by Cara Shaw
Although Robbie took heed of what his aunty told him, he was not overly bothered. At eleven, he had never even spoken to a white person and had only seen them from a distance. If a white person came into the camp for any reason, every single adult told him to run and hide, which he did with all the other children. He knew in his heart that white people were bad, like the bunyip that lived in the dangerous billabong that sat further into the bush, a dark damp place where legend had it that children had fallen into the water, and been eaten by the evil creature.
They walked along the track to the safety of their camp and to the group of huts and shacks that were scattered beneath the sweet smelling gum trees towering above. He breathed deeply as they entered, it was always a little cooler inside the grove. Now early evening, most of the inhabitants had lighted their camp fires, each one sending little smoky swirls upwards and melting into foliage above. Robbie smiled as his people ambled towards them, eager to collect their goods. Robbie acknowledged the familiar faces that were a part of his extended family group, and the place where he always felt safe. He knew instinctively that he belonged with these people and that they would always protect him and love him.
He and May stood beside the baskets and she doled out the food fairly, taking into account those who had slipped her an extra penny for apples or potatoes and onions, sharing out the flour equally amongst every person in the mob – it kept people from going hungry. The chicken she put aside for Lily, Robbie’s mother, as it was she who had handed over a fair amount of the pound, which she had saved from her husband’s meagre wages, who was still in Queensland cutting cane. Later, Lily made a chicken and vegetable soup, seasoned with wild herbs which she shared with her immediate relatives, with at least one serve reserved for anyone in the camp who was unwell or who needed food. May sorted out the flour sacks and divided them up between the women who had the most children, and desperately needed material to make clothes. She found the hidden needle and thread and tucked it into her pocket, and holding the gingham bolt under her arm, she took her own supplies back to her shack to begin tea for her and Clyde and the two girls, Mary and Jenny.
“What’s that you got there May?” shouted out one of the women in a teasing voice.
“A present, thank you very much!” May replied, thinking of the dresses she would make for her and the girls, and the new shirt she had planned for Clyde. All in all, it had been a very profitable day.
Robbie carried the chicken for his mother and accompanied her back to their hut. There she sat at the little table Walter had made when they had first married, to pluck and clean the bird. She tossed Robbie two apples and a bit of damper, and told him to go and play while she prepared the tea. He ran off to find the other boys, but stopped by May’s to fetch out the yabi that lay languishing at the bottom of one of the baskets, left outside her hut where she had put them. These would come in handy later on for new-borns to rest in, or for use when gathering bush foods. Robbie decided to set the yabi free and he carried the poor creature down to the river with Pauly and Laurence who came with him. They sat on the bank watching it limp away while they crunched on their apples, poking each other in the ribs and laughing. Robbie had felt sorry for the yabi after what May had said at the Choo’s, and decided to set it free. After all, he thought, everyone deserves a second chance.
The next day Robbie awoke in the hospital and the ward was somewhat quiet, except for the sound of feet shuffling around his cot. “Qui vous?” he asked.
“Je suis votre infirmiere,” came the reply.
“Ou est le docteur?” he inquired anxiously.
“Il sera bientot la,” said the nurse.
He will be here soon, he thought. He tried to use the French he had learnt, which he had picked up easily over the last few months from a couple of the English soldiers who were fluent. He found the language quite simple, and had no trouble memorising the words and copying the pronunciation. Even though the Australian soldiers were baffled that he was bothering at all, Robbie discovered that learning to speak it came easily to him.
“Excuse moi Mademoiselle?’’
The nurse giggled, “Oui?”
He thought she must find his accent amusing. “Je suis aveugle?” Was he blind? He had to know.
The giggling ceased abruptly. “Non. Non je ne pense pas.”
He was relieved, and he noticed that the nurse’s accent was different. “Vous etes Francaise?” he couldn’t help asking.
Again the warmth returned to her voice, “Non, je suis Italiane. Do you speak English?”
It felt good to have a conversation with someone, “Yeah love. I’m Australian.”
There was a short silence, “Australian? You look, I don’t know, different…”
Robbie was puzzled, then he realised what she meant. “Oh, I see what you mean. No, where I’m from everyone looks like me.” He couldn’t see how else to explain his Aboriginality to her.
The nurse seemed to understand. “Ah, like in Italy. The southerners look very different to the northerners. Is this right?”
Robbie thought that would have to do, “Yeah, spot on love.”
Suddenly there was a flurry of movement around his bed and he heard more French voices. One in particular, which was loud and strident.
“Qui est-ce?” it said curtly.
The nurse answered, “Le guerre Australian.”
“Unlever un pasanment.”
The nurse took off Robbie’s bandage and gradually everything came into focus. He saw whom he assumed to be the doctor standing at the end of his bed, a small balding man with wire-framed glasses. With him were two other men in white coats and a small dark girl, whose sleeves were rolled up, wearing a white pinafore over a blue shirt. The doctor came closer to him and peered into his eyes.
“Pouvez-vous voir?” he asked, breathing heavily over Robbie’s face.
“Oui, je voir,” said Robbie, screwing up his nose at the smell of the man’s unsavoury breath.
“Savez-vous que vous gaze?” the doctor said.
Robbie glanced at the girl, he did not understand.
“He’s asking if you know you were gassed,” she translated.
“Oui,” Robbie said, “Je sais.”
The doctor turned to the other men, and they talked rapidly amongst themselves.
Robbie looked at the girl, “What’s your name?” he whispered, smiling at her.
“Maria,” she smiled back.
“I’m Robbie,” he grinned.
The doctor returned to the bedside. “Vous etes remarquable. Etes-vous sauvage Australien?”
Robbie knew what that meant, and he was offended, “Non! Je suis Duradjuri!”
Once more the doctor turned to his colleagues, and they all spoke in excited tones, then they walked away and left Maria standing next to the bed.
“What did they say?” asked Robbie
Maria looked perturbed. “They said that no one so far has survived a gas attack by the Germans, that you are the only one. For some reason he thinks that you are different to other people because you are, what is it? Un sauvage? What is that?”
Robbie grew nervous, “He just means that I might be stronger because I grew up in the countryside at home.”
“And because your skin is dark?” said Maria.
“Maybe.”
Robbie didn’t like the way this was going. After he had signed up no one had said a word to him about being Aboriginal, and he knew that he had passed the enlistment procedure without discrimination because the recruiters were running out of men his age to send overseas – even though he was seventeen, not eighteen as required. When he went to the office in Billington he was looked over, given a medical examination and told to put his name down on some papers. Nobody had asked him about his parentage or checked the colour of skin, and he nominated the local post office as his address. After that
he was sent to a training camp at Cowra, boarded a train to Sydney, and then travelled to England by ship. The other men never commented on his appearance or skin colour, it was as if any difference vanished the moment he put on the uniform. The French doctor made him feel uncomfortable and alarmingly, unsafe.
Maria sat down in the chair next to his cot, “I think there is a problem,” she said.
“Why?” said Robbie, “What else did they say?”
Maria looked at him with concern, “He wants to send you away to a hospital in Switzerland, so he can perform tests on you. The others agreed, they’re going to organise a transport truck for you tonight.”
A flash of warning shimmered through him; he had to leave. “I can’t stay here. I’m not going to Switzerland,” he said to her urgently.
“No…” she replied, deeply unsettled. She looked around at the hospital, the wounded lay on their beds moaning in pain, some were unconscious and many were dying. After being surrounded by constant horror and devastation for weeks on end, she was exhausted. She needed to find a little hope somewhere, she looked back at Robbie who was fine and strong. Her heart lurched.
“Maria, are you the one who’s been looking after me?” he whispered. She nodded silently. “Help me… please!” he pleaded.
She had been looking after him, in fact, she couldn’t stay away from his cot. Over the last four days she had washed him, fed him and held his hand while he slept. To her there was something very special about Robbie Dalton, his shiny black curly hair, which she had touched often while he slept, was like silk. The texture of his skin was like caramel-coloured velvet, and even his scent was sweet and fine. She thought she understood the doctor’s curiosity about him and why he wanted to examine him. She too wondered how had he lived through the terrible gas attack above all the others. The news had spread around the wards like wildfire, that the only surviving soldier from the new method of warfare had emerged unscathed, unaffected except for some mild paralysis and a temporary loss of sight. When he had first arrived, unconscious and filthy, she had undressed him, rolled up his uniform and stored it under his cot with his boots. She had even looked through his kit bag, and found his name embroidered on the inside – Robert Dalton. Her shift finished at six o’clock, she knew what she had to do.
She bent down and whispered into his ear. “Stay still and wait Robbie, I will come back. Your uniform and boots are under the bed. When it gets dark, put them on and lie under the sheet.”
He nodded and watched her as she walked quickly away, stepping lightly between the beds and out the door at the end of the ward. She was so pretty and tiny, she reminded him of the girls at home; in contrast her nose was narrow and her hands were small. Her uniform could almost have been too big for her, however, she filled it out nicely with her large soft breasts and round hips. When she had removed his bandages earlier that day and was rearranging his bed, he saw that the muscles in her brown forearms were strong. She was used to hard work. Her eyes were large and brown, and her lips were dark pink. Maria. He trusted her, she would get him out of this hospital – he was sure of that. He lay back on his thin pillow with relief and waited for night to fall. He had beaten the French doctor; he was a Duradjuri warrior and an Australian soldier, and he refused to be treated as anything less.
Chapter Three
When Maria returned Robbie had changed into his uniform and was dozing under the sheet. She shook him gently, and held a lamp near his face.
“Follow me,” she whispered.
He climbed out of the cot and forgetting that he hadn’t been on his feet for five days, staggered.
Maria held his arm, “I’m sorry Robbie, you will have to push through it, we need to walk for another forty-five minutes before we are safe.
He looked down at the strong young woman at his side who gripped his arm with fierce determination, “I can do it,” he said.
She handed him a blanket, “Here, put this around you, it will cover your uniform and we won’t attract any attention.
They made their way along the aisle between the cots where restless figures lay huddled under thin blankets. The ward was dense with shadows and lit with a few oil lamps that hung along the walls. Gangrene had set into many of the soldiers’ wounds and the atmosphere was one of hopelessness and loss. Robbie swallowed with emotion, and Maria glanced at him, tears in her eyes.
“I know, it is terrible,” and she guided him through the door. They walked through the antechamber of the hospital where examination areas were surrounded by draped sheets. Tables and chairs were set up nearby where nurses and doctors sat scribbling notes or cleaning equipment. No one glanced at them as they walked through, and when they entered the yard they passed an open pit where the soldiers’ bedpans were emptied and lime sprinkled over the top. The smell was beyond putrid and Robbie gagged.
“Keep going Robbie’” Maria urged.
They passed through a pair of iron gates and walked by an array of muddied and dented army vehicles that were parked in the drive. A group of orderlies in bloodied aprons stood, silently smoking cigarettes and swaying with exhaustion, again ignoring the little nurse and her blanket shrouded patient. At length they were outside the hospital and on a cobblestone road, where they could hear the rap of faint explosions and gunfire from the front; inconsistent as it was night time and the day’s fighting had eased off. They walked slowly and gradually Robbie felt the strength returning to his legs.
The hospital was located in the city of Ypres, a few miles away from the front and had been requisitioned at the beginning of the war. Originally a Flemish counting house, it had been cleared out and reassigned to care for the wounded. The edifice was constructed from brick and stone, intended to promote an imposing façade, dedicated to protect the large amounts of money that once lay within its hidden vaults. Robbie looked at the receding building with relief, grateful to be away from the place that after everything he had endured, symbolised wholly to him the futility of war.
“Where are we going?” he asked Maria, who walked steadily beside him.
“Hollebeke, it’s where I live,” she replied.
The early evening had begun to cool down significantly, so he pulled the blanket more closely around his shoulders. Robbie looked up at the northern sky as he had done many times since he had arrived on the continent, and was still unable to recognise anything in the heavens that reminded him of home. There was no giant emu-man avenging the theft of his daughters, or diamond-studded rainbow serpent threading its way around the earth, laying eggs and creating new tribes. The seven sisters were missing – the ones who ran across the night sky gathering stars to toss downwards, which changed into nourishing bushfoods when they hit the earth. All these stories he knew by heart from sitting around campfires at night with his relatives.
When he had disembarked at England with his regiment, and was taken to the camps that were set up at Wiltshire, everything about the northern hemisphere challenged his natural comprehension of the world. During that first week the men underwent a second round of training. They were shown maps so they could understand exactly where they were and their journey from Australia to the Western Front was charted in a red line. Robbie had been fascinated, this was the first time he had attended anything like a classroom, and within a matter of hours a bigger picture was revealed to him. He had been taught to read and write by his mother and some of the other women in his camp, who had learnt when they were at the mission. The only reading material available in his young world had been the Bible and the occasional newspaper, which didn’t broaden his overall knowledge at all. The women were adamant that the children should learn to read, fearing that being unable to do so would put them at an even greater disadvantage when they were grown. They never encountered much opposition over the matter, as the determination of the Duradjuri women was legendary. He was grateful now; he had been able to read his enlistment papers and sign his name properly, w
hich he observed was more than some of his white counterparts were able to do. The training included – which for him was very confusing, a lecture about sexual intercourse and something called prophylactics, all of which caused huge mirth amongst his regiment. Eventually he gathered that if he slept with a prostitute, his penis would fall off unless he put on the French letter that every soldier was issued. When they reached Calais after leaving England it finally dawned on him what the lecture was about, as there were French girls everywhere charging very reasonable rates for every kind of assignation a soldier might desire. He only had enough money for a couple of encounters which, after he’d managed to actually get the letter on, he found quite satisfying.