Matilda's Last Waltz

by Tamara McKinley

  ‘Over Yantabulla way, missus. Gone to spirits.’

  Matilda looked at him in amazement. ‘Yantabulla’s over a hundred and fifty miles away. How on earth did Gabe manage to walk that far?’

  He grinned. ‘Take three or four turns of the moon, missus. Gabe good runner.’

  Matilda doubted Gabe had been capable of running anywhere, but the fact that he’d died so far from Churinga lent credence to this statement.

  She started as a terrible wail began outside the gunyahs and they both turned to watch the extraordinary sight of Edna on her knees by the side of a long-dead camp fire, beating her head with a nulla nulla and slashing at her arms with a knife.

  ‘Why did you leave me, husband?’ she wailed. ‘Why did you leave me, husband of mine?’ She bent and took the dead ashes from the fire and smeared them over her head and body.

  ‘What’s going to happen to her?’ Matilda whispered to the boy.

  ‘One full turn of the moon and she will make a clay cap. After four seasons of wearing this, she will take it off and wash the clay from her face and body then put the cap on the burial place of her husband. Then she will look to her husband’s brothers for protection.’

  The news of Gabriel’s passing spread quickly through the tribe and the men began to paint white circles and lines on their faces and bodies. The women gathered feathers and bone necklaces and draped them around their men’s necks. Spears were taken out and sharpened, shields of stretched kangaroo hide were painted in bright tribal emblems, and heads of all but the widow were coloured with red dye.

  The men moved slowly in regal procession away from their camp and Matilda and the women followed them out into the plains. After many hours they came to a place where the grass grew around ancient stones that were adorned with totem symbols.

  Matilda and the women sat in a circle a mile or two away, forbidden to take part in the ceremony. As they listened, they heard the mournful sound of the didgeridoo. Bull roarers sang as they were spun through the air, and the dust began to rise as the men began their ritual dance.

  ‘I wish I could see what was happening, Dora. Why aren’t we allowed any nearer?’

  She shook her head. ‘Forbidden for womens, missus.’ She leaned closer and whispered, ‘But I tell you what’s happening.’

  ‘How come you know if it’s forbidden?’

  Dora grinned. ‘I hide when little, missus. See what mens do.’ She shrugged. ‘Not really interesting.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ Matilda said impatiently. ‘Tell me what’s going on over there?’

  ‘Mens dress up in feathers and paint, carry spears and bull roarers. They make music and dance and dance. Each man has spirit animal inside him. He do the dance of his spirit, make same dance as kangaroo or bird, dingo or snake. But in silence. He must not speak so that spirit can come out and carry Gabe long and long to Dreamtime.’

  Matilda stayed with the women until the light was gone from the sky then she returned to the homestead. The ceremony would go on for days and she had work to do, but at least she had been able to mourn Gabe, she thought wearily. The Aborigines might be considered heathens but their ceremony today was very like an Irish wake she’d once attended years ago – only there was no drinking, and the whole thing had been performed with dignity.

  She climbed the steps to the verandah and came to a halt. There, on the floor was a stone amulet – a churinga. Who had put it there was a mystery but as she picked it up she knew she would always treasure it as a reminder of Gabriel.

  * * *

  The men began to return from war but too many would never see the grasslands of home again. Apart from Billy Squires and Tom Finlay and his sons, there were other casualties. The local policeman would never leave hospital in Sydney. Shrapnel had severed his spinal cord and he lay in a coma that would finally finish what the enemy fire had started. The publican’s boy had survived, but he would always walk with a limp and have terrible nightmares. The storekeeper’s two boys had died at Guadacanal, and their parents moved back to the city where the memories were not quite so sharp.

  The face of Wallaby Flats was changing. New people came to take over the pub and the store, the old church was restored, the streets metalled and a commemorative garden planted. There was a bustle about the place that had been missing for too long, and along with this bustle came the rush for cheap land.

  Curtin’s Labour Party looked at the great tracts of land inhabited by a minority of people and decided that the thousands of men who had come home should be given the chance to work their own stations.

  It was an old solution to the problem of what to do with the sudden influx of war-weary men – one that had been tried after the Great War and had proved to be a failure. For what did these men know of the hardships of the squatters life, or of the endless battle to survive? Men and women had struggled for months, sometimes years, at their new lives, but had mostly given in and moved back to the cities. The outback had a way of separating the men from the boys, and only the strong survived.

  Howls of protest and argument could be heard from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the shores of Sydney, but the government went ahead and put compulsory purchase orders on thousands of acres of prime grazing.

  The biggest land owners were the ones to feel the pinch. Squires lost sixty thousand acres of his one hundred and twenty. Willa Willa forty thousand, and Nulla Nulla forty-five.

  Matilda had moved quickly once peace was announced. She remembered what it had been like when her father came back from the Great War, and knew that if the government forced her to sell Wilga, they would pay far less than it was worth on the open market.

  She needed to get the best price possible. For despite the money Matilda had already sent her, April was having a hard time of it in Adelaide and the responsibility of overseeing so many thousands of acres had become too much for Matilda on her own.

  The new owner had written from Melbourne to say he didn’t want the cattle as he was planning to breed stock horses on Wilga. He agreed she could keep half of Wilga’s mob. Matilda knew she had enough grass to accommodate so many sheep and needed the rams to bring a stronger element into her mob. The wool was good this year but next year it would be even better.

  It was the cows that proved to be the problem. Until now she had had very little to do with them but the old drovers had retired and she soon found that cattle had very different needs to sheep. She pored over books every night, learning about prices, breeding, slaughtering and the countless infections she would have to deal with. No wonder the new owner didn’t want to take them on, she realised. They would be expensive in the drought, and would churn up the grassland with their hooves.

  The fences dividing Wilga and Churinga had been replaced but still she hadn’t met the new owner. Although gossip over the radio said he was young and handsome and a good catch for some lucky girl, Matilda wondered what he was really like, and how long he would survive.

  She had little time for the city men who thought living out here would be easy, and doubted he was any different from any of the others who’d taken over the acquisitioned land since the war.

  She hired three more drovers, a cowman and two boys. Three of her stockmen returned from the war looking for their old jobs, and she took them on willingly. She had a new barn raised, a cowshed and stalls, and set aside a thousand acres just for the cattle. The grass was high, the price of wool, mutton, beef and milk soared. Europe was starving and the great open grazing of the outback provided the world with its meat. At last there was money in the bank and new hope for a prosperous future.

  Thrift was a way of life Matilda couldn’t easily abandon, but she knew she had to move with the times and over the next year began to modernise. She bought a new cooking range, a gas fridge and a slightly less battered utility. The luxury of electricity came in the form of two generators, one for the house and one for the shearing shed which had been repaired and extended. New curtains and comfortable chairs, sheets, crockery and coo
king pots all made Churinga a more comfortable home. The drover’s bungalow was extended and a new cookhouse and bunk house added.

  She invested in good breeding ewes, a ram and half a dozen pigs. She reckoned that if things went on as they were, she could afford to build a forge and a slaughter house in a couple of years. That way Churinga would become almost self-sufficient and would save money in the end. Shop-bought horseshoes were expensive, and so was the cost of having her animals slaughtered by the butcher in Wallaby Flats.

  Despite her new-found wealth, Matilda still patrolled the pastures and kept an eye on how Churinga was being run. Old habits died hard, and she grew bored around the house now that Edna, Dora and Daisy had finally learned to do things properly. Matilda still rode out in the shabby trousers and loose shirt she’d always worn, with the old, sweat-stained felt hat squashed over her thick tangle of hair.

  The humidity was high that afternoon, the rain of the previous night steaming in the lush grass and glinting in the shade of the stand of trees at the foot of Churinga mountain. She took off her hat and smeared her shirt sleeve across her forehead.

  The blurred outline of a horse and rider emerged out of the shimmering horizon, and as she drank from her water pouch, she watched the almost dreamlike figure sharpen into focus.

  At first she thought it was one of her drovers, but as he drew nearer, she realised he was a stranger. With the water pouch stowed away, she reached for her rifle. It had been many years since the Depression and its wandering vagrants but it was better to be safe. Her drovers were spread throughout the thousands of acres of Churinga and she was alone.

  She sat very still in the saddle and watched him approach. It was difficult to tell how tall a man was when he was in the saddle but she guessed he was above average height and by the way he rode, obviously at home on a horse.

  ‘G’day,’ he called when he was within earshot.

  Matilda acknowledged his greeting by lifting one hand in a wave and the other to take a firmer grip on the rifle. She could see now that he was broad-shouldered and slim-hipped. His shirt was open at the neck and his moleskins and boots covered in dust. She couldn’t see his face, it was in the shadows beneath his wide-brimmed hat, but as he drew nearer, she saw it was friendly.

  He brought his mean-mouthed stock horse to a dancing halt and took off his hat. ‘You must be Miss Thomas,’ he drawled. ‘Glad to meet you at last. Finn McCauley’s the name.’

  His hair was black and curly, his smile warm and his eyes the most extraordinary blue. It was difficult to tell how old he was, the elements out here aged a man’s skin and drew lines around eyes and mouth much sooner than in the cities – but the gossip over the two-way radio and bush telephone had not done him justice, she acknowledged. He had to be the most handsome man she’d ever seen.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ stuttered Matilda. She still felt awkward with strangers and he’d caught her off guard. ‘How you settling in over at Wilga?’

  His hand was warm and firm as it swamped hers. ‘Good,’ he said with a grin. ‘It’s a bonzer place, Miss Thomas. Just right for horses.’

  She stuffed the rifle back into its saddle pouch and caught him watching her. ‘Can never be too safe out here,’ she said quickly. ‘How was I to know who you were?’

  ‘Too right,’ he said solemnly. ‘Must be crook for a woman out here on her own.’ His amazing eyes were looking at her closely. ‘But then, I suppose that doesn’t worry you very much, Miss Thomas. I heard about how you managed through the war.’

  ‘I just bet you did,’ she replied tartly.

  His laughter was deep and melodious. ‘Fair go, Miss Thomas. A bloke’s got to find out about his neighbours, and I know enough to believe only a third of what I hear over the bush telephone.’

  She eyed him for a moment, not sure if he was teasing her. He only needs an eye patch and an earring, she thought, and he would make a perfect pirate.

  She drew up the reins and smiled, prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. ‘Good thing too,’ she said lightly. ‘If half the things were true, this place would grind to a halt. No one would have any time for work.’

  He looked at her for a long moment, his extraordinary eyes dancing over her before returning to her face. ‘Reckon you’re right,’ he said softly.

  He’d caught her off guard again, and she didn’t like it. There was something in his eyes and in the way he spoke that did strange things to her insides, and as she had never experienced such feelings before, she wasn’t sure how to handle them.

  ‘I was about to stop for a drink and some tucker,’ she said gruffly. ‘Care to join me, Mr McCauley?’

  One dark brow lifted and he smiled. ‘Only if you call me Finn,’ he drawled. ‘Had too much formality in the army and a man kinda loses something of himself when he isn’t called by his Christian name.’

  ‘Then you must call me Molly,’ she said before she had time to think.

  She didn’t wait for his reply but led the way through the green canopy of the Tjuringa mountain bush to the rock pools. He confused her, and it irritated her not to be fully in control of her thoughts. She needed these few moments to catch her breath.

  Sliding down from her horse, she let the reins drop to the ground. A good stock horse was trained to stand still once the reins were released, and she had no fear of its wandering off.

  ‘This is ripper,’ breathed Finn. ‘I didn’t even realise it was here.’ He took off his hat and dipped it in the pool, tipping the water over his head.

  Matilda was mesmerised by the way the droplets glistened in his dark tangle of curls and hurriedly dragged her attention back to her saddlebag.

  ‘I try and come here once a week,’ she said, pulling the bag down and carrying it to a flat rock. ‘The water’s so clean and cold after the sludge back at the homestead, and it’s usually cool under the trees.’

  She knew she was chattering like a galah, and tailed off. ‘But it’s a bit sticky today after the rain.’

  He filled his water bag and drank deeply before wiping his mouth on his sleeve. ‘Tastes wonderful after the tank water. No wonder you visit here as much as you can.’

  His face was suddenly serious as he took in the broad flat stones and the deep pool that was so obviously just right for a swim. ‘I hope I haven’t spoiled your plans by turning up like this? If you want to swim, I’ll leave you to it.’

  Matilda blushed at the thought of how she’d planned to strip off and plunge right in as usual. ‘Of course not,’ she said quickly. ‘Too cold for a swim. I usually just paddle,’ she lied.

  He eyed her for a long moment, and if he disbelieved her, he wasn’t saying.

  Matilda took the sandwiches out of the saddle-bag and put them on the stone between them. ‘Help yourself, Finn. They’re probably a bit warm and soggy by now but I made them this morning so they’re quite fresh.’ She was gabbling again. What was it about this man that made her as senseless as a headless chook? she wondered.

  He bit into the ham sandwich with strong white teeth and chewed contentedly as he stretched out on the rock and watched the waterfall. There was a stillness about him, she realised, a contentment with his life and who he was. Perhaps that was what made him so attractive.

  He broke the silence, his slow, southern drawl a bass accompaniment to the orchestra of the bush birdsong. ‘How long have you been at Churinga, Molly?’

  ‘All my life,’ she replied. ‘My grandparents were pioneers,’ she added with pride.

  ‘I envy you. You must have a real sense of where you belong.’ He looked around him. ‘My parents moved around a lot when I was a kid and I never felt settled. Then the war came along and I was on the move again.’

  ‘Where did you serve?’

  ‘Africa and New Guinea.’

  He’d spoken lightly, but she’d noticed the shadow in his eyes and decided to move away from what was obviously a painful subject.

  ‘I’ve never heard the name Finn before. Where does it come fr
om?’

  He lifted himself on to an elbow, his head cradled in his hand, and smiled. ‘It’s short for Finbar. My parents were Irish.’

  She grinned back at him. ‘So were my grandparents.’

  ‘So,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘We have something else in common other than Wilga.’

  She looked down at her hands. ‘So you reckon you’ll stay, then?’ It was absurd to feel her pulse race as she waited for his reply.

  ‘I’m not new to this way of life. I come from Tasmania, Molly, and although I haven’t had much to do with sheep, the drought and heat there are much the same. I’m not planning on moving anywhere for a very long time.’

  She looked at him in surprise. ‘I thought Tassie was supposed to be like England? All green, with lots of rain and cold winters.’

  He laughed. ‘Common fallacy, Molly. The coastline is cooler than here, but the plains in the middle can get just as brown and dusty. We suffered as much as you in that last long drought.’

  ‘So why choose to come here and not return to Tassie?’

  His easy smile vanished. ‘I wanted a new start and the government were willing to teach me about sheep farming.’ He threw a pebble into the water and watched the ripples spread. ‘Horses are my real passion, but I knew I would have to have another source of income until my breeding programme was up and running. These wonderful rich pastures give me room to breathe, Molly. I needed to get away from small-town gossip where everyone knows your business.’

  It was her turn to laugh, and it held a sharp edge of scorn. ‘Then you’ve come to the wrong place. Gossip out here is what keeps everyone going. And I wouldn’t mind betting you’ve already heard a good deal of tittle-tattle about the strange Matilda Thomas who lived alone with her Bitjarras for almost twenty-five years.’

  His grin was mischievous. ‘I heard Matilda Thomas kept herself to herself and was thought to be stand-offish. But I see no evidence of that.’

  She looked at him and smiled. ‘Welcome to New South Wales, Finn. I hope your new life gives you what you’ve been searching for.’