It was hard to say what she hated most about it. Was it the heat? The air was so dry the trees were positively whistling for dogs, and the chickens were laying hard-boiled eggs. Or was it maybe the ‘super pit’? The open-cut mine looked as vast and deep as the Grand Canyon. Massive trucks, each wheel the size of a seaside bungalow, toiled up and down its raw, red slopes – day in, day out. No, the sewage pit had to be worse. It sent up an unspeakable stench in the sun and attracted a black fog of flies. Worse even than that was the Aboriginal settlement. There were rows of windowless dormitories where she was appalled to discover that whole families lived. These identical cement structures were built between the two pits – the sewage and the super. But surely the worst aspect of Broken Ridge mining town was the casual racism. ‘What did Jesus say to the Abos when he was up on the cross?’ her cab driver bantered on the way there. She tried not to stare at his vast buttocks spilling over the bucket seat.
