by Julie Janson
…
Mary travels back to Freeman’s Reach, the waibala name for her true country, where she was born near Deerubbin. The soft lagoon was a place of plenty and she had hoped to give birth there. But Mary stands by Bushell’s lagoon now choked with willow trees. Carp slash the surface, the native fish are gone, and the yabbies are already eaten. It has so quickly turned from paradise to a muddy hole. She clutches a willow branch to stop falling in. Even now, in the distance, she can hear the sound of trees being felled. Piles of timber are near the track waiting for a bullock team to haul them to Windsor. Fires burn in the bark piles. The smoke seeps into her skin.
Anxiety fills her. If she could find help to get down the river where no waibala could find her, perhaps she could give birth in peace and the child will not be taken away. Fear tugs at her chest and she aches for some quiet place for her new baby. She remembers giving birth in the Smythe kitchen and the burst of love for baby Eleanor, then her abandonment. How could she have left her child? She punches the side of her skull as if she can punch away the dark memory.
She keeps walking along a riverbank alive with Aborigines building boats and splitting logs. Mary continues until she is on the edge of a small settlement by the Hawkesbury River. She longs for a boat to take her far away. She needs a canoe like the one her father made long ago to travel the length of the river.
Over on the riverbank she sees an Aboriginal man watching her. She has a flash of recognition. He is an old cousin of her grandfather, a Darkinjung man. He works as a timber man on the estates near Windsor and he beckons to her. He remembers her family well and asks after them but the shaking of Mary’s head tells him all he needs to know. All gone. He is a kind old man and she leans against a tree as he takes his axe and calls her to follow him. He will build her a canoe. Mary walks along a path towards the last remaining gum trees. She is wary and looks around for some unnamed danger. But she must trust him.
Sunlight and bellbirds fill the air in a beautiful clearing. The man whittles a canoe paddle from wild hibiscus while the yellow flowers lie in piles around him. He chews the bark to strip it from the length of the branch, the fibre rolled in a ball to use later as string. The canoe bark comes from a stringybark tree. He places a log against the tree and, despite his age, he is agile as he shimmies up with bare legs that grip each side of the trunk. It is almost unbearable for Mary to watch because this is so much like her father.
The man has a rope slung around his hips and the tree, and he edges it up to support his weight. In his belt is a waibala axe; it is sharper than his stone mugu. He notches the tree trunk, climbing until he is as high as three men, then carefully hacks at the tree, digging a knife into the space between bark and wood. The sap oozes as he pries the thick covering away. He shimmies back down and makes another axe cut around the base. Further hacking and he has split the bark sheath down the middle. He grins at her then leaps down to take hold of a suitable stick to pry the bark from the tree. There is much grunting and then the tree is naked.
Mary runs her hand over the pale yellow wood – it is smooth as skin. She mourns the death of this tree but this thick sheath of bark will become her canoe. She helps the man lay it on a big smoky fire and they drag logs and stones to place on the stretching bark. The heat and weight will make the shape right for a vessel. It flattens in the steam and, after a long time, she can see the boat emerge from the curved bark.
The sun has risen high in the sky and around them the sound of axes rings through the remaining forest. Her friend shapes the ends of the canoe by cutting them into wedges and bending each one. He uses thick woven twine to tighten the ends then he examines the boat for holes and uses fern tree resin heated in the fire to fill any cracks. He smooths the bark with his knife.
They wait several days for the bark to harden and the canoe is nearly finished; he motions to Mary. They carry it to the river where he tests the craft and she can feel a rising happiness. This canoe means freedom. He sits lightly in the middle, balanced and comfortable on a pile of paperbark. He demonstrates the new paddle of sticks tied together and laughs out loud as the boat flies across the inlet. He waves at her and for a terrible moment she thinks he will keep rowing and it has all been an awful prank. But no, here he comes. A bursting smile and he leaps out and helps Mary to sit her pregnant form onto the finely balanced seat.
The first canoe journey is along a narrow creek, where she sees trees scarred from the marks of cobrah worm hunting. She collects the young mangrove fruit to steam on a fire and eat. She collects geebung from the nearby bush, and the berry fruit fills her mouth with sweetness. A pile of sarsaparilla leaves lies on a possum skin in the canoe; she will make a tea from these to soothe her belly. The tranquil water is soothing and she sings in the sunlight to her unborn child.
When the baby is ready to be born, Mary takes refuge in a Burruberongal camp along the river at Eastern Creek. The women know Mary as a cousin and they huddle around her and build a fire to warm the birthing possum rugs. After a quick labour, her baby is born. Mary is alive with joy. The boy baby is pale, a yella fella baby, gurng. The women cluck and touch his little face and wash him with eucalypt leaves and whisper his totem, wibbung, the magpie. He brings his love to all of the women, so they take turns to hold him above the warm ashes and rub him with goanna oil. They massage the tiny human and hand him to Mary to nurse. She feels such joy in this new life as his eyes meet hers. Mary swears to herself that no-one will ever take him from her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
1838: FROM WISEMAN'S FERRY TO GENTLEMAN'S HALT
The office of the Protector of Aborigines is established after a recommendation in the report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes. The Protector would be required to learn Aboriginal languages and their duties would require them to watch over the rights of Aborigines, guard against encroachment on their property and protect them from acts of cruelty, oppression and injustice.
…
Mary finds a job with a kind employer – Colin, a quiet farmer who treats her well. In return she cooks and cleans for him. The farm grows corn and wheat and Mary cooks loaves from fresh ground flour that is milled with a horse to turn the grinder. The kitchen becomes her domain and she turns out plum puddings, but with no currants, and gingerbread. She learns to sew dresses from satinette and cassimere and decorates them with jet buttons. The farmer sells all these items in the market in Portland.
The farmer tells her about an abandoned house, Gentleman’s Halt, up the river towards the town of Spencer. When her son Wibbung – or Timothy, who is named after his French father – is three years old, Mary decides to move on to find this house along the Deerubbin. Colin built the house himself and has no further need of it. He draws a mud map for her and when she asks if she will be safe, he nods his head.
Early one morning, she and Timothy wave goodbye to the farming families who have sheltered them, and she pushes her canoe onto the river. The water is not so deep or dark and has reeds growing along the bank. Cormorants dry their wings on branches and the sun is dappled on the water. She has a bundle of blankets, her violin, some coins that she has saved, a bag of flour, tea and sugar.
Even though the saltwater is shallow, the river becomes fast flowing and she has trouble paddling. Her son sits in the middle on the pile of paperbark as she fears sharks. The bark twists and lurches to one side, and water dribbles into the bottom.
The river becomes deep and treacherous in places but there is still a singing beauty as a mist rises in the early morning. Diving grey cranes swish before her, ducking under the green waves and rising with wriggling fish in their beaks.
Mary paddles down a narrow stretch of river and sees the place where it splits in two. The Colo River on her left has a thin strip of settler shacks, corn growing and sheep grazing. She will not go there as it has a reputation for wildness and the stealing of black and white women. She chooses Deerubbin, her mother river.
Soon a distant sound of roc
ks splitting and explosions of dynamite tell her she is close to a settlement. The steep red and yellow sandstone cliffs tower over her with huge ghost gum trees and thick bush. She continues towards Wiseman’s Ferry where the convict road, the Great North Road, has been recently built. Perhaps she will find work in the nearby inn.
Wiseman’s Ferry is a large raft where loads of flour are winched across the river by a metal wheel driven by a horse. The old ferryman and innkeeper is Solomon Wiseman. His inn is called The Sign of the Packet; he is an ex-convict and lighterman from the Thames in London.
Along the riverbank, the convict road workers are dressed in torn, dirty shirts, their skins tanned from the sun and hunger etched on their faces.
Mary ties her canoe to a tree and walks up to the thin, well-dressed Wiseman who is operating the metal wheel of the ferry. Mary puts Timmy on her hip, and tightly binds him in her possum cloak as she gathers courage to speak to the ferryman.
‘Sir, do you have work at your inn for a woman who can read and write? I do laundry and sew as well,’ she asks.
He looks her up and down and notes that she is golden skinned and very handsome.
‘I have no work for such as you, sorry, lass. You would not wish to work for me anyway, it is punishing hard work. It killed my first wife, who died of natural causes, or unnatural, depending on your point of view,’ says Wiseman and he chuckles. He collects a toll from the driver of a cart, then turns back to Mary. He winks as he pockets the coin with a look of deep satisfaction and then leans down to a wooden crate. He holds up a bag of salted meat and waves it at her.
‘Salt beef. Want to buy some? A penn’orth?’ he asks.
Mary watches his movements closely. She has heard the stories about this powerful, shrewd man from people down river. He has been known in years past to threaten ticket-of-leavers if they did not accept more of his meat with which to serve the convict gangs who worked on the Great North Road to Wollombi. Wiseman rubs his hands together. He views Mary, an unprotected woman, as a possible source of profit. Mary nods and takes the bag of salt beef and pays him with a handful of British farthings; he counts the copper coins. He notices she has a silver shilling in her bag.
‘You got a shilling there; what else you need?’
‘I will keep that,’ she says and Mary tucks the money into her skirt.
He hands her a bag of wild lemons and a sugar stick of boiled lolly.
‘Take a lolly for your child, and we have a surplus of wild lemons. No cost. I suggest that you go on quickly as this place is no good for pretty women like you. The desperate men hereabout might fuck you,’ grins Wiseman.
The convicts who are unloading the bags of flour whoop and call out to her. They are not accustomed to seeing lone females on the river. Mary sees no malice in them and feels only compassion. They are in leg irons and chains, covered in sores and she watches the overseer walking towards the cringing, starving men with his cat-o’-nine-tails flicking in his hand.
Up the bank, a few staggering drunks walk back from the inn. They call out to her. They yahoo and offer crude gestures. They would like to grab her.
Mangroves grow thick around the riverbank and Mary drags her canoe quickly into the water. She must escape this place.
But even in the water she is not safe. Two drunken men in a fishing boat wave at her. The yellow-haired one grins at her like a devil. He puts up a sail and heaves to. He is going to chase her. She paddles furiously to get out of the channel but the tide is stronger than her paddling. She criss-crosses to a tiny rivulet in the mangroves. The fishermen laugh at this good sport but, to her relief, Wiseman calls out for them to leave her alone but they ignore him.
‘Hey, girly, you better paddle fast because we are going to catch you and rape you!’ the drunk shouts.
The drunks lean over the side of their boat but Mary keeps paddling with an occasional turn of her head to make sure her little boy has not fallen out. She pants and her chest heaves with sweat and fear. Timmy is giggling at the speed of the canoe. The men are closer now, sideways and grinning, like fools.
Suddenly the wind changes and the men are blown off course, and are now struggling to keep up with her. They end up tangled in mangroves while Mary skims across the river and is way ahead of them.
‘Alright, koochoo, good boy, hold on,’ she says.
The oysters are thick on the small rocks. Mary rows by a section of the river too narrow for the chasing sail boat. She can hear the men howling with regret as she paddles faster into the shadow of the mangroves – her shelter.
She pulls up on the muddy bank and tugs the canoe up the black slime. Soldier crabs scuttle around. She ties up the canoe with the stringybark rope. The ground is black stinking slush but it feels safe and she hopes they won’t find her amongst this stench. For many hours she can hear them searching the rivulets. She huddles with Timmy in her arms in quiet terror.
‘Hush, you must be very quiet Timmy, or Mummy will be hurt by bad mens,’ whispers Mary.
Hours pass and Mary gathers fat oysters by chipping them off the rocks with a piece of silcrete stone. She pops them into Timmy’s little mouth. He laughs, little hands clapping. Then she digs cobrah mangrove worms for him from the mangrove branches with an axe. He knows nothing but what his mother feels, his eyes upon her searching for clues about her mood. He asks endless questions. She loves him so very much.
‘We going for corn? We going for swim?’ asks Timmy.
‘Yes, we’ll get corn to cook,’ says Mary, ‘Now, nyannungai? Who owns this?’ She asks him and holds up his small fishing line.
‘Timmy’s,’ he laughs and grabs it. ‘Me kurung.’
‘Yes, a little boy.’
The shadows grow in the cool afternoon. From their mangrove sanctuary, they can see grey herons on the bank and spoonbills scooping up water. They climb onto a firm bank and the crabs scuttle in armies of grey helmets and Timmy runs after them laughing. Mary can let him laugh now; surely the men have given up hope of catching her. There is no sound of men on the river.
She shows Timmy the curved grass nest of a satin bower bird with its collection of blue shells and some small bones. Mary picks one bone up then quickly drops it. This death bird has collected a human finger bone – a bad omen.
They sleep in the canoe under the possum skin on the darkest of nights. Mary stirs under a thick fog of grey dreams. She is floating in deep water, swirling with pulsing eddies, then her eyelids flutter and she is awake. The canoe is drifting and she leans back on the flimsy bark to gaze at the night sky. Her breath slows. In amongst the mangroves she can hear creatures all around her scuffling for food. Crabs and eels most probably, not men, so she can breathe again and not be torn by fears.
The dawn breaks. Pink glowing light and birdsong trickle across the creek. Her back aches. She washes her face in the water – time to give Timmy her breast and the last of the damper. She holds him close, murmuring, ‘Coo coo, my baby, not far now.’
A day later, they come to a tumbled-down grand two-storey sandstone house on the edge of the Deerubbin. This is the secret house of the farmer friend. Its name is written on a board, ‘Gentleman’s Halt’, and there is an abandoned convict-built road at the back of the dwelling. She camps in the house and find beds, pots and the remnants of a garden. In the darkness she hears a python in the roof but it slithers away. She finds a supply of dried beans and weevilly flour in wooden tubs. She marvels at the wide verandahs, wooden shuttered windows and high ceilings. There are orange trees heavy with fruit, a jetty and countless oysters, birds and kangaroos. The view from upstairs is of the wide arc of the green river and mangroves. She sucks an orange and peels another for Timmy. Pelicans and cormorants entertain the child.
Weeks pass into months and Mary collects plump blackberries to make syrup and uses the meagre supplies of flour to make a kind of sod pudding cooked in the camp oven on the fire in the main room. Her arms are criss crossed with scratches from the briars. The spring near the house has f
resh water and Timmy laughs when he is bathed by the fire in a tub.
Mary tends the corn field in its ruin from kangaroos. She builds a fence from twigs and erects clattering tins on string to warn her when they try to steal corn.
As each day cools, she drags a bucket of water to drip on the new corn shoots and cabbages. Each tiny plant is a joy. On her walk back to the house, she is alarmed to see the door ajar and the sound of someone breaking sticks inside. Panic rises in her chest. Can it be a runaway convict who will harm her?
Mary motions for Timmy to get down and be quiet, and they crawl to the door. To her astonishment, her old friend Mercy is standing in the kitchen, grinning. It is pure joy to behold her because it has been six years since they were together at Masters’ house. Mercy had heard rumours of this abandoned house and followed the gossiping upriver to find her friend. Mary had spent many hours thinking about Mercy; now her laughter fills the room and the bright face glows. She is mature and beautiful with curls piled on her head, with a white scarf and a necklace of silver abalone shells and knitted grass around her neck. Timmy is shy and peeks out at her from behind his mother. Mercy tickles him and chases him around the kitchen in a game of hide and seek.
‘Where you get that little naoi rowboat?’ asks Mary, as Mercy settles into an armchair, patting the seat while looking at the uncomfortable surroundings. Mercy picks up a filthy cushion and sniffs it and throws it to the floor.
‘You got a cover for that?’
She unties a bundle of food.
‘I barter for a watch chain. Don’t ask about that. I here with you and koochoo baby. No worry,’ says Mercy. ‘I got presents for you and the little fella. I got new clothes and flour, tea, sugar, dry beef and a fruit cake!’
‘You want stay with us? Be an aunty for my boy?
‘Lovely wungar boy. Call me aunty. It look like you got a good place here. Plenty fish. Nice chair, nice roof, nice fire, no waibala boss to shout at you. Nice. It’s pretty good. Reckon I stay for a bit?’ says Mercy. They hug and are happy to have each other, like sisters. No-one wants to be alone because loneliness can kill.
