Outback Station

by Aaron Fletcher

  Flies and mosquitoes were a nuisance on days when the air was still, and snakes slithered across the track, many of them poisonous. At a creek one afternoon, David saw a wild boar. Both hammers on his double-barrel musket cocked, he waited as the boar snorted and dug at the ground in a display of temper, its long tusks gleaming. Then it finally turned and disappeared into the brush, and David rode on.

  At first he failed to notice the widely-scattered Aborigines, because he was accustomed to those who loitered about the villages where they were conspicuous. Here they were part of the landscape, blending in almost perfectly. When a bright spot of yellow on a hillside caught his eye one day, he studied it and saw the small face under it.

  It was the bright blond hair of an Aborigine child, which darkened into black as they grew older. Then he saw the others, a man, woman, and youth, in the broken shadows of brush beside the child. Absolutely motionless, they were in full view and yet almost invisible in the mottled play of light and shadow on their dark bodies as they watched him pass.

  He saw others from time to time, always at a distance and motionless. Recalling what Frank had said about bushrangers, he watched for fresh hoofprints on the track. As the days passed, the terrain became more arid, the vegetation changing. Savannas were covered with deep spinifex grass, varying from soft green to the color of ripe wheat. Mallee covered hillsides below barren spines of black granite, and desert oaks were mixed with the stands of eucalyptuses. With summer approaching, the creeks were drying into billabongs, oxbow ponds in curves where the channels were deeper.

  It was a harsh land where predator and prey struggled for survival, but it lacked a cruel aspect because it was utterly impersonal. Its immensity difficult to comprehend, the land had a rugged, compelling beauty. The soft dull light of early dawn gave way to a blinding brilliance as the sun rose, illuminating the scenery with an almost painful clarity. After sunset, dusk came as a deepening blue that closed in from all sides, lighted by an afterglow from below the horizon. As David traveled onward into this entirely new world, his past sorrows were sealed off in a remote part of his mind, like his watch remaining in his pocket with its lid closed.

  Late one afternoon, he crossed a hill overlooking the Cobdogla River. Making camp beside it, he saw that it fit the Aborigine description as a land of plenty, because the wide belt of lush green vegetation flanking it teemed with animals. The river also fit Frank's description of flowing upside down as the water was extremely muddy.

  The days grew warmer west of the river, the midday heat warning of the torrid intensity that would come in December. The water sources were more scattered, and David made sure to keep his canteen, a leather-covered bottle, full. Once every two or three days, he had to make a dry camp at sundown, sharing the water in the canteen with his horse.

  One day, as the noises from birds were fading in the midday heat and being replaced by the throbbing chatter of cicadas, David glimpsed a ground parrot a few yards ahead. Frightened by something, it darted from the brush on the right side of the track and crossed it in a flash of green. The horse cocked its ears and looked at the foliage, then David saw a musket barrel in the branches, pointing toward him.

  Smoke puffed from the flash pan on the musket as David kicked out of the right stirrup and dived off the left side of his horse. The musket tracked him, firing, and the horse shrieked as its right foreleg folded and it went down. David clutched his musket, hitting the ground, and scrambled into the undergrowth on the left side of the track.

  ''You bloody bastard!" a man in the brush across the track bellowed. "You flaming get! You made me shoot the bloody horse, you scurvy swine!"

  The man's voice, enraged and with a frenzied, irrational edge, rang out harshly over the horse's screams of pain. Its right foreleg was limp, blood foamed from its lips, and the animal had been shot through the shoulder and lungs. Lying behind a clump of acacia, David cocked a hammer on his musket and aimed at the back of the horse's head to end its torment.

  As he fired, the horse jerked and then quieted. The man on the other side of the track thought the bullet was meant for him, and a pistol fired with a sharp crack, the ball clipping through the branches over David's head. The shot was followed by another raving outburst as the man promised David a slow, painful death because the horse had been shot.

  Quietly sliding backward, David put a screen of foliage between himself and his pursuer, then reloaded the spent barrel in his musket as he moved parallel to the track. A few yards from the horse, he crept back to the edge of the undergrowth. The man's foot stirred the grass behind the brush where he hid as he craned his neck, looking for David.

  Both hammers on his musket cocked, David aimed at the foot. He squeezed a trigger and fired, then ducked to one side of the gunpowder smoke to aim the other barrel. As the ball ripped into his foot, the man screamed in pain and shock, involuntarily sitting up in full view. David aimed at his chest and pulled the other trigger.

  Just as the hammer fell, the man realized his mistake and threw himself to one side. He was an instant too late as David swung the musket barrels and tracked him in the sights as the weapon fired. The heavy ball slammed into the man's chest, the impact knocking him flat on his back.

  David reloaded as he crossed the track. The ragged, unkempt man in the brush on the other side was near death, gasping hoarsely for breath as blood trickled from his mouth. He glared at David in feral hatred, his breath catching in his throat as he whispered an oath.

  "Is there anyone you'd like to have informed that you're gone?" David asked. "I might be able to get a message to them eventually. Or is there anything else you'd like done?"

  The man's lips curled in a sneer as he hissed another oath, then his eyes became wide in pain and fear as he jerked, blood gushing from his mouth. His limbs quivering convulsively, he choked for a moment, then the movements stopped and his eyes became lifeless.

  Searching the body, David found an old letter from England addressed to a Henry Bolton at the convict barracks in Sydney. Another pocket contained a watch with the same name engraved inside the lid, along with a purse containing well over a hundred guineas. The man had been a bushranger, who apparently lost his horse, and had been waiting beside the track to ambush a traveler to get another one.

  After burying the body, David took his bedroll and canvas bag from behind the saddle on his dead horse. Now afoot and still a long distance from Wayamba Station, he knew his situation was uncertain, if not perilous, and he could carry only so much. In the bag was a pouch of mail for Wayamba Station that he had picked up from the postal office in Sydney, along with instructions to place it in Patrick Garrity's hands.

  Making up a pack with his blanket, he put the mail, a supply of food, and his ammunition in it. He tied his canteen and the bushranger's musket to the pack, then hoisted it to his back. With the pistol in his belt and his double-barrel musket under his arm, he went down the track.

  It was late afternoon of the next day before he found water. His canteen was almost empty, and his feet were blistered. After drinking his fill from the billabong, he soaked his feet in the damp mud at the edge of the water. The next morning, his canteen full, he shrugged off the pain in his feet as he trudged down the track.

  During the following days, his feet gradually toughened, and he was able to walk comfortably, but water was a constant problem. Two and sometimes three days passed before he came to the next small brook or billabong near the track, and he also needed more water as the days grew hotter. With his wide hat pulled down against the glare of the sun, he walked form sunrise to sunset, never allowing his canteen to become completely empty.

  Being on foot made him feel less capable of coping with anything that might arise, as the wilderness seemed more forbidding and threatening. Thinking about the bushranger's irrational behavior, he remembered what Frank had said about the way the outback affected some people. Although he enjoyed the solitude, he could understand why some would react otherwise. Being totally alone in t
he vast spaces could be oppressive.

  One morning, after the air had been unusually still, a gust of wind rustled the brush and trees. David was walking up a long, low hill, the foliage partially blocking his view, but the horizon to the south seemed hazy. He dismissed it, continuing up the hill and tugging his hat down firmly as harder gusts blew.

  When he reached the top, the wind was a steady gale and felt like a blast of hot air from a furnace. It whipped up dust that obscured his vision, and a thick, dark cloud of dust swept from the south. For a moment he considered stopping until the dust storm passed, but his canteen was less than half full and he needed to find water.

  The velocity of the wind increased, and the dust, blotting out the sun and turning the day into twilight, blinded David. Just when he decided he would have to stop, he realized he was off the track, dimly seeing a deep ditch in front of him as he stepped off the edge.

  He tried to stop, but the edge crumbled under his feet. Falling and sliding through the brush on the steep side of the ditch, he rolled to the bottom. He huddled there in the choking dust, closing his eyes and covering his face with his sleeve so he could breathe.

  Hours later, when the wind died away, David was covered with fine dust. He climbed the steep bank, hoisted his bundle on his back, and started to return to the track. He went several yards in one direction, then in another without finding it.

  He was surrounded by dense growth that limited his vision to a few feet, but it was not sturdy enough for him to climb to look around. Deciding to return to the ditch and begin a methodical search for the track, he discovered he had moved about so much he was unable to find the ditch.

  For the remainder of the day, he broke limbs on the brush to mark his path and crisscrossed the terrain. Still unable to find the track by nighttime, he drank sparingly from his canteen and tried to eat a piece of leftover damper. His mouth was too dry for him to eat, and he went to sleep.

  The next morning, David headed west until he broke out of the brush and came to a hill. From the top of it, he saw no sign of the track. But far to the west was a mass of dark green foliage, possibly a source of water, and he set out toward it.

  During the breathlessly hot afternoon, he came to a grove of trees beside a dry creek bed. His hunger was a gnawing pain, and his mouth was completely dry. He took a sip of water and continued walking. At nightfall, he drank the last of his water and fell asleep.

  At dawn, David was weak with hunger, and his mouth was parched. He struggled to his feet, lifting his back pack and picking up his musket, then stumbled onward. Each laboring step seemed to take his last strength, but he found more and forced himself to keep moving.

  He became delirious as time passed in a daze. There was a fleeting impression of darkness, then it was daytime again. His tongue swollen, he was unable to close his mouth. Having lost his pack and musket, he crawled up a barren slope toward a patch of shade in a rock outcropping to escape the glaring sun that was beating down on him mercilessly.

  When he regained consciousness, it was late afternoon, and his mouth was damp with water bitterly tasting of minerals. He was sitting against a boulder near the top of a stony ridge, and an old, naked Aborigine woman knelt in front of him. She was pouring sips of water into his mouth from a small wooden vessel made from a section of tree limb.

  He gulped the water greedily, then she moved aside. A few yards away, a young Aborigine man and an older man looked at him impassively. Both of them stood on one foot and leaned on spears, their other foot tucked behind the knee of the leg on which they were standing.

  Two young women, three youths, a girl, and two small children whose hair was still blond crouched against a boulder at one side, gazing at him. His pack, muskets, and other belongings were stacked near him, the Aborigines evidently having gathered them from where he had dropped them.

  The scene had an eerie quality to David, its colors tinted a deeper hue by the rich, rosy light of the setting sun. The Aborigines were absolutely silent as they gazed at him inscrutably, all but one completely motionless. The girl held a length of dried plant stem, a wisp of smoke rising from smoldering fire in its pulpy center. Occasionally she waved the stick gently to keep the ember burning.

  They were entirely different from the Aborigines near the villages both in appearance and attitude. Instead of wearing castoff clothing, they had only woven grass belts that held their stone tools and weapons, and the men's spears were tipped with stone points. More than primitive, they were ancients, living as their forebears had eons ago.

  David spoke to the older man, who was evidently the leader of the small group. "Do you understand English?" he asked.

  It was apparent that neither he nor any of the others did when the man replied softly with a syllable that meant nothing to David. From a subtle, uncomfortable stir among them, it was also clear that his voice, while weak and hoarse to him, sounded jarringly loud to them.

  The man glanced at the old woman beside David and nodded toward him. She gave him another drink, then joined the other women and children, as the man silently motioned to them. They gathered up woven grass bags and other belongings, the two young women having water vessels similar to the old woman's, and stepped between two nearby boulders.

  David saw why his voice had sounded loud to them, because they communicated in gestures and soft murmurs. The two men sat down at one side while the others made camp. One of the women had a bundle of sticks, which they broke up. The girl blew on the end of the firestick, then touched it to thin slivers of wood. A moment later, a small fire burned, and the women and children moved around it, rummaging in their bags.

  Darkness fell, and the people were silhouetted against the firelight. A few minutes later, the old woman came to David with a piece of something that had been roasted over the fire, and what looked like two small, wild figs. David thought that the roasted flesh was lizard or some other reptile, as he choked it down quickly. Then he ate the small bitter fruit.

  The Aborigines ate and settled themselves to sleep as the fire burned down. David lay down, resting his head on his pack. The food burned in his stomach, making him nauseous, and he had a severe headache, but he was exhausted and immediately fell asleep.

  The next morning, two of the youths carried his muskets and pack, and David followed the Aborigines into the brush at the foot of the hill. The men led the way, the women and children following, and David almost lost sight of them. They spread out, moving as silently as shadows, and he caught only intermittent glimpses of one or another of them.

  An hour later, David's legs had become very unsteady, making him stumble occasionally. A feverish weakness gripped him, and he was ravenously hungry. An agonizing headache pounded in his skull, but most of all the effort of walking had given him a raging thirst.

  Almost as though she could read his thoughts, one of the young women was suddenly in front of him. Removing leaves that reduced evaporation from the water vessel she balanced on her head, she handed it to him. David took a deep drink from it and gave it back, then the woman replaced the leaves and put the vessel back on her head, moving into the brush.

  He struggled to keep up, and just when he felt that he could go no farther, the tall brush opened out. A short distance ahead, the Aborigines filed through spinifex grass toward the edge of a wide, deep ravine. A dry watercourse, it contained a raging river during heavy rains.

  The Aborigines climbed down into the ravine and crossed it to the deep shade under a wide shelf of rock undercut by flood waters, and David followed them. The men, youths, and children stepped under the overhang and sat down. David collapsed weakly near them, but the women and the girl went back to where the rock was only a few feet above the floor of the ravine.

  Putting aside their bags and long, polished staffs, the women and the girl used sticks and pieces of bark to dig a hole. When it was a few feet deep, the girl handed her firestick to one of the young women and climbed down into it. She threw out sandy dirt, and the others shoveled it
away. As the hole became deeper, the other young woman took the girl's place.

  A short time later, the hole had become so deep that the digging was very difficult. At the bottom of the hole, the young woman handed up dirt on slabs of bark to the other one, who hung headlong down into the hole with the old woman holding her feet. Occasionally they changed places, and David saw that the dirt on their slender, naked bodies was damp.

  He realized that the Aborigines had some practical knowledge of geology, having located a gnamma hole. A stratum of granite or other stone that water was unable to penetrate was under the ravine. Water soaked into the ground during floods, then was held in the lower levels of the soil by the stone. When a hole was dug down to that level, water collected at the bottom of it by drainage from the surrounding soil.

  After a while, the young woman at the bottom of the hole handed up the small, wooden water vessels full of water, which the girl carried around until everyone had their fill. His thirst finally quenched, David gave his canteen to the girl to fill. She was puzzled by its purpose until he poured some water into it from a wooden vessel, then she took it to the hole and brought it back full of water.

  When all of the water vessels were refilled once again, the women and the girl pushed the dirt back into the hole, stamping it down and removing all traces of their work. They then opened their grass bags and took out lizards, small snakes, and handfuls of witchetty grubs. The older man beckoned David, he and the others eyeing the reptiles and the worms in anticipation as they gathered around. Not quite that ravenous, David opened his pack and took out leftover damper from several days before.

  The young man finished his share of the food, exchanging a few words with the other man, then left with one of the youths. The others finished, and the man and youths lay down, while the women mended their grass bags and did other tasks as they talked softly. His hunger partially satisfied, David took a drink from his canteen and lay down. The women looked at the canteen in fascination, talking and continuing with their work.