I Saw a Strange Land

by Arthur Groom

  Next morning Tiger assured me the wind never ceased.

  I told Tiger to pack and move back towards Ayers Rock. I would go alone through the bluffs to get photographs, and would follow the camels later. Thus, a little after sunrise, I moved once again up the slope of flowering lilies and followed a ridge to eastward, far enough to look into all the Olga chasms at once. It was an unforgettable sight, transcending by far the grandeur of Ayers Rock, or anything else I have witnessed in my lifetime. The dome on which I stood was warm and peaceful in calm sunlight, and the distant howling of Wulpa Chasm was like a far-away, dim accompaniment to the impressive stillness of the hidden valley in between and below me. Two or three miles out beyond the circumference of the complete Olga group a heavy ground fog spread out above the sandhills and plains like a snowfield. It commenced to tuft and break up as I dropped down into a narrow crevice, tightly packed with undergrowth for about two hundred yards. An hour or more later I emerged on the slope of another valley to meet three dingoes almost face to face. They paused a fraction of a second, wheeled and raced away while I scrambled hurriedly onto a rough conglomerate outcrop to see more of them. My foot dislodged a large boulder, which rumbled and rolled in considerable noise. The dingoes had disappeared completely, but the echoes started up several euros. They went hopping off in different directions, rattling over stones and spinifex, pausing awhile to look about at this man-made disturbance; a snort, and on again, up and up with incredible strength and grace.

  Eventually I scrambled two or three miles east of the main Olgas, and entered a canyon about five hundred feet deep, and less than a hundred feet wide between sheer red walls; and continued up it for half a mile to scramble out on to a rocky balcony that I recognized as one of the front legs of the Elephant dome I had seen the day before. The ‘head’ of the elephant was now one sheer wall rising a good four hundred feet to my right. The ‘leg’ was hollowed below me with caverns and overhangs. Rock wallabies hopped and lay round in the sun, unconscious of my presence above them. Movement was impossible without noise, and when I continued downhill they whisked into shelter.

  I took a line on Ayers Rock clearly visible against the distant peaks of the eastern Musgrave Ranges, and set a course slightly southward of it to bring me across the camel tracks. Two hours later I moved up beside Tiger on the leading camel, half-asleep in the morning sun. He woke up with a start.

  ‘Which way you go this time? You want to ride camella?’

  But the camels were too slow, and I was feeling fit and eager. I tossed up part of my pack on top of the big tucker-boxes, and walked on ahead towards Ayers Rock. Rains and floods had delayed the beginning of my long journey. Now I wanted to get back to civilization as soon as possible.

  _______

  * Wind.

  CHAPTER XXII

  SMOKE ON THE HORIZON

  Had time been more plentiful I would have turned south with the camels to the Musgrave Ranges, and then followed that range system to the Presbyterian Ernabella Mission at the eastern end of the ranges, within sight of the five-thousand-foot peak of Mount Woodroffe. I had considered the possibility of a long walk over eighty miles of intervening desert to Ernabella. This suggestion had caused some concern to the Reverend F. W. Albrecht of Hermannsburg; and he had communicated by radio, while I waited at Areyonga, with the Reverend A. C. Wright, Superintendent of Ernabella, and discussed fully the obvious dangers of such a hare-brained proposition.

  I learnt some months later that Mr Wright had sent two native men to meet me at Ayers Rock, and guide me through if necessary; but they returned to Ernabella a week later without reaching their destination, and complained that there was too much water and bog in the desert!

  Ernabella Mission commenced operations in 1937. Its first Superintendent was the Reverend H. L. Taylor. It has an average resident native population of about one hundred and fifty, with several hundred more calling in for brief periods between walkabouts and intermittent employment on grazing properties many miles farther in, towards the Adelaide to Alice Springs railway line. Some of the natives are the most primitive in the land and have had little contact with the white man. They roam a hundred or more miles west through the Musgrave, Mann, and Petermann Ranges. Once a year some of them move up on the long three-hundred-mile walkabout to Hermannsburg or Areyonga for man-making initiation ceremonies. The usual route north is from Ernabella to Mount Conner, thence up beside scattered salt lakes to Angas Downs, and through the Krichauff hills to Areyonga. Before the arrival of the white settler, movement was free and easy, and good hunting all the way; but now the natives find their waters fouled and shared by wandering stock, equipped and closed with man-made pumps and tanks; and the hunting is not good. The wanderer is not to be blamed if be relies now on what he can beg, earn, or borrow, so that he often reaches his destination a half-starving, cringing remnant of a once virile race.

  The Ernabella staff consists of the Reverend A. C. Wright (the Superintendent), and Mrs Wright, Sister Turner, Miss B. Bills (school-teacher), Mr John Bennett (stock overseer), and Mr M. Balfour (in charge of provisions and stores). There is mail-truck communication with Oodnadatta, three hundred miles away by desert track, every fourth week; and another route to the Finke River siding, two hundred miles north-east. Summer heat churns the long arid tracks into loose, difficult sand; and rare rains soften the sand and clay into slush and bog to hold up all movement for a week or more.

  I had met the Reverend Mr Wright in Alice Springs, dressed in old clothes, well on in years, breaking down an army hut for removal over three hundred miles of road by truck.

  Hospital cases of illness have to be transported by truck over the three hundred miles to Alice Springs, or by truck to either Kulgera or Erldunda Stations, and thence by the Flying Doctor plane operated and serviced by Eddie Connellan. The two-way radio transceiver gives at least a partial sense of security to far out Ernabella. It is the S O S and lifeline of the outback and, with the Flying Doctor Service, has saved many valuable lives and much suffering.

  Choice of route from Ayers Rock back to civilization was difficult to decide. I had less than a fortnight to return to Brisbane, with many miles yet of slow camel travel before linking with faster transport. If I went to Ernabella, I might have but a day or so with them, with little hope of motor transport after the recent rains, and the probability of eighty or a hundred miles’ walk against time to the nearest landing strip. If I went dead east, past Mount Conner, and on towards Erldunda Station, I would have some chance of a lift into Alice Springs by truck over the ‘back’ road from Oodnadatta to Alice Springs. Pastor Albrecht had advised me either to take the camels and continue with them to Ernabella, or to ask Tiger to turn north-east to ‘Andrews’s country’, vaguely forty-five miles over the sandhills from Ayers Rock.

  But Tiger shook his head at mention of Andrews’s country. He was keen to continue to Ernabella, probably to get in touch with old friends and display his importance; and Tamalji was also eager to return there where much of his boyhood had been spent. Thus I made my own decision. We would go straight in east to Mount Conner, and make a second choice at the first sign of regular traffic.

  The slow journey from Ayers Rock to Conner was very much a repetition on a smaller scale of the country from Lake Amadeus to Ayers Rock, except that travelling natives had, for nearly half the sixty miles, burnt much of the thick spinifex a year or so before, laying bare the desert sand, over which was now sprouting a quick growth of flowering plants. There were hundreds of acres of the golden-green flowering grevillea, joy to Tamalji and Njunowa, who raced from corm to corm, sucking at the sticky syrup, and disturbing noisy grey martins. The desert was mostly clean, clear sand, light pink in colour, fitting background to the flowering daisies and heath along the sandhill crests. The lovely purple bloom of the parakeelia was spread out beneath the sun; and thus I had colour in the sand, and vivid colour in the plants, light high clouds and a blue sky, keen air, cool and fresh, and good company.

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nbsp; During the first day, Ayers Rock stood up huge and light mauve against the distant domes of blue Olga; and then Olga disappeared as we crossed a sandhill and we saw it no more. To eastward, Conner’s flat top showed over wave after wave of low sandhills; and once again we played hide-and-seek. The distant tors were a never-ending source of inspiration and grandeur. It was difficult to understand how anyone could lose direction with such definite landmarks to follow; certainly not in winter’s clear visibility. During the heat of summer, midday heat and mirage would distort landmarks and reduce visibility to a few miles. Half-way between them, both Ayers Rock and Mount Conner were clearly visible, and at no time during the three slow days were both the tors beyond sight from the crest of any sandhill.

  After the half-way mark the spinifex was once again rank and unburned, and Tiger lit torches of spinifex to fire a string of jet-black smokes, which went racing away to northward, roaring, crackling, and leaping up in a wind from the south. The black columns of smoke rose well over a thousand feet; and during my wanderings from the camel line I crossed sandhill after sandhill to see answering smokes on every horizon other than in the west directly behind us. There was a grandeur and significance in this silent exchange of greetings and messages from one side of the desert to the other. There was no code, no prearranged order of signals, but each series of smokes told its own story. During the long hours of slow travel I decoded from a line of signals, rising one after the other down to the south-east, about fifty miles, that natives were on a walkabout, heading south to Ernabella, probably some of the big group still returning home leisurely from the Areyonga ceremonies. Forty miles or so to the south-west, a high, lone signal obviously indicated to Tiger that someone was hunting near the Pundijarrina Soak, north of the Musgraves. Directly northward, smoke swirled up during the day, clamouring for notice. It turned out later that they were on Andrews’s country, known as Curtain Springs, the exact whereabouts of which was unknown to Tiger. Andrews’s exact locality is known to very few. He is the ‘farthest-out’ settler at the end of a very rough, very sandy desert road. The most prominent signals were those rising in opposition to the northern smokes, from a spot which I concluded to be Weetabilla (Witabala) Rockhole, mapped about fifteen miles south-west of Mount Conner. The smokes conveyed a definite message to the three boys. They were obviously anxious to make personal contact with the signallers. There was much muttering, and some attempt to swing the camels. I watched Tamalji closely. He was endeavouring to persuade Tiger to head for Weetabilla, and then on to Ernabella. I intervened and ordered a direct course for Conner, which was now standing up squarely and unmistakably ahead. It was one mass of fractured rock, surrounded by high barren cliffs, supporting its own plateau high above the surrounding country. It was bright red above a thick forest of dark-green mulga at its western base.

  Through the afternoon of the second day we headed for Conner. The boys fired a great amount of spinifex, until we had a continuous screen of smoke behind us, defining our straightened course to all distant watchers; and then towards evening the signals at Weetabilla commenced to creep out and extend one by one, up towards Mount Conner. The signaller was also now on the march. This strange converging of two lines of travel went on silently over the desert; it was weird, crystal clear, and filled with meaning.

  Tiger spoke seriously after evening meal and grace. I knew it was coming.

  ‘Maybe white man got little cattle station close by Mount Conner. Aneri Soak – I think. S’pose we get there tomorrow. We get good water – might be fresh beef, too. Might be motor-truck there, take you to Alice Springs catch that aeroplane.’ He turned in the dusk and indicated that Aneri Soak was a couple of miles south of Conner, and my map confirmed his point. The names on the map were few and far between; but Aneri Soak appeared beyond doubt. I was also curious to see who the signaller was.

  We camped that night in a mulga thicket, where wandering natives had been digging holes three and four feet deep in the sandy clay beneath the mulgas, in search of the large bulbous honey-ant. The first cattle track I had seen for more than a week passed right beside the camp site, evidently made by a wandering bullock lured into the desert during the heavy rains, only to be cut off from reliable water-supply.

  We got away at daylight and headed a little south of Conner. Tamalji and Njunowa immediately lit a string of smokes and got a quick answer from Aneri Soak. Our other mystery traveller from Weetabilla was obviously waiting there. The signallers to south, south-west, and to northward were not on duty or were disgusted; but faint smudges many miles off to the east on the cattle country about Erldunda answered us for an hour or two. Conner now towered high within three miles, when the camels quickened pace on to a rough motor track, the first I had seen for several weeks; and within a few seconds they were stepping out to the good pace of nearly three and a half miles an hour.

  Although desert country still extended for many miles, the motor tracks indicated at least an isolated settlement. A large, heavy-tyred truck had passed about two days before, apparently going north-north-west. The track was seldom used. Within another mile we topped a rocky ridge, then passed over a curving sandhill that was one of a circle of dunes surrounding a saucer depression about three miles across. Just beyond the lowest point, a windmill whirled beside a trough and yards, and farther up the sandy rise a bare, square shed seemed naked and out of place. Beyond that again, several native wurlies dotted the sandhill.

  ‘Who lives here, Tiger?’

  ‘Dunno. White man, I think. Maybe white woman.’

  I left the camels and walked quickly ahead. As often occurs near a rare watering-place, all plant-life had been eaten out except for an emerald-green wet patch sloping gently down like a vivid mat laid over the sand from the east. It carried the seepage from Aneri Soak on to a broad clay-pan in the bottom of the depression. The country was so much like a great saucer that the camels must have been seen immediately they topped the sandhill rim behind me; and I felt very obvious and wondered what manner of person or persons I might meet, as I walked a mile or so right out in the barren, sandy open, past the windmill, up past the yards, past a mulgabough meat-shed, and towards the hut, which was walled with flattened oil-drum sides, thatched with mud over iron, windowless, with an open dark doorway; and not much larger than a household garage. The place seemed deserted, but I was conscious of being watched from the shadowy interior. A white woman, with a young child beside her, came into the doorway; and native women and children moved about the hut, while others peered round the corners of the building.

  ‘Good morning,’ I greeted her. ‘I’ve just come in from Ayers Rock.’

  ‘Well, you’re just in time for dinner,’ she said with amazing calm. ‘Come right in!’ Then she commenced to talk rapidly, made a pot of tea, and handed rations to several native women, who quickly scampered. The hut was stuffy, crammed with stove and tables, cases of provisions, a makeshift safe, curtained bed, shelves, and sewing-machine. It was evidently living-room, lounge, kitchen, store, office, and harness-room. ‘You must have come a long way,’ she continued. ‘I wondered who was sending smokes up in the desert. You didn’t have to turn back like the other party. Only went back from here a few days ago. Got this far in their four-wheel-drive trucks – bogged twenty-seven times between Erldunda and here. Used too much petrol and couldn’t go on. We’ve had inches of rain – take tea? Got no milk, and sugar’s short – Yes, they were going to try to drive to Ayers Rock. Schoolboys and some masters from Geelong College. Chap with a funny name – Bechervaise – it was – keen on climbing hills. Anyway, they all went up Mount Conner and had a look at Ayers Rock from the distance – Have some corned beef? Haven’t got much to offer you. Supplies are held up – don’t hold back now. It’s good to see someone. Anyhow, some of the party talked of walking to Ayers Rock, but Mr Dumas – that’s the man who helps here with my husband – they’re away now on Erldunda, well-sinking for Mr Staines, and they’re held up, too, with trucks bogged and broken down
– anyhow, he warned them off the walking business. No surface water, and the desert’s bad walking – have some pickles on your corned beef? That bread’s just new and fresh. Must take some with you. Have some treacle. Sorry I haven’t any jam. That’s been off the tucker list for a few weeks.’

  ‘Is there a direct track from here to Ernabella?’ I asked. ‘If I could arrange quick transport I should like to go there if at all possible, but I have only a few days left to get back to Alice Springs.’

  ‘You’ll have a job getting from here to Ernabella,’ she informed me. ‘Track’s bad. It’s nearly a hundred miles, and Ernabella truck is probably bogged down, too. My husband’s camp is about thirty miles along the Erldunda road. You might get a lift in from there when it dries a bit more. The track you came in by goes up to Andrews’s place – twenty-five miles from here, away back over the desert. He’s got two trucks; but one’s in at the Alice, and the other’s broken down or bogged somewhere on the desert track somewhere this side of Henbury. He can’t help you. My furniture’s over at the Andrewses’, and I’ve been hoping and looking for someone to bring it along. Not much chance yet awhile. Been down to Adelaide a couple of months ago, had a big operation; and just got back – got a match, I’ll light me a cigarette!’

  Somehow, the black tea and corned beef and dried bread and pickles tasted like a banquet. The woman was more than middle-aged, and busied herself in the small hut as she talked.

  ‘You haven’t told me your name, or the name of your property here?’ I asked.

  ‘Name’s de Conlay; and this is our Mount Conner Station – a thousand square miles. We’ve got some good cattle. Been here three years. Bit tough to start; but we’re not sorry. A couple of years, and we’ll be on the pig’s back.’