T G H Strehlow

by Journey to Horseshoe Bend (retail) (epub)

‘They tell me that after Nelson died at the battle of Trafalgar, his body was taken to England in a cask of rum to preserve it for his funeral,’ commented Macky. ‘And when the body was pulled out, the cask was only half full of rum – some of the sailors keeping guard must’ve got thirsty in the night. At least old Sargeant had been pulled out of the tub as soon as ever he was dead – that brandy hadn’t been swishing round his corpse for days.’

  ‘And the grog we’re drinking today has come out of bottles never opened before,’ added Hughes. ‘Since old Bony over there started telling his snake yarn, I’ve been watching all that grog carefully that’s on the shelves behind the counter; and all the tops of the bottles are good and sound.’

  ‘Well, one more round of whisky on the house,’ concluded Harry. ‘And then we’ll close the bar, or you blokes might start getting too noisy. Remember there’s a woman just across the passage, and she’s been crying her heart out in her room ever since the old man died. Let’s give her a fair go and get out of the bar and back on the verandah.’

  The glasses were quickly emptied and put back on the bar counter, and then the men filed out quietly into the still, sultry air of the waning day. The clouds had thickened considerably during the afternoon, giving promise of yet a third oppressive near-sleepless night.

  THE DULL DAWN OF a listless Sunday morning broke over the stony, arid landscape, looking drab and almost colourless in the dust haze under lowering banks of clouds. After breakfast Stolz held a brief devotional outdoor service for the Hermannsburg party. This service was attended also by Mrs Elliot and most of the dark population. It was an event of unusual interest in the lives of the latter; for it was the first church service of any kind that had ever been arranged for them at Horseshoe Bend.

  After the service Mrs Elliot served morning tea under the verandah. She was determined that Mrs Strehlow should be drawn into the company of the tea party at least as a listener, so that her mind would be taken off her overwhelming sense of loss. She mentioned how her two half-caste kitchen women, Victoria and Lill, had often told her stories about Hermannsburg, and spoken with deep affection not only of the Reverend Strehlow but also of his wife. From these tales it had become evident that if Strehlow had come to be accepted as the great aboriginal father figure at Hermannsburg, then his wife had long since come to fill the role of the great mother at his side. A shy flush of joy came over Mrs Strehlow’s wan and care-lined face. She had met both Victoria and Lill during her stay at Horseshoe Bend ten years earlier and had always taken a keen interest in their doings. Since the mail-man who came to Hermannsburg started his mail run at Horseshoe Bend, the Hermannsburg folk had always been kept well supplied with all the news – and all the gossip too – relating to Horseshoe Bend and to its folk, white and dark. In this way Mrs Strehlow had learned about the struggles that Mrs Elliot herself had faced when she first arrived at Horseshoe Bend as Gus Elliot’s girl bride. Lill, the gentle and kindly, soft-eyed woman who had borne Gus three sons and a daughter, had been most indignant at being displaced from her honoured position in the Elliot household by the arrival of the young ‘white kwiai’, who had, in addition, insisted that Lill’s children – some of whom were much the same age as the new Mrs Elliot – should change their surname from that of their father to that of their mother. The fierytempered and straight-speaking Victoria had taken Lill’s part with rebellious vigour; and the dark stockmen had sullenly refused for a considerable time to accept the change in the names of their lighter-coloured mates from Bert, Sonny, and Jimmy Elliot to Bert, Sonny, and Jimmy Swan. But in the end Mrs Elliot had become accepted as the new white mistress of Horseshoe Bend; and both Victoria and Lill had been so won over by her kindness to the whole dark population that they had not only dropped their enmity towards her, but had come to treat her as a daughter who had to be helped and protected in the harsh land where she had made her new home. Both Victoria and Lill had their three-quarter white daughters taken from them and sent south for their education. Victoria had in this way lost her two daughters Dolly and Florrie, and Lill her daughter Millie; and neither mother had ever become completely reconciled to her bereavement. Both women still hoped that the time might come when they should at least be able to set their eyes once more on their grown-up daughters. In the meantime the ‘young white kwiai’ had become a kind of daughter-substitute. The bond of affection that now existed between Mrs Elliot, Victoria, and Lill had a strength that was as admirable as it was touching: perhaps it was only Central Australia that could have united in such perfect accord three women whom social forces and influences in the more civilised South would have turned into lifelong antagonists.

  When Stolz commented on the quiet efficiency with which Lill and Victoria were doing their work at the tea party and in the kitchen, Mrs Elliot replied, ‘Yes, they’re both dears. I don’t know what I would have done without them all these years. When Sheila was born, no one could’ve been more proud of the baby than they were – they treated her like their own child, and they couldn’t fuss enough around me.

  ‘They took me out after rains and taught me all about bush foods – the berries, the yalka, the yams; and whenever any native game was brought in, they always came along with some cooked meat for me too. And I got to like it in the end.

  ‘But I appreciated their help most of all when I first came to The Bend. I was just a young city girl from Melbourne – a real newchum girl, frightened of centipedes, spiders, scorpions, and snakes; and there are plenty of those around here in summer, particularly after good rains.

  ‘I remember one afternoon, some months after I’d come up, having a bath in the rickety old bathroom off this verandah – just some posts stuck in the ground and old packing-case boards nailed to them. The door was made of boards too, and wouldn’t shut properly. Just as I was standing up reaching for the towel hanging on the door, I saw a big black snake wriggling underneath it. I can’t tell you what a fright I got – I’d never seen a live snake in my life before. I just stood there in the bath and screamed my head off. As soon as I started yelling, the men came rushing out from the hotel. But when the first man pushed open the door, he stopped in his tracks as though that snake had bitten him; and he went back for his life. No one else would come near me. In the end Vic heard me screaming. One of the men told her what was going on. I can still see her coming in at the door, carrying a big waddy. She knocked that snake cold in a jiffy. Then she took the towel off the door, put it around me, and gave me a good old scolding, ‘Missy, you no gottem shame? Standin’ dere and callin’ out like that till all dem men come along, and see you standin’ dere naked in the barss! Why you no sing out longa me first time? Me bin feelum proper shame longa you!’ But she wasn’t really mad with me – just thought that the missus shouldn’t be seen like that by any of the hotel customers. She was really sorry for me.’

  When the laughter had died down, Stolz asked, ‘Do you have many snakes about here in summer?’

  ‘Do we!’ replied Mrs Elliot: ‘I’ll say we have! And the trouble is they can slip in under most of the doors in the hotel, the kitchen, and the dining-room. On a hot night you’ve got to take a light wherever you go or you might step on one of the blighters in the dark. Some of the men around here mightn’t mind, but I do. And so do all the women. Tell you another snake yarn: do you remember old Fred Freer?’ she asked, turning to Mrs Strehlow.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ the latter replied. ‘He brought up our mail for quite a while.’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Mrs Elliot. ‘And in between the mail runs he was working here as the station cook. Well you know what old Fred was like. He hardly ever opened his mouth, and nothing could shift him before he was ready. About the slowest thing I ever saw in these parts, and that’s saying something. But he was a good cook, and he used to bake the loveliest bread I ever tasted. Now Fred was a married man – rare thing in this country – and he’d brought his wife up with him. She hated the place and the bush and the folk up here, and in the end old Fred had
to get back south, though he didn’t want to leave The Bend. Mrs Freer used to spend most of the day gossiping, and at night she’d sit up reading in bed with a kerosene lamp alongside of her. One night she was reading in bed as usual, when she saw a snake crawling in under the door. ‘Fred!’ she called out, ‘Fred! Come here! Quick! Fred!’ Old Fred was out in the kitchen kneading the dough, his arms stuck in it right up to the elbows; and old Fred wasn’t going to be disturbed. He was proud of his bread, and wasn’t going to shift for anyone. Mrs Freer kept on yelling, ‘Fred! Quick! Come here, Fred, I want you!’ In the end even old Fred couldn’t stand all that yelling any longer. ‘I can’t come,’ he calls back, ‘I’m just setting the bread. What is it?’ Mrs Freer yells back, ‘Fred, come here quickly, there’s a snake in the room.’ ‘I can’t come now,’ he grumbles in that slow old way of his; ‘the snake will keep. Better still, it might go out. I’ll come in a minute.’ Mrs Freer keeps quiet a few minutes. Then she starts yelling for Fred again. ‘What’s the matter now?’ he calls back. ‘Fred, come quickly, the snake’s still in the room – I can see it going under the washstand.’ ‘Well, put the light out, and you won’t see it!’ he yells back. After that he finished kneading the dough, tucked it up in the dish with a blanket, and put it next to the stove for the night. After he’d done everything as slowly as he could, he went and picked up a stick. The old snake was still crawling around in the room, and Fred knocked it over first hit. Mrs Freer was just about having hysterics by then; but Fred didn’t mind. Nothing could upset him. If I’d been Mrs Freer, I tell you I’d’ve crowned him, good and hard!’

  ‘What a man he must have been,’ Stolz remarked, laughing heartily. ‘Fancy being able to get away with a thing like that! Not many married men would ever try it out on their wives.’

  ‘There was no one who could shift Fred, as I told you before,’ countered Mrs Elliot, ‘neither man nor woman. He just wasn’t natural. But he was a darn good cook, and we were all sorry when she made him leave the country. She was a match for him in one respect at least – he couldn’t get away from her.’

  ‘I’m surprised to hear you have so many snakes around here in summer,’ commented Stolz, looking at the arid landscape. ‘You’ve got only barren hills near the station, and the Finke over there hasn’t many big gums in it. Where do all the snakes come from?’

  ‘From the Finke mainly,’ Mrs Elliot replied. ‘And the Finke’s never looked so poor as regards gums till that last big flood came down in it, beginning of last year. When I first came here, I often used to look at the beautiful big gums behind the yard, and on the other side of the river at the road crossing. And then the big rains came, late in nineteen-twenty. The Finke started running, and so did the Hugh, and so did the Palmer, and so did all the creeks on the Horseshoe Bend run. They all run into the Finke above The Bend, and the Finke ran past the station for more than six months. I’d never seen so much water rushing past me all my life. The first flood got down here about a month before Christmas, nineteen-twenty, and it wasn’t till late last year that the last trickles stopped running between some of the waterholes. That was after the heat-waves’d set in. The biggest flood came down in March last year. I remember standing out in front of the hotel. It had been pouring rain all night, and all creeks and gutters on the run were running into the Finke, and the flood reached from near the top of the bank behind the stockyard up to the box gum flats on the other side – about half a mile wide. All of a sudden we could hear something come roaring down from the west like a real tornado. It kept coming closer, and all the people in the camp and everyone in the hotel rushed out to see what it was. And then we saw it coming – it was a shock wave of water, about ten feet higher than the level of the flood. When it reached the station, the water went right through the yard and came up within half a chain of the hotel. On the other side it spread right out as far as the sandhills. The Finke must’ve been about a mile and a half or two miles wide at this stage. Down went all the big gums, on both sides of the main channel. At sundown the only big trees still standing were what was left on the flood flats. That’s why there aren’t any big gums left all along that horseshoe bend along the eastern side of the Finke where the cliff walls are. All you can see now are a few young gums growing up out of the sand; but it will take twenty or thirty years before the Finke is going to look nice again at The Bend. I don’t think I’ll still be here to see it.’

  Loud shouts from the camp interrupted the conversation. ‘Boss comin’ back,’ excitedly announced Victoria. ‘Dat’s de buggy comin’ down de hill now.’

  Gus Elliot had left Charlotte Waters on Friday night, soon after hearing of Strehlow’s death. He had camped the first night at the Nine Mile, a flat between Charlotte Waters and New Crown Point, where there was plenty of feed for his team. This had been a ‘dry camp’ for his horses, and he had paused at the Goyder soakage next day in order to give them a drink. After calling in at Old Crown Point, he had spent Saturday night in a grassy patch near Cunningham’s Gap to give his horses a chance to have a good feed. For the country around Old Crown Point was, as usual, a powdered-up dustbowl, where hundreds of cattle, milling round the station well, had eaten the open country completely bare of its grasses and trampled down for square miles the once luxuriant cover of ‘old-man’ saltbush found in the box gum flood flats.

  It was still only ten thirty in the morning when Elliot returned. His horses were weary, but Elliot himself looked surprisingly fit after his rushed hundred-and-sixty-mile round trip made in the scorching weather. He would not listen to any suggestions of taking even a short rest after his return. He was full of eagerness to learn all the details of Strehlow’s last day and the funeral. His main regret was that he had not been able to pay his personal respects at the grave-side to the man with whom he had been acquainted for twenty-eight years. When his wife told him about Strehlow’s final request to have his bush friends rewarded after his death, Elliot declared energetically, ‘Ruby, I’ll get those bottles up to old Allan and Bob with the next mail. Now about the men here: I’m going to put aside a whole case of free whisky. Anybody that’s here now, and anybody that comes within the next fortnight, is going to get a free drink at the bar. I’ll tell them that all the grog came from Mr Strehlow, but I’m only going to put a few bottles on his account. It was a real fine gesture from the old boy to think of us like that. Of course, it’s just the sort of thing one might have expected from him. But I’m not going to take all that money from his widow – she’ll need every penny she can hang on to. The mission staff never got paid much – it’s a bloody shame how little the old fellow got all his life. But that’s none of my business. Horseshoe Bend can stand a case of grog easier than the poor old boy’s estate.’

  Elliot, feeling completely desiccated after his long, hot drive back from Charlotte Waters, wasted no time in getting to the bar to relieve his own thirst. Then all white station hands and visitors were called in so that Elliot and the other white men present could drink a toast to the memory of the departed, according to the time-honoured traditions of the bush. When all had assembled at the bar, Elliot poured out liberal double-whiskies into the waiting array of glasses and said, ‘Well, mates, here’s to Mr Strehlow – a man’s man like the rest of us!’ After the toast had been honoured with great fervour, he continued, ‘And that drink’s not on the house either: the old boy specially wanted us all to remember him after his death the same way as we’ve always remembered our own mates after they’ve gone. He left a will that a case of whisky should be donated at his own expense so that we could celebrate things the right way, as is proper in the bush. We’ll have three rounds this morning. After that anybody that comes here during the next fortnight is going to be included in the shout.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ exclaimed Hughes. ‘Who’d’ve thought a bloody parson would’ve left any money behind for blokes like us to wet our whistles with? All the ones I’ve ever struck’ve been a mean lot of bloody wowsers – like Mack said yesterday,
they’d start sniffing you up and down like dogs with runny noses as soon as you started shaking hands with ’em.’

  ‘This one was different,’ interposed Elliot with firm conviction. ‘He was the absolute boss on that station of his – make no mistake about that; and yet all the niggers in the country trusted him and would do anything for him. And, parson or no parson, the bush people, too, grew to respect him – funny bloody thing, come to think of it! But he was honest. He was dinkum. He was a white man. He’d make any bush bloke welcome on the station. This is a man’s country. Every white man on his station is the king of all he surveys, as the saying goes; and the old boy was a man’s man. Everyone in this country agrees on that.’

  After the three rounds of free drinks the bar was shut; for Elliot had many other details to attend to in the store before Stolz could leave Horseshoe Bend and continue on his way to Hermannsburg.

  According to the new arrangements, Mrs Strehlow and her son, accompanied by Heinrich, were to resume their journey to Oodnadatta on the following morning in the van with fresh horses borrowed from Horseshoe Bend. Hesekiel was to be the driver of the van, while Titus would be in charge of the loose horses. Since a hurried dash would be necessary in order to cover the remaining two hundred and thirty miles to Oodnadatta in eight days, the Charlotte Waters telegraph station and the cattle stations lying on the travel route had to be contacted by telephone; for it was clear that additional fresh horses would have to be borrowed at each station further down the track to take the place of those that were unable to continue. This quick dash over the gibber country was necessary if the travellers were to stand any chance of catching the fortnightly train which would be leaving Oodnadatta on the last day of October.

  Horseshoe Bend was the only station along this track that had a store stocking the full range of provisions and general road requirements needed by Central Australian travellers; and Elliot, with the assistance of Heinrich, carefully got ready all the goods needed on the two Hermannsburg vehicles during their separate journeys – both for the van which was continuing south to Oodnadatta and for the buggy which was returning north to Hermannsburg.