The men gave chase. Jardi ran through the clearing, collecting the spear on the run and rejoined Adam. They passed rough-barked trees and ones of silver-white, all the while descending across gullies and narrow ravines. Through the vegetation the three men caught sight of the edge of the heavily timbered area. Patches of open land beckoned, only to become littered by woody plants and bushes as they got nearer. They were running hard now, their breath coming in gulps as they rushed through the timber. They jumped fallen logs and skirted scrubby bushes, twisting around saplings in pursuit of their prey. Occasional flashes of red fur were glimpsed but the animal was canny and fast. It ducked and darted, leading the men on a downhill chase.
Adam knew the red kangaroo was probably long gone but the rush of blood spurred them on. Landing on a stony outcrop, the musket clasped firmly, he jumped from one ledge to another, angling downwind of the animal, just in case it had halted its escape. He had left the older man behind, but Jardi still followed. The younger man’s steps were fast and sure across the leaf litter but there was also another noise, the dull thud of the kangaroo.
At the bottom, where the land spread outwards from the folds of the mountain and the trees grew thinner, the red kangaroo reappeared. The animal stopped abruptly and in that instant Adam lifted the musket and fired. The kangaroo dropped to the ground. Startled birds flew from nearby trees then all was quiet.
Bidjia ran from the timber, his breath catching in his throat, and together the three men made their way to where the animal lay breathing its last breath.
‘A good kill, brother,’ Jardi said quietly. He knelt by the kangaroo, leaning on his spear.
Bidjia touched the animal’s body, stroked the furry pelt, muttered something undecipherable and then, unsheathing his knife, slit the kangaroo’s throat. A moment’s silence drew attention to the cooling breeze and the distant scent of fire.
‘The animals are easily alarmed.’ Adam used his knife to cut through the thick fur of the hind leg. He sliced the flesh down to the bone and, with the whiteness of the limb exposed, twisted the bone in its socket until it snapped, and then hefted it over his shoulder.
‘The kangaroo is made flighty by others. Come.’ Bidjia led them away from the mountain. ‘This is big tribe land. The Big River country.’ Since their wanderings had begun they had crossed lands belonging to many different tribes. The message stick had been well-used.
‘Are they still following us?’ Jardi asked. ‘I haven’t seen them.’ The further north they’d ventured, seemingly, the more empty the land grew, although everywhere they went there were signs of other tribes. Some, like the warriors who’d been watching their progress from a distance, simply waited to ensure that they moved on. Others expected the laws to be respected and for Bidjia to ask permission to pass through lands belonging to others.
‘They have gone,’ Jardi’s father confirmed. ‘We have passed through their country. We have not seen so many wagon tracks, and the grasses beaten by the overlanding of sheep have grown less.’
‘We journey a way unknown to the whites,’ Adam explained.
The countryside was a patchwork of pale greens and browns in the fading light. ‘Perhaps, but maybe there are not so many of them that they fill this land. It is too big, even for them,’ Bidjia replied.
Adam was aware that men were settling beyond the defined counties, the imaginary line of British rule. Archibald Lycett had spoken of new and displaced settlers and their need for land, but Bidjia remained deaf to his warnings. The Elder grew more certain with each day that they could out-walk those who followed behind; that unspoilt earth could be found by the great waterhole further to the east, that another tribe would welcome them, they, the dispossessed; that his son, Jardi, would find a woman so that their line would not die out. Adam only knew one thing. That they had kept moving until they were beyond the stretch of the law.
‘We should stop and make camp before darkness comes,’ Jardi suggested. Their attention was drawn to a large carcass on the ground. A cow had been killed. Its hide pierced by a spear, two legs roughly hacked off. Placing a hand on the animal, Bidjia looked from the dead beast across the darkening countryside. The kill was a day old. The whites did not take kindly to such losses. They knew from bitter experience that there would be retribution.
‘It’s best if we keep moving. We want no trouble.’ Bidjia increased their pace and soon the three men were walking quickly north-east, picking their way across unfamiliar ground, the kangaroo leg growing heavy on Adam’s shoulder. Above them the sky grew blue-black, the air chilled. The coldness from the earth rose steadily and they picked up their pace, trotting across a land of deepening shadows.
A few days later Bidjia sniffed the air. The scent of smoke was bitter and close. It was not the dense smell of burning bush but something contained, manmade with pieces of dead timber and gathered kindling. Here in this place where they intended to camp during the hottest part of the day, there was the smell of a cooking fire and the outline of a rough dwelling through the trees ahead.
Although the sun woman was fierce, Jardi decided they must leave this place and move on quickly. Adam was in agreement.
‘No.’ Bidjia sat heavily in the dirt beneath a thickly branched tree.
Adam dropped to his knees by the older man’s side. ‘Are you ill?’
Bidjia patted Adam’s shoulder. ‘It is a long time since I found you, Bronzewing,’ he looked up at Jardi, ‘and it is many seasons since I chose your mother and whispered your name so that you would come. I grow old and tired.’
‘We have wandered too long,’ Jardi complained.
The soil was cool in the shade of the intertwining branches. It was a good place to rest. Adam looked at the hut. ‘I will go. I doubt whoever lives within will be too pleased to see the likes of you knocking on their door.’
Jardi nodded reluctantly, but he crept forward and took up a position some yards from the building, spear at the ready.
‘Be careful, my white son,’ Bidjia cautioned.
Musket in hand, Adam approached the dwelling. ‘Coo-ee. Anyone within?’
In reply came the sound of something being overturned, the scuffle of movement. ‘Who wants to know?’ a rough voice answered.
‘A traveller.’
The bark door barely opened and a wedge of yellow light glimmered weakly. ‘Who you be then? Friend or foe? I’ve got nothing worth thieving.’
‘Friend. I’m alone.’
‘Show yourself.’
Adam stepped towards the dim light.
The man within was sun-cracked and stoop-shouldered, but he grasped a wooden club and looked capable of wielding it. He stared at Adam, from his blucher boots and coarse cotton trousers to the cream shirt he wore, blinking as if the man before him was an apparition. ‘I’ve got nothing worth stealing so you can put the musket down.’
He scratched at a grey beard and mumbled something about not having seen a white man for a few months. His Irish accent was thick and he spoke with a slur. ‘A few months,’ he repeated. ‘It’s been more than a few months. But there was a woman. Dark-haired thing. They were travelling onwards, before the massacre. Two wagons, loaded to the hilt they were, but not much for company. You’d think they would have stayed a bit, being how a man doesn’t get much of a chance for a good yack, and a woman, well, I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw a white woman. Only saw her from a distance, mind. But I can still smell her. You know how a woman smells? Rich with promise.’ He gave what passed for a wink. ‘Well, come in.’
Adam stepped inside. The hut was small, well-built and hot. There were two young black boys curled on the ground near the fire, who sat up rubbing their eyes and proceeded to stare suspiciously at him. Behind them the fire crackled, the smoke spiralling through a hole in the ceiling. A rough shelf held two tin plates and a pannikin, while a cast-iron pan and quart pot were suspended from hooks above the fire. Against one of the mud-plastered walls a number of spears rested while a stump passed for
a chair. The rickety table made up the extent of the furnishings. The man complained of the draft and Adam pulled the door shut, but not before noting Jardi, who stood flattened against the outside wall. Immediately the tiny space became acrid with smoke, cooking smells and the long unwashed.
‘Not many visitors. You want a feed?’ The pot he sat on the table smelt of boiled kangaroo meat. There was a bald patch on the side of the man’s head and a mess of scarred flesh suggestive of a brutal accident or fight. ‘There’s salt and bread.’ The blackened dough was unwrapped from a piece of cloth and placed on the table beside a chipped bowl of salt. ‘I had a woman but she gone and died a while back.’ He ruffled the hair of one of the native boys. They were not pure of blood. They sat cross-legged and waited patiently as the food was ladled onto a plate and held out their hands for the chunks of bread, which were torn from the tough loaf with some effort. The boys scoffed the meal down and then proceeded to wipe the vessels clean with fingers and bread. Adam declined the meat but accepted a piece of the bread and an old jam tin filled with hot water.
‘No sugar, but I keep a store of berries, better than nothing.’ The old man tipped a wooden vessel onto the table and Adam recognised the small dried fruit of the wild plum and, selecting one, dropped it in the water. ‘I had tea once. You don’t got any, I suppose? No? Ain’t nobody around here to get anything, excepting those people that came through. They gave me a bit of tobaccy. Since then I’ve only had the Superintendent from the station.’ The man served up the watery kangaroo on a tin plate and ate it between bites of bread and sips of sweetened hot water. With no other seat in the room, Adam sat on the dirt floor. ‘The young’uns stayed. Not much choice in it for them. Their lot didn’t want them back, but I reckon one day they’ll come for them. Still, while they’re here, they’re a bit of company. What you doing here then?’
‘Heading east towards the coast.’ The bread was made of ground native millet. The Irishman owed his survival to the ways of his dead Aboriginal woman and the two boys, who Adam guessed were his sons.
‘Bit late to be travelling. Where you come from then? Seen anyone?’ He watched Adam as he slurped the water.
‘Only a few blacks.’
The man tapped his head. ‘So you being alone, you’d be on the run? Convict or bushranger, it makes no difference to me.’
‘Something like that.’
‘Man’s a right fool to be travelling about in this weather, so they must be on your tracks. Summer’s settled in for a bit, but when she breaks the cold will hit you like a stab in the chest. Still, there’s plenty to burn. Ain’t been much rain so the going will be easy. Find yourself a good camp near water’s my advice, be cold in the mountains already if you’re heading east. You be right careful though, lad. The blacks have always been a bit uppity around these parts, but things are worse now. Times were when they’d spear a cow or a sheep, maybe even the odd shepherd, but not now. Last year there were white men murdered, stockmen.’ The old man rose and Adam noticed for the first time dozens of knife-carved notches on the wall. ‘Caused a real commotion in these parts. Not least of all because good workers are hard to come by.’ A filthy finger counted the marks backwards. ‘But the big ruckus,’ he tapped the wall, ‘that was,’ he began to count, ‘near two months past.’
‘January,’ Adam offered.
‘Aye, January.’ He returned to his stump and sat. ‘The settlers complained about there being no law and order after them men were murdered the year afore, so the troopers appeared they did, arrested some blacks and then kept on the tail of the main mob. Well, the blacks attacked them, as you’d expect them to do, and then they fled so the troopers rounded up a whole lot of the buggers. Killed them they did. Massacred them. Called the place Waterloo Creek, on account of that general, Napoleon. Nice touch.’ He grunted a laugh. ‘So the blacks are uppity again.’ His smile turned to a grimace.
On the dirt floor directly beneath the rough calendar were two perforated human skulls. The bone was smooth and shiny as if they received the benefit of regular polishing. The old man noted Adam’s interest.
‘Those there heads belonged to my woman’s kin,’ he explained. Selecting one of the skulls he picked it up and, rubbing it briefly with a shirtsleeve, placed it on the floor again. ‘She be traded fair, but then when the sugar and the tobaccy ran out they wanted her back. Seems the terms were meant to be ongoing, so I shot ’em one night and the next week others near bashed me head in. Well, fair is fair, I thought. Anyway, after that I reckon they decided to leave things be. But eventually they came for her. She’s dead now, so we’re square. You got grog, tobaccy?’
‘Nothing.’ Adam finished the sweetened drink.
‘And not likely you be getting your hands on some neither unless you work for one of them squatters.’ Returning the blackened pot to the fire, he patted one of the boys on the head. ‘The Lago Station Superintendent wanted me to be a hutkeeper, on account of this here hut sitting square on the station’s boundary. Be damned, I told him. Risk getting speared to look after another’s sheep?’ A gnarled finger tapped his forehead. ‘I been around. You know what I’m saying? I been around. Finally he offered me some rations just to keep my eye out, you know, let him know of any goings on. In return he reckoned he’d keep quiet about me being a runner. ’Course I said yes. I took his sugar and flour, but ain’t nobody comes through here. Only the black-haired woman and them settlers last year. Imagine settling up here? Desperate they must be. This is the blacks’ land, they should leave ’em to it. At least there’s no cat-o’-nine-tails here. I do alright. I’m a-living.’ Dipping the ladle in the cooking pot, he scooped up the scant remains and sucked the spoon clean.
‘But he came back again, the Superintendent did. A while ago it was. A month past. All riled up and ready for a fight. Asked me if I wanted to come hunting. He wasn’t talking about no wallaby neither.’ The man sat the pot on the fire and added a drop of water. It sizzled loudly. ‘He told me that them that keep the law weren’t much interested in sending troopers north to these areas. That if man and beast wanted to settle beyond the counties then they had to look after their own troubles. And there’s trouble a-plenty up here.’ The old man tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. ‘What you here for then? Are you one of them riders out on the hunt? I don’t want no troubles with the blacks. I keep to meself and they leave me alone. We’ve an understanding.’
‘Just passing through.’ Adam thanked the man and opened the bark door.
‘No point leaving now, stay awhile. It be a hot one. Talk some more.’
‘I best keep moving.’
‘Suit yerself. I know what it’s like, being on the hop. Stay low then, lad, stay low.’
The man was still muttering as Adam walked away from the hut. He headed east a bit and then circled back through the scrub, Jardi tailing him to ensure they weren’t followed.
‘You on for a talk then?’ Jardi chided.
‘Just passing the time of day.’
Bidjia was waiting for them. The men hunkered down among the trees as Adam repeated what he’d heard. ‘So we best keep our wits about us,’ he told them. ‘By the sounds of things some of these settlers will be shooting first and not bothering to ask questions.’
‘This is bad business.’ Bidjia poked at the dirt absently. ‘No good comes of settlers left alone to resolve disputes …’ He looked up through the leaves sheltering them. ‘There are good and bad whites, we know this. Your people have renegades as we do, but what little hope I had in your white brothers, Bronzewing, has dried like a caked riverbed.’
Adam thought of Winston. ‘The settlers are scared and angry. They don’t understand our ways.’
‘They wish we were like the grains of sand that could be blown away with the wind,’ Jardi concluded, lying down to rest next to his father. ‘I wish the same of them.’
Adam checked the ammunition pouch tied to the belt about his waist. He hoped Bidjia only needed rest and that nothing else ailed him fo
r there was still much travelling ahead. In the midday heat his thoughts drifted to that of the settlers and the woman the old man had mentioned. It had to be the same girl he’d seen last year. The chances of it being another female were slight. But there was little point thinking about her, although the thought of that dark-haired beauty was a pleasant diversion. He sighed and, closing his eyes, conjured up the songlines that Bidjia had taught both him and Jardi. Hopefully the ancestor’s footprints would lead them safely to the sea.
Chapter 17
1838 May – the Hardy farm
Kate woke to the sound of scratching. Daylight was yet to arrive but the weak paleness that preceded dawn crept through the rough wall boards, layering the dim room in a pasty light. Level with her nose, only four feet away, was the outline of something against the wall. Rubbing at the crusty sleep in her eyes, the blurry shape grew clear. It was a spiky-looking animal in the corner of the narrow room.
Rising on her elbow she watched as the creature continued snuffling along the wall. Her shoe was the closest object. Reaching for it, she flung it as hard as possible in the direction of the animal. The leather made a loud thud as it hit the timber and fell to the dirt floor. The thing appeared to curl itself into a prickly ball.
‘What is it? Who’s there?’ The cook sat up, the wooden frame and sagging canvas of the cot creaking dangerously.
‘I’ll get rid of it, Mrs Horton, don’t you worry.’ Kate stepped into a long beige cotton skirt, tugging it over the thin drawers and shift she wore and, slipping her arms into the matching boned bodice, positioned the hem neatly over the skirt’s waistband. A shawl completed her dress.
The cook swung her legs out of the cot with a pained slowness. ‘You’ll do no such thing. You’ll leave my Henry exactly where he is.’
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