Wild Lands

by Nicole Alexander

  Bronzewing laughed. ‘So then, have you found yourself a woman yet?’

  ‘Have you?’ Jardi countered, as they began to walk back towards Bidjia. ‘You’ve been gone a year.’

  ‘Nothing took my fancy,’ he admitted.

  ‘And the business, it went well? You were too busy arguing with my father last night to share all your stories.’

  ‘There isn’t much else to tell.’ Bronzewing had crossed the mountains back to Parramatta last year with Mr Lycett and assisted in taking his wool to market. With a good price obtained, he’d then joined a party of settlers intent on journeying south-west towards the Murrumbidgee River. He’d not travelled to that part of the colony before and although he was employed to act as intermediary with the various clans and tribes along the route, he was, more importantly, an extra white man with an extra musket. The trip had been eventful. The wife of one of the settlers had given birth along the way and lost the child; they’d had sheep rushed and speared. Bronzewing had not always been successful dealing with this land’s first people. His knowledge of the different languages was slight, but he knew their ways and he did his best to reassure both black and white in the hope of avoiding attacks, by either party. In his absence, however, relations between Bidjia’s clan and the Lycetts had deteriorated.

  Ahead, Bidjia waited, his brow wrinkled tightly. ‘Late,’ he accused.

  ‘Must you burn here?’ Bronzewing complained. This is what they’d quarrelled about last night. ‘Surely we could go a mile or so further west. Jardi has told me how angry Mr Lycett is with the clan for burning his land. Do you really want to make things worse?’

  ‘You have spent too much time with the whites.’

  Bronzewing adjusted the spear in his hand. It felt good to have the familiar weapon back in his grasp.

  ‘Go,’ the older man told them.

  Bidjia waited as the two young men detoured around the slope of the hill so as not to disturb the animals. Spears in hand, the sinewy frame of Jardi matched the longer stride of his white brother. Although Bronzewing was a foot taller and well-muscled for his age, he’d had to train hard to match Jardi’s natural ability. The boy Bidjia had taken from the humpy those many years ago was now a man, brought up in the ways of Bidjia’s people and schooled by the well-meaning Archibald Lycett, who’d tried to entice the boy back to an unknown God and the life he’d lost.

  When the boys were out of sight, Bidjia lit the grass. The flames caught quickly, fanning across the ground and gathering pace. A line of smoke rose into the sky as the fire grew in intensity, fed by the wind. Bidjia skirted the edge of the burnt ground. In the distance he could see a small group of wallabies racing away from the fire towards the waiting hunters. They would eat well tonight.

  By the time Bidjia reached the scrub, one of the animals had already been speared. Colby and Darel, the other men of his clan, were talking to Bronzewing and his son and were in a hurry to leave. They stood engulfed by the smoke, their eyes streaming, the wallaby lying on the ground between them.

  ‘Lycett,’ Colby stated, explaining that one of the settler’s men was riding nearby on horseback.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Bidjia told them.

  Bronzewing led Bidjia and Jardi westward through the dense bush. They followed a different path to that of the other two men in case the whites gave chase, weaving through thick trees gnarled with age. Their route back to the camp was not direct but if they were lucky, Lycett wouldn’t be able to prove that it was them who had lit the fire, although the man would guess at the truth.

  ‘You can go to Lycett and make the peace if it is needed,’ Bidjia told Bronzewing. The white boy had formed a bond with the settler over the years and was friends with Lycett’s eldest, a straggly-limbed youth named Winston, who spent most of his time drawing shapes on paper. It was a strange occupation for a man.

  They ran at a steady pace in single file, startling the odd kangaroo and wallaby. Through the trees ahead they could see sheep grazing and, close to the animals, a shepherd. Bidjia was quick to change their path. They crossed a dry gully and were nearly out of sight of the shepherd when a musket shot rang out. They halted immediately, fearing the worst.

  ‘It is some distance from us,’ Bronzewing advised, ‘and with the wind as it is the sound could have travelled much further.’

  Bidjia wasn’t convinced but they kept moving. The boy was usually right. Most of the settlers in the area knew Bronzewing, although they called him by his white name, Adam. As a child he’d been known as the bush-boy, a description that had allowed him to move relatively freely between blacks and whites, but with age came mistrust. There were some on both sides who questioned his loyalty and treated him warily. But Bidjia was glad to have taken Bronzewing from the hut near the water on the other side of the mountain. A man could never have too many strong sons. Had he been a weakling he would have abandoned him, but the boy was quick to learn and begrudgingly his clan accepted him.

  When Bidjia had first come across the humpy, the day of the white man’s leaving, he knew from the beginning that the boy’s mother would not survive if her man did not return. Instead of spending the days usefully, making things or foraging like women should, she moved like a mouse and gave fright at the slightest sound. In contrast, the boy was bright-eyed and curious and the darkness of his hair, which shone a burnished copper in the light, reminded Bidjia of a Bronzewing pigeon. The day the warriors from another tribe came through, his clan had decided to cross the mountains and escape the encroaching white settlers. It was by chance that he’d approached the place of the white woman and child and seen the warriors. The mountain people were aggressive. He’d guessed that they would kill her. While many of his people were confused by the whites’ use of the land and the brutality that they directed against their own people, others were angry with them and sought vengeance for the changes forced upon their way of life. Bidjia didn’t even think of saving the woman, he only wanted the boy.

  So he had taken him and, with the few remaining clan members, they had walked away from their country, following the ancient pathways through the mountains and down the valley to the plains. The scuffling between two ancestral creator spirits, the giant eel-like Gurangatch, and the large native cat, Mirragan, had scratched out the features of the terrain, the rivers and hills, and it was the story of this unknown territory and the description created that helped to direct them to new lands. Bidjia would never have imagined that the whites would cross the mountains as well.

  They reached the camp some hours later. A wisp of smoke and the scent of roasting meat meandered through the trees, leading them to a shady clearing where two bark humpies sat among the timber. Colby and Darel had arrived some time before them.

  ‘We saw no-one,’ Colby told them as the men sat around the camp fire. After Bidjia, he was the eldest of the clan. ‘But my spear was ready.’

  ‘As was mine,’ Darel said enthusiastically.

  ‘We saw a shepherd in the distance and heard musket fire, but that was it,’ Bronzewing told them. ‘And just as well, fighting is the last thing you want, if you wish to stay here.’

  ‘And how would you know what is best for us?’ Colby asked. ‘You have been gone from here many months and you come back and tell us whether we should fight or not?’ He stared at Bronzewing from across the fire. ‘I think you would put the white Lycett first. He is your colour, and you are not of ours.’

  ‘Enough,’ Bidjia warned. Drinking water from a kangaroo skin bag he passed it around the group. The wallaby smelt nearly done. It had been cooked whole in the fire pit and unskinned to retain its goodness.

  ‘One of Lycett’s men came here when we were hunting,’ Colby advised the group. ‘Merindah spoke to him.’

  Colby’s woman, Annie, approached the men in Merindah’s place. Merindah was heavily pregnant with Bidjia’s child and kept her distance from the men now her time was drawing close. Annie pointed at Bronzewing. ‘Lycett wanted to know if you had returned. I said no
thing.’

  Bronzewing nodded.

  She backed away quickly to wait near one of the shelters with Bidjia’s woman and the clan’s three surviving children, a young boy and girl belonging to Annie, and a sick one-year-old, who was Merindah and Bidjia’s child.

  ‘He knows it was us.’ Jardi tugged the wallaby from the fire pit and began to cut pieces of cooked meat from the carcass, before pulling out the heart, liver and kidneys.

  Bidjia accepted the organs and divided them up between himself and Colby. The other men received a square of bark with chunks of meat on it and began to eat. Wooden bowls held the wild nuts and berries the women had prepared. ‘When the moon grows fat and lazy we will burn the adjoining ridge.’ Reaching for a kidney, he chewed on the tender flesh, the juices running down his chin. ‘If the rains come the grasses will grow thick and fast.’

  ‘There is plenty of game here, to hunt and trap.’ Colby ate hungrily. ‘It will be a good season for us.’

  ‘What about Lycett? Maybe we should go to another place further away,’ Jardi suggested.

  ‘This is another place.’ His father reached for the fresh water, took a sip and then stuck his finger into a bag of sugar and sucked at the sweetness. The sugar was a ration, along with blankets, provided to the clan by the Lycetts in exchange for occasional work, such as barking trees. ‘Our tribal lands are on the other side of the blue hills where the mullet run and the lilies grow. Within those lands is the place where my mother took the afterbirth when I was born and buried it in the ground. That is where my mother laid me down. That is my land. Do you expect us to keep moving forever?’

  The men ate silently. It was difficult to argue with Bidjia.

  ‘You who are born of this land may go to your sacred place, the place of your totem and perform the rituals that make this land grow and flourish. You have this right. I do not. I cannot go to the place of the yam and do the ceremony to make the yam plentiful. I cannot ensure the release of the life force to which I am connected. I am stolen from my land.’

  The men finished eating, the truth of Bidjia’s words reminding each of them how he suffered.

  ‘You saved your clan, Bidjia.’

  The Elder of the tribe looked at Bronzewing. ‘Only some,’ he muttered.

  They sat by the flames, the sadness dissipating as birds settled in the trees around them and night creatures began to forage.

  As darkness began to send its wispy shadows across the clearing, one by one they moved slightly away from the campfire. Bronzewing stretched out his legs and rubbed his shoulders against the bark of the tree behind him. A few feet away Bidjia rested his aching muscles by lying flat in the dirt on his back.

  With the men’s leaving, Annie served up meat for the children and herself, and then carried nuts and fruits to Merindah. Bronzewing shouldn’t have been surprised to return home and find Merindah with child again, the second in two years, however she’d been unhappy here since her arrival and a year had not improved her countenance. She was a pretty girl, whose young body had attracted envious glances from both Darel and Colby, but she was clearly miserable. Her sick child lay on a piece of bark while Annie’s two children ate and played.

  ‘How is the baby?’ Bronzewing asked Bidjia while following Annie’s movements as she went to check on the infant.

  Bidjia shook his head and closed his eyes. The men’s bellies were full and they were tired from the day’s work. A short distance away Darel and Colby talked quietly, Jardi had disappeared. With the lengthening shadows Bronzewing sought out Merindah. She had her own fire behind a bark lean-to and the sick child lay close to the warmth of the flames. The girl started at his approach, drawing a blanket across her swollen belly.

  Bronzewing squatted opposite her and asked after the child, noticing that the foods brought to her remained untouched.

  The young woman touched the baby’s chest gently. She had swabbed the child every day for three days with an infusion made from the leaves of the paperbark, which could help with aches and pains, but there had been no change.

  ‘How long is it now?’ Bronzewing asked the girl.

  Merindah poked at berries cupped in her palm. ‘Four days, he grows weaker. He will not suckle. The milk is good, but if he does not drink …’

  Her words hung. In the firelight the child looked starved. His tiny rib cage stuck out and the cheeks were sunken. It was only a matter of a day or so at most. Perhaps there may have been a chance if the child had been taken to Mrs Lycett – there still may be – but Bidjia’s approval was needed and in his current mind-frame such consent would be unlikely. ‘You’re still unhappy here? But are you not looked after? You have enough food?’

  Merindah stroked the child’s face. The young girl had come from another tribe two years ago, the agreement brokered by Bidjia when his last woman had died in childbirth. This was the fifth woman of Bidjia’s that Bronzewing could remember. It seemed with the death of each previous one, whether through sickness, childbirth or accident – his first woman had been bitten by a snake – that each subsequent woman had even less time to walk the earth. The continuation of the clan was vital and most of the women who came into their group fitted in easily but it was different with Merindah. She was open to understanding the ways of the white settlers, and she’d been quick to pick up the English Bronzewing taught her, but she was also very young compared to her husband. The loss of the child would not help things. ‘I’ll talk to Bidjia.’

  Merindah’s dark eyes grew luminous beneath a rising moon. He felt the lightness of her touch on his arm as he made to leave. ‘I work for the Lycetts.’

  ‘You can’t, Merindah. You belong to Bidjia.’

  ‘I would wear the woman’s clothes, I would learn their ways to keep my children healthy.’

  ‘Sometimes not even white medicine will help, you know this, and who is to say your child does not have a white’s illness?’

  The girl ignored this. ‘You see, I have this.’ From beneath a blanket she pulled out a ball of material, unravelling it to reveal a woman’s dress.

  ‘Where did you get that from?’

  The girl snatched it away.

  He glanced over his shoulder. ‘I won’t say anything, but keep it hidden.’ He wondered where the dress had come from. Who had given it to her? ‘Merindah, you are with Bidjia now, you can’t leave here, you know that.’

  ‘I would be your woman, Bronzewing.’

  He thought of what it would be like to lie next to her. To feel the warmth of another’s body, the companionship of sharing more than just a piece of the earth. It had been nearly eleven months since he’d bedded the girl at the hostelry the night Lycett’s wool had been sold. Bronzewing had treated himself to a good meal and a nip of rum sitting out on the verandah, the small dining room being full, and later found himself with company that wasn’t bad looking. It had been a long year since that night, but he didn’t look back as he walked away.

  He found Jardi by following the noise of metal against stone. The young Aboriginal was sitting in a patch of tall grass a short distance from the camp. A cold wind rustled the pasture so that the surface of the land appeared to be rippling outwards, much like the ocean. The grass grew golden in the moon’s light and in the centre of this halo sat Jardi. He was sharpening a knife on a flat rock, spitting on the shiny surface, scraping the edge of the blade in a circular motion. Bronzewing had gifted the blade to him some years prior.

  ‘You make the noise of two kangaroos,’ Jardi muttered, remaining absorbed in his task, not lifting his head.

  ‘And I see you no longer hug the fire at night.’

  ‘Was it not you who told me that the night spirits wouldn’t drag me away? Some things I listen to.’

  Bronzewing looked over his shoulder. The camp fire burnt brightly. Jardi never strayed too far from the fire’s protection. ‘I have spoken to Merindah.’ He sat down in the long grass, broke a stem and chewed on the sweetness.

  ‘She is close to her time, Bronz
ewing,’ he rebuked.

  He wanted to tell Jardi about the dress Merindah concealed but the garment suggested that the girl had had recent contact with the whites. She would be punished. ‘I know, but I wanted to see her and the child. It’s probably too late but I could take the baby to the Lycetts in the morning. They may well have some treatment that could help. Mrs Lycett is a kindly woman and –’

  ‘They have already sent enough of us to the spirit world with their sicknesses, even their own people weaken and die. Their medicine is not so strong.’ Jardi lifted the knife to inspect his handiwork, the fine edge of the blade glinting in the moonlight. ‘Anyway, my father would not allow it.’

  ‘The child won’t survive,’ Bronzewing stated flatly. ‘Surely that must be a consideration.’

  ‘We managed to look after our own long before the whites came.’

  ‘I know but they bring their illnesses to the clan and they may have the knowledge that can heal them.’

  Jardi sighed. ‘There are some things that must be left alone, Bronzewing. You should respect our ways. You have lived with us these many years.’

  ‘You and the tribe have always had my respect, you know this to be true, but we speak now of a child’s life. To do nothing, to simply wait until the baby dies, is wrong.’

  ‘The sick will be replaced with the new. Merindah will soon birth another.’

  At times the customs of the tribe gnawed at Bronzewing’s conscience, yet the ultimate goal with every decision made always led back to the overall wellbeing of the clan and their survival. It was difficult to argue with such thinking although Bronzewing knew that were it not for the strained relationship between Bidjia’s people and the Lycetts, his wish to take Merindah’s baby to Mrs Lycett may have been considered and consent begrudgingly given.

  ‘You have always been the hopeful one, my friend.’ Jardi dropped a length of grass across the knife blade. The sharp edge sent two halves falling to the ground. ‘And I know that you do not understand us at times. My father says that things were simpler once, that life was better. I understand this from the stories he has shared. Life for my people is not as it should be. Nothing is right. Between one place and the next, this land has no sense of itself.’