Walk across Australia

by David Mason

  Geraldton Historic Society Bore and headed toward Carnegie Station.

  We camped five to 10 kilometres short of the Munkilli Claypan which meant, in such a good season as we had, drinks for all next day. I did not camp closer as I did not wish to attract hordes of mosquitoes into a camp of four camels and a human.

  Next evening I sat on my swag watching a remarkable sight. I was alerted to the approach of the storm by static breaking up the weather report on the radio. I looked into the sky and soon the lightning flashes appeared to the west of Mount Rossiter. Then the cloud, a tall, swelling fat black crab with pincers extended, moved toward us. As I watched I saw the stars extinguished and I counted the time between lightning and thunder. It was getting closer.

  As the dark grew nearer, and because our view of the sky was so enormous, it was like a living thing cleaving the early evening with menace. Kashgar whimpered a little while I watched spellbound and, despite the fire, felt the temperature drop as it passed low and directly overhead to eclipse the lights in the sky. The darkness chilled me before it was soon gone and I watched it sail away to the north-east and the dunes of the Gibson Desert.

  Late that night, near midnight, it happened again. Another bull camel in the camp. There had been no moon, so all was very black. I was deep in my swag and the deep-throated roars of camels broke into my dreams. Pushing my head from my sleeping bag and putting on my headlamp, I could just make out Kabul and another camel, their muscled necks wound together, canines exposed, roaring in mortal combat.

  In a moment I was out of the swag and grabbed the rifle. I yelled, ‘Get out of it’ and my cry was just enough to make the intruder move off a few metres. I put the rifle down for a moment and pulled on my boots. He went for Kashgar. I searched for his shadow with the corner of my eye and took a deep breath to calm myself. I checked that Kabul, Chloe, Kashgar and Dalhousie were out of the firing line.

  As the intruder moved to Kashgar I took a shot. He was no more than 10 metres away. He turned around and I shot again. He staggered to the road and I heard him go down, his body thumping to the ground. Circling around him I could hear his gasping for life. I moved to him with the rifle as quickly as I could. Later, after the sound had cleared and the menace had for a time evaporated, I made a drawing of the camel’s attack and wondered if I could learn by writing things down.

  In the morning I woke early and smiled when I found Kashgar had slept as close to me as her rope would allow. I also woke to find myself bathed in sweat. My T-shirt hung from me and the sleeping bag liner was almost wringing wet. I had not got rid of the virus or whatever it was, and I felt drained and weak. Later that day we camped about 10 kilometres from Mount Nossiter and at least closer to Carnegie Station.

  Not long after first light we met two bull camels. Unusually, we saw them from a distance away, and we were downwind. I shot both and having checked the cardboard box of shells found myself down to 20 rounds. I had lost count of how many I had to shoot. It was another hard day, mostly into a west-south-westerly breeze. My right calf, where Achilles met calf muscle, had a lump in it. I had a headache. To take my mind off things that gave me pain I started picking flowers for pressing between the pages of my diary.

  Just after noon next day I noticed a change in the country. From undulating sand dunes to a harder gibber ground seemingly with more green. It was not long after that we found it. Never before had a cow pat appeared so welcome! It was the first sign of Carnegie Station. At 4.30 p.m. we struck some things altogether different, a cattle grid, barbed-wire fence and then a large tractor pulling a blade. It was Max, a New Zealander, grading the Gunbarrel Highway.

  8 To the Coast

  – 25 September 1998

  No mountain ranges, no rivers, no lakes, no pastoral lands, nor mineral districts has it brought to life; where the country was previously unknown it has proved only its nakedness; nevertheless I do not regret one penny of the cost or one minute of the troubles and labours entailed by it.

  David Carnegie, 1898

  We left Carnegie Station, named after one of the last explorers through Western Australia in the nineteenth century, late in the afternoon and camped not far from the station. We arrived there the day before, around 2 p.m. About four kilometres before arriving at the station I met Peter Buchanan, who told me he was a veteran of Korea and Malaya. He’d been out collecting wood for the donkey – the Outback hot water system.

  Less than an hour later I saw the house, the first after weeks of walking. I realised that the prospect of nocturnal visitors, of teeth and screaming and fear was over. The camels could eat and rest and I could at last sleep through the night. As we came closer to the house I was struck by the presence of so many young trees. Citrus and ghost gums around 10 years old.

  As we I arrived at the whitewashed front gate my knees were weak and my heart thumped harder. I turned to Kabul, caressed his nose and whispered a question into his twitching ear, ‘Have we done it?’ He sighed his fragrant sigh into my face and I kissed him under his wet left eye.

  We were met by Faye Smith, who stood beside the gate in a floral print dress with her hands clasped in front. I wanted to embrace her and cry and sing with happiness and relief. Instead we shook hands and I introduced myself and each of the camels.

  Faye invited me to lunch and later in the afternoon I cleaned and repaired gear. The camels were tethered just outside the house paddock, to the south of the front gate. Later in the evening I met some of the other workers and Faye’s husband Ian, who told me that Carnegie Station was the subject of a Native Title claim by local Aboriginal people. ‘Mate,’ said Ian, ‘there haven‘t been Aboriginal people out here for more than 50 years. What do they know of the land? I know its secret places, those dips and hollows where water might be. They don’t. How would they do on the land without me?’

  Faye gave me mail that had been forwarded for me to Carnegie. There were letters from my parents and from friends a birthday cake which I shared with the Carnegie people. Faye smiled and said that I would be better keeping the cake for myself. ‘You look like you could do with some fattening up,’ she said gently.

  Two nights from the homestead we camped about 10 kilometres past the Glenayle Station turnoff. So I guessed about 40 kilometres out of Carnegie Station. The days were getting very much warmer, and the light breeze from the west and north-west sucked the moisture from my cheeks. The country was red brown gibber stone with golden shadows of spinifex and shallow creek beds cutting the track. There were far more emus and kangaroo here than out in the desert. This was just west of the country that David Wynford Carnegie and his expedition passed through on their 1896 return journey to Halls Creek from Coolgardie. Carnegie was the fourth son of an earl, and an adventurer. After education as an engineer and a stint on tea plantations in Ceylon he joined the rush to Coolgardie when gold was discovered in Western Australia in 1892.

  Though full of energy and passion, Carnegie was so ignorant of the land he resorted to capturing Aboriginal people, tying them up and feeding them salted beef until they revealed the presence of water. One such spring, named Empress Spring by Carnegie, was hidden 25 feet underground in a cave with a small entrance and not rediscovered by Europeans for 70 years.

  Carnegie left Australia shortly after his expedition, was feted by the Royal Geographical Society in London, and appointed Assistant Resident in Nigeria. Here at the age of 29 he was mortally wounded while attempting to capture a criminal, struck in the thigh by a poison arrow. His was a life that flickered, just briefly, with an intense flame. I wondered if, as he lay dying, he thought it was worth it.

  At the place we camped there was a 30 metre ghost gum, a hot summer’s sentinel, just a square leg away from where I rolled out the swag, across the track from Johnston’s Water. A few metres from Johnston’s Water was Mingal Camp, a covered camp with stove heater built by the people of Wongawol Station, next station from Carnegie, who used the camp when they were out mustering cattle.

  I was up i
n the early morning, the flies already batting their wings against my cheeks, searching for the moisture in my eyes. There were so many flies that for the first time since the Simpson Desert I went in search of the fly veil and put it on my hat. In the course of the day I met Kimberley John, so-called because he had worked in the Kimberley of north-west Australia, station owner Spencer Snell from Wongawol, and later in the day his wife Gloria. The generous Gloria invited me to stop over in the station buildings at Wongawol. Everyone was on their way east to Carnegie Station to help with the mustering of cattle.

  When I packed up the following morning I counted eight centipedes up to 20 centimetres long in among the blankets of the swag. They were of the blue green variety and the colour reminded me of the ties around sacks of potatoes. Later in the day the wind picked up. If I dared to open my mouth the moisture evaporated and my tongue became dry felt. With my head down and the elastic of the fly veil around the crown of my hat, the veil flew off and I gave it up as lost. I was too tired to give chase and anyway. With the wind blowing as it did flies were not a problem.

  We got away early from Johnston’s Water where there were great mobs of emus, up to 15 in one group. To the north-west, Desolation Hills lay squat and malevolent, monochromatic, bleak and lonely. They looked a place where a person could die and never be found, a place where dingos, birds of prey and ants would consume the flesh and disperse the bones.

  Late in the afternoon we camped at Jackie Junction, 27 kilometres from Wongawol. Just before I went to sleep with my head relaxed on the canvas pocket of the swag, I felt a sensuous caress on my neck and jaw, a hundred soft caressing prickles. I turned on my headlamp to see legs and the biggest huntsman-like spider I had ever seen. A flick to a bush nearby and I went back to sleep. How could I worry about something that was not venomous?

  Dalhousie loves Kashgar, sniffing and rubbing anything that smells of her. With Kashgar unconcerned in the background.

  The Snells invited me to stay in the single men’s quarter, where the stockmen Keith and Kimberley John had their beds. The camels stopped in the house paddock where the generosity of the Snells saw them plied with hay. The last they did not bother with, preferring the lovely weeds that grew in profusion across the paddock.

  The Snells told me they had inherited the property from a spinster aunt who died a year or so before. Estate problems saw to it that ownership took a long time to sort out. The station had originally included Carnegie and Wandidda and was built around the turn of the century, not long after David Carnegie had moved through the area. The original homestead was just three rooms and built of local stone with firing ports, one of which opened to cover the old well that had been dug by hand. According to Spencer there were at least two Aboriginal men killed around the old house. One had been shot near the well, the other had approached the house holding a spear against his leg and was shot.

  I went to the old homestead and walked inside its walls. It was shaded inside, cool, with its history and memories tangible in the narrow firing ports and the stone bases of water tanks clearly evident inside the house. It had been designed so that the station people could hold out for some time if the house came under siege.

  I was glad the old house had been kept standing. It was testament to a very different time, of hopes, fear and conflict, distrust and death. Over dinner that night the Snells told me that they had to be on Wongawol because it was part of their family. Spencer said that they had a responsibility to look after the station and care for the land and everyone nodded in agreement. It was a responsibility that came with the family, they said. It was in their blood and could not be denied.

  At the conclusion of the next day, camels and I camped 25 kilometres along the track. It was so hot that the dirt track rippled and buckled into the horizon. I drank all the water I carried on me and by late afternoon had a headache that beat against my skull. What breeze there was came from the north, and it drove the brittle dust into our faces. The small radio told me that the forecast for the next day was for isolated showers clearing to the east. I hoped the forecast was right. There were just l90 kilometres to Wiluna.

  As I sat on the swag that night the wind picked up from the north-west, heavy with moisture and the expectation of a storm. I felt the dust stick to the grease of my face making a gritty crust. Just after I had unrolled the swag and lay my bones in the sleeping bag the winds hit. Then the winds accelerated and blew hot fireflies from the campfire as it drove in from the north-west. I left the shelter of the swag, pulled on my boots and by hand doused the fire in sand. Watching the embers being blown into the night I had no doubt the wind and live lights of fire could have started a blaze capable of sweeping across the land.

  By next morning the weather had changed. A gentle breeze blew cool from the south-west. The camels were happy to be up and moving as there was little feed for them to pick. We moved past Little Banjo and then Banjo Well, beyond a salt lake with some water in it, and earlier than normal stopped at a terrific patch of a favourite camel food of mixed weeds, pigweed and low shrubs. It was not the sort of smorgasbord I thought we should pass up. As I did every day, after the routine of unsaddling and setting up camp I watched my friends and marvelled at their ability to eat. It seemed to me that a camel could eat enough in half an hour to change its profile, from a lean machine of labour to a plump bellied vegetarian.

  We were fortunate to camp where we did as only a few hundred metres away the country changed and there was little feed for camels. We arrived at abandoned Yelma Station, noted on my map as Outback Bore, in the morning and after a drink moved off quickly, the camels made nervous, their eyes wide, by the squeaking of the windmill.

  Though the day’s temperature quickly rose, the breeze from the west-south-west was just enough to take the edge off the heat. In the afternoon I stopped to look at a shaft of an abandoned gold mine near the track. I told the camels that if they should fall down they would never be found. If little Dalhousie did not understand my words, he understood their tone and kept well away. Maybe too, he had learned from his adventure in the rock pool.

  I looked down the shaft into the shadows and marvelled at those who had come to this place to search for gold. Not only was this place remote from Wiluna, the ground was concrete hard. For men with little more than picks and shovels it must have broken backs and hearts.

  We left the pastoral lease of Wongawal Station early in the morning. We passed Leeman’s Bore just off the track to the left, the last bore on the station. For the calcium they gave, Kabul and Chloe chewed some kangaroo bones along the way and we moved on to Lake Violet Station, de-stocked and run by a mining concern. We met Keith and Kimberley John on their way into Wiluna for a ‘blow’ – a drink and a general relax from the pressures of the station. In the afternoon I waved to Ian Smith driving back from a shire council meeting in Kalgoorlie, more than 600 kilometres from Carnegie. It was what people here did – long drives to do the things they believed they had to do.

  Kissing Dalhousie who was growing up fast.

  We camped in what I thought was a reasonable spot up from Mitchell Bore, located on the third cattle grid on Lake Violet Station. It was the home of the scorpion and as I sat to write up my diary I felt fine-haired caresses on my leg and flicked three into the dust. I wondered if I had disturbed a family.

  In the middle of the morning next day we met a very ‘second-hand’ Keith and Kimberley John coming back from Wiluna. They had enjoyed a big night in town. Not unexpectedly, it was etched under their eyes. They told me it would be the last for at least six weeks, during which time they would be out mustering.

  Later we met Phil from Prenti Downs cattle station who was taking two new female workers to the station. One was a 20-year-old, very pale with dyed black hair. She stepped from Phil’s four-wheel drive and immediately began to slap on sunscreen.

  The second had an accent of the US West Coast. Over 40 I supposed, bottlebleached blonde, a tattoo burned or skin-grafted off her left upper arm,
with two more, one melting into a dark web on her hand and the other on her forearm; two flags, I thought. She insisted on ‘working the camels’ but had no idea how to do so. After I introduced the camels, she snatched at Kashgar’s lead rope and shouted ‘Down girl! Get down!’ I asked her to stop because Kashgar became unhappy, with a bellow and a beseeching look in my direction.

  The woman’s aggression bled into the air around us and the camels. As I took Kashgar’s rope from her hand I told the bottle-blonde it was best to leave them be until they got to know her. She narrowed her eyes and told me she wanted to walk from Coolgardie, in the southern Western Australian goldfields, to ‘Ayers Rock’ with camels, but had been refused permission by ‘bloody Land Councils’. She said she wanted to be just like the camel lady.

  West of Carnegie Station.

  I told her that all she needed were some camels, some gear, some maps, a rifle and lots of patience. I told her that times had changed and that it was necessary to secure permission to enter Aboriginal land. After all, it was theirs. ‘Bullshit,’ she said, ‘the Aboriginal people don’t want to keep me out, it’s the white men, the damn administrators.’ I wished her luck and Phil winked at me and left his hand in his pocket too long. The two women turned away from me and got back into the vehicle. Phil left me a smile.

  Like the people we met, the country changed all the time, from sand to clay pan to salt lake to breakaway and then to hard ground. We camped in a good spot for camels with plenty of feed. There was a full moon and with it, for some reason inexplicable to me, mosquitoes that whined around my head and made the camels snort, stamp and sigh.

  We were just 25 kilometres east of Wiluna and I was emotionally and physically exhausted from having to put up with pain all the time; in my back, my legs – in the consistent jarring movement. Was it masochism, masculinity or the drive to achieve that kept me going? I was utterly fixated and obsessed with reaching my goal. There was no doubt about that. The real question was, at what cost? The only time the pain stopped was when I was on my back in the swag. How tempting it could be to ignore a check of the tethered lines or a look at the camels because a sixth sense told me to. But I never ignored the impulse to check them. Maybe that was what made things so hard. Never a rest from them. Never a time when I could truly relax.