Caught in the Headlights
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"For Adam Schilling, fifteen is an age of change. His childhood is brought abruptly to a close when, with his friends, he discovers a skeleton in an abandoned well, and stumbles upon a dangerous secret hidden in the bushland near their farms. With puzzles to solve, and a growing fascination with Megan, the new girl at school, Adam learns that life is neither black nor white but grey, and always in transition."
Set in country South Australia in the 1990s, Caught in the Headlights was first published in 2003 by Harper Collins Australia. The cover art and design was by Liz Seymour. Caught in the Headlights was listed by the Children's Book Council of Australia as a Notable Book for Older Readers and it was subsequently included on various Premier's Reading Lists in schools for several years. The inspiration for Caught in the Headlights came from two key sources: - my own teen experiences as a country kid - a news report that a cannabis plantation was found in the area where I grew up |
Caught in the Headlights has been republished by Millswood Books in 2025.
Print copies at $25 each plus postage can be ordered directly from me by emailing [email protected]. I will provide an invoice with details for payment and, upon payment, I will send you the books you order. Depending on the printer, the turnaround is usually 2-3 weeks.
Ebook copies can also be ordered at a variety of stores via this link: https://books2read.com/u/mdRRQX
Alternatively, you can purchase the book as an ebook or order a print copy from Amazon by following the link below:
CAUGHT IN THE HEADLIGHTS
Print copies at $25 each plus postage can be ordered directly from me by emailing [email protected]. I will provide an invoice with details for payment and, upon payment, I will send you the books you order. Depending on the printer, the turnaround is usually 2-3 weeks.
Ebook copies can also be ordered at a variety of stores via this link: https://books2read.com/u/mdRRQX
Alternatively, you can purchase the book as an ebook or order a print copy from Amazon by following the link below:
CAUGHT IN THE HEADLIGHTS
Sample chapter
War games
If I raise my head -
‘I know you’re there Schilling!’
Glass shatters over me. I shuffle left, away from the window, brushing crystal fragments from my dust-faded jeans. The wooden floor creaks. Dead giveaway. I curse the floor. Another missile smashes through the glass, clanks against the limestone back wall, rattles across the floor. Within reach. If I stretch.
‘You’re dead meat Schilling!’
Heavy thud against the window frame. Lousy shot. No need to answer that. If I plant a seed of doubt, Ray might back off. Turn away. Think I’m somewhere else in the buildings. Then I’ve got him. Doubt. Fear. Surprise. Simple strategy. The art of a good war game. I stretch forward, edging towards the stone laying on the gritty floor. Fingers creeping. Slowly. Reaching. Touching. Close my hand.
‘Freeze!’
The shout frightens the crap out of me. I jerk against the wall, drop the stone. It rolls harmlessly out of reach. Hans stands in the doorway, blond shock of hair, shanghai loaded, menacingly aimed.
‘Either give up, or die like scum,’ he snarls.
Some choice. I capitulate.
Another rock crashes through the window and clatters harmlessly across the floor. ‘I know you’re in there!’ yells Ray, but with less conviction. If only Hans hadn’t found me
‘Too late! I’ve already got him!’ Hans shouts triumphantly. He lowers his shanghai, and unloads it. ‘Whose turn now?’
Ray clambers through the window, gingerly avoiding the glass shards embedded in the rotting frame. ‘I knew you were here,’ he says. ‘It’s my turn to hide.’
We head out of the abandoned farm buildings, over the stone-littered earth, and along a stand of straggly native pine trees, until we reach the rusted hulk of an ancient Sunshine combine harvester serving as game headquarters. The sky is rumpled dull grey cloud, but the January air still holds the heat.
I hear it first and yell, ‘Car!’
We duck behind the harvester. I peek out. Cream dust. Grey Falcon. Tyres chatter along the gravel road. Coulters on their way home from church in Tailem Bend. I wait until the car and its dust cloud swirls past and over the closest rise before giving the all-clear. Ray and Hans reappear.
‘This is a real kick,’ Ray says and flicks back his mop of black hair. ‘Best idea for a weekend for a while.’
I grin. It was my idea to trash Lionel’s place. I say his place, but it isn’t really his. It belongs to Patersons. They own thousands of hectares of land around here.
‘What? Smash it up? Break things? You serious?’ Ray asked incredulously at school when I first suggested the day’s entertainment.
Regular Van Damme is Ray Williamson. Or Stallone. Or Schwarzenegger. Or Nicholas Cage. He loves them all. Even Keanu Reeves. As long as they’re in high-tech war movies, playing gung-ho grunts, creating more carnage in a film than probably the whole Australian army did in all the wars, he’s as happy as a pig in the proverbial as my Mum says. Ray’s bedroom is plastered with posters of those guys. When I suggested trashing Lionel’s place, his green eyes lit up. I half-expected him to start skipping and dancing around me like Hanger does when I tell him I’m going down the paddock.
Oh yeah, Hanger’s my dog. Well, he’s really Dad’s dog, and his name’s supposed to be Kuta, but he hangs around me all the time, and when we go out on the Yamaha he sits on the petrol tank and hangs over the handlebars. The faster I go the further he hangs out. Hanger. What else could I call him? He was Kuta for a couple of years before I started calling him Hanger. Now that’s his name. Even Dad calls him Hanger. He’s a Border Collie. Smart. Almost as smart as a Kelpie.
‘Okay. You’ve got three minutes,’ I inform Ray.
‘Yeah, right. As if I didn’t know,’ he retorts. ‘And no cheating.’
‘Why not?’ Hans asks. ‘You did.’
Ray laughs and inverts his middle finger before he turns and runs towards the buildings. Hans and I settle behind the harvester, according to the game rules, and start timing.
‘Let’s give him two minutes,’ Hans suggests, grinning.
The idea appeals to me, but I’ve got a conscience. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have one. It would make certain decisions a lot easier, but I’ve got one all the same. ‘No. Three,’ I say. ‘It’s more fun beating someone fairly.’
‘Two minutes thirty to go,’ Hans mutters, checking his watch.
I study a pair of magpies sitting on a pine tree bough eyeing us. I often wonder what birds and animals think when they’re looking at us. What do they think of human beings or what we do? If I had my air rifle I’d see how close I could get.
‘Whose place was this?’ Hans asks.
‘Lionel’s. Local rabbito.’
‘A what?’
I look at Hans as though he is an idiot. Which he is for not knowing what a rabbito is. Then again, Hans Zuidland is a townie, not a farm kid. His parents own the Yumali general store. Their house is at the back. I’ve stayed there on weekends and it’s wild. Open access to the shop goodies. Read any magazine. Sneak a few Playboys out for private perving. Play for free on the Addams Family pinball machine. What else could anyone want?
‘A rabbito. You know, runs traps, catches rabbits. Sells the skins. Or he did. Did the local farmers a favour as well by getting rid of the pests. When he was sober.’
Hans squints. ‘What do you mean by that?’
I laugh quietly. I thought everyone knew about Lionel, but then Hans and Ray live out of my district so they wouldn’t have heard anything probably. ‘He was an alco. Drank more booze every weekend than I reckon the footy club could manage on the end-of-year trip. Drank anything - sherry, port, Stone's Green Ginger Wine, rum, whiskey, even metho. There’s a massive bottle stash in the old cellar. I’ll show you after. Dad says every cent Lionel made was pissed into the grass outside the old house.’
What I don’t admit though is that the thought of Lionel used to scare me when I was a little kid. I imagined him staggering around the old stone farm house, singing loud, tuneless songs, tinkering under the dented bonnet of his rusted cream-coloured FC ute, wandering the moonlit paddocks late at night, or early in the mornings, before the sun rose, on his rabbit runs. Spooky stuff.
‘Thirty seconds!’ Hans reports. ‘What happened to him?’
‘Disappeared,’ I explain, easing up to sneak a peek at the old farmhouse. ‘Went walkabout.’
‘When?’
‘Year ago.’
‘Time,’ says Hans, standing. ‘Let’s get him.’
We start around the side of the harvester but freeze when we hear another vehicle coming up the road. I pull Hans back under cover. A light blue four-wheel drive thunders past. Pajero. V6 I guess. Going pretty quick on the gravel road. Heading into town. I don’t recognise the vehicle. Strangers. I know most of the local farmers’ cars and trucks. But occasionally casual visitors go through, and sightseers wander up our road out of curiosity. They usually drive slower than the Pajero was moving. Unless a local had a new car.
‘Can we go?’ Hans pleads like a little kid. ‘I wanna bust Ray big time.’ He flicks a stone over in his hand, grinning eagerly. Mister blond hair blue eyes. If he ever shifts to Adelaide he’ll be a certain surfie. The all-Australian hero look.
‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘Go on.’ But I’m still watching the dust cloud rushing into the distance. I get suspicious of strange cars on our roads. Not so much during the week, because they’re probably heading out to a farm to talk business. On the weekend is different. Especially around dusk and at night. Spotlighters invade us.
I hate spotlighters, Dad and Mum hate them too. They come uninvited out on our back roads and shoot everything they can - rabbits, roos, foxes, cats, dogs, road signs, windows, and a million beer cans. Spotlighting’s not the problem. We all go spotlighting. It’s the townie spotlighters. They don’t give a rat’s tossbag who lives in the area as long as they get to shoot something. Anything. Spotlighters shot two of our cows a couple of years ago. Heinz’s cattle dog was shot last year. We shoot foxes and rabbits because they’re pests. Spotlighters shoot them because they just want to shoot something. That’s why I know the cars and trucks in the district. It’s easy to check out who should be around the place, and who’s trespassing.
I don’t know the Pajero. I make a point of remembering it. Later, as it all turns out, I am glad I do.
If I raise my head -
‘I know you’re there Schilling!’
Glass shatters over me. I shuffle left, away from the window, brushing crystal fragments from my dust-faded jeans. The wooden floor creaks. Dead giveaway. I curse the floor. Another missile smashes through the glass, clanks against the limestone back wall, rattles across the floor. Within reach. If I stretch.
‘You’re dead meat Schilling!’
Heavy thud against the window frame. Lousy shot. No need to answer that. If I plant a seed of doubt, Ray might back off. Turn away. Think I’m somewhere else in the buildings. Then I’ve got him. Doubt. Fear. Surprise. Simple strategy. The art of a good war game. I stretch forward, edging towards the stone laying on the gritty floor. Fingers creeping. Slowly. Reaching. Touching. Close my hand.
‘Freeze!’
The shout frightens the crap out of me. I jerk against the wall, drop the stone. It rolls harmlessly out of reach. Hans stands in the doorway, blond shock of hair, shanghai loaded, menacingly aimed.
‘Either give up, or die like scum,’ he snarls.
Some choice. I capitulate.
Another rock crashes through the window and clatters harmlessly across the floor. ‘I know you’re in there!’ yells Ray, but with less conviction. If only Hans hadn’t found me
‘Too late! I’ve already got him!’ Hans shouts triumphantly. He lowers his shanghai, and unloads it. ‘Whose turn now?’
Ray clambers through the window, gingerly avoiding the glass shards embedded in the rotting frame. ‘I knew you were here,’ he says. ‘It’s my turn to hide.’
We head out of the abandoned farm buildings, over the stone-littered earth, and along a stand of straggly native pine trees, until we reach the rusted hulk of an ancient Sunshine combine harvester serving as game headquarters. The sky is rumpled dull grey cloud, but the January air still holds the heat.
I hear it first and yell, ‘Car!’
We duck behind the harvester. I peek out. Cream dust. Grey Falcon. Tyres chatter along the gravel road. Coulters on their way home from church in Tailem Bend. I wait until the car and its dust cloud swirls past and over the closest rise before giving the all-clear. Ray and Hans reappear.
‘This is a real kick,’ Ray says and flicks back his mop of black hair. ‘Best idea for a weekend for a while.’
I grin. It was my idea to trash Lionel’s place. I say his place, but it isn’t really his. It belongs to Patersons. They own thousands of hectares of land around here.
‘What? Smash it up? Break things? You serious?’ Ray asked incredulously at school when I first suggested the day’s entertainment.
Regular Van Damme is Ray Williamson. Or Stallone. Or Schwarzenegger. Or Nicholas Cage. He loves them all. Even Keanu Reeves. As long as they’re in high-tech war movies, playing gung-ho grunts, creating more carnage in a film than probably the whole Australian army did in all the wars, he’s as happy as a pig in the proverbial as my Mum says. Ray’s bedroom is plastered with posters of those guys. When I suggested trashing Lionel’s place, his green eyes lit up. I half-expected him to start skipping and dancing around me like Hanger does when I tell him I’m going down the paddock.
Oh yeah, Hanger’s my dog. Well, he’s really Dad’s dog, and his name’s supposed to be Kuta, but he hangs around me all the time, and when we go out on the Yamaha he sits on the petrol tank and hangs over the handlebars. The faster I go the further he hangs out. Hanger. What else could I call him? He was Kuta for a couple of years before I started calling him Hanger. Now that’s his name. Even Dad calls him Hanger. He’s a Border Collie. Smart. Almost as smart as a Kelpie.
‘Okay. You’ve got three minutes,’ I inform Ray.
‘Yeah, right. As if I didn’t know,’ he retorts. ‘And no cheating.’
‘Why not?’ Hans asks. ‘You did.’
Ray laughs and inverts his middle finger before he turns and runs towards the buildings. Hans and I settle behind the harvester, according to the game rules, and start timing.
‘Let’s give him two minutes,’ Hans suggests, grinning.
The idea appeals to me, but I’ve got a conscience. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have one. It would make certain decisions a lot easier, but I’ve got one all the same. ‘No. Three,’ I say. ‘It’s more fun beating someone fairly.’
‘Two minutes thirty to go,’ Hans mutters, checking his watch.
I study a pair of magpies sitting on a pine tree bough eyeing us. I often wonder what birds and animals think when they’re looking at us. What do they think of human beings or what we do? If I had my air rifle I’d see how close I could get.
‘Whose place was this?’ Hans asks.
‘Lionel’s. Local rabbito.’
‘A what?’
I look at Hans as though he is an idiot. Which he is for not knowing what a rabbito is. Then again, Hans Zuidland is a townie, not a farm kid. His parents own the Yumali general store. Their house is at the back. I’ve stayed there on weekends and it’s wild. Open access to the shop goodies. Read any magazine. Sneak a few Playboys out for private perving. Play for free on the Addams Family pinball machine. What else could anyone want?
‘A rabbito. You know, runs traps, catches rabbits. Sells the skins. Or he did. Did the local farmers a favour as well by getting rid of the pests. When he was sober.’
Hans squints. ‘What do you mean by that?’
I laugh quietly. I thought everyone knew about Lionel, but then Hans and Ray live out of my district so they wouldn’t have heard anything probably. ‘He was an alco. Drank more booze every weekend than I reckon the footy club could manage on the end-of-year trip. Drank anything - sherry, port, Stone's Green Ginger Wine, rum, whiskey, even metho. There’s a massive bottle stash in the old cellar. I’ll show you after. Dad says every cent Lionel made was pissed into the grass outside the old house.’
What I don’t admit though is that the thought of Lionel used to scare me when I was a little kid. I imagined him staggering around the old stone farm house, singing loud, tuneless songs, tinkering under the dented bonnet of his rusted cream-coloured FC ute, wandering the moonlit paddocks late at night, or early in the mornings, before the sun rose, on his rabbit runs. Spooky stuff.
‘Thirty seconds!’ Hans reports. ‘What happened to him?’
‘Disappeared,’ I explain, easing up to sneak a peek at the old farmhouse. ‘Went walkabout.’
‘When?’
‘Year ago.’
‘Time,’ says Hans, standing. ‘Let’s get him.’
We start around the side of the harvester but freeze when we hear another vehicle coming up the road. I pull Hans back under cover. A light blue four-wheel drive thunders past. Pajero. V6 I guess. Going pretty quick on the gravel road. Heading into town. I don’t recognise the vehicle. Strangers. I know most of the local farmers’ cars and trucks. But occasionally casual visitors go through, and sightseers wander up our road out of curiosity. They usually drive slower than the Pajero was moving. Unless a local had a new car.
‘Can we go?’ Hans pleads like a little kid. ‘I wanna bust Ray big time.’ He flicks a stone over in his hand, grinning eagerly. Mister blond hair blue eyes. If he ever shifts to Adelaide he’ll be a certain surfie. The all-Australian hero look.
‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘Go on.’ But I’m still watching the dust cloud rushing into the distance. I get suspicious of strange cars on our roads. Not so much during the week, because they’re probably heading out to a farm to talk business. On the weekend is different. Especially around dusk and at night. Spotlighters invade us.
I hate spotlighters, Dad and Mum hate them too. They come uninvited out on our back roads and shoot everything they can - rabbits, roos, foxes, cats, dogs, road signs, windows, and a million beer cans. Spotlighting’s not the problem. We all go spotlighting. It’s the townie spotlighters. They don’t give a rat’s tossbag who lives in the area as long as they get to shoot something. Anything. Spotlighters shot two of our cows a couple of years ago. Heinz’s cattle dog was shot last year. We shoot foxes and rabbits because they’re pests. Spotlighters shoot them because they just want to shoot something. That’s why I know the cars and trucks in the district. It’s easy to check out who should be around the place, and who’s trespassing.
I don’t know the Pajero. I make a point of remembering it. Later, as it all turns out, I am glad I do.