Cry of the Curlew: The Frontier Series 1

by Peter Watt

  She was full of surprises from the very commencement of their trek. Luke had been stunned to see her wearing men’s clothing the morning they met to ride out of Rockhampton. But he was even more surprised to see her ride astride her mount as a man would. Riding side-saddle along the rough bush tracks was not practicable. It was spine-twisting and uncomfortable, she had explained to him, and he was forced to agree.

  Luke taught her to ride and how to lead the packhorse and very soon he took it for granted that it was just as natural for a woman to ride like a man as it was for a woman to wear the practical clothes.

  Kate adapted to life on the bush track as if she had been born to it, although at times the bush was like an ocean devoid of landmarks. Luke was a good teacher and patiently taught her how to live with nature and travel through the country of endless horizons. She soon gained her confidence as he pointed out how he followed the seemingly invisible route west along the lonely track.

  Often at nights when they were camped, the American would gaze at her across the camp fire and ponder on how lucky a man would be to have such a woman for his wife. O’Keefe must have been raving mad to leave such a woman, he would muse to himself as he sipped at his coffee and watched her prepare for the next day.

  He did not consider that the beautiful young woman saw him in any light other than as a good friend, a guide and protector on the trek west, and he would sigh and dismiss his feelings as nothing more than wishful thinking. He was careful to hide them from her, but the further west they rode the more he realised that he could never love any woman as much as Kate O’Keefe.

  In the two weeks travelling west, they had encountered only the occasional shepherd riding or trudging back to Rockhampton. But near Glen View they encountered a solitary bullock dray returning to pick up supplies in Rockhampton.

  The dray was stacked with bales of wool for its return journey, and the man who walked beside his team trailing a bullock whip was almost as wide as he was tall. He was accompanied by a tough little cattle dog which snapped and yapped at the legs of the big plodding bullocks.

  They met the bullocky and his dog just on sunset and pitched their camp with the teamster, who introduced himself as Harry Hubner and was pleased to have them share his camp fire.

  After the horses and bullocks had been hobbled for the night, the four sat around a camp fire sharing the evening meal. The fourth member to share the fire was the dog, which considered itself an equal to the humans. After all, did he not work as hard as his master? The dog took a liking to Kate and leaned against her, staring with adoring eyes at the human whose voice was as soft as her stroking pats were gentle.

  ‘Bloody dog!’ the burly teamster growled with deep affection for his tough little mongrel as he reached over and poured Kate another mug of tea. ‘I feed him and give him a job and he wants to run off with the first woman he meets!’ The dog gave his master a mournful recriminating look for his attack on his supposed lack of loyalty, then placed his nose contentedly in Kate’s lap as she sat on a log by the camp fire.

  Under the brilliant canopy of twinkling stars, they shared food and gossip of the lonely outback tracks while wispy smoke rose from the flames as if trying to reach the shimmering stars and smother their crystalline brightness.

  Harry watched Kate over his mug of tea. The American was lucky, he thought, to have a pretty young lass like this girl for his woman. From her manners and talk he guessed that she was from somewhere down south but he could see that the American was a bushman. He could tell by the way he moved around the camp site – always watchful and cautious – and he had the natural ease of being one with the bush. Although Luke’s American accent still predominated, it was intermingled with words of the Australian bushman. They were a strange pair, Harry thought. She young and pretty . . . and a city girl. He older and tougher. A man more at home in the bush than around cities. But they were good company and a change from just being with the mongrel on the lonely stretches of the western track. ‘Another mug o’ tea, Mister Tracy?’ he asked as he stirred the billy with a stick.

  ‘No. I think my grandaddy would turn in his grave if he saw how much tea I was drinking,’ Luke replied politely with a grin. ‘He never was partial to tea after the party we had in Boston.’ His reference to the infamous Boston Tea Party that had helped fuel the rebellion against the British Crown of George III was lost on Harry, who knew little of history except that the Americans were once the enemy of Britain. But that was a long time ago and now the Yankees were all over the Australian colonies. There was Mister Freeman Cobb who had set up that stagecoach line down in Victoria. He was pretty famous, and there were many other Yankees the teamster had come across in his travels. And men like this Mister Tracy, who said he was a prospector. Generally they were pretty good fellows but they had some funny ideas about something they called Republicanism.

  ‘Seen anyone else on the track in your travels?’ Harry asked conversationally as he poured the third cup of steaming tea into his chipped and battered enamel mug.

  ‘Just one or two shepherds heading down to Rockhampton a couple of days ago,’ Luke replied. ‘Said they was from the Balaclava run . . . and had a big thirst.’

  ‘Be old Billy Bostock’s boys,’ the teamster said with a chuckle. ‘They would be wantin’ to watch out for young Tom Duffy and that wild darkie if they was Mister Bostock’s men.’

  Kate glanced at Luke with a startled expression. ‘Do you know Tom Duffy?’ she asked casually to mask her excitement at the mention of her brother’s name and the bullocky gazed suspiciously at her.

  ‘Yair. Know Tom,’ he replied slowly. ‘And knew Patrick too. We would run into each other on the track back last year. Good men, both of them. Shame to hear what happened. Big Pat getting himself killed. And Tom out there taking the squatters and the traps on a merry chase in the bush. Don’t think they will ever catch ’im though. Not while he has the myall with him. I even hear it rumoured that the myall was the one who killed young Angus Macintosh. Heard the boys at Glen View talk about it when I was there for supplies. Matter of fact, I’m taking back a load of Glen View wool right now.’

  ‘Do you know where this Tom Duffy might be?’ Kate asked with an eagerness that was not missed by him as he raised his mug of tea.

  ‘I don’t. But if I did, I don’t think I would tell you if’n I knew,’ he said defensively. ‘No offence intended, Missus.’

  ‘Would you tell his sister?’ Luke asked quietly and the teamster stared at him with speculative interest. Then he glanced at Kate with a growing awareness.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said slapping his thigh and peering closely at the young woman. ‘You Tom’s sister, Missus?’ She nodded. ‘And yer looking for yer brother?’ he asked with a chuckle and she nodded again. ‘Knowing this I would tell you if I knew where yer brother was, but I don’t know where they might be. Last I heard they bailed up a squatter the back of Port Denison. Seems the two of ’em are moving north. They stays mostly out in the country beyond, livin’ like darkies, an’ I don’t think you will ever find him if you go looking. They has to find you.’

  Kate had not wanted to reveal her identity as Tom’s sister but in an attempt to locate her brother, Luke had gambled on the teamster telling the bushranger’s sister of his possible whereabouts. As her relationship to the Irish bushranger had now been revealed, Kate made a decision to ask the teamster all he knew about her father and brother. Harry told as much as he could, mostly things about the past and the respect that father and son had commanded from those who knew them. Eventually the conversation shifted to Macintosh and Harry mentioned that he had seen a former police officer by the name of Mort staying for a while with Donald Macintosh on his property. He also recounted how Mort had ‘cleaned out’ all the myalls in the district and he warned them to stay away from the tribes further west, as they were wild and fearless. More than one bushman who had gone their way had not returned.

  Kate listened to the old bushman recount all that
he knew about the country and its people. He was more than happy to talk, especially as one of his audience was such a pretty girl, and the sister of the infamous bushranger Tom Duffy. What a story he would have for the next traveller he met on the track!

  The constellations whirled in a slow arc overhead and the soft crackle of the fire lulled Kate into a weariness. She found her eyes drawn to the dancing flames of the camp fire where vague and disturbing images pirouetted in the glowing coals to suddenly swirl around her like whispers in the night. The whispers seemed to be everywhere and she shivered. Who calls? Where are you? Was the fever returning? She rose unsteadily from the log and excused herself to retire for the night.

  She unrolled the coarse blankets for her bed and wrapped them around herself to ward off the creeping chill of the still and cool night, while the comforting murmur of the men’s voices and the familiar sounds of the possums scurrying in the branches of a tall gum tree nearby provided her with a gentle bush lullaby. The peaceful sounds of the bush at night had become as familiar to her as the clip-clop of the milkman’s cart at her home in Redfern.

  In a short time she fell into a deep and troubled sleep and the images that had flitted before her eyes as she had watched the flames now crept out of the shadows of the hushed night to enter into the sleeping world of her dreams.

  Luke continued to swap yarns with the teamster as they sat by the fire. He asked him many questions about his observations on rock outcrops and creeks he had come across in his travels. But none of the answers sounded promising from a prospector’s point of view. When the fire was almost out Harry stoked it with fresh logs which would burn through the night until piccaninny dawn and he bade Luke a good sleep.

  Luke rose and walked over to where Kate slept. He quietly checked to see that she was well rugged against the chill that would increase during the crystal-clear night. He pulled the blankets up to her chin as she tossed restlessly in her sleep and he frowned. She was being troubled by nightmares, he thought, and he felt helpless in the face of the things that haunted her. Or was the fever returning?

  He placed his hand on her forehead and felt that her brow was cool. He breathed a sigh of relief as he stared down at her, but remained concerned for her troubled dreams. He would have given his very life to take away her pain. ‘Oh, Kate,’ he whispered softly. ‘If you only knew how much I love you.’

  He took away his hand from her forehead and gazed at her for a long time before leaving her to prepare his bed-roll a short distance away. According to what Harry had told him, they were presently camped on Glen View land and very close to the hills that Henry James had described where the dispersal had been carried out. That knowledge alone could bring on nightmares, he thought, as he fell into a deep but untroubled sleep of his own.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Kondola sat cross-legged before the fire crooning his song, while tiny stick figures danced a corroboree and surreal kangaroos hopped. The flickering flames of the fire brought them to life on the wall of the cave and not even the distant and mournful howling of the dingo in the depths of the night could interrupt the old warrior. Nor the inquisitive little possums watching wide-eyed from the branches of a gnarled gum tree would dare disturb the song as they listened in hushed silence. In time they would tell the story to their children of the last of the Nerambura elders who came to the cave on the wings of an eagle to sing the last song for his people in the Dreaming.

  Soon the dingo would cease its howling and the calls of the curlews would rise as a sad symphony to the star-filled night sky as the old Aboriginal warrior tugged at his grey beard and remembered with deep and unremitting sadness how it had been before the white man came with his flocks of sheep to chase away the creatures of the bush.

  And he mourned for himself, as no one was left to mark his passing with the rites accorded to a man who had proved himself a great warrior among his own people. No relatives to place his body on a dais of sticks and stones so that the young warriors could anoint themselves with the dripping secretions from his body as future aspirants to his title of great hunter and warrior. And no one to tie his legs and bury him in a shallow grave until the time came for his bones to be removed and placed respectfully in a hollow log to sleep with the possums and cockatoos that made their homes with him. Now he was totally alone with the spirits of those he once knew as the people of his clan.

  His gaunt ochre and feather-daubed body marked his hunger. But there were no young men to hunt the wallaby nor women to make the nardoo cakes and his stomach growled. He had subsisted on the lizards and wild honey he had found in the crevices of the rocks on the hill.

  They were coming. Not the white men on their horses who tended the sheep. No, the woman was coming. The Spirits had spoken to him in his sleep and had told him that he must guide her to the sacred place. They did not tell him why he was to help the woman, but he sensed that she had the power to see and remember all that had happened in the shadow of the sacred hill.

  The chanting had wearied the old Aboriginal warrior and he lay on his side by the fire to drift into a deep sleep from which he would never return.

  Just before dawn Luke came awake with a start.

  The whimpering was not very loud, but to Luke’s experienced ear it was definitely out of place in the early morning sounds of the bush. He groped for the Colt, always within his reach, and rolled on his belly. ‘Kate?’ he called softly. ‘Can you hear me?’ The whimpering ceased and Luke crawled like a stalking leopard across to her, fully alert to any danger that might present itself.

  ‘Luke!’ Kate mumbled as she fought off the last remnants of the dream and saw his face inches from hers.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked anxiously.

  ‘Yes . . .’ she answered hesitantly. ‘Yes, I am all right.’ She sat up and rubbed her eyes. ‘Where did the old black man go?’

  Luke scanned the scrub of the early morning, but only the soft and gentle sound of the cowbells jangling and the distant cry of curlews came to him. The dog would have barked had an intruder entered the area around the dray. Nothing moved in the early morning chill. ‘I didn’t see any blackfellas. You sure you weren’t dreaming?’ he observed quietly.

  Kate was now fully awake and she could see him clearly outlined against the last of the morning stars.

  ‘I must have been dreaming,’ she mumbled. But the old Aboriginal had spoken. And she had understood every word he said. No wild Aboriginal could have done that. He had been so real and she could vividly remember the strange scars on his back and skinny chest and the strange painted designs daubed over his body. There were feathers of wild birds stuck to him and she remembered that he was very old and seemed to know who she was. The dream had not been a nightmare but it had still frightened her by its reality. It was like the time Tom had come to her in the fever. Who are you? Where are you? Now she understood.

  ‘Luke, I know where my father and Billy are buried,’ she said softly. ‘And I know why I am here.’ The meaning of the dream came back to her and she trembled for the terrible things he had shown her.

  Luke instinctively put his arms round her shoulders and she did not resist his embrace. ‘I saw it all,’ she whispered in an awed voice. ‘The little children being killed by the troopers. It was horrible. Those poor innocent children slaughtered.’ Her voice quavered as the woman born in Ireland spilled tears for a people slaughtered under the red sun of the Australian plains. ‘They came in the morning and the mothers watched helplessly as the troopers laughed and slaughtered their children.’ Kate’s tears of grief splashed down her cheeks and her voice was choked as she forced herself to continue. ‘They tried to run but the white men were waiting for them at the hills and . . .’ she hesitated. ‘The old man told me why I am here but he could not show me the future. He told me there was too much pain for me to know. Oh, Luke, I’m frightened.’ He held her tightly in his arms and rocked her gently as she sobbed with the terrible memory of the dispersal.

  The little cattle
dog sleeping beside his master lifted his head from his paws, rose and padded across to Kate, where he put his wet nose in her lap. The little dog understood the pain she was experiencing. Luke held Kate in his arms until the first warming rays of the sun kissed the brigalow scrub.

  Kondola had taken her to a place where no woman had ever stepped before in the history of the Nerambura clan. It was a place taboo to women. But he had taken her into the sacred cave and shown her the painted wall as the Spirits of the rocks and stones of the hill had told him he must.

  The place by the creek was eerie and frightening.

  There were the sad echoes of children’s happy laughter at play and the lazy melodious voices of old men and women at gossip around the cold ashes of fire.

  Luke stood among the bleaching bones with his rifle over his shoulder. He bent and scooped up the tiny skull of what would once have been a child. There was a hole through the skull marking the entry of the lead ball from a trooper’s carbine and he felt a twinge of guilt as if he were desecrating a graveyard. He replaced the skull carefully where he had found it. ‘This must have been the site of the blackfellas’ camp,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘Sure must have been some massacre.’

  He was prompted to reflect on his own experiences at the Eureka Stockade almost a decade earlier. ‘I think I know how the Nerambura felt,’ he said softly, ‘when they saw the troopers come down on them . . . poor bastards!’

  Kate sat astride her horse watching him. A great sorrow swept her as she gazed down at the tiny scattered bones of a baby and thought of her own dead child. Unrestrained tears welled in her eyes.

  ‘Those poor mothers seeing their babies killed. Seeing them trampled by the horses,’ she whispered and felt her sorrow for the slaughtered children replaced with an avenging rage as she watched Luke pick his way through the scattered bones towards her. She even hated the big English sergeant because he had been part of all this. But her hatred was tempered by the memory of his guilt-haunted eyes. Henry James was already in hell.