The 26 seater Ballard High School bus trundled north along Route 85.
Although none of the twenty-one occupants knew it - not the nineteen Year Ten Media students, not Mister Roger Loydell, their Form teacher and teacher of English and Media Studies at Ballard, and certainly not Miss Cassie Arbogast, the Media Studies teacher who'd arranged the visit to the Mount Squires Recording Studio, just as she did every year, and who was driving the bus - one of them was about to have a stroke.
It was a typically hot afternoon in May and the kids were fidgety. Loydell looked at his watch: 12.46. They'd been on the road for an hour. They were halfway there. He decided to let them keep themselves amused. He put the pile of media essays he'd been reading and marking down on the vacant seat next to him and got up. He leaned over Miss Arbogast's shoulder.
“I'm going to let the students play with their mobile phones, walkmans, computers, whatever,” he said over the rumble of the engine.
“Good idea,” Miss Arbogast said over-brightly. “They're starting to get on my nerves.” As an unnecessary afterthought, she added: “ETA Mount Squires - 13.45.”
Loydell knew this. She knew he knew it. She just had a habit of stating the obvious.
“It'll be good to get there,” he managed to say, before turning towards the seated students.
“Listen up, all of you,” he announced. When there was complete silence, he proceeded. “Those of you who have the following with you - mobile phones, walkmans, computers - can, for the remainder of the bus trip to the studio, take them out and use them.”
There was a ragged, low-key cheer, followed by some frantic bag searching.
“Once we get there they go away again. Clear?”
There was a vague murmur of assent and some nods. Not enough. Some of them would try and claim they hadn't heard.
“Is that clear?” Loydell repeated.
“Yes, Sir,” the students responded en masse.
Loydell sat back down and picked up the essays, continuing to read the one he was halfway through.
“...The lucrative session work in the early sixties meant that he ended up playing the guitar on the following records: "I Can"t Explain' by The Who, "You Really Got Me" by The Kinks, "Gloria" and "Baby Please Don"t Go' by Them, "With A Little Help From My Friends" by Joe Cocker, "I"m Into Something Good' by Herman's Hermits, "Down Town" by Petula Clark, and "It"s Not Unusual' by Tom Jones, amongst many others which he remained uncredited for.
“His earliest guitar was a Grazzioso, which was a Stratocaster copy. He soon bought himself a genuine Strat, followed by a Gretch Chet Atkins, which he quickly swapped for a black Gibson Les Paul Custom, a guitar that he used consistently until it was stolen from him in the mid-seventies whilst on tour in America. He also used a Vox twelve-string in his first group, and in his second group, he used primarily the Gibson, but also an old style Fender Telecaster, which can be heard on "Babe, I"m Gonna Leave You' on the first album. On that same album, he used a Gibson J-200 for all of the acoustic numbers. Later in his career he began to use a Gibson SG double-neck...”
Loydell put the paper down and looked out of the window at the Gibson Desert as the bus went past the Macintosh Range. They had to be, without doubt, the most beautiful group of mountains in Western Australia. He corrected himself - in the whole of Australia.
He studied Saunders Point and Point Lillian carefully, knowing that the Range was the natural - and often the not-so-natural - home of some of the most spectacular birds ever seen. Flying around the top of Saunders Point was a cast of about twelve Crested Hawks. He watched their breath-taking aerobatics for a while, and then switched his attention to the two Letter-Winged Kites flying around the summit of Point Lillian. Like swans, the Letter-Wings always paired up. Sometimes they would flock together if there happened to be an abundant harvest of rodents, other than that they stayed in pairs.
The Macintosh Range was also the home of the Nankeen Kestrel or - as Loydell preferred it - the Windhover. The English teacher part of him was intrigued by the reference to one of his favorite Gerard Manley Hopkins' poems. The Wedge-Tailed Eagle had also been seen in the vicinity of the Range, although Loydell knew that sightings were pretty rare. Still, he looked carefully, and despite not seeing any, he enjoyed the grace and the beauty of the birds he did see. All too soon, the Range was left behind as the bus trundled on and Loydell picked up the essays again and focussed his attention back on the one he'd been reading.
