Life As We Knew It

As I dug deeper into the charcoal of our firepit, I remembered my fifteen year old eyes glazing over when I listened to dad telling me that “When the world as we know it is in complete disarray, and it will happen one day, I want my family to be safe and you’re old enough to know now”.

“Remember that the heart shaped locket your mother gave you holds the key to your safety. If I’m dead, you must take that key and get to our safe place in the Gibson Desert”. Yeah, yeah dad …. World as we know it …. Pffttt!

He wasn’t crazy after all, and this morning, as I survey the damage the meteor has caused and furiously dig for the box with the locket and key, I wish he were here. I’m only 19, and I’m terrified. The world as I knew it yesterday has ended. Forever.

Mum thought he was in the grip of complete insanity when he insisted on buying a doomsday bunker at Yulara, in the middle of the Gibson Desert, and I wish she, too, was here to apologise for the years of her mockery before she left him.

It’s almost surreal to believe we are even having to silently thank dad, but the unimaginable has happened. A 20km wide meteor crashed to earth, wiping out towns and cities along the east coast of Australia, and decimating life as we know it.

The air carries the sounds of people crying and screaming at each other, gunshots and explosions, and the sirens of surviving emergency vehicles racing to rescue the undead. The sky is filled with smoke and the stench of life burning.

“Come on” I mumble as I dig, deeper and deeper. Where is the box? This is exactly where he said he buried it next to the concrete slab the BBQ sits on. Yes! I hear the clink of the trowel hit metal! That’s the box the locket is in. Excitedly I dig faster, clearing the dirt. I can see the box now!

Looking around to make sure no one is watching, I lift the box out, open it and remove the locket. The box is full of things dad envisaged we would need to get to safety – thousands of dollars in new notes, two compasses, binoculars, maps and a pistol with two boxes of ammunition. “What the hell Dad”, I think, “Where on earth did you get a gun?”.

Excitedly I show those waiting to leave with me. I’m grinning from ear to ear and the faces of my little brother and sister, my grandmother and my two best friends, Emma and Daniel smile back at me. Dad had paid for seven places in his bunker – for he and mum, me and my two siblings, nana and pa. My friends were taking mum and dad’s places and pa was long gone, so we still had one spare place.

“Nana, you stay here with the kids. Emma, Daniel and I need to go for supplies for the trip. We need enough food for two weeks, fuel and water, medical supplies, and tools for the trip”.

Nana needed convincing about the quantity of food until we explained what we might encounter along the way. In ‘normal circumstances, the Gibson Desert bunker was about a 30 hour drive from Sydney western New South Wales, then up through the middle of South Australia near the border of Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Today though, it could take days, or weeks.

“Nana, help the kids pack clothes – summer and winter – sleeping bags, pillows, blankets, games and books. We’ll be back in a couple of hours, and we’ll leave after we pack the camper”. Yes, dad had thought of everything, including a camper for the trip but which we’d taken on our annual family holidays. It was full of memories, and I was comforted by the fact that mum and dad’s spirits would be with us the whole way.

Emma, Daniel and I jumped into Daniel’s SUV and headed out to scout for what we needed. We agreed there would be no point going to the local shopping centre so headed for a small village shopping centre about 25 minutes away, just north of our Sydney home. Arriving there we found only a handful of locals gathered together in the car park, and breathed a sign of relief at not finding chaos.

We parked near the back door of the small neighbourhood supermarket and loaded six wheeled suitcases with as much nonperishable food as we could carry, a few boxes of fresh food, several five litre bottles of water, then headed off to a nearby camping store dad had taken us to a couple of years ago.

The owner, a crusty old character known as ‘Bushie Bob’, was a dedicated ‘prepper’, veteran of two wars, and had agreed with dad that everyone should prepare for disaster. He was nowhere to be seen and I felt bad taking what we needed, but I figured he would probably be happy to know he was providing what we needed to get to safety.

We grabbed everything from butane gas bottles to first aid kids, water purification tables, rope, pulleys and carabiners, and MREs, those dried food ration kits, into a couple of trolleys. “Old Bob, you really are a life saver!” I said out loud as I filled a trolley. Daniel laughed as he grabbed two dozen large jerry cans we could fill with fuel and said, “I wonder where the old bugger has gone?”.

“No idea mate, but the dude is an absolute Godsend! I hope he’s safe somewhere” Emma added as she threw first aid kits into her trolley. “Hey, we’d better hit a chemist and get some actual medication in case we need it” she said.

Next stop was up the road to a petrol station to fill the jerry cans. Madness! People everywhere, a couple of men fighting each other in the car park – over what, we had no idea. We waited our turn, filled the cans and took off back home to pick everyone up.

An hour later we were one the road, fully loaded and in surprisingly good spirits. We told the kids we were going on a crazy fun adventure to the biggest sand pit they’d ever seen, and that seemed to calm them somewhat. It’s only 1pm but we feel like this has been the longest day ever.

Daniel knew all the back roads out of Sydney so offered to do the first few hours of driving. We have a clear run through the surprisingly empty Sydney CBD, other than having to navigate around abandoned vehicles, and within an hour we were on the start of the Great Western Highway, driving past paddocks of cows and horses, seemingly oblivious to the human plight unfolding.

This part of our world seems unaffected by the disaster that has turned greater Sydney on its head, and for a short time we forget what we’ve left behind.

About three hours into our drive we come across road that must have had debris from the crater land on it and it’s been wiped out. Our only alternative is to go ‘cross country’ in a long loop, through someone’s farm, then back onto the road about 20 kilometres away.

Phone services are down, so we’re thankful for dad’s old maps, and by 5pm we arrive in Mudgee, western NSW. We’re astounded to see that this sleep town seems to either be in denial about the meteor, and the townsfolk just don’t care. The main street is calm and full of people just going about their day, albeit at a faster pace than would probably be normal. It’s a welcome relief and we decide to take a break, have dinner and find somewhere to stay for the night. I’m grateful to dad for thinking about cash.

Generators are feeding the town with power and the seven fuel tankers which arrived before the disaster are sitting at the edge of town, waiting to be needed. Locals have taken to riding horses in and out of town, to conserve their precious fuel.

We wander into the Lawson Park Hotel, and are greeted by curious locals wondering where our little mob is going. I lie and tell them we’re seeking refuge with family in the Northern Territory, where we should arrive in a couple of days. This seems believable and arouses no suspicion, so we settle in to order a much needed feast. We can see a lot of people who seem to have fled cities, and a local says Mudgee has been inundated with ‘city slickers’ who escaped and seem to have no plans to leave.

Only in an Australian country town in the middle of nowhere would you find generators keeping the beer taps going, but here they are, and the locals are sitting around loudly discussing ‘that thing from space’ and what will happen a week from now, a month from now and into the unknown future.

At sunrise we hit the road on the Mitchell Highway again, which seems to go forever and is littered with small craters every few hundred metres. The drive to Broken Hill should take four or five hours but takes us all day. As we near the town we see charred bodies scattered everywhere. Alarm bells ring, and I tell nana to close the blinds in the back of the camper and put a movie on for the little ones.

The town is empty of people, and a huge crater has eaten up the town centre, making it impossible to pass without diverting along dirt access roads. We navigate our way through, but our detour takes three hours. Finally coming out the other side, we’re filled with sadness and dread. What else will we find? Will highways be cut off? We see a horse, reined and saddled, so drive slowly toward it and see its rider is a twelve year old girl, sitting in the dirt, crying. Her family were killed, and she survived because she was fishing for yabbies in their back paddock dam. We tell her where we’re going, and she asks to come with us.

We continue as far as the outskirts of Port Augusta, which takes twice as long as it should and we drive through the night, stopping about 1am to rest. Too afraid to park in the open and leave our little party exposed, we find refuge in a forest about 1km off the highway. Waking to a scene of utter destruction it’s obvious that this meteor threw itself far and wide, across the country.

The next three days are more of the same – craters on road, the odd car full of passengers also escaping wherever the occupants came from.

We make our way through Coober Pedy, to Wintinna, Indulkana, and go almost off road to Mutijulu then finally arrive at Yulara five days after fleeing Sydney.

We are greeted with suspicion by a couple of locals forming a checkpoint, but show them our map, the key and our tickets to the bunker and are waved through. The bunker entrance is down a long track, through thick scrub which scrapes at the sides of our camper the whole way, and through another two check points.

A steel gate opens, and we drive underground to a parking zone. Descending a long flight of stairs we enter a welcome oasis, teeming with people, and are amazed at this small underground town which will be our home for who knows how long.

A guide takes us to our family pod, down a long ramp, past a café, recreation centre and hydroponic gardens, telling us there is a swim centre, cinema, children’s playground, power hub and laundries below our level. We shower and fall into exhausted sleep, relieved to be here and thankful to dad for his crazy idea. Exploring our new home can wait.

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