by Arthur Groom
Thus I was deeply interested, as a rare white visitor to Areyonga, to see what steps the missionaries were taking to cushion the shock of such a recent mass disturbance. My previous visit of one night had left only a fleeting impression of dusky faces, campfires, late arrival, and early-morning departure. We now camped in a small fly-proof concrete hut, simply furnished with table and chairs and wire bunks; and – a refrigerator, presented to the Mission.
Pastor Philip A. Sherer had been in charge of the Areyonga Mission for several months of his three years of service at Hermannsburg. Prior to that, trained native evangelists had built and maintained buildings, dug wells, distributed stores, collected and paid for hides and skins and wild dog scalps from native hunters, settled arguments, held devotional prayer-meetings daily and a full service each Sunday; distributed medical supplies and given a degree of first aid. A census taken of the year 1947 revealed that Areyonga ministered to 345 natives, including fifty married families, 110 children under thirteen years of age, twenty-four marriageable girls aged from fifteen to eighteen years, approximately thirty old women aged from forty-five to sixty years, and thirty-five old men of similar ages. There were several adopted orphans; and 240 people received Government rations and endowment. There were about twenty-five or thirty young men fit and able to hunt and fend for themselves. There were two families with four children under twelve years, twelve families of three children, twenty-four families of two children, and twelve young families with one child. Men and women were classified old from forty to fifty years onwards, and by disability. The basic rations of flour, tea, sugar and syrup are supplied by the Government to the Mission for distribution by the Mission staff. The Mission gardens contribute important vegetable rations to all aged or disabled people, pregnant women and nursing mothers, and children.
The Areyonga buildings consist of a large general store, two evangelist’s huts, three small huts for saddlery, equipment, and a medical dispensary; and the Superintendent’s tiny new hut, in which we camped. Plans are in hand for improved quarters, and for a church. Meanwhile, services are held beneath the front or back concrete-floored verandas of the large store, depending on weather conditions. The natives camp and roam at will, here today, gone tomorrow; but often back at the depot on Saturday ration day. In winter days of balmy warmth most of the children run naked, and the men hunt through the hills and deep canyons, naked or with little on. It is a happy, laughing, well-watered land of deep valleys cutting through the thousand-foot-high red plateau of the Krichauffs; but every week or so during winter a bitter wind whips up, usually from the south, and the natives travel with warming mulga or bark firesticks, which they hold in one hand, passing them to and fro in pendulum action before the abdomen.
The white man parks his hat, and sometimes his coat; the Areyonga native parks his hunting spears, and sometimes his firesticks, to glow slowly until wanted again.
CHAPTER XIV
THE SINGING HILLS OF
CENTRAL AUSTRALIA
A rough motor track winds away nearly west from the Areyonga Mission, and out through narrow rocky passes. The valley is locked by red sandstone walls that grasp the downing sun in a crimson aurora at the end of the day. In its rugged isolation in the heart of the Krichauff Range, it has no radio or telephone; but it has music and sound always echoing from wall to wall, and from crag to crag, to continue along a tree-lined watercourse or up into the deep, narrow tributary canyons to the north-east.
All sounds are magnified and held in suspense, and often ventriloquial. The valley is never quiet, and it is at its noisiest with barking dogs and calling natives when the Mission truck battles through sand and rock from Hermannsburg every few weeks with supplies.
I climbed the high red walls of the valley and looked out over vast wildernesses of red canyons, more valleys, and hollowed cliffs, topped by the evergreen plateaux of spinifex and stunted mulga and mallee. Voices drifted up continuously from no particular point, and during devotion and the singing of hymns it was easy to believe that the natives were singing all over the flat sandy floor of Areyonga Valley, which is about a quarter of a mile wide, and a mile long to its first large bend. From there on it runs at least another twenty miles into the east.
The singing was always part of the wilderness. It bounded from rock and cliff, and ran along the watercourse. It was impossible to pin sound to its source. The laughter and shouting, and the lovely singing, and the barking of dogs, the weird blowing of a hollow tube, echoed from rock to rock; and walls and rocks spoke and laughed while moving figures of natives seemed dumb. I watched one afternoon two young men climb a massive red crag until they appeared almost sheer above the Mission. High against the blue sky their tiny black figures stood out. They hurled large stones over the cliffs; and from far up the deep canyon below them their long calls and laughter came drifting back, though they appeared silent actors to a distant accompaniment. It was like watching a shadow-play in the sky.
Morning after morning a clear contralto voice completely dominated the sunrise hour. It defied direction and came from anywhere and everywhere. It was alive, powerful, rich and clear. Its owner would sing part of a hymn, break into loud laughter, whistle, shout, and then sing again with amazing and effortless continuity. The voice belonged to Palatji, the goat shepherd, about fourteen years old; and the echoes belonged to the valley.
I would watch her from a distance while she raced wildly after a bleating goat. She would throw the animal on its side, sit on it, and milk it quickly to the accompaniment of her own amazing voice. The daily routine of Areyonga was simple. Palatji heralded the day; and her loud ‘Hey, Billy goater! kiddy, kiddy, kiddy – Hey – ahhh!’ woke the whole camp. This would be followed by Lucy, dumpy wife of Wilfred the storekeeper, banging pots and pans over an open mulga fire, while she prepared our simple breakfast of coarse porridge and goat’s milk, damper and jam, and rich coffee. Wilfred and Lucy had a little daughter, Audrey, who was generally clean and tidy until mid-morning, and naked and dirty at midday. Devotion followed immediately after breakfast, to which the nearer natives were called by Peter* and Alexander, the native evangelists; then followed medical parade of the sick and lazy, amusing to watch, with Pastor Sherer dispensing medicine and pills and ointments and bandages to all deserving cases. There was no waiting queue of depressed patients; pain was something to joke at. These people had complete faith in the missionaries’ power to cure all ills. Alexander was liaison officer and investigator-in-chief. He came in one morning from a long walk. He was old and stiff and tired; but down in Opina Gap some miles away he had found a sick boy who appeared to have no parents or friends. Natives were bringing the lad in. We went out to meet them, and Sherer attended to the lad as he lay on an old bag and torn blanket beside Areyonga Creek. General weakness and resultant fever was the main trouble. The lad was a myall, unable to speak a word of English, and apparently had struggled some miles before collapsing; yet he had faith in Sherer, and nearly swallowed the thermometer time and time again. It took many minutes to indicate with pointing and action and expressive grunts that the thermometer was meant to go beneath the tongue and not right down his neck. A prescribed diet of vegetables, fruit, and goat’s milk made him much brighter. His hospital bed was beside the creek, his roof the blue sky and stars, and his nurses all who passed that way.
After darkness each evening the full native choir would gather to the command of Peter and Alexander, and squat about small fires at the back of the ration store to practise the hymns that the missionaries had taught them and their ancestors patiently for over seventy years. The natives have fully accepted the white man’s worship in song in place of some of their old and barbarous ceremonies. Natives on ‘walkabout’ have gone out many miles beyond ordinary routes of travel, far out into the Petermann and Musgrave Ranges, and there carried their memory of the hymns and taught the primitive people who had never seen a white person. Missionaries have contacted nomadic myalls who already could sing the words of Christi
anity, without knowing their meaning.
It was during choir practice that I would leave Sherer for a while, and walk to the middle of the valley to listen, spellbound, to the miracle of rich voices echoing in harmony, and spreading powerfully on and on into the dark unknown like a grand organ.
One Sunday evening the natives came in from near and far. After evening service I talked and gesticulated to them of the coastal jungles of my own country at Binna-Burra, Queensland, and compared tropical jungle trees with the stunted mulgas of Central Australia. The listening group grew slowly until there were some I had not seen before. They were native pastoralists, who had been shepherding their cattle. They had ridden in many miles, and gathered now to form a choir about the low fire. I could face the choir and listen to its full strength, or turn to north, south, east, or west, towards any red bluff or wall, or canyon, and hear the clear, definite returns, one after the other. They sang those they knew best – ‘Alkela, alkela, argana nama (In Heaven, in Heaven is joy)’, ‘Ta ndolka tjorriramanga (When I survey the wondrous Cross)’, ‘Nguang Unkwanga kuterai, Jesua nunala (Abide, O dearest Jesus, among us with Thy grace)’, and ‘Altjira rega ekalta kngara tnant jitjika (Praise to the Lord, the Almighty)’.
The old favourites of civilization are also favourites of these native men and women and their children. ‘Silent Night’ and ‘Nearer, my God, to Thee’ are inspiring renditions at any time; but, in the native Pitjentjara and Arunta (Aranda) tongues into which these well-known hymns also have been translated, and with the organ effect of the echoing hills, there is a Sacrament and worship by primitive people in their own wilderness, which is one of the miracle things of this earth.
Sherer and I took shoulder-packs on a morning of bright warm sun and flaring cirrus cloud, and followed the Areyonga Valley eastward in a long and gradual curve between its northern and southern walls, which were deeply gashed with shadowy ravines. To northward, the deeper canyons pierced the main Krichauff plateau for some miles, and were walled in shattered formation and brilliant red, holding all manner of rock overhangs and caves and narrow slits between parting sandstone slabs. In one canyon a perfect red penguin of rock stood up some two hundred feet above a thousand-foot drop. There was no water anywhere in the northern wilderness; the rocks were too shattered to hold it; but to southward the valley’s other enclosing wall was of more solid base and foundation, though pierced deeply every few hundred yards by ravines three hundred and four hundred feet deep, with hard smooth beds containing important rock-holes.
The days were going by, and I was becoming anxious, when loud calls echoed up the valley. Natives ran hither and thither. Someone was coming! Narpoo and two other natives in charge of four camels were thus heralded an hour before they appeared in sight beneath a towering bluff. They had messages. Pastor Albrecht had sent native searchers out beyond Haast’s Bluff to bring in camels capable of standing the long journey to Ayers Rock. Food for several weeks and Tiger the native guide were following in the Mission truck, and would be ‘out’ within three days. Pastor Albrecht also would be along personally, to plan the venture.
But a miracle changed the whole picture.
The sky thickened with a white haze, grew leaden and threatening, and natives moved restlessly from one valley to another, pulling down one crude wurley to set up another of spinifex grass and mulga-bushes, only to abandon it within hours and move on again. There were false alarms that the Mission truck had entered Kuttaputta, sixteen miles away, and of wandering natives approaching from the west. Natives were posted many miles out, and amongst them no doubt were the humorists who thought it funny to raise a false alarm; but indecision, restlessness, and a certain amount of irritability were among the nomadic wanderers. Sherer and I sat beside the little campfire well into the night. No stars showed. There was atmospheric pressure within the valley, and the mountains themselves seemed restless.
After midnight, on Friday morning, 15 August, steady rain set in; and by daylight it was raining heavily from the east. Goats huddled miserably on wet crags of rock, and Palatji forgot to sing. Natives shivered within their leaky, makeshift wurlies, and much of the laughter and song died out of the valley; but the rain kept on, swishing and whispering quietly through the hills, bringing with it incredible salvation over the whole land.
It rained steadily for two days and nights, welled up, ran the rocky gullies and ravines, then the major streams, and bogged the country so that camels and horses, donkeys, goats, cattle, and natives floundered deep over clay-pan and grassy plain and valley floor, finding all movement exhausting and difficult. Ultimately everything remained still and waited.
Improved weather with brilliant sunshine brought a general movement of the population. It was moving-day for all and sundry; and those who had not already wandered rooted up their simple belongings and followed the simple instincts of the nomad. A large group of about sixty Pitjentjara men arrived across three hundred miles of rough desert from Ernabella Mission in the Musgrave Ranges. They had come ‘up’ to contact members of their tribe for initiation ceremonies, and thereby contributed to much of the restlessness. They stayed a few hours, plotting and begging, and then vanished.
I climbed a large hill five miles west of the Mission. Small and large spirals of black smoke curled up out of the valleys and above the hills. The natives had spread far and wide. I met one family heading north-west. The old man tried to talk. I could not understand him and he could not understand me; but he said his musical ‘Owa’ to everything I said or did, and thus we got nowhere fast except to grin and wave our hands about. His wife circled shyly past, head and body erect, firewood and rolled bundles on top of her dirty matted hair, and the inevitable piccaninny on her back, while she turned every now and then to abuse a crying child some fifty yards behind.
In a fortnight at Areyonga I had learnt much and walked and climbed far and wide into the hills and valleys; but time was limited, and I still had a long way to go. I conferred with Pastor Sherer, and Peter and Alexander the evangelists, and Wilfred the storekeeper. If no word came through from Hermannsburg by midday, Friday, 22 August, I would walk down the rough and lonely camel route beside Illara Creek to Tempe Downs Station, and get a transceiver radio message through to Hermannsburg.
But Friday was a queer day, windy and restless on the heights, leaden sky, heavy, yet cold. Sherer killed a goat, cooked a farewell dinner of roast goat and damper, black tea, tinned turnips and tinned peaches. A group of natives had gathered round the campfire; they were concerned and amused about the man who wanted to walk. Old Alexander’s comment was to the point; ‘Your name is Ndoinduba – that mean, never stop still; not want to sit about all day. Walkabout here – walkabout there – walkabout everywhere, and not get tight in leg.’ At which he indicated his thigh muscles.
It was with considerable feeling that I turned my back on the Areyonga Mission, walked down the bed of the valley, continued a mile through the rocky pass, rounded a bluff and found old Alexander barring the way at the head of about forty natives. Probably half of them were naked, waving firesticks to and fro for warmth. They came slowly forward. It was a farewell line-up. They shook hands shyly. Then old Alexander stepped forward with his hand held out. ‘Good-bye,’ he said sincerely. ‘You are going a long way. May God go with you.’
_______
* Talbalku.
CHAPTER XV
ON FOOT THROUGH THE
KRICHAUFF RANGE
Areyonga Creek ran southward across a valley still held within high red walls, which rose to nearly one thousand feet. It has carved its way through gateway after gateway to join the Illara. I went down through them, following the main pad used by goats, camels, horses, cattle, hunting dogs, dingoes, and natives alike, to the wilder country farther south about Bowson’s Hole, from where little-known pads radiate off through more hills and valleys.
I looked back now and then to wave to Alexander and his followers, and noticed dark figures on rocky crags; some were silhouetted on th
e high domed ridge directly above Areyonga; minute, jet-black sticks of movement against a heavy grey sky. The rain had brought emerald-green grass on the narrow flats that had been barren a week before. Mulga, ironwood, and some corkwood dotted the sward darkly, backed in every direction by the red walls. A large native camp had been deserted hurriedly. The fires still smouldered; some of the wurlies had been built only for a night or two of crude shelter; green twigs and acacia branches were still strongly scented. The winding camel pad went through rocky Opina Gap, then across another flat towards a great cliff running east and west beyond vision, more imposing and a brighter red than any I had seen in the Krichauff Range. The Areyonga disappeared into its gloomy shadow. It was not the ordinary gap through a narrow ridge. This was a canyon through a plateau, known to the natives as ‘Lbolba’, meaning ‘springtime’, or ‘the time of flowers’. Battarbee had spoken of it as the Beautiful Gap. The walls were sheer and overhanging, but the rocky bed easy to scramble over. The clear pad was marked with many footprints of the Ernabella natives returning southward nearly three hundred miles to their homeland. Scattered ashes had been dropped from their firesticks.
About a mile down in the canyon a lone native approached, naked, walking rapidly, and at first unaware of my intrusion. At about fifty yards he stopped suddenly and leapt behind a large boulder. A loud call brought him out, and eventually he moved quickly and silently past in a wide curve.