Wild Lands

by Nicole Alexander

  Kate was still digesting George Southerland’s revelation as she lifted each layer of clothing inside the chest. Eventually her fingers touched the creamy cotton, lace and muslin her mother had shown her so excitedly all those years ago. The gown had been altered over time. The cream bodice with lace collar was now boned in the seams and the gauzy muslin fell prettily from the waistline. It was true it lacked the quantity of material in the skirt and sleeves that the current styles favoured, but it was still of fine quality, albeit slightly old-fashioned.

  Stripping off her clothes, Kate washed her face and hands with a cloth and a sliver of soap, then proceeded to sponge the remainder of her body. She turned once or twice during these ablutions to glance out the window towards the hills. She had the strangest sensation that she was being watched, and finally she drew the curtain against the failing light.

  Stepping into her drawers, Kate pulled the two separate leg pieces over damp skin and tied the cord at her waist then tugged a shift over her head. Once dressed in her mother’s gown, only then did she remove the cloth cap covering her hair. The oval mirror reflected wide almond-shaped eyes and dark hair, which she quickly smoothed into a bun at the nape of her neck. Three ringlets, slightly droopy from the day’s travel, framed either side of her face. Wetting her fingers Kate coaxed the messy curls into more uniform spirals, patting the ones on her right temple in an attempt to hide the scar. The old injury was now a reddish blemish, which curved like a question mark from above her eyebrow around her eye. By day the cloth cap she wore beneath her straw hat helped to conceal the wound, but it was impossible to hide other wise. Her mother had suggested a little flour would lessen the slight discolouration but there was no disguising the jagged edge of Lambeth’s fury.

  ‘This will have to do.’

  Kate didn’t have the looks of the ‘currency children’, those born to convicts. Most of the native born were tall, slender and fair. Instead she resembled her mother. Of middling height, with a lithe figure, she bore the mark of a Scottish heritage that Lesley once told her was mixed with Spanish blood.

  A clock chimed from somewhere within the house. Kate heard muffled footsteps, conversation and laughter and the irritable whine of a child. This was a busy household and by the brief attention granted her and the Reverend on arrival, its mistress ran it efficiently. It would not do to be late. Kate took a final look in the mirror, smoothed the tightly fitted bodice and, with a steadying breath, thought of what lay before her. The truth of the position that the Reverend had so kindly sought on her behalf.

  Chapter 6

  1837 August – on the western side

  of the Blue Mountains

  Winston Lycett was sitting in his usual spot, a flat rock at the base of a tree split in half by a lightning strike. The branch on the ground angled down to a narrow trickling creek and on the other side of the gully was a patch of grass frequented by kangaroos. Bronzewing moved through the timber silently. It was already late. Having spent the morning hours searching for the light wooded trees that were used for spear-making, the sun had overtaken him and no shadow trailed his progress. He’d not seen his old friend since he’d left with Archibald Lycett last year and he’d missed his company. Winston was usually drawing at this time, his sandy head tilted to one side, lank hair falling across his brow, a piece of charcoal hovering over paper. Still some distance away from his friend, Bronzewing lifted a hand to yell coo-ee in greeting, but halted. Today there was no scatter of drawing materials. Instead the usual artist supplies were stacked to one side.

  There was an Aboriginal with him, a woman. Winston had been fond of girls from an early age. The Codbolts with their three daughters, who lived ten miles away, had all appealed. Although they were hard to look at with their round, bland faces and overly large foreheads, Winston was not put off. All three girls had shown interest in Winston, a fact that he delightedly announced shouldn’t be dismissed in a place where women were scarce – and were also willing if it meant there was a chance to snare a good husband. Clearly nothing had changed in Bronzewing’s absence.

  The girl sat side on. Winston lifted the woman’s breast in a hand and lowering his head began to suckle like a baby. The young woman rested her hands on the ground, arching her back and drawing him closer. Finally Winston lifted his head, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. The girl laughed and offered him the other nipple, which he groped at enthusiastically.

  Bronzewing’s approach startled a mob of kangaroos. Raising their heads from the herbage they’d been nibbling, their ears pricked. The movement alerted the girl. She turned towards the narrow creek and then, jumping up, ran through the timber. He was too far away to see the girl’s face properly, but not so distant to recognise the movement of a man buttoning up his trousers. Winston, having dressed himself, leant back against the tree and feigned sleep.

  ‘Coo-ee.’ Bronzewing lifted a hand in greeting and the kangaroos hopped away.

  Winston yawned. ‘Back to give my work another one of your negative assessments?’ he replied. There was a musket and canvas waterbag at his side.

  ‘Should it be negative?’ The only thing recognisable in Winston’s pictures were trees. ‘You should come hunting with me, Winston. You’ll grow dull spending all your time here.’

  ‘Stay where you are, Adam. I’m ill.’

  Bronzewing took a hesitant step forward, the sound of his white name always jarred.

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘What is it this time?’ He doubted there was much wrong with Winston other than the usual array of ailments that beset him, and his desire to keep his meeting with the girl secret. He wandered along the trickle of water that awaited replenishing from the spring rains that were yet to arrive, finally squatting opposite Winston beneath a spreading tree, the narrow waterway between them.

  Winston scowled and then tapped his head – once, twice – against the knobbly bark. ‘The pox, the sickness that comes to your lungs or head, who knows?’ He coughed heavily, the action wracking his long, thin body. He wiped at his mouth. ‘One of the ticket-of-leave men came down with it a week ago. He’s bedridden now. One minute freezing, the next burning up. It started with a cough. And yes, my mother has forced a number of preparations down my throat. None of which have helped.’ He coughed again, and stretched out his legs. ‘But you’re not here to visit me. Father’s at the house. I expected you here sooner. It’s been a year. We knew you’d returned.’

  ‘The warmer weather will help what ails you,’ Adam responded. ‘The winter’s been cold.’

  ‘Father says I shouldn’t complain. That London is bitter cold, with a dank fog that covers the city like a shroud. Well, the cold is bad enough here. It takes hold of your bones and won’t let go.’ He began mounding the leaf-litter at his side, piling small twigs and leaves. ‘You shouldn’t have fired the grass you know.’

  ‘And you and your family should have stayed on the other side of the mountain,’ Adam countered.

  Winston gave a weak smile. ‘Then who would have dragged you to the bench under the tree so you could be educated instead of remaining a heathen?’

  ‘Sometimes I think your mother suffered more than me.’

  Winston sat a little straighter and, pulling his knees up, wrapped his arms around them. ‘There is more to learn, you know. There are many books to read, countries to understand, theories to unravel.’ His face grew animated. ‘Like how far the land extends to the west, whether there is a great inland sea. Don’t you wonder what lies out there, in all that undiscovered vastness? What people are there, what riches, what opportunities?’

  The silhouettes of the timber surrounding them lengthened across the ground. ‘More of the same, I hope. Although Bidjia says that those tribes that roam in the direction of the setting sun speak of lands that are flat and dry.’

  ‘That’s hardly a description.’

  Adam shrugged. ‘Actually I thought it pretty accurate.’

  ‘So, tell me where you’ve been this
last year. Father said you joined an expedition of settlers a month or so after the wool was delivered to market. What was the country like? Did the natives attack? Is it better land than here?’

  Adam jumped the gully between them and squatted some feet from where his friend sat. ‘Similar, yes, and in places.’

  Winston frowned. ‘I envy the explorers. What makes them, do you think? How does a person come to be born with such grit while others are rendered useless by overbearing fathers and familial duty?’

  ‘Chance perhaps?’

  ‘Then it is a bitter pill knowing that life is so random. Sorry, I’m sounding positively maudlin.’ He slumped back against the tree trunk. ‘I would do better in Sydney.’

  ‘A scholar’s life?’ Adam suggested.

  ‘We both know it would suit me. But Father has other plans and my opinion counts for nought.’

  ‘You could have come with us, Winston, at least to Parramatta.’

  ‘I know my father, Adam,’ he replied matter-of-factly. ‘He is one for choosing favoured company,’ he said pointedly, ‘and for making the best use of a person’s abilities. He did entrust his wife and land to me in his absence so that is one point in my favour I suppose. Besides, while you were away I took the time to study the ledgers. There is money to be made out here, there is no doubt of that. My father makes a great fuss of a person needing to be hands-on, but he has done the hard yards. You only need to oversee the running of these holdings, for there are convicts to do the work.’ He gave his friend a warm smile. ‘I will bide my time until his is over and then I will take my place as his heir. Anyway, I’m glad you’re back. There’s no-one to argue with, at least about anything worthwhile. Did you know that a German astronomer named Bessel has managed to measure the distance from the sun to another star? Isn’t that the most marvellous thing? I wondered about it myself, you know. He did it using two different lines of sight and measured the angle between the two lines. Don’t look at me like that. You used to be interested in these things.’

  ‘And I still am, but I should say my respects to your father.’

  ‘Another day then. I do miss our time together, as does my mother.’

  Adam rolled his eyes theatrically. Mrs Georgina Lycett was a kind woman who would have been prepared to raise him as one of her own, if Adam had been so inclined. ‘Reading, writing and arithmetic – I don’t have much use for such learning now.’

  ‘You will,’ Winston assured him. ‘One day you will. All the things you find so trifling now will one day become vitally important. You will need your signature to sign the deed to the land you will one day own, and your sums will help you count your coin, while the skills we learnt in map reading could lead you to your wife, if you remember the King’s English, or should I say Queen’s, and don’t scare her off with your Godless ways.’ He chuckled quietly at his own humour, while waggling a chastising finger. ‘Eventually you will marry and have children and settle down. It is what all men want. Oh, we may come and go from the house we provide for them, but women are the hinge on which life exists. You are no different. Heathen or not. And even your blessed clan can’t exist without a pretty smile.’ His voice had tightened.

  ‘You are full of advice today, my friend.’ In spite of Winston’s kindly intentions such talk meant little to Adam. The stars were his ceiling, the warm earth his bed and he was subject to no-one. The bush was his natural home. And although he both enjoyed and appreciated the learning that he’d been favoured with, the Lycetts could not draw him further into their world. Learning the extent of England’s power, the breadth of her colonies or the many commodities transacted by the East India Trading Company would not keep him alive in this world.

  Winston sighed. ‘I offer it while I can and hope it’s not disregarded.’

  Adam never had been partial to his friend’s melancholy moods. ‘Your life is your own, old friend, I’ll see you married yet and before me.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt of that, but I know I will not make old bones so do me the courtesy of not arguing with what I know to be true. None on my father’s side has lived past fifty-five years.’

  ‘Well, if you keep talking he’ll be dead before I see him.’

  ‘Don’t cross my father, Adam. He’s a fair man, it’s true, but we both know that when it comes to his business and the care of his family anything and anyone else is secondary. None of us have forgotten 1824.’

  Adam well recalled the attempt by the Wiradjuri to expel the whites from their sacred sites and hunting grounds. The ongoing struggle had led to increased hostilities from Mount York to Bathurst and beyond, with deaths on both sides. ‘I hardly think the presence of Bidjia’s clan warrants martial law.’

  Winston had the disinterested appearance of someone who had already moved on from that topic. ‘Will you do something for me? Deliver a message?’

  ‘To whom?’

  His friend began to re-pile the mound of leaves by his side. ‘I’ve a penchant for women, as you know, but I must break ties with this one.’

  ‘Out of your depth, are you?’

  ‘Yes and no,’ Winston wavered. ‘It’s Merindah.’

  ‘Merindah? Bidjia’s woman?’

  Winston picked at the leaves on the ground. ‘I promised her things,’ he said awkwardly, ‘things that were not mine to promise. I would not like her to think ill of me.’

  Adam was stunned. ‘She does not belong to you.’

  Winston’s eyes grew in size. ‘I was only talking about helping her, but frankly, she doesn’t belong to Bidjia either. They are not married and she is desperately unhappy. Besides, the blacks trade women like we trade wool at the markets. I hardly think Bidjia has the right to any fuss.’

  ‘As far as their customs are concerned, they are married.’

  ‘I see why my father would do you the courtesy of speaking to you first rather than hunting down the natives that fired our land. You’re like him. You would put your ways and your native family first before your friends, before your true life. It is a misplaced loyalty.’

  ‘Merindah belongs to another.’

  ‘Until she is traded or passed on.’ The comment hung. ‘I see by your hesitation, Adam, that some things don’t sit so easily with you.’ Winston flicked at the leaf litter he’d been piling by his side. ‘Why do you stay with them?’

  ‘You mean why do I return to them? I have been away this past year.’ Adam hunched his shoulders. ‘I am used to the life, their ways. I doubt that I would be suited to any other.’

  ‘Really? Look at you with your blucher boots and palm-leaf hat, your hair tied back like a dandy.’ Winston slumped back against the rough bark of the tree.

  ‘I’ve chosen a life that suits me, Winston. Anyway, I best go and listen to your father lecture me.’

  Lifting a sketch pad and charcoal, Winston studied the blank sheet. ‘Lecture? It’s our livelihood. Your blacks are burning our land.’

  Adam trudged the half-mile to the Lycett farmhouse, an unwanted image of Merindah in Winston’s arms ruining the day – he could only assume it had been her. This was a problem he’d never foreseen; his friend with Bidjia’s woman. If there was more than friendship between them and the relationship was discovered, the tribe would only have one form of revenge. Such a liaison could never be revealed.

  The homestead was situated amidst the undulating countryside that rolled westwards toward the Bathurst Plains. The house was a squat building of timber and bark with a low-slung verandah situated close to sheltering trees on the western side, while to the east the great divider between the inland and the coastal areas, a range of blue-tinged mountains, loomed down at the isolated farm. The positioning ensured some relief from the summer sun and also shaded a vegetable plot, which showed tufts of green sprouting up from the damp earth.

  Georgina Lycett, a grey-flecked, brown-haired woman with the type of overly joyful disposition that at times rang untrue, was sewing beneath the schooling tree, as he and Winston had named it, a basket of
threads on the bench. She looked up on his approach and waved. ‘Adam, at last. We have all missed you. Winston especially has bemoaned your long absence. You must save us from his morbid mutterings and eat with us.’

  Adam waved back. ‘He is ill?’

  ‘A fever, we have all had it, although admittedly Winston has experienced the worst of it.’

  On the verandah, a suspended cage held a rainbow lorikeet. The head of the bird was a deep blue, the rest of the body a mixture of green, red and yellow. The parrot was talkative today and had clearly been enjoying a diet rich in nectar from the early spring flowers Mrs Lycett picked, for there was bird droppings splattered all through the cage, on the timber boards of the verandah and the wall opposite. Winston’s father sat nearby, reading.

  ‘Adam, good morning to you.’

  ‘Mr Lycett.’ Adam leant on one of the verandah’s wooden pillars. A vacant chair rested against the wall of the verandah. It was not offered.

  Grey of hair, serious, with a face creased like woven matting and immaculately dressed, Mr Lycett was akin to a coiled spring ready to bounce at a moment’s notice. ‘You’ve been with Winston? No doubt he’s been regaling you with Bessel’s achievements. I’m glad you’re back. It will give us all something different to talk about.’ His mental faculties were on a par with his son’s but he had a driven quality about him and Archibald Lycett knew the difference between the educated mind and idleness, a trait that he often ridiculed Winston for. ‘A letter from London. My sister.’ He folded it carefully, ensuring the original creases were matched and lay the letter on the table, beneath a hinged box which held a pistol.

  ‘I can come back when you’ve finished reading?’

  Removing round reading glasses, Archibald wrapped them in a length of cotton and placed them in a wooden case. ‘Not at all. I’ve read it a half-dozen times already. She writes with a fine pen. I can almost see the River Thames … the vendors.’ He gave a sigh, tucking the letter in his coat pocket. ‘Such a distance away. It means nothing to you, I know, such is the loss to the native born. You know why I wanted to see you?’