by Kim Scott
Mr Mustle and his wife sat at the front of the small cart. His wife had been at the station for some months now, and needed relief, so he and his good wife intended going on to Frederickstown by steamer from Kylie Bay. Mustle noted that his employee’s lubra and half-caste son had—at the last moment—slipped onto the back of the cart. It was too much of a load really, but he let the matter pass; he could eject them along the trip if he wished. And three sets of hands would mean the cart would be loaded and returned so much more quickly.
The cold wind was insistent enough to make their teeth ache. It started to rain. My family huddled together in the tiny space available on the cart until Mustle had Sandy and his son hold a large oilskin over Mrs Mustle. The oilskin flapped, and at times the wind cracked it like a gunshot. Fanny turned her face up into the rain from where she sat on the jolting floor of the cart, at the feet of her men. She swung her legs around, and slid from the back of the vehicle. It was going at a fair pace, and she stumbled a bit as she touched the ground and left the track they had followed.
The horse and cart continued through the rain with its four passengers. That wind! Even with the rain being driven before them it was very difficult to see anything. Things formed and reformed as you got closer. But it was a good horse, and Mustle decided to trust it. Time was limited. He could hardly complain of rain, it was needed. Campbell Mustle was considering whether to get Sandy One to replace him on the seat, so that he and his wife could shelter more fully. It would be only a temporary indignity, leave them rested for their time in Kylie Bay where they would cast their vote against federation, and spend the inevitable social time with his brother’s family. They were rolling through the bed of what was an only occasional creek, and the Mustles were dreaming of various Entertainments in the parlour, when one wheel rose over a fallen balga trunk, and the cart tipped.
Cammy Mustle left the vehicle first, and flew higher than the others. For a moment it seemed that he was intent on immediately ascending past the spiteful clouds, but the lack of sunbeams and the persistent, beating rain defeated him. He was an inordinately long time falling, seemed almost to drift down and the rain rushed by him. Sandy Two, lying on his back on a stumpy mallee bush, the rain playfully tapping his face chest belly, saw the white man flying above him. Fanny, standing a little off the track to observe it all, saw the same man go up up up, and then return with the curve of the sky. His downfall culminated in a sickening sound. He landed like a spear; head first, body straight and quivering. Then, slowly, he tipped and slammed onto his back.
Fanny went to her son first, and then to the sobbing white woman while Sandy One bent over the silent one. They arranged the couple side by side in the shelter of the upturned cart. Mrs was screaming, afraid to touch her own man.
They would have to send the boy for help, decided Sandy. He could ride to the Mustles at Kylie Bay. Sandy sent Fanny back to the homestead to let the workers know. She would have to be seen to be helpful, he quietly said to her. ‘Cry,’ he said. ‘Look upset.’
Away they went; Fanny trudging one way, a strip of oilskin wrapped about her, and Sandy Two going the other with his thin legs gripping the big horse’s stomach.
The youth rode with the rising wind. The world was grained diagonally, and individual drops of it clung to his eyebrows. His clothes were heavy. Often he passed so close behind the dunes that he felt—even within the rain—the salt of the sea, and heard the surf mumbling fitfully over the fretting wind, his breath, the rhythm of the horse. Once or twice the rain cleared from around him, and he looked down as if from a great height at the sea shifting the white sand about, and worrying at the granite outcrop beneath him. Cold water everywhere.
Kangaroos, at peace in the driving rain, watched him pass. If he rode them he might be faster still.
It was dark.
There were fires at the camp, but the homestead was silent. Sandy Two scratched around, and asked the old fellow sleeping on the verandah to wake the bosses and tell them what had happened. A pale, already expressionless face falling with the rain, and the woman soundlessly shrieking.
The old fellow was shaking his head, and pushing the boy away when the boss’s young son, Andrew Mustle, came onto the verandah from the outer darkness. He adjusted his clothing as he listened.
An older man arrived, and lit a small flame to expand the space around them. Sound was muffled, and the old man—Willie Mustle it must have been although in that light and shifting space it could have been who knows what?—made Sandy say it all again.
‘You’re Sandy Two are you?’
There was a boat with a sail. In the darkness Sandy Two thought of his father’s and mother’s stories of boats, and he saw the sea torn and ripped and bleeding white. The wind was turning, and they sailed away from land with it, and then returned, thumping and breasting the waves, and so it went on until eventually they came into the shelter of a headland, and the sea relaxed. Sandy Two leapt from the bow as they had told him, but leapt too early, and had to clutch again at the gunwale as the boat drove on. Andrew Mustle grabbed a fistful of hair and held him above the water.
In the pale light they could see purple lines marking the contours of Mrs Mustle’s face. The Mustles took the unconscious man to the boat—there was no time to waste—and despite the weather, they must get him to Kylie Bay, transfer him to a bigger boat and send him on to Frederickstown. They’d take the boy also, and leave Sandy One with Mrs Cammy until they could send help.
Fanny materialised from the drizzle and sat beside the weeping woman. She leaned her back against the broken cart and thought of a loose bundle of flesh slumping from side to side as the boat tacked, and a skinful of bones vibrating as the little boat fell into each sharp, dark valley.
Her boy on board.
Sandy Two was shaken, uncertain; he always remembered that trip with fear. An oddly angled and diminished swell moved between the islands, and a strange wind shifted to and fro there, brushing the sea’s grey surface in contrasting directions. The granite wall of an island seemed akin to the sea itself, the bruised sky was solid. He heard his mother cry; winged voices called to him, and—leaning over the edge of the boat—Sandy Two began emptying himself.
Vomit sprayed his face as they re-entered the wind. Another swell exploded against the island, became some great irrepressible entity, rising rising even as the wind whipped it and the deep earth pulled it down.
Now the wind drove them, filled the sail with its power and gave the boat life. The little boat leapt and leapt and seemed to stumble, would have wallowed but for the stretched-tight sail holding them just above the surface. Their eyes clung to the gloaming shape above before them which would not let them rest.
Sandy, drained as if to his essence, wondered if they would ever turn the boat, ever be capable of making it stop. They might eventually find themselves becalmed, drifting and—waking up in sunlight, crusty with salt—turn to the islands thinking of water, to drink to drink.
On one of those islands there is a salty pool the colour of blood. Even today you can lift things from it which might have been pieces of timber, or rods of iron, but which—salt encrusted—look like thin limbs.
The red twin Patrick and Dinah had moved on already.
There was no place for Sandy and his brood at Mustle’s station now, the new manager wanted nothing to do with them, and chased them off.
At Badjura Station a new manager looked at my family blankly. ‘No, there’s no Pinyans Benangs Wonyins no Winneries here no more.’
Sandy had not moved from his seat on the wagon.
Asked about work the manager said, ‘No.’ There were more than enough men wanting work, that was what was worrying him, not the plight of some jumped-up little gin jockey hauling some books and his family behind him. Who knows how many others might turn up next.
A bunch of books. An empty cage. A couple of kegs for water, some food. A gin and a half-caste boy. Probably a few tools, and a rifle. A horse and camel hauled the wago
n, and although the manager was curious as to how the fellow got the animals to work together, he did not want him staying any longer than necessary. He wanted them on their way, as he did each roo shooting party which wandered in now expecting hospitality as their right, and half the time with the blacks carrying guns same as white men. There should be a law about it.
Someone said, ‘Pat Coolman? Yeah, him and Daniel were heading for Done’s lease. There’s gold there.’
Fanny worried for her daughters. A world gone? The children remained.
A world gone? Changed. The telegraph line, railway line, wheel tracks everywhere. Rubbish, and bad smells. Trees gone, grass grazed to the ground, the earth cut, shifting, not healed and not yet sealed; vegetation left too long without flames and regeneration. Dust coated the leaves. So many places seemed empty or had new inhabitants. Fanny and the two Sandies once dined on cat, a descendant of a crate of animals dumped inland and expected to feed on the pioneering rabbits. There were plenty of rabbits now. Cats, too.
Her people huddled in groups, dressed in the rags of white people. They held out their hands to strangers, and were herded about like sheep and cattle, though less well fed.
Fanny and the Sandies were heading back to Wirlup Haven and all the death they had left scattered there.
They got to the Forty Mile Tank all right. They had carted that way years ago, but this time, with just the old cart and a horse and camel hitched to it and searching for somewhere they could live, Sandy One saw it with new eyes. Beating the dust from his clothes he took a long look; it was barren as far as he could see.
On the plains around him there were no more pink flowering gums, no trees of any kind. They’d seen no roos, no emus; even a knowing eye could find very few signs of the little animals that should be there.
There were men with rifles at the hoof-churned waterholes and at the condenser tanks.
All in all Sandy felt like giving in. He’d just about had enough.
And anyone could see that the people slumped together in one another’s shade were not well. They sat at a distance from the store, having been shooed from its verandah by the woman there, whose hands had fluttered like pale moths in the heat as she hastily dispensed rations. Her husband had run off to the ’fields, and here she was, again, running the business.
Sandy One offered to help, but she hissed at him, and refused him even as much as she’d handed out to the others.
‘Let’s eat the camel,’ he muttered, as he crouched and came in under the wagon.
The three of them sat in the shade, a good distance from the store and those who remained behind it, some of whom periodically tried to lift themselves from the ground, before once again resigning themselves to the comfort of their shadows.
‘We’re gunna end up no better.’
They saw a thin woman leave the hut where the tank’s caretaker lived, and walk over to those behind the store.
Sandy One crawled out into the dying light, hitched up his trousers, and swaggered over to the caretaker who was methodically dealing with the locks of his hut.
When he returned Fanny and the boy were out from under the wagon. The fire showed only their faces, their eyes teeth floating in the air. Sandy was heavy with grog, and roaring as he entered the firelight.
His tongue must have been bothering him again. The boy knew his mother would be able to see its red and inflamed tip within that bleached beard, darting between yellow teeth and cracked lips. It could be fiery, that tongue, like the very heart of a flame.
The old man got his rifle and disappeared into the darkness, shouting about charity, about stolen land, about gold and miners and cockies; shouting bitterness and betrayal. People should be looked after.
A mad bellowing began even before the rifle’s explosion had faded. Sandy Two thought the stars should fall with such sounds, but then he heard the crackling of the fire, and even—it seemed—of the stars burning.
There was a dull thud as the camel fell. His father was the sound of footsteps moving to the flickering fires behind the store, was a voice calling them to come eat his food for there was too much for him on his own.
Kylie Bay was ahead of them still when they came across the camp close to the track. There was very little water, no shade. The dusty wind dried the skin, the moisture in the eyes and tongues of the people crouching there.
Closer to town they read the sand, and again heard the story. Boots and hoofprints had scuffed and dug. There were black flecks, and twigs and grains of sand had been curled together as the spilt blood dried. Quick bare feet stepped away, returned a little later and, repeatedly stamping, circled the site.
Next was a salty red pool, and they were approaching the government water tank, and—yet again—that very bad smell. The returned body of Johnny Forrest, namesake of the Premier. Grandchild of the Premier who had promised much, but forsaken his family.
At Kylie Bay camels lay in the sandy street, and were loaded with stores for their journey to the ’fields. There were less than there had been just a few months ago. The place had grown first a homestead, then telegraph office, police station, store, pubs.
Here and there, our own people, begging.
At Kylie Bay once more, Fanny, and Sandies One and Two went to the police, to speak of justice, and ask for rations. At least for the wife and boy, said Sandy One. He explained his situation, how they had fled. There was so little life, there was no food, no water. Murder everywhere.
The police asked if he had any daughters. About fourteen or fifteen years old was a fine age.
The Coolman twins? Yes, they were at Gebalup.
My family camped just outside of Kylie Bay. That night in the camp a woman and her baby died. She was not much more than a skeleton, as was the child at her breast.
Gebalup was a flock of tents scattered over the shrub-scraggled slopes, and a little creek where men panned for gold.
A policeman had set up his tent beside the hessian and timber store. Cans of food were heaped in the shade of a lone salmon gum which was part of the store’s structure.
The storekeeper had heard of Sandy. His father had spoken of him.
‘I’m a Starr. Henry Starr,’ and he held out his hand. Sandy Two stepped up beside his father as the two men disengaged.
‘You working, Sandy? You carting?’ asked the young storekeeper, ignoring the upstart boy’s raised hand, and simultaneously appraising the woman.
‘Hello. We don’t get many darkies around here anymore,’ grinned Starr.
‘No,’ said Sandy. For a moment he saw the young man falling toward him. ‘You shot the rest,’ he wanted to say, but his tongue gave him trouble, again, and all that came was a slur of words to which young Starr merely nodded politely.
‘I had the ration contract for them, too, in Kylie Bay,’ said Starr. ‘Not without some trouble getting it, I can tell you.’
Sandy Two saw that the walls of the store behind Starr moved with the breeze. Legs of bacon hung in the space above his head, and chickens roosted here and there, clucking and ruffling their feathers against the gloomy heat of the tent.
Starr advanced Sandy some supplies, on credit, on account of their long relationship. He thought Sandy might want to do some carting for him, for them.
‘Dad’s got a property, by the coast. Half a day away, just west of Kylie Bay. Everything comes in from there.’
They were growing fruit, in a little valley. ‘There’s water, and it’s cool.’
‘Sandy Mason? Well,’ said the elder Mustle to young Starr, ‘his father was a shepherd for us, west of here.’
And his mother?
‘A gin, a half-caste from hereabouts, Dubitj Creek. You remember old man Williams, the sealer? No? He used to camp at Dubitj Creek, came across from Tasmania, and he grew vegetables to trade with the whalers, and he used to guide them in through the islands.
‘That was her father, that’s old Sandy Mason’s grandfather. So, anyway, I know who Sandy One Mason is. He’s a nigg
er, really. It pays to keep track of these people, I’ve found. And the son? Yes, I reckon there’s a regression there all right. He is not with us either. I wouldn’t trust him.’
Sandy One, our first white man?
Sealers shot the men, kidnapped the women, bashed the children. Sandy One’s mother was conceived in rape, born on an island, and—snatched from her mother—was little more than a child when she was thrown from a boat and into the arms of the convict shepherd who walked her to Frederickstown. A good white man, he schooled her and their boy.
Sandy One, our first white man?
Sandy drove for his sons-in-law who had set up business carting for the mines, and the pastoralists. They had his daughters with them.
And so, some weeks later, our very first Travelling Inspector for Aborigines met up with some of my family. It seems it was the Travelling Inspector for Aborigines who first caught them, first sentenced them to a page. He fancied he had a great power, and never more so than when—leaving his horse, cart, and native boy—he took to his bicycle and, not quite touching the ground and with the wind at his back, skimmed along the camel pads. He ascertained things at a glance, swooping into a succession of towns, settlements, stations, camps. Each evening he dutifully condensed it all into long looping lines of ink.
It must have been somewhere in the southern goldfields, a tiny mining settlement long past the edge of what would become the wheatbelt, that he met my family. It must have been not so far from Gebalup, that little part of home, where the railway lines pointed and never reached, and where the trembling telegraph line curved by, not stopping. It was not so far from where the police constable would soon say, ‘No, there’s none. There never was many, except maybe at the station, at Mustle’s station. But that was before my time.’
The inspector wrote them down thus:
I saw the following: a woman, about forty years of age, with a half-caste baby, and a half-caste youth. They were well dressed, and, as usual, dodging about among the houses.
