Page 13 of Outback Hearts

‘Oh, thank God. I’m Zara. I own this place, and I’m about to lose my mind. My chef quit two weeks ago, my waitress moved to Townsville, and I’ve been doing everything myself. Can you cook? Wait tables? Make coffee?’

‘I can wait tables, and I make a decent coffee,’ Amelia said. ‘I worked in a café at a nursery on weekends at home.’

‘You’re hired. When can you start?’

‘Tomorrow?’ Amelia suggested.

‘Perfect. Actually, could you start today? Just for lunch service? I’ll pay you extra, and I’ll throw in lunch. I’m completely slammed. Booked out for lunch.’

Amelia looked at Jill, who grinned and shrugged.

‘Why not?’ Amelia said.

Three hours later, she’d served lunch to twenty people—mostly locals and some travellers driving through town—learned how to use Zara’s ancient coffee machine, and earned seventy-five dollars plus the best chicken schnitzel she’d had in Australia.

When Jill came to pick her up at three-thirty, Amelia climbed into the van with a huge smile on her face.

‘We did it,’ she said.

‘We bloody did,’ Jill agreed.

They drove back to the old pub as the afternoon sun slanted across the landscape, both of them chattering excitedly about their new jobs. When they pulled up, Alex was sitting by his van, reading a book.

‘Success?’ he called.

‘Both employed!’ Jill called back.

‘Knew you would be,’ Alex said. ‘This town needs you, whether you knew it or not.’

As they set up for another night by the fire, waiting for Sophie to return, Amelia looked up at the old pub with that same strange certainty she’d felt the night before.

Chapter Three

By Friday, the girls had fallen into an easy rhythm with Garnet Creek. They were getting to know the town. In the early morning, when Jill and Amelia dropped Sophie at the grocery store, the main street lay quiet and still, the buildings casting long shadows across the red dirt that edged the bitumen. The air held that particular quality of outback mornings—cool and clean, carrying the scent of eucalyptus and dust, before the sun climbed high enough to bake everything.

The town itself was barely more than a handful of streets arranged in a loose grid. The main drag—Creek Street, predictably—stretched for perhaps three hundred metres, bitumen in the centre with dirt shoulders on either side. The buildings were mostly weatherboard, single-storey, painted in sun-faded colours that might once have been vibrant but now blended into the landscape. Corrugated iron roofs threw back the light in shades of rust and silver.

Sassy’s grocery store sat mid-street, its green trim and hand-painted sign giving it a cheerful air despite the peeling paint and sun-faded walls. The shelves inside were well-stocked and organised. A bell above the door announced each customer with a cheerful ding that seemed at odds with the town’s quiet struggle.

Further along, Ryan’s hardware store sprawled in a large tin shed, its yard a chaotic sprawl of star pickets, water tanks, rolls of wire, and farm equipment that looked like it had been there since the 1980s. Inside, there was everything from fence posts to stock feed, the essentials that kept the outlying properties running.

The Creek Café occupied a corner block, its wooden verandah providing precious shade for three small tables. Through the windows, Jill could see the mismatched chairs and local artwork on the walls—someone’s attempt to make beauty in a place where survival took most of the energy.

The servo anchored the far end of town, its twin bowsers looking like museum pieces, the original 1950s models still somehow functional. A handwritten sign in the window advertised ice, bait, and “basic groceries”—the kind of place that served travellers who’d miscalculated their fuel or forgotten essentials.

Between these main establishments, a few other businesses clung to existence. The council chambers—low brick, practical, housing the library and shire offices in adjoining rooms. A post office that opened three days a week: Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings. A stock and station agent with faded signs advertising livestock sales that probably didn’t draw the crowds they once had. A tiny medical centre that looked like it might be staffed by a visiting doctor rather than a permanent GP.

The community hall sat back from the main street, its paint peeling, a faded CWA sign suggesting it still hosted the occasional meeting or function. Near it, a water tower rose against the sky—the town’s lifeline, storing bore water for the houses scattered across the surrounding streets. It displayed a mural of black cockatoos.

Houses dotted the residential streets radiating out from the centre, most of them modest weatherboard cottages with wide verandas and corrugated iron roofs. Some had dying lawns, gardens that had given up in the face of drought and heat. A few had made an effort: flower boxes with struggling geraniums, fresh paint on window frames, a vegetable patch sheltered beneath shade cloth. Some were empty with hopeful for-lease signs at the front.

Behind one street, Jill spotted the school—small, maybe two or three classrooms—and the distinctive blue rectangle of a public swimming pool, though whether it was still functional was anyone’s guess.

To the west, low hills rose in dusty purple ridges, their slopes dotted with sparse scrub. To the east, the land flattened into endless Miller grass plains, golden and shimmering in the heat. Gum trees clustered along dry creek beds, their pale trunks ghostly against the red earth, survivors of droughts that would have killed lesser species.

***

Amelia stared out of Vera’s window as Jill drove slowly through town. The sky dominated everything—a vast blue so intense it almost hurt to look at it, cloudless and never-ending.