by Arthur Groom
Behind me, the lower and southern wall of the gorge was not so high; but it received the full force of the sun striking on its deep, rich red, and probably caused much of the coloured shadows and light beams by reflection. I scrambled cautiously beside a large sandbank above a long and deep pool that was patterned with delicate tracery from overhanging trees. On the opposite cliffs were many noisy shags, and some young screeching in large nests of twigs on small ledges; ducks swam in and out of a cave and quacked up an emphatic protest. Bright mulga and ringneck parrots flew up and down stream, and a whole convoy of busy budgerigars passed by in characteristic wavering flight, swiftly, noisily, up the gorge and beyond sight. Rock pigeons paraded like soldiers over the red rocks in the sun to my right. They moved oddly, in groups, several at a time – a quick run, stop, run; birds at drill. The whole place was now alive with movement.
Rex Battarbee had been right. Here was natural colour beyond description. It was high up in the sky, with shades of blue and mauve reflected from the cliffs. It was in the patches of green spinifex, clinging in pin-heads on the rubble slopes. It was in the water, the sand, even in the trees; and perhaps the slow-moving deep shadows were more colourful and mysterious than anything else. The colour was in the water-worn rocks of the river bed. There were boulders and slabs of green, grey, mauve, pink, white, red, black, and all the shades between. This colour system was entirely different to the bright colours of the canyon walls. It was of shades and tints, and went up about ten feet to normal flood level, proving that the basic colour of red was gradually being washed out of all rocks crashing from above. Rex Battarbee had told me of two other places that might equal the Ormiston – Central Mount Wedge, to northward of the Macdonnells, and King’s Canyon, far off the beaten track in the western end of the George Gill Range. He had not been there, but Bryan Bowman had told him of it.
Some day, perhaps, I might see one or both of them!
There were plant-growth and small fish deep in the pools, similar to the marine coral gardens of the Barrier Reef; and each pool had its own tinge of reflected colour. The running water continued for half a mile, during which the narrow gorge bent twice, sharply. Each bend was a spectacular overlapping of red cliff from left and right, giving a distant impression of inaccessibility, yet the scramble from boulder to boulder was easy and pleasant. There were no other human tracks. Euro, rock wallaby, and dingo tracks were plentiful. High up beneath the northern overhang, rattling stones indicated a startled euro climbing the almost perpendicular slopes and shelves with amazing speed. Brother to the kangaroo, the bulky euro can ascend mountain-sides with amazing agility.
The spring water was deep, ice cold, and sweet. There was no refuse, no rotting carcasses; and no exploring tourist had painted his name in white against the red. The place was alive with bird and animal life and colour, and death seemed to play no part in it.
Eventually I turned back and walked slowly down the gorge through deeper shadows than those of the morning, and through a deeper mystery of colour. A chilliness was sweeping down. The birds were less noisy. The change of light and my change of direction threw into ghostly relief many rock needles and spires jutting up towards stronger light.
A day later I was twenty miles west of the Ormiston, in the Redbank** tributary of the Finke. It is reputedly difficult of access; and, according to one account, emerges from a slit in the side of Mount Sonder nine hundred feet deep and three feet wide.
I did not find that nine-hundred-foot slit. Instead, I found a gloomy crevice a few feet wide, and no more than two hundred feet deep. The place was silent and dull, with one lonely duck dodging uncertainly in the shadowed water beneath a jagged overhang. The pool stank of cattle and manure. Their long track in to water led up over the rocky bed of the Redbank. I scrambled to the right, eastward and up above the crevice, and surprised a parade-ground of euros sunning themselves on rock terraces. They hopped off, mostly to northward. Then I went slowly on up Mount Sonder*** to overlook all the tributaries of the Finke. It has been written more than once that Sonder is unscalable; and others have written of hardship in approach and ascent. The only hardship I experienced was the physical effort of walking up a long, exposed ridge of rock that cut my shoes badly. The rock is rough and abrasive, and the action of goose-stepping over the sharp spinifex is rough on clothes and shoes alike.
But to rise nearly two thousand eight hundred feet above the plateau of Central Australia, which is itself two thousand feet above sea level, is like rising above a prehistoric world before animal and human life existed. It was a crystal-clear day and, as my horizon widened, every shape of hill and mountain jutted up. All the watercourses were drawn neatly on a vast coloured canvas. To westward, the massive domes of Mount Zeil†, Razorback, and distant Heughlin and Haast’s Bluff well out on the horizon, were a filmy blue, etched in stereoscopic effect against a white sky faintly tinted with purple. To northward, range beyond range and isolated peak after peak rose up to confound any attempt to locate them on my maps, which I had already proved to be inaccurate and incomplete. A little east of south the red terraces of Mount Hermannsburg indicated the Mission forty miles away; and behind it all rose the green spinifex tops of the Krichauff and James Ranges.
It took a lively hour to climb Sonder. I found a cairn of stones that contradicted any report that the mountain had never been climbed. I looked down over dizzy, sharp, red razorbacks facing the east, and separated by canyons slashing down for many hundreds of feet. Even from the east, Sonder would be scalable by experienced climbers who know how to avoid masses of cracked, treacherous, overhanging rocks likely to crash outward and down.
A wedge-tailed eagle flew up over the side, swerved sharply at close sight of me, and vol-planed down into the eastern pound at terrific speed. Wildflowers were plentiful; the main one, a mauve bottle-brush, dominated the crests. To eastward the wilderness of the Macdonnells continued on towards Alice Springs in the parallel formation that seemed never-ending but not monotonous. About ten miles ahead, a large valley was blocked by the sharp walls of a pink and brown mountain, with its bare, crumbling sides also slashed with ravines. It was hard to pin this vivid panorama of mountains and valleys and distant fertile plains on to the accepted belief of barren, waterless, and monotonous desert waste. Undoubtedly it was wintertime, and I had to accept the testimony of others of its colour in summer mornings and evenings; but in summer the bare rock walls and closed valleys would radiate terrific midday heat; plants would parch and die, birds would be listless, water scarce and foul; and the curse of a low ten-inch rainfall, and drought and eroding wind would play havoc. I had already seen the bleached bones of cattle, camels, and horses; and had seen deserted homesteads to prove the summer battles of man and beast against a ruthless, scorching death.
It was a land of moods and great power. For some hours I sat up on top of Sonder. Birds were busy and tame. One of them was closely allied to the harmonious thrush of the eastern coast of Australia; a type of bush canary hopped through low, flowering bushes. They came close by and finished off the core of an apple. Their life is a constant battle to outwit the wedge-tailed eagles and hawks that make the mountain heights their home.
I went down slowly, trying to save my shoes, stopping along the exposed bridge to peer down into rocky depths to right and left. Far to the west, Mount Zeil, Razorback, and Heughlin, all as high if not higher than Sonder, gradually rose to block the view and circle me in.
Down on the floor of Glen Helen Valley a dingo followed steadily, stopping when I stopped, running a bit to one side in a curve when I shouted, until he picked up a cross-track and disappeared. I camped a mile downstream from Bryan Bowman’s homestead. A cloud of dust framed native stockmen approaching behind cattle. They passed the time of day, seemed in some doubt how to judge a man who travelled alone on foot, and rode on, looking back now and then. No doubt they thought I was insane; but I had my own opinion about that.
Across the river a broad series of vertical rock st
rata stood up some hundreds of feet. Fleecy clouds drifted up behind, and sunset far beyond tinged them to crimson so that the red sandstone slabs rising high up were black and shadowy; and at dusk a very large dingo walked in proud silhouette onto the highest crag and paused awhile, looking down at the sandy river below. He made a magnificent tableau; then disappeared into the silence; and I sat on my swag, still looking at the darkening slabs, and watched large night-birds and bats flutter noiselessly out, one by one.
Daylight dwindled with all its life and colour, but Australia’s wild heart beat on into the night. The whole country vibrated and moved with life; mostly silent, mysterious, pulsing, and tremendous beyond the knowledge of man.
_______
* Named after Dr Will Sonder.
** Oorachilpilla.
*** Oorich-ip-ma.
† Wallatrika.
CHAPTER VIII
WESTWARD AGAIN
The Mission Board members were to inspect Haast’s Bluff Mission, eighty miles a little north of west from Hermannsburg. The morning was spent in loading the big truck with flour, tea, sugar, tinned food, and all manner of stores for sale and free distribution. The Mission policy, strongly backed by the Commonwealth Government, is to overcome the native’s tendency to seek the doubtful benefits of town life by providing, firstly, the basic tenets of a living in his own primitive wilderness. It is gradually bringing to the native a sense of comparative values. There are still many whites who defraud the full-blood native and half-caste at every opportunity. The Mission has to act as a protecting barrier between such a parasite and the aboriginal hunting grounds so well placed geographically a hundred and more miles west of Alice Springs, and continuing beyond the South Australian and Western Australian borders. The native is easy prey to rumour and promise, and drifts easily towards civilization, where sudden contact with white mannerisms quickly undermines any little moral resistance he may have had. It was particularly noticeable during the second world war, when money was cheap and plentiful.
In 1937 a pastoral company was formed, with headquarters at Alice Springs, to exploit much of the country now within the Haast’s Bluff Aboriginal Reserve. Had the project been allowed, one of the last native hunting grounds would have been invaded; tribal and family life would have been dispersed immediately without compensation or remedy; a few more wretches would have drifted in to sit idly about homesteads and other settlements, to beg, bargain, and live on greasy scraps of food without thought of diet or balance.
The Mission fought hard against the invasion, and with the help of Dr Charles Duiguid of Adelaide, and others, the threat was averted; and Haast’s Bluff Aboriginal Mission, controlled by the Government under the supervision of the Hermannsburg Mission, was the result. The Government has already put down and equipped several sub-artesian bores, and further money is to be spent in providing permanent waters.
We left Hermannsburg at midday, with Pastor Gross driving; and once again I sat on top of a large drum of water behind the cabin of the truck, with Rex Battarbee on another. Pastor Simpfendorfer squatted before us with a shotgun. At every bump the iron roof beneath him boomed noisily. Every few hundred yards a line of kangaroos would start up to right or left, race madly in parallel, and then leap at frantic speed across the road ahead. The good Pastor blazed away in the hope of providing a wayside native camp with fresh kangaroo meat. He announced his progress with disturbing bangs on the cabin roof with the butt of his gun. The usual collection of natives squatted on soft bags of flour, and held on like monkeys over the larger bumps and sandy skids. One was returning from hospital at Alice Springs. Another had attempted to by-pass the Mission on an ill-advised walkabout to Alice Springs: a quiet talk had persuaded him that he would be better off back where he belonged. He seemed quite happy about things, and the lure of ‘pitchers’ and sly beer was fading before the knowledge of lizards and kangaroo meat ahead. Another native was setting out on a long periodical ‘walkabout’ into the Aboriginal Reserve, and the truck would ease his feet for a few miles at least.
We turned west from the Finke, crossed over the wire mesh laid on the sandy bed of the Gilbert; and then Gosse’s Range stood sharply up before us. The colours of this red crown of solid rock changed rapidly as we curved about it; but basically it was red. Its sides were sheer, creviced, and crumbling slowly. Now, from the west, its colour glowed high into the evening sky. At sunset, Gosse’s was dropping starkly down to the northeast behind us, and we were travelling heavily down a long, sandy slope through desert oaks and grass-trees towards the Krichauff Range, which stood up boldly. Before it, a sea of windswept grass was tinted with pink reflection from the red.
Once again the impossible happened. The range opened up, and we turned south, then east into Kuttaputta Gap. Dusk, and the mystery of driving between rising walls hemmed us in, and made our sturdy motor throb loudly from hill to hill. Several miles along there were loud calls from a massive eastern rock silhouetted against the stars; and Battarbee spoke out of the chilliness of the night.
‘Natives camped at Amulda Gap. They’ll be in at Areyonga by morning.’ We called back to them. Our way down the sixteen miles of valley was heralded by call after call thrown and echoing from one dark bluff to another.
Our nine o’clock arrival at Areyonga Mission brought an excited medley of native men, women, and children. They climbed over the truck, shook hands, peered closely, laughed and got in the way. A few were well spoken. It has been the policy of the missionaries not to encourage pidgin-English. The native has proved himself quite capable of clear diction if encouraged, just as his flair for copying causes him to adopt the broken English flung at him by those who do not know any better. Once a native has grown accustomed to pidgin-English, it remains with him for life and considerably damns his progress.
The day was icy cold and clear, with a slight breeze from the north-east, against which we drove full tilt. Those of us who were perched up high, hung on and shivered. Sonder, Zeil, Razorback, and Heughlin stood up jagged and blue to northward, all not much under five thousand feet; each one defiant, individual, and clear. Each one would alter colour through the day. Battarbee had remained at Areyonga to paint and instruct any natives who showed genuine desire to decorate the white man’s paper, instead of red cliff walls.
We passed into good cattle country with grassed flats, and paused beside an abandoned tourist caravan camp, clearly indicated by empty tins and rows of bottles. At sunset Pastor Gross stopped the truck and we all climbed high up on top of the load. Haast’s Bluff lay ahead, tilted sideways and standing out clear before several peaks to west of it. The rich blue had the transparency and delicacy of tremendous distance, yet it appeared to be magnified and stereoscopic, and one felt that an outstretched hand might touch it. Deep in the blue shadows, I knew the rock was red, a fantasy of light and colour. Pastor Gross set up his colour camera to record the brilliant crimson and purple of the Mareeni Range ten miles southward, running nearly east and west, and with the soft revealing light of the dying sun full upon it. The Mareeni is nearly one thousand feet high, with a cliff rampart extending many miles like corrugated iron on end. It vanished over the south-western horizon.
Starry night took over, and blanketed Haast’s Bluff in black shadow against the stars, while we drove on almost within the silence of its tremendous overhang; and then turned south, then west, to the Mission Depot. On Thursday 12 September 1872 Haast’s Bluff was named after Dr Haast, a geologist, of Canterbury, New Zealand, by Ernest Giles, who with his companions – Carmichael, Alexander Robinson, and a little dog, Monkey – stood in awe before the colossal mass, tilting so oddly, and in rebellion against the hills to westward.
Most of the Haast’s Bluff natives were away ‘bush’. The little Mission hut of one room was not big enough to hold the party, and most of us slept outside in a night temperature of twenty-four degrees. Old Titus the evangelist was in charge, and had Evangelist Epafras to assist him. These two native men controlled several hundred na
tives, held devotional services, issued rations with the help of Edwin the storekeeper, ministered to the sick, acted as builders and foremen. They were accredited receivers of kangaroo skins and dingo scalps. Haast’s Bluff area is rich in kangaroos, euros, and rock wallabies, and is first-class cattle country for the native stockmen breeding their own small herds. Its choice as a native depot within the reserve has justified itself. Pastor Pech and his wife, a trained nursing sister, have since taken over the spiritual administration of Haast’s Bluff, installed a wireless transceiver station, moved the depot to a better position near a permanent bore-supply put down by the Government, and have built a landing field by using a team of native workmen.
The Mission Board members wanted to inspect the cattle country to the west. It was hoped to set up more native stockmen with their own herds of cattle. At 9 a.m., devotion was held beside the ration store. Titus was verger and community leader. I watched the natives come in from every direction; some popped up out of the grass, some from distant bushes. One second there was just bare plain, the next second a string of natives were walking in as though they had been coming for many miles. Mr Weckerts had a large tin of boiled lollies to distribute. No one had said a word. No shout or call was conveyed; but he was the definite goal of many from near and far. They came singly, and in groups, with hand outstretched and a grin from ear to ear; and I listened to the musical ‘Xanku’, rarely ‘Thank you’, and now and then ‘Owa’* or ‘Culla’†; but all with the same meaning. Many of them were naked on that frosty morning, particularly the children, who raced all over the sandy flat; and I was not sure whether Titus’s call to devotion had called them all in, or whether by some magic they had smelt the lollies miles out across the plains. By the time we were ready to continue westward, perhaps two hundred had wandered in, devotion was finished, and handshaking and mutual admiration once again the order of the day. Haast’s Bluff is beyond the end of the Macdonnell Ranges system. West of it a new series begins: strange hills, remnants of isolated eroded peaks, scattered ramparts beginning and ending in disorder, millions of tons of rubble in the valleys. Our journey led first to Mangaraka, a deep-red, isolated old plateau about two or three miles across, standing abruptly on its broad plain, with a gorge cutting darkly in from the north-eastern corner. We parked the old truck half a mile out and walked up a small gully. The red bluffs towered high above us, and ghost gums and cypress pines clung precariously to dizzy ledges. Mangaraka has an important native water reservoir several hundred yards up the gorge. We found its black water deeply shadowed in a swirled-out round hole perhaps eight feet across. It might have been ten or twenty feet deep. A dead rat floated in the gloom. How the natives got down to the water is a mystery. I went with Pastor Gross and Pastor Simpfendorfer on a wild scramble, contouring the base of the main cliff. Our voices boomed and echoed. Nosepeg the native followed with a small attache case. Pastor Gross was out to get all the colour pictures he could. We turned back at an old landslide of fallen boulders, from where we could look out of the gorge and across a broad plain to Haast’s Bluff, and to Heughlin, Zeil, Sonder, and Razorback beyond, all a brilliant blue now, sharp and clear in the morning light.