The Clay Dreaming

by Ed Hillyer

  ‘Mr Bendyshe?’

  ‘To whit, when we get an Indian into broadcloth or an Australian into uniform, we think the great experiment of our civilisation has been successfully accomplished, and that our “travelled monkey” is a promising type of all his kind. But in truth he is only a talking parrot, a well-bred wolf, a performing tiger, whose congeners still in the forest are what they ever were. Their ability to follow the trail of a tribe or individual, their recognition of the latter by his footsteps, even in the sand, and their skill in building a native hut of branches, which it appears no European has yet been able to accomplish satisfactorily, only place them on a level with the dog and the bird.

  ‘Had they shown an ability to depart from their traditional habitudes of thought and action, and to adopt in their place, however imperfectly, the higher modes of life introduced by the colonists, there would have been some hope for them; but of this they seem utterly incapable, and therefore their doom is sealed. Without the forest to live and breed in, they ultimately perish, like beasts in a menagerie.’

  ‘For shame, sirs,’ a lone voice was shouting. ‘For shame.’ Sarah was almost surprised it was not hers. A general kerfuffle arose, ruffled feathers, some boos. Sarah heard again the same protestant voice she had thought to recognise earlier. ‘We are not monsters,’ it cried, ‘we’re moral people! God knows our business.’

  Hastily she crept forward.

  ‘Sir,’ replied the Chair, curtly. ‘Identify yourself!’

  ‘The Reverend G. Alston.’

  Only by leaning precariously over the edge of the balcony could Sarah see him, as he broke out of the crowd and into the central aisle

  ‘Look to yourselves, gentlemen,’ he declared, firmly. ‘Look to yourselves!’

  ‘Are you leaving? Goodbye!’

  The Reverend Alston was a former associate of Lambert’s, one of the few whose position and opinions she had always respected; her immediate impulse was to follow him out.

  The Chair moved to restore order. ‘Mr Row?’

  ‘With all respect due to Mr Bendyshe, despite the current trend in scientific thinking there is a very great gap between man and the animals.’

  ‘Mr Reddie…’

  ‘With regard to Mr Row’s excellent observation, supposing for a moment the Darwinian theory to be true, when Mr Wallace addressed the Society, he said that since man has reached such a high condition the law of natural selection no longer applies to him.’

  ‘But does it not apply in the case of the monkey,’ asked the Chairman, ‘which is developed into man?’

  Laughter.

  ‘It ceased after man was developed. And I recall a pertinent remark of Dr Hunt’s on the occasion. He said what a poor natural law it must be, if mortal man can so easily revoke it.’

  The man himself stood, creating an expectant hush.

  ‘W-w… W-w-would…’ Dr Hunt gave up and simply beckoned.

  Dunbar Heath, as Chair, interposed. ‘Would you like to come to the front, Mr Wood?’ he said. ‘Come to the front. Our next speaker, gentlemen, is the Reverend J. G. Wood, who has very kindly agreed to share with us a preview of some findings from his forthcoming treatise, The Natural History of Man.’

  To applause the Reverend Wood took to the stage, another small man in black suit in a large room too entirely filled with them.

  ‘Whenever a higher race occupies the same grounds as a lower, the latter perishes…and the new world is always built on the ruins of the old. Such is the history of the Aboriginal tribes of Australia, whose remarkable manners and customs are fast disappearing, together with the natives themselves. The poor creatures are aware of the fact, and seem to have lost all pleasure in the games and dances that formerly enlivened their existence. Many of the tribes are altogether extinct, and others are dwindling so fast that the people have lost all heart and spirit, and succumb almost without complaint to the fate that awaits them.

  ‘In one tribe for example, the Barrabool, the births recorded during seventeen years were only 24, being scarcely two in three years, while the deaths have been between eighteen and nineteen per annum. Mr Lloyd gives a touching account of the survivors of this once flourishing tribe. “When I first landed in Geelong, in 1837,” he reports, “the Barrabool tribe numbered upwards of 300 sleek and healthy-looking blacks. A few months previous to my leaving that town, in May 1853, they showed me with outstretched fingers the total and unhappy state of the local population: nine women, seven men, and one sickly child. Enquiring after my old dark friends of the early days I received the following pathetic reply.”’

  Screwing up his face, Wood parleyed an idea of Aboriginal speech. ‘“Aha, Mitter Looyed, Ballyyang dedac, Jaga-jaga dedac!”’ Wood looked up from his various papers. ‘Etcetera,’ he said, ‘many others named equally “dedac”, meaning as one might expect that they were dead.’

  The man might as well have painted his cheeks with bootblack. Sarah thought she might leave. If she could only glean something of Brippoki, but nothing good could be learned from these men. Nothing. She stood.

  ‘This one tribe,’ Wood went on, ‘is typical of the others, all of whom are surely, and some not slowly, approaching the end of their existence. They are but following the order of the world, the lower race preparing a home for the higher. Do not mourn them excessively, for the Aborigines perform barely half of their duties as men. As it has been noted, this vast country was to them a common. They bestowed no labour upon the land. Their ownership, their right, was nothing more than that of the Emu or the Kangaroo.

  ‘In due process of time white men have introduced new arts into their country, clearing away useless forest and covering the rescued earth with luxuriant wheat crops, bringing also with them herds of sheep and horned cattle to feed upon the vast plains which formerly nourished but a few kangaroo, multiplying in such numbers that they not only supply the whole of their adopted land with food, but their flesh is exported to the Mother Country. The superior knowledge of the white man thus gave to the Aborigines the means of securing their supplies of food, and therefore his advent was not a curse, but a benefit to them.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ Various members of the audience expressed their hearty approval.

  ‘They could not,’ said Wood, twinkling his eyes, ‘take advantage of the opportunities thus offered to them, and instead of seizing upon these new means of procuring the three great necessaries of human life…food, clothing, and lodging…not only refused to employ them, but did their best to drive their benefactors out of the country, murdering the colonists, killing their cattle, destroying their crops, and burning their houses. The means were offered to them of infinitely bettering their social condition, means they could not appreciate, and, as a natural consequence, they have had to make way for those who could. These I term the unvariable Laws of Progression. The inferior must always make way for the superior, and such has ever been the case with the savage.’

  ‘Hrrrah, hrrrah.’

  Copious applause. Sarah’s head was spinning. She had to sit down again.

  Wood bowed and backed away as the secretary took the stand.

  ‘I thank Messrs Wake and Wood for their most excellent speeches,’ he said. ‘Almost everywhere, save in the older and more civilised nations, we see one world of people passing off the stage, and another, more highly developed world coming on. In a few years the surface of the earth will be utterly altered. Whole races that now rule supreme over immense tracts will have passed away for ever, and civilisation will turn to better account the lands that have so long been the undisturbed home of the “black fellow”. A new era will be inaugurated, and human responsibilities vastly multiplied.’

  More applause.

  Somebody within the audience rose to their feet.

  ‘Such a worldwide reform has never before occurred,’ he said, ‘but if so, may it not, at some far distant date, occur again? Europe, now pre-eminent in all the attainments of man, may have it for her destiny to repopulate the globe, an
d then to tarry in her onward career. It may be the lot of nations now springing into existence at the antipodes to outstrip her in the pursuit of knowledge, and, when ages shall have passed away, to supply, in their turn, a nobler race, a more perfect humanity, to the lands which now rank foremost in civilisation.’

  Sarah understood the reference made to that same newspaper article, inspired in part by Aboriginal cricket at Lord’s, so annoying to Lambert. The very notion sparked off a good deal of disgruntled murmuring.

  Not to be outdone, the unknown speaker raised his voice louder. ‘The New Zealand offspring of the imagination of our great essayist may be no unreal creation of the imagination,’ he supposed, ‘and England may yet be indebted to her descendants in the south for a people who shall as far surpass her present occupants as the civilised Englishman of this day excels the halfbarbarous Maori.’

  Whether he was being brave or foolish, the commentator was howled down.

  ‘The Chair recognises Dr Bertholdt Seemann.’

  ‘It is not wort’while to waste time in discussing the dream of Gibbon or Macaulay respecting the New Zealander,’ he said, ‘in his looking at the ruins of London! These speculations are only interesting as showing the profound ignorance of Anthropological science in men of genius and learning.’

  Boomerang-like, the comment rebounded on the Fellow who had thrown it out.

  Dr Hunt checked at his pocket watch, nose twitching. He looked like Tenniel’s white rabbit from Lewis Carroll’s Alice; but, when he spoke, the part voiced was that of the Mad Hatter.

  ‘Scientific societies,’ he spat, ‘are not intended to be theatres for the display of the eccentricities of their members, or f-f-for the ventilation of individual crochets or crudities, but for the real advancement of science. I do not know at this moment of ernnhny race who has raised themselves since we first gnnnuu them.’

  ‘Mstrrh Wood?’

  ‘The owrahrr mode of dealing with theeze people is the safe one to adopt with ahhrr savages…never trust uhhm, and nahrahhr cheat ruhhm.’

  ‘Grrr Ga?’

  ‘Hahrrr rahhrrr snarrrrl ra raa. Nhgggnnr.’

  ‘Vvrrr. Shhhhha aahuunnnr gurrrrnn. Pcha, pchaa. Grrrawaa.’

  They were old baboons, sucking at plums and vomiting. Sarah fled. Her feet tripped and thumped on the carpeted stair. She had to grope for the brass handrail, salt tears streaking her cheeks and running into the corners of her mouth. Pharisees! Near-sighted Pharisees!

  Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

  The distance from Brippoki’s chosen camp to Number 89 Great Russell-street is about four miles, negotiated at a steady jog.

  Dragging his heels, he arrives at the Guardian’s house later than usual. He arrives to find the window-glass shut and the house in darkness.

  Brippoki creeps around the tops of the buildings opposite. Huddled into a crouch, arms clasped over his head, he forces his heartbeat to slow.

  A firebug shivers from room to room. Thara baiame. The Guardian sits with the father.

  The light retreats, is snuffed out. Brippoki sky-walks around to the rear of the house, swinging from the branches of the tall trees there.

  He observes Tharalarkin in the small room behind that of the father. She stands – dressed in a long white cloth he has seen once before – combing out her silvered hair. Unmoving, she stops and stares long and hard into the looking glass. She stands and stares until his limbs grow stiff, until long after steam from the hot tap has smoked her reflection, wiping out all trace of it.

  CHAPTER XLV

  Wednesday the 17th of June, 1868

  MISSING LINKS

  “With few associates, in remote

  And silent woods I wander, far from those,

  My former partners of the peopled scene;

  With few associates, and not wishing more

  Here much I ruminate, and much I may,

  With other views of men and manners now

  Than once, and others of a life to come.”

  ~ William Cowper, The Task

  As sure as day gives way to night, so eventually the night passes once more into day. In order that he might gather up the dew from where it spangles the longest grass, Brippoki rises early from his couch.

  Hunger as much as thirst aggravates his wants. Pickings are slim – more so than back in the World, even deep in the desert country. He takes up a small spade of wood fashioned between idle hours, his karko. With this he can dig for grubs, edible roots, even a frog should one be sleeping under the ground. From each he may suck sometimes no more than a sip of liquid, and then roast them on the ashes of his modest fire. This bright morning, half an hour’s steady work only wins him a few stems of reed from the marshy bog. These he fires and then chews at length, to extract the softer parts, and as much goodness as they might grudgingly yield.

  Wading in amongst the reeds, half burying himself in the mud – all that remains of the small canalside brook as it dries up – chills Brippoki’s blood. Lying supine beside his campfire, he builds it up again, until sufficient to roast a dish of water-beetles.

  Brippoki reaches into his coolamon to retrieve the strands of bark fibre prepared a few days earlier. He has, meantime, been rinsing them in the cleanest water he can find, and laying them out in the sun to dry. Sitting with one leg tucked beneath the other, he selects two small pieces of the teased bark and, under an open palm, begins to roll them along his outstretched thigh.

  With the skill of muscle memory he weaves the fibrous threads into string, kaargerum. Such menial tasks fell to him when only a boy, working alongside the women.

  A man’s True life does not begin at birth, or during infancy, spent among the womenfolk, when he has only a number for a name. Without status, without sex, without even a proper name, he is called Kertameru. Only slightly older, and Brippoki is stolen away by the Curadgie, to undergo the first of the ceremonies that would lead to his eventual manhood. The Curadgie, foremost among his mob’s elders, is a very wizened old man, able to foresee events before they happen, and to communicate with the restless spirits of the departed.

  Life’s journey is no smooth path – so says the Curadgie, a clever-man among his people. It is a series of obstacles that must be overcome – knots, along a string – positions an individual must be qualified for, in order that they may then be occupied. Rights of way and rites of passage, each stage of life carries with it its own test, its own ritual, and its own price. These are lessons Brippoki knows all too well. He bears the scars inside and out, each badge of pain an indelible mark.

  Although he can never speak of it to anyone, Brippoki remembers his first rites of passage – the ordeal of it – clear as day.

  Not ceasing in his labours, Brippoki begins to rock back and forth where he squats, on his heel. His eyes lack focus. He sings.

  ‘Wiltongarrolo kundando.’

  His voice, pitched high, quavers. ‘Kadlottikurrelo paltando.’ ‘Strike with the tuft of eagle feathers, strike him with the girdle’…

  He is drenched from head to toe in blood, drawn hot and fresh from the arm of a bourka. The anonymity of early childhood ends this day. Still just a boy, he is no longer a number, but receives the first of his names – Parnko. Limits are imposed on the goorong he is allowed to eat, the living embodiments of the sacred totems. The flesh of the red kangaroo is forbidden him, as are the females or young of any sort; likewise the white crane, linkara; the wallaby, meracco; the pheasant; three kinds of fish; and two of turtles, rinka and tungkanka. Wilya kundarti now by status, he is allowed to carry a wirri for killing birds, and his first karko, with which to dig for grubs.

  It is in his fourteenth summer that he is ready to enter the third stage of his life. Like every other male child, he must endure the trials of man-making before he can be fully accepted as a mature adult, through rites of circumcision.

  Early one morning the boys are seized from behind, a tigh
t band fastened across the eyes of each. They wail in fear of their lives. Their captors lead them a few thousand paces distant from the camp, out of sight and earshot of any of the women or children. They are made to lie on the ground, and covered over with a possum-skin cloak – unable to see what the men are about to do. He hears a curious sound, an intermittent thump, like the limping of a cripple – first one, and then others joining. The air soon fills with dust. He can tell from the grit between his teeth, the drought on his tongue. Above them starts a terrible groaning, among them whimpering, and then dampness. One of his brothers has wet himself. A shriek and a beating of limbs as someone is seized and dragged out from beneath the cloak. Upside-down, through a chink of material, he witnesses the fate of the unlucky boy. Then another, and then rough hands grab at his ankles, and it is his turn. Pulled free of the skins, he breaks free of the elders’ grasp and falls flat on his face, only to jump up and run full pelt for the tree-line. Barely ten paces and the heavy body of a Red Ochre Man brings him down, drags him back. The dust of enchantment is blown into his eyes, clouding his vision. Pulled up by the ears, loud cries are ringing in them. The Men, all the men of his clan, little more than silhouette and shadow, they circle him in single file. A katto, or long stick, passes from hand to hand.

  More of a blur then, bodies in motion – the young bodies of his fellows, frozen. The katto. Stamping feet, groans, cries. His tears. The katto, all hands on the katto, the press of bodies, smell of sweat. His own body is picked up and thrown through the air. His eyes burn. The eyes of the Curadgie, face to his face…

  Blood. He tastes blood.

  ‘Mangakurrelo paltando,

  Worrikarrolo paltando,

  …Turtikarrolo paltando!’

  Brippoki pauses to wipe the sweat from his brow, and to staunch his bitten lip.

  After the operation the new beings are kept in isolation, well away from the taint of females, until such time as they are fully healed. Living on a vegetable diet, their heads are constantly anointed with grease and red ochre, bandages wound around them but no blindfold. At the last, they are crowned with ornamental feathers. For some moons following circumcision a yudna, or pubic covering, is worn. When it is removed, according to custom, his boyhood will be over. Having survived his ritual death, the worthy individual is reborn a man.