I Saw a Strange Land

by Arthur Groom

  What a country!

  The proposed route to Ayers Rock lay down past the eastern end of Lake Amadeus, which was reputed to contain treacherous bog. A straight line from Reedy Creek to Ayers Rock would pass over the lake about one-third of the way from the eastern end of its eighty-mile length. Tiger knew of a direct route across the lake: the route where Giles bogged his horses when proceeding south on Sunday, 20 October 1872, and turned back to King’s Creek. Tiger was obviously concerned. The recent rains might have filled the lake and bogged its clay-pan approaches. Giles had named the lake Amadeus after a king of Spain.

  But Tiger cheered himself. ‘Maybe we be all right,’ he called out. ‘Tiger knows good road that way. S’pose it too much bog, we go – east – turn around lake country – then see Ayers Rock. I know good road across that desert country. You’m see. We go all right. Right up Ayers Rock – sit down little while – look about every place – then we go to Olga country, too.’

  As I baked several dampers and boiled meat and beetroot, to save using limited canteen water in the desert, the three boys chanted about their fire, jumping up now and then in black silhouette against the flames. Tiger called loudly into the darkness, and his voice rolled along the red cliffs. ‘We go right up to Ayers Rock, and touch him like that—’ He leapt to a tree-trunk and patted it. ‘We go through desert country alla way, sandy country, crazy country. Tiger takem you. Show’m you everything. Good country. Only Tiger know ’em properly.’ Then he would wave his hands about, followed by echoing round of laughter, with Tamalji always first and last, and loudest. ‘Camella! Hey! You camella – out there eatem mulga tuckout! Hey! You hear me? Tiger sing out to you. Don’t you run away tonight. You stay close about. We catch you tomorrow morning – quick smart – pack up – quick smart. Boss makem plenty damper make you grunt like ol’ man. Breakem your back. Breakem tucker-box. Don’t you camella be cranky beggar now, or we’m kick your guts in.’

  _______

  * Carpet Snake.

  ** Ngarkinti.

  *** Ngangkali.

  † Aluruka.

  †† Ayers Rock.

  ††† Mount Olga.

  *† Ipitilkita.

  **† Lilla.

  ***† Watarka.

  CHAPTER XVII

  PUSSY-CAT AND

  PAPPY-DAWG COUNTRY

  I rose with the birds’ chorus of the next morning just as Tamalji and Njunowa crept off in the dim light for the camels. We got away after sunrise, heavily laden with water canteens and rations, and moved with the majestic slowness peculiar to camels, quietly out of that lovely haven; a mile to the entrance, past the eastern sandstone bluff, and out over the sand. It was like crossing a bar to the open sea. These were the real sandhills, extending for many miles, two hundred to three hundred yards apart, and up to fifty feet high. We had to cross them diagonally, leading the camels to the base of one, ascending at a long angle to obtain grade; slipping, stumbling, shouting, stopping to link broken lines of string and frayed bits of rope; ‘changing them up,’ to quote Tiger’s phrase, which meant trying the camels in a different order of travel in line ahead.

  I walked and zigzagged from side to side of the route. There was plenty to see: desert oaks with drooping branches, wildflowers on the sandhills, sturdy flowering bushes usually at the northern base of each sandhill, and the clear new tracks of animals, birds, and reptiles patterned neatly on the sand since the rains had eliminated nearly all but the heaviest and deepest tracks that had stood the test of years. Cattle tracks were common up to ten miles out; after that they were rare. At about ten miles we surmounted a sandhill perhaps eighty feet high. Behind us, but low down, the George Gill and its domes above King’s Canyon stood up clearly; and away ahead, a very low, dark ridge, scarcely more than a blue line above the horizon, brought a cry from Tiger: ‘That’s my point. I know him properly. We catch him tonight. We all going good – camella good – everything good. Tiger knows good road. You’m see.’

  Eventually the cattle tracks vanished; odd horse tracks crossed our path; but the tracks of the smaller inhabitants of the desert were becoming increasingly clear, as though etched deliberately in the sand.

  ‘Tiger,’ I called, ‘little track runabout here. What is it?’

  Tiger walked over, looked down at a straight line of tracks.

  ‘Pussy-cat walkabout here.’

  ‘Not properly pussy-cat?’

  ‘Owa! Properly pussy-cat – like pussy-cat runabout Alice Springs.’

  I was dumbfounded; we were at least fifteen miles out from known waters of the George Gill.

  ‘How long pussy-cat runabout here?’ I asked.

  ‘Long – long time.’

  ‘When Mission start?’

  ‘Owa, long time before Mission start,’ Tiger replied. ‘Rabbita – he only come to this country little while. Pappy-dawg – wild dawg – been here alla time. Horse and cattle come before rabbita. Pussy-cat he come long, long time ago – before sheepee an’ bullocky an’ camella. My people tell me – pussy-cat come that way,’ he nodded to the west. ‘Long time ago – before white people come, big boat come that way and pussy-cat jump off, run about, find ’nother pussy-cat, and now big mob pussy-cat everywhere, run about desert country alla time; eat little birds – lizard – eat close up everything.’

  ‘What about water?’

  ‘Oh, he walkabout long way in wintertime, then in summertime he look about for nice place in hill country—’ Tiger’s explanation was rudely interrupted by camel trouble. Ol’ Man broke his leading line, then Darkie flopped down in a soft clay-patch, bellowed, groaned, and refused to budge. Tiger spent nearly half an hour adjusting the load.

  I could not get the cats out of my mind. Every mile or so, we crossed their tracks. They had been roaming the desert for many years. No doubt hundreds had gone a little ahead of the pioneer settlers; but, surely not since William Dampier?

  The clean sand was like a book. A week had passed since the rains, but the light-pink sand was clearly marked by birds, lizards, snakes, large insects, mice, rats, kangaroos, cats, an odd dingo, emus, wild horses up to twenty miles out; and, as we kept heading south over this tremendous ocean of sand, the unmistakable soup-plate marks of wild camels. ‘We must look out for wild camella,’ Tiger declared seriously. ‘They see us first, they come up quick and fight our camella. No good. Make lot of trouble.’

  Thus on the crest of each sandhill, I paused awhile to search each trough for any sign of trouble. By midday the four camels had settled down to a steady pace. We stopped awhile, unloaded, and boiled up, glad of the shade of a desert oak. It was to be our longest day of travel with the camels. At about twenty-two miles out we passed three miles west of Tiger’s low hill, which he called Alatoota. Somewhere on its uninviting top there was an important rock-hole. The general elevation had risen very gradually some hundreds of feet, and from a high crest I stood awhile in late afternoon amongst flowering heath and looked back over the twenty-odd miles of a saucer depression of sand waves, one after the other, in an ocean of green-topped pink rollers. It was not difficult to imagine movement, so that the whole panorama seemed to move and surge and swell on towards the distant cliffs of the George Gill.

  We camped nearly thirty miles out from Reedy Creek, on a bare flat between two large sandhills. There was promise of a chilly night, and clouds had commenced to pile and toss fretfully. Tiger was proving himself a particularly reliable leader. He was proof that a primitive native could be christianized gradually, and imbibe a strong sense of honour and duty. Tamalji was still the wild savage. I guessed that the Christian teaching of the Missions meant little more to him than a routine associated with a source of food. The call of the wild was still uppermost in him, and would dominate his reasoning for years to come. Njunowa was young and irresponsible, and I could see much difficulty ahead of him. Christianity so far meant nothing to him. The primitive living of his forefathers was now a generation or two behind him. He had little awe of tribal ceremony, a
nd many of the ways of the white man were comedy to him.

  But we had grown into a team; even if I felt a little annoyed at Njunowa’s laziness and voracious appetite, and his off-handed impudence of giggle and underhand comment, Tamalji was in his element in the desert. He wandered, as I wandered, on foot, always somewhere before or behind, or east or west of the line of travel, eating quandongs and berries from small bushes, uprooting and pushing over witchetty-bushes to devour the large white grubs found in the roots, stamping violently about a newly dug lizard’s tunnel to block the entrance and imprison the lizard before digging it up quickly and bashing its head against the nearest tree. Then, perhaps, there would be the cry from Tiger perched on the leading camel: ‘Pappy-dawg! Go thataway – maybe got li’l pappy somewhere!’ And off Tamalji and Njunowa would streak over the sandhills, Njunowa puffing well behind. Excitedly they would go, yet in silence, following the twisting trail of a dingo slut roving in search of food to feed a hidden litter. At such times Tamalji had no sense of duty to the camels. The lure of the hunt and money for the scalps led him on, and I felt he would have little hesitation in deserting me for a litter of pups. It was always during these absences that the camels would play up badly, or a load shift; and I would become annoyed at the absence of the hunters when they were wanted most. The more the incidents occurred, the more reliable old Tiger proved himself. Back the two boys would come, sometimes together, usually separately, with Njunowa puffed and silent. There would be no greeting, merely a sidling up as though nothing had happened, and after a period of monosyllables one of them would make a humorous remark, and Tamalji would start off again with his screaming roar of laughter. But there were the occasions of a kill, when Tamalji would return with four or five or more small dark pups to throw their lifeless bodies beside the skinned pelt of the mother – silent evidence of a battle with a snarling female dingo protecting her young.

  The end of each day had its own routine teamwork: a quick unloading and hobbling of the camels, the lighting of two fires, sorting of rations for tea and breakfast – damper, meat, onions, spuds, tea, and sugar for the boys – and then I would sit beside my larger fire and boil a pot of onions and potatoes, and grill a large slice of steak, still fresh and good in the winter coldness; but it was diminishing rapidly, and the lonely tin-opener would soon be in constant use. The boys never ate without grace offered by Tiger, who patiently waited for me to attend.

  We had just eaten on the first night out from the George Gill. Tiger had returned grace, and we were standing about the fires, listening to the clink of hobble-chains. Tiger was cheerful, as always.

  ‘You camella, eat you dinner close up tonight. Don’t walkabout every way. You ol’ cow camella; don’t you have little calfie tonight. We can’t keep him. Must knock him on head. I tellem you now, so you b’ave yourself, and listen properly to Tiger! You’m all hear me?’

  Chilly night had fallen, but there still remained a continuous chirping, as of many birds.

  ‘Tiger,’ I said, ‘what’s the matter with all those little birds – not gone to bed yet?’

  ‘That one not little bird,’ Tiger answered. ‘They all lizard – we call ’em Iltjiljara.’

  ‘But where are they?’

  ‘They all sit down under grass and spinifex.’ Tiger waved a hand about to indicate the many clumps of spinifex. ‘They cheeky beggar; call out for you; tellem you country belong to him, and we must all go away. They like to see moon come up.’

  The chirping was all round, as of hundreds of lost chickens. The sunset clouds had broken, and there was a strong low moon in the east. I walked quietly out through the clumps of spinifex. From beneath my feet, under the nearer spinifex, from clear, clean patches of sand, the chirping continued loud and unabated hour after hour, well into the night. It ceased only at the sudden clouding of the moon well after midnight. A spasmodic drizzle set in, and the rest of the night was an uncomfortable, cold, and miserable wait for dawn and hope that the weather disturbance was temporary.

  Progress was slow in the fine pelting sleet and drizzle of a grey morning. Visibility was limited to a few hundred yards. The camels broke away, ‘went down’ to sulk and bellow, and bite savagely at Tiger, who was like a Jack-in-the-box – up and down from camel to ground. Tiger was worried; his landmarks were shrouded beneath low cloud, and his sense of direction was not to be relied upon.

  A man’s booted footprints crossed our way from west to east, and within twenty feet several camel tracks headed in the same direction, one behind the other in the telltale manner of pack-camels. We evidently were not alone in the vast desert wilderness. Judging by the tracks, someone else was within a short day’s journey. Tiger came up. ‘That must be track belong to half-caste dingo-scalper,’ he announced. ‘Maybe that smoke we see from King’s Creek country – maybe this man been out in Petermann country – catch pappy-dawg scalp. Maybe go this way and get water in Alatoota country. Rock-hole there; but too many cloud sit down now to see smoke.’

  Nevertheless, Tiger lit a large clump of spinifex. The flames leapt and crackled in the volatile grass, churning up and up in dense black smoke, and quickly spread over many acres. They brought an answer some hours later during a lull in the light rain. A single smoke-signal rose from a low point of rock on the south side of the Alatoota Hills, about ten or fifteen miles a little north of east.

  Towards evening we scrambled up an isolated outcrop of shelving sandstone. The clouds had dropped low again; but from its crest we looked south over a monotony of sand and trees, continuing on wave after wave. Tiger was worried. He had hoped to sight Ayers Rock and check his direction. To westward, a heavy rain-shower blackened and shadowed the desert, and hit us with a racing swish that sent the camels into a snarling tangle. Within a few minutes it had passed, leaving behind more than half an inch of rain that had vanished into the sand as fast as it had fallen. Since the George Gill I had not seen the slightest sign of a watercourse, gully, or depression in which water might lodge and stay long enough to ease the thirst of any living creature.

  We moved slowly on to a mulga thicket at the lowest, hard clay point in a trough between sandhills, barely in time to beat a second downpour. We soon had two large fires blazing away, the camels unloaded, the saddles and equipment stacked in an attempt to divert as much water as possible; and then we stood up without shelter of any sort to face the long night ahead.

  It rained heavily until midnight, then drizzled fitfully. The leaping, hissing flames caught the falling rain in scintillating jewels of light. There was a certain grim humour in the situation; and out in that desert of reputed scorching barrenness I would have paid well for an umbrella. There was no wind, and the swish-swish of rain through the trees, and on the ground fast softening into bog, was a sound I grew to hate. The journey ahead would be difficult. It would be necessary to avoid, as far as possible, the boggy depressions between the sandhills. The heat of the fire sent the dampness of my clothes drifting up in steam. I was worried about Lake Amadeus. It lay only a few miles ahead; but the rain probably had filled it or bogged its approaches.

  The three boys crouched about their small fire for several hours, chanted and talked; then they coiled up in wet blankets and slept until daylight about a dead fire. They rose in subdued misery, moved over to stand silently about my fire. Tiger could have sold out for sixpence. Tamalji’s laughter was a memory; and Njunowa shivered violently even while he almost grilled his naked body over the coals.

  A temporary break in the weather came at about nine o’clock, during which the boys slowly brought in the camels, loaded them silently, and began the difficult task of travelling south through a land that had now absorbed at least four inches of rain. The troughs were difficult and treacherous and unavoidable, the sandhills tough and strenuous at any time. Tiger took the leading camel and proceeded cautiously, winding in and out, sometimes almost circling completely about to avoid the soft patches. The extent to which the earth’s surface had softened was incredible, alt
hough all trace of water had vanished. Within an hour the heaviest rainstorm of all blackened the west, raced up, and pelted down with hissing fury. The camels became frantic, bunched up, groaned and bellowed, and refused to budge until the rain had passed towards the east, and the first bright sunlight for two days turned the desert into a gleaming mirror for just those few fleeting minutes until all sign of water had vanished again. Tiger mounted the leading camel. ‘Come on there! Rain all gone!’ Tamalji’s screaming laugh rose up and down the scale, and even Njunowa called up enough energy to trot away in search of witchetty grubs. The camels got into line and strode out at a good three miles an hour, through patches of soft ground, over the sandhills, and across the valleys, for there was a new zip in the air that could not be denied. A high sandhill barred our way, visible across our path a mile or more to the south-west, and continuing on unbroken to the north-east. I watched the camels mount it slowly, diagonally, with Tiger turning in the bright sunlight to call to the labouring animals behind him. He reached the crest, took off his hat and waved it wildly: