Marngrook and Other Award-winning Stories from the Stringybark Australian History Award

by David Vernon

  A moth threw itself against the shutters and in the distance, she heard the melancholy call of an owl. A half moon set off across the sky throwing shadows that made her heart race. Just as she wondered if she’d imagined the whole thing a group of men walked up to the house.

  She straightened the rifle. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. The men stopped and jabbered among themselves.

  “They don’t know what you saying,” Molly said.

  “Well, you tell them,” Cissie commanded.

  “Most them words different to mine.”

  “Just try, Molly. Tell them to go back to camp.”

  Molly put David down on the floor and Cissie leaned back to let her at the window. Molly called out to the men. Cissie could feel her trembling shoulder against her own. Back came a cacophony of shouts. The earth began to rumble.

  “What are they doing, Molly?” Cissie asked.

  “They angry. They very angry Missus.”

  Cissie peered out. The men were pounding the earth with their feet, turning and turning, the dust swirling up in the moonlight. Her dress clung to her, wet through. “Tell them I will make thunder fire if they don’t go away.”

  Molly called out again. The pounding continued.

  “They don’ understand,” she said to Cissie.

  “Take David over behind the chair and stay there,” Cissie ordered, prizing the child from her knee.

  Ned’s instructions blared through her mind. He’d made her practise loading, aiming and firing over and over again. She’d thought he was being melodramatic. Aboriginal attacks were in the past. Colonial cast-offs rarely came west now that there was more opportunity to work and binge in the cities. The shepherds were just harmless old soaks. But it had turned out he was right; a woman had to be able to handle a gun out here.

  She balanced the gun on the sill, her arms trembling. The men were still dancing up the dust and making strange staccato sounds. She took a deep breath, aimed above them and pulled the trigger. A box tree branch fell among the startled men and they took off in all directions. One fellow was knocked to the ground and lay there screaming and shaking a skinny leg in the air. Cissie almost laughed. After a long moment he got up, shook out his legs, then his arms, and ran off into the bush. Cissie lowered the gun. The shadows of the night stretched out before her.

  Historical note: Water Rights is based on a family story about Kate’s great-grandmother who was besieged by an Aboriginal group for several days in a long drought in western Queensland while her husband was away droving horses south. Kate explores how a lone, white, recently urban woman saw and experienced these displaced and increasingly desperate indigenous people.

  Kate King writes fiction, essays and poetry, and has many published tanka and haiku. Kate lives on the northern fringe of Canberra and takes inspiration from the paddocks of cattle, birds and eucalypts she views from her desk and from historical research at the National Library of Australia.

  Kamilaroi Country

  — Wendy Seddon

  A wiry, tired man rode a wiry, tired horse. Three weeks in the saddle with three hundred head of cattle wandering the long paddock can do that to a man and a mare. Droving, ideal employment for an ‘antisocial cretin’. Not his words but Francine’s, and that’s enough of that, no story there, just a sad mistake. Hundreds of miles with his only utterances being “whoa!” and “dog, here!” left plenty of time for thinking, or more often, not thinking — lulled by the rhythmic amble of his horse into a somnificence which calmed and satisfied.

  It was because he was in this state that he only noticed the boy when a sudden movement caught in its peripheral vision spooked his horse. A scrawny lad mirrored the mare’s reaction and scrambled out of a low forest of gorse, ready to flee. The drover judged the boy to be about twelve or fourteen, certainly no older than fifteen — it was hard to tell under the grime of the trail. His boots were shredded and his clothes were cut for a boy carrying at least an extra 10lbs in weight. Must have come quite a way. An intercourse between the boy and the drover, not eloquent enough to be called a conversation followed and went like this:

  “Hey, boy!”

  “I aint doin’ nothin’, Mista!”

  “No-one says ya was. C’mere. Ya got a name?”

  “Frank. Don’t tell me dad ya seen me Mista!”

  “Dunno ya dad. Ya got a place in mind to head to?”

  “Gunna join up, gunna be a soldier. Me bruvver ‘n me uncle’s with the Wallaby march. I reckon I can catch ‘em if’n I don’t dawdle.”

  “They’ve got 40 mile up on you, lad. Don’t go breakin’ yer neck in a wombat hole!”

  With a cheerful wave, the boy ran off in that half skip, half run that kids do before they’ve been raped of their innocence. “Should be home bottle feedin’ a poddy,” thought the drover, “not my problem if he goes gittin’ his head bowed off, more ‘n likely they’ll clip ‘im ‘round the ears and send ‘im home.”

  He’d seen the Wallabies set off from Walgett, saw the posters in the Post and Telegraph office too. They showed a soldier standing astride two countries calling “Cooee,” supposedly from the Dardanelles, “Won’t you come? Enlist now.” A Digger in need of a bit of a hand with a dose of adventure to boot was a sure way to round up a mob of wannabe soldiers and set them marching. Destination: Sydney, 281 miles away. They were headed in the same direction but he was only going half that distance and glad he wasn’t covering it on foot like them — marching through swirling dust over hard packed dirt or worse, crushed stone or blue metal and trekking through rivers of mud in the wet.

  He’d heard tell of them being treated like lords in the towns they went through, crowds cheering them on, but not before putting flowers ‘round their necks and filling them up with roast lamb and plum pudding. He hardly believed the tales of hand knitted socks gifted by the dozens from womenfolk along the way, but he did believe the tales from a Boer war veteran who now roamed the bush tracks. Lost- not geographically but in his soul. Whatever happened ‘over there’ did not appeal to the drover, he saw no adventure in killing people he personally had no fight with.

  Life was dandy; he had a pumpkin — would make a pretty good pie when he put it with hot, crusty damper. He’d plucked the pumpkin from a campsite known to be visited regularly by a sundowner who planted seeds around the North West so he’d have a reliable food source when next he ambled that way. He could do with a new pair of socks though.

  From what he could figure from information coming his way in dribs and drabs, the Wallabies were making good time. Then again, they didn’t have a hundred head with them. He preferred cattle to men. They weren’t likely to bugger off to the hotels or the brothels along the way. One hundred and twenty four head actually and he intended to get as many as he could to the sales at Gunnedah. He uncoiled his whip and cracked it over the dog’s head. The signal between them was clear — round up the half blind heifer lagging behind and get it back with the mob. Next time he’ll leave her, he aint no babysitter to a stupid cow. He chuckled then because the words ‘stupid cow’ brought with them memories of Francine and their last slanging match.

  And so the days went by. Thinking or not thinking, dozing then riding breakneck after a demented tearaway. The duration of the trip was at a predetermined rate, about 10 miles a day, and he was on time. He remembered his first taste of droving...

  He’d been signed on at a pitiful salary of ten shillings a week and ‘find your own horse.’ If the horse died he’d have to find a replacement. The route was to go through Booligal, a detested run by drovers state-wide. It was either in drought or flood or plagued by rabbits or grasshoppers — all of which meant a headache for the boss drover. The only saving grace along the way was the One Tree Inn (or to be exact, the publican’s daughter) but just my luck, thought the drover, the place burnt down the previous year!

  There were 2,000 head in that mob but the time they got to Echuca they’d run up a tally of 350 head dead from eating desert pea,
another 500 duffed outside Hay, three dogs lost — one snake bite, one just keeled over one day and another buggered off somewhere along the trail. They’d had to leave Hodges behind in Ivanhoe with some gut problem and Redford’s boy took a tumble and wasn’t any use after the Black Swamp — could have broken his fool neck but only broke an ankle. The Booligal track had certainly lived up to its reputation.

  That poet bloke, Paterson wrote about Booligal — Hay and Hell and Booligal, and Paterson wrote that other one — Clancy of the Overflow. He’d come across a couple of Clancys over the years, drove sheep up to the Queensland border. Funny how the poem talked about overlanding cattle though. In the rhythmic plodding of the horse’s hooves, he composed a little ditty of his own…

  Francine, I used to like your eyes,

  Your voice like nature’s breezy sighs,

  Your mouth the shape of rosebuds red

  But I’ve swapped you for my horse instead!

  The dog barked and startled a flock of cockatoos, which fluttered noisily off as one from their roost in a ghost gum, alerting the drover and dragging him back to the present and the lush Namoi Valley. Just as well too; the cattle were getting restless. They smelled the water a couple of miles ahead and it would take all his concentration with the total co-operation of the dog to hold them back so they wouldn’t stampede.

  Just up ahead he could see ‘Gin’s Leap’ and he let the cattle drift between the hills and the river. Apparently a young aboriginal girl and her lover jumped off the cliff and a Romeo and Juliette style romance ended predictably. The drover tried picturing Francine hurling herself over the edge, distraught that she would never see him again. Not likely. A few graves were all that remained where the Rock Inn once stood- seemed to be the area for tragedy. He and Francine were a tragedy but, funny, she had grown on him.

  The sale yards at Gunnedah were close, the end of his employment. When he’d filled his pockets and his belly and when he’d had his fill of ale, he might just head back up to see Francine in Moree. He had a necklace of Quondong seeds he’d traded with ‘Quandong Joe’ to sweeten his return. Might even take her dancing before he signed on again for another trek along the long paddock.

  When the cattle were penned and a second count done, a handshake between the drover and the owner, and the drover’s work was finished. Then, after a night of restless ‘indoors’ sleep, he mounted his mare and rode back through town. The banner still hanging on the corner of the Grand Central Hotel. “Welcome the Wallabies,” barely warranted a second look.

  Historical note: During WW1, volunteer recruitment drives for the Australian Imperial Forces resulted in ‘snowball’ marches throughout rural NSW. These had starting points in various places and threaded their way through the country towns en-route to Sydney. Nine Marches were held between October 1915 and February 1916, the best known being the Cooee March from Gilgandra. The Wallabies marched from Narrabri, 8 December 1915 but did not go all the way to Sydney. They finished in Newcastle 8 January 1916 and became known as ‘Maitland’s Own’ Battalion, the 34th.

  At the same time, our fledgling country hosted its now famous icons such as its drovers of sheep and cattle, daring and wily as any Wild West Cowboy, and the swagman in all his guises. This story is one account of how they could have interacted.

  Wendy Seddon lives in Medowie, just north of Newcastle NSW. Married to Peter, she has five grown up children. While working part-time in Newcastle she always finds time to ‘scribble’ and knit for her first grandchild due 2012. Wendy is also a fledgling Bush Poet, loving its discipline of rhythm and rhyme.

  To my Sister, Hessie Burke

  — Beverley Lello

  Alone in her attic room in the Burke family home, St Clearans, Mary O’Grady would lie awake and wonder whether she should stay or go. She played out the departure in her mind: packed her trunk, attached a label, heard the carriage arrive and watched the men lift up the trunk; imagined herself climbing up and sitting next to the driver, waving to those who were staying behind and disappearing down the road. Then she lost sight of herself and could only think of staying, of getting up as usual and making sure, Molly, the servant had built up the fire and the water was heating so all would be ready for Hessie’s breakfast.

  On the day the decision had to be made she had prepared the tray and taken it into the breakfast room. It was a bleak day, not unusual for county Galway, and after she’d set out the cups and saucers and placed the silver teapot in its accustomed position, she stood gazing out the window at the wet and weary vegetation.

  “Day dreaming again.” Hessie’s voice intruded.

  “There’s always a little space for dreaming.” Mary usually just agreed with everything Hessie said; it was easier that way. Today things had to be different. “It’s so green out there. It’s hard to imagine that dry and arid place where your brother … journeyed.”

  This was dangerous ground but all Hessie said was, “The tea is getting cold. Shall I pour?”

  Mary moved to perform the task because that is what Hessie really expected her to do.

  “I see you’ve been reading those newspapers again. Put them away. I want to enjoy my breakfast in peace,” said Hester Albinia Burke. She pushed the newspapers to one side and sat on the sofa, a stiff upright figure in black serge, faded red hair drawn back severely in a tight coil. “Has the post come?”

  Mary handed her several letters, the letter she wanted Hessie to give her full attention to on top. “There’s one from Australia.”

  “Another one! Burn it.”

  “Burn it?”

  “You know I’ve heard enough of that nonsense about Robert to last me what little time I have left.”

  “This has an official seal. It looks important.”

  “I’m not opening it now. He’s dead. Any other news will surely keep.”

  Mary placed the letter on the tray. She moved the newspapers to the table beneath the window, placing the part with the most interesting piece of news facing upwards — Explorers laid to rest. The rain had stopped and the mist had parted a little to reveal the hills, folds of them, one beyond the other. Did he think of the green hills of Ireland as he was dying? Mary and Hessie would never know.

  “He probably died with his head full of that silly actress.” Hessie was good at reading minds.

  “How the fool demeaned himself with such a ‘person’, I can’t imagine. A philanderer. Robert O’Hara Burke was a philanderer and they chose him to lead an expedition across a wild continent. I still can’t decide whether the selection committee men were even bigger fools than he was.”

  Her furious voice shattered Mary’s dreaming. She turned and watched the woman who had chosen her to be her companion, paid her a meagre salary and expected her to be an audience to her bitter ranting. This thought made Mary speak more boldly; her acquiescent self was momentarily subdued. “Some must have admired him. In that early newspaper account they spoke of him as a man who had fine intelligent eyes, and a splendidly formed head.”

  “So you know it by heart. I see you have fallen under his spell but the brother I knew was always able to charm with his good looks. But an explorer? No. An explorer of women’s petticoats, more likely.”

  Ignoring her usual practice, Hessie lifted the tea pot and poured herself more tea. She appeared to complete this task with full concentration but her mind was carefully forming her next words. “I would not waste my admiration on a fool, Mary, even if he is my own brother. I admit… I hesitate to say… I feel I must take you into my confidence here… I am jealous. Robert had the opportunity to gaze into the distance, to forge a path into the future, whereas I… I’m as fixed in this house as that… teapot.” She pointed an accusing finger at the offending teapot before raising her cup and sipping the tepid liquid.

  At a loss to respond to this unexpected revelation, Mary moved away from the window, picked up her cup and drank. “I wish I had a fortune teller to read the leaves in my cup,” she said.

  “No need,�
�� said Hessie. That harsh, decisive voice again. Hessie would be her fortune teller. “You’re a woman. If there is a glorious destiny, it’s not yours, it’s your brother’s or that young man who comes mooning around wanting to take you on Sunday walks.” She paused to let her words settle before continuing. “I suppose he’ll be here later.”

  “Yes, yes he will. He has something to tell…”

  Hessie wasn’t finished. She had more doom to deliver. “It will be marriage next and a life of babies and drudgery. Another companion lost just when I’ve shaped you to my needs.”

  Mary shrank back into her chair. She needed just a sliver of courage. “Perhaps you should open the letter.”

  “So I can read more of that rubbish about heroes and myths.” Hessie seemed to rise out of the chair, almost levitating in her rage. Mary feared that she would make herself ill but then the anger seemed to leave her in a sigh. “Open the letter if you must. Read it to yourself. I’ve read enough about that fool.”

  Mary rose and found the letter opener and slid it under the black seal. The paper was stiff and folded into itself. It had come a long way to be read now by a young woman with hope in her heart to a bitter woman who had never accepted her lot as a minor character in the life of a great man. A clock chimed the hour. Ten strokes.

  A rain squall pebbled the glass of the window as Mary read the last words of Robert O’Hara Burke as dictated to John King, the only member to survive of the three explorers who had journeyed from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Her hand trembled as she held out the letter to Burke’s sister, a woman who had never travelled further than Dublin.