by Peter Docker
‘We go feet first, for snags, sitting upright.’ Mularabone reiterates the drill to me. ‘You hold the pack – it’ll keep you up. I’ll hold you.’
We get up and start to wade out into the water. It’s cold. I’m thinking of the dull splash behind us last night as we were both getting onto the skin. The water in front of us explodes as rounds slam into the surface.
‘Go, bruz! Go!’
I run for the deep water. Mularabone crouches in the water and fires back up the slope to the two troopers standing there firing at us. He puts the first one down immediately but the other trooper drops to the ground and continues to fire. The current has hold of me and I push off the muddy bottom and start to pick up speed. Rounds are hitting the water. Mularabone is still firing and backing into the water. He ditches his weapon, turns, and dives down. I submerge myself, holding onto the bottom of the floating pack. I kick out for the deeper water and feel the current pushing me along. The backpack is nearly torn from my grasp as two rounds hit it. I just hang on by getting another hand onto the dangling strap. Under the water I feel Mularabone next to me. I feel along his arm until we are holding hands tightly, and now we are in the current proper. We pick up speed very quickly. In a few moments Mularabone gives me the double-squeeze signal and we both breach the surface. Above and behind us there is some shouting from up near the remains of the dam. There is some more firing. I grab the pack and hold it to my chest, and swing my feet around so they’re in front of me. Mularabone keeps holding my hand, and uses the leverage to swing his feet forward in the current. There are more shots fired but we don’t hear them hit. Now we can see the drop. Beyond the initial drop of forty metres there is a series of deep pools forming, and boiling rapids that disappear around a right bend after another two hundred metres.
‘Can’t we walk around, bro?’
‘This was your idea, coord.’
‘My idea?’
‘You’re the one reckons we’re the Waterboys!’
We hold hands and race towards the opening in the dam wall. We wrap ourselves in our water blanket, go through, and slide into the drop.
Ghost of History: Cavorting with Savages
The day is overcast but warming gently. The clouds are high and have no intention of dropping rain on us. We could be in England, were it not for the strange foliage all around. As we make our way unhurriedly down the slope we can see the large group of Englishmen already assembled at the designated place. Fremantle walks ahead with the three boss men. The Birdiya of Mooro – the Country north of the Darbal Yaragan – and the Birdiya of Beeloo – the lands east of the Darbal Yaragan bordered by the Dyarigarro River and the hills – walked into the Beeliar camp before dawn. Beeliar seemed to be expecting them. They each brought twenty warriors at least. Then we marched up the river to this place. Fremantle is in full dress uniform, and the birdiya are all painted up, wearing their prominent nose-bones, and carrying their stone axes. How these birdiya knew to come in today, Fremantle would not say. Behind us is a large group of young warriors carrying spears and woomeras.
As we approach the Djenga, a clear ripple of consternation spreads through the red-coated soldiers of the 63rd under Captain Irwin’s command. We see one of his subalterns confer with him, and a clear nod from the Irwin. Captain Stirling steps away from the group to greet us. More like to impede our progress towards his gathering. He is a naval officer after all.
‘Captain Fremantle.’
‘Captain Stirling.’
It is six weeks since we had to rescue Stirling and his passengers from his ill-advised attempt to run into the sound in arduous conditions.
‘I was beginning to believe you overslept, Captain Fremantle.’
‘Not one of my vices, Captain Stirling. I was conferring with the representatives from this Country, which took longer than expected.’
Stirling takes in the three birdiya, as if seeing them for the first time. They are unflinching under his vice-regal gaze.
‘May I present the owner of the Mooro Lands, on which we stand, the owner of the Beeliar Lands near the river mouth, and the owner of the Beeloo Lands east of the river upstream.’
As each of the boss men is introduced, he steps forward as if this moment was rehearsed. Stirling turns his gaze on Fremantle.
‘I hope that you have impressed upon these ... gentlemen ... that the new power in these lands is His Majesty – whom we both represent.’
Fremantle stares back at the new Governor as if he has not heard or understood. The birdiya are unreadable. The spearmen behind look on impassively. The redcoats beyond look distinctly nervous. Stirling steps in close to Fremantle, their noses almost touching.
‘Don’t be a fool. Do not shame your father and your brother. You have been given a second chance. Do not bite the hand that feeds you with this nonsense.’
Fremantle stares him down. ‘You know nothing of shame ... How dare you presume to speak to me of my family,’ and his voice is like ice.
Captain Irwin approaches to break the stalemate: ‘Shall we begin, gentlemen?’
Stirling steps back.
Fremantle says, ‘The Birdiya of the Mooro Lands wishes to officially welcome you to his Country, Captain Stirling.’
‘Then you had best explain to him that he is now a subject of His Royal Highness King George IV.’
‘Why don’t you explain it to him?’
The birdiya watch this exchange with interest.
‘The natives may watch ... if they behave.’
Stirling turns and walks back down to the assembled soldiers and settlers. One of the junior officers hands him the parchment with the official proclamation. The three boss men and Fremantle follow.
There is a colonist all dressed in white just off to the side making a sketch of the scene that Morison will develop later into a painting. His sketch will never include the Countrymen present. This is our history. You can tell yourself it’s not really a lie. But you can’t tell yourself that it is the truth. These men of Empire need no instructions to reconstruct history towards a narrative that better suits civilised invasion; it comes naturally – an unspoken contract that they have entered into freely.
One of the settlers begins to ready some bottles of wine from a basket. An animated murmur races through the assembled Countrymen when two metal axes are produced by one of Stirling’s men.
The Union Jack flutters in the breeze at the end of a long pole held by one of Major Irwin’s men. Captain Stirling is clearing his throat to speak. Captain Dance of the Sulphur nods to his wife, Helena. Mrs Dance, dressed all in white, steps up to the tree, and an axe is handed to her. This was meant to be Mrs Stirling, but the Governor’s wife refused at the last minute to venture so far up the river into the untamed wilderness. The Mooro Birdiya steps forward, holding his stone axe, and starts to shout at Mrs Dance.
Stirling remains unperturbed and begins to read: ‘In the name of His Royal Highness, King George IV of England...’
Mrs Dance looks uncertain. She changes her grip on the axe. The Birdiya continues to shout, moving forward like he might grab at the axe. Irwin is nodding at his men, and the redcoats rush forward with their weapons to come between the Djenga and the Countrymen. I can hear the soft clacking of wood on wood as the warriors behind me are fitting their spears into their throwing sticks and the distinctive metal on metal clicks as the soldiers cock their muskets.
Stirling leaves off reading, and strides over to Fremantle.
‘I warned you, sir.’
Fremantle says nothing but his own hand lies on the hilt of his sword.
‘You may proceed, Mrs Dance,’ Stirling calls back over his shoulder without taking his eyes from Fremantle.
Captain Dance’s wife swings the axe into the meat of the wood. The sound rings out in the bush by the river, and the Countrymen all go very still. Fremantle turns to the Birdiya. They exchange a long look, and then they turn and start to walk away.
‘Do not give me your back, Captain Frem
antle!’
Fremantle stops and turns. ‘A man who cannot navigate should not call himself a sailor, Captain Stirling.’
‘A man with no honour should not call himself an officer, Captain Fremantle.’
‘You cannot change. None of you!’
‘One would only make a change if something needed to be rectified,’ says Stirling. ‘If something was wrong.’
‘Something is wrong. Can’t you feel it?’
‘The sooner you put to sea the better, Captain Fremantle. Your display of cavorting with the savages in front of your own men is preposterous beyond sanity.’
Fremantle draws his blade in a moment. ‘Cavorting?’
‘You, sir, are a disgrace to the Navy and to the Academy! Oh, I stand corrected, you never attended the Academy!’
‘Cavorting?’
Fremantle moves towards him with his blade held out. The soldiers of the 63rd are taking aim. Stirling draws his sword.
‘Gentlemen! This has gone far enough!’ booms out Captain Irwin.
Behind us we hear a song start up with slow-slow clapsticks. The two captains face each other with their bare blades almost touching. I have fenced with Fremantle and know his power and speed only too well. The slow song creeps up on us all and wraps around us all like a mist. After a long time Fremantle is backing away, and sheathing his weapon. Irwin and Stirling turn their eyes on me. I look down to see my own blade in my hand.
‘You would do well to remember your place, Lieutenant,’ snarls Captain Irwin.
I look away towards the song origin, and the retreating Fremantle. Captain Stirling sheathes his sword.
‘Wherever you go, Fremantle – the native stink will follow you!’
Behind us we hear the metal blade of Mrs Dance’s axe smacking into the tree. The song sucks us all away like minnows on an outgoing tide.
Twenty-three: Red Balloons in the Guts
It’s fully light. My face is hard up against the river sand. My body is flattened beneath me. The water tugs at my feet like an insistent child.
‘Where are we?’
‘Ssshhh.’
I pull my feet out of the water. Mularabone is above me. He speaks in a hushed tone.
‘Don’t move. Don’t look up.’
Behind my ears, and the base of my skull, is burning. Mularabone bends over me and rubs sand all over me as if he’s salting a pork roast. He rubs sand on my feet. I try to pull them away but he holds me firm by the ankle as he does each foot.
‘Don’t move.’
‘It tickles.’
He finishes and lowers himself onto the sand next to me.
‘You good, coorda?’ he asks.
‘Never better.’
‘You liar-boy.’
I try to smile. ‘Where are we?’
‘We’re in that place.’
That’s why he’s covering me with sand: protection. This gorge is humming with a secret power. There are dark forces here. Dark forces that can take over even an unwilling host. My father was willing enough. The Sarge’s brother, too. Something happened here. Something that stained the Country. Behind us the water is still hurrying away to invigorate the lower riverland. Above our heads the morning birds are singing out the joy song for the return of the water. My heart is still beating fast from the rapids and my knees are burning with fresh bruises.
‘We gotta move,’ he says.
‘How?’
‘You tell me.’
My stomach feels like it is full of big red balloons rubbing against each other and making that rubbery slippery sound. I squeeze my eyes shut and listen.
‘There’s a tunnel,’ I hear myself say after a while.
Mularabone gets up.
‘Don’t move,’ he tells me, and moves off.
I lie there trying to slow my heart, listening to the fast flowing beauty of the reborn river at my feet. It’ll take days to empty the dam. Maybe longer. They won’t be able to attempt repairs until the water is very low. By then it’ll be too late for the Water Board.
Mularabone comes back. ‘I found it – but it’s too small,’ he says.
‘We have to crawl to start with. Then it’ll open out to a chamber,’ I say.
Mularabone grabs the backpack, and I slowly get up, careful not to look anywhere but at my own feet. I know better than not to obey Mularabone when it comes to such instructions. If there are things here that I can’t see – then I can’t see them. It’s as simple as that.
At the end of the little spray of river sand the walls of the gorge are sheer. The tunnel entrance is about a metre over our heads. Mularabone makes a stirrup with his hands and boosts me up, and I scramble into the hole in the rock. I start to crawl. It is tight. I hear him clamber up the rock face and come in behind me. The back of my head is burning. This is the right one. Formed by the passage of old water. I crawl with my head down. The only time I try to lift it I hit the rock above me. This is more claustrophobic than the Sick Mother, but drier. I have to fight to stop the closeness of the rock making me feel trapped. Just keep crawling.
After a while I think I hear voices. Women’s voices talking Language. My elbows are red raw from the rock crawling and the red balloons are rubbing away in my guts, almost drowning out the water song burning through my head. When I finally stop, unsure of whether or not I can continue with this crawling, there are the voices again. Then Mularabone is standing over me, and we are in the larger chamber. He turns me over, pulls me up to a sitting position, and then slings me across his back.
I think I see a fire. I think I hear Nayia. Aunty Ouraka’s voice is there too. I see the fire. I see weapons standing nearby. My eyes are open but my vision is blurry. The red balloons in my guts start to deflate with a soft hiss.
I feel Mularabone’s feet walking beneath me as if they are mine.
Shared Searching Dream: Grog Bunker
Around me are strong arms, holding me up, cradling me, warming my bones, defying gravity, and moving me along. The movement comforts and confuses me. In this bewildered perambulation we go along and then down, down steep steps.
I’m dumped onto the cement floor like a bag of root vegetables. The air is close and putrid. That smell reminds me of the underground prison, before I swam the Sick Mother. There is some light down here. Some kind of open flame that I can’t see from my vantage point on the floor. An unknown smell invades my nostrils, flaring them involuntarily.
The first thing I see is the blade. It catches the light and twinkles silver and white. I recognise the hunting knife. My father had it in his hands the night I shot him through the mouth. He’d cut himself with the blade, letting blood whilst watching a recording of my mother dancing. Now he carefully rubs the blade on a small flat stone, spitting on the stone to achieve the desired wetness. As he concentrates on the blade, I see Jack in him clearly, and the nature of passed-on pain in families. The noise of the blade scraping across the wet stone dominates the cramped space. It’s some kind of concrete bunker.
Strapped onto a steel morgue bed is a small girl. She is tied down with defence force plastic ties. Against the far wall is a young boy, tied up, and just above me is a woman. All Countrymen. All naked. All have tape across their mouths. Stacked against all available wall space are crates of rum bottles.
I’m not tied up: just a pile of bones with skin on them, lying in an untidy heap on the floor. He doesn’t think I’m a threat. He doesn’t acknowledge me in any way. I have that feeling of having intruded on something secret and personal, like peering through that slit in the van, seeing my mother’s nipple moving back and forth. I can’t move my skull, just swivel my eyes in their sockets, to look around. Feels like 44’s metal neck restrainer.
How did he get that steel trolley hospital bed down here?
He opens a crate, pulls out a flagon of rum and takes a big swig. He goes to the naked woman chained to the wall and forces her to drink. She swallows and coughs. Her lip is bleeding.
He starts to speak. War suits him
. Especially this war. I try to focus on his voice. In the end I only get it when I zoom in on his lips with my vision and really concentrate. They remind me of the lips of Mitch the Blood Nut, the lips of 44. Nothing like Jack’s lips or mine. I can hear his tone and the melody of each sentence – but I still can’t get any meaning. His words are greasy, smoke-like worms with no eyes or features.
I change my focus to the girl prisoner. She strains against her bonds in a silent and useless struggle that knots her little muscles and tightens her face. Her eyes are wide with fear. There are tears pouring from her eyes and mucus oozing from her nostrils, making her breathing loud and laboured.
It is Nayia. Nayia as a child. The boy is Mularabone.
I know it all now. I can see it with my own eyes.
Who is the Countrywoman? I can’t see her face clearly in the half light. The mother of Nayia? Of Mularabone?
Why is my father taking so long to sharpen his knife? The plastic ties holding the prisoners can’t be that hard to cut through. I blink my eyes and his words in English come through to me.
‘We’re gonna play a game. All you have to do is watch me. If you take your eyes off me, I stab her deep. Starting now. Watch me!’
I look to the Countrywoman. She is watching him. He takes the hunting knife and cuts the girl on the arm. Her little body arches on the table and a strangled scream comes out through her nose, her mouth working against the tape.
‘You still looking? Good.’
He cuts the child again. The Countrywoman is trying to yell but is stifled by the tape. From her taped-over screams, I can tell that it is Ouraka. He cuts her again. The child is howling behind the tape now while my stomach is churning and my head is engulfed in icy flames. He reverses the knife and runs the hilts along the thigh of the child Nayia, his smile growing as the Countrywoman recognises his rape intention. He runs the knife hilt up her thigh. The Countrywoman’s head rolls around.