Cry of the Curlew: The Frontier Series 1

by Peter Watt

  ‘What about the gins and piccaninnies?’ Henry asked when Mort’s eyes met his. ‘Mister Jackson always ordered they be spared in a dispersal.’

  The police lieutenant’s eyes narrowed as his expression barely concealed his contempt for the question. ‘This is a dispersal, Sergeant James,’ he replied. ‘You leave the gins and piccaninnies and they will breed their treacherous kind to become a nuisance in the future. Mister Macintosh has not called on us to have us come back to do this all over again. No . . . we do the job once, and we do it efficiently . . . I will allow the troopers to dally with the nigger women that they might take alive . . . But you will ensure that the problem of the gins’ disposal is met before we leave. Does that answer your question, Sergeant James?’

  Henry nodded and stared down at the lines and circles on the ground which were now becoming vague patterns in the dust as the hot sun slowly sank in the west.

  Before the sun set that evening, Donald Macintosh and the party of seven shepherds rode out of the police camp to take up a position to the west of the unsuspecting tribespeople. Neither European nor Aboriginal could imagine the terrible consequences the following day would bring to all their lives. Consequences that would stretch far beyond their time to haunt the living of both cultures. Even of those yet unborn.

  Mort had ordered that no camp fires be lit and it had been a long night for Henry as the dark chill seeped through his body and gnawed at his damaged leg, while the mournful cry of the curlews deep in the brigalow scrub had also kept him awake. Although he knew the eerie cries came from a small ground-living bird, there was still something haunting in the sad wailing cry. Like the cries of the dead – which they were, according to Corporal Gideon. Henry could almost believe the trooper’s story as he lay shivering under a coarse blanket. First one curlew would cry out – then be joined by many others. The chorus of wailing like the pitiful cries of souls doomed to eternal damnation in hell.

  ‘Corporal Gideon!’

  The whispered command from Mort was passed down the line of horsemen until it reached the tall and wiry police trooper who spurred his mount past the column of Aboriginal troopers to stop beside the Mahmy.

  ‘Yessa, Mahmy?’

  ‘I want you to go ahead and confirm the presence of the enemy on the creek.’

  Gideon frowned. The white debil used words he did not understand – like confirm! Mort saw his perplexed expression and swore as he thrust his face belligerently at him.

  ‘Damned ignorant charcoal!’ he snarled. ‘I want you to go and see if your nigger brothers are at the camp on the creek. Then I want you to come back and tell me. Do you understand that much?’

  ‘I savvy,’ the trooper replied with a carefully controlled edge of anger as he reined away and was quickly swallowed by the scrub.

  Gideon was unerring in his ability to guide his mount silently through the dry scrub of the brigalow but he rode cautiously as he approached the creek line. The police corporal had a grudging respect for the tribesmen of central Queensland who, given the tactical terrain of thick scrub and rocky hills, were men to stand and fight. The white man dared not pursue the warriors into the scrub because their mounted mobility and European firepower were negated by the terrain, and the lethal accuracy of the long hardwood spear hurled at close range had taken more than one foolish settler who had underestimated the tribesmen on their own ground.

  The Aboriginal warriors of Queensland had quickly learnt to exploit the tactical weaknesses of the white invaders. Only Gideon and his fellow Aboriginal police troopers were any match for the skills of the painted black warriors in the close-quarter fighting of the thick bush and rocky hills.

  Founded by the flamboyant and hard-drinking bushman Frederick ‘Filibuster’ Walker in 1848, the Native Mounted Police had come from the remnants of the southern tribes of the Riverina district of New South Wales. Gideon had been recruited from the banks of the Murrumbidgee River by Frederick Walker himself. He had been selected for his superb physical condition and ability to learn the killing ways of the white man.

  Gideon had no qualms about killing his fellow Aboriginals because the Queensland tribesmen were as alien to him as the white man. His own world was a thousand miles south on the banks of the Murrumbidgee where he had another name. One that had been granted to him on his traditional initiation into manhood. But it was a secret name that he could not tell the white man for fear of tribal punishment. So they had given him one of theirs – Gideon – and told him it was a sacred name of an ancient warrior. His natural leadership qualities had quickly earned the respect of his European officers and he was soon promoted to the rank of corporal.

  Gideon’s acute hearing first alerted him to the camp as he guided his mount cautiously through the scrub. He’d picked up early morning sounds of old men coughing from the smoke of rekindled cooking fires, babies crying as they sought the first suckling of the dawn and the yelp of a dog as it received a kick for its furtive attempt to snatch a meaty bone from beside a smouldering fire.

  He slid from his mount and crept forward with the stealth of a hunter and, as he edged his way towards the camp, he thumbed back the hammers of the double-barrelled carbine and carefully scanned the disappearing darkness for any signs of his enemy. He was once again the warrior and alert to the most minute sounds of the bush. But this time his enemy was a tribe he had never known before.

  Through dark eyes he observed the peaceful camp come to life. The Nerambura were not aware of his presence on the other side of the water holes.

  TWO

  The warbled sweet notes of the magpie in the brigalow scrub was the first thing young Tom Duffy heard when a big and bearded Irishman kicked at his bare feet. Tom woke reluctantly with a groan and pulled the blanket over his head.

  ‘We won’t be reachin’ Tambo this week,’ Patrick Duffy growled down at his son, who attempted to retrieve the fragments of a shattered dream steeped in carnal pleasures, ‘if you don’t give Billy a hand.’

  ‘Yeah, Da,’ Tom replied truculently. ‘I’m getting up now.’

  The sweet aroma of damper loaf and strong sugared tea from the crackling breakfast fire a few yards away drifted across to Tom who still lay under the heavily laden bullock dray. He yawned and hauled himself to his feet while his father growled a greeting as he trudged past the Aboriginal teamster Old Billy squatting beside the fire.

  Patrick Duffy’s life had been lived in two worlds: that of his birthplace of Ireland where he had opposed – sometimes with force of arms – the British occupation, and in the Australian colonies continuing his struggle against the English Crown at the Eureka Stockade. Now he lived far from the memories of those struggles to build something for his children . . . For the memory of his beloved Elizabeth who had died of fever on the sea voyage to the Australian colonies and was buried at sea.

  Billy was the last of his clan as the white man’s sicknesses had killed most of his people. And where the epidemics had failed to decimate them, the arsenic-laced flour left by the squatters beside the water holes had finished off the handful of survivors. He had watched helplessly the agonised death from poisoned flour of his wife and children so many years earlier, and afterwards had wandered aimlessly among the giant river gums that guarded the billabongs of the mighty waterway that meandered across the flat plains between two colonies.

  Eventually his wanderings had brought him to a white settlement called Corowa. He had stayed on the fringes of the town where Patrick found him begging for food and rum. He gave the old Aboriginal a job because he needed the skills of a natural bushman. But more than that, the Irish teamster gave him respect and together they had seen fire and flood. Common adversity and an acceptance of each other’s spirits had cemented the friendship between the two men.

  They had shared camp fires and discussed the meaning of their two worlds. The white man was like no other the old Aboriginal had known and now the turning of the dray wheel measured the moments of his existence.

  As Patrick
Duffy walked away from the Aboriginal teamster squatting by the camp fire, he was unaware that a strange and terrible portent had appeared in their lives. One that only Billy recognised all too clearly.

  Tom scratched at his beard. He itched from the dust of the track and thought about the creek Billy said was only a few miles to the west. The evening before he had watched the swirling cloud of tiny finches fly overhead and carefully noted the direction the birds had taken. They knew that the birds’ flight was towards a source of water, and a plentiful supply of water meant a chance to wash away the cloying sweat-caked dust of the track from his body and beard.

  He paused in his scratching. Billy was rocking on his haunches beside the fire and crooning an eerie sound. Tom instinctively knew what it meant and a chill ran through him like an icy river.

  ‘Da!’ he called to his father who was unshackling the leg hobbles from the bullocks while they stood still with bovine patience.

  ‘What is it?’ his father answered as he straightened and gave the lead bullock, Mars, an affectionate pat on its broad forehead.

  ‘I think you should come over here,’ Tom replied with an edge of panic in his voice. ‘I think something is wrong with Billy.’ In all his twenty-five years on earth, Tom had never felt more fear than he now experienced. The crooning chant was a weird and alien sound as if at one with the shadow world between night and day, and the young teamster fervently wished he would stop his wailing.

  ‘Billy, you old pagan, you’re scaring the bejesus out of us,’ Patrick chided as he strode towards the man crouching and rocking with his head in his hands. ‘What in the name of Saint Patrick are you going on about?’

  Billy did not answer but continued to chant and stare across Patrick’s shoulder to where he could see the Messenger watching him with the smug knowledge of what was to happen. The same Messenger had been foretold in his vision during the silent hours of the night. How could he tell his friend of the terrible vision that had come to him in the dark? Nearby, a crow with shiny black feathers perched on the eucalypt tree beside the hobbled bullocks.

  Patrick noticed the old man’s stare fixed on a point beyond his shoulder and turned to see the raven-like bird perched in the tall tree watching them with beady evil eyes, seemingly alive with malice. A superstitious shudder ran through the big man’s frame.

  ‘A bloody crow,’ he growled. ‘You’ve got yourself into a state over a bloody crow.’ He tried to sound annoyed but secretly he had a great respect for the old Aboriginal’s unexplainable insights. The same strange powers had been strong in Elizabeth, his wife, and now in his daughter, Kate.

  He searched around for a rock. Unable to find one, he wrenched a tuft of dry grass attached to a clod which he hurled at the crow. The clod fell short and the bird remained unperturbed by the angry Irishman’s efforts to scare it away. It would leave in its own time.

  Then the crow spread its wings and caught the morning’s first rays with a spectacular shimmering flash of green light. It gave a long, lazy cawing call to Billy. The crow had spoken to him, but in a way the white man could not hear, nor understand. And the ominous words that the crow spirit spoke had been plain and simple. They were in a place of death!

  Corporal Gideon returned from his reconnaissance as silently as he had left.

  Sergeant James joined Lieutenant Mort who glanced impatiently at the sun creeping above the scrub. Time was running out for the troop if they were to be successful in catching the tribe unawares before the men left to join hunts and the women scattered to dig for yams.

  ‘How many?’ Mort asked his scout.

  ‘Big fella camp, Mahmy. Many blackfella . . . from here to here,’ he replied, spreading his arms in a wide arc, and Mort turned to his second in command for an interpretation.

  ‘Probably around fifty,’ he mused as he leant forward in the saddle. ‘Seems like a clan gathering rather than the whole tribe. What side are the young bucks sleeping on?’

  The Aboriginal corporal waved with his hand and replied, ‘Away from the water, Sar’nt Henry. Young blackfella toward the bush on the other side.’

  From his answer Henry knew that the single men, who would compose the bulk of the warriors, were sleeping in a rough form of an outer defence perimeter, while the unmarried girls, old people and children slept in designated areas within the defensive arc.

  ‘Can horses cross the creek?’ Mort asked anxiously and Gideon’s face broke into a genial smile.

  ‘My word, Mahmy,’ he replied. ‘Water . . . this deep.’ They watched the Aboriginal corporal lean from his mount to indicate the water only came as far as the belly of his horse and Mort breathed a sigh of relief. Fortune was still on his side.

  ‘Corporal Gideon,’ Mort said, sliding his infantry sword from its leather scabbard hanging at his waist. ‘You will take the centre and guide the attack. I will be just behind you.’ He then turned to his sergeant. ‘Sergeant James, you will form the men line abreast. When we get to the nigger camp I want you to stay with the horses while the boys go in after the darkies on foot.’

  Henry wheeled his mount away and trotted back to the waiting troopers. He was pleased that he was not required to pursue the survivors. On more than one occasion he had witnessed the savage ferocity of the mounted troopers as they cut down the near helpless Aboriginals in the mopping-up phase of a dispersal.

  He relayed the order and the mounted troopers formed the single rank with precise ease. They were superb horsemen and Henry could not help but feel a flush of pride as the hours of tedious practice on the parade ground was manifested in the way men and horses responded calmly and professionally to the order.

  ‘Ready carbines!’

  The black troopers propped musket butts against thighs, cocked the hammers of their carbines, and awaited the next order. The expressions on their dark faces were studies in alertness and anticipation as their horses tossed heads and snorted as they too sensed the imminent charge being transmitted in the tense actions of their riders.

  ‘Walk!’

  The mounted troopers moved forward in an orderly line. Small shrubs bent on the broad chests of the police mounts, and then were crushed under hoof. Tiny bush birds fled from the thickets in alarm as the strange beasts advanced like an unstoppable monster. After a few minutes, the police corporal turned to his commanding officer to hiss, ‘Here, Mahmy!’ They were within striking distance of the Nerambura camp and Mort spurred his mount through the line to take up a position at the front of the rank where he raised his sword which caught a flash of early morning sunshine bursting with an explosion of white fire along its length.

  ‘Charge!’

  He brought the sword down and leaning forward in the stirrups the troopers gave a whoop as horses exploded into a furious gallop with heads outstretched and nostrils flaring while the big mounts vied with each other in a race to be first across the creek and into the camp. The ripple of horsemen became a tidal wave on its way to swamp the unsuspecting and peaceful Nerambura clan of the Darambal people. And like a tidal wave it surged forward bringing indiscriminate death to all in its path.

  At first the strange rumbling sound was like that of the summer storms before the time of the heavy rains. The dogs of the camp sniffed suspiciously at the air, at the unfamiliar scent, and trotted stiff legged with tails erect to the edge of the camp where they began a furious barking. Babies began to wail as the rising fear from their mothers was transmitted to them. No one thought of running as the sound paralysed them with the fear of the unknown. Then the sound became visible and even more terrible than the Nerambura could ever have imagined.

  The horsemen burst upon them splashing across the creek to crash through the flimsy gunyahs and scatter the cooking fires in showers of orange cinders. The blasts of the carbines came as a single shattering volley, and the heavy lead shot flung men, women and children, torn and bleeding, into the dust of the earth where they were trampled under the hooves of the frenzied horses.

  The dogs were first
to scatter, barking their defiance against the strange four-footed beasts as they sought refuge in the surrounding bush. Mothers snatched at babies, warriors for spears and nullas but the troopers were upon them before they could fight or flee. Many of their terrified cries were strangled short by a second volley from the muskets as lead shot found easy targets of yielding flesh and bone. When the carbines were emptied, they were wielded like clubs to crush skulls and snap necks. It did not matter whom they killed. Such was the speed and surprise of the attack that the warriors did not have an opportunity to effectively arm and resist and, like the wiser women and dogs, they chose the course of fleeing the terrible killing ground.

  In the melee of killing, Mort caught sight of a toddler. The divine madness was upon him. The child stood paralysed with a wide-eyed expression of wonder and fear of the strange creatures that had come into his world. He raised his chubby fists to his eyes to block out the sight that had caused him so much anguish as it thundered towards him. The sword took the little boy through his tiny chest and the momentum of the galloping horse lifted him bodily from the ground.

  With an expert flick of his wrist, Mort released the toddler from the point of the sword and had a fleeting glimpse over his shoulder of the little body tumbling like a rag doll in the dust with blood pumping in short, bright spurts from a ruptured artery.