Mike Dixon

and watched out of the window as they drove along a ridge
dotted with cliffs and steep gullies. The track ended in a nat-
ural amphitheatre, strewn with large boulders. Daryl stopped
and sounded the horn.
A minute passed and
a figure emerged from a
cleft in the rocks. He was
tall and skinny and wore
a single item of clothing:
a pair of baggy shorts
that looked as if they‟d
been handed down by a
grossly overweight per-
son such as Daryl.
It was the old Dutchman. He no doubt had a name but no
one used it. He spoke English with a slight Dutch accent.
Apart from that, his speech was entirely Australian. He took
the plastic bag which David gave him and led him „indoors‟.
Indoors turned out to be different from anything that Da-
vid had imagined. He‟d had visions of a variety of tumble-
down dwellings. This exceeded his expectations. The Dutch-
man lived underground.
He‟d taken a cave and enlarged it. David was impressed. A
cool breeze blew through the habitation, coming in through a
cleft in the rocks and exiting somewhere at the rear of the
complex. Light entered through irregularly shaped windows
constructed from bottles packed together with clay. The walls
had been whitewashed and the overall effect was pleasing.
But, it was far from clean. The Dutchman wasn‟t coping
any more. A once cozy dwelling was falling apart. David un-
derstood Noelene‟s fear that he would die one day and be