by Rod Moss
Just before sunset there was a knock at the door accompanied by low talk and coughing. Some of the Whitegate kids shuffled into the house with Christopher and Bernadine, shaking rain-pearls from their greasy hair. They were totally drenched in spite of the plastic raincoats they had just bought from the second-hand shop. The bigger kids wanted to hold the baby and fussed over her. They were in a hurry to get to camp and wanted a lift. Christopher jumped in the front passenger seat and stared silently ahead.
As they got out he said, ‘Men sit in front seat, Rod. Not woman.’
I turned the car back towards town and rolled over the cattlegrid along Undoolya Road. Under the cattlegrid, I could see the channel was filling. Some 212 millilitres of rain had fallen within twenty-four hours, producing sudden flooding. The river had muttered and seethed through the night, sweeping rafted trash from the camps and debris from the guttered upcountry. Torrents made brisk files to the river.
After three days the water retreated. Tree matter had flattened and twisted against the great gums. In the curing mud, grass, cartons and empty tins were composed into weirdly rigid homologues, occasionally flattered by discarded clothing. A young Aboriginal woman, who had most likely been asleep in the riverbed near town, was found bloated, bleached and wedged up in the fork of a rivergum, near Amoonguna.
The rains signified a change of seasons. Temperate March. Tree martins, cued to the dimming light, massed mid-air to maul the remnant mosquitoes, spotting the sky like currants stirred in a cloud mix. A few cooler nights and the mosquito population quickly dropped away, making outdoor camping very attractive.
We drove east as cirrus scrummed together, for a 15-minute curtain call before sunset. The full moon prised itself from the track ahead; it looked within arm’s reach, fat and sassy. Its yolk whitened as the night passed, bleaching broad swatches of sand between the trees. Moonstruck. Could you be nocturnally blistered, I wondered? The campfire flickered low, alluring large moths that careered into the embers. I woke several times to shift into the rivergum shadow and found myself drawn to the satellites and meteorites unbuttoning from the crystal firmament and spearing through the pitch. The busy sky seemed so close that the meteorites looked to be fizzing to extinction just over the ranges.
Once or twice brumbies clip-clopped nearby. In the morning we saw they had hoofed out sand around the soakage. A thin film of oily water was still evident in a small patch at its centre. I knelt to run my fingers against the damp grains. The morning air was so abundant my ribs ached. Camping out was an elixir, a charge. Right at that moment, it seemed the best of all possible reasons to be living in the Centre.
JUDE WAS HAVING SUPPER WITH US the following night when Noelly and his wife, Rosita, dropped in for a cup of tea. Elaine and I were still rhapsodising to each other over our first night’s camping with Ronja. None of our guests were impressed. What were we on about? They camped out every night, with no choice in the matter.
An hour later a man selling encyclopaedias managed to squeeze past my front door defence and unfolded his wares on the lounge room floor. He pattered on, a volume a minute, boggling our eyes with four-colour maps, transparencies of human anatomy and flow-charts.
‘Who that fella?’ Jude asked diplomatically in the kitchen, where I had retreated to make tea.
‘I don’t know.’
‘But he sound like he your friend. He talkin’ fast like drunken man. Might be little mad, that one.’
The salesman continued prattling. After twenty minutes Jude politely excused himself.
‘Too much talking, I suppose. I must be went.’
I rolled my eyes at Jude as he passed through the front door. The salesman was spent and took the cue to leave as Ronja started crying.
‘That a greedy milk crying baby there,’ said Rosita.
We were consoled by comments like these. Neither Elaine nor I had family in Alice Springs and we were always grateful for such concern and love. Among various pieces of advice we were given was a warning not to carry the baby when she could walk for herself. We were to take her to old Arranye, who would make her walking legs strong by singing his emu song over them.
A few weeks later, Elaine, Ronja and I visited the camp at sunset. There had been a recent meeting at Emily Soak with the Central Land Council, government representatives, and the Indigenous Hayes and Johnson families. A significant number of senior people had filed back to Whitegate to discuss the meeting. I had never seen so many family members gathered at the one time. Among them was an old man from Ilpeye Ilpeye, who dangled a twenty-dollar bill in front of Ronja for her to grab. When she failed to respond he handed the note to Elaine, telling her to buy some good luck for the baby.
He told us that clearance had been given for the occupants of Whitegate to construct concrete houses, the same as at Ilpeye Ilpeye. Eight corrugated iron sheds were built several years on for shelter, but until this day, the concrete houses have not been constructed.
We were about to go home when Mercia asked if we would take her in to hospital with her husband, Joseph Johnson senior. He had been drinking rum against medical advice and was vomiting blood. His skin had a greyish-yellow cast in the gloaming. He sat glumly beside her, completely indifferent to us. I dragged Joseph into the car and we drove to Casualty. At the front entrance I helped him to his feet and Mercia supported him as they shuffled through the double glass doors.
ON FRIDAY 29 APRIL 1988, my fortieth birthday, we moved – as first home owners – to a new address. This was our consolidation, a neat little place with an established native garden. Arranye endorsed the property when he heard my news.
‘Young fella, that been market garden one time. Chinese fella been make it. Oh, Afghan time, I been think.’
There were horse yards nearby, and when Ronja grew a little older I would stroll with her before breakfast and hold her close to their pale grey nostrils as they nuzzled towards her. She would stroke their velvet noses until their lips rolled back over their teeth.
Jude and Bartholomew Johnson were the first people from Whitegate to visit us in our new home. I fired up the stove and we were soon nursing cups of tea. Jude asked for the green law book so that he could talk about the ceremonies with Bartholomew. The discussion about ceremony inspired me to put on a record of Mevlana Sufi flute music and perform a few minutes of the ceremonial dance I had studied in the late 1970s under the eye of the Sheik’s son, Jelaluddin Loras. Jude and Bartholomew watched my whirling appreciatively from the couch.
Afterwards, I put on some Congo music and mentioned it was performed by the pygmies in Central Africa.
‘I been read church paper this morning ’bout guardian angel,’ Jude said.
‘What kind of paper?’
‘You know it. Little book, I suppose. Like comic,’ he added. ‘You believe it, Phantom?’ Jude asked, his finger touching his lips.
Bartholomew looked at me expectantly.
‘It’s just a story in a comic,’ I explained.
‘Them people singing now be Phantom’s friends. Same mob in that comic,’ Jude said.
In his opinion, the pygmies were also a type of guardian angel. His pronouncements were delivered with the same immense gravity with which he always spoke. I do not ever recall him changing key.
I had nearly always been aware of Jude’s presence before he appeared. Whether I was painting in the lounge room or just having a chat with Elaine, an image of him would slip into mind. The air somehow altered, or my attention to it did. Within a few minutes, he would appear outside the house where he would lightly call my name or break a twig to announce himself.
One Saturday afternoon I sensed he was outside and found him propped against the carport pillar. He reached up and asked me to hold his hand. Our hands softly enfolded. He told me that Alphonse and Graeme Hayes had been killed the day before in a ‘three times rollover’ near Amoonguna on the Ross
River Highway. Once again, Jamesy Johnson was culpable. He had been intoxicated and warned not to drive. Worse still, he had walked away from the crash and not told anyone. For this transgression he would be cursed with a magic song.
‘I’ve got no more business now,’ Jude said in a distressed tone.
Dominic and Lizzie arrived some time later. Jude’s somnolence made me uneasy and I suggested we all go out and see Crocodile Dundee 2. But the clichés of the film failed us and we returned home for a supper of honeyed crumpets. Jude was awkward, seeming to eat only to oblige the rest of us. He had such minimal control. The crumpets kept slipping from the plate to the table but he was not the slightest bit perturbed or self-conscious about his inept table manners.
He was attracted to the piano we had just acquired, like no other object except the Spencer and Gillen book. He stood at the keyboard, depressed the black keys, and stared into the wall as if it bore some musical notation, his fingers in irresponsible medley. The music suffused him: an improvised harmonious jazz that moved me too.
AS THE COOL WINTER MORNINGS SET IN, I started to partake in the Sunday family hunting on a regular basis. I’m not gun crazy in any sense of the word; I think the only time I was into guns was a flit of rabbiting as a teenager. Although not interested in handling guns per se, I joined in all other facets of the day, including tracking, carting carcasses, cooking and occasionally relishing the fresh meat. Sundays were the easiest days to organise hunting or picnic outings, as many rested from the grog.
We drove out towards Emily Soak on one occasion, my car packed to the hilt with adults and kids. Xavier indicated to slow down. I tensed up. He got out and cocked the magnum .23. His brother Eric said it was an anthill. Anyone can make mistakes. But we hadn’t gone a hundred metres when Xavier again asked me to stop. He crept over the trough of the steeply cambered track. This time, even I could see it was a horse. David Johnson quietly relieved Xavier of the rifle. David was Arranye and Gregory’s youngest brother, small like them, but more muscular.
‘That nanthe, Xavier,’ chided Jennifer Johnson, ‘not kere aherre.’
Hunting kangaroo sharpened the senses. Tracking, and assessing scats, movements and particular birdcalls all informed us as we hunted. We would walk for three to four hours, carrying only guns and water in 2-litre cordial bottles. David helped me identify various scats: the cubed scat of the kere arenge/euro kangaroo, and the soft-cornered scat of the kere aherre/red kangaroo. The red kangaroo, being the largest living marsupial, occupied the open plains. The euro, the hairy one, was smaller and chunkier, and prized for its sweet meat, nurtured by grazing on the herbs in hilly country.
While we hunted our talk was minimal and replaced by gestures. I was told that day to turn my red-chequered shirt inside out, as it would frighten prey. We stooped and walked slowly over the low ridges, keeping in the cover of rocks and trees, and upwind of the quarry, while retaining as straight a line as possible.
The crusts of quartz, David whispered, were the shit of the mythological witchetty grubs as they made their procession towards Emily Gap. He slipped his clacking thongs up over his ankles. I followed his steps, soundless in the soft sand. Once or twice there was a snorting and a thump on the ground as we surprised our quarry and ourselves. The roos dashed off. Maybe two or three of them.
Later David saw what I could not see, until my vision followed the barrel of his gun. He crouched on one knee and slid a bullet into the chamber, paused, then stood and walked closer. My tension mounted as I followed. Surely it would sense us from 30 metres? A misplaced step on a twig. A shirt catching on a bramble. Any twitch would give us away. My entire body felt like an eye. The roo turned in our direction and stopped munching. David crouched again and squeezed the trigger.
The crack of the gun seemed incommensurate with death, inconsequential to the expanse of the surrounding plain which swallowed it. But the bullet was not lost. It collided with the buck’s cranium, splitting and removing a sizeable chunk of jaw. Ignorant of the connection between the crack and the fizzing trajectory of the .23, the roo had leapt at the sound, but towards the bullet, tumbling mid-flight to the gravel. A clean kill with no damage to the edible choice cuts.
Xavier felt around the roo’s eyes, telling us that there was plenty of fat there that would make for good eating. The buck was so large we butchered it on the spot, each of us lugging a quarter to the car. When we got back to camp the meat was distributed systematically, the male hunters proving their worth through such sharing. Thereafter, when each hunt was mentioned, each feature of it was replayed. The places we walked over were remembered for the food they had provided.
While the men and the older boys hunted on foot, which could consume near a whole day, the women and smaller kids stayed under the rivergums by a fire. Short lengths of these gums were hacked from the banks and carved with tomahawks into lizards, snakes and music sticks. The women brought bits of fencing wire and rotated them in the embers until they were hot enough to blaze simple, repetitive patterns on the artefacts. The kids helped their mothers scrape water from a soakage in the creek. The billies soon simmered away. The women also brought flour and syrup to make johnnycake or damper. It was just as well. More often than not the men returned empty-handed.
This form of hunting was not the exclusive or preferred practice of Arrernte men. If a Toyota was available, they would drive it hard across all sorts of terrain and shoot roos from the cabin. This method guaranteed meat. The dead roos were tied with their own sinew to the bull-bar or slung on roof racks. In places with water and good feed, kangaroo populations were obliterated at rates unknown to the fathers of most of the men. The kids also demonstrated their hunting skills from my moving station wagon. Even without guns, they would pick off an eye with a slingshot, causing the roo to stumble. A dog would leap from the car and tackle it, and the boys would finish the job by clubbing the head.
The rainwater that collected in the gutters along the roads and highways nourished the desert grasses and attracted livestock and kangaroos. On the odd occasion when I passed a freshly hit roo, I heaved it into the back of the wagon and took it to camp.
‘Where you been get ’im?’
‘North Road, on the sixteen mile.’
‘Oh, that Stephens’ mob. That okay, that one.’
Roo steaks were available in the supermarkets, but the families bought minced meat or lamb chops. They had a problem with the supermarket kangaroo. No one in camp could verify whose country the meat came from and what part of the animal had been butchered. The roo tails were, it seemed, a different matter; the same questions didn’t apply to these fattiest of morsels. The small, local shops kept freezers full of furred tails and ran a brisk trade in them. It was common to see Aboriginal women with plastic carry bags bobbing along with this ludicrous luggage, protruding tails lapping at their thighs.
PETRINA HAD TOLD ELAINE that her birthday was on the last day of June. At her request we agreed to hold a party for her that following Wednesday night. We insisted that there would be no alcohol. Elaine baked a wonderful carob cake.
Xavier, Dominic and Lizzie arrived half an hour before Petrina. I heard her muttering to herself as she swayed up the driveway. But before I could say a word, Xavier roundly scolded her for getting drunk. She sulked off to the steps of the chicken coop while Xavier and Dominic turned the meat on the barbecue. I failed to persuade either of them of my culinary prowess. They declined the exotic rice pilaf that I had ripened with bay leaves and cinnamon bark.
‘You cookin’ with gum tree, Rod. Bark and leaf. We don’t be eat that one. Not like it, gum tree.’
‘Why doesn’t Petrina join us? The party is for her, after all?’ I asked.
Xavier yelled for her. But she just sat there in the dark silence for a further 20 minutes. Then we realised that she was waiting to be ‘called in’, like at bush ceremony. She was keen for the song and to blow out her cand
les. We put the meat on hold and ate the cake first. Now Petrina was happy. Dominic belted out his repertoire of country and western and Top End gospel songs. Then Xavier snatched my guitar from him to crank out a tune, but soon realised that his miserable thrumming discouraged the celebrations. He handed it back to Dominic. Before retiring, Xavier crammed the candles into his pockets as souvenirs.
‘This one be nice, quiet party. No grog,’ he said.
Dominic wanted to pick up his swag from Amoonguna before being dropped at Whitegate. 7 We drove to Amoonguna, slowing and hushing, respectfully, on the Ross River Highway where the recent rollover had occurred. A collection of concrete houses and dongas sat beside the sealed road. The land around here was dotted with peppercorns, a popular introduced species that accompanied settlement in Alice after World War 1. Most of the houses were damaged, and three or four gutted by fire. It looked like it had succumbed to a recent siege.
A few days after the party, when we noticed we were missing our knife, we recalled Xavier covetously eyeing the meat cutting. I told Mercia of our suspicions. She tongue-lashed her younger ‘jailbird’ brother. Xavier’s larrikin, teasing behaviour was flagrantly opportunistic. He had told Mercia we had given him the knife and that it wasn’t in camp anyway.
The next weekend Mercia, Peter Yungi Johnson (David and Arranye’s brother) and some kids accompanied us to Little Well. Only days before, Gregory Johnson had paid three hundred dollars for the Ingkerreke Outstation Service people to take David, Janet, Frieda, Xavier, Petrina, Joany McCormack and Eileen Ross out there.