T G H Strehlow

by Journey to Horseshoe Bend (retail) (epub)

  Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

  Let me hide myself in Thee;

  Let the water and the blood,

  From Thy riven side which flowed,

  Be of sin the double cure,

  Cleanse me from its guilt and power.

  Nothing in my hand I bring,

  Simply to Thy Cross I cling;

  Naked, come to Thee for dress;

  Helpless, look to Thee for grace;

  Foul, I to the fountain fly;

  Wash me, Saviour, or I die.

  When the service had ended and most of those present had dispersed, the grave was filled in. Then Heinrich set up a wooden cross at the head end of the new earth-mound and placed on it the initials ‘C.S.’ neatly, in smooth water-worn stones.

  It was the hour of high noon.

  After returning to the station buildings, the men and women who had stood at the graveside still sensed the presence of the man they had just buried. The Horseshoe Bend telephone was kept busy sending out death announcements by telegram to friends and acquaintances far and near, and receiving condolence messages in return. Stolz, who had decided to wait at the hotel till Gus Elliot’s return from Charlotte Waters, wrote up his notes on his trip north from Oodnadatta and the final events at Horseshoe Bend; for he wanted this first account to catch the return camel-mail from Horseshoe Bend to Oodnadatta. Mrs Elliot sat for some hours with Mrs Strehlow while the latter was waiting for the arrival of Constable Macky, the police trooper stationed at Alice Well police station, twenty-six miles north-west of Horseshoe Bend. It was Macky who had the duty of preparing the police report on Strehlow’s death. In normal circumstances this report would have been made by Macky and submitted to his superior officer, Sergeant Stott at Alice Springs, before the funeral; but because of the hot weather Sergeant Stott, as soon as he had received the telephone message about the death on Friday night, had personally given permission over the telephone for the body to be buried before Macky’s arrival. Since Macky was unable to leave Alice Well before eleven o’clock on Saturday morning, he did not reach Horseshoe Bend till four o’clock that afternoon.

  The dark folk in the camp sat and talked in low and depressed tones, carefully avoiding the name of the dead man. All of them were full of sadness about his death. Not only the three visitors from Hermannsburg, but the Horseshoe Bend folk, too, were wondering what would happen to the Aranda people now that their one fearless white champion had died. Hermannsburg had become a symbol not only for aboriginal welfare but for aboriginal rights and aboriginal dignity under Strehlow’s firm management. Would, or rather could, there ever be a successor to equal him?

  Even the tough and hardened white bushmen at Horseshoe Bend had been deeply shocked by Strehlow’s sudden death. During his twenty-eight years at Hermannsburg he had become an institution, almost a legend, among the small white population of Central Australia. That this vigorous, fearless man should have been struck down before their very eyes in the full strength of his tough manhood before he had turned fifty-one, had come as a shattering blow to all of them. It was a grim reminder to everyone of the power of death over all men, wherever they might be, irrespective of strength, age, or importance.

  In a land where every white person knew every other white person by name and reputation, a white person’s death was always a catastrophe that deeply shook the whole white community. The attitude of the survivors to this catastrophe was determined by the traditions of the bush community: there had to be a Christian burial for the deceased, followed by a hard drinking bout on the part of the survivors so that the latter could get the taste of death out of their systems. The attitudes and the conduct of the bush community on the occasion of a death hence bore a certain resemblance to the attitudes and conduct that were thought to befit the occasion of a birth. Both were occasions on which the services of the Church were seriously solicited, and both closed with drinking bouts.

  The religion of the normal bushman of those times could have been summed up in a few brief injunctions. Every white child had to be baptised by a minister of religion at an early stage of its life: ‘We bush folk are, after all, Christian men and women, and not just heathens, like them niggers.’ Hence every priest, padre, or missionary, whose travels might have taken him through the Centre, was requested to baptise any of the children that had not yet received the first ministrations of the Church. No heed was paid to denomination, except for the broad distinction that had to be made between Catholics and non-Catholics. Thus a number of non-Lutheran white children born in the Centre had been taken to Hermannsburg for christening because of the infrequency of visits by clergymen belonging to other denominations.

  There was similar feeling about the necessity for a Christian funeral – it was unthinkable that a white person should be buried unless someone either read or said a prayer over his grave. Police stations generally possessed Bibles and prayer-books. So did some of the most unlikely, hard-swearing bush characters: it was felt by many to be a wise plan to take out some kind of insurance policy against the accident of a sudden death.

  In between these two major occasions both the Church and religion were avoided almost like the plague: in their ‘southern’ city manifestations it was felt that neither the Church nor religion had anything of value to offer to the tough bush folk of the Centre, where men had their own moral code and their own traditional notions of right and wrong. And in one respect, at least, the bush folk regarded their code of conduct to be far superior to that of the ‘Southerners’ – they were not hypocrites who went to church on Sundays and indulged in all manner of rottenness and swindling practices for the rest of the week. If God existed, then the average bushman felt that he would be able to face up to his final examination before the Almighty just as well as the pious wowsers, hypocrites, sneaks, tell-tales, and swindlers who had gone to church regularly every Sunday. And if ‘the Old Bloke in the Sky’ should decide to boot them out after all, then they were prepared to take His punishment with the same unflinching stoicism with which they had faced up to hardship and death, sicknesses and accidents, droughts and bad markets, during the whole of their lives.

  In accordance with the customs of the country, the bar of the Horseshoe Bend Hotel was thrown open at about four o’clock in the afternoon after the burial so that the white mourners could drink to the health of the departed. Their torn and blistered hands and sore backs bore eloquent witness to their hard toil in the muggy heat of the morning. All of them felt that they had richly earned their liquid reward.

  Harry Tilmouth, generally known as ‘the Bony Bream’, had been detailed to serve behind the bar in the absence of the licensee. As indicated by his nickname, Harry was a somewhat undersized man who was completely devoid of any surplus flesh on his rather slender bones. His shaggy, greying hair and straggling moustaches rarely had a comb run through them, and he shaved no more frequently than once a week. Bigger men enjoyed teasing him and making good-natured jokes about his skinny appearance and lack of inches. But Harry was as tough a stockman as the best of them: he was hard and wiry, and could outstay and outlast most of his detractors in point of sheer doggedness and endurance.

  Because of his late arrival at Horseshoe Bend, Constable Macky had spent only a few minutes with Mrs Strehlow. He had expressed his condolences to her and had then left her, after arranging to take down on the following morning all the details required for a Coroner’s report. He quickly made his way to the bar, where he pushed his way forward through a row of toil-worn grave-diggers. ‘Shift your carcasses, men,’ he said in a loud and commanding tone of voice, ‘and make room for the Law!’ Noticing a few black looks coming upon the faces of the tired men, he added in a more conciliatory tone, ‘Let’s have a round of whisky, boys – let’s drink to the memory of Mr Strehlow!’

  ‘No, the first round’s going to be on the house,’ retorted Harry, with a dead-pan expression on his face, ‘by orders of the missus.’

  ‘That’ll do me,’ said Macky. ‘I’ll pay for
the next one.’

  The first round was poured out, and swallowed down with audible noises of relief and gurgling approval; and so was the second.

  ‘That’s the first time any of you blokes have ever drunk to the memory of a bible-puncher, I’ll bet,’ commented Macky tersely.

  ‘You’re right,’ replied Jack Fountain, ‘never happened here before; and I’ve lived in this country longer than most.’

  ‘Agreed,’ added Snowy Pearce, the head stockman of New Crown Point Station, ‘and I’ve seen enough floods going down the Finke to start calling myself one o’ the old hands in the country.’

  ‘Anyway, this one was different from most of them,’ mused Macky, holding up and examining carefully the last half-inch of whisky in his glass. ‘As a rule I must say I hate all pious, snivelling bastards. Most of them make no end of bloody trouble wherever they go. They come up from down south and make the most of our hospitality, and then they go back and fill the papers with all sorts of rubbish about us – talk about our ‘farmyard morals’, accuse us of prostituting the kwiais, tell lies about the gambling, swearing rotters of the Centre that are exploiting the poor bloody niggers, and so on. I tell you, the first time I had to go on patrol to The Mission, I was expecting to find the same kind of rotten, grog-sniffing hypocrite there – you know, one of them low bastards what shakes hands with you only to get close enough so’s he can smell if you’ve just taken a nip from the old brandy bottle. And I tell you, I was all set to let him have a piece of my mind if he started on any of his bloody religious pap-talk with me. But somehow the old boy was different. The station was well run, the niggers well-behaved, and as for the hospitality – boy, you should’ve seen it! I came away from The Mission thinking, well, perhaps there’s good and bad among them bloody parsons too, same as the rest of us.’

  ‘Yes, he was a good bloke,’ agreed Harry. ‘And absolutely dinkum too. Every time I went up to The Mission on the mail run, things were the same – never any different. Everybody worked hard – it was one of the best-run settlements anywhere in this country. And you could always get a bunk and a good feed there. There was always somebody about who’d offer it to you.’

  ‘Well, let’s have another drink,’ interrupted Hughes, a thirsty prospector from Arltunga who was on his way south to Port Augusta. ‘Must be just about my turn for a shout now.’

  ‘Good on you, mate,’ called out Jack Fountain. ‘We’ve got to keep our whistles wet in this damn rotten hot weather.’

  A third round was poured out, and the glasses were drained with audible smacks of appreciation. Fountain pushed the tip of his white beard into his mouth and sucked from it some drops of whisky he had spilled when drinking.

  ‘When you blokes’re ready for it, there’ll be a second round on the house,’ promised Harry.

  ‘That’s the stuff, Harry, old boy, keep her going!’ called out Macky. ‘Perhaps it’s a good idea having a bloody funeral every so bloody often – the Horseshoe Bend bar isn’t as liberal as this as a rule.’

  ‘You should’ve seen it when old Ted Sargeant was buried,’’ commented Jack Fountain drily. ‘The old pub sure turned it on then. Nothing like it ever been seen in this country before or after.’

  ‘Why, what happened?’ queried Hughes. ‘Tell us all about it.’

  ‘You must be one of the few blokes around these parts what hasn’t heard the story,’ replied Jack Fountain. ‘It’s so bloody old by now that it’s got white whiskers on it. But I’m no good at spinning yarns: ask Old Bony behind the counter – he was here that time just like the rest of us.’

  Harry Tilmouth at first tried to refuse telling the story, but was finally forced into relating the events of Sargeant’s death.

  ‘Well, it was like this,’ he began. ‘Ten years ago now, back in March nineteen-twelve – I just seen the date on the gravestone this morning – old Sargeant suddenly went down with the DTs. He and Gus Elliot owned this pub then, and Sargeant was the senior partner. Old Sargeant’d had the DTs a coupla times before. But this time he passed out altogether…’

  ‘He “lapsed into a coma”, as an official police report would say,’ commented Macky drily.

  ‘That’s right, he passed out altogether,’ repeated Harry. ‘And nobody had any idea what to do about him. No doctor, no medicines, no ice, no nothing, and the poor old bugger out to it like a bloody old bull knocked over in the killing pen. Couldn’t use brandy to bring the poor bastard round – already had too much brandy in ’im. And his face was as red as tomato-bloody-sauce.

  ‘Next morning after breakfast, the mob goes up, worried – like, to take a proper squint at him. All of a sudden one of them blokes standing round the old boy yells out, ‘What about getting the old boy off the bed and sitting him up in a bath o’ brandy?’ Well now, that’s something all of us could do…’

  ‘But what’d be the good of a bath o’ brandy?’ queried Hughes. ‘What the hell could that do for a bloke with the DTs? Never heard of anything so bloody mad before!’

  ‘There’s nothing mad about a bath o’ brandy,’ countered Jack Fountain haughtily. ‘In my young days mothers used to stick their babies into a bath o’ brandy to stop ’em having convulsions.’

  Hughes laughed. ‘Sounds like a shocking damn waste of bloody good grog to me,’ he remarked. ‘Never mind, don’t let’s have an argument about it – another round of grog, Harry, and let’s change over to brandy.’

  Harry poured out the ordered round of brandy and said with some asperity, ‘A bath o’ brandy’s nothing to laugh about – it’s an old and tried bush remedy, only you young blokes don’t know nothing about it. Shows what a bunch of bloody new chums you are!’ Then he continued, in a calmer tone of voice, ‘Well, to get back to the story – we got hold of a small washing tub, stripped the old boy right down to his birthday suit and sat him in the tub. A couple of us hung on to him so’s he wouldn’t fall over. After that old Gus, his partner, brings in a case of brandy. He opens bottle after bottle and empties the whole bloody lot over him. The rest of the mob stands round and watches…’

  ‘I bet they all stood slobbering at the corners of the mouth like a mob of thirsty dingoes, while they were watching the brandy running down over the old boy,’ laughed Macky.

  ‘The most wonderful bloody sight I ever set eyes on in my life,’ continued Harry, disregarding Macky’s jeering remark. ‘We all felt sorry for the poor old bugger just sitting there not knowing he’s sitting in a bath o’ brandy with good grog running all over him. We knew he was in a desperate way – it was a toss-up whether even brandy’d save him now.

  ‘Then all of a sudden he just collapses in the tub, and we knew that was the end of poor old Ted.’

  ‘What a time to kick the bloody bucket!’ exclaimed Hughes, in mock indignation. ‘Couldn’t he have come round long enough to lap up all that good grog first?’

  Harry ignored the question, and went on in the same even, almost expressionless, tone of voice, ‘All we could do was pull the poor old bugger out and stretch him out on a bed. And some of the men was crying: seemed too terrible for bloody words. Others kept saying, ‘What a glorious death – dying in a bath o’ brandy!’ Only the poor old bugger didn’t know a flamin’ thing about it! After that old Gus got to work on the phone. We knew Mr Strehlow was somewhere on the road close to The Old Crown. Gus rang at eight in the morning, but he’d already left. When Gus heard the mission horses were all pretty well knocked-up, he sent down a team of fresh horses to meet the mission buggy. Told the boy to ride like hell and bring Mr Strehlow up that afternoon for the funeral. When he came, the whole bang lot of us went down to the grave, as is fit and proper. After that we all came back to the bar to drink to poor old Ted’s memory. Needed it too: we’d had to listen to a good old hellfire sermon at the grave…’

  ‘To hell with hellfire sermons!’ exclaimed Snowy Pearce and thrust his empty glass before Tilmouth. ‘Here – fill ’er up quick! Got to put out that hellfire before the thought of it dries out the
old tongue! This bloody place is hot enough today without Old Nick doing any stoking. And while you’re about it, may as well fill up the rest of the glasses too!’

  Tilmouth complied, and then continued, ‘Well, as I was saying, we all came back to the bar after the funeral. And when we’re all standing up, tongues hanging out from thirst and that hellfire sermon, old Gus calls out, ‘Well mates, as it’s my poor old partner what’s died, all drinks this afternoon’ll be on the house while the brandy lasts’.

  ‘Boy, did we have a time that afternoon! Brandy galore, as much as any man could swallow! By the time the brandy cut out there wasn’t a man left what could stand up straight, and most of the bastards were stretched out on the floor around the bar, dead to the bloody world. Only old Gus kept his head – stuck to a few whiskies and let us have as much brandy as we could pour down our throats.

  ‘Next day some bloody bugger spoiled it all. Went up to old Gus and wanted to know where all that grog had come from. Reckoned Gus must’ve bottled up the brandy from the bathtub and served it out to the mob…’

  ‘Stone the bloody crows! That means that you bloody shickered lot of silly old topers must’ve been closer to your “dear departed friend” than any of you bastards guessed when you were drinking to him,’ yelled Macky, bursting into loud guffaws of laughter. ‘Anyway, it served you right for being nothing but a mob of common, greedy drunks!’

  ‘Well, nobody could prove anything for sure against old Gus, of course,’ Harry concluded his recital. ‘He certainly poured all that grog out of bottles that afternoon. Only they all came out of a box standing on the floor behind the bar so nobody could tell if the bloody corks’d been pulled before or not. Well, Gus naturally denied everything, and nobody minded much about it next day. Too late anyway, and the grog had tasted all right – no doubt about that.’