by Di Morrissey
Ardjani held out his arms. ‘Then we’ll have to find the daddy so we know who is the new family. They look after this baby.’
Beth sighed. ‘I hope we can track him down. The baby is well cared for at the welfare agency but she needs her real family to love and teach her.’
‘It’s good for this baby to grow up here. We start teaching our children our ways from very young so they know where they come from and their place in the world. This is important for children. We teach them this so they become good people. Our Barradja children don’t get lost like many white kids.’
‘That’s true. Our white society and many white parents seem to be losing the strong way to bring up children.’ They were silent for a moment and Beth asked, ‘How are your boys?’
Ardjani smiled proudly. ‘Soon be time for Joshua to be finishing his initiation. And Luke needs to learn more white ways. Beth, I want them to go to a white-boy school.’
Beth nodded, her face betraying no surprise. These were Ardjani’s youngest sons by his second wife who had died two years ago. Josh was fifteen and Luke nine and Ardjani saw in them the future. They would take over from him and he spent teaching time with them every day.
‘Why do you want them to go to a white boys’ school, Ardjani?’ asked Beth gently.
‘I been thinking. I got a white schooling . . . it makes me okay to the white law men. I learn about God and the Queen of England and how to use proper knife and fork.’
‘That was at a mission school. Times are changing, that sort of education won’t help Josh and Luke.’
Ardjani shook his head. ‘I know. That’s why I want a big school for them. Posh one. Number one boarding school. They must get a white education as well as learn to be Barradja men and help our people to be part of both worlds. You fix it, Beth.’
He turned away, the subject closed. She knew there would have been much discussion and meetings about this idea. Then came the next step. Get Beth to fix it. It was part of her role as their adviser and friend.
‘Ardjani, it will take a little time. We have to write to the headmaster of the best school. I think Camfield Grammar in Perth would be the one. We need to explain why you want the boys to go there. It’s very expensive, and there will have to be some special care taken with the boys until they settle in. And also, we need to explain why you think it might benefit the school as well as Josh and Luke.’
Ardjani nodded. ‘I speak a letter about two-way thinking in education. You type it up.’
‘We have another matter to discuss. The group of white people I’m bringing to visit with you and the community. Here, in the next few weeks.’
Ardjani nodded and looked to the other elders. ‘We talk about this one. Rusty, Digger and Lilian are a little bit worried.’ He lifted an arm and hollered to a nearby child in Barradja language, ‘Get Lilian. Tell Aunty to come here.’
Lilian came in her own time. Not hurrying to Ardjani’s command, for she too was a law woman and elder, but still conscious that Ardjani’s wish was law. Her plump face smoothed away wrinkles, but a crooked nose and missing teeth attested to earlier bashings by a drunken relative, now no longer around. She sat cross-legged on the ground, her faded cotton dress tucked between her knees, and she folded her hands in her lap and faced Ardjani.
‘We talk about this idea, Beth, and Lilian want to know how these people going to help us. Why can’t they meet with us in the town? Or come here for a meeting and go back? Why they come and stay here?’
Ardjani glanced at Lilian who took up the subtle signal and spoke in a soft voice. ‘We don’t want to be unkind, they are welcome. But if they city people, how they stay here with us? We don’t want our place here to be like them caravan park places.’
Beth nodded. ‘They understand that. And we can camp. I’ve found someone to help us so we don’t make it like a picnic park. The idea is that these people come and experience your life, learn from you. And maybe we can get them to help us with our plans. I haven’t spoken to them about this yet. Let us see how they react to being here.’
‘Whitefellas don’t think they have anything to learn from us fellas,’ commented Digger dryly. ‘They say, what them blackfellas living in the desert going to show us people?’
‘We had white law fellas help before, they no good,’ said Rusty.
‘They were young law fellas, haven’t learned everything up good yet,’ said Ardjani. ‘They say they work to help us, but they don’t listen to what we want. They go in court and talk up to the judge and we sit in the back and they don’t say what we tell them.’ And speaking to the others, he went on, ‘Now, we do it number two way, Barradja way. We speak to the judge and white lawyers sit in the back.’
Beth laughed. ‘That sounds good. But you still have to know how to weave through the white courts and legal and bureaucratic process.’
Ardjani smiled as Beth talked, and finally he said to the others, ‘We will work together and we start a new law system, a new wurnan. A new way for all Australian people to share our lives and this land. We find a way to give this gift.’
‘So we start with these people coming. They want to learn about everything,’ said Beth. ‘The art, the music, the medicine, the food, the wunggud spirits, the stories . . .’
‘They gonna need to stay here many years,’ said Rusty with a grin.
‘It’s a start,’ said Beth. ‘It’s a start.’
For hours the airliner had flown over a vast emptiness. Melbourne and Sydney seemed so far away they might as well have been on another planet. Nothing Susan could see below suggested a connection with the two eastern seaboard cities she knew so well. So quickly had the fertile western plains of New South Wales given way to . . . nothingness. As hard to read as an abstract painting. And in a way the stark colours and contours of the empty land below reminded her of a painting. But one she could not read or become involved with, or comprehend. Maybe to understand this landscape you had to be down there, in it and on it.
The barren corner country where three State borders met looked desperate enough, but the big salt pans that bleached great scars from the country further out, and then the horizon-to-horizon parallel red sand dunes of the Simpson Desert, were an assault on the sense of place and distance.
It was like no other trip Susan had made into the Australian countryside and the flight to Darwin in the Northern Territory was like no other flight. Flipping between Sydney and Melbourne on business, holidaying in the Whitsundays, a ski trip to the South Island of New Zealand, all now faded compared with the impact this flight had on her. For the first time since making the commitment to go to the Kimberley country with Beth, and since taking up Andrew Frazer’s invitation to visit Yandoo, Susan had a feeling she was being transported into another world, a world in which she would be a stranger. It occurred to her, had the first settlers to Australia also felt this way?
The thought of being a stranger in her own land bothered her. Because what was below and beyond the horizon in all directions was her country. ‘My Country,’ she mused, recalling the wonderfully evocative poem she, and practically every Australian, had recited throughout their early school years. Yet, for all the poetry recitation and folk songs, the television documentaries that had reflected the great outback, the books, the art and the music that all spoke to her of this ancient sprawling nothingness, it had always felt as distant as another planet. As if it had no connection with her life.
The feeling was worrying and exciting. She recalled a remark Andrew Frazer had made to her at Easter. ‘You’ve got to get the dirt in your skin to know it.’
Andrew Frazer. She smiled to herself. Andrew, the alien from the bush. She closed her eyes and recalled the time she had spent with him at the Royal Easter Show, and how they had found an attraction for each other. Where this embryonic friendship was going, well, that was still a big question mark in Susan’s mind. But she was looking forward to seeing him again. At least in his part of the country there would be a little patch of civil
isation, there would not be the same sense of emptiness. His family had been on Yandoo Station for close to a hundred years. There, in less arid country, she would find a comfortable, more familiar Australia.
Susan waited to change planes at Darwin for the short flight to Katherine, the closest airport to Yandoo which was just over the border in WA. In the lounge at Darwin Airport were Japanese in flagled groups, European backpackers, excited senior citizens on package tours escaping the southern winter and Aborigines, some wearing stockmen’s hats, riding boots, jeans and bright shirts, others carrying mobile phones and briefcases looking like they’d come from Land Council meetings down south. There were also teams of beefy men in T-shirts, strained by muscle and beer gut, that identified them with oil rigs or remote mining locations.
The flight to Katherine was short, mainly over cattle properties with their own airstrips and connected by a network of roads that seemed to link with the bitumen highway that ran across the continent from north to south – The Track. Well, it was once a track, Susan had read in the airline magazine. Nothing much more than a pad for camel trains until a war turned it into a key defence artery. But everyone, even officialdom, still called it The Track.
To Susan’s surprise, on the approach to Katherine she glimpsed a huge airbase with a bay of Caribou and Hercules transport aircraft. She had forgotten that Katherine was one of Australia’s most powerful forward defence posts and, as her passenger aircraft flashed past this parade of power, she was struck by the huge contradictions the day was providing. She had a growing sense of anticipation at the prospect of seeing Andrew. But it was a little disconcerting not knowing his family, not knowing what he’d told them, what they expected of her. But it really didn’t matter that much. It was just another interlude, she told herself again, even though some queer feelings were stirred by his affectionate promise only yesterday when he telephoned her to confirm, for the second time, that he would meet her at Katherine airport. ‘I’ll be there with bells and drums.’
‘Wouldn’t a didgeridoo be more appropriate?’ she had quipped.
He’d brought no musical accompaniment, but his big smile, affectionate hug and a warm kiss made the reunion an easy one. ‘Gee, it’s great to see you again,’ he said, taking her cabin bag and heading into the small terminal. ‘I sometimes thought you wouldn’t make it.’
‘Oh,’ she said, making no effort to conceal her surprise at the remark. ‘And why did you think that?’
He was at once embarrassed. ‘Well . . . well . . . it’s such a long way to come, and you have this commitment to do this oddball bush thing with the Aborigines and I just thought that if you’re pressed for time, Yandoo would be the first item on the agenda to get scratched.’
Before she could reply, two men in the rig of cattlemen shouted, ‘G’day, Andrew.’ He gave them a quick wave. ‘Stock and station agents,’ he told Susan by way of explanation. While he was retrieving her bulging bag that doubled as a backpack, an attractive woman stepped forward to get her suitcase and flashed him a big smile.
‘Hi, Andrew. How are things out, at Yandoo?’
Susan stood back as he chatted briefly with her, both exchanging remarks that made them laugh. It was the sort of conversation that Susan sensed went beyond the casual friendship category and she was aware of a flash of emotion that was suspiciously like jealousy. But she thrust it to one side as she realised how more mature and relaxed he seemed compared with the man she first met at Veronica’s dinner party. His casual gear topped by a broad-brimmed, well-worn, sweat-stained Akubra pushed back to reveal an unruly curl of sun-bleached hair, his unhurried gait and broad shoulders made him stand out. His face invited the greetings that he accepted with the ease of one who expected them.
‘Popular boy,’ she smiled.
‘My town, old family,’ he said with an answering smile.
Instead of heading for the parking lot, Susan found herself back on the tarmac to one side of the terminal. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked, a little puzzled as she took in a large sprawl of light aircraft.
‘To the chariot.’ He gestured towards a Cessna parked nearby. ‘Only way to travel if you have a choice. Besides, after the long trip you’ve had today, the last thing you need is to be bouncing along dusty roads. We’ll be home in no time this way. Make it nicely for afternoon tea.’
Susan remembered that he had mentioned in Sydney that he flew and the family owned a light aircraft, but it never occurred to her that he used it like a motor car. As he stowed her bags and helped her aboard, she realised this was the first time she had flown in a small plane.
He sensed her apprehension. ‘Big enough. And safer than being on the road. And I know the way home.’
‘I hope so, it looked very lonely out there.’
Andrew threw his hat on top of her luggage, busied himself with pre-flight checks, started the engine, waited for clearance from the control tower and taxied for take-off. Susan watched him with growing reassurance but increasing discomfort. It was becoming unbearably hot in the little cabin and she was starting to perspire. ‘Give us a few more minutes and we’ll be up in the cooler air. Open your window for a bit.’
Soon they were airborne and heading west. The cabin became more comfortable. Andrew did another routine check on the radio and settled back. ‘Want to have a hold of the controls?’ he asked.
‘You must be joking!’
‘I was.’
Because they were up only 3,500 feet, Susan saw a new perspective on the land. There were so many signs of human presence. Fences, tracks leading to gates, tracks to dams, water-mills, well-formed dirt roads, distant glimpses of station buildings, frequent sightings of mobs of cattle resting in the shade of trees, occasional small settlements beside billabongs and streams.
‘What’s that?’ she shouted, pointing to a cluster of galvanised rooftops amid trees by a big waterhole in a near dry creek.
‘Our station mob.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘Aborigines. Some families who’ve decided to live in the bush away from the main settlement in the reserve. Lots of them all over the place these days.’
‘Why? Why do they do it? Looks a terribly isolated place to set up home.’
‘It is. Bit too complicated to explain now, but it’s all about getting back to their roots. At least that’s what they say, but I don’t know just how useful it really is in the long run.’ He did a quick instrument check then pointed ahead. ‘See that fence line . . . that straight line going right across the country just above the prop?’
‘Yes. I’ve got it.’
‘Well that’s the eastern boundary of Yandoo.’
‘God, it seems to go from horizon to horizon.’
‘Yep. Big spread.’
‘Bigger than Texas,’ she said with a grin.
‘Not quite. You know in the 1950s there were three cattle stations up this way that were so big that together they were bigger than the whole State of Texas.’
‘Really!’
‘That’s the story anyway.’ His voice dropped a couple of notes and with mock seriousness he intoned, ‘It’s a big country.’
They passed over the boundary fence and he began his descent, swinging the aircraft slightly to line up with the dirt strip that had been cut from the scrub. Susan could see a white Land Cruiser parked by a windsock and a shed that was obviously the hangar. A kilometre or so away was a greener, denser patch of trees, a hint of lawn and several outbuildings around a large galvanised roofed homestead and another group of smaller houses, almost huts, some distance away down by a creek. He reached over and briefly squeezed her hand. ‘Stand by for landing.’
He executed a perfect touchdown and taxied the plane right up to the hangar, did a radio check with flight services, then switched off the motor. ‘Let the dust settle a bit before jumping out,’ he advised, and waved from his window to greet the Aborigine crouched in the shade of the Land Cruiser, smoking a cigarette. ‘G’day, Charley. How’s it g
oing?’
‘Charley one of the faithful retainers?’ she asked quietly.
Andrew wasn’t too sure how to take the remark and it caused him to hesitate briefly with his log book entry. Susan wanted to bite her tongue, realising that it was a remark that could be taken two ways, and she was relieved when he made a joke of it. ‘Yeah, been with us all his life. Putting his name up for the Australia Day honours list. Services to the cattle industry.’
They all helped push the plane into the hangar then piled into the Land Cruiser. Charley got in the back seat. Susan turned and introduced herself. ‘Hi , I’m Susan.’
‘G’day, miss,’ he said, with a little nod of acknowledgment and a big smile of nicotine-stained broken teeth. Susan tried to guess his age. Maybe late fifties she reckoned.
In a few minutes they were on a red gravel driveway that curved through a garden oasis to the porch of the homestead.
It was a low stone building in a U shape around a rear garden, the columns of the wraparound verandah smothered in tangled coils of bougainvillea. The silver of the corrugated-iron roof glinted in the sunlight, its deep eaves shading broad stone steps. As Andrew pulled up, two dogs rushed cheerfully to greet them and a woman came out of the front door and stood waiting.
‘That’s Mum. Her name’s Ellen.’ Andrew led Susan forward.
His mother was in her early sixties, dressed in a simple cool dress with a single strand of good pearls at the V neckline. Her brown hair was cut short following its natural waves. The effect of looking like a senior member of the British royal family at home was relieved by bare legs and flat white sandals. She looked cool, poised and smiled graciously. ‘Welcome to Yandoo, Susan. We’re delighted you decided to come. But you must be hot and tired. Come inside and have a cool drink.’ She turned to her son. ‘Let Charley do the bags, dear.’
Susan followed Ellen into the cool interior. ‘On your way to the Kimberley, Andrew tells me.’