by Judy Nunn
About to close the drawer, he noticed what looked like a jewellery case. Henrietta wore little jewellery. He’d been unaware that she had recently acquired this small silver box. And without informing him too. Terence was intrigued.
The case was locked. Even more intriguing. He searched briefly for a key without success. No matter. He’d break the lock easily enough, husbands and wives should have no secrets, after all. And he took the jewellery case downstairs to his study to attack it with his penknife.
1878
Benjamin Sullivan liked to show off the locket. In Barclay’s Room, a converted old store of the famous surveyor Goyder, where the elite of Port Darwin attended concerts or played dominoes and charades, Benjamin would sit in a corner chatting to the latest newcomer, and it would be only a matter of minutes before he produced the locket. It was always an excellent conversation opener.
‘Where did you get it?’ the newcomer would ask, suitably impressed.
‘Exchanged it with a black,’ Benjamin would lie, ‘for a tomahawk, the blacks like tomahawks.’
Monsieur Durand, the dandified mining magnate complete with tamarind-blossom buttonhole and waxed moustache, who acted as master of ceremonies at Barclay’s Room, would inevitably be holding court or introducing the latest performer, but Benjamin always preferred a quiet chat in the corner.
‘I was a surveyor with Goyder’s expedition in ’69,’ he’d continue which, if not exactly a lie, was certainly an exaggeration. He’d been a cadet surveyor doubling as an axeman when the need demanded. Again the newcomer would be impressed, the year-long expedition of Goyder and his team was the stuff of legends.
In 1869 the South Australian Government had decided that the mysteries of the far-distant Northern Territory must be revealed. Who knew what pastoral lands might lie hidden amongst the vast tracts of unexplored country, or what wealth of minerals might lie undiscovered beneath its surface. George Woodroffe Goyder, Surveyor-General of South Australia, was the man chosen to lead the expedition, the purpose of which was the survey of a half a million acres of tropical territory in less than a year.
Not only did Goyder carry out his mammoth task but, two years later, the success of the ‘Singing String’ was considered largely due to George Woodroffe Goyder’s Northern Territory Survey Expedition. The ‘Singing String’ was two thousand miles of overland telegraph line stretching from Port Darwin to Adelaide. Linked by submarine cable to Java, the line had thence linked Australia to the rest of the world.
A bit of the hero was bound to rub off on anyone connected with the Goyder expedition, and Benjamin Sullivan liked to be considered a hero. He always started off his tales with the locket, though, such a visual way to impress, before branching off into his adventures and the men with whom he’d shared intimate acquaintance.
‘Goyder, yes, knew him well, a fine man.’ He hadn’t known Goyder well at all, taking most of his orders from one of the junior surveyors. ‘And Bennett, tragic story Bennett, we were close friends.’
Benjamin and J.W.O. Bennett hadn’t been ‘close friends’, but Benjamin had indeed known the young draftsman. They’d been the same age, just twenty-three, when Bennett had been stabbed in the back by natives. There’d been a recent tribute to him in the Northern Territory Times. A retrospective article indeed, but an indication that Bennett’s death remained a newsworthy item.
‘Took him four days to die, poor fellow.’ And Benjamin would shake his head, as if reliving the loss of his dearest companion.
Benjamin Sullivan was a striking looking man. Above average height, thirty-two years of age, he was strong and fit in the body. With thick, wavy hair which grew to his shoulders and an impressive beard and moustache, he looked for all the world like the rugged frontier man he wished to be. But for all the strength of his appearance, he was a weak man at heart. Perhaps he knew it. Perhaps it was why he needed his stories.
He was just as comfortable telling his stories in any one of Darwin’s three hotels, each consisting of a bar and three rooms. There was the Pickford’s Family Hotel, the Palmerston Club and the North Australian. But not being a drinking man himself, Benjamin preferred Barclay’s Room. Gold miners, when they returned to their shanties near town and sought out the bars, were more intent on getting the grog into them than they were in conversation.
It was the pioneer families in their shack homes dotted about the scrub whose company Benjamin most enjoyed, the wives being particularly fascinated by the locket, and the varying stories he told of its acquisition—he always varied his stories about the locket according to the audience he was entertaining. These brave young wives had joined their husbands, many of whom had been members of surveying teams, and settled in Port Darwin, bringing with them a cultural and social change to the town. Benjamin wanted nothing more than to be one of those pioneer families. He had built his own modest home and intended a trip to Adelaide soon to find himself a wife, one who would bear him strong children.
Benjamin was in his customary corner at Barclay’s Room and this time he was out to impress the wife of James Masterson, a successful gold miner who had recently joined forces with Monsieur Durand. No shanties for those two, both men lived in fine houses, and no prospector’s pan for them either; they employed whole teams of pig-tailed, palm-leaf-hatted Chinese coolies—and two whites with rifles to keep them in order—and at no initial cost. The South Australian Government had given free passage to thousands of Chinese in order to provide cheap labour for its northern province. With thirty Chinese to a team, each paid a shilling a day, tons of supplies and equipment could be carried in the baskets of their shoulder poles across the 120 miles to Pine Creek and the mines. And even if it took the teams three weeks, there was little cost to the mining magnates, the coolies lived on a bag of rice, and then they trekked back, their baskets laden with cakes of smelted gold. It was necessary to keep replacing the coolies, however; more often than not when the Chinese had received their first week’s pay they purchased a pannikin, a shovel and dish and set off to fossick on their own. There were hundreds of them out there, it was told.
‘It is certainly a most lovely thing,’ Mrs Masterson said, holding the locket up to the light, ‘how did you come by it?’
‘Yes it is lovely, isn’t it?’ Benjamin agreed, admiring the line of Mrs Masterson’s neck as she held the locket up to the light. She was a handsome woman, he’d like his wife to resemble Mrs Masterson. ‘It was given to me by a black woman. Of the Larrakia tribe. A great beauty.’
Mrs Masterson handed the locket back to him and directed her attention to Monsieur Durand, who was introducing a soprano to the minuscule stage.
Benjamin realised she had taken offence. He’d meant no harm by his remark, he’d simply wished to gain her attention. But then Mrs Masterson was an Englishwoman newly arrived in Port Darwin and possibly fearful of the blacks. It was certainly obvious from the set of her pursed lips that she didn’t approve of them. Personally, Benjamin didn’t find the blacks at all offensive, he had come to know them during the expedition. Come to admire them in fact. Therein lay the huge weight of his guilt, but no, he mustn’t think about that.
‘I was a surveyor on the Goyder expedition at the time.’ He hastily dropped his story of the Larrakia beauty and was about to launch into his adventures on the trail, but she cut him off dead in his tracks.
‘Really,’ she said without interest, her tone glacial and dismissive.
Annabelle Masterson had assumed Sullivan was offering the locket for sale and she’d been about to enquire as to its purchase price. Now she wiped her soiled fingers daintily on the lace handkerchief which she kept secreted in the sleeve of her gown. How dare the wretched fellow proffer her a tainted piece of merchandise. And his mention of the black woman’s ‘beauty’, did that mean he’d had intimate relations with a native? Was she supposed to be impressed? Was he deliberately insulting her? It was indescribably sordid, and she signalled Monsieur Durand with a subtle lift of her eyebrows.
&nbs
p; ‘Mrs Masterson,’ Durand was at her side in a matter of seconds. He’d been keeping his eye on Sullivan, it had always irritated him the way the man paid no attention to the evening festivities. In fact Durand often wondered why Sullivan bothered coming to Barclay’s Room at all. If he simply wanted to sit and talk then why didn’t he frequent one of the hotels? He certainly looked as if he belonged in a bar, with his long hair and his untrimmed beard. It was appallingly obvious that he didn’t even clip his moustache. And now it appeared he was annoying Masterson’s wife.
Durand raised Annabelle Masterson’s hand to his lips in the flamboyant gesture he extended to all the ladies; they loved it. ‘Perhaps you would care to sit a little closer to the front,’ he said, ‘your view is somewhat obscured here in the corner.’ Although bent upon rescuing his new business partner’s wife, and although he neither liked nor approved of Benjamin Sullivan, Durand knew better than to directly offend the man who was, after all, a renowned surveyor.
‘Thank you, that is most kind. Good evening, Mr Sullivan.’ And Annabelle Masterson sailed away without so much as a glance at Benjamin, who sat, with the locket still in his hands, wondering exactly what he’d done wrong.
Benjamin had never received such a reaction before. Many of the pioneer wives had been titillated by his story of the Larrakia ‘princess’ whom he had befriended. The daughter of a native ‘king’, she had been a great beauty and he had saved her life, in return for which she had given him the precious locket. He always kept the story innocent and heroic. Unless there was a suggestive twinkle in the eyes of his listener, in which case he would look away and say modestly, ‘she remains my friend to this very day’, and allow them to read into his remark whatever they wished.
But it hadn’t been like that at all. The locket had not been gained by heroic deeds, nor indeed by simple barter. No matter how many stories Benjamin invented, no matter how hard he tried to forget, every now and then something would jog his memory, as strangely enough Mrs Masterson’s snub had just done, and the hideousness of that morning would return as vivid as ever.
It had been during the long sea voyage aboard the Moonta when they’d rounded the southern coast of Western Australia and headed northwards, bound for Darwin Harbour from where the Northern Territory Expedition would set out. They’d stopped at several ports en route to replenish supplies, and they’d set up camp in several protected bays during the voyage. They were well north of the Gascoyne River, bound for Port Hedland, when the orders came that they were to hove to, disembark, and set up their tents.
The following morning he and Harry Stafford had gone on a hunting expedition. So had a number of the others, whatever fresh meat or fish supply they could find was a welcome relief from the endless corned beef rations on board.
Harry Stafford and Benjamin had become good friends. Harry was a survey hand and, although lower in the ranks than Benjamin, far more of a leader. In fact Harry was trouble. A tough, wiry young man who enjoyed a fight and took on any dare offered him. Benjamin, six years younger, rather envied Harry and tried, when he could, to emulate him.
They were well into the bush, three or four miles from the camp, in a clearing beside a creek which augured well for their hunting prospects, when they heard a noise, something big in the scrub behind them, perhaps a kangaroo. Harry turned, revolver raised at the ready.
Yatamudtji was travelling alone with his wife Toolainah. She was carrying a baby in her belly and wished to give birth to her firstborn in the company of the women of her own people, the Kullari, far to the north. Yatamudtji had travelled across many tribal lands, he was now in the territory of the Ngarli and he wanted no trouble. At first, when he’d heard the tread of human feet through the bush he had thought it was people of the Ngarli, but the steps were too heavy, he’d realised. Then he’d seen the white men.
Yatamudtji had seen white men on two occasions before, from a distance, and although at the time they had done no harm to his people, he was very wary of them. They carried fire weapons which could kill in the blink of an eyelid. If he’d been alone he would have crept stealthily away, but they were nearing the place where his wife was resting, in the bark lean-to amongst the bushes by the creek. Any minute Toolainah might rise and startle them, and they might think she was some beast of prey and point their fire weapons at her.
Yatamudtji put down his spear, he must give them no cause to find him threatening. He would offer them the two goannas he held, strung together with twine. Then he had an even better idea, he would show them minya yindi, the symbol of peace. Yatamudtji wore minya yindi around his neck, his father had entrusted it to him as an omen of good luck, that his firstborn might be a son.
‘Waminda,’ Yatamudtji said, which meant ‘friend’, as he stepped from the bushes, and in his right hand he held up the locket.
Harry fired in the instant that he saw the black. Even as he pulled the trigger he was aware that the man carried no spear, but what the hell, he was a big healthy young buck, not one to tangle with, and God knew how many more of the bastards might be hiding in the bushes.
Yatamudtji was thrown backwards by the impact, his chest shattering as the bullet entered his heart.
‘Take cover, Ben!’ Harry yelled, ‘they might have us surrounded.’ He felt the thrill of battle as he circled the clearing, aiming his revolver at the bushes, prepared for attack from any quarter. Come on you black bastards, he thought, just try to take me. Just try, I dare you.
Benjamin was terrified. But, even in his terror, he’d registered that the native had been weaponless, and that he’d been holding up his hand. Surely it meant he was approaching them as a friend. But what if Harry was right? What if they were surrounded? Any minute hordes of black savages might come at them from out of the scrub. Benjamin spun about fearfully, searching in every direction, his revolver raised at the ready.
Toolainah had been shocked awake by a loud explosion. What could it be? She hauled herself to her feet and saw her husband on the other side of the clearing. He was sprawled dead on the ground and blood was seeping from the wound in his chest.
Her eyes wide with shock, her hand to her mouth, Toolainah started to wail. She was not aware of the white men who whirled to face her, all she could see was Yatamudtji.
‘Shoot for God’s sake!’ Harry yelled, turning his revolver sights once more on the bushes, leaving the woman for Benjamin to dispatch, there was far more danger in the bushes. Any minute now they might charge.
‘It’s a woman,’ Benjamin said rather stupidly, staring dazed, at Toolainah. Her wails had now reached the point of hysteria. How could he shoot a woman?
‘So?’ Harry snarled. ‘Shoot the bitch.’ Her screaming was getting on his nerves. But Benjamin remained frozen to the spot. ‘Jesus Christ, Ben!’ Harry turned, took aim, and fired.
Toolainah’s screams were silenced as part of her skull blew away and her body fell backwards into the shallows of the creek.
Harry circled the clearing like a dervish. ‘Any more of you out there?’ His bloodlust was up. ‘Come on you black heathens!’
Benjamin stood stunned, staring from the body of the man to the body of the woman. As her blood wound its way through the rocks to trickle downstream, he saw her protruding belly and realised, with a sickening sense of shock, that the woman was with child.
Satisfied, finally, that they were safe, that the savages had been travelling alone, Harry came to his senses. ‘We’ll have to cover the bodies,’ he said, gathering foliage and dead branches and dragging them towards the stream. They would be in deep trouble, he knew it, if the slaughter of the blacks was discovered. Orders from the South Australian Government were that peace must be maintained with the natives at all cost. He threw the branches and foliage over the woman’s body.
‘God in heaven, man, lend a hand,’ he growled at Benjamin.
‘She was with child.’ Benjamin still couldn’t move.
‘Good riddance, one less black bastard.’ Harry was getting angry now
, perhaps with his own hot-headedness, but he felt like strangling Benjamin; useless bastard, he thought. ‘Drag him over here,’ he ordered, jerking his head in the direction of the black man’s body as he gathered together more foliage. ‘Come on, man, move! Do you want to go to gaol for murder?’
Jolted from his state of numbness, Benjamin did as he was told. Harry was right, they would have to cover the bodies. As he grasped the black man beneath the armpits, he noticed the locket. Hanging by twine around the man’s neck. This was what he had been holding up to them as he’d stepped from the bushes.
Benjamin glanced back at Harry who was paying him no attention. He slid the locket over the black man’s head and slipped it into his pocket. He would look at it later. Then he dragged the body to the shallows of the creek where he helped Harry cover it from view.
They left the scene of the crime as quickly as they could, and approached the camp from a different direction. They travelled silently, Benjamin still horrified at what had taken place, and Harry cursing the fact that he’d been in the company of spineless young Benjamin Sullivan. Who would have thought such a fine looking specimen of manhood would prove to be such a coward.
When they came in sight of the cove where the ship was at anchor, and they could see the tents set up along the shoreline, Harry grasped Benjamin’s arm and pulled him to a halt.
‘What’s wrong?’ Startled, Benjamin looked about nervously. Was there something unseen in the bushes?
‘Nothing. Yet.’ The threat in Harry’s voice and in the steely glint of his eyes was ominous. ‘But there will be, I swear, if you don’t play the game.’
‘What do you mean?’ Benjamin felt distinctly uneasy.
‘If those bodies are discovered and questions are asked, you know nothing. We never saw any blacks, right?’