The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

Orange Immortelle

Meaning: Written in the stars

Waitzia acuminata | Western Australia

Perennial with long, narrow leaves, and papery orange, yellow and white flowers. Spring blooming after winter rain. En masse these flowers are spectacular. Have been found in their millions across much of the scrub and desert in the west, with people often travelling long distances to see them.

Alice was woken by the sunrise. She kicked the sweaty sheet off her legs and sat up, rubbing the salt crust from her eyes. Her room was bathed in an orange glow. She went to the window and pushed back the curtains. Unfettered light flooded in, reflected off the Bluff towering over the dusty town. Alice looked beyond the buildings and streets to the undulating red sand dunes and gullies of spinifex and desert oaks, stretching as far as she could see. She remembered soldier crabs, sea breezes, green sugar cane, silver river water, and fields of bright, blooming flowers. The desert air was so dry and thin that the perspiration on her body evaporated before it could bead. She was further than she’d ever been from anyone, anything and anywhere she knew.

‘I’m here,’ she whispered.

After a coffee and a fruit scone at the bar, Alice walked out of the pub to her truck. She checked the turquoise paint on her doors was dry, and went to the glove box for the decals. She covered both doors with them, then stepped back, folding her arms. She’d never have thought anonymity could come as easily as a coat of paint and some monarch butterfly stickers.

Later she went to the grocery store, and filled the freezer of her bar fridge with lemonade ice blocks. She ate three in a row lying on her bed, watching through the window as the midday sun blanched the trees. In the afternoon, when it started to cool, she went out to wander the strange red landscape.

She walked along the base of the bluff, studying the squat emu bushes, clumps of spinifex, and spindly desert oak trees. She stopped to notice the wildflowers that grew among the rocks, and picked a couple for her pockets. A charm of finches flew overhead, singing into the vivid afternoon sky. Alice swallowed roughly; the otherworldly feeling of the desert landscape saturated her senses.

Days and nights passed. The split on her nose healed. Occasionally a memory would rise, and Alice would let it. But if she found herself drawn back to the night she left Thornfield, she did whatever it took to distract herself from thinking through the depths of June’s betrayal, or what had happened to Oggi and Boryana. Were they arrested? Were they scared? Did they know it was June who had reported them? She knew how to push the unanswered questions down.

To give structure to her days, Alice developed a routine around the sun; she was insatiable for the desert light. Every morning, she sat on her windowsill, above the corrugated-iron roof of the hotel. As the sun came up, it painted the rocky outcrops and ranges in varying hues: rich wine-coloured burgundy, bright ochre, shimmering bronze and butterscotch. Beholding the seemingly endless expanse of the sky, Alice tried to breathe more deeply, as if she might inhale the space, as if she might create a similar kind of vastness inside herself.

After sunrise, she would take a walk. The town was set in an ancient, dry riverbed, filled with pebbly sand from which tall and thick ghost gums grew. She strolled among their cream to white and pink-tinged trunks, stopping to inspect a pale grey stone or a fallen gum nut. It was hard to believe water had ever flowed there, as if the river was no more than folklore, something that long ago took to the sky on the wings of black cockatoos.

Through the middle of the day, when it was hottest, Alice stayed in her room with the air conditioning on high, flicking through the cable channels. As the afternoons cooled, she went back out to wander again. At night, after dinner, she found refuge in shadows and watched the stars.

Two weeks passed. She didn’t go back to see the vet. She didn’t check her emails. She took the SIM card out of her mobile phone and threw it away.

To her surprise, there were things in the desert that brought her such comfort, they felt almost medicinal. The fiery colour of the dirt, and the feel of it cupped in her hands, soft as powder. The melodic songs of the birds. The light at the beginning and end of each day. The warm wind, the silver-green-blue of the gum leaves, the endless, cloud-tufted sky, and, most of all, the wildflowers growing in the riverbed, among roots and stones. She had started to pick and press them, without fully admitting to herself that it was the familiarity of the flowers that brought her the most solace.

One morning, Alice discovered she’d filled a whole notebook with pressed wildflowers. After she finished breakfast at the bar, she headed into town to buy a new one.

Walking along a quiet street by the dry riverbed, Alice found the town library. She smiled at a faded mural on the library wall, evidently an attempt to make the small boxy building look like a stack of books. Inside was cool respite from the searing heat.

Alice wandered between the shelves contentedly. She remembered the library from her childhood, filled with pastel light and stained-glass windows that told stories.

‘Sally,’ she mumbled.

‘Can I help you?’ the librarian asked from the next shelf over.

‘Where are your fairytales?’ Alice asked.

‘By the back wall.’

Alice ran her fingers along the spines of the stories she remembered reading as a girl. Her writing desk, her library bag, her mother’s ferns. She searched for one book in particular and when she found it she let out a small cry.

Later, after she’d joined and tucked her library card into her pocket, Alice borrowed the maximum number of books allowed and lugged them back to her hotel room. She spent the afternoon flicking through their pages, running her fingertips over stray sentences, intermittently stopping to rest an open book on her chest while she watched the lacy patterns of gum tree shadows dancing across her wall. That night she bought pad thai takeaway with extra chilli, and a six-pack of cold beer, then lay on her bed under the air conditioner while she read the book she’d treasured as a girl, full of stories about women who shed their seal skins and left them and the sea behind for the love of a man.

One afternoon, when Alice was on her way back from the riverbed with a fistful of wildflowers, Merle, the owner of the pub and hotel, intercepted her at the bar.

‘Alice Hart,’ she announced. ‘You’ve got a phone call.’

Alice followed Merle into a small office behind the bar. Her palms were sweaty. Had June found her?

The phone receiver sat on the desk. Alice waited until she was alone, wiped her sweaty hands on her shorts and picked it up.

‘Hello?’ she asked. She pressed her other hand over her ear to drown out the noise of the pub at knock-off time.

‘I thought you’d want to know your dog is all better,’ Moss said on the other end of the line.

Alice exhaled.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi,’ she exclaimed, giddy with relief.

‘Hi there.’ Moss chuckled.

‘Sorry.’ Alice inwardly kicked herself. ‘Thanks for letting me know. That’s wonderful news.’

‘I thought you’d think so. When can you come and pick her up? She’s fat, happy and fluffier than Merle’s perm.’

Laughter took Alice by surprise. As did the warmth in his voice.

‘Tomorrow,’ she heard herself say.

‘Great.’ A pause. ‘How have you been?’ he asked.

‘Fine,’ Alice said, fidgeting with her picked flowers. ‘Sorry I haven’t …’

‘Not a problem. You’ve been busy. Getting rest. Borrowing the entire catalogue of the town library.’

‘What?’

‘Small town.’ Moss laughed easily. ‘It’s not hard to make news around here. Apparently, you like to read.’

Merle cleared her throat at the door.

‘Sorry, I have to go,’ Alice said.

‘So, I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Where?’ Alice asked.

‘The Bean on Main Street. Eleven?’

‘Sure.’

Alice hung up.

‘Sorry,’ she muttered to Merle as she left her office.

‘No problem.’ Merle smiled curiously, an eyebrow raised. ‘Fancy a beer, love? It’s happy hour.’

‘Maybe I could take it to my –’

‘Nope.’ Merle cut her off with a hand held up. ‘No one drinks alone on my watch. Come and sit at the bar. Tell me what you’re doing here, holed up alone in my pub in the middle of nowhere. I love a good story.’

The thought of telling anyone anything about her life before she drove into Agnes Bluff made Alice nauseous. Moss’s words rang in her ears. It’s not hard to make news around here.

Moss hung up the phone, staring at it as if it might offer him answers to his questions about Alice Hart. Questions that had nagged at him for days. He’d waited and waited for her to come back for the puppy, but she hadn’t. Regular chats with Merle kept him updated. She was still there. She was okay. She hadn’t blacked out again as far as anyone knew. Why do you care so much? Merle asked him. You of all people should know you can’t save every stray. Moss changed the subject. He couldn’t tell Merle he cared because Alice was the first person who made him feel like he had anything to offer, anything to give, in the five years he’d been in town. After losing Clara and Patrick, he never expected to feel any such thing again. And yet. There she was. Alice Hart. A woman who knew how to speak through flowers.

He went to the fridge, got a beer and returned to his desk. A nudge of the mouse brought the computer screen back to life. Moss’s pulse quickened at the sight of her photo he’d found earlier. It was top of his search results. Alice Hart. Floriographer. Thornfield Farm. Her profile was on the About Us page. In the photo she was standing deep in a field of flowers, surrounded by gnarled gum trees, holding a bouquet of natives so large it nearly dwarfed her body. She looked sidelong at the camera. A barely there smile. Eyes clear. Her hair piled on her head, fastened with an enormous red heart-like flower.

Alice Hart has lived at Thornfield for most of her life and grew up on the farm’s language of native flowers. She is a skilled floriographer and can help you to create the perfect arrangement to speak from your heart. Available for consultation by appointment only.

He’d Googled floriographer next: a person fluent in the language of flowers, a craze that was at the height of its popularity in the Victorian era. He’d hoped that Googling her might quash his fascination, but her enigmatic story only fuelled it.

Moss leaned back in his chair, reading the Thornfield contact information. He sipped his beer. Picked up the phone and put it down. Hesitated for a few moments, then reached forward and picked up the phone again. Dialled the number on the website, gripping his beer bottle as he listened to it ring.

He was just about to hang up when a woman answered, her voice thick with tears.

Alice settled herself at the bar. The sunset filled the pub with a kaleidoscope of colour.

Merle set a fresh coaster down and sat an icy pint of beer on top of it. ‘Cheers,’ Merle raised a shot of bourbon. ‘So now, Alice Hart, tell me what you’re doing here all alone? Where’ve you come from? Where’re you going?’

Alice wrapped both hands around her beer.

‘Oh now, don’t clam up. Everyone here’s got a story. You think you’re the only whitefella who’s run away to the desert to become someone else? Forgive me, darlin’, but you’re not that special.’ Merle tapped her acrylic fingernails on the bar. A loud shout came from the beer garden outside. ‘Oi! Cut that shit out!’ Merle bellowed, making Alice jump. ‘Don’t go anywhere, pet, just gotta sort out this kerfuffle.’

Alice exhaled in relief. Around her the noise rose steadily as the pub filled. Carrying her flower pickings and beer, she squeezed herself off her stool and wriggled her way outside into the cooling blue dusk. She took a sip of her beer and opened her fist. The flowers were crushed. As she was looking them over, Alice became aware someone was behind her.

‘Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,’ a woman said, raising a pouch of tobacco in explanation. Her voice was kind. Alice nodded, gripping her beer. The woman rolled a smoke, lit a match and bent her head towards the small flame. She was wearing a uniform but in the dim light Alice couldn’t make out the insignia. She waved the smoke away from Alice as she exhaled.

‘It’s the only pub for a hundred clicks. Gets pretty busy.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Alice said. ‘I’m staying here.’

‘Oh, right. Been in town long?’ the woman asked.

‘A month today.’

‘Lived in the Territory long?’ She raised an eyebrow at Alice.

‘A month today,’ Alice said, feeling herself smile.

‘Aha. You’ve got about two months to go then.’

‘Until?’

‘You start to feel like you’re not on another planet. I’d guess a classic newbie to the desert, from the city or the coast. You’ve got that telltale deer-in-the-headlights look about you.’

Alice stared at her. ‘How do you know this isn’t just how I look?’ she heard herself say.

The woman was quiet for a moment, before chuckling. ‘Shit, you’re absolutely right. Sorry. That was rude of me.’

Alice nodded, studying her beer fizz.

‘I live down the road. Grew up in the red dirt,’ the woman said, smiling. ‘Which might explain my highly evolved social skills.’

Alice couldn’t help but look up and return her smile.

‘I’m Sarah, by the way.’

‘Alice.’

They shook hands.

‘What do you do out here, Sarah?’ Alice gestured at her uniform.

‘I manage the park,’ she replied, poking a thumb in an obscure direction over her shoulder.

‘The park?’

‘Kililpitjara. The national park? You haven’t been yet, I take it.’

Alice shook her head.

‘A very special place.’ Sarah stubbed her smoke out. ‘How about you, what do you do?’

‘I, um …’ Alice trailed off. ‘Sorry,’ she said, rubbing her forehead. ‘I’m in communications.’

‘Communications?’ Sarah repeated.

Alice nodded. ‘I got a business communications degree through Open Uni. I used to,’ she stopped. Tried again. ‘I used to run a flower farm. But not anymore.’ If Sarah noticed her fumble, she didn’t let on.

‘Bloody hell. The way this place works will never fail to amaze me.’ Sarah laughed, shaking her head. Alice looked at the pub, not understanding. ‘No, no,’ Sarah said. ‘Not the pub. The desert. The people that blow through here. The timing and craziness of it all.’

Alice smiled politely.

‘We’ve just had a job opening for a visitor services ranger in the park. That’s why I’m in town, to talk to a few people about finding someone to fill the role.’ She grinned at Alice. ‘It’s a tricky one because we need someone who can do the hard yakka but is also qualified in communications.’

Alice nodded slowly, beginning to understand.

‘The pay’s good. You get housing,’ Sarah said. ‘If I give you my card and you’re interested, how about you email me and I’ll send you more details?’

Alice’s palms were clammy. It was a long time since she’d felt hopeful. ‘That’d be great,’ she said, brushing invisible things from her arms.

As Sarah took a card out of her shirt pocket and offered it to Alice, she got a better view of the badges on Sarah’s shirt. They read Kililpitjara National Park and adapted the design of the Indigenous Australian flag: the top half was black and the bottom half was red, with a yellow circle in the middle. In the centre of the yellow circle was a cluster of Sturt’s desert peas.

‘Thanks,’ Alice said, taking the card.

Sarah checked her watch and began to walk away. ‘I’ve got to go, but it was great to meet you, Alice. I’ll keep an eye out for your email.’

Alice raised the card in farewell as Sarah disappeared into the crowd. She held it to the light. It bore the same emblem as Sarah’s shirt. Alice didn’t need the Thornfield Dictionary. She’d memorised the meaning of Sturt’s desert peas the morning of her tenth birthday, when she opened her locket and read June’s letter.

Have courage, take heart.

The next morning Alice was waiting at the library when the doors opened at nine o’clock. She hurried to the computers with Sarah’s card, which she’d already dog-eared. She typed the national park’s website into a search engine and waited for it to load. Checked the clock. She was meeting Moss in two hours.

The web page loaded slowly, filling the screen with the national park’s homepage. At the top was a landscape photograph. Alice leant forward, as if she might will it to load faster.

A pale mauve sky. A few smoky wisps of cloud. A smudge of apricot light above the violet line of the horizon. An aerial view of green foliage on luminous red dirt.

It took Alice a moment to realise that she was looking at a crater from above; she didn’t grasp its size until the whole photograph uploaded and she saw a tiny dirt road and the white dots of vehicles. Her eyes were drawn to the centre of the crater, which was filled with red wildflowers. She drummed her fingers on the desk, waiting as an inset photo of the flowers loaded. She stopped drumming. The heart of the crater was a circle of Sturt’s desert peas in mind-blowing, blood-red bloom.

She gripped her locket as she scrolled down.

While Kililpitjara, or Earnshaw Crater, was only ‘discovered’ by non-Indigenous people in the early fifties, it has been a living cultural landscape for Anangu for thousands of years. Geologically, the crater is the impact site where an iron meteorite hit hundreds of thousands of years ago. In Anangu culture, the crater was caused by a great crash that also came from the sky, but not an iron meteorite; it is where a grieving mother’s heart fell to Earth. Long ago, Ngunytju lived in the stars. One night, when she wasn’t looking, her baby fell from its cradle in the sky to Earth. When she realised what happened, Ngunytju was inconsolable. She took her heart from her celestial body and flung it to Earth, to be in and of the land with her fallen child.

Alice stopped. She sat back, letting the images of the crater’s creation story settle. When she was ready she continued reading.

In the middle of Kililpitjara grows a wild, concentric circle of malukuru, Sturt’s desert peas, which bloom for nine months each year. Visitors come from around the world to see Ngunytju’s heart in flower. It is a sacred site of deep spiritual and cultural significance to Anangu women. They welcome you here and invite you to learn the story of this land. They ask that when you walk into the crater you do not pick any flowers.

Alice scrolled back up to the photo. She quickly opened another tab. Created a new email address, grateful for the sight of a blank inbox. She hurriedly wrote an email, typed in Sarah’s address and clicked send before she could overthink it. The computer responded with a cheery ping. Sent.

Alice slouched in her chair, staring at the celestial crater. The caption caught her eye.

In Pitjantjatjara language, Kililpitjara means belonging to the stars.