My wife was already gone when I woke up. It was my birthday and I had treated myself to a sleep-in. We owned a cattle station with a little over a million acres in the outback of Southern Australia. We shared part of our eastern property line with Anna Creek Station, the largest cattle station on earth at six million acres. There was always something to attend to on a ranch of that size, and it wasn’t unusual for one of us to leave before dawn and not see each other until the end of the day.
I ate my breakfast and went to the barn to get the tools and supplies I’d need for the day. I had a couple of sections of kangaroo fence that needed minor repairs. When I got to my work truck, which was always parked beside the barn, I found a hand-written note on my windshield that said, “Drive west for 20 miles.”
I didn’t recognise the writing. I assumed one of our ranch hands had written it. My work for the day was 10 miles north of the house, so I ignored the note. My wife would radio me if it was important.
I loaded the truck and got in. Waiting for me on the passenger seat was another hand-written note that said “Drive west for 20 miles”. This was obviously a birthday prank of some sort. A surprise birthday picnic in the eucalyptus grove on our western property line, maybe.
She could wait. I don’t like surprises, and I had work to do. The kangaroo fence wasn’t going to repair itself, and there was no way I was letting those mangy buggers get at my vegetable garden. I started the truck and headed north on a dirt trail that didn’t quite meet the requirements to be called a road. It took about 20 minutes to reach the section of fence that needed to be taken care of. I retrieved my ladder and tools from the back of the truck and set about getting things organised. Kangaroo fences are tall, usually seven feet or more, and ours was also electrified. I’d thrown the breaker earlier back at the barn. I’d shocked myself a few times before I learned.
When I reached the top of the ladder, there was a handwritten note stapled to the top of the fence post. “Drive West for 20 miles”. My wife knew what I was going to be doing that morning, so while this was surprising, it wasn’t unexplainable. She sure had gone to a lot of trouble to rope me into whatever it was she was up to.
Way off on the western horizon, I could see a cloud of dust being thrown up by a vehicle that looked to be travelling north at a pretty good clip. The binoculars were in the truck but I knew that even with them, it would be impossible to tell what the vehicle was. “What’s she up to?” I muttered. I stuffed the note in my back pocket and got to work on the fence. There was a mob of kangaroos a couple of hundred yards away and I could tell they were waiting for an opportunity to rush the fence. They knew the good food was on the inside.
With the repair completed, I headed back to the house. I noticed my wife’s truck was back in the garage. She’d left the door wide open, which was not like her. She liked getting into a vehicle that was cool, and our air-conditioned garage took care of that.
As I ducked my head inside to press the button to close the door, I noticed a slip of paper under the windshield wiper. “Drive west for 20 miles”. Alright. Enough was enough. She obviously had a plan that I was an integral part of. My chores were complete, so I got back in the truck and pointed it west.
The roads in the outback aren’t great, but there aren’t a lot of people driving on them. With a properly equipped vehicle, it was possible to drive at 40 or 50 miles an hour most of the time. Half an hour later, I was close to the perimeter of our property. I saw the familiar small stand of eucalyptus trees that was on the dividing line between us and the ranch next to us. She must be in there somewhere. But how? Her car was at home.
I stopped the truck, got out, and started yelling her name as I walked the trail into the stand of trees. No response. Now I was worried. I still wasn’t completely convinced she was behind it, but something weird was definitely going on. I turned to go back to the truck. She wasn’t there, or she would have answered by calls.
A flash of white caught my eye. It was a piece of paper on a tree trunk about 25 feet away. I could only have seen it if I’d been walking out of the trees back towards the truck. As I got closer, my heart started beating harder and harder. The note was nailed to a tree, but was partially obscured by a hand. A severed human hand. My wife’s hand. Her wedding ring was still on her finger. It was nailed to the tree at the top of the note.
The note, with dried blood all over it said, “Drive north for 20 miles”.