We left early. Five superannuated rock bands played their hits from the 1980s and 90s in a country vineyard, as the crowd of salt and pepper-headed rockers, drank like they were 25 again. A ripple of Altamont aggression ran through the throng as the sun set and the queues for the women’s toilets grew longer.

The band we’d come to see was still 90 minutes away, when the family of four in front of us, ensconced on a tartan blanket, fled when a middle-aged drunk fell over their 11-year old daughter and face-planted in to the sushi.

“Lets go,” I said to Jacky and we walked 15 minutes down a dusty road to the old Subaru, followed by the sound of drums, bass and a slightly out of tune guitar. I looked for Venus and there she was, twinkling in the western sky. The heat of the day rose from the red dirt car park as we pulled out on the the side road which led to the highway.

“We’re too old for this shit,” Jacky said.

“Strangers in a strange land,” I said as I slid in an old Lou Reed CD and wound down the driver’s window. Rows of grape vines lit by the headlights flew by as ‘Sweet Jane’ belted out from the door speakers.

150 metres ahead, a car’s brake lights fishtailed and came to a sudden stop. I pulled in behind the car and a woman with blonde hair in her late 50s, wearing blue jeans and a black leather jacket, lay face down in the dirt. A man in his 60s lay ten metres behind her.

A young woman was crying hysterically, “Oh, Jesus, oh fucking Jesus,” she kept saying. “Steve didn’t see them.”

Jacky called 000. Steve kept saying they just appeared out of nowhere, like ghosts, who’d walked out of the vineyards.

The woman was lying on her stomach, her head turned hard to the right. She was unconscious and making gurgling sounds. I pulled her tongue from the back of her throat and she breathed easier. A faint pulse. Dilated pupils. Amongst the bloodied matted hair, the back of her skull was a broken egg shell. She was dying.

Jacky put the crying woman in the passenger seat of the Subaru and told her to take deep breaths.

The man lay on his side and spoke in a light German accent.

“Bunny, Bunny, are you alright?” he called out. “That’s my wife. We were walking to a party…” A smashed bottle of shiraz bled next to a small black ruck sack. He had a broken leg and deep cuts on his forehead.

“Bunny, can you hear me?”

A light breeze carried the bass of the band over the vineyards. Sometimes louder, sometimes softer, like a heart beat, as I wiped the blood off his face. He looked up at me.

“She’s going to be alright, isn’t she?” He had a good face. His red and black western shirt had ripped open to reveal a small tattoo over his left breast. A picture of a rabbit with red boxing gloves.

“She’s pretty crook…”

“My name’s Karl”

“I’m Patrick. She’s breathing, mate”

“We were singing”

Steve hovered over Jacky’s shoulder, looking down at the woman, ran his fingers through his hair and walked in to the vines for a cigarette.

The girl was chugging down water from a bottle while blabbering to her Mum on her mobile, “This woman just flew over the hood and hit the windscreen, then bounced on the road”

He kept staring at Bunny lying on her stomach.

“Been married 35 years next January. We met at a party in Dresden. Is that your wife?”

“Been together for ten years. Met late”

“Have you been to Germany?”

“Yes and Dresden too. We stayed by the river”

“When we first came here, there were no grapes,” Karl said. “I planted 40 acres. Shiraz mainly but other varieties too. Hard work but a good living”

He looked in to my face and his rough hand reached for mine.

“There’s a mobile phone in the rucksack. Would you call, Johann, my son,” he said. “Tell him they’ll probably take us to the Flinders Medical Centre. Tell him the dogs need to be fed”

“What sort?”

“German Shepherds. Almost a stereotype, no?” He tried to smile.

I grabbed the mobile from the rucksack, “Of course”.

Karl knew his wife was dying. Knew it like he knew when it was time to harvest and when to tie back the vines. He could feel her heart beating in his. Jacky said something but I ignored her. The sweet scent of rotting grapes wafted over us.

“So it ends here,” he said.

I looked at Jacky and she shook her head. Steve lit another cigarette in the driver’s seat of his car. He had a mobile phone pressed to his ear. In the distance, the wailing ambulances came.

“Nothing really ends,” I said, “does it mate?”

“No, everything goes on the same, although for me, not the same”

The ambulances blocked the road and the paramedics put a brace on Bunny’s neck and gently lifted her in to the ambulance. Karl still held my hand as they stretchered him to the doors of the second ambulance.

“Thank you Patrick and please remember to call my son about the dogs”

I watched as the ambulances drove away and then walked over to Steve as two police cars pulled up.

“It wasn’t your fault”

He looked at me blankly. “I know”. His partner got in the passenger seat and stared straight ahead.

After we gave our statements, we sat in the old Subaru, our hands covered in dirt and blood and looked down the lines of vineyards stretching in to the darkness.

“You know what I think,” Jacky said. “I think she was driving”

I ran my fingers over the buttons of Karl’s mobile.