by Alison Booth
‘My dear Violet,’ she began to write. After imparting the news that a suffrage bill might soon be introduced in South Australia, she got to the real point of the letter.
I’m still feeling a bit lost without Father. Here in the outback I’m trying to decide what to do with the rest of my life. I love both political economy and painting. I’m good at political economy but I cannot carve out a career for myself in this field because I’m a woman. I’m competent at painting and sketching, activities deemed suitable for young women of my class, as you know! On the principle of comparative advantage, I should be like Father, working at a university, and I should buy my paintings from someone else. If I were a man, perhaps that is what I would do. Once women are emancipated this will become possible. But I fear this will never happen in England in my lifetime.
She stopped writing and read what she had written. Though she’d intended the paragraph to be humorous, its content left her confused and angry. She had been brought up to think that anything was possible. There had been no barriers put in the path of her education and she was glad of that. But with her father gone, she was simply a single woman battling along on her own, with no identity apart from the few people who knew her as James Cameron’s daughter. This was hardly her father’s fault. He had always said that it was imperative that women were given the vote, that the situation had to change. She began to write again.
I can almost hear you say that I could become a Poor Law Guardian like you. But that isn’t what I want nor is it what I’d be good at, despite what you’ve told me. The best I can hope for is to be an unpaid but full-time agitator. Don’t laugh at me, Violet, for I believe I have become rather good at this. All my letters to the newspapers get published and they may even bring forth controversy and lively discussion!
I should stop complaining and be thankful that I have the means to support myself and to be free to choose between agitating and painting. But I know that my painting will never make the world a better place. It will never bring joy to anyone, and especially not to myself. In fact, I have more or less given up since I arrived in the Territory.
That wasn’t quite right. Nibbling the end of her pen, she thought of the sketch of the mangroves she had dashed off at Port Darwin, and of the few drawings she had produced as they travelled to Dimbulah Downs. The truth was that she had only given up drawing and painting since arriving here. She dipped her nib in the inkwell and continued to write.
Perhaps you will be advising, why not do both, agitate and paint? I don’t think this is feasible. Amateurs do several activities and none of them really well. My father was never an amateur. He was so successful because he was brilliant and because he devoted all of his time to his work.
The truth of the matter is that he didn’t view artworks as worthwhile. I have realised this now, this minute, as I sit scribbling to you here in the outback.
She stopped writing and put down her pen. The shock of this new discovery took her breath away. Father was a scientist, and to him art and music were luxuries. How strange that she hadn’t seen this before. She wiped her inky fingers on a pocket handkerchief she kept in the travelling desk for this purpose, and continued writing, more slowly now.
This is probably partly why I’ve felt guilty spending time improving my painting techniques. This is probably also why I felt guilty when Father was alive when I was not helping him with his work. Being his ‘unpaid secretary’ was what you once told me.
Perhaps you will also be thinking as you read this that your old friend is engaging in self-pity. You would be right to think this and I trust you will forgive me. Although writing to you can never be as good as sitting talking to you face to face, I find that explaining my dilemma about my future does help me to look more dispassionately at the options that lie before me.
She put the pen in the slot in her travelling desk. For too long she had been evaluating her painting with her father’s eyes rather than her own. She’d always thought of herself as objective, but only now had she become detached enough to see that she’d internalised her father’s prejudices, which conflicted with her own. No wonder she’d felt so ambivalent about her work. This letter was not for Violet, it was a letter to herself. After she screwed the lid on the inkwell, she picked up the letter and scrunched it into a ball.
I’ll write to Violet later, she thought. I’ll describe the Aboriginal customs of the Dimbulah Downs tribe, or as much as I’ve been able to work out. The complex clan system. The spirituality. The way the camp is arranged, in circles of wurleys. The way the dogs devour the bones and others refuse from a meal. The raised scars worn by men and women. Violet will be much more interested in this than in my endless introspection. But first I must write to Charles.
She pulled out a clean sheet of writing paper and picked up her pen. She began to write very fast, not thinking in advance what she would say, simply letting the words pour out.
My dear Charles,
Thank you for your letter. It is so kind of you to write with the news that you know will interest me. I shall try my best to reciprocate.
The Aborigines’ belief in a spiritual existence may intrigue you. There are many layers of meaning in their lives and much of it remains inaccessible to Europeans, and maybe always will. The Aborigines believe in the immortality of human souls. Children are born out of a spiritual world and spend a lifetime journeying back to it. Elders are close to their ancestors, to their Dreaming, and for this reason are to be respected. Yet it isn’t only the spirits of men and women that exist timelessly but the whole of creation. The Dreaming place is important because it gives an identity and a sense of belonging. This is as much as I have been able to find out so far from my conversations with the women.
Yesterday afternoon there were fires near here, on the far side of the billabong. I felt frightened and asked Bella, who is a housemaid here, if we should worry. She said no. It seems that the Aborigines use these fires to manage the land, and the usual Dimbulah Downs manager has encouraged this. They call it ‘cleaning country’, Bella said, and they do it from early to mid dry season to avoid the potential for larger more destructive fires later in the dry season. They light a number of small fires on damp ground, typically not all at once, and they create a semicircle of these, with each end joining up to the creek. This way they create a firebreak around an area.
Yesterday I watched the dense plumes of black smoke rising into the still air. There were a dozen or so black kites circling around the burning area, waiting to swoop on any escaping small marsupials or reptiles.
Not long before dark I could see a wall of flame where they had lit the nearest fire. Later, after nightfall, the clouds were red tinged and occasionally I heard the sound of what I took to be a burnt tree crashing to the ground. Anxious the fires might get out of control, I had a bad night’s sleep, thinking all night I could smell smoke in the air. In bed, I heard the sound of the corrugated-iron roof creaking against its constraints as the temperature dropped from ninety degrees Fahrenheit to the high fifties. That seems very chilly in a building that leaks cold air. Periodically I imagined the smell of smoke was stronger and got up to look out for fires. There was nothing: the Aborigines had it all under control. Eventually, I fell asleep to a lullaby of chirping geckos, interspersed with the distant sound of the inevitable bush curlews.
After breakfast this morning, I went for a walk around the far side of the billabong. The dry leaves on the path crunched underfoot. The fire remains were still smoking; the pandanus palms and gum trees burnt but not completely, the black kites still circling, and a three-quarter moon floating in an already harsh blue sky.
Then I thought that I too need to ‘clean my country’. I carry with me so much baggage from the past. To what extent are my views my own, formed by careful thought? Or have they instead been moulded by Father, and my lifelong desire to see him happy?
I don’t yet know the answer
s to these questions. But here, in this savagely beautiful country, I intend to find them. Can I carry on in a new sphere away from past influences? Can I clean country like the Aborigines and discover what to do with my life?
Thank you again for your letter, Charles. Hearing from you always means a great deal to me, and it always will.
I have kept the most important matter to the end of this letter. In asking me to become your wife you have again done me a great honour, and I must ask your forgiveness when I say that I don’t know yet if I can marry you. I’m changing too much to make any immediate commitments. I hope you’re not hurt by this, and I take some comfort from the words that you wrote, that you don’t expect an immediate decision.
Yours very affectionately,
Harriet
She waved the last page until she was quite sure the ink was dry, before folding the letter and placing it in an envelope. Perhaps, she thought, by the time Charles receives this letter I will know who I am and where I’m going. And then I’ll write again to Charles.
Chapter 27
They Give Me Civilised Name
Harriet was strolling past the storeroom when she heard a loud male voice that she didn’t recognise. Coming from the direction of the kitchen, the voice sounded authoritative, although she couldn’t distinguish the words. After an interval, she heard the gentle murmur that was Ah Soy’s reply.
She was almost at the kitchen when a big white fellow stepped through the doorway. He looked to be in his late forties, after allowing for the fact that white men aged early here, dried up by the cruel sun. She smiled and held out her hand. It would be good to have some company. Perhaps this man would have something else to talk about apart from station life. ‘Welcome to Dimbulah Downs Station. I’m Harriet Cameron.’
The man touched his broad-brimmed hat in a gesture that struck her as a parody, or possibly it was too tightly jammed on to his head to be easily removed. ‘Welcome to Dimbulah Downs Station yourself, Miss Cameron. I’m Bert Carruthers from Empty Creek Station. Empty by name and empty by nature.’ As he gripped her hand in a firm handshake, he laughed uproariously at a joke that she guessed was well-worn. His palm was calloused and the sun-hardened skin on the back of his hands was as knobbly as a lizard’s skin. ‘I was just passing by with some of my stockmen and thought I’d call in to welcome you to the Territory.’
‘Thank you.’ Harriet looked around for the stockmen.
‘Blacks all of them. They’re down at the billabong.’ He gestured towards the camp.
‘You’ll stay for supper?’
‘We’ll stay the night,’ he said. ‘But you don’t need to worry, we’ll be camping a few miles away.’
‘Henry and the others will be back soon. I hope you can stay until then at least.’ After asking Ah Soy to make them some tea, she led Carruthers into the shade of the fly-screened enclosure on the verandah of the main house.
‘I heard about you from my new ringer.’ Carruthers sat down opposite her at the table, while Ah Soy distributed the tea-things. With some difficulty he pulled off his hat. It left a red welt around his tonsured head.
‘I don’t think I’ve met any of your men. I’ve ridden out to the stock camps a number of times but the men I met were all from Dimbulah Downs.’
‘My new ringer came here by way of Port Darwin, on the same steamer as you. Dan Brady’s his name.’
‘Brady? You’ve got Brady at Empty Creek?’ With startling clarity, Brady’s angry and distorted face appeared before her like an apparition. Aware that Carruthers was watching her closely, an amused expression on his face, she blinked quickly, and the vision was gone.
‘He’s working for me. You can come over and see him if you like, though it would take you the better part of a week to get there.’
Harriet smiled at the joke she thought Caruthers had made. She doubted she would ever see Brady again and was glad of it.
Ah Soy brought out a tray loaded with the teapot, biscuits and a cake. His usually smiling face was a scowling mask, possibly because Carruthers referred to him frequently and to his face as the Chink. Tell the Chink my tea’s too weak. Tell the Chink my cake’s a bit short on raisins. Tell the Chink my plate’s a bit dirty. At the third repetition, Harriet was moved to tell him what she should have done at the second: that he was a guest and shouldn’t abuse her hospitality or Ah Soy.
Carruthers found this enormously diverting. He slapped his hands on his beefy thighs and threw back his bovine head to let forth a roar of laughter not unlike a bull bellowing. Evidently he’d been hoping for a reaction and she resolved not to rise to the bait again. Soon he recovered himself enough to splutter, ‘By Jove, you’re a card! Give you a few more months up here and we’ll see what happens to your manners!’
‘That’s all, thank you, Ah Soy,’ Harriet said. ‘We won’t need anything else till the others get back.’ Glancing at Carruthers, she saw that one of the raisins from the allegedly raisin-free cake was nestling in his moustache. Ah Soy appeared to have noticed this too: he grinned at her over Carruthers’ head as he padded back to the kitchen block.
Now Carruthers began a monologue designed to convince her that, if something was in short supply but demand was buoyant, prices were bound to rise. Although she didn’t feel comfortable with this man, allowing him to dominate the conversation was one way of filling in the time before the others returned.
But perhaps she’d missed something. Carruthers was actually talking about specifics: stock prices rather than a political economy treatise. Yes, he was talking of cattle; she’d been distracted by his treatment of Ah Soy and she wasn’t being a good hostess. Maybe he owed thousands to the South Australian government for his leasehold, she thought while watching him more attentively. Probably he was plagued by worries about the health of his cattle and the economic depression affecting all the colonies. She began to feel sorry for him. He might be affected by one of the bank failures they’d read about in the last batch of newspapers that had come with Frank O’Connor.
Yet when he finished summarising for her what he termed the labour problem, she decided unequivocally that she didn’t like him. ‘There’re only two sorts of black fellers,’ he said. ‘The blighters who fawn all over you and the blighters who’d put a spear through you if you didn’t get them first. We’ve got too many of those murderous blighters and not enough of the fawning sort.’
She looked at his eyes, as relentlessly blue as the sky. ‘There are no problems like that here,’ she said. Beyond him, she saw plumes of smoke from the campfires by the billabong drifting slowly through the pandanus palms and paper bark trees and diffusing into the still air.
‘Don’t you believe it. At Empty Creek we’re getting our cattle speared all the time and it’s getting worse. The only way to stop the wild blacks spearing the cattle is to put the fear of the devil into them. Take a few pot shots at their campsites, for example. We pay big rentals to the South Australian government for this land and it’s time the government troopers looked after us a bit so we don’t have to take the law into our own hands. I reckon there should be a bounty on the blacks, a pound for every curly black head. At my reckoning I’d have myself thirty quid by now.’
When Harriet gasped, he seemed gratified by her reaction. But those days of massacres of blacks had ended over a decade ago, she’d heard. He was the type of man who would boast about something in order to shock you, and she wondered how much truth lay behind it. ‘No wonder you’re short of workers,’ she said.
‘Keep the lubras for that,’ he said, laughing. ‘They’re good workers day and night.’
Perhaps I’ve become an honorary man, Harriet thought, and that’s why he mentions this. Or conceivably he was simply baiting her again.
‘More use than the white women,’ he added, hard eyes gauging her reaction. ‘God’s police all of them, yourself excepted.’
&n
bsp; She wondered whether to argue with this man or to tread more warily. She hadn’t been cautious with Brady and she’d made an enemy there. It would be a good idea to avoid making any more.
At that moment Bella appeared with a pot of hot water. She looked uncomfortable, and Harriet watched Carruthers overtly scrutinise her, looking her up and down as if she were livestock at a country fair. He was almost licking his lips, Harriet thought; thick lips under a greying moustache. But he wasn’t appreciating Bella’s beauty as something to admire; he was viewing her as something to possess. ‘You can go now,’ she told Bella.
‘They’re good workers night and day,’ Carruthers said once more, as if she might have missed his meaning. ‘If you know how to treat them, that is.’
‘I heard you the first time, Mr Carruthers.’ She turned away as a black cockatoo flew overhead, screeching. Should she point out that if the settlers killed the men and fornicated with the women the black race would soon die out? No, this was precisely what men like Carruthers wanted. Doomed to extinction, that’s what the white settlers often said about the blacks. Doomed to extinction so it wouldn’t matter if they hastened it on a bit. Whiten the blacks who were left by miscegenation and then whitewash this with inevitability, for they all knew that God’s chosen race was white.
The sinking sun now sliced so sharply into the horizon that the sky appeared to be bathed in blood. With relief she observed the column of dust along the track to the homestead that signalled the return of the others.
Presently Henry and two of the white stockmen joined them on the verandah. Sarah, looking pale and tired, stopped long enough to say a brief hello. Bending low over Harriet, she whispered, ‘Where’s Bella?’