Stilwater. Rafael de Grenade

oil in my blood. The crocodiles in the black water would be witness to my metamorphosis, if I made it through alive.

      The Choppers

      I DIDN’T HAVE TO WAIT LONG to experience the choppers. Two flew in from Karumba, a town on the gulf a few hours flight to the south. I heard the roar of engines and saw the metal dragon-flies land on the flat at the end of the airstrip. The pilots walked toward the station compound carrying duffel bags and a case of beer.

      Flynn Cooper owned the chopper company. He wore a plaid shirt and a brown cap over short sandy-gray hair, and had fair but gulf-weathered skin. Rich was one of the pilots with whom he contracted. They climbed the stairs to the kitchen veranda to join Angus, Ross, Mike the mechanic, and those of us on the station crew who drifted in at dusk to sit at the table and make light conversation over a few beers before dinner.

      In the age before helicopters and motorbikes, the mustering crew waited for the floods during wet season—usually the months of November, December, and January—when most of the land turned into a sea. In those months, the livestock that escaped being swept out to the gulf sought refuge on the sand ridges and waited for the water to recede, and this made them easier to locate. Ringers set up temporary camps and endured the heat and sand flies for months, riding in the boggy country and spending long days to cover hundreds of thousands of hectares in the muster.