by Rod Moss
We biked back home, refreshed from our swim, and having seen far more than we’d bargained for.
EARLY IN MARCH, ELAINE DECIDED to partake in a yoga retreat in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, and took Ronja with her. During her stay she went into premature labour and was admitted into hospital in Camperdown, Sydney, for the next four and a half months. Her stability was maintained with a regime of Ventolin. She only got out of bed for the toilet. Any more activity than that brought on contractions.
I went to retrieve Ronja and had arranged two weeks off from college so that we could be together as a family in Sydney. We knew two couples who lived there as well as Royden. Ronja was rotated between the households until I arrived. Thankfully, the friends all lived within easy walking distance of the hospital. Ronja and I familiarised ourselves with the playground equipment of Newtown, Redfern and Camperdown. We traipsed the parks, which brought us toe-to-toe with unprecedented quantities of dog poo. Sydney’s dog Dreaming was forever stuck to our shoes.
Almost as soon as we got home, Ronja developed pneumonia and was placed in the children’s ward in Alice Springs hospital. The nursery had only one cot into which she was promptly bundled. All other bedding was in the next room, which was overflowing with Indigenous kids evacuated from Yuendumu, all suffering from an enteritis epidemic. It hurt me to see her attached to machinery, and the fear in her eyes. I slept next to her cot on the floor while cockroaches ran errands on crumbs from her leftover supper sandwich.
When the masked nurses woke Ronja to take a swab of mucus from her nostril, I had to hold her still – an unwilling accomplice to the terror she experienced. As she recovered I contracted flu and became too weak to care for her. I was as helpless as she had been, able only to crawl to the toilet. I stayed an extra day in hospital, relying on the excellent nursing staff to tend to Ronja.
As I was full-time at work, I made day care arrangements for Ronja with a neighbour. I held my breath before I made each Sydney phone call, hoping that the baby was still inside Elaine. Royden, true to form, had been attentive and nurturing. He ran daily errands from Balmain to Camperdown. He’d introduced Elaine to his doctor, Sue Henckle, and she and Elaine formed a friendship that lasted until Elaine returned to Alice. I was so grateful to them.
DURING MAY, RONJA ACCOMPANIED the old man and me to Little Well. On the curving road we saw that recent rain had promoted the growth of the native grasses. Two months earlier, the absence of follow-up rain presented a forlorn feeding prospect for the horses that Kevin Pick grazed in this marginal, dust-hazed country. We sighted two flocks of bush turkey with their chicks. Only their heads were visible cruising the crest of the dry grasses. Though they presented easy targets, we had no gun. With the rain had come the flies, of course, and they bred on us, every aperture a wound into which they hived.
We travelled south-east of Phillipson’s Pound, a massive hybrid of russet bony sandstone mountains in the hub of Eastern Arrernte country. Arranye motioned me to stop whenever we came to topographies he wanted to talk about. This journey never failed to move me. But in Arranye’s company, his country was augmented with stories and, on privileged occasions, the travelling songs of the animals that populated it.
We lit fires when we sat to talk, merely to choke off the flies. He said the flies were like this after rain. More rain was imminent, but the breeze would have to turn from the north. Could I see the small green parrot, he asked, that ushered in the rain? I could hear only the cello-noted surprise of the rock pigeons. They fluttered and riffed above us, warning their fellows to scarper away to higher perches.
On the old Andado road, he sensed the lull in the fourth hour of our drive and wound into the native cat song. He had been speaking about the cat moving in the low sand ridge west of the road. Now he became the cat or quoll, clawing the air, scratching, sniffing, barely containable in the seatbelt. It was his acoustic calling card and so ruffled my nerves, the vehicle revved in response, accelerating on the sandy road. Ronja was deep in slumber, her head resting on my thigh. This was the kind of singing of the country he reckoned wasn’t done enough in places where I’d noted degeneration.
‘You love it too much?’
‘Yes.’
‘Some time I dance it you.’
The native cat Dreaming was crucial to sub-incision procedures. I thought of Ted Strehlow, Carl Strehlow’s son, who had recorded these cat stories while serving as a field officer and native protector in Central Australia. Arranye had met Ted Strehlow when they attended ceremonies along the Hale, Ross and Todd rivers in the 1930s and 1940s. Arranye inhabited these stories. The traditional stories of the country and the stories of his biography were indivisible. And, as Strehlow commanded respect as an authority on Arrernte culture, so Arranye had earned mine.
‘Arranye,’ I asked, ‘is there anything you need to ask an older person about this cat?’
‘No. I know it right through. Backwards and forwards. All of it for my country. And I know Luritja [south] and Kaytetye [north].’
The story bisected the continent from Port Augusta to Darwin. Not obviously like the sealed Stuart Highway, which had determined my reading of the country. Bitumen spoke about speed and precise timetables. Roadhouses were planned on fuel tank capacity and driver fatigue, just as the telegraph repeater stations were constructed at intervals that bespoke the limitations of available technology a hundred years before. Sinuous tracks like the one we were on, which skirted the toes of the Arookaba Range, were sometimes erased only to emerge elsewhere nearby. These dirt roads belonged to curiosity, the need to be detained, to fossick.
We wound in and out of cherished places that provided local food and water. These tracks brought us close up to extraordinary landforms. Arranye showed me aringe, the frogmouth owl’s Dreaming rock. There were several 50-metre high cones of red gravel. Boomerang Hill and Black Hill were composed of small pitch-coloured tektites; the old man pointed out flints and spearheads, thousands of them. There were meteorite craters, and caves, some with rudimentary ochre paintings on their walls. A low saddle of red sandstone conglomerates, the very image of scaly armour in the lizard story of the site, flanked Atherrete Bore. As we passed Camel Flat Bore, Arranye convulsed in laughter at the sight of its priapic shape.
There were moths, small ones, everywhere. Some weeks back these were caterpillars, a ground tribe on the move, devouring hundreds of square kilometres of bogan-flea burr. No one had seen this ‘caterpillar mob’ at Little Well for at least ten years. On the flood-out east of the Collins Range we entered ‘proper snake country’, close to the mythological snake site at Little Well. A quivering froth of yellow and white flowers consumed the space between grass and tree. They radiated against the red sand, gaudy as badges.
‘Like scramble egg, you think, my boy?’ Arranye said, nudging me in the side. ‘Pretty one right now, you might be thinkin’.’
We wove amid the glaucous shrub, the stands of boxwood and gidgee. Arranye’s knowledge of all that moved, sang or rustled in the country could quickly reduce me to inadequacy. His knowledge gave him confidence.
Gregory loped towards us as the car slowed down. He would have heard us grinding through the flood-out, fifteen to twenty minutes distant. His gorgeous smile peeled around dentures ground smooth by years of grit-imbued foods.
We regrouped by Gregory’s fire. A flock of small, innocent clouds huddled protectively on the north-western horizon, mimicking the shape of the range. They flared briefly, a rufous red, as the sun fell. We sank our mouths into large enamelled pannikins of tea, limned with the residual slick of soups and stews. We soaked bread and thick crackers in the brew, appeasing our hunger before the meat grilled up.
I should have been prepared for anything by now. Still I was surprised to find Gregory had set up a video player under some gidgee. The dulcet purr of a small generator tethered a short distance from the TV’s flickering eye suddenly shrunk
the infinite space around us. The stars kept sparkling. But our eyes were drilled to the receiver. The moths flirted with the monocle, hypnotised like the rest of us. Gregory had chosen the televersion of the Jonestown saga of 1978. The names had been changed to protect someone, though it could not be the innocent or naive. Over nine hundred people died with cult leader Reverend Jones. Perversely, the film’s name had been changed to Johnson Town, which was the reason Gregory had chosen it.
During the night Arranye was disturbed and sat up for twenty minutes repeating questions in English.
‘Where they come from? Where their grandfathers come from? Where their grandmothers come from? German, I suppose. Nobody can win. Where is his country? I know my country. I must ask my good mate.’
Who was he referring to? I nestled into my pillow and dwelled on his curious assumption. Germans had an illustrious history in the Centre from Hermannsburg Lutheran Mission days until the present – the explorer Leichhardt; Mueller, the first master of the Telegraph Station and warden of the Arltunga goldfields in the 1890s. Really, Strehlow would have been the prominent German in Arranye’s experience.
In the morning Arranye couldn’t recall his dream-addled monologue, but admitted the movie had stirred haunting memories of his early days, when so many of his playmates and relatives died at Arltunga Mission from contaminated water. He pledged to take me to the site of the many unmarked graves.
Arranye had developed a chest cold. I had one myself. Ronja and I went with Gregory to gather the lime green leaf of a small bush on the banks of Angkerrknge Creek.
‘Might be we call that one Vicks VapoRub tree,’ rasped Arranye on his early morning smoke.
The leaves were boiled down and mixed with animal fat, then rehoused in a Log Cabin tobacco tin. Arranye was concerned for me and beckoned me to lie on his blanket and remove my shirt. Having sung over the tin, he rubbed fat onto my chest, intermittently blowing softly. He sang again, his touch a susurration across my chest. He asked if I had eaten.
‘Oh, mwerre [good],’ he said, when I told him that I’d had breakfast.
‘ Irretye [wedgetail eagle] might be give it you, cold. He bring that cold air close up your head. You can’t see it. But he’s got it. Fly low over you. Paint it shadow on you.’
I turned on my belly and he touched my back briefly, and continued singing. I put my shirt back on. He flounced my hair, combing his fingers through it several times, shaking them free of accumulated static after each passage.
‘Go sit in sun, my boy. That proper medicine for cold.’
By now the gidgee embers were right for shovelling into the recessed cooking pit. A kangaroo had been singed and thrown in to make for lunch. I noticed a fat-headed skink impaled on a twig among the wood pile. Knowing it was a casualty of our wood handling, I terminated its misery by throwing it on the coals. A wick of fat flared and was snuffled in the ashes. Gregory berated me.
‘Not there. That for kere. Chuck ’im over there.’
It was my first awareness of the special regard that Arrernte held for cooking fire. Certainly it was not a place to dump waste.
We sipped at our tea while the roo baked. Arranye declined the offer of powdered milk for his tea.
‘Make me too much larrikin for woman.’ He paused, waiting for my attention again. ‘Might be I suck on woman’s titty if she be give it me,’ he taunted, digging me in the ribs.
Near seventy, he might well pass up the milk.
The tea boiled in an old flour drum and would simmer all day. The talk, like their names, was a tangle of droving, mining and Catholic lingo. I leant into his stories, sniffing for crumbs as he related them.
I wondered about his impression of my story-telling medium, painting. What did he think of them, I asked him.
‘Young fella, my good mate, you know a true story? Not Dreaming story. Young blackfella be gutting bull with white boss. Boss said, “This knife no good. Go get ’im pocket knife from wife missus in kitchen.” He go off to kitchen. He not know this thing, puckit niff. He say it over an’ over to ’imself, “Puckit. Puckit.” A perentie cross ’is track, ’is word get lost that way. It follow perentie. When he get to homestead, he see boss missus ’an say, “Boss want me fuckit you.” So they do jig-a-jig an’ he go back to boss. “Me fuckit boss missus like you ask.” That boss, he just tell ’im to keep cleanin’ out that rib an’ make sure he keep plenty kerosene on ’imself keep ’em flies away. Tell ’im to jump inside them ribcage. Boss put match on him and burnt it whole lot. What you think that might mean? That mean you got to be listen proper and learn it own story from what you hear it.’
True to Arranye’s forecast, several cloud zeppelins trundled south across the sky followed by a fleet of darker, menacing company. The trees close to the tin sheds scratched arcs into their red oxide coating. Rain was coming. The sky was now uniformly grey. Then it unclotted into large charcoal sheets which moved at greater speed. Rain followed the blunt claps of thunder. I shivered. A ferrous perfume rose from the washed earth.
Arranye suggested I head back to town. I jumped into the truck, somewhat nervous. I’d be alone with Ronja for the return trip. Traffic on the Numery track was scarce. Before me were seven gates. Each time I got out to open and shut the gates I checked the tyres. The Ross River also crossed the Numery road. The track was glazed and hard to hold. With the windows down, the heavy Petra Chlor seized my nostrils, sweet and rich. When the windows were shut, my car carried the lingering odours of Arrernte bodies and the fires they sat around, of the scent of meat which they perspired.
I made Allua Bore and Loves Creek without getting a flat or running off the road and paused, somewhat relieved. From the creek’s northern bank, Ronja and I watched the creek water rally, a rare sight in the desert. Coral-coloured clays plaited with the limestone run-off, pushing a filthy foam like brewer’s yeast before it. Huffs of wind lacerated the dolomite cliffs, coifing eucalyptus limbs. Leaves, stewed with sand, squalled into the creviced rockwall. In half an hour the creek gusted its banks, roiling midpoint, ripping into the ribcage of the cliff. I noticed the rear of the vehicle was totally covered in a coat of red as I returned to the cabin and gunned the engine.
TWO WEEKS BEFORE ELAINE WAS FULL-TERM, I flew to Sydney with Ronja to attend the birth. Royden picked us up from the airport and drove us directly to the hospital. The moon sat a little above the city. Reflections in the towering windows threw off moon chips. Ronja thought the whole city ‘look like party’, her absolute endorsement for the good and the beautiful. Rain thrashed against the large window in Elaine’s ward. Down below, a thousand cars nudged each other along asphalt estuaries, pods of glistening dolphins in playful columns. We made immediate arrangements for Elaine to check out and drove with Royden to his subterranean flat in Balmain.
A fortnight later, on 6 July, Elaine went into labour. We had the plush birthing suite and access to its pool, should we opt for a water birth. We lolled around in the warm water for a few hours. Labour progressed and Elaine retired to the bedroom. Raphael arrived sweet and bacon smelling at 2.19p.m. A magnificent boy child. The amazing relaxation after delivery, erasing months of furrows from my body, turned me to putty. Two love children.
After four and a half months, Elaine was breaking her neck to quit Sydney. We flew home days after the birth.
‘We call that one city slicker,’ said Raphael Turner, his namesake, soon after we had arrived home. ‘Not country like marle akweke Ronja.’
Xavier wept when he heard we had called our boy Raphael, after Kemarre’s oldest son. He took off his shirt, picked Raphael up and rubbed his body against him, saying ‘this Aboriginal way’.
He was glad we hadn’t named him Xavier. ‘I soon be dead,’ he said.
When Jude came to see Raphael he was pleased we had a boy and delighted with the name. But neither he nor others subsequently fussed over him as they had over Ronja. Was this beca
use he was born away from the place, I wondered.
Raphael was dubbed ‘Raffi’ for short. His Buddha-like presence was immediately evident, strikingly peaceful and self-contained. He had rolls of fat and a wrestler’s buttocks. Even new mothers in the street would stop to admire him. He was sensational. A little chocolate-eyed blondie.
One morning there was a soft rap at the door. Gregory was there with his wife and her sisters in tow. He wanted help with shifting their swags from Whitegate into the saltbush behind the Federals Sports Club. The women fluttered around the ‘new’ baby.
Their abode was Little Well, but when in town they had always stopped at Whitegate. Since the deaths of Graeme and Alphonse Hayes, Whitegate was off limits and inappropriate. Jamesy Johnson had been cursed with a song by the Hayes as retribution for his culpable driving. Now there were tensions with the Johnsons, who were forced into constant and precarious itinerancy at numerous camping spots around town. Patrick Hayes, who’d lived with the deceased at the Hayes outstation, was culturally obliged to vacate and demolish the shelters to allow the spirits to be liberated; subsequently he had asserted himself at Whitegate.
We did a run to transport the bedding, pots and pans, and boxes of groceries among other things in the recently acquired ’81 Commodore station wagon. The back was so congested with stuff that the swags went on the roof rack. I didn’t have any ropes and lost the load as the car jogged over the cattlegrid into suburbia. Strollers walking their well-groomed dogs at dusk gazed in wonderment at the sprawl of bedding on the road. We restacked it and wended our way through the saltbush to where Gregory had gathered some dry sticks for a fire. The scrub here was generously littered with plastic carry bags and Gregory ignited the fire with a couple of nearby ones. The saccharine, poisonous dioxin fumes hung in a thin cloud just above the saltbush.