All the while Queeny had been saying that George would have headed for the Alice River Country, that is the region further West where, joined by the Beatrice, the Alice truly became a river, the old man’s own country. She said it again now, ‘He been go Alice, all right. No goot look-about here. We can’t find him track. He too goot, dat bloody black bastard. Two-feller got him dat-one brush, too . . . hide him tracks.’
Nell said promptly, ‘We go Alice.’
‘Eh, look out! Dat too much long way.’
‘No-more long way. I been come dat road plen’y time, when I live long o’ Mitchis Coon-Coon.’
‘You ride long o’ motor car dat time.’
‘No matter . . . dat no-more long way.’
‘Wha’ you goin’ do dere?’
‘I tek him back my boy.’
‘Might-be you can’t find him dere.’
‘I find him all right. I ask him dat station boss helip him me.’
‘Might-be he tell him p’liceman.’
‘I tchileep long him spone he want . . . I know dat man, Mist’ Bolder.’
‘Wha’bout ask him dat man dere tek we long o’ motor car?’ Queeny nodded towards the camp.
‘He been say he can’t go ’way from here.’
‘Might-be tomorro’ ’nother-one man.’
‘No-more. I wan’ ’o go now, Tchister. Come on, we go.’
Queeny protested, ‘Too dark!’
‘We can see dat road all right. Please you come, Tchister. I wan’ my lil boy back. I don’ wan’ dat bloody black bastard breakin’ him in. I tell him you before, I been dream dat-lot kill him my boy. ’Cause he not blackfeller dey wan’ ’o kill him. Like dere behin’ Catfish. I know dey goin’ ’o kill my lil boy. You come now, please, Tchister.’
Queeny sighed heavily, then cried in sudden anger. ‘All right, I come. Dis time I gitchim dat bloody black bastard I kill him daid . . . I get rifle from station . . . I buy him . . . I kill him daid, daid, daid!’
As they crossed the river again at that point lower down where they had gone to and from the road camp, the dogs started in on them again, roaring along the bank. The beam of a flashlight swept along the trees above. Then — bang! — wheeee! A bullet went screaming over them. The rocky river-bed rang to the explosion. The dogs were silent. The pair stopped in their tracks. Then a great voice rose up from the camp, ‘Go easy with that rifle, you silly bastards!’
Another voice answered, ‘Pull your ’ead in, mug.’
‘I’ll punch your bloody ’ead in!’
‘Come an’ try it!’
Uproar of voices of men and the dogs again.
Nell and Queeny and Mungus went scrambling up the bank, crossed the road and straight into the bush. They stopped again. The voices were still raised, but distant now. After a moment they swung to the right in the direction of the road, gained it, and went swinging away along it, with Minaiji, the Evening Star, palely lighting their way.
By the same dim light, across a pale-earthed plain grown only with stunted bushes and lank broken grass, parallel to the Alice road and about a mile to South of it, George and Prindy, heel to toe, were heading in the same direction. Somewhere away to southward of them dingoes were howling in doleful chorus.
But for those following the road was not the easy way it had been by day, because used now by stock for bedding down, the beasts leaping up in fright before the yapping onslaughts of a dimunitive debil-debil and the appearance of two grey ghosts, one with three legs, they were too astonished to move and had to be walked round. Queeny was scared of bulls, a couple of which were heard grumbling challenges. She told tales of acquaintances who had been chased by bulls. Nell kept on grimly, speaking only when Queeny complained of weariness, repeating shortly what she had said at first, that if they kept going, they might find those they sought camped where they had all camped last night. Queeny sighed and swung along, singing bits of hymns: ‘Yas, Jesus luff me, yas, Jesus luff me, yas, Jesus luff me . . . de Bible tell me so . . .’
After about two hours of it, with Minaiji down in the tree-tops, they came to a creek, one of many they’d had to cross, but this one with water winking at them. They stopped to drink. But Queeny said she couldn’t go on without a drink of tea and a bite to eat. Nell agreed. They made a fire, boiled the billy, ate bread and beef with the tea. Meantime the star had gone, leaving a black black world behind, for all the blaze of other stars. Queeny said she was too done up to go on. Nell coaxed, screeched a bit, wept. But Queeny wouldn’t budge. ‘Stop worrit,’ she said wearily. ‘We gitchim all right. But no goot long o’ dark.’ Soon she was asleep. For a long while Nell whimpered crouched in the tiny glow of the fire, then sighing lay down in the cow-dung and slept.
Thus, while only a mile or so away up the same creek by another waterhole beside another tiny fire the quarry were sleeping. Dingoes were still howling away to southward.
Igulgul came up, winking through the trees, a skinny old fellow now, peeping, it seemed, at both parties, so near to each other and yet so remote. The dingoes got in between the two parties and howled to tell them of their proximity, so that they stirred in their sleep. Mungus woke, but made himself very small so as not to be seen or smelt. Evidently he didn’t understand the lingo. Just before dawn the dingoes curled up in the way of their kind and fell asleep.
Both parties were up in moonlit lilac-tinted dawn, taking a hasty meal of the last of their bread, a swig of tea, then away. The Sun rose red behind them, turned to brass. The sou’easter rose and lashed them on the flanks. The flies came to ride with them and drink their sweat.
In a couple of hours the women reached the point of long yesterday’s beginnings. No sign there even of their own tracks now. Even the place where they had camped under the paperbark was trodden over by cattle and torn about by birds after scraps. They paused only to drink. They went on till noon, when they came to a large stockyard that evidently had been worked only a day or two before. A couple of dead beasts, sick or maimed creatures that had been shot, lay behind the yard, attended by a large flock of kites and crows. Scraps of car tracks were to be seen amongst the hoof-prints, and horse-prints amongst the bovine. There was a shed by the river, in which hung a food-safe from an ant-proofed hook. Inside they found a heel of stale bread and a small can of treacle. They had bread and treacle for dinner.
Southward, now some five miles distant, the others were making their way over grey plain grown with stunted bushes and lank grass. Good beinook country. Everywhere grey heads of bustards popped up to stare. George said they would wait till they came to water before they took one. They saw the waterhole a long way off, by reason of the small birds clouding over it. Only a couple of small trees, the only trees in miles. George said they would get a beinook now. He had Prindy break a bough off a bush and, raising it high, go walking ahead with it. The silly birds began to follow the odd thing, the walking tree, forgetful of the man walking with spear poised in womera. Prindy stopped, to wag the bush slowly. The beinook approached it warily. Zip! The spear flew. Great grey wings outspread. A croaking of protest against the treachery. The stricken bird ran with the rest, but could not take the air, fell, to be pounced on by Prindy and despatched with a boomerang, and the usual apology, ‘Poor bugger.’
The water in the hole was white as milk with clay, but cool and sweet. They drank deeply. Then they grilled their bird and ate great chunks of it, and afterwards slept for a little in a bit of shade; while a couple of kites circled waiting for them to be gone. They went on, taking half of the bustard with them.
The southern plain ran almost to the Alice River, so that it was not impossible that those kites in their highest orbit would have been able to see both parties. At any rate, there was a windmill by the river that the women saw rise up out of the river timber; while the men saw it as what looked like a taller tree in the wall of trees away away to their right.
The women came up to the windmill right glad of the water in the trough they had to share with a smal
l mob of cattle, because hereabout the bed of the river was sandy and its flowing underground. They reached it with the gilding of the sky, just ahead of galahs homing after a day of foraging along the river. They brought down one each with sticks, and had them, little bags of bones, for supper. Then they got through the fence of the earthen tank and lay down to sleep in the weeds.
Those across the plain kept going longer, drawn by a force much more powerful than a couple of hours’ thirst and the prospect of laying weary limbs down, for all its remoteness. George had been looking for it since noon. The haze of the dusty windy day had hidden it until the western sky reddened and revealed it as a small blue speck. George, who had been singing softly to himself, suddenly cried, ‘Ngah gunga . . . ngah gungah . . . my country, my country!’ He explained that the speck was a peak in the sandstone country, called Aldinbinya, The Head. They would be going there, into the very heart of Aldinbinya, into its Snake Caves. Troperly Tchineke country . . . properly belong Old Tchamala.’
The last of the red light revealed a blue wall of plateau, made by Tchamala, in his burrowings that had resulted in the river system of the country, Beatrice, Alice, Queen Victoria, so George said. He sang of his country:
Gubbalinga, gubbalinga, ngah gunga
Gubbalinga, ngah, ngah.
They were just about to camp, when away somewhere to the southeast Prindy said he could hear plovers. That meant water. They headed that way, by the light of Minaiji — and sure enough, there was a gilgai, a little clay-hole shaded by bushes. While the plovers ran round them, scolding, mimicked by Prindy they made camp for the night.
In the clear morning air, The Head stood out more distinctly. George viewed it with face quivering. ‘Long time I no see my country,’ he said.
‘Gullalinga, ngah gunga . . . ngah, ngah, ngah!’ As they went on their way westward he told of the wonderland it was, as so often during the long journey to it, but never with tears in eyes and voice as now. He pointed out where Alice River Station homestead lay, actually on the Beatrice River, just above the junction of the two streams. Nothing was to be seen there but the dark line of far-off timber. He said they should reach the homestead by noon.
The other party, in trying to assess their own proximity to the homestead, made use of the windmill, up the twenty-foot ladder of which Nell went, to the great wonder and excitement of Mungus, to view the scene. She came down to report, ‘Nutching . . . on’y tree, tree, tree.’
After a drink of tea strongly laced with treacle, they got on their way. Now the country was changing again from grey to yellow, the stunted beefwoods and mulgas that had lain between them and the plain that so narrowly kept them from what they were so widely seeking, giving way to open forest.
George now walked with sprightly step, telling Prindy how soon they would be entering upon their proper relationship of Nungala and Wallanjinni. Prindy must prepare himself for the ordeal of silence ahead of him for many a moon. The old men George would gather at the station would start the proceedings. One who stood in the relationship of father would give George formal permission to take charge of his nephew, one who was his father-in-law would impose the ban of silence. Then George might properly take him away to show him his Road, which would lead them right across the desert through the Frog Country and down to the mouth of the Queen Victoria and the people who lived there. They would meet Snake Men on the way, whom they would tell of the eventual rendezvous with the Pookarakka. Prindy would return as a Young Man. George said, ‘I die finish dere, long o’ my rown country. I never leave him no more . . . Goot-feller my country . . . ngah gunga!’
It was Prindy first saw the homestead, just a silvery flicker as of a breaking wave in the rolling violet sea that the dark line of the river timber ahead became with the climbing of the Sun. Then slowly, as if they built it in imagination as yearned they towards it over the miles of yellow dust and bleached grass and scant grey trees, it grew into a cluster of shimmering iron roofs, elevated tanks, a beef gallows, a radio mast, the darker green of alien trees.
The homestead stood in a wide clearing that would be the result of its own requirements in building material and firewood, extending on the western side of the timber of the river — Beatrice River, despite the station’s name. The original homestead had stood at the confluence of the rivers, but had been too often flooded out. This place was built with the Vaisey take-over. But surely that was the original material which made up the collection of hovels on the river bank below the tanks — the blacks’ camp?
Still under cover of the surrounding bush, George and Prindy came to a barbed wire fence, slipped through it, kept going till it was likely they might be seen, then turned southward. Not that there was anyone in sight to see them, as to be expected at this time of day. Even the kites and crows on the gallows seemed to be asleep. George kept on, into timber of increasing density, so that soon the homestead was lost to view. They came to another fence, passed through. Still George kept on in the same direction, southward. Beyond the fence there were outcrops of sandstone, increasing in size. At a distance of a good mile past the homestead they came upon a place amongst the rocks that was clearly a Ring Place, Kokulal, as George called it, putting down his things and leaning on his womera to stare about, as if seeing it in ceremonial, at length saying, ‘Big trouble here before.’ There was no evidence of its having been used in a long while.
‘Wha’ nam’ trouble?’ asked Prindy
George only shook his head, then picking up his things again, said, ‘We go long o’ river.’ He set out through the rocks, now at right angles to their former course.
Over and around the rocks and thick timber they went, for about a third of a mile, with the sound of the river waxing from a murmur to a steady watery roar, to come suddenly to where the ground fell away steeply to a flat grown with grass and patches of swamp reeds and large leafy trees through which the river could be seen glinting. They went down. Horses snoozing in shade woke and stared and snorted. They crossed the flat to the river, setting down their gear to walk in through the bit of ooze along the low bank and drink deeply.
The river, some fifty yards wide, ran swift and shallow, boiling over rocks. The other bank was steep, rising to rocks and heavy timber. The shallow ran up into the glare of the Sun. It ended a little below this point, where a long green reach began steep-banked on both sides, with aquatic trees clinging, their outer roots, arching down to the water, looking like the knees of a tribe of giants sitting washing their feet.
They went from the water to a shade too low to be fouled up with horse-dung, and set their things down again. Then George said he would go down to the station to see his countrymen and get those men. Prindy could do what he liked, bogey, perhaps; but if anybody came along, he was not to let himself be seen if possible, and if not possible, must turn his back. George slipped out of the stinking khaki shirt and trousers he had worn to rags since leaving Hang On Creek, took the shirt and ripped the back out of it, to make a square. This he slipped between his legs and knotted on each hip. He told Prindy to do likewise with his clothes, remarking, ‘We properly blackfeller now . . . chuck-him-out clothes.’ Then, carrying only his womera, he set out, heading for the tree-lined bank. A well trodden path was cut into the earth behind the trees. He followed it.
The point below the blacks’ camp was well marked. Two dug-out canoes were moored to roots; and roots served as drying racks for bits of clothing; and bits of soap were stowed in crannies. Several paths ran up the bank. George went up. He stopped short of the top to stand and survey the village of hovels, dog-high for the most part, and built of any rubbish, a score or more, grouped about ash-heaped hearths, some covered with bark or tin and with cans hanging from hooks, most with a skinny dog or two beside it dead to the world. No sign of life, except swarming meat-ants. George clicked his tongue. Dogs’ heads rose on the instant. Noses sniffed. One blue-heeler bitch leapt up with a growl. In an instant the place was in uproar. Black heads poked out of blackness. George ma
de a sign. Black bodies, most in rags, some semi-naked, all children naked, a couple of adults decently dressed if badly rumpled, came popping out. George came to the top, to strike the conventional pose of visitor, stork-like, right foot against left knee, leaning on womera. He spoke a couple of words. A shout. Several of the men came running to him. First the whiteman’s greeting, the handshake, then the touching, the smoothing, the frank delight of simple people in reunion. Then a crowding round, with babble of talk, and some weeping from women. An old woman laughing toothlessly from the doorway of one of the worst of the human kennels. George went to her, bent and took her hands in one of his, and smoothed her bony arms with the other, while she mumbled and wept and then snatched a hand free to stroke him. Others stared from a distance. Some dropped down by their firesides with backs turned. Then suddenly it became dignified. All but four or five old fellows withdrew. Those remaining with George led him away towards the tank-stand, to stop and squat in the shade of the tank and talk earnestly. Others in the camp began to drift back towards the homestead.
The talk of the grey heads went on for about an hour, when two left the group to go back to their humpies, to reappear after a little while wearing nagas only and head-bands, and carrying womeras and a couple of spears and a dilly-bag apiece, and one with a sugar-sack into which he put beef hanging in chunks in one of the fireplaces and a hunk of bread from a hanging safe. When these two returned the rest stood up and shook hands with George, who turned away, and with the other two on his heels, went back over the bank.
Prindy came out of the shade as the trio appeared, to stand awaiting them with head hanging, sunlight glinting on recently washed hair, glowing on golden skin. The intense interest of the newcomers was evident. As they came up to him, George addressed him, in the lingo of the country, in which he must have been instructing him. Prindy looked up, causing the strangers to exclaim on intaken breath: ‘Ahgorru ghuli!’ probably the equivalent to Eh, look out! The grey eyes surveyed them gravely.
Poor Fellow My Country Page 77