A Single Tree

by Don Watson

  Even in matters of food and drink he is characteristically abstemious. His food is natural seed, especially from native shrubs such as wattle and cassia, with a leavening of insects and minor vegetation in the off seasons. His drink is seemingly non-existent. By some miracle he is able to live through the harsh Australian summer with nothing but the surrounding vegetation to supply him with moisture.

  The lowan is the most industrious of birds. For much of the year he works at his mound without respite – morning, noon, and night, seven days a week. It is an incredible performance. Each morning he opens the mound and tests the temperature of the fermenting organic matter to see whether it is being maintained near the critical incubating level of 33°C. He tests this with his beak and his tongue. Then, having determined the state of things, he adjusts his regime of work according to the difference between nest temperature and air temperature, varying his routine from season to season and, indeed, from day to day.

  The cycle begins in April. By prodigies of labour the lowan excavates a hole to a depth of about a metre, with heaped sand and soil all round, and begins scraping in leaves and bark, twigs, stems, and dry organic matter. And all this, five or six months before even the first egg will be laid! The faith, thoroughness, and long-term preparation; the care, uncanny judgement, and power to adjust to daily or weekly change mark him out as one of the most wonderful of earth’s creatures. For thirty metres or more around the mound he rakes the ground clear of fine leaves, dry grass, and bits of dead vegetation, and brings it all laboriously into the centre – his legs working tirelessly in strong backward strokes until the whole mass has been concentrated in the hole to form the egg chamber.

  Then comes the wait for rain, good saturating rain to soak the organic matter deeply and thoroughly – perhaps several times – until it can be covered with sand to begin fermentation. Several months will have gone by. At the end of winter and during spring the egg chamber is covered more and more deeply until a metre of sand is heaped up above it in a miniature mountain five or six metres in diameter. In September the testing begins – a daily excavation down to the decaying matter to assess the condition of the egg bed as its temperature rises towards the critical 33°C. And at last, at long last, it is ready for the first egg. The month, granted wide seasonal latitude, is usually October.

  After the first laying more eggs follow – perhaps fifteen or twenty of them – at intervals of a few days or even a week. Each time the male digs down to the nesting chamber and tests the temperature of the selected spot. If all is well the female then lays the egg and disappears into the bush again. The male stays on to rebuild the mound. With egg-laying lasting until the onset of summer heat four months may elapse before laying finishes; and with incubation taking six or seven weeks there is normally little more than a month or two between the end of one breeding cycle and the beginning of the next. The male builder gets little rest.

  Inevitably chicks are hatching while some eggs are still being laid: nuggety chicks they are, very well developed in the large eggs, for they must have the strength to struggle up through seventy or eighty centimetres of sand until they break out into the open air. A short rest, and they scamper off into the scrub, fending completely for themselves from that moment on. Paradoxically, after all those monumental labours, neither parent takes any further interest in the young. Having created them they leave them to take their chance.

  The assiduous industry of the lowan devolves wholly upon the critical demands of incubation. And these have a seasonal character. Fermentation tends to be vigorous in the early stages of the cycle when the spring sun outside is still mild. The mound therefore has a tendency to overheat internally and has to be opened up each day for a short period to cool. As fermentation slows down and the air temperature outside rises, there is a more equable balance and the mound need not be opened quite so frequently. Later still, in high summer, the eggs have to be protected from the fierce heat of the sun and so the mound is built up high to provide insulation; only in the cool of the morning is it opened to drain off excess internal heat. Finally, in early autumn, both fermentation and the sun’s rays provide less and less heat. The mound therefore has to be opened during the day to make the most of the sun’s warmth, and closed again to protect the egg bed against the cool of the evening.

  Within this broad seasonal pattern, of course, there are endless daily variations – cold snaps in summer and sudden bursts of heat in spring – to which the lowan must respond with sensitive judgement and shrewd emergency action. Apart from such perils and vicissitudes he faces predators and marauders of all kinds, especially in his infancy, as well as the scourge of drought and the incalculable devastation of fire. In 1967 the drought was so severe that no breeding could occur. What is less well known is that 1968 was even worse, and the lowans had to be fed by hand to enable them to survive – Keith Hateley ranging far and wide to find wattle-seed and other appropriate food that was indigenous to the region.

  Drought has other effects. It inhibits the female’s strength, affects the eggs, minimises the chick’s chances of survival. Worse still, it prevents the various species of acacia from bearing seed and thus cuts off the lowans’ food supply. Fire is even more tragic. Once an area has been burnt out – food seeds destroyed and organic material reduced to ashes – it takes a long time for the mallee-fowl to return. Some say twelve to fourteen years at least. For few creatures, therefore, is the prevention of fire so utterly vital.

  To watch the lowan working his mound is a moving experience. He seems never to tire. Up and down, out and back, raking incessantly with strong backward strokes, he is the symbol of commitment. Long after our departure, at night and in distant places, we can still see him in our mind’s eye – solitary, unremitting, painstaking. If ever a bird deserves to survive it is Leipoa ocellata.

  The Little Desert, Rigby, Adelaide, 1975

  Daryl Tonkin

  1999

  I was with Euphemia for two full and happy weeks before either Harry or Mavis acknowledged that a change had taken place in the living arrangements at Jackson’s Track. At first they accepted that I had built myself a camp out in the bush and wanted to look after myself, but that was before they discovered Euphemia was with me. Then there was an almighty row!

  Harry stopped me while I was in the middle of using the back end of my axe to knock some dog spikes out of the logs I had just dragged in. I halted mid-swing and looked at him.

  ‘Come up to the house when we knock off. We’ve some things to discuss,’ he said.

  I stared into his face for a minute, then continued to swing at the spike. Harry walked back down to the mill.

  After I put up my horses in the new corral at my camp, I told Euphie I wouldn’t be stopping for tea and turned in the direction of the main house. It was a beautiful evening, with red, late summer sunlight filtering through the trees. I walked past the mill and the hands were sitting outside the mill houses with their feet up. I could smell their meals cooking. I walked across the red hill with a setting sun hot on my back throwing my shadow long across the ground before me now that I was out of the trees.

  I had an idea what was coming once I reached that house. A few days ago, when I had stopped in at Stewart and Dora’s camp to see how things were going, Dora and I had a long talk over several cups of tea. She said she was glad that Euphemia had someone like me to look after her. She said that Euphie was a good girl and deserved happi­ness. She also felt she had to warn me. She said now that Euphie and I were together and people knew about it, we would not be able to avoid trouble. She said she did not know where the trouble would raise its ugly head, but that it would and we would have to face it. She said that we would face it all of our lives together and she prayed we were strong enough. She said she thought Euphie was. She said she loved us.

  I knew then, as I approached the house, that I was about to face trouble, and I felt strong enough.

  Jimmy was stacking wood by the kitchen door. He looked up and wave
d, stepped back from the wood, turned and walked away from the house rather than into it as he usually would do. I took a deep breath and went on inside. Mavis and Harry were sitting at the table waiting for me. I didn’t sit down with them, but preferred to stand at the end of the table. Mavis started.

  ‘Do you have any idea what you’re doing?’

  I looked straight at her but didn’t answer.

  ‘No brother of mine is going to live with a black woman!’ she shrilled.

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ I asked quietly.

  Mavis looked at Harry in exasperation.

  ‘Daryl,’ said Harry in a more reasonable tone than Mavis, ‘it’s not natural. A white man cannot live with a native woman.’

  ‘How do you expect to be able to hold your head up and look people in the eye?’ Mavis spat out, impatient with Harry.

  ‘What people do you have in mind?’ I asked.

  ‘Decent people!’ she shouted, spoiling for a fight that I was determined not to give her. The thing about Mavis was that when she got wild her face would go white with rage, the opposite of most people. I could see the blood was draining out of her face and I didn’t like it. Harry could see it, too, and he knew just as well as I did that she could be a terror.

  ‘Daryl,’ Harry said, ‘you can’t live with her. It’s against our religion. It’s against God.’

  That stumped me. How could the happiness Euphemia and I have be against God? What God?

  ‘Well, I guess I have my own religion.’

  Mavis hissed.

  ‘It’s unnatural,’ Harry repeated quickly putting his hand up to keep Mavis quiet. ‘You can’t keep her there with you. You must send her back to her people.’

  ‘I didn’t order her to come and stay with me. And I won’t order her to leave. She is free to do as she pleases. It’s up to her what she does.’

  ‘You’ll be an outcast with your people, with your family with all white people!’ said Mavis.

  ‘I’m sorry about that. People are entitled to their opinion, but I will live life the way I like and I don’t care about other people. I never have,’ I answered.

  ‘You’re a fool!’ she shrieked.

  ‘Its fine to have blackfellas working for us, but it is against the law to live with them,’ said Harry trying to sound calm and reasonable.

  ‘What if there are children?’ said Mavis with a look of horror on her drained, by now almost blue, face.

  ‘It’s not our way Daryl,’ said Harry.

  I stood there looking at them both, one after the other. It was a stand-off. Nothing more to say but Mavis couldn’t have me so calm.

  ‘What have you got to say?’ she screamed.

  We all jumped at the tone of her voice. I took a deep breath.

  ‘You’ve got your way. I’ve got mine.’

  Mavis rose up.

  ‘You’ll finish up with absolutely nothing! I’ll see to that! I’ll never have anything more to do with you!’

  Harry put a hand on her arm to stop her haranguing, but I had had enough. I turned and walked out. Neither of them followed. I had known this would come and I had not cared. When I had asked Euphie to come live with me, I hadn’t been interested in thinking about the complicated social issues, and I still wasn’t interested in thinking too hard about them then.

  I walked back over the red hill facing the angry red sun full on. The sun had hardly moved in the sky since I had entered the house. Very little time had passed. It seems that it takes no time to cross from one world into another. I passed the mill, I re-entered the forest and disappeared from view.

  Jackson’s Track: Memoir of a Dreamtime, Penguin, Melbourne, 1999

  David Trigger

  2008

  Aboriginal views regarding introduced plants and animals are instructive. While for some the category of indigenous species excludes things regarded as emblematic of colonisation as well as those responsible for environmental degradation, there is also considerable evidence suggesting the incorporation into Aboriginal culture of certain ‘exotic’ species. In some areas of Central Australia, for example, feral cats are hunted for food and celebrated as spiritually significant with a Dreaming route similar to those of native species. Introduced cat is also painted with traditional Yolngu designs in north-east Arnhem Land. Buffalo from Asia and also cattle have been celebrated with traditional song and dance forms mimicking the animals’ features, just as with native creatures. As with a host of other animals and plants, this is flexible intellectual accommodation of introduced species, challenging any simplistic or taken for granted ideas about Aboriginal people’s views on belonging and indigeneity in Australian places, landscapes and nature.

  By implication, such intellectual openness among Aboriginal people prompts us to reflect on how we might define exactly what is to become ‘Indigenous’ or ‘native’ in both nature and society. If Aboriginal people (‘Indigenous Australians’) make intellectual room for non-native fauna and flora, recognising the capacity of introduced animals and plants to achieve a place in the environment and the nation, does this not complicate any scientific (perhaps ‘econationalist’) messages that position so-called ‘exotic’ species as essentially ‘alien’? It certainly complicates any broad society-wide assumptions that symbolically identify ‘Indigenous people’ with an exclusively ‘native’ ecology, and any related view that simplistically equates things ‘natural’ with things ‘native’.

  ‘Place, belonging and nativeness in Australia’ in Frank Vanclay, Matthew Higgins

  and Adam Blackshaw (eds.), Making Sense of Place: Exploring concepts and expressions of

  place through different senses and lenses, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, 2008

  James Hamilton Twigg

  1905

  1

  I am busy at the lambing now and by this time have 84 lambs of which number only 32 are rams. Ear marking, castrating and tail cutting are all jobs I am now an expert at. I suppose you know a good hand can cut and tail about 1,000 ram lambs a day keeping 2 men very busy catching for him. One slash cuts off the end of the purse; the testicles are then squeezed out with thumb and finger, dragged out with the teeth with one back jerk of the head, another slash at the ear, then the tail and next please. One gets covered with blood from the tail as it squirts out from the two big veins for about 3 feet and for a couple of minutes in a day they are skipping about as well as ever but must suffer a lot as the testicles are dragged right off the kidneys.

  Having such a small percentage of wether lambs will materially effect my future income for this year as of course I must stock up with the ewes . . .

  I am in a hole through losing my big cart horse. He got poisoned weed and lost the use of his hind quarters. I took chaff etc. to him in the paddock till he got down to it, and went home to fetch the Martini; came back and found him dead so saved a cartridge. Swore an awful lot and vowed (different to swearing) that I would buy a lot of arsenic and soda, borrow a syringe and kill every blade of it on the place. It would be a gigantic undertaking but could be done in time and with an awful lot of really hard work in carrying water up the hills etc.

  2

  This is an ideal home for the working man as distinguished from the settler. The working man comes from the other colonies, leaving his family behind as living is so dear over here and earning from 25s.0d. per week on the farm and his keep or 10s. per day at the mills, down to 8s.0d. and keep himself or if he takes out a timber license and goes hewing sleepers at ls.0d. to 1s.6d. each for either the Government or a big contractor he can earn from 10s.0d. To £1 a day and his outlay for tools is only about 50s.0d. Also if he has £100 or so when he lands he can invest it in two horses and a dray and go sleeper carting for the hewers and earn splendid money, say on an average 30s. per day. All this money is sent out of the colony to keep the aforesaid wife and family so although these men have an equal vote with the land owner they don’t care a button for the State and are doing the State no lasting good. Their u
nion keeps up the price of wages and controls the hours of labour and they now are in full power in our local parliament. Their policy is high wages and cheap food, the direct opposite to the farmers. By taking off the duties on imported food stuff etc. they can keep down the prices to a great extent but owing to the great distance by sea and the shipping combine’s high rates, prices still keep so that we can grow stuff at a profit. The day these men, who only live a few months or weeks on one place and in a tent got an equal say in the affairs of the State Government with the land owner, it was a fatal day for us as they soon put into the Legislative Assembly their own men chosen by the Union and the first thing they passed was the Payment of Member’s Bill! £200 a year and now they propose raising it to £300!

  The first thing that strikes a newcomer to W[estern] A[ustralia] is the dullness of the bush, the sombre hues and the silence. Unless the wind is blowing the latter strikes one at once. You feel, as one used to, in a very big church with the organ rumbling away up in the roof somewhere. Now and then a bird chirps to its mate or some parrots or cockatoos make their harsh noise, and then one may ride miles without hearing a sound. A kangaroo or wallaby jumps off like a shadow making, after the first startled rush, no sound at all and soon lost in the scrub. Before and after Christmas, for a few weeks, the bush in places does look pretty to us, as the wild flowers are out then, some of them being very beautiful in their construction when examined carefully. Of the Aborigines no trace is left now in the South West, beyond a very few round the towns and country villages and a sprinkling of half castes and very smart fellows they are, very athletic and mostly splendid horsemen and crack shots, quick with the gloves and generally pulling off most of the events at the country sports unless squared to lose . . .

  Letters from Irish Australia, 1825–1925, Patrick O’Farrell (ed.), New South Wales