Dreamtime

“Perhaps he couldn't see the wood for the trees”, Bernard said, looking at the sergeant, a faint smile appearing on his lips. The sergeant bent forward and placed the palm of his right hand on the only part of the Nissan's roof that was still flat, steadying himself as he looked through the remains of the driver's door. There was warmth in the metal from the late afternoon sun. Bernard stood a few yards away and only had to stoop to see the driver's blood stained head wedged between the steering wheel and a windscreen crushed by the front of the roof during the impact. The torso seemed to be wrapped in deformed  plastic and metal that had once been a dashboard and engine bulkhead. They both focused on the driver’s eyes. Dead, young eyes; half closed, fixed, dull. “Any smell of booze in there”? Bernard said. “You know what they're like”. The sergeant looked past the driver's head and saw his own face reflected in the few remaining pieces of a twisted and broken mirror mounted on the outside of the passenger door opposite. His eyes went back at the driver before he stood up and faced Bernard. “Sorry”, Bernard said.

The Nissan, a small flat-bed truck, a 'tray', they called them, was trapped underneath the rear semi-trailer of a 'pocket' roadtrain. The Nissan had been travelling along the main route, the roadtrain, loaded with logs, was leaving a track from a forestry site, turning across the small truck's path. Paramedics had been and gone, there was nothing they could do, and the driver of the roadtrain was now talking to some local officers, as Bernard and the sergeant began their investigation. The enormous forest formed a backdrop that climbed a low escarpment in the distance; a mass of greens and browns set against the clear blue sky. The sergeant looked to the distant trees; there was a breeze up there making some of the branches sway. “Any sign of braking?” Bernard asked, walking slowly back down the road a short way, studying the dusty surface over which the Nissan would have travelled. It wasn't long before he sauntered  back. “There's no marks”, he said. “What about the tyres”? Bernard crawled under the trailer as he spoke, intent on getting a closer look. The Nissan had been dragged sideways after going  under the roadtrain and there were marks on the road to show this movement, but nothing else: no additional heat scarring on the tyres themselves that might have shown the Nissan's driver was braking before the collision. The sergeant followed Bernard's movements with an occasional glance but remained standing beside the dead driver, his hand still resting on the roof above the body.

“The brake light bulbs might tell us something”, Bernard said, pulling a multi-tool from a pouch attached to his trouser belt. He flipped out the Philips driver and began removing the rear light lenses. “If the filaments are stretched it may indicate the lights were on; their metal hot”, he said. But neither bulb showed any sign that they were on during a sudden deceleration. “Both broken but not stretched”, Bernard sounded disappointed. “The sun may have been low, maybe it was shining in his eyes, so he couldn't see”. Bernard seemed to be talking to himself. “Mind you", he said. "The locals say there were some clouds about, so the sun might not have been out when it happened”. The sergeant just looked past him, still gazing towards the distant hills. There would be kangaroos up there, you could imagine them foraging as dusk approached, now the real heat of the day had gone. “How long do you think it would have taken the prime-mover and the first semi to get to where they did before the collision”? Bernard asked. The sergeant thought for a moment, but wasn't able to answer before Bernard came up with his own assessment. “Could have been about five seconds”, he said. “Possibly”.

“Apparently, it's one of the biggest natural forests in the country”, Bernard was now saying. He didn't know the area well; he'd just read about it on their trip up. It wasn't a region anyone, as far as he could see, would wish to visit and he certainly would have no reason to go there himself, under normal circumstances. It was a long way from civilization. In fact, it had taken a couple of hours to fly from State Police headquarters, a journey they would have to retrace later when they headed home, leaving local officers to clear up and deal with the body.  "Pretty impressive, aye; trees as far as you can see”. The sergeant heard what was being said, he nodded occasionally, but his eyes were fixed on those hills. There would be snakes among the trees, the serpent, and frogs, probably, and, of course, birds. The butterfly too. “These rigs are in and out of here all day long, carting logs away, if he's local”. Bernard gestured towards the Nissan as he spoke. “He must have known that”. He paused for a moment. “If he was doing sixty kph, he would be about ...”. There was a further silence from Bernard; his face raised to the sky while he concentrated on the computation. “... Let's see, a kilometre a minute, so, that's … over sixteen metres per second. In five seconds, that is at least ... eighty metres. Eighty metres! He must have been asleep not to see the rig pulling out in front of him. He could have stopped, easily; he wouldn't even have had to brake hard”. The sergeant wasn't listening now. There were koalas too; before the machines came, anyway. “Or just taking time out”, Bernard said.