T G H Strehlow

by Journey to Horseshoe Bend (retail) (epub)

  This then was the myth explaining why a curse had been laid upon the upper reaches of the Fifteen Mile Creek, and why this arid and gloomy expanse in the heart of the table mountain region had become the Land of Death. Strehlow, who had passed Uralterinja somewhere about midnight, had not been able to view the sombre landscape; but Theo, who was seeing it in the middle of the day, felt intensely depressed by its almost ominous barrenness, even though he did not know the grim myth associated with it. The fierce dust-storm of the morning had brought up mountainous thunderclouds from the north. At midday the storm began to ease considerably; and for the last mile or two before the van reached Uralterinja an unnatural calm set in. It was now one o’clock in the afternoon. Suddenly a loud crash of thunder broke the silence. Heavy drops of rain began to fall noisily. A wild gale suddenly leapt into life, and the gnarled box gums marking the beginnings of the Fifteen Mile Creek bowed their thickly leaved crests before its tempestuous fury. Great branches were twisted as though they had been thin twigs, and hundreds of torn-off leaves could be seen scurrying helplessly across the shelterless expanse of pebble and stone. Little dust-clouds began to reveal the many-tailed trails of violent gusts across the hard ground. The donkeys laid their ears back close to their short, upright manes, and began to snort apprehensively. Fortunately Undunja waterhole was close at hand; and when the van reached its high bank, Njitiaka and Lornie stopped the donkeys and took refuge themselves in the totally inadequate shelter of the rocking van. For a few minutes it seemed as though the whole desolate landscape, whose unnatural darkness was lit up by sun-bright flashes of forked lightning, would be overwhelmed by the mad fury of driving wind and pelting rain. Then the reverberating rolls of thunder ceased as suddenly as they had begun, the heavy drops stopped falling, the storm died down and subsided, rifts appeared in the ominous cloud-banks above, and an almost breathless calm ensued. The brief burst of welcome, rain-scented freshness that had come into the heated, dust-laden air departed again, and the heavy, sultry atmosphere was even more unpleasant and oppressive than it had been before.

  As soon as the last fitful gusts had died away, Njitiaka and Lornie gathered up a few dry twigs which the storm had ripped off some of the box gums near the van, and lost no time in boiling the tea billies. For several hours past there had been no firewood along the track, nor was there any more firewood available before the next Finke crossing; and the travellers were not due to reach the latter much before sunset. The donkeys, too, were given a drink at Undunja, though they had travelled only fifteen miles since leaving Idracowra. For the heat of the morning had been unexpectedly fierce, and the next watering place would be at Horseshoe Bend.

  A long, sultry, tiring afternoon followed upon the resumption of the journey. Hour after hour the van clattered over the pebble-strewn wastelands, scarred deeply by sharp, ditch-like watercourses that had cut their way through the softer layers of clay and rock. These watercourses came down from the flanking line of table mountains south of Uralterinja. Many of these mountains marked sites visited at the beginning of time by the crow ancestor of Mbalka. Theo watched with horrified fascination the wheel tracks made by his father’s buggy the night before, particularly at the places where they crossed these sudden watercourses. Many of them were only about twenty feet wide, and their low, hard clay and rock banks descended almost perpendicularly to a depth of two, or even three, feet at the camel pad crossings. It was clear from the wheel marks and the tracks of the struggling horses that the buggy had plunged down during the night into all of these watercourses with a violent jar that would almost have shaken the passengers off their seats, and that sometimes several harsh and jolting leaps by the rear horses had been necessary before the vehicle had bumped its way out of the deeper gutters again. Since the driver had only the dim lantern lights carried by the two riders in front of the buggy team to guide him, it was amazing that the vehicle had not been overturned when hitting the sharpest and deepest of these ditches. What the totally exhausted sick man had been forced to suffer on his rough night ride through the Land of Death was almost beyond imagination. Occasionally the tracks showed that the buggy had halted for a while after gaining the top of the opposite bank of a gutter, probably in order to enable Strehlow to regain his breath after being flung hard against the back of his chair.

  Somewhere near four o’clock in the afternoon the majestic, cone-shaped mountain of Kngeitnama could be seen towering up against the sky several miles south of the track. Its mighty cone dominated the flat-topped mountains around it, just as a decorated ceremonial chief, wearing a sharp crest of white plumes, might loom up above a group of his followers who were carrying horizontal ornaments on their heads. Kngeitnama, whose name meant ‘the Father is standing’, was associated with a local rain myth. Its sharp and pointed crest was formed of white rock, and from its broad and rounded base the land fell down steeply towards the green Finke Valley, which could be seen against the northern horizon. The sun came out from behind the clouds which were beginning to break up with the waning of the afternoon. At last some signs of life appeared – red-and-white, and mottled, Horseshoe Bend cattle, with their long, sharp horns, grazing among the juicy herbage that grew in the narrow beds of these sharp watercourses. Their slim cattle pads could be seen winding for miles in a northerly direction towards the waterholes in the well-timbered Finke Valley. The smell of the rain in the early afternoon had induced these cattle to come out into the barren table mountain country for some miles further south than usual – to the very ends of even their tiniest hair-root trails.

  The buggy tracks now began to veer back towards the Finke Valley; and some time after six o’clock in the evening the iron-tyred wheels of the van ceased to clatter noisily. Instead they began to bite deeply into the soft ground that marked the edge of the box gum flats flanking the broad, sandy river bed. A large stockyard on the southern bank of the Finke indicated the proximity of the waterhole of Uleta. The road had to cross the riverbed here, since the southern bank of the Finke at this point was formed by high cliff walls. These marked the trail of the Tangka men on their way to Uralterinja. Behind these cliff walls rose some single flat-topped hills which indicated the haunts of an Ititilbiria bird ancestor who had once proudly pound his large heaps of grass seeds here in order to knead meal cakes from them. The sun sank below the crests of the western table mountains as the van made its first crossing over the Finke below Uleta.

  There was no time to halt for an evening meal. For the remainder of the journey to Horseshoe Bend the van followed the well-defined donkey wagon trail which led from the Uleta stockyard to Horseshoe Bend Station. The brief rainstorm that had hit the travellers at Undunja had not extended as far as the Finke cliffs below Uleta; and as the van moved slowly through the northern bordering box gum flats and stands of needle bush, it was enveloped and swallowed up by a cloud of warm and choking dust stirred up by the plodding, dragging feet of the tired donkeys. The wheels of the van sank deeply into the loose soil powdered up some weeks previously by the Horseshoe Bend wagon which had carted posts and rails for the cattle-yard, and firewood for the station population, from the splendid river gum and box gum stands in this area. The van wheels, being much narrower than those of the heavy wagon, cut at least three or four inches down into the loose ground which was a mixture of river sand and flood loam. The wooden fellies and the ends of the wheel spokes carried up tall, thin slices of powdered earth when rising; and the dust created by this soil when falling down obscured the lower parts of the wheels almost completely as the van moved forward slowly, evenly, relentlessly, without halt or pause, into the gathering gloom that was beginning to descend on the thick tree stands.

  Two hours later a hot night lay in breathless oppressiveness over the dark landscape. The van once more crossed the Finke in order to cut off a large bend, and the vehicle now moved over into the sandy silt flats bordering the southern bank of the river. The soil here was a mixture of white creek sand from the Finke and red sand from the mountain
ous dunes that flanked its southern overflow channels. This wide silt flat was covered with tussocks of tall cane grass; and the bare ground between these tussocks had been gouged out deeply by the heavy floods of the previous year. The surface of the silt flat was accordingly very rough, and bumpy with hillocks a foot or eighteen inches high. The height of these hillocks was due to the fact that the dense network of roots under the cane grass tussocks had enabled the ground covered by them to withstand the gouging action of the ripping, tearing floodwaters. The springless van began to lurch and bump like a drunken thing in a thicket-like darkness unrelieved by any vehicle lights; and Theo decided to complete the final miles of the journey on foot. Njitiaka had long since tied the reins of the leading donkeys to the curved piece of flat iron projecting over the tool-box mounted on the front of the van, for the donkeys could be relied on to follow the tracks of the station wagon without any deviations. They moved forward with surprising briskness although they had already covered a distance of more than thirty miles from Idracowra. They seemed to sense that a few miles further on they would come to journey’s end; and that would mean water, feed, and rest after a hot day and a long, hard pull. Njitiaka’s occasional harsh barks were not really needed any longer, but he kept on shouting at the donkeys from sheer force of habit. Theo could not help marvelling at his seemingly iron-lined throat, which had enabled him to keep calling out loudly for some fourteen hours with few breaks of any length.

  And so the last miles were covered, chain by chain, yard by yard, step by step. Theo put down one bare foot before the other almost mechanically, sometimes wondering whether the long-expected station lights would ever come into view. There was no moon; and though the stars were shining, their brightness, too, seemed to have been dimmed by the heavy pall of dust that still hung in the atmosphere after the wild storm gusts of the morning. Because of the darkness which blotted out all the more distant objects, such as the hills and the dunes, it often seemed as though neither the van nor the team was moving forward at all. In spite of all movement the travellers seemed to be marking time; and even the closer trees passed by them seemed to reappear again and again. From time to time Theo would ask how much further the station was, and Njitiaka would bark out gruffly in pidgin English that it was ‘close up now – little bit long way yet’.

  And then, when Theo was beginning to walk and to stumble like a sleepwalker, the van, which for a while had been heading directly towards a dark cliff bank on the eastern side of the river, turned in a more southerly direction. A few minutes later the dim lights of a couple of storm lanterns could be seen blinking uncertainly beyond the southern end of this cliff bank from somewhere on the rising ground across the white river bed. The donkeys slipped down a steep decline into the loose sand of the deeply scoured-out main channel of the Finke. There came a hard and heavy pull through the fine, powdery river crossing and a hard and steep pull up the high and sharply rising bank on the far side. Then the van rolled slowly past the stockyard gallows, from whose high cross-beam the carcass of a freshly slaughtered bullock was hanging, split down its middle. A pack of half-starved camp dogs, sniffing and wallowing amid the strong-smelling mess of bullock blood and fresh manure, slunk off snarling as the travellers went past them to the front of the Horseshoe Bend Hotel, some chains further on. The van pulled up in front of the hotel verandah. It was ten thirty in the evening.

  Dark men and women came forward to help Njitiaka and Lornie with unharnessing the sweating, snorting donkeys. The swags were tossed off quickly. Heinrich came forward and took Theo to the kitchen. Mrs Strehlow greeted her son briefly and then rushed back inside. A quick supper ended a long day’s journey for the party, all of whom were too tired for any conversations. Everyone wanted to go to sleep as quickly as possible. Njitiaka, Lornie, and Titus carried their swags to their friends in the camp, which was situated across a deep natural gutter. These gave them sleeping room in their tin shacks for the night. Theo was bedded down on an iron stretcher placed on the hotel verandah outside the room in which his parents had been put up. He was glad of the waterbag hanging from the verandah rafters close to his bed – he had not been able to stop drinking all day, and the water in this bag seemed deliciously cool after the constant great draughts of lukewarm and hot water which he had been consuming on the long journey.

  His queries after his father’s health were answered with curt briefness by people who were feeling just as tired as he was. The buggy had arrived at Horseshoe Bend only at ten o’clock in the morning. His father had scarcely been able to stand the cruel bumps over the pebble-strewn country among the table mountains during the night; and when the hot morning sun had begun to pour down its fires on him, he had been seized by an asphyxiating bout of asthmatic breathlessness. He had gasped for air for at least half an hour back in the first box gum flat before the buggy had been able to move on. Only the thought of being put in telephone communication with medical aid had given him the necessary strength to complete the last few miles to the hotel. The heat of his first day at Horseshoe Bend – well over a hundred degrees in the shade – had further exhausted him. He was asleep at last, but he had needed a heavier dose of laudanum than ever before.

  THE HORSESHOE BEND AREA had been remarkable for its cruel heatwaves for as long as human memory went back, and long before that time; for the main totemic sites in this region were all associated in some way with fire or with the scorching heat of the summer sun.

  The station had been built on a site known as Par’ Itirka (‘Incestuous Gum Tree’), so called from a large old gum growing on the bank of the Finke River near the station stockyard. This ancient tree with its swollen trunk figured in a mythical episode describing Par’ Itirka as the home of devastating summer heat from the very beginning of time. The major mythological sites closest to Horseshoe Bend were all situated along the high rocky cliffs which marked the left bank of the Finke from a point located about a mile upstream from the station down to the rockholes of Gula situated about three miles downstream. The furthest rocky bank upstream was the high cliff of Pot’ Intjinja, the ‘White-haired Mountain’, which was known also as Inggodna, the ‘Spark of Fire’. At Ndaterkaterka and Gula began a number of totemic sites associated with parties of ancestral carpet snakes. The main ceremonial centre among all these sites was Pot’ Arugutja, the ‘Stone Women’. The local myth of Pot’ Arugutja related that at the beginning of time there had been a camp of ancestresses here belonging to the ntjira grass-seed totem. These ntjira women had been under the guidance of two female chiefs who were sisters and who bore the names of Lakuta and Ulirtjata. The two sisters had a nephew who, like them and the ntjira women, was remarkable for his very light, copper-coloured skin. Ntjira grass is a sandhill grass with reddish seeds; and these ancestral ntjira folk had kept the copper-coloured skins commonly found among the more light-skinned, new-born Aranda babies. The two sisters of Pot’ Arugutja sent their nephew with escorts up to the Northern Aranda centre of Rubuntja, a lofty outrigger mountain rising high above the plains situated north of Ljaba, the great honey-ant home of the western MacDonnells. Rubuntja belonged to the fire totem; and a spark of fire from Rubuntja had landed at Inggodna some time earlier. The ntjira boy was to be initiated into manhood at Rubuntja and then returned to his relatives at Pot’ Arugutja. But the fire totemic ancestors of Rubuntja, whose bodies were all coal-black, like the burnt stumps of the trees which their bushfires had incinerated around their mountain, became fascinated with the red-coloured boy and decided to keep him after his initiation. When the time came for his return, they substituted one of their own new initiates for their visitor, and sent this black-skinned novice, escorted by a large party of Rubuntja men, back to Pot’ Arugutja. The ntjira sisters went out eagerly to meet the Rubuntja party and came upon them at Pot’ Iluntja, a flat in the sandhills, several miles north of Inggodna. But one glance at the dark-skinned substitute novice was enough to reveal to the sisters the treacherous trick that had been played on them. Angrily they poured o
n the ground the stone-ground meal of ntjira grass seeds they had brought in their wooden vessels as a gift for the Rubuntja visitors. They refilled their empty vessels with draughts of magic poison and offered this to the thirsty men. The men drank deeply of the poison, and followed their hostesses back to Pot’ Arugutja. But it was not long before the Rubuntja men began to feel sick. Some of them vomited and died before reaching Inggodna, others succumbed after they had reached the main ntjira camp at Pot’ Arugutja. As soon as the last of the treacherous northern men had died in the windbreak of the Pot’ Arugutja women, the ntjira sisters gathered up their wooden vessels, refilled them with grass seeds, and strode eastwards to Jitutna, a place located in the high dune country east of Horseshoe Bend. They bore themselves triumphantly; and the brilliant red-and-black cockatoo feathers which rose high from their heads symbolised the flowering tufts of ntjira grass that sprouted up everywhere they went.

  Wherever the Rubuntja men had vomited, heaps of black pebbles came into being. These were believed to contain the fiery essence of the Rubuntja visitors. The Horseshoe Bend men used to visit them during the freezing spells of mid-winter in order to perform rites designed to draw down greater warmth from the winter sun above so that the hunters could go out after game in excessively cold weather. A small fire of dry saltbush twigs would be lit over these heaps, and the black pebbles would be stirred up in the hot ashes. During this procedure the following special fire verses used to be chanted:

  Let the afternoon sun shower down its sparks!

  Let the afternoon sun send down its fire!

  From the crown of the sun’s head let the sparks fly out!

  From the crown of the sun’s head let them spread out fan-wise!

  From the hollow of the shield let the white heat glow down!