arm and already half-flattened from too much hugging. I gave Mack too many freckles and made his arms cross grumpily over his chest. He was always grumpy on long drives.

But this didn’t feel like a normal long drive.

There were no stops for hot chocolates in strange towns with funny names. No singing along to Dad’s old roadtrip CD—where every second song was one of those cheesy 90s ones he swore we’d learn to love. No I-spy. Nothing to spy except red dirt and blue sky. Even the car felt different. Like it knew we weren’t heading somewhere, but away from something.

The silence wasn’t peaceful. It was heavy. The kind that settles in your bones.

The only sounds were the tyres humming on tarmac, the whisper of wind sneaking in through imperfect seals in the door, and the radio crackling in and out of signal—faint snatches of distant voices that sounded like ghosts trying to reach us across a divide too wide to cross.

Outside, a road train tore past in the opposite direction. A blur of chrome and dust and diesel roar. The whole car rattled in its wake, buffeted by the sheer force of air displaced by its passing. For a moment, I caught a glimpse of the driver’s face—creased and sun-browned beneath a faded beanie, eyes fixed forward, unreadable.

And I envied him.

He had a destination. A purpose. He knew what he was carrying. What waited at the end of the road.

We hit a cattle grid, the metal bars rumbling under our wheels, sending a shiver through the chassis that climbed up into my spine.

Mack sat next to me, silent. His forehead pressed against the window, fogging the glass in slow, rhythmic clouds. In the reflection, his eyes didn’t seem to focus on anything—not the passing trees or the road signs. Just... somewhere far off. Like he was seeing something behind the landscape.

His hand rested on the dead phone in his lap—Grandma’s old one. His fingers curled around it, knuckles pale, like he believed if he held on long enough, it might spark to life. As if Grandma might suddenly be there, saying his name, telling us where to go, what to do.

Mum drove with both hands gripping the wheel like it might try to turn itself. Her knuckles stood out white and sharp, tendons tight beneath the skin. She kept glancing in the rear-view mirror—not at us, but at the road behind. Not just once or twice, but often. Like she was checking. Watching.

For what?

Every so often, she reached for her own phone in the cup holder. Checked the screen. No messages. No calls. She never said anything when she looked, but her lips pressed thinner each time.

We passed a sun-faded sign: Wilcannia – 196 km

One marker in a journey that would stretch across two states—from the red backbone of New South Wales, across the pale gold plains of Queensland, all the way to Brisbane’s humid edge. From dust to water. From ghosts to cousins.

I tried to picture it—Brisbane. The green. The rivers. The laughter of Aunty Amelia’s kids who hadn’t seen what we’d seen. Who still believed the world followed rules. That it made sense.

That empty-eyed men didn’t walk through walls.

That doors didn’t open in places where there shouldn’t be doors.

But as the kilometres rolled beneath us, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we weren’t escaping.

Not really.

That the building behind us hadn’t stayed behind at all. That it was still with us, trailing quietly along like a shadow that kept pace no matter how far we drove. Curling itself into the folds of our clothes, hiding in the seams of our thoughts.

Something we couldn’t leave. Something that had already left its mark.

And even if no one ever believed what happened—what we knew had happened—I had drawn it now.

On paper. In lines and figures and sky and dust.

Our story. Woven into the landscape. Hidden in plain sight.

Like a secret only the outback, and we, would understand.