A Single Tree

by Don Watson

  Today the native women were spread over the plain as far as I could see them, collecting Panmin, murnong a privilege they would not be permitted except under my protection. I inspected their bags and baskets on their return and each had a load as much as she could carry. They burn the grass, the better to see these roots but this burning is a fault charged against them by squatters.

  White men hunting kangaroos: there is not a station home or out station but the men and master have dogs to hunt kangaroos. Now as the blacks state, if the sheep belong to white fellow surely the kangaroo belong to blackfellow? Yet the white men take the blackfellow’s kangaroo but won’t give him sheep for it. The whites under pretence of looking for cattle and sheep and any other trumped up story rush pell mell into a camp of natives scattering these poor people, driving them from their property and seizing upon the same. What would be said if the natives whilst in chasing the kangaroos or emu were to follow after them through a flock of sheep? Yet these artful whites say they must do their will. Whilst at Borumbeep Kirk’s bullocks were astray. This was, as a matter of course, attributed to the natives and the overseer came to the natives and told them if they did not find the bullocks they were not to stop there. This was under my nose.

  Applied to Rutter for loan of cart, said he could not spare the bullock’s cart but if I had a horse of my own he would lend me the light cart. Although this would not bring all the supplies I had no alternative but to submit to it. Sent 3 pannicans to Rutter . . .

  2

  There was a half sheep and I told Tom to grill some chops. He did not hear it, he is getting childish. 3 p.m., the messenger returned and reported that 2 Jacalet at Mr Hall’s had been shot by Bill, Mr Hall’s cook – named 1. Yang.ar.re.min, or Crip.be.ar.rer.min, 2. Mip.bur nin – and that the other natives had gone a long way. The native messengers only brought one black man with them named Char le tur.ne.min, a Parn bulluc. The Parn bulluc country is 10 miles N of Borumbeep. Another boy came with Char.le.te.nur.ne.min named 9. We.til.go.ar.re.min, a Jacalet.

  These reports of natives being murdered, shot by the white ruffians is truly distressing. The natives are in grief in consequence. The nat­ives – and – reported that Francis had shot the undermentioned:

  1 Kome.bone.ar.re.min

  2 Poit.chun.dar.rer.min

  3 Jare.jow.wel

  4 Nat.toeng.ar.ra.min.

  The above are Poeng.art conedeet – the country of this people is situated 20 miles N of Borumbeep. The above were shot by Francis; also the under-mentioned:

  1 Cow.quin.in.ur.nin

  2 Creng.en.oke brother to Ling ur nin who came from Campbell’s

  3 Wet.tone.ar.ra.min.

  Seven blacks shot by Francis

  1 Cow.ar.re.min – a big man

  2 Win.now.are.rer.min

  These two shot by Tanabe, a shepherd to Kirk.

  The natives at Hall’s were shot at Hall’s hut; Hall was present. The natives showed me how they acted, said they told them to be off, pushed them out and then took up muskets and shot the two men as they were going away. They took away all their things and put them in the fire. The natives said Wills’ cook shot a man and woman – Aborigines – natives at the Picernin Yalloke to the E of Borumbeep –

  Kon.nite.bur.min, woman

  Por.rin.gon.ne.war

  The above are U. toul bulluc.

  1 Wor.rer.wor.er.min, Neecherbulluc

  2 Lime.bur.nin, Poit bulluc

  3 Al.lin.go.mur.nin, Weer rip cut

  The above three are reported to me by Ling.ur.nin as the men who killed Wills’ shepherd. The natives say Wills’ shepherd killed 2 natives, l man 1 woman, and the natives killed him for it. The natives informed me that there was a tribe a long way N called Po.bib.ber.rer bulluc who was plenty sulky and killed Pellerin and Galgal bulluc. Natives report that some women and an old man are coming from the Grampians. They say they burnt the natives that were shot. Natives shot by Piccaninny Mr Gibb.

  1 Car.der.neen

  2 Pul.let.puc.coren, Bullerburer . . .

  3

  Saturday, 31 July

  Heavy rain last night and wind. A.M., wind S. Rain beat through van – the joints were open. Slept tolerable comfortable. Francis pressed me to sleep in his hut and it was evident the bed had been prepared, clean sheets and pillow case. He entreated and said he would play me a tune on the fiddle and I was to make myself at home, etc. I however had made up my mind to sleep in the van and got away. I could not sleep in the place; I was disgusted and my heart sickened when I thought of the awful sacrifice of life done by this individual. He acknowledged to 5; the natives say 7.

  I regretted going to his place but I had fully expected Parker had made the enquiry. None had been made nor had he been to Francis’. He got to Synnott’s and returned back because Francis was from home. Why not have gone to the station and take the depositions of the men? Murder had been done and he knew it, and Synnott was one. I ascertained this morning that — alias Charley who accompanied me and who had lived with Synnott and Francis was present when the people were attacked. He is about 13 and positively declares that the natives did not use or throw spears or any other weapons, that Francis, Synnott with a party of men went to the camp down the river a short distance and made the attack on the natives and shot them as stated and the natives ran away. Francis said to me with apparent indifference that the short of the story was that the natives attacked him and he shot 4. No enquiry had been made and he supposed none would be made. He had reported it to the government. The natives shot were (men) some Barconedeet and some Parn bulluc.

  Just as I was about to mount my horse to proceed on my journey I saw what appeared to me a cranium of a human subject. It was laying exposed on a small bare hill where sheep had been folded and about 100 yards from Francis’ hut, and between it and his garden. Indeed it was I may say in the midst of buildings, for the woolshed was within a few yards and it was near the road. I cannot conceive why this skull was permitted to remain exposed in such a situation; it is doubtless best known to Francis. I showed it to the natives and they said, ‘Mr Francis killed him, Mr Francis shot plenty black fellows, all gone black fellows’. I put it (the cranium) in the van and brought it away this skull must have belonged to the man shot at the sheep fold. I asked the youth where the other remains were, he said all taken away by the dogs. I asked if he saw the dogs eating the body, he assured me he had. And as I found the skull in the position I did it is quite probable.

  Journals of George Augustus Robinson, May–August 1841, in G. Presland (ed.),

  Records of the Victorian Archaeological Survey 11, 1980

  Eric Rolls

  2000

  Australia was forged in fire during millions of years of lightning strikes and volcanic eruptions. During the last one hundred and thirty thousand years Aboriginal Australians used fire to hone established reactions. Some plants came to depend on fire, some accepted it then restored themselves: some learnt to shrink away from it.

  Eucalypts give the best example of the differing intensity of the fires that still shape Australia. They encourage fire with a high, volatile oil content in the leaves, with streamers of inflammable bark, with a massive drop of dead leaves so low in minerals that they burn exceptionally well. But a forest never risks more than 5 per cent of its total mass, its soul is solidly enclosed in living wood. Grass yields everything that it displays above ground.

  Most species of eucalypt are prepared to meet every possibility When a fire jumps a damp valley it can scorch the tops of trees on the way without setting fire to the understorey. For this eventuality the eucalypt has naked buds at the base of the leaf stalks that break open in a few days. If one of these attractive new shoots gets eaten, microscopic accessory buds grow to replace it. If a hot, high fire through the understorey burns the whole crown, epicormic buds, protected by the thick, heat-resistant bark, sprout in hundreds. Within a month trunk and main branches bristle with disordered growth. The tree loo
ks fuzzy but it is functioning again; it is connected to the air. After nine months three or four of these shoots take over. They lift up like real branches and the unsuccessful shoots die and drop off.

  When a particularly intense fire burns down a whole tree, it grows quickly from a lignotuber buried safely under the ground. Earth is an excellent insulator. The hottest fire scorches no more than the top three centimetres. Once again, the growth is undisciplined. Within three weeks the tree can have a hundred prospective trunks sixty centimetres high from which it will select one or two. These lignotubers are storehouses in exactly the right proportions of every mineral and chemical in the soil. They vary in size from that of a football to distorted masses weighing a couple of tonnes in some of the mallees.

  The two great timber trees of Western Australia, Jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata) and Karri (E. diversicolor) show marked difference in their attitude to fire. Jarrah has great ability to recover from the hottest fires. Karri resists light ground fires, but top fire kills it.

  The imposing Mountain Ash (E. regnans) in Victoria is extremely fire sensitive yet it requires a hot fire to free its seeds from a hard capsule and a bed of rich ash to give the seedlings a good start. How many millions of years did it take for forests of these trees to decide that they would thrive on three fires each thousand years? Frequency is critical. Any fire through a young Mountain Ash forest before it seeds at about twenty-five years is likely to wipe the forest out completely. It will have to have to begin again as a scrub, a thicket of mixed shrubs.

  As a new forest of Ash grows the understorey changes. At first shrubs like the untidy, cream-flowered Common Cassinia (Cassinia aculeata) dominate. This dies after twenty-five to thirty years, then small trees like Olearia argophylla, one of the Daisy Bushes with cream flowers, take over for seventy-odd years, after which the damp darkness favours moss and ferns with scattered grasses and shrubs here and there.

  The sturdy Blue Mountains Ash (Eucalyptus oreades), with smooth white trunks up to two metres in diameter, is also fire sensitive but it takes care of its future in a different way. It had to, the Blue Mountains are subject to frequent fires. It suppresses the growth of its saplings and they put their energy into flowers instead of wood. They become sexually mature at ten years and sprinkle the forest floor lavishly with seed that the old trees can no longer produce. When fire or wind or timbergetter gives one of these trees room, it grows quickly.

  In The South West Book published by the Australian Conservation Foundation in 1979,W. D. Jackson gave a fascinating account of how fire determines the composition of Tasmanian forests. It has absolute control of what grows. A fire every ten to twenty years produces a buttongrass plain with belts of scrubby eucalypts. When the period extends up to one hundred years eucalypts dominate a dry understorey of Olearia, Acacia (especially the cream-flowered dealbata), Pomaderris, one of the several shrubs known as Dogwood with big heads of yellow flowers, and some rainforest shrubs in damp patches. One hundred to four hundred years between fires produces mixed forest; the thinning eucalypts are the tallest at ninety metres but many rainforest trees to forty metres have spread under them. In wetter places rainforest and tea-tree, Leptospermum, have taken over. After four hundred years all the eucalypts die; they rot and feed a rainforest dominated by Atlantic Beech, Celery Top Pine and Leatherwood (Eucryphia lucida) that produces such distinctive honey. These trees maintain a damp atmosphere which discourages fire.

  Short regimes always favour grass. For years during the 1950s and 1960s a section of the Coffs Harbour–Orara road on the north coast of New South Wales ran along a central contour of a mountain growing a eucalyptus forest. The uphill side of the road which burnt every few years from motorists’ cigarette butts or faulty mufflers carried a thick grass understorey. The downhill side where fire was reluctant to run grew rainforest.

  The several species of resinous Triodia known as Spinifex in the Centre can produce tremendous fires. In 1975–76 one million square kilometres burnt around Alice Springs. That is 13 per cent of Australia, equal to the combined areas of New South Wales and Victoria . . .

  Smoke aids the germination of many Australian plants. When the seeds of ninety-four species of West Australian plants proved unwilling to germinate, botanists subjected them to smoke from burning native vegetation. Forty-five germinated readily. These seeds germinated when soaked with water that smoke had bubbled through. In the field, smoke drifted over an area caused a plentiful germination in the next rain. The action of the smoke is not known; ammonia might play a part.

  Australia: A Biography, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 2000

  Deborah Rose

  2006

  Old Tim Yilngayarri was the only person I’ve been lucky enough to meet who had actually been to the Sky country. This old man taught me with great patience. He had lived through events I can barely imagine: massacres, near slavery, and many other forms of cruelty. At the same time, he had been the top man for dogs and dingoes, their “Lawman” throughout the whole region. His stories about the Sky country are difficult to understand, not only because he and I struggled to communicate across language gaps but also because he speaks from experiences that I cannot fully imagine. I could not meet him halfway in conversation because I’d never been there. He describes Earth–Sky connections that are available only to a few people, and as he had been there, he brought back a report for the rest of us. He said that the Sky people had dropped a rope and taken him up to their country, where they gave him special powers. And when he looked back at Earth, he saw the fires of people’s camps looking like stars. Old Tim left it open to us to imagine the reverse: that to look at stars is to see the campfires of the Sky country.

  The old man lost his power, and now no one in that area has had the experience of being taken out of this world and given power. It may be, as some suggest, that the connections are being lost. But not everywhere, not yet, and not as long as the stories are told and the songs are sung. Not while the Crocodile stars still shine and the symmetries of wind and stars beat out their steady rhythm.

  As I learned when I left the Northern Hemisphere, the Star folk are most fully alive when they are connected with their Earthly countrymen. Happily, dogs, like Orion, seem to be everywhere. In her exquisite essay “Oyez à Beaumont”, Vicki Hearne reminds us of the moment in T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone when the great hound Beaumont, gored by a boar, lies dying. The huntsman kills him in compassion: he “let Beaumont out of this world, to run free with Orion and to roll among the stars.”

  In Australia the dogs are dingoes, and they run with the Seven Sisters, not with Orion. Women and dogs! I can’t help but feel happy about the protective mateship dogs offer us: how they chase guys who pester us, and bite the arms and legs of those who might harm us. Some Australian stories tell of how the crafty Sky hunter sent his penis underground to try to get to the Sisters, to ambush them from below, as it were. But the Sisters were not sitting on the ground, and they set their dingo mates on him, urging them to savage the unwelcome visitor. As Mark Twain would say, I will draw the curtain of charity over the rest of this scene.

  Where the Seven Sisters go, dingo knowledge goes too. The star tells Old Tim’s people that the dingo pups are being born, and when the stars make another shift, they say that the pups have opened their eyes. The old people, all those long-gone generations of Aboriginal countrymen, would raid the dens and take some pups to eat and some to keep as companions.

  They all lived together like that for some five thousand years.

  Today, though, dingoes are under sustained attack by pastoralists who mistakenly believe that the use of 1080 poison (sodium fluoroacetate) will protect their vulnerable calves by diminishing the dingo population. In fact, recent research shows that poisoning disrupts the family structure of dingo packs and produces unsocialised rogue beasts who attack domesticated animals. In spite of scientific evidence, and in complete disregard of Indigenous people’s views on the use of poison, the w
ar against dingoes goes on. It is quite possible that the pastoralists will win. Like the Assyrians of old, many pastoralists descend on their dingo enemies with the blood-thirsty desire to annihilate them by death and dispersal. And like Tiglath–Pileser, who piled up the heads of the defeated peoples “like heaps of grain”, some pastoralists display their spoils of war, hanging the dead bodies of dingoes from trees, fences, and signposts.

  If they win, if all the dens and families are dispersed, and even the lone survivors are hunted down or left to die of heartbreak, the only dingoes left will be in captivity. Like wolves and some domestic dogs, as well as many humans, they howl with grief and with lust, but one of their other primary motivations is to locate and communicate with other members of the group. Their howling vocabulary is complex, and they sing out to their countrymen in harmonies that amplify the sound of their voices, telling each other who and where they are. I have heard the dingoes singing across the cliffs and gorges, across plains and deserts, and I cannot really comprehend that no matter how bright the night, or how sweet the air, there may come a day when we’ll never hear them sing like that, ever. Not to their sisters in the sky country, or to the hunters in the sky and on Earth, or for the love of their own kind, or in celebration of their own way of being in the world.