I Saw a Strange Land

by Arthur Groom

  I mixed several dampers on an old piece of bagging – the first for many years. They were particularly good, but the boys were not enthusiastic. Tiger informed me: ‘Bread, he much better he not got too many hole. Treacle run away too fast!’

  The following day was Tuesday, 26 August. It might have been the beginning of spring. We got away early in the deep shadows of the hills, and twisted away up the valley through further masses of flowering yellow cassia, and within three miles turned south round the shoulder of spectacular Mount Levi***, which faced the west like an immense three-tiered rainbow-cake in colour. I scrambled over its rocky sides and watched the camels half a mile out, several hundred feet below, curving about as they slowly changed direction. South-west, the eastern end of the George Gill† Range, rose up above the broad barren flat separating it by several miles from the Levi. Fantastic cloud-drifts floated over during the whole day from west to east. We lunched beside a long waterhole and sent up some ducks. Tiger had a gun and two cartridges to last him the whole journey. I was unarmed, my most serious weapon being a box of matches. The eastern end of the George Gill Range is strangely spectacular. At a distance it appears tremendous, sheer, and almost overpowering, but close approach across the broad clay-pans kills the illusion. The heights fall back into ordinary red rock slopes, and closeness brings some disappointment. We went slowly between the two ranges, then, with the George Gill now to northward, turned west again along its southern base. The camels were on their best behaviour; but for some miles the scenery was decidedly monotonous except for fantastic cloud-drifts over the hills. Just before sundown we moved out of the mulga on to a natural runway continuing for nearly three miles, about a furlong in width. A plane could have landed almost anywhere along it. Kangaroos were common, and two emus raced frantically across the runway. I dropped some distance behind to study the clouds colouring-up towards sunset, and to watch the camels in silhouette as they moved slowly and silently along the strange wide pathway that seemed to head directly into the crimson orb of the sun.

  It was hard to imagine anything else but peace in the world.

  At sunset, Tiger took a long shot at a kangaroo at about sixty yards’ range, and saw it stumble. He leapt from the leading camel, raced after it on foot into the mulga. Half an hour later he walked up beside the camel line, exhausted, and tossed the carcass down on the pebbles. ‘Got him – he go close up Oolra††. I been run – and – chase – him – and just about when I close up fall over meself, him fall over first.’ One pellet had entered the chest. Tamalji whooped and laughed; picked up a stone, smashed it into sharp flint edges, and disembowelled the animal swiftly. Ol’ Man Camel got an extra load of bleeding, furry carcass, thrown over the tucker-boxes. That night we camped in a mulga thicket, with the George Gill Range standing up silently half a mile northward, and to southward the desert stretched on a hundred miles to Oolra and Kuttatuta†††. A brilliant moon played havoc with racing, tossing clouds, piled them above the range, threw them aside, and rode merrily above them until midnight, when the clouds darkened and thickened, and it drizzled until morning, with a bitterly cold wind gushing in from all directions.

  The camels roared and moaned, grunted and protested, and twisted away from the stinging drizzle, broke leading lines, and gave trouble until nearly midday. Progress was slow and interrupted. At one stage Tiger gave a loud yell and pointed to a broad expanse of green. Tamalji rolled from his perch on Cranky Beggar, and he and Njunowa went racing wildly over the flats. I was left walking beside Tiger, who was leading the team.

  ‘Pituri,’ Tiger explained. ‘We take plenty back to Areyonga people. We get three shilling a sugar-bag, sometimes get more.’

  We travelled through about a hundred acres of the pituri, growing about three feet high, very much like tobacco. Tamalji and Njunowa darted through it, selected and pulled leaves, and piled them in bundles on the camels until we resembled a travelling market garden. Hardly had that period of excitement passed when two large dingoes leapt away from the rotting carcass of a large calf, and raced for the shelter of the hills. I pointed them out to Tiger. Within a few seconds Tamalji and Njunowa had left the camels once again, and were running after the fleeing dingoes.

  ‘They go catchem pappy-dawg,’ Tiger explained. ‘Lot of wild dawg in this country. Have little pappy now. Tamalji know ’em track everywhere. He catch ’em. You see. We take pappy skin back to Mission and sell him to Gov’ment.’

  About a third along its length, the George Gill plateau-topped range is severed by a broad pass out of which emerge Bagot’s Creek and Stokes’ Creek. More pituri grew in the piled-up sand beside the fresh-water Walpmara Springs at Bagot’s Creek. Three miles farther on we crossed Stokes’ Creek, a broad watercourse of sand emerging from its canyon in the red hills, to disappear a few miles south of the range into the sands of the desert.

  So far the George Gill Range had been somewhat monotonous and less spectacular repetition of the curving red bluffs and intervening gullies so common to many of the ranges within a hundred miles; but west of Stokes’ the escarpments changed rapidly. Oddly grotesque shapes and huge domed outcrops of sandstone stood up above the plateau. Some were like mammoth red animals of a prehistoric age; some were isolated monoliths, hollowed with caves and terraces. It was like looking up to a gallery of leviathan figures modelled from the past. The walking at the base of the range was heavy going in sand, and I had to proceed cautiously to avoid sharp twigs and thorns. The small creek at Kathleen’s*† Rock Hole emerged from a low wide red canyon. An uncertain wind whipped up from the south-west and annoyed the camels. Tiger halted and unloaded them; I built a fire that scattered smoke and cinders in all directions; and then Tamalji and Njunowa came in silently from converging directions, stood about moodily for some minutes; then, as always, characteristic of them in disappointment, Tiger’s consoling remark in English: ‘Maybe those pappy-dawgs cranky beggars today. Catch ’em all another day.’ A few seconds of continued silence, a reply muttered by Tamalji in guttural Pitjentjara, and the three men burst into violent, continuous laughter, with Tamalji’s enormous, high scream drawing a look of haughty concern even from the squatting camels. I had never seen or heard any man, black or white, laugh with such physical power or volume as Tamalji. His laughter rose up and up, until it seemed to reach a crisis where it could continue no longer; and then down from his amazing high guffaw with a long-drawn, dying scream of finality.

  It was enough to wake all the skeletons of the desert.

  Sand in the tea, sand in the damper and meat, a belching, stinking camel, paper and clothes blown about, worried the boys only for a few seconds. Each incident was followed by temporary solemnity, giving way to riotous laughter.

  Njunowa had brought in a bunch of spinifex. He patiently stripped each needle to get at a rare gum substance no larger than a pin’s head, used to fasten spearheads.

  Reedy**† Creek, some eight miles ahead, was our destination for the night. I left the camels with the three boys, and clambered up on to the terraces above Kathleen’s Rock Hole, and turned west-north-west along the crest of a ridge that had the regular formation of a parapet. The camels plodded slowly along half a mile out on the sand, and perhaps seven hundred or eight hundred feet below the crest, waving in and out between mulgas and tall desert oaks. The trees were spaced with mathematical regularity, so that near at hand the straw and pink of the desert sand and grass was the base upon which the deep-green blobs of the trees stood up sharply; but, twenty, thirty, and more miles southward the trees covered the desert in a continuing dark-green mass that went on and on over the flat horizon. At one point right on the centre horizon, a low faint-blue dome curved a little above the horizon. Was it Ayers Rock? More likely it was some unmapped, little-known mountain beside Lake Amadeus.

  I clambered over a prominent red bluff half-way between Kathleen’s Rock Hole and Reedy Creek, and found on the plateau above it running water and long rock-holes from the recent rain. White daisies were flowe
ring against the red rock. The camels still moved in parallel; but about a hundred yards south of them two emus moved cautiously in the same direction, obviously unseen by Tiger and his companions.

  On the western side of the neck of the large bluff, where it joined the main range, an immense cave continued beneath a jagged cliff for about two hundred yards, and just below it a stream gurgled down a deep ravine. The cave held remains of old native fires and some sandstone slabs about a foot across, originally flat, but now hollowed with the grinding and pounding of native food throughout the years. High up in the walls and shadows were crude rock paintings of lizards, birds, snakes, kangaroos, and circular symbols. It was a monument to the tragedy of dispossession; with yet another probable tragedy of the future if ever this deserted living-place of an ancient people is desecrated by the signwriting of the white vandal.

  I scrambled down the gully, and eventually overtook the camels as they were about to turn a rocky corner into Reedy Creek. The bay in the range is about a mile deep and a mile across at the mouth, shaped like a horseshoe; the sandy floor is almost flat, and the cliffs curve about, high, red, and sheer, giving close protection from most of the winds. Surmounting the cliffs, the eroded sandstone domes and monoliths stand up like the buildings of an ancient city. I estimated some of them to be as high as a six-story city building, each one separated from the next by a shadowy crevice in a maze of deep passageways that would take years to explore.

  The camels moved slowly in to anchor and looked about with obvious interest. They evidently sensed the end of at least one important stage in a long journey, and moved faster. They knew of water ahead, good feed in the trees, and even a little saltbush a mile or so out. Tiger talked to them, and there seemed to be a bond of understanding between man and animal.

  ‘Come on, you ol’ camella. We been make good time, an’ you all sit down here an’ walkabout all day tomorrow. I take everybody up King’s Creek – hey?’ A riot of laughter from Tamalji and Njunowa. ‘Ol’ Man – you know’m this country las’ year with Misser Borgell and Ol’ Man Thommasin. You tell all these other cammella where good tuckout tonight – get him all fat and full to go ’cross desert. You tell ’em all camella Tiger take you all Lake Amadeus country an’ Ayers Rock. Must drink plenty water. Don’t you all run away. Everybody go cranky beggar at you!’

  More laughter, and Tamalji’s high, bloodcurdling scream echoing from the cliffs. We moved up beside the creek with its sheer white, fine sand, running water, tall, graceful, and spreading gums over the sand with no undergrowth; all encircled by the gleaming red cliffs!

  We unloaded and camped beside a shattered gum-tree. The tree had been cut and barked deeply with an axe. Its bared weathered timber had clearly marked on it, some ten or twelve inches high, the initial G, by explorer Ernest Giles or W. C. Gosse between October 1872 and July 1873. The tree won’t last very much longer. A few more years, and it will fall or burn away in a desert fire.

  I rolled out a large damper, sodden, and only half-cooked in the drizzle of the previous night. Tiger came forward. ‘You good cook now; that bread good one.’ I cut it in two. It was solid dough; but Tiger was enthusiastic. ‘Don’t throw him away. He is properly good bread; no got little hole everywhere for treacle run out.’

  This time I laughed with them; and perhaps it was the peace of the place, or perhaps the associations of years ago when Gosse and Giles moved over Australia’s heart in their epic explorations, returning again and again to the cliff-bound haven for water and rest; but I felt a deep contentment and well-being. Within a hundred yards of the camp Reedy Creek descended from the George Gill plateau in a waterfall of its own, delayed awhile in a deep gloomy pool about which there was a small fringe of reeds, and then continued some miles into the desert, to vanish into the great depth of sand like all the other watercourses of the George Gill. The tall, white-boled trees were of vivid green, drooping like willows. In summer, no doubt, it would be a hot inferno of heat radiated from the rock.

  A moon sailed up over the eastern walls, and once again tossed light clouds about. Curlews, owls, and frogs called; and a bright patch of moonlight played on the G marked on the decaying tree within ten feet. It was easy to skip back over the intervening seventy-five years. Ernest Giles had approached from the north-west, and named the range after George Duff Gill, of Melbourne, who had helped to finance his expedition. Apparently he named Reedy Creek, Penny’s Creek after Mr Penny of Yorke Peninsula; King’s Creek after Fielden King of Gottleib Wells and Black Rock; and, as he continued east, he named Stokes’ Creek after Frank Stokes of Coonatto; Bagot’s Creek and springs after John Bagot of Peake Station, the Levi Range after Philip Levi of Adelaide, the Petermann Hills and Petermann Creek after Professor Petermann of Gotha, and Middleton Ponds after A. D. Middleton of the Darling River. Giles wandered up and back, eastward, then westward, eastward again along the southern base of the George Gill; but nearly every attempt to penetrate the wilderness of its canyons and ravines was met by hostile demonstrations from many natives.

  W. C. Gosse reached the George Gill up from the south in July 1873, turned and went south again. Either man could have carved the big G, now being flecked with moonlight three-quarters of a century later.

  It was a strange night. Tiger stood up and sang a hymn, patiently encouraging the other two boys to follow. Heavy clouds overwhelmed the moon, and a slight drizzle set in and continued until an hour before dawn, when all trace of cloud vanished suddenly, and the bitter chill of fine weather penetrated my sleeping-bag. I lay awake, waiting for daylight; but before there was any definite light in the eastern sky, one lone sentinel of a vast feathered colony called somewhere down the creek. It was a clear note I had never heard before, continuous and determined, obviously a signal. It was followed immediately by a bird chorus that filled the whole valley, and continued rapidly for several minutes, as though every bird within the encircling cliffs was determined to greet the day. As daylight strengthened the chorus died down to many scattered chirps.

  We breakfasted before sunrise, packed some food, and set out on foot on the three-mile walk to King’s Creek and Canyon. Our route lay round the base of the range, which curved to the north-west, and now rose abruptly to nearly one thousand feet. There were bushes of blue bell-flowers, and white bell-flowers, acres of a new type of golden cassia, numerous white sandhill daisies, and a bushy wattle new to me. The boys ran from one desert quandong-tree to another, picking and eating the ripe red fruit; and also found edible figs in narrow clefts of rock. We walked in through acres of stunted bushes to King’s***† Creek, and paused beside MacNamara’s deserted old bush hut, built by W. H. Liddle. Built originally of sandstone, saplings, and clay, it had fallen and crumbled. The creek was running strongly; lined with vivid-white ghost gums, in an intricate pattern of velvet white and deep green. The gums were in the bed of the creek with running water at their roots; they were spread-rooted over massive, fallen red squares and straight-sided shapes of sandstone; they were lined along one rock terrace above another, jutting crazily out of narrow cracks high up the sides of towering cliffs that walled the canyon like a great inverted V nearly a mile long.

  We all drank a lot of water from the crystal-clear pools; and as we climbed and scrambled, the whole place absorbed a light-pink reflection from the tremendous, smooth red walls above. Zamia palms were dotted oddly here and there. King’s Creek and Canyon had necessitated a long detour from the usual straight desert route from Tempe Downs to Ayers Rock; but I would have travelled ten times the distance to enjoy the grandeur and colour of the place. There is nothing like it in Australia. Its past is steeped in native lore and ceremony. It was and still is one of the main waters and hunting places of Central Australia, and the pilgrimage place of nomadic wanderers who feel its call hundreds of miles away. As we clambered higher and higher with extended vision, we could see distant ‘smokes’ in almost every direction, mostly out in the great native reserve. Tiger and Tamalji and Njunowa held urgent conference
s and pointed excitedly to the smokes. They were trying to work out the direction of travel of those who had fired them. Tiger explained some of them: ‘Thata one – might belong to half-caste feller – maybe – go out with one camella to get pappy-dawg scalp. ’Nother one – thataway.’ He pointed directly south. ‘Maybe Ernabella men go back across desert, and walkabout little while in rocky country, spear kangaroo – euro.’ He then indicated a line of smokes extending for several miles. ‘Maybe someone come up tonight from Petermann country – long way thataway – camp close by Reedy Creek country – maybe we see ’em.’

  Tamalji was excited, and leapt from rock to rock, and scrambled up and along terraces. Njunowa puffed his way slowly, and only went where he had to go. He was getting fatter and lazy, and was a bit of a nuisance. Tiger was proud of his childhood country, and patted himself on the chest time and time again with closed fist. ‘This one good country all the time. I live here – runabout – when little boy. Good country altogether. Reedy Creek we call Lilla. Bagotty Spring country we call Wynmurra. All good country. My country – go all the way across Lake Amadeus and Oolra and Kuttatuta. I take you and show you. Tomorrow – we go ’cross desert? We take them ol’ camella – plenty water canteen – we got good tucker – good! We go three, maybe four, days, thataway – right up by lake country – right up Ayers Rock, we go!’

  And as Tiger talked and patted, and filled the other two boys with some measure of excitement, we scrambled up a jagged, narrow razorback, rising higher and higher beneath a red bluff, topped with an unbelievable wilderness of red domes; stopping every now and then to look about over a wonderland that seemed to have no place in Australia’s ‘dead heart’. The stops were twofold: to absorb the grandeur of it all, and to wait for Njunowa’s puffing, sweating carcass to labour slowly higher. For once I had to throw all thought of travel by landmark or direction to one side, and patiently follow old Tiger through passageway and crevice between the giant domes, several miles towards the plateau’s edge above Reedy Creek. At one point we laboured up a corridor almost straight for nearly a furlong to emerge on the crest of a dome. It was the last of its group to northward. We were now nearly a mile over the rim of the plateau. The domes continued west, then north-west, to curve in a horseshoe several miles across; but in the intervening space a desert of rolling sandhills, seldom seen by white men, had been lifted some eight hundred or a thousand feet up to form the centre of this strange plateau. What enormous and patient power of wind had swept the sands from the lowlands up over the massive red ramparts of rock, to lie and form and move slowly in waves across the flat, saucer-like depression? Tiger’s voice came as though from a distance. He pointed to a thin spiral of smoke some miles ahead. ‘Somebody walkabout there. Might be catch rabbit!’