Mary’s heart went out to her.
‘Peter, you beast! She wants her baby.’
She tried to hand the cub back; but its tiny claws were hooked tight on to her dress. The thin material, already rent and worn, gave way. There was a long ripping tear. The dress slid to her feet. The koala sobbed and moaned.
A week ago nothing more calamitous could have happened to the girl. But now, after her initial shock, she felt strangely unembarrassed: more concerned with the cub than with her nakedness. Kicking the remnants of her dress aside, she bent down and very gently returned the baby to its mother’s back. Instantly the sobbing ceased. The mother koala looked round, blinked her eyes, licked her cub, climbed down the last three feet of trunk, and waddled off to another eucalyptus.
‘Poor thing 1’ Mary said. ‘You oughta known better, Pete.’
When, after a fashion, the reed hut had been completed, the children moved on. Mary would have been happy to stay; but Peter was eager to explore the rest of the valley.
That evening they came to a bend in the lagoon, and rounding this, saw ahead of them the valley-end: a sheer precipice of granite, and at its base a dark tunnel out of which an underground river flowed in a smooth pouring torrent. About a mile from the end of the valley the river broadened out, forming a shallow reed-fringed lake, three-quarters of a mile across.
Here the children made camp beside the water’s edge. They camped early, close to a patch of pink-tinted pipe-clay, agreeing to explore the precipice the following morning. Well before sundown they were eating rose hips and bauble nuts beside a blazing fire.
Then Peter discovered the clay. Discovered that, when moistened, it could be used for drawing; for drawing faces on the smooth lakeside rocks. He called Mary, and together brother and sister experimented with pieces of moistened clay. They found that it drew like chalk on a blackboard; and soon the lakeside rocks were covered with drawings: crude but evocative drawings: drawings that would have been a psychologist’s delight.
After a few experimental dabs and smudges, the children settled down to their respective works of art. Peter drew koalas, lizards, and Jesus-birds: symbols of the new life. But Mary drew girls’ faces framed with glamorous hair styles, dress designs that might have come out of Vogue, and strings of jewels like the Fifth Avenue advertisements: symbols of the life that was past. And after a while she drew something else: something even more revealing: a house. A simple outline: one door; one window; one chimney; one pathway lined with flowers. Symbol of subconscious hopes and nightly dreams.
The sun dipped under the rim of the hills. The children left their drawings; they stretched out, side by side, in front of the fire. Darkness on velvet wings came flooding into the valley.
‘Coo-ee, coo-ee!’ sang the brain-fever bird. Over and over again.
Down by the lake a bittern moo-ed among the reeds. A crescent moon lifted clear of the hills. The valley slept.
Next morning they smoothed out the ash of their fire. They were just starting off to explore the head of the valley when they saw the smoke. A thin spiral of wood-smoke, pencilling the skyline above the opposite shore of the lake.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE smoke rose lazily: a slender, blue-grey column, pencil straight. For a long time the children looked at it in silence.
Suddenly the column broke, changed to a succession of puffs: in sequences of three; one large, one medium, one small.
‘They’re signalling, Pete.’
‘Yes.’
The boy looked first at the smoke then at his sister; he saw that her eyes were shining, her lips parted. In the ashes he traced a pattern with the toe of his foot.
‘You reckon we oughta answer ?’
She nodded, silently, with eyes for nothing but the smoke.
They raked over the ash, pushed in kindling wood, and soon there rose from beside the bed of pipe-day an answering column of bluish-grey, a misty spear stabbing the azure sky.
‘Fetch a branch, Mary. A big ’un, with lots of leaves.’
The girl knew what was wanted: something light enough to lift, but bulky enough to block off the smoke. Soon their column too was broken into a sequence of irregular puffs.
While the boy signalled, the girl watched; watched the farther shore of the lake. Suddenly she saw movement. She strained her eyes; but the figures she had momentarily caught sight of merged chameleon-like into the background of lush-growing reeds. For a while everything was very still. Then the figures appeared again; three ill-defined pin-points leaving the column of wood-smoke, coming down to the lagoon. The sunlight glinted on three fountains of spray, as the strangers dived into the lake. A second later three arrow-heads of white were moving slowly towards them across the sunlit water.
‘They’re coming, Pete.’
The boy left the fire. Came and stood by his sister. Saw she was trembling. Took her hand.
‘Don’t worry, Mary. I’ll look after you.’
She squeezed his hand: gratefully.
‘You reckon they’re white men, Pete? Or black, like the darkie?’
The children strained their eyes as the swimmers came steadily nearer. They swam in single file; and it seemed to Peter that their heads were black and abnormally large.
‘I reckon they’re darkies, Mary. Darkies with big heads!’
The girl nodded; she’d come to the same conclusion herself. She had expected to be terrified at the thought of herself being naked and the strangers being black; yet now that the fact of their blackness had to be faced up to, she realized – unexpectedly – that she wasn’t nearly as frightened as if they’d been white! Holding Peter’s hand, she stood at the edge of the water, waiting.
The swimmers came splashing into the shallows. Now that they were nearer, the children could solve the mystery of the size of their heads: they were carrying bundles.
The first swimmer was a full-grown male; and perched athwart his shoulders was a piccaninny, a baby three-year-old, his fingers clutching his father’s hair.
The second swimmer was an adult female: a smiling, broad-faced gin. Her bundle was a young warrigal: a half-grown dingo pup, its body draped round the back of her neck.
The third and last swimmer was a young lubra, round about Mary’s age; strapped to the top of her head was a yam-laden dilly-bag.
The man grounded his feet. He waded out of the water and set the piccaninny down. He was a tall man: straight as a lath: sinuous from head to toe. His hair was straight and jet black, his chest was cicatrized with a V-shaped, shoulder-to-shoulder weal, and he was quite naked. The women followed him, the water glistening on their skin like black pearls. The gin was well-formed, almost buxom; the girl, like Mary, slim, supple, and lithe.
The man’s eyes were curious. He addressed himself to Peter.
‘Worum gala?’
His voice was deep, yet strangely soft and lilting; like the bush boy’s, only several octaves lower.
While Peter floundered into conversation, the women turned their attention to Mary.
Deeds speak louder than words; and the young black girl and the white quickly came to an understanding. The lubra opened up her dilly-bag, and offered Mary a yam. The gift was accepted, and a handful of bauble nuts offered in return. The gin nodded and smiled, and a few moments later understanding turned to something deeper, when the piccaninny – realizing he had missed a share-out of food – started to cry, and Mary picked him up. He stopped instantly, and started to play with her hair: with her long golden hair that hung almost down to her waist.
And as the piccaninny cemented friendship between white girl and black, so the warrigal – the dingo pup – served as a link between man and boy. For Peter loved dogs. The warrigal reminded him of his basenji way back in Charleston. He listened to the black-fellow man with only half his attention; his eyes were on the dog. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he went scampering off – the sight of the warrigal worrying a sycamore branch was too great a temptation. In a moment boy and dog were joined in
playful combat, splashing together in clouds of spray through the shallows of the lagoon.
For a moment the black-fellow man blinked in surprise. Then he laughed. He saw that the womenfolk were happily sharing food, and lay down among the rocks.
After a while he saw the children’s drawings.
He looked at them casually at first, noting the crude inaccuracies of Peter’s koalas and lizards; then his eyes passed to the girl’s pictures. He sat up then, intrigued. He squinted at the hair styles, seeking in them some clue as to the strangers’ race or tribe. He got up and walked slowly down the line of drawings, peering closely at each. And at last, at the very end, he came to the house: to Mary’s dream house: one door; one window; one chimney; one pathway lined with flowers.
‘Awhee! Awhee!’
He sucked in his lips.
The gin came across; quickly; and together they peered at the dream house. After a while Mary, still carrying the piccaninny, joined them. They looked first at her then at the house.
‘Awhee! Awhee!’
The gin’s voice was filled with curiosity, almost with awe. She spoke quickly, excitedly, pointing first to the dream house then to the hills on the far side of the valley. Quite suddenly Mary got the gist of what she was saying. Hope surged within her. Over the hills was a house. Not just a hut such as natives lived in, but a house like the one she had drawn: a white man’s house: a first stepping-stone on the long, long trail that would, one wonderful and longed-for day, lead them back to home.
‘Where? Oh, where?’
Her eagerness was something the Aboriginals could understand.
The black man’s eyes were sympathetic. Gently he took the girl by the hand and led her down to the sand beside the lagoon.
Peter, seeing them talking so earnestly, left the warrigal and came and stood beside his sister.
He saw the black man point first to a valley looping aslant the hills like a tired snake. The black man mimed the climb of the valley: his feet rising, his knees sagging. At the top he indicated that the children should sleep. He lay down on the sand and snored. The gin giggled. Then, with the point of a yacca branch, he traced a line heading east, into the rising sun. After a while the line broke, and with a couple of curves the black man indicated a hill. Then, beyond the hill, the line went on. Soon came another, lower hill; and here, the black man indicated, there was water; he drew a circle, pointed to the lagoon, and lapped like a dog. He also indicated food: yams: he drew them beside the hill and champed his teeth. And here too he indicated sleep: again the lying down, again the snoring. The children nodded. Next day the line continued east, towards another, higher hill. And here, at the base of the hill, it stopped. Ended at a house. The black man drew it: one door; one window; one chimney; one pathway lined with flowers.
The children looked at each other. The gill’s eyes were like the stars of the Southern Cross.
‘Oh, Pete!’
She burst suddenly into tears.
Peter looked at the warrigal and the reeds and the red-gums and the glistening expanse of the lagoon, and knew in that moment that every detail of what he’d seen in the last two weeks he’d remember for the rest of his life. Then he walked slowly across to the fire and collected the last of their bauble nuts. He stood for a moment looking not at the others but up and down the sun-drenched valley; then he went across to the black-fellow man and held out his hand.
‘Good-bye!’ he said very formally.
The black man grinned and he too held out his hand.
Peter turned to the girl.
‘Come on, Mary’, he said. ‘Kurura.’
He led the way along the shore of the lake.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Walkabout
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Foot Notes
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Walkabout Page 9
