At last, on George’s promise to take her and Prindy to the railway at the first opportunity after reaching Rainbow Creek, Nell agreed. Thereupon the move began. The cache of remaining goods, clothes, blankets, tobacco, pipes, matches, canned foods, was opened up, and carried down to the boat in the creek; and up and down again, for several hours, the procession went, so as to be ready to catch the tide tonight. It was a simple matter to get the boat ready for launching, with George and Nell heaving on a lever while Prindy poked the sticks beneath the keel. The only trouble was with sandflies and mosquitoes. They daren’t light a fire for fear of rousing the suspicion of their neighbours and having them come to interfere.
Then everything was ready, and nothing to do but watch Igulgul come smirking looking a bit fatter out of the deepening blue, while oily brown water came up and up, with the mud-skippers leaping ahead of it and the crabs darting about and the big creatures of the deep harrying the little ones in the endless struggle for survival. Mungus was there. Queeny was for leaving him behind, tied up for the mob to find him tonight. But Prindy wanted him: ‘For learn him properly bush-dog way,’ as he said. He was so excited that someone had to keep an eye on him all the while to stop him from barking, instead of which he squeaked.
The lapping water was crimson as they shoved the boat into it. Then there was the rush to load those stores left out so as not to make the job too heavy. Then Mungus, with a hand over his muzzle to silence what could not now possibly have been restrained with mere threats of the violence that no one of Aboriginal upbringing could ever do to child or dog. They were on their way, keeping to the creek till it was good and dark and the water pulling back towards the sea. George had stepped his mast with the leg-of-mutton sail ready for use, but for the time was poling her along with an oar. Soon they were racing in the tide stream, soon out of the estuary and tossing in the swell of the open sea. With a light wind off the land and the current running parallel to it, George unfurled the sail, went into the stern to steer with an oar and work the sheet, heading northwestward, following the dark line of the shore, all the darker for the blaze of the setting Moon. Nor’nor’west of them blinked what George said was the Point Albert Lighthouse.
George told Prindy that the breeze would drop when Igulgul went down into his hole, because he sucked it, just as Old Tchamala sucked the sea and made the tide. Queeny’s comment on that, made with a lilting laugh of derision, was: ‘Dat blackfeller rubbitch, boy. Don’t you tek notice. Bible say God mek him wind and sea and ev’t’ing.’
Ignoring her, George said that moonset would bring them to a beach where there were coconuts, remnants of an old plantation, and where they would spend the night. Sure enough, there was Igulgul soon winking through tall palms and as he vanished the wind dropped. George took the depth with his oar, said they were almost on the bottom, and jumped out, with a blaze of phosphorescence that made Prindy cry out. George explained that it was nothing but the light Igulgul left behind him so that fishes and things could see where they were going in the dark: ‘All-same you tek fire-stick from fire for look-about,’ he explained, ‘You come on in, gi’ me hand.’ Somewhat gingerly Prindy went overboard, but in a moment to be delighting in the wonder, which he described as being like someone lighting matches under water. George giggled, saying, ‘Might be dat-one Jesus, eh?’ A snort from Queeny.
When the boat grounded, George brought out his home-made kellick to moor her for the night. The bottom was hard sand. George said that she would be floating well inshore when they wanted her in the morning. Then, with dunnage for camping for the night, all four made their way up to the warm dry sand at the edge of the scrub, with Mungus leaping madly about squeaking on the edge of barking, while Queeny’s flashlight struck at him like an extension of her crutch. When a fire was lit, Prindy wanted to take the flashlight and go look for coconuts with Mungus, but to the loud objection of the others, saying you didn’t know what might be in there. By the sounds, after they had settled down, a lively little world was in there: the squeaks, the cracklings, rustlings, while flying foxes flapped and gabbled up in the coconuts. Not that Prindy paid much attention to it. Scarcely had he eaten when he fell asleep against George. His mother, on his other side, was not long in going off herself, Mungus dug a hole for himself at a safe distance from Queeny. The others sat for a goodly while, in stony silence, staring at the Point Albert light, Queeny smoking cigarette after cigarette, George a couple of pipes of opium.
Queeny was the last to drop down to the silky sand, pulling a blanket over her, but to wake after only an hour or so crying out so as to arouse the others. Panting, she told Nell that she had dreamt that a big black flying fox had her in his claws and was carrying her away. It was small wonder that she should dream of flying foxes, with the racket going on up top there; still, she declared that it was ominous, that in her country, away over East, to dream of the flying fox meant that someone close to you was soon to die, might be you’self. Prindy went off again at once; but the others took so long about it as to need to brew a billy of tea. Then George had to take himself off a little way because he was seized with coughing, and Queeny objected. When he was out of earshot Queeny muttered to Nell, ‘He de one goin’ ’o die, I reckon.’ Then she added savagely: ‘Might-be I kill de bloody black bastard!’ Nell’s comment was the indrawn whisper: Eh, look out!
Prindy and Mungus, well rested, had the others out at piccaninny daylight with a noisy assault on the crab armies marching ahead of the incoming tide. The boat was well afloat. Prindy and the dog swam out to it, while Nell shrieked of sharks and Queeny called on Jesus. Prindy, already something of a boatman, had anchor up and boat ashore in no time. He would have loaded her with coconuts, only that there was scarcely room to move about in her as it was. He consumed one with his breakfast and took along another four. George said they must make the eastern horn of the harbour before the tide turned and Igulgul got up to come tchinekin, as he did by day, and blowing the sou’easter before him; otherwise they would be swept out to sea. He predicted a windy day, talking only to Prindy, but for the benefit of all. What they would do, he said, was to cross the harbour at the mouth, and lay up for the day in a little cove just inside West Point. Then with the aid of his Patrons, Igulgul and Tchamala, they would make their way in secret and with ease to their destination. He made no bones about reliance on those Patrons of his, perhaps largely in refutation of Queeny’s too-ready mockery of blackfeller rubbitch.
But however the Old Ones had dealt with George in the past, they weren’t a bit helpful today. Tchamala was already sucking the tide out at full rip again when they reached the harbour, the invisible Igulgul breathing at some twenty knots at least — conditions that could have been disastrous for a less skilled boatman with a boat not so well equipped to meet them. There was no beating up against that wind and tide in what was a mere row-boat with a sail that was useless in any but a following wind. He kept her only as much into the wind as would give him steerway westwards, where there was land, if ever so far away, and not an horizon blank of anything but ivory bits of cloud out of which to make imaginary Isles of Spice. He was lucky in not having Queeny’s mockery to make things worse. She started off well enough when it was evident that they were not heading as planned, but desisted as the sea got up and laid her low. All got seasick except George; even Mungus, but Queeny worst of all. She was beyond even caring for the spoiling of much of her precious merchandise by the swamping seas. Prindy recovered as soon as he’d got rid of his breakfast of coconut. He then took a hand, bailing. It was the turning of the tide again that saved them from a voyage to the so-called East away up there to northwestward, or return to their Dreaming Places in the spirit. Evidently George was counting on the turn to counter northerly drift when he pressed more to windward.
Thus in the middle of the afternoon he got them ashore on Prince Albert Peninsula, so close to Point Albert Lighthouse that the stripes about it were plain to see, but so far from Port Palmeston that the place was only
a few purplish humps floating in heaving mirage from which Queeny, crying her thanks to Jesus for delivering her, turned looking as if white-ochred again. However, it wasn’t long before Queeny, taking stock of things, delivered herself in her customary manner. George ignored her, going off with Prindy and Mungus to dig turtle eggs, this being a nice bit of beach and turtle tracks fresh on it.
They had the good luck to catch a turtle that, having been mauled by a shark or some such creature, was too stricken to return to the sea from its last-night’s laying. They had that baked in its upturned shell, for supper, along with eggs cooked in hot ashes, and a damper of sorts made with soggy flour. Igulgul appeared to be laughing at them as he slipped down behind the scrub. They slept in the soft sand as the night before, but with no such interruptions. The lighthouse winked and winked, but without troubling them, because they knew, on George’s information, that no one was there except the mysterious contraption that gave forth the light. There was nothing to fear from the kuttabah’s magic, only from the kuttabah himself.
As the idea of chance can have no place in Aboriginal philosophy, it would be wrong to say that George was taking no chances with tomorrow’s wind and tide when he took the precautions he did to avail himself of the very best conditions for navigation to suit his purpose. He anchored the boat in a bit of a creek with a channel that would fill with the first incoming water, unloaded her so as to have her floating at the first possible moment, and roused the camp at the first lap of the turning tide, declared breakfast off, had everybody racing to load up again when it was possible, and was under way while yet the light left by Igulgul from the night before blazed to the long strokes of his oars. Conditions were perfect. The sea was like a billabong at midday for smoothness, the tide set to sweep them towards Port Palmeston even if they’d lain down and slept once they got out into the run of it, the only wind that made by their progress. So easy was the going that George declined Prindy’s assistance on the oars, telling him to throw the spinner out and hook a few of the multitude of fishes to be heard and seen about them, so that they might breakfast well on arrival at their destination. Prindy showed the true Aboriginal philosophy by asking him to Sing the White Fish, and joined in with him with a much more musical version of the chant, despite the snickering of Queeny.
Soon there were the lights of the Jail to be seen. They should pass it in daylight too faint for anyone watching even with a spyglass to take them for other than Greek fishermen, so said the knowledgeable George. But he was forgetting that one in the Jail who he believed needed no such things as whiteman’s magic to know what was going on and who was particularly concerned with his own, that is to say George’s, business just then. He soon had cause to remember the Pookarakka. Normally, at this time of year, the wind, the Trade Wind of the southern tropics, would rise with the Sun, as a breeze that developed in strength with the heat of the day. Later it could be expected to get earlier as the continental Inland got colder with advance of winter and the northern seas by contrast warmer, until for several weeks it would be blowing all the while. There might have been a cold snap down Inland last night — might, that is, if blackfellow logic were to be ignored. The breeze caught them while they were off Turtle Beach. Then would have been the time to act upon that logic, had wisdom prevailed. But how act upon it readily in these days when it was held in such contempt that a master of it like the Pookarakka was kept in a cage, when things had come to such a pass that a man was reduced to travelling with tribal sisters, even to have them pissing in one’s presence, as that peg-legged rubbitch did without shame in the bailer fin? So George kept on, even when the breeze was so stiff as to need Prindy’s help on the oars. He said that as things were they’d never make their destination today. Instead they would make for West Point and wait in a salt-arm till dark. But they never got within cooee of the harbour’s mouth. Such was the wind by sunrise as to defeat all advantage to be had from the tide, which meant at last to have the tide against them, too. It was then that George admitted openly what privily was probably nagging his mind for a long while, the way he kept casting worried glances at the pile of shimmering whiteness on the harbour’s eastern shore that was the Jail: ‘Old Pookarakka been sing him wind, I reckon. Him koolah long o’ me.’ It was to Prindy, as always, he spoke, and softly, since it was masculine business. But the women heard; and Queeny sniggered to Nell about silly-bugger blackfeller. George said nothing to that, but swung the boat round, shipped his oars, gave one to Prindy to steer with while he unfurled the bit of sail.
Queeny demanded, ‘Wha’ you doin’ . . . where you go?’
Ignoring her, George took the steering, heading for Turtle Bay.
But they were in the middle of the tide stream, running nor’west. There was no getting clear of it to make the shore. The Pookarakka was doing things properly. George knew better than to waste energy trying to beat him. He eased the sheet, let the boat have her way with the following wind and sea. How she spanked along!
Queeny demanded, ‘Wha’ you doin’ . . . goin’ ’o bloody China?’
Soon they were abeam the camping place of last night, and quickly overhauling the lighthouse. Queeny sitting amidships, amidst her dunnage, and Nell, up near the bow, kept looking ashore and astern and ahead and at each other with evident increasing concern. As they swept on past the beach, Queeny raised her voice again: ‘Wha’s matter . . . you go jitty, old-man . . . where you goin’ to?’
George gave his answer through Prindy: ‘Benin’ point dere, no-more big wind, no-more sitrong tide.’
That’s how it turned out — although the Pookarakka made things so lively as they turned Point Albert that it looked as if his intentions were not mere harassment but sheer deadly. The sea was boiling in a rip that at times seemed to lift the small vessel clean out of the water and dump her down again so that she wallowed in green wells. Queeny screamed to Jesus. Even old George was crying out in lingo what sounded like appeals to the Wise One. Nell and Mungus crouched together, whimpering and vomiting. Prindy, large-eyed, simply hung on.
Then there they were, in comparatively quiet water, running westerly past a high rocky shore, above the sheer cliffs of which the heaving of the trees showed how the wind was piping. No chance of a landing there, even though the water inshore was glassy smooth. Then round another point and running now sou’westward.
‘Look-see,’ said George to Prindy.
Far ahead of them the shore turned due westward, so far away as to be seen only as a dun line. But reared behind it was a violet pyramid — Mt Mooragetaghee. Prindy recognised it with a smile. ‘We go dere now,’ said George.
‘Where you goin’?’ demanded Queeny.
Nell added her voice: ‘We wan’ ’o go long o’ railway line.’
George said to Prindy, ‘Railway line dere behin’ River dere. Whiteman call-yim Finish River . . . from time dat-lot come overland . . . dey finish dere. Mooragetaghee dey call-yim Mt Finish. We go up dat river . . . go, go . . . we come Mooragetaghee. By’n’by we go long o’ railway line.’
Queeny yelled, ‘I wan’ ’o go long o’ Rainbow Beach.’
George said to his mate, ‘I reckon Pookarakka want him me tek you long o’ Mooragetaghee. Dat Tchineke place. Might be we wait long o’ him dere. We meet him blackfeller dere. I send him word long old-man. Dat my half-country, I been tell him you.’
Queeny yelled louder, ‘I wan’ ’o go Rainbow Beach.’
George answered but without looking at her, ‘All right . . . jump overboard, tchwim!’
She shut up, at length fell asleep amongst her sodden and mostly ruined goods. She woke to find the boat tossing again. ‘Silly black bastard . . . what you doin’ now?’ she cried.
They had just cleared the high shores of the northern part of the peninsula which constituted that region, and were come into a long bay backed with mangrove swamps that curved all the way round to where, at its western extremity, it dissolved in mirage. The wind, blowing over low country, was as fierce here as
round the other side, and seemed all the worse after the spell of quietude. But whereas on the eastern side the sea had run wild, here there was not enough of it to raise a wave worthy of the name, because the tide was now low and the bay for the most part stinking mud. Queeny woke to find George struggling with an oar to keep them off a mud-bank. There was no leaving it to the sail here. They had to row, following winding channels that sometimes proved to be culs-de-sac and had to be rowed all over again, or that were connected with others so shallow that those who could get out without getting stuck for good had to do so to pull her across. Queeny, the one who hadn’t to do anything, cursed George for messing up her goods with the foul mud. He forgot himself again several times to curse her back, telling her that if she didn’t kai-atulli he’d have all her stuff overboard and make their going easier.
The tide was coming in again; and they were sailing again, helped again in heading across wind by the set of the tide as it rushed in to fill the swamps. They were making great way, with higher country looming up to southward to give promise of a landing for the night. Already they could see the silvery gap in the grey-green of the southern shore that George told Prindy was the mouth of the Finish River — and all the while Mooragetaghee, rising higher and higher from the wilderness. They were hugging the shore as close as possible now to take advantage of its shelter, because further out the white horses were tossing their manes out of the coffee-coloured water. They would be about half a mile offshore. Now there were no mud-banks. They had scraped over the last of them a way back. The shore was still lined with mangroves, but behind could be glimpsed the eucalypts of higher ground than the tides could touch. Everything looking lovely — when the Pookarakka struck again — CRASH! They all fell in a yelling heap as the boat stopped dead. The water was too dirty to see what it was; but George quickly found it with an oar. A reef — shoved up right in front of them, and so hard that there was a gaping hole in the bow with the milky coffee gushing in. George grabbed a sack of Queen’s flour to plug it, and had Nell sit on it, while he and Prindy heaved everything else into the stern, including the shrieking Queeny and the yelping Mungus. Then he tried shoving the boat off. She wouldn’t budge, except to swing her stern from the tide and tear still more out of her torn bow. The water poured in. Queeny yelled to Jesus to save her. George called on the Pookarakka: ‘Wha’s matter, old-man . . . you too rough . . . I do it ever’t’ing you ask him me . . . go easy, Pookarakka!’ Nell grabbed Prindy, only to be pushed away, as he turned to help George heave the cargo overboard. There was no need for that. Soon what could float was floating out, as the stern rose with the rushing tide and the jammed bow went under.
Poor Fellow My Country Page 66