Strange Stranger

Talk about trippy. At 7PM I’m asleep knowing it won’t really be sleep – that fever sweat alt consciousness of the unwell – and I’ll be having to piss every 45 minutes anyway, so the night is a write off.

A fellow overnighter draws up, at least that’s how I generally think of them. Between the hours of 6PM and 9.30 I hear car door slamming continually. Sometimes he, male voice, shouts angry gibberish. In and out of consciousness I wonder who’s behaving strangely and why.

At 10PM I think I spot him. Definitely spot someone, alerted by his footsteps. He looks fourteen, so I guess it’s a cranky family jammed inside a sedan. He walks by the van, trying to look in.

Girls arrive later, laughing with untrammelled joy. Maybe they belong together and live locally.

Then about 11PM the car starts up and drives off.

Phew. I snug up for more sweaty disconcerting tripping.

In fifteen minutes the car is back. Same spot.

In the morning I note the engine is still running – it had since he arrived back – and the parker lights, quite eerie, going all through the night.

After breakfast I’m packing up and a green grey 4WD pulls in ahead of me. I’m about to climb out through the door and right there, two feet away, I bump into someone with the same haircut, clothing and shoes as the one who got out of the red car earlier and walked past. In his twenties, extremely self-composed and giving off a very knowing look, he calmly tilts his head to my g’day mate. Too knowing to speak.

He has the very same height and build as the fourteen-year-old (I thought, the light was tricky) who walked past last night, straining to see in. Should also add that I never saw him walk back the other way, returning to that car.

In daylight now, to walk so very close past the open van door like that he had to deliberately find a narrow line between the van and the bollards. He deliberately walked close. No one I’ve met in years of camping would do that.

This guy seems to go to the other car, I don’t look on, head down is not provocative.

Instantly then he gets in the 4WD and leaves.WA number plate.

I leave about 9.45AM. The red car’s engine is still idling away, and the parking lights still eerily running. Still no hint of movement inside.

I have no idea if anyone was in it. No idea of how many people are involved.

That young guy in the green gray 4WD. Why did he stop, not use any facilities, choose to thread a tight line beside my van for no reason that can be good, walk on to the strange car and then go?

Two people or the same one?

It’s now 3.40PM and I’ve arrived back at the same place. The red car is gone.