by Arthur Groom
There is a brass plate on the Henbury front gate, naming Finke pioneers. Henbury has a native community, many of them Christians in the charge of evangelist Galaliel, trained and instructed from Hermannsburg; a contented lot, well fed and well trained.
A young native woman had brought in her week-old infant, shyly, for ‘all them white missus to look at him first time’. She rocked the child to sleep in its small ‘pitchi’ of carved wood, beneath a pepperina-tree.
I lay under the spreading river gums of the Finke, and drifted into retrospect. Millions of gallons of precious water glinted in the late sunlight, swirled and slid past on a long journey, only to vanish in sand and salt. The red heart of Australia had cast its spell. Thousands believe it to be a dead, useless land; but it is not dead. It is hard, tough, treacherous, wild, magnificent, beautiful – yet ugly sometimes in mood; filled with the greatest traditions Australia has of the past in its native legends, and the remnant dream people emerging slowly from the past towards a new but difficult order.
Millions of years ago it was an elevated land. Now there is a vast coloured skeleton from which much of the earth and rock has withered and eroded away. Australia’s bared heart still rots slowly and quietly, very slowly, through the thousands of years.
Drought may sicken it; flood may dampen it; but it will never die. Some of the rugged peaks are still nearly five thousand feet above sea level. Some of the canyons, many hundreds of feet deep, are still unknown, holding natural rock formations that some day may be world-famous. It is all a past ceremonial ground and legendary dream source of the oldest and most primitive race of people still on this earth. All the main rock features, animals, and birds, are embodied in native stories; those stories must not pass from memory. Pulverizing stones and lost native weapons are scattered over the ridges and sandhills, and in the abandoned camps of the desert that may never be occupied again – for this strange, ancient people, whose strength and virility lay in their fierce worship of their own past, collapsed at the coming of the white man. A long Christian crusade has helped to save a small band of survivors to face a future still uncertain and crowded with known and unknown difficulties.
Close protection of this strange land is more than necessary. It will be criminal tragedy if exploitation is allowed in terms of dividends only; for some day the heritage of a vast unspoiled wilderness will write its own value.
Thus my questions had received their answers; but many of the answers indicate another story that has yet to happen, chapter by chapter. It will be a strange story; for, to be happy, it must have no end.
_______
* Mutikutara.
A quarter of a mile wide, the mighty Finke sweeps into the Krichauff Range. The white strip to the right of the river is the motor track to Palm Valley.
Sandhills within fifty yards of Henbury Station homestead.
Hermannsburg Mission, beside the Finke River, showing the large vegetable-garden compound tended by native women.
Native rock-hole in a once ‘ceremonial’ valley near Hermannsburg Mission.
Albert Namatjira, the famous full-blooded aboriginal watercolour artist.
North-east from the crest of the Ellery Ridge in the Macdonnells. The black dots are mostly mulga-trees in gullies between spinifex ridges.
In Palm Valley, Krichauff Range. The palm to the left is one of the rare Livistona Mariae.
Fallen red boulders of sandstone in Palm Valley.
Glen Helen homestead, beside the Finke River.
The ridges of the Macdonnells on the southern side of the Glen Helen Valley. The crest of this ridge is about eight hundred feet high.
River gum in the Ormiston River bed, a mile before the Ormiston River emerges from its deep canyon through the Macdonnell Ranges. The distant rocks are a brilliant red with purple shadows.
Large pool and bright-red cliffs with nesting shags at the beginning of the Ormiston Gorge, Macdonnell Ranges.
The crest of Mount Sonder, one of the red rock masses rising close to five thousand feet above sea level at the western end of the Macdonnell Ranges system.
The eastern end of the red Wulpa (Walpa, Walpina) Chasm, Mount Olga. The bluff on the left rises fourteen hundred feet.
Vertical rock strata above the sandy bed of the Finke at Glen Helen, Macdonnell Ranges. Note the cow at the left base for comparison.
Mangaraka Gorge, of red sandstone, looking back towards distant Haast’s Bluff.
The red left-hand bluff of Mangaraka.
Looking down into the Standly Chasm, Macdonnell Ranges, from a northern ridge.
Totemic rock paintings at Emily Gap, Alice Springs.
Part of Alice Springs township, looking towards Heavitree Gap from Anzac Hill.
Simpson’s Gap, twelve miles by road west of Alice Springs.
The curving hills three and four hundred feet high in the heart of the Krichauff Range.
The weird pattern of part of the Krichauff Plateau.
At the southern end of the Serpentine slit through the Macdonnell Ranges, half a mile long, several hundred feet deep in solid red rock, and for most of the way only a few feet wide. The left-hand branch of the Upper Ellery River system passes through the Serpentine.
This Areyonga Mission boy seems to have a happy outlook on life.
Bewilderment is on the face of many native children new to the mission.
Areyonga Valley, west of Areyonga Mission, Krichauff Range, showing typical parallel curving ranges covered with spinfex and isolated clumps of mulga.
Natives at Areyonga Mission. In the background is the echoing Red Wall.
A study in black and white at Areyonga Mission.
Father and son, Areyonga Mission.
Stalking a euro, Areyonga.
River gums near Bowson’s Hole, Illara Creek, Krichauff Range.
Thousands of red, wind-worn, sandstone domes line a great U about twenty miles in extent at the western crest of the George Gill Range, Central Australia.
Turning into Reedy Creek, George Gill Range.
The lower red ramparts east of King’s Canyon, with mulga-bushes and domed clumps of spinifex.
The glowing bright-pink and red cliffs of King’s Canyon, at the western end of the George Gill Range. The bed of the valley is filled with a tropical tangle of white ghost gums, palms, and ferns and flowering bushes around running pools of water.
The passing of a desert storm south of Lake Amadeus.
Lake Amadeus, the mystery lake of Central Australia, after rain. It is approximately ninety miles long and from two to ten miles wide. The water, which is salt, is seldom more than a few inches deep..
‘…the storms passed before and behind us, one after the other…’
Njunowa and Tiger pose before rock paintings at the southern base of Ayers Rock.
The amazing formation of eroded terraces and bird caverns high up on the northern cliffs of Ayers Rock. This feature is about six hundred feet high, and is visible nearly fifty miles away on a clear day.
The Old Woman’s Cave, beneath the northern base of Ayers Rock. The cave undermines the cliff for nearly a quarter of a mile.
Approaching Ayers Rock from the north-east. The rock is about fifteen miles distant, glowing pink above the dark green of the mulga.
The south-western shoulder of Ayers Rock, with mulga plain beyond.
An important native spring at the northern base of Ayers Rock.
The curving vertical sandstone strata of the north-eastern corner of Ayers Rock.
Some of the lower and more easterly domes of the Mount Olga group.
An isolated northern dome of the Olga group, nearly a mile from the camera, with conglomerate boulders on the crest of a smaller dome in the foreground.
Homeward-bound along the crest of a desert sandhill north of Mount Conner.
Mrs de Conlay and grandchild at Mount Conner homestead, Central Australia.
Alf Butler, pioneer owner of Mount Quinn Station, a property of one thousand square mile
s on the Palmer River, standing outside his shanty of old iron, boughs, clay, and rocks.
Tempe Downs homestead, Palmer River, Krichauff Range, Tempe is one of the oldest cattle stations in Central Australia.
The Kangaroo Tail rock-slab, independent of the main bulk of Ayers Rock, with figure for comparison. There is a space of several feet between the slab and the mass.
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