Two particularly high sandhills raised their red foreheads not very far from the station. They were important enough to have names – Tnakatuma and Ntonurknga. Because of the rapid destruction of the vegetation around the station buildings by horses, cattle, donkeys, and goats, Idracowra had been notorious for the severity of its dust-storms ever since its establishment. There had been an earlier station settlement a couple of miles downstream at Iwutitnama. The present site – Mbontuma – had been selected by the owners because the sandy northern Finke bank at this point was raised slightly above the level of the highest floods. At the same time, the saltbush flats which covered the southern bank of the Finke spread out as far as the edge of the high sandhills rising over a mile south of the main river bed. This wide belt of saltbush was several miles long; and a couple of miles east of Idracowra this plain was inundated from time to time by the brown floodwaters brought down by the Kringka – a lazy box gum channel which wound its snakelike course towards the Finke from the clay-pans and clay-flats situated on high-level country more than a hundred miles away to the south-west of Idracowra. This Kringka rarely ran in flood over the full distance of its course. Normally it consisted of a series of large, but very shallow, clay-pans, which were linked by channels only when the rains had been sufficiently heavy to make the water rise high enough to flow over and tear breaches in the low sandbars that used to spread across many parts of the Kringka during lengthy drought periods. But the very sluggishness of the floodwaters, and the many sandbars that normally blocked their course, helped to keep most of the water brought down by local rains in the country where it had fallen. Hence the Kringka channel, and the many broad box gum flats in it, carried a long belt of saltbush, and in good seasons of rich herbage, through the Erldunda and Idracowra station runs; and nowhere was this belt wider or more fertile than from the point where the Kringka channel joined the southern box gum flats of the Finke to the place of its entry into the bed of the Finke at Knguljambalataka. At the latter site stood a post carrying a locked letter-box, in which the camel postman could leave the mail intended for Erldunda Station. For Idracowra Station was often left unmanned during mustering periods; and the Erldunda folk could then pick up their mail at The Letter Box.
The name Idracowra was a corruption of Itirkawara, the Aranda name for Chambers Pillar, a striking sandstone formation rising high above the red dunes some eleven miles north of the station. But in spite of its corruption by the whites, the initial ‘I’ of Idracowra was still correctly sounded like the initial ‘I’ in Itirkawara that is, like the vowel in the English word ‘it’. Occasionally this initial vowel was sounded long, like the ‘I’ in ‘machine’. Chambers Pillar marked the final resting place of the fierce mythical gecko ancestor called Itirkawara, who had set out as a young man on a long journey north-eastward from Tjina which took him across the border into Queensland. During his travels he had grown into a huge and powerfully built man of superhuman strength and extreme violence of temper. On his way home to his birthplace he had challenged and cut in halves with his stone knife a number of other unfortunate totemic ancestors in various Aranda speaking areas. Flushed by the ease of his successes, he had disregarded the rules of the strict marriage code whose provisions were to become obligatory for the Aranda folk of later days. He had, in fact, deliberately committed the flagrant moral crime of having marital relations only with girls who belonged to that kin-group class from which not his wife but only his mother-in-law should have come. In the later human days men who committed this most abhorred ‘incestuous’ act were invariably punished by death. The presumptuous gecko ancestor, however, had defied even the anger of his own kinsfolk at Tjina by improperly bringing such a girl to their camp as his wife. His enraged relatives had promptly banished him and the girl from their midst, and told the ostracised pair to make their home out in the sandhills, far from the waters of the Finke. Itirkawara, though raging with fury, had been powerless to defy the edict of his own gecko kinsfolk. He had retreated north into the sandhills, taking the shrinking girl with him. Among the dunes the pair had suddenly grown weary and turned into prominent rocky formations. Itirkawara had changed into a stone pillar standing on a high base and raising its crest some hundred and fifty feet into the air. The unhappy girl had turned into a low hill, situated about a quarter of a mile from the Pillar; and, just as the girl had at the very end crouched down on the ground, averting her face from her seducer in deep shame, so the rocky crest of this low hill turned its face away from Chambers Pillar.
The old Mbontuma waterhole had become silted up by the Finke floods soon after the establishment of the second Idracowra Station; and a well had been sunk on the northern bank, several chains upstream from the buildings, to provide water for the many hundreds of cattle that browsed in the rich saltbush and herbage flats on the southern side of the main channel. This well was of the normal two-bucket type found everywhere in Central Australia at the time; but Theo had never seen one before, since Hermannsburg and the two adjoining station properties of Henbury and Glen Helen had been so copiously supplied with open waterholes by the Finke River. He therefore accompanied Johnson and some of the dark station women when they took the donkeys down to operate the double draught system of the well. With one bucket coming up full to the surface whenever the other one went down into the well, it did not take very many hours to fill the big black-iron stock tank that supplied the long stock troughs. Hesekiel, Titus, and Jakobus were already down at the well, looking critically at the Hermannsburg horses. The tired animals were standing around in dull listlessness. They would have stood there completely motionless if it had not been for the fiendish persistence of the tormenting flies, which forced them from time to time to toss their heads wearily and to give occasional savage swishes with their tails. Dark streaks and weals on their rumps still bore witness to the cruel cuts they had received from whips on the previous day. All their rearing pride of only five days ago had gone out of them. Their bodies still looked reasonably rounded and strong; but there was no longer any fire left in their sad, tired, pleading eyes. Their spirit had been utterly defeated by the hard journey; and it was clear that many days would have to elapse before they would be fit for any further duty. ‘They are knocked-up altogether,’ Hesekiel remarked; ‘we’ll have to get fresh horses from this station before we can go on to Horseshoe Bend.’
‘Donkeys are better than horses in this country,’ put in Jakobus; there are too many sandhills down here.’ Theo agreed heartily with the latter remark. As draught animals in sandy country, the local donkeys had no equals. With their ability to eat and digest anything, from grass, herbage, and acacia foliage down to rags and paper, these sturdy animals never lost their condition in the alarmingly quick manner of horses. In addition, women and even children could harness them and work them; and if the donkeys were slow, they were also completely reliable. It seemed ironical that these sturdy animals should ever have been termed ‘asses’ in a derogatory sense: this term of abuse could well have been reserved for their unthinking two-legged detractors.
The day again turned out to be a scorcher. Men and animals were grateful for the long midday break, which most of them spent resting or sleeping in the shade of the big river gums. It was a relief when evening came and the long, hot day ended. And for Theo it had been his first Sunday without hymns, prayers, or church services.
DURING SUNDAY ALLAN BREADEN and Heinrich had spent much time in discussing Strehlow’s desperate plight, and the problem of how to bring him closer to medical help. Both men were convinced that Strehlow was far too ill to continue his journey in the buggy. Only a motor vehicle could take him to the next station; and the best plan would be for the sick man to wait for Mr Wurst from Appila to come to Idracowra. The train on which Mr Wurst had arranged to bring his car had been due to reach Oodnadatta on Friday night; and even if he had not been able to leave the railhead till midday on Saturday, he should by now be well on his way north from Oodnadatta.
When Alla
n Breaden and Heinrich visited Strehlow in the blockhouse on Monday morning, both were deeply shocked to see him looking so ill. His day of rest had not improved his condition in the slightest. There was no time left for any hesitation or indecision. ‘Mr Strehlow,’ said Allan, ‘you can’t leave Idracowra in your buggy today. Your horses are knocked-up, and this hot weather knocks hell out of any man even if he’s in the best o’ good nick. Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll send two boys to Horseshoe Bend with a letter to Gus, telling him to send the car on to Idracowra as soon as it gets to The Bend. His donks will take about six hours to pull the car over the Finke and the box gum flats for the first twelve miles. After that it’s hard, solid going till the car gets here; and our donks will pull it over to the station. That’ll let you have a spell here till the car comes. The old blockhouse isn’t much of a place to stay in; but at least it’s solid and keeps you out of the sun.’
The sick man was only too ready to accept Allan’s offer. But when he was about to express his thanks, Allan quickly brushed his remarks aside. ‘Look, it’s nothing what I’m doing. Everyone in this country would be only too glad to do the same for you. I’m only sorry I can’t do more.’ And with those few words Allan strode out, told two of his stockmen to saddle up the two best riding horses in the yard, and sent them off with a letter to Horseshoe Bend.
Allan Breaden had spoken the truth. Though he was Joe Breaden’s brother, he was merely the manager, not the owner of Idracowra Station. During the course of his long life on stations in the Centre, Allan, like some of the other pioneers, had from time to time made considerable amounts of money as a cattleman; but after spending forty-seven years in the cattle industry, he was still only an employee, and not a man of property. He was now aged about seventy. All he could look forward to was to end his days on some cattle station willing to accept him as an Old Timer living on the old-age pension.
Allan David Breaden, who had been born on Booborowie Station, north-west of The Burra in South Australia, had first come into the Centre in his twenties, in the year 1875, and hence shared with ‘Dickie’ Warburton the honour of being one of the first two Finke River pastoral pioneers. Allan had initially gone to Glen Helen. It was he who had discovered the natural stock-paddock formed by the parallel ranges south-west of Old Glen Helen station while riding with a mate through the Upper Finke country north of Hermannsburg in 1879; and the creek running through this paddock had been named ‘the Seventy-Nine Creek’ from the date 1879 which Allan had carved into a big gum tree close to its point of entry into the Finke. But the aboriginal population in the north-western MacDonnells had been too numerous for the taste of the early cattlemen; and, together with Gus Elliot and a number of other Upper Finke pioneers, Allan had after some years moved to stations situated downstream from Hermannsburg. After a first term at Idracowra, at that time a holding belonging to Messrs Grant and Stokes, Allan had become manager of Mount Burrell on the Hugh River, a property which was then one of those Elder stations that went in mainly for horse breeding. Mount Burrell shared, with Owen Springs and Undoolya, the distinction of being one of the very first pastoral properties to be stocked in the Centre. Mount Burrell had originally been held by Messrs Gilmour, Hendry, and Melrose, under a South Australian Pastoral Application for Lease granted on 7th December, 1875. The local Southern Aranda had resented the intrusion of the white men and their cattle, and had resorted to cattle-spearing in order to drive them out once more. The white men retorted by going out and firing shots into the aboriginal camps. Among the victims on these shooting occasions had been Anngamilja, a woman who belonged to the star totem of Iloata. Her descendants, who later on became some of the best aboriginal stockmen on the stations situated on the lower Hugh and the middle Finke River, kept alive both her name and that of the white station man who had led the attack on the camp in which she and some other folk had been killed. ‘The Gilmour (or as the aboriginal pronunciation had it, ‘Gillimore’) mob’ was to be remembered for its alleged murderous misdeeds eighty years after the Mount Burrell lease had first been granted. But matters had improved by 1891, when Allan Breaden had been able to tell the members of the South Australian Pastoral Commission, on their visit to Mount Burrell on 6th April that year, ‘Formerly the natives were very troublesome, but they are now civilised’, and add the tribute that he had found them very helpful as station workers. On all stations where Allan had worked, his dark employees, in their turn, referred to him in appreciative terms – ’im goodfella boss, quiet man altogether’. At a later date Breaden had moved down from Mount Burrell to Henbury; and he subsequently became manager of Idracowra after its acquisition by his brother Joe.
Like Bill Stokes (who had been one of the first and most important part-station owners in those early days) and most of the other pioneering cattlemen of the Centre, Allan had never known how to save money. He had preferred to enjoy his pay cheques to the full whenever they came in; and so his money had soon ‘gone west’ on liberal drinking bouts and on trips to the southern cities, where grog and other diversions had quickly emptied his pockets. For most of the Central Australian cattlemen hotels such as the Black Bull Hotel in Hindley Street, Adelaide, had too often represented not only journey’s end, but money’s end, too. But to go through one’s money as soon as it had been earned was what every true Central Australian bushman was expected to do; and Allan, like the others, had never been restrained in his easy spending habits by any worries or fears about the future. Once the hard-earned money had gone, these cattlemen had returned to the Centre and to the loyal companionship of their dark and coloured women. The latter were universally known as ‘kwiais’ – ‘kwia’ being the Southern and Eastern Aranda term for a girl. After returning to their old haunts, the pioneers had gone back without complaints or regrets to their tough life of work and hardship, relieved by the friendship of mates. In the eyes of the white population the vast spaces of the Never-Never were stripped of many of the terrors of its bush isolation by the knowledge that in times of need every man in the Centre could be counted on to come to the rescue.
After Allan Breaden had left him, Strehlow was able to give himself up to his self-questionings and to even deeper reflections on the problems of pain and the nature of man’s relationship towards God. Now that the letter had been sent to Horseshoe Bend, there was nothing left for him to do but to wait and to think. His wife remained in the room with him to attend to his needs, and his meals were brought to him from the station kitchen. In any case, he had little appetite left for eating any food. His upper body had been wasting away for weeks, as was becoming painfully apparent from the hollowness of his cheeks and the strange new bony appearance of his once strong and heavy hands. Loss of appetite, lack of sleep, a grossly swollen lower body, and his never-ending struggle against pain, had reduced him to a state of near helplessness. But his powerful heart was still beating strongly, and his clear brain was more active than ever.
On this morning Strehlow knew that only a miracle could save him; and he knew also that it was beyond his power to bring about that miracle. Not even prayer could guarantee, let alone compel, an answer from God. Like Job, he could only sit and wait for whatever answer would come from God, the supreme Lord of life and death. And in his heart he was growing more and more certain that the answer would be death. If so, it would be death either here or at some other station on the track; he would never reach the railhead at Oodnadatta. His grave would be dug in this desert waste. And then what would become of the faithful wife, so utterly dependent on him, who was sitting by his side, completely unaware that he was a dying man? Or of the son whom he had prepared to the best of his ability for a good secondary education in Germany? Both would be left penniless and without a single relative in Australia. With Germany itself in chaos and political turmoil, and writhing in the iron grip of galloping inflation, no relatives over there were in a position to come to the rescue of the two persons whom he would be leaving behind him when he died. They would have no protector save God t
o take pity on them.
T G H Strehlow Page 14