Long Gone the Corroboree

by Tony Parsons

  Evans looked out across the bushes towards the creek. "Billy, his mother and Dooley Davis are three of the few locals who trace to the old Gubbi Gubbi who were here when this place was first settled. I suppose you can’t blame ‘em for bein’ interested in what’s goin’ on here. One of their old camps was on the opposite side of the creek to your place. The story is that one of the big killings was supposed to have happened there. And what Gubbi Gubbi were left after the massacre, Jack Hewitt Senior finished off with poisoned flour. Before the last few Gubbi Gubbi cleared out, they killed Old Man Hewitt, bashed his head in with clubs. He’s buried here on your block somewhere, so the story goes.

  “I dare say that with land rights, the Gubbi Gubbi descendants could claim all this was a sacred site. But it wasn’t treated real sacred back then. It was a killing site. They might be able to claim ownership and ask for it back except that I’m not sure that they’ve had continuous ownership, not even of Lilly’s place and certainly not of your block, Clay, because nobody lived here after Young Jack Hewitt cashed in his chips. Nobody local wanted to own it because of the ghost stories. From all I’ve been told, it seems as if Old Jack was a really tough old bastard and poisoning Gubbi Gubbi wouldn’t have caused him to lose any sleep. ‘Blue’ Delaney might have told you how he was supposed to have come here from down south where he’d been a convict and then a bushranger.”

  “Yes, he did. He was supposed to have brought a heap of gold with him,” Steele said.

  “That’s what was said but there were so many stories about him and Jack Junior. One day maybe, someone will write a book about them. Could be you, Clay,” Evans said with a grin.

  “Did anyone ever see any of this gold?” Steele asked.

  “Yes and no, Clay. My old man said that his bank manager told him that the bank had records that they’d paid Jack Junior cash for gold, but it was kept very quiet so Junior wasn’t visited by blokes looking for his pile. Young Jack was a pretty tough bloke too and he had a couple of shotguns for company. There’s stuff about him and his father in the historical library they’ve got in town. Old Jack’s back was supposed to have been a mass of scars from the lash, so he’d have been a convict sure enough. Whether he’d done his time or cleared out before it was up, nobody seemed to know. And he wasn’t the kind of man you’d ask that sort of question. Whether he’d been a bushranger and brought gold I wouldn’t know either. But Young Jack lived until he was a hundred and three and he never seemed to be short of money. I mean, he had enough to live on long after he stopped workin’ for a living. The woman he lived with kicked the bucket long before Young Jack snuffed it. The story is that Young Jack paid cash for everything he bought. Maybe there was gold and Young Jack knew where his old man had hidden it. He died more peacefully than Old Jack anyway,” Josh said.

  “Mr Delaney gave me a potted history of the property. It didn’t put me off owning it. In fact, I’m happy to be able to make the old place live again. The British made Norfolk Island a hellhole with unimaginable treatment meted out to men and women, same as they did in Brisbane and Tasmania, but look at Norfolk Island today. Norfolk trades on its awful past and how many people know that Brisbane was a place of great cruelty for the convicts sent there? There was an exclusion zone around it so nobody would know, or be able to help, anyone who escaped. Norfolk Island and Brisbane have lived down their pasts. And this wasn’t the only place where indigenous Australians were murdered because it happened in many places. Some tribes simply ceased to exist. Look at what happened in Tasmania. The original inhabitants were all gone in about eighty years after the first European settlement. People thought different back then. The indigenous folk weren’t thought to be of much account, so how many Europeans grieved for their passing? There’s a lot of righteous indignation now and some land has been handed back but nothing can erase what happened in those early years,” Steele said.

  “Do ya reckon the first Australians would have fared any better if some other country than Britain had grabbed Australia?” Evans asked.

  “No, I don’t. They could have fared worse. Most of the so-called Christian countries were heavily involved in slavery over some hundreds of years. Portugal was one of the initiators of the slave trade. Spain wiped out the Aztecs and appropriated everything of value they owned. Spain persecuted its own citizens during the Spanish Inquisition, so our indigenous people wouldn’t have had much future under them either. At about the time of Australia’s early development, France was busy lopping off the heads of its aristocrats and when it wasn’t doing that, it was fighting somewhere and responsible for great loss of life. The Vietnamese certainly didn’t welcome their tenure there and kicked them out as soon as they could manage it. The Netherlands dragged its feet about the abolition of the slave trade and the Indonesians got rid of them as soon as they could. As for the Russians, well, if you weren’t an aristocrat, life was hard. I doubt the Czars would have been concerned about anyone on land they wanted to acquire. The Dutch would certainly have colonised Australia. They illustrated that in South Africa. They were hard people and didn’t show much benevolence towards the locals. Apartheid was a rotten business. No, I don’t think our indigenous Australians would have fared any better under a different coloniser. They might have been made slaves,” Steele said.

  Josh swilled a remnant of tea around in his mug while he thought about Steele’s summation. “When ya think about it, gives ya a queer feelin’ to be sitting here on what used to be Gubbi Gubbi country. They’ve all gone, all the full bloods from the local tribe anyway. That’s unless there’s any of them left up north. Lilly told me that one of the descendants was definitely still alive. There was supposed to be a small bunch of Gubbi Gubbi that cleared out when all the killings were on. That was after they did for Old Hewitt. I suppose, there’s only the likes of Lilly, Billy, Dooley and their relatives left around here now.”

  Steele nodded. “There were some dark deeds done here, that’s for sure, Josh.”

  “This was one of the first of what might be called permanent dwellings built after European settlers came here. It’s a wonder one o’ them historical societies didn’t grab the cottage and do it up. I checked to see if there was anything heritage on the place, but it was clear. One day, it could be famous,” Evans said with a grin.

  “You wanted to pull it down and build a modern house in its place,” Steele reminded him.

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t get the drift then of what you had in mind. Now I do. What are you going to do when we get the place finished?” Josh asked.

  “Move in,” Steele said, deadpan.

  “I fell into that one, didn’t I? I meant, what else are you going to do?”

  “I plan to grow vegetables and herbs, and maybe I’ll do a spot of fishing. And just maybe, I’ll kick off my writing with a book about this place and its history. But I don’t want to think too far ahead. I’m happy to be alive after what I went through in America and I’m going to take each day as it comes,” Steele said.

  “This place would be too quiet for most people but I reckon it might be just right for you. You don’t mind living on your own?” Evans asked.

  “Not a scrap. I’m looking forward to it.”

  “How do you think your last girlfriend would like living here… if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “She wouldn’t like it at all. My last girlfriend was a television personality who had a great unit near Sydney Harbour. She liked the bright lights and dining at expensive restaurants,” Clay said with a gentle smile.

  “Ya don’t say. Yeah, well, I reckon a girl like her wouldn’t turn handsprings about livin’ here. Course, the right girl might not mind if she liked ya enough.”

  “You appear to know a bit about women,” Steele suggested.

  “Naw, not me. I keep me eyes open and I tell you straight, women scare me. I haven’t found one yet that I’d like to have with me for the rest of my life. Until I find one that I reckon is the right one, I’ll stay a bachelor. The building an
d cricket keep me busy and I go to the coast for a fish every now and then. I like the saltwater fish. I’ve got a boat,” Evans said.

  “Keeping busy is the secret to being happy, Josh. Books are a great help, too. I read a lot. Especially at night,” Steele said.

  “I can’t say I’m a great reader. I like the Idriess books because he wrote about some pretty rough places and I like Upfield’s books because of the way he writes about the outback. Them aside, about the only other books I ever read were Zane Grey’s. I used to be big on westerns but his were the best. The way he wrote about Arizona and Texas and Colorado made you want to see ’em. Bloody wonderful he was,” Evans said.

  “I know what you mean, Josh,” Steele said with a nod. He wondered what Zane Grey would have written about this place and about the distinctive peaks of the Glass House Mountains. “Some people thought he was over the fence with his descriptions,” he added.

  “Yeah, well, I can understand that some people would say that. But if you’re never likely to see those places, I reckon that reading about them would be the next best thing. And his men were real men and his women, real women, if you understand what I mean. Of course, nobody talks that way anymore, but I suppose they did in those days,” Evans said and raised his thick, fair eyebrows in what seemed an almost comical gesture.

  “There’s been plenty of real men and women here, Josh. Australia couldn’t have progressed so quickly without them. We’ve had our heroes and heroines, many of them never acknowledged, but distance seems to add lustre to people’s deeds,” Steele said. It was as close to a reproof as Steele ever made to Evans but the builder didn’t seem to regard it in that light.

  “I suppose you’re right. I never looked at it that way. I never thought of us having anyone like Lasseter with his black guns,” Evans said with a grin.

  “He was just a fictional character, Josh. Lasseter never existed. Sure, America had its great scouts and Indian fighters and its pioneer women. I’ve read about them too. Just about every white woman who was captured by the Indians in Texas was raped. And still, they went with their men to begin farms. So did our women, Josh. They didn’t have to contend with Comanches but they did have to contend with isolation and heat in places where the bite of a snake often meant certain death because there were no doctors and no anti-venom. And sometimes childbirth meant death too. The deeds of many of those people have never been put in books. I’d like to write about some of them, Josh,” Steele said.

  “You sure have a way with words, Clay,” Josh said with a nod of his head. “I’ve got some sort of an idea why your books were so successful. Me, I was never any good at English or writing anything.”

  “Each to his own, Josh. We make the best use of the talents we have,” Steele said looking across at the cottage that Josh was steadily rebuilding.

  Little by little the old dwelling came back to life, and when it was completed, it didn’t look at all like a modern dwelling but very much like it would have appeared when it was first erected. Of course, there were changes. It now had a higher roof and gauzed verandas front and rear. The old iron water tanks had been replaced by two dark green tanks that merged into the surrounding greenery. The slab walls were back in place but now lined. The internal flooring was of polished timber and the bathroom and laundry were modernised. There was a bath and a shower and a hot water service, too. The kitchen was equipped with an electric stove, refrigerator, toaster and jug. And it was liveable once more.

  When the final touches had been made and before any furniture was installed in the new dwelling, Billy went from room to room in wide-eyed wonder. The old building had come back to life before his eyes in a fashion he could never have dreamed possible. He’d seen it all happening but still, it was difficult for him to see how Clay and his builders had been able to replicate the old building.

  “What do you think of it, Billy?” Steele asked.

  “It’s really good, Mr Clay,” Billy said. He seemed lost for words. The actual building of a house was old hat, as Billy had seen plenty of houses being built: it was the fact that the new building was a facsimile of the old dwelling that stunned him.

  Steele had been so impressed with Billy’s willingness to work that one afternoon, he suggested that he keep back half of the money Billy had earned and he’d contribute the other half for the purchase of a new guitar.

  “Dooley would probably just smash it too, Mr Clay,” the boy said.

  “You could keep it here, Billy. Keep it here and come and play it here,” Steele told him.

  The boy’s face lit up. “That would be beaut, Mr Clay,” Billy said enthusiastically.

  True to his word, Steele handed over the guitar the day they finished working on the cottage. “Here’s your guitar, Billy,” Steele said and handed the case to him.

  “Crikey,” the boy exclaimed as he examined the new instrument. “It’s a real bewdy. A lot better than me old one.”

  “You earned it, Billy. You did a lot of hard work here. Come back and play it whenever you feel like it. You can use one of the verandas so you don’t disturb me. Some day when I can afford it, I’ll get Mr Evans to fix up a room for me near the old toilet and you’ll be able to use that to play your music when I’m working in the house,” Steele said.

  “Gee, thanks, Mr Clay. Thanks a lot,” Billy said with a beaming grin. Billy’s pleasure was manifested in his smile. The boy didn’t smile very often but when he did, it was something to see. Steele thought he was a striking boy. He hadn’t had much experience with young people and he was enjoying Billy’s company. There was a freshness and frankness to Billy that he hadn’t previously known.

  “Can I bring me mum down to see your house now, Mr Clay? Now, it’s finished, I mean.” Josh Evans had packed up and left so Steele and the boy had the new building to themselves.

  There was such eagerness in Billy’s request. Despite what Josh had said, he couldn’t see any harm in allowing Billy’s mother to come and inspect the renovated building. The cottage probably meant something to Billy’s mother, which wasn’t difficult to understand, considering her forebears had once camped on the land on which the cottage was built. And it wasn’t as if Lilly Sanders was unaware of the cottage because she’d walked past it to catch a bus at the crossroads.

  “Of course, you can bring your mum, Billy. But give me three or four days to furnish the place. I need to buy some furniture and rugs to give it a bit of warmth. I mean, so that it looks like a place someone lives in,” Steele said.

  “Mum wouldn’t worry about that, Mr Clay.”

  “I do. Give me three or four days and I’ll have a decent chair for your mother to sit on.”

  Steele was aware that he wasn’t flush with money. He’d had quite a lot of money at his disposal before he left Australia but treatment in America had used up a good deal of it and he hadn’t had a lot left when he went to Israel. The cottage renovations had all but wiped him out. He was paid royalties every six months but there would be none from his fourth and most recent book because he’d directed that they all be paid to the Salvation Army. His most urgent consideration was to produce another book so that he could live on the advance. He didn’t want to dip too deeply into the royalties as that was the money he needed for living expenses. It wasn’t going to cost him much for food as he planned on growing vegetables and catching fish in the creek, but there would be bills for electricity and for rates, not to mention vehicle expenses. But he wasn’t so hard up that he couldn’t afford some furniture, even if most of it was second-hand.

  He found a second-hand shop and purchased a solid kitchen table, four chairs, a wardrobe, a double bed, a kitchen dresser and some cutlery and plates. He paid for these items to be delivered and then moved on to a shop that sold new furniture, mattresses, carpets and rugs. He couldn’t afford much new furniture but he wanted a clean mattress and some rugs to put on his new timber floors. Steele’s last call was to a hardware shop where he bought a fork and spade, a sprinkler head for his hose
and a variety of seeds.

  The furniture arrived late in the afternoon and didn’t take long to move into position. Steele saw at once that he really needed a long comfortable divan and he thought of Shelley’s white leather lounge set and smiled. Shelley would consider his furniture very plebeian, but he knew hers would look entirely out of place here at the cottage. Still, it pleased him that he’d made a start on furnishing his new dwelling and the rugs looked particularly homey on the polished floors. There were rugs in the two bedrooms, the living room and a smaller strip carpet in the kitchen. The kitchen table would have to act as his desk for the time being and he placed his computer at the opposite end to which he would have his meals. The kitchen now had a table, four white chairs, a dresser and a refrigerator. Josh had sold him a kitchen sink and a set of cupboards, which he had removed from a kitchen he’d renovated, and Steele felt that he was now very well set up to look after himself. He could add further items when his finances improved. The fantasy he’d imagined throughout his treatment was now a reality.

  But when Steele walked through his new dwelling, the bareness of the living room was so pronounced that he decided he would have to install some kind of divan. He thought of Shelley’s chic apartment and divan, and sighed. A living room without some form of seating was not to be borne. What if he had visitors? Where could he put them? On the kitchen chairs? It wasn’t good enough. So he drove back to town and purchased a cane divan, two matching chairs and some flower-patterned cushions. He was able to fit these items into his van and drove home again feeling very pleased with himself. And when he was done placing them, the living room certainly looked much cosier.

  The next day was Saturday. He’d lost track of the days but the salesman at the second-hand shop had told him that he would be going to bowls the following day and to the coast the day after, so Steele knew it had to be Saturday. It was a lovely, warm morning, with a faint breeze riffling through his trees. Steele put on a pair of shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, took the spade and fork from where he’d left them beside the back veranda and walked down towards the creek. Here, he marked out a rectangular piece of ground and began clearing it of weeds before turning the ground over for his vegetable patch, the first part anyway. He’d had a crash course in horticulture while at the kibbutz but the soil there was very poor and needed a lot of attention to make it productive. The Israeli workers had attended to that but here, the ground was lovely to work, red ground full of humus.