I was conscious of my age, thirty-seven at that time, which I felt was old for having my first run as supervisor. So I took things pretty seriously. As soon as those boys jumped off the boat, I gauged their worth as labourers. I planned on working them hard, you see. Hardo looked hungover. He winced as he collected his pack and swag. As he trekked the rough track to the work hut, he spewed in the long grass.
But he didn’t say a word, the whole way there.
The others were friendlier – all handshakes and greetings. Billy and Aaron were brothers from down south. They were both burly guys, and bouncing with enthusiasm. When I saw their nervous glances at the beach and grass around them, I felt the warm glow of satisfaction. They’d obviously heard the tales of the Woody Island copperheads. Mansell noticed too, and he tried to set them at ease, saying the snakes were docile this time of year. In that moment, I hated him more than ever.
‘Why’d you bring a gun over here, Rick?’ I asked, as he passed it around. He wasn’t Hardo at that stage. His nickname evolved, over that first work trip, from Rick to Riccardo, and then to Rockhardo, before settling on Hardo. The name suited him, in a funny sort of way. He thought of himself as a hard man, with his swagger and his tales from the streets. But the more you got to know him, the further you could see through his bluster. Hardo stuck, as a joke name, really – but he loved it.
‘I dunno. Shoot stuff, I guess.’ He found a dented International Roast tin in his bag and shook it.
I assumed, from the dull rattle, that it was full of pellets. ‘Well, we don’t kill things over here, man,’ I distinctly recall saying. ‘We’re Landcare workers. We’re supposed to look after the place, not blow the wildlife away.’
‘And you ’specially can’t shoot the birds, ol’ man,’ said Mansell in his Cape Barren Island drawl. ‘They’re the old fellas, you know? The old people – watching over us.’
I felt like slapping the black off his face. I’d been listening to his airy-fairy spiritual shit for the last month, and I was over it.
‘Do you have a problem if I set up a target?’ asked Hardo, looking squarely at me. His chin jutted out in challenge.
‘In your own time, fine. But if anyone gets hurt, it’s on your head.’ I felt like I was backing down a bit, but I didn’t want to seem too overbearing. I didn’t want an us-versus-the-boss situation.
Over the next week, the job took over, and I forgot about the gun. We burned off all the dead gorse plants that Mansell and I had cut and dragged into piles. And we cut and sprayed new ones. Billy and Aaron worked like troopers and were easy to get along with. They argued amongst themselves a lot, though. Billy – the younger brother – was constantly stirring Aaron, and we all got a laugh out of it. Even Mansell, the lazy bastard, seemed to come back to life.
Hardo was in a bad mood most of the time, because he wasn’t allowed to use the chainsaw. Everyone else had a chainsaw ticket, but not him. Billy started calling Hardo ‘poison boy’ because he had to do the spraying. It caught on, and everyone razzed him up. Hardo hated it. He challenged Mansell to a fight during smoko one day. I reckon he thought Mansell was the weakest. I had to step in and give Hardo a warning. He spat on the ground at my feet and walked away.
We had some free time on the weekend and the crew were scratching for things to do. Billy took an empty bottle of White King down the hill from the hut. He set it into the side of a large pile of dry gorse, about sixty metres away. Hardo brought out the rifle and the tin of pellets. The crew started taking shots at the target, but they struggled to hit it. I watched them for a while. They were having a good time, even Mansell was having a go. But I could see that they were aiming straight at the target, not taking the bent barrel into consideration.
Against my better judgement, I said I could hit it. Hardo turned to look at me. I could see his mind ticking over. He didn’t want me to show him up. He’d been trying to undermine my authority with the crew. He was trying to destabilise us.
‘No way you can hit the target. You couldn’t shoot your way out of a fucking bag,’ he scoffed.
Without a word, I reached for the gun. Hardo held on to it for a moment, before reluctantly giving it to me. I crouched down in the gravel and cocked the mechanism. Someone had sprayed canola oil on it, and it snapped back together with an easy click. Rifle loaded, I propped up the barrel with my left hand and snuggled the stock into the right side of my chest.
‘Go, boss,’ said Aaron.
Hardo shot him a look. I could see how the barrel was bent to the left, and slightly up. I adjusted my aim to the lower right side of the target. I fingered the trigger.
It had been years since I’d shot a gun. My first time was with my stepfather, on the bank of Brumbys Creek. I was eight years old. We were duck shooting, and he let me fire the 12-gauge into the willows on the other side. The recoil knocked me on my back and I was winded. I cried, and my stepfather jerked me up by the arm. He wiped the tears from my face with his rough hand, before any of the other shooters could see.
‘Fuck you, Dad,’ I whispered now, and fired. The pellet blew the top off the bottle and sent it spinning away. The crew whooped and cheered.
Hardo swore and kicked at the dirt. ‘What a fluke,’ he said.
‘Fluke, was it?’ I looked back at the target and then winked at the others.
‘Try and hit something else, then,’ said Hardo. ‘Something further away.’
At this point, I know I should have called it quits. I’d upstaged Hardo, and put him in his place. But I wasn’t satisfied with just driving the knife in – I had to twist the blade.
‘Like what?’ I asked.
We looked down the valley, towards the water. On top of a large boulder, something white stood out against the blue backdrop of the sea. It was about eighty metres away, near the beach. We all saw it.
‘That white thing, on the rock,’ said Hardo.
I squinted down the barrel of the gun and lined the object up with the sight. At this distance it was featureless. It was the right size for a bird, but it wasn’t moving. I took a long time to steady the shot. I think I was waiting for Mansell to tell me not to shoot it; not to shoot the bird, because it was one of the old fellas. But he didn’t and, with his silence, I was condemned.
I aimed low and to the right – and fired.
The white thing on the rock disappeared.
I felt a shock go through my body. Tendrils of dread spread through my chest.
‘I think he hit it,’ said Billy.
‘He did!’ shouted Aaron.
‘Let’s go and have a look,’ said Hardo.
I thought he’d be gutted that I’d hit the target, but he wasn’t. He had perked up and was striding down towards the beach. We all followed. I tried to get in front, but Hardo walked fast. I prayed to the universe that I hadn’t killed a bird. I knew Hardo was praying that I had.
We reached the rock. It was tall. At least fifteen feet. There was nothing at the base of the rock, or off to the sides. It must have been a bird, and it must have flown off the rock at the sound of the gun. I started to feel relief.
Then Hardo’s voice came to me. ‘Round here, at the back,’ it said.
My lungs constricted. My mouth went dry.
‘Holy ’taters,’ I heard Mansell say.
I walked around behind the rock.
On the ground was a large white eagle. A trickle of red stained its robust, grey-streaked chest. I picked it up. It was surprisingly heavy, and warm and limp in my arms. I willed it to be alive, but it didn’t move. I had killed countless muttonbirds in my life, but that was different. Birding is in my blood, part of my culture. The death of this eagle was another thing altogether. Only minutes earlier, it was proud, majestic. It probably had a partner, perhaps young ones to care for.
The enormity of what I had done weighed down on me, and I felt hot tears well up in my eyes.
Conscious of showing weakness in front of the crew, I turned my back to them and laid the bird on the ground. I can’t even remember what I said during those moments.
Hardo was the first to speak, and his words, and their timing, were perfectly executed. If I wasn’t so devastated, I may even have admired him.
‘I can’t believe you killed a beautiful sea eagle.’
‘It was your fucking gun, you … prick.’ My accusation came out as a hopeless whine.
But they were already walking away. All of them together, with Hardo in the lead.
The next day there was a fire on the island. That morning we’d been burning off a pile of dry gorse. During smoko, while we were in the hut, a westerly picked up and the fire spread through the dry grass. It moved quickly across the flats and up one side of the mountain. I’d hardly spoken to the crew all morning, but I managed to call them into action. I knew I had lost their respect. Once news of what I had done reached my employers, or the authorities, I expected to lose my job. And now, with a major fire on the island, I was done for.
‘It’s because you killed that eagle,’ said Mansell, as we ran out to fight the fire.
I didn’t reply. I wanted to feel anger towards him, but I couldn’t. I knew he was right. He had been right all along, and I didn’t listen. Besides, anger seemed to be missing from my emotional repertoire that day. All I could feel was sadness and regret – then, and for a long time after. Looking back, I think that lack of fury was a good thing for me, at the time. It didn’t last, though.
Hardo ended up with the supervisor job. But, of course, that’s what he always wanted. Maybe that’s why he brought the gun in the first place.
It took a while for the fury to find me, for it to settle like a cold bullet in the chambers of my heart.
It’s still there. Most days, I can ignore it. But in the grip of a terrible hangover, when the black eye opens up, it comes to life within me. And I wonder, then, which old fella it was who I killed. I wonder how much of my life, after that day, was shaped by that action.
But most of all, I wonder what would happen now if I got my hands on another gun. A straight one. If they let me back on that island.
Hardo still works there, you know.
THE BLACKFELLAS FROM HERE
The brass plaque read: The owners acknowledge that this house stands on Aboriginal land.
It was neatly fixed to the brickwork by the side of the doorbell. The house was an impressive three-storey on the edge of the Launceston CBD. Fairytale windows, set into a gabled roof, provided a million-dollar view of City Park. The front yard was surrounded by a high brick fence, and in a green pond by the path leading to the front door, there stood two smiling, moss-covered cherubs – frozen in eternal glee. The house screamed old money.
‘Rich bastards,’ said Kat to herself, as she walked up the steps and onto the porch. Turning back towards the pond, she flicked the smouldering remains of her cigarette at one of the cherubs. It bounced off the concrete eyeball and fell into the water with a hiss.
A week earlier, the house had featured in the real-estate guide of the local newspaper. One of the photos had been a close-up of the plaque. The owner, Dr James Clifford – a prominent psychiatrist from Launceston – had been reported as saying that, he and his family hoped others would follow suit and provide similar gestures to the Aboriginal people, both past and present.
Kat pressed the doorbell and a gong resounded from deep within the house.
Within seconds, a silhouette appeared in the glass panel in the door. The outside light came on, and the door was opened by a man in his mid-fifties, who was cradling a half-filled brandy snifter. He wore a maroon cardigan, neatly pressed slacks and a pair of worn but expensive-looking house shoes. His black hair – grey at the temples – was wet and slicked back, as if he had just showered. A spicy scent wafted off him, accompanied by the unmistakable smell of roast meat from inside the house.
The man lowered his head slightly and squinted at his visitor over his glasses. ‘Can I help you?’ His voice was calm and pleasant. Kat immediately pegged him as a schmoozer.
‘Good evening, sir. Are you James Clifford?’
‘Yes, I am. Why?’
‘I was hoping I could talk with you about something.’
James looked his visitor up and down, his eyes taking in Kat’s lithe figure. He took a sip from his glass and leaned against the doorframe. ‘Well, we’re about to have dinner. Are you selling something?’ he asked, with a wink.
‘I’m not selling anything, Mr Clifford—’
‘Doctor Clifford,’ he interjected. He gave Kat a lazy smile, like someone who knows they will impress.
‘I was hoping to talk to you about your plaque, Doctor Clifford.’
‘Ah yes, I’ve been getting a few questions about that lately. What would you like to know?’
‘My name is Amy,’ Kat lied. ‘I’m a student at the university and I’m doing a paper on Aboriginal land return. I was hoping to ask you about what motivated you to install a plaque acknowledging that this is Aboriginal land.’
‘Okay, well, I suppose I can answer some questions, ah … Amy. Come in. If you don’t mind, I’ll eat my dinner while we talk?’
He held the door open for Kat to enter, and she did.
‘Don’t worry about taking your shoes off,’ he said, taking in her high-top Doc Martens. ‘There’s enough lace there to rope a sail.’
The house was warm and the smell of meat was stronger inside, making Kat’s stomach growl. She pulled her backpack from her shoulder and followed James’s gesture to head towards an open door up the hall. The clanking of kitchenware sounded down the passage.
‘Sorry if this is a bad time,’ said Kat, turning back to James. As she did she saw his gaze lift from her arse.
‘Please wait in my office, I’ll just finish up in the kitchen,’ he said.
Kat walked into a room lined with red-cedar panelling. A crammed bookshelf took up one corner, and an open fire crackled on the far side of the room, next to a mahogany sideboard. In the centre of the room was James’s desk, neatly arranged. A green banker’s lamp provided the only light in the room other than the fire. She sank into one of two red chesterfields in front of the desk and placed her backpack on the floor. She closed her eyes and ran her palms along the smooth, cool leather of the armchair. It smelled like paper money.
A woman’s raised voice from the kitchen brought her back to reality, along with the loud bang of a ceramic plate being put down a little too hard. James appeared at the doorway with a tray of food and a glass of red wine. He sat on the business side of his desk and started his meal. The manner in which he ate, Kat thought, made him look grotesque: his dry, manicured hands held the shiny cutlery as delicately as a surgeon, yet he slopped the food into his mouth like an invalid. Somehow picking up on her distaste, he dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a napkin, removing the streak of gravy that lingered there like a brown, translucent slug.
‘So, what do you want to know about the plaque?’ he asked finally, putting down the napkin and reaching for his wine.
‘Why is it there?’ she asked, almost snapping at him. She saw James raise an eyebrow and checked herself.
‘What I mean is … What is the reason you had it installed?’
‘Well, many years ago—’ James began.
‘Ah, wait … if you don’t mind, Doctor Clifford,’ interrupted Kat. She reached into her backpack and took out a handycam attached to a short tripod.
His eyes narrowed. ‘You never mentioned you were making a video.’
‘If you don’t mind,’ said Kat, setting up the camera. She placed the tripod on the desk, facing it towards a sheepish-looking James, who moved his half-eaten dinner to the floor.
‘I don’t see why you need to film this,’ he said. ‘You said you were doing a paper for school?’
James smoothed out his cardigan, then produced a comb from his slacks and ran it through his hair.
‘Let’s start again, shall we?’ Kat asked, without waiting for an answer. She mouthed the words three, two, one, and then continued. ‘So, Doctor Clifford, you have had a plaque installed at the front of your mansion. It acknowledges that this house is built on Aboriginal land. Can you please explain why?’
James cocked his head at Kat’s use of the word mansion, and shot her an inquisitive look before answering. ‘Well, there is a bit of a story behind that,’ he began. ‘Many years ago, I did some work in a remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory. It was after I finished my psych residency training in Sydney. Cyclone Tracy had just gone through Darwin, and many of the Aboriginal people in the affected areas were left without anywhere to live. Those homeless ones surged into the outer communities, which became overcrowded, creating terrible living conditions. The Feds put a call-out for doctors to go there to aid the people; meds to deal with the disease, and psychs to deal with the grief and loss. I was hungry for experience so I jumped at the chance. While I was there, I met someone I’ll never forget. He wasn’t a victim of the cyclone. Raymond Chong had grown up in the community that I was working in and, even at his young age, he was a respected community leader. Ray became my counsellor during my time in that community and, when I think back, I’m sure he helped me more than I helped any of his people. If it wasn’t for Ray, I think I would have run away from there, screaming.’ James paused in reflection for a moment.
Born Into This Page 9