by Cara Shaw
When Dell was thirty-six she decided to stop working at Tulloch Grange. Twenty years in a station kitchen had ruined her body and her health, so she mainly stayed around the camp fishing and gardening, or taking the occasional cleaning job to make ends meet. Tick spent the next ten years drinking when he could and making a menace of himself around town. He became more or less a permanent fixture at Tulloch Grange, sleeping in sheds and loitering around the back door of the kitchen, which irritated the new, white cook no end.
Robbie was dismayed to discover that Tick was Eric’s son, and just the thought of his ugly meaty hands touching his Aunty Dell was enough to make him sick. He had to accept that Tick was Dell’s son too, and that for some reason Charley Pace had been adamant about bringing his body back to the camp. Usually their dead were buried at the Anglican churchyard in a special section that was set aside for Aboriginal people. The day that Tick was brought home, Charley gathered a group of men and together they dug a grave beside a good strong gum near the bora circle. The men, directed by Charley, folded the corpse into a semi-foetal position and sat him in the hollow; then they placed a spear and a boomerang that one of the older men had made for the occasion, alongside him.
Three of the Duradjuri women: May, Dell and an old aunty of Dell’s sat on the ground in their long skirts, tapping their clapping sticks together and singing softly. Robbie had followed them down to watch and was fascinated by the scene before him; traditional practices like these were rarely seen at his camp and kept very private. He understood that he was witnessing something ancient and profound, and deep pride bloomed inside him. Then Charley took off his shirt and sat on the ground while Dilly who had been waiting near the women, painted lines on his face and body with white clay from a coolamon. While he was painting, the men present began to sing in Duradjuri and when Dilly had finished, Charley rose and danced slowly around the freshly dug mound. Dilly retreated and stood next to Robbie, watching while Charley conducted a series of concentrated movements.
“What’s he doing?” whispered Robbie.
“He’s makin’ a death dance, and the others are singing the passin’ song,” replied Dilly.
“Why Tick?” Robbie asked.
“Do you know about Windradyne?” said Dilly, and Robbie nodded.
Robbie did know the stories about the great warrior Windradyne, a strong and dedicated leader of the old Duradjuri tribe. When the settlers had first appeared in Duradjuri country Windradyne was kindly towards them, assuming that they would move on and continue with their journey as travellers in his culture always did. Instead they stayed on and began cutting down trees and digging into the ground. Deeply offended, Windradyne watched as they brought in sheep and cattle to graze, polluting the creeks and rivers with faeces until the water became unfit to drink. When the Duradjuri proceeded to camp in their traditional spots as the turning of the seasons dictated they should, the settlers chased them off and shot them with their rifles. Windradyne staged assault after assault, fighting hard to win their lands back. His perseverance earned him the grudging respect of the Europeans because of his bravery, even in defeat. The war he waged was long and relentless and when he died – worn out and old, a landholder buried him at his station and marked the grave as a sign of respect. All the people knew about the greatest warrior of them all, the one who had fought for the preservation of their tribe – and lost.
“Dell is his great-grand-daughter and Tick is his great-great grandson. Charley’s line goes back to this mob’s karandajin. Do you know what that is?” Dilly said.
Again Robbie nodded. karandajin was language for healer or spirit man. He had no idea that Charley was one of these men; he only knew him as an extremely tough bushman who could turn his hand to just about anything that needed building or fixing. He almost felt shy seeing the older man shirtless and painted up, as if he had been allowed into a sacred secret that belonged only to Charley. In a way, he thought that was probably right.
“Are Dell and Charley meeting their family obligations by doing this for Tick?” he said.
Dilly nodded, “You got it mate. From now on we don’t mention the dead man’s name, keeps his spirit safe see?”
Abruptly the dance ended and the singing stopped. Charley put his shirt back on and helped to fill in the grave while the women walked sadly along the bush path back to camp. Robbie noticed that the birdlife, which had gone quiet during the ceremony, rang up a noisy chatter once more.A kookaburra swooped past them to pick up a lizard and held it in his long beak, then beat it to death while sitting on a branch.Robbie was thoughtful as he and Dilly followed the women home. What he had seen had moved him and brought with it a connection to his Duradjuri identity; he discovered that he liked the feeling that it gave him and although he felt sorry for Tick, he knew that it was important to know these secret things about his own people. That evening May went to Dell’s hut, and Lily, Robbie’s mother, took over a pot of rabbit stew and some damper and left it inside the door. The two women curled up together on Dell’s pallet of blankets and flour sack pillows and Dell wept while May held her.
The men returned to work the following week and resumed their tasks. Eric Crane came down from the house and gave them all filthy looks but kept silent about Tick’s death. The station was very short on hands and because the Aboriginal workforce had been gone for nearly a week the shear had fallen behind schedule. Eric couldn’t risk another walk off, so he muttered abuse under his breath instead of confronting the men head on. At the end of shearing season, the Aboriginal workers lined up outside the stores shed to receive their rations. The shearers were long gone, having collected their pay and commissions before going into Cranston to gamble it away and spend it on grog and prostitutes. Charley headed up the line and the station manager handed him two bags of flour, eight ounces of tobacco and instead of the usual half-shilling, the standard allowance for eight weeks’ work, the manager just shrugged.
Charley hand still outstretched said, “Aye boss. This ain’t right.”
The man gave him a condescending look. “What ain’t right jackey?”
“It’s a half-shilling, not none,” Charley replied.
“It’s right alright. You blokes walked off the job for a whole week – and that half-shilling ain’t a wage anyway. You don’t like it, take it up with Mr Crane.”
Charley closed his fist and took his rations. Shaking with rage he left to stand in the shade while he smoked a cigarette. One by one all the other men received the same explanation and walked away demoralised. They packed their swags and shifted them onto their backs, ready to walk home. As they left Robbie heard Charley utter a profanity – the first and only time he had ever heard the temperate man do so, and Robbie’s heart broke just a little to hear the bitterness in his voice.
It was on that walk back to camp that Robbie came to a decision, and after he reached his mother’s place and gave her the rations he made his intentions clear. Lily was horrified. “I can’t let you go all that way to fight an English war! I need you here, we all need you. It’s not on Robbie, Dad would never allow it – and anyway, you’re too young!” Walter had left weeks earlier to look for more work, and Lily was alone.
It was after the ensuing argument and talk with Dilly that he made up his mind. Early the next morning he left the hut and his camp and walked to Billington to sign up. As he was leaving his mother stood at the top of the bush path in the morning mist, birds wailing eerily as she wept, begging him not to go, which made Robbie even more determined to alter his luck. That very night he was on a train to southwest New South Wales for his first round of training at Cowra basecamp as an Australian soldier, and Robbie Dalton’s life was about to change forever.
Chapter Two
Robbie was kneeling in a trench, hands shaking from the cold. He was ten hours in and had lost track of time completely. A pressing numbness had begun to surround him, and it was difficult to feel anything at all.
He looked at the trench wall in front of him and the crude wood that had been hastily nailed together to provide a structure for the labouring mud and dirt to strain against, while the carnage thumped above. He was aware that he had moved into an altered mental state and felt his head tip forward slightly. Then he heard it; tap, tap tap. His head jerked upward and the sound stopped abruptly. He passed out once more and he heard the tapping sound again. I recognise that sound he thought, and he turned his head to see Dilly, of all people, sitting on the ground tapping his old boomerangs together softly, and singing one of the songlines that he had taught Robbie at initiation.
Overwhelmed with shock at the sight of his old friend he cried out, “Dilly! How the bloody hell did you get here? Who sent you down – the Sarg? Jesus Dil, you gotta get outta here – you’ll die!”
Robbie panicked, he had no idea what Dilly was doing at the front, sitting in his trench, where Robbie had been hunkered down for the last six days, the stench of a boggy latrine just a few feet behind him. Had he jumped a boat to come and see him? Was he here for a reason? He blinked, no that was stupid, he was in France, but Dilly was there, right in front of him large as life.
“What is it Dil? Oh God, it’s not Mum is it?”
Dilly stopped tapping the boomerangs and smiled widely at Robbie. “Calm down mate, your Mum’s fine. We’re all fine, we miss you though, we want you to come home soon.”
Robbie felt tears well as he looked at the old man, familiar to him as his own mother, secure in knowledge that Dil had always been there watching out for him. And now he was here in this god-awful place. He smiled back, and when he did he felt a wave of love wash over him.
Dilly sat, holding the boomerangs in his hands. “Now Robert.” Robert. Dilly never called him that, and Robbie snapped to attention. “Stop your cryin’, cause I don’t have much time, and I don’t want the Sarg coming down on me,’ he winked, “you know what I mean?”
Robbie nodded, quiet and waiting. Seeing Dilly was a miracle, and he felt like the luckiest man alive to have a relative come down to visit him specially, here, in the trench.
“I gotta tell you something, listen up,” Robbie nodded obediently and kept quiet.
“Sometimes, just sometimes, it’s not a bad idea to stick your head in a hole. Just dig it out and put your head in. That’s what I got to tell you. You hear me?” Robbie nodded again, and felt his throat constrict. Dilly stood up.
“No Dil,” he shouted, “don’t leave me here on my own!” Dilly smiled and slowly backed away, “No mate, I gotta go. Wouldn’t be good for anyone if I stuck around. Now don’t forget what I told you, right?”
Dilly walked along the trench and disappeared around one of the dirt walls. Robbie had to fight with everything he had not to throw down his rifle and run after him. But he didn’t, he would never desert his post or his mates. Suddenly he heard the gas rattle – the signal that rang down the trenches when the enemy hurled or dropped one of the evil canisters into the ditches to release a noxious gas that could maim and kill. Robbie panicked and frantically tried to locate his mask, which should have been in his pack – it wasn’t there. He must have lost it weeks ago. Realisation dawned on him, he had no protection, he was going to breathe in the rotten stuff and then he was going to die. When he heard the shouts of fear coming from the other men near him he began to cry. He shook his head in despair, rested his forehead against the muddy wall and decided to wait for the gas. When it came he’d just breathe deeply and let himself go, he’d had enough, he couldn’t take this pointless war anymore. The decision now made he relaxed a little, although he was still worried about Dilly. How was he going to make it away from the front? He inhaled sharply and felt the mud wall sticking against his face, it was cool, soothing and soft. He pressed his head into the wall a little more deeply, it was very soft. Just dig it out and put your head in, that’s what Dilly had said. Just dig it out…
Robbie grabbed his rifle, upended it and began punching at the trench wall with his bayonet. When he had made a good hollow he used his helmet to scoop out more dirt. He pulled a heavy woollen sock from his pack, drenched it with water from his canteen and wrapped it around his neck. Then he knelt down and arranged his great coat over him as if he were inside a cocoon, and quickly soaked his neck kerchief in water as well and covered his nose and mouth. He huddled up closely against the wall and laid his head in the recess, frantically tucking every inch of the dense washed-wool coat around him. Just as he put his head down he heard a strange hiss, and he felt a rush of air flow over him and past him. He squeezed his eyes shut, and was reminded of the time he had gone into a trance during his initiation at bora, and the moment when he felt as if he had climbed up onto the Milky Way itself and was gliding along it like a platypus. Biamie, he thought sleepily, Biamie, and then from tiredness or sheer fright, Robbie fell into a deep sleep and did not see the evil milky gas that floated in and around the trench, which then hung suspended in the damp air, before dispersing and drifting away.
He came to much later, when he felt something heavy prodding him in the back. He heard someone shout, “Alive!” and then the tramp of heavy boots moving along the unstable wood boards in the trench. Rough hands pulled the coat from his shoulders and eased his head out of the recess Robbie had made in the wall.
A medic looked at him in awe, “You’re the only one left alive in this section mate. Look!”
As he was loaded onto a stretcher Robbie gazed down the trench which was littered with twisted, poisoned bodies, and just before his vision began to blur he heard the medic say, “Poor bastards what a bloody waste.”
The orderly at the end of the stretcher nodded grimly in agreement and Robbie was overcome with a wretched sadness. While he was being transported by a Lanchester lorry to the army hospital near Ypres, his body appeared to shut down completely. He could not see at all, nor could he breathe through his nose. His fingers had curled up like claws and his feet were completely numb. He felt himself being manhandled roughly though not unkindly, from stretcher to bed and his last sensation before he passed out was the feeling of a heavy army blanket being tucked around his body.
The first thing Robbie noticed when he roused once more was the stench. The smell was a little like the muddy banks of a river when it went down, where small water creatures were left behind to die and rot. In other words it smelt a lot like shit. He gagged. Although he was awake he couldn’t see, and there was a heavy bandage wound around his head and over his eyes. His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth, and it felt rough and dry; he lifted his hand.
“Water, please water,” his voice was hollow and weak.
A voice responded, “Eau? Oui, je vais chercher pour vous…”
A moment later his head was lifted and he felt the metal rim of a tin cup at his lips, and he drank quickly, gulping in his haste.
“Vous devez boire lentement!” he heard, and the cup was pulled away abruptly.
Then he felt a touch and his hand was guided to a tiny table where the cup sat, and then someone helped him to sit upright. Drink slowly he thought, and he reached for the cup again to take another small sip. The water made his sense of smell even keener, and he realised that the odour he had detected earlier was shit after all. That and he suspected, the gangrene that was flourishing in the open wounds of the dying men around him. He felt a sinking feeling in his chest, was he going to die here? Of all places? Tears welled under his bandages as he began to frantically pat up and down his body, checking to see if all his limbs were still attached to his body, that he was still intact.
“Mate! Mate!”
Robbie turned his head a little at the sound of the voice, obviously Australian.
“Yeah,” he replied, “I’m here.”
It was the man in the bed next to him. “Did you get hit in the face? Are you blind?”
“No,’’ Robbie replied. “Gas,” he swallowed as his mouth filled wi
th foul tasting saliva. “I don’t know if I’m blind or not.”
The soldier made a grunting sound, “You’re one of the lucky ones!”
Robbie was incredulous, “How’s that?”
“You’ve got all your arms and legs mate.”
“Yeah, yeah I have. What about you?” Robbie asked.
The man laughed nastily, “I got nothing. Nothing.”
Robbie didn’t understand, “Nothing?”
“I’ve lost everything sport, I’m all stumps.”
“You mean…” Robbie was shocked.
“Yeah, going to get a job at the circus, with all the other freaks. Now all I’ve got to do is think up a stage name. Got any ideas?” The soldier laughed again, and Robbie not knowing how to respond, tried to shut the sound out.
For the rest of the day people came and went, some attending to Robbie, giving him water, soup. One nurse sponged him down with warm water and massaged his arms and legs, murmuring to him in French. The hospital was a dismal place and even though he could not see, the sounds and smells surrounding him were desperate and sad. He had a thought that it was almost worse than being in the trenches. Men screaming in agony, or weeping piteously, their cries interspersed with terse words from the nurses and doctors. There was much movement around him, and Robbie soon understood that bodies were being carried in and out, either to surgery or to the morgue. His fear never left him as he could not be absolutely certain which was to be his fate, and he gripped the sides of his cot in panic. He didn’t hear from the soldier next him again and assumed that he had died. Robbie thought he was better off, unable to envisage what kind of life he would have had with just stumps for arms and legs. As he tried to sleep he thought of the special place far away in Australia where he had lived his whole life. Never before had he considered himself to be a lucky person, but now in comparison, he saw that maybe his mob wasn’t too badly off after all. He would have liked to be at home at that moment, in the camp, surrounded by people who loved him and knew him best. He thought about the routines of his old life, all of which he had taken for granted right up until he found himself in the abysmal hospital.