Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  Bishoff, staring, exclaimed, ‘But that’s impossible!’

  ‘I suppose it is. But it’s the truth . . . and unless you face it, you can’t live amongst these people, except as a downright rogue or hypocrite. Even those few people truly sympathetic towards them think of them as lowly creatures to be raised to our own exalted way of life. You’ll find these good people mildly voicing the same objection to the blackfellow as drove the pioneers to destroy them in rage . . . that finally they’re useless, because they won’t give up their simple savage freedom, even if that amounts at last only to living like animals on the edge of the conquerors’ towns . . . in short, won’t join up with us as slaves to our own systems. What you’ll see of the blackfellow mostly will make you feel he’s pretty low. I’d like to put the idea into your mind that he’s like that because he never gave in . . . for all the bullying, the sheer brutality and the pretended brotherly love, he has never, never given in. That’s why I want to tell you the story of Bobwirridirridi. And speaking of the Pookarakka, the Wise One . . . I’ve a feeling we’ve got him with us.’

  Bishoff looked around. Nothing but silvery grass and posts and wires of the fence: ‘I don’t see anything.’

  Jeremy jerked his head towards the line of timber, went on to say, ‘If you looked long enough you’d see a lot of things. That’s what this country’s like where it hasn’t been defaced by our pale-faced brethren. I mean both real things and those that are unreal to the unknowing. This is a land of spirits. Don’t forget that it was divined as such even before found by the unbelievers. The mariners who dreamt of its existence called it Terra Australis del Espiritu Santo, South Land of the Holy Spirit, from which at last the lovely name Australia, South Land, came. You’ll have to make allowance for this magic quality to appreciate the story of the Pookarakka properly. I’ve inferred that magic is the be-all end-all of Aboriginal existence. Even those who appear to be husks of men to you, the Bloody Nutchings who’ve lost their Dreaming, as the blackfellow who still has his would call them, see everything as magic, even the bottle of grog he gets for selling his wife, or the stick of Niki-niki, trade tobacco, he’ll beg for without shame.’

  Jeremy paused to clear his throat: ‘Not used to so much talk-talk.’

  ‘They told me that I’d be lucky if you talked to me at all . . . and just as unlucky if you did.’

  ‘Oh? I haven’t heard that one. They mean you’d regret it, because then I’d bash your ear?’

  ‘Something like that. But please go on. I find everything you say quite fascinating. It gives a new slant to things I’d taken for granted.’

  ‘Well . . . the early settlers over in that Princess Alice Country were left to settle their differences with the blacks their own way. The police kept out of it. It might have proved to be the best way in the end. Let everybody concerned get over their fear of each other . . . and then the traditional woman-lending starts. You’re bound, as a blackfellow, to lend your women to a trusted stranger who has none. The boss’s bed could have been the foundation of harmony . . . and a new society. The trouble was there were the whitewomen to reckon with. Eventually they’d come looking for their men, find them Gin Jockeying, as they say, empty out their black rivals . . . and call in the police at any show of resentment. That’s how the country was settled, man . . . settled and civilised. You’ve run into Piggy Trotters, I suppose? Well, he’s Vaiseys manager at Alice River Downs. He pioneered that country. That halfcaste girl there, Ah Loy’s wife, the little boy’s mother, is a daughter of his. Not that Piggy would admit anything of the sort . . . or could if he would, with his squattocratic wife and daughters.’ Jeremy chuckled.

  He went on: ‘Vaiseys took over the Princess Alice Country. The white ladies moved in. Soon the troopers arrived. As it was Vaisey cattle that were being speared now, and Lord Alfred had no idea of the old settlers’ tolerance of it as a sort of tacit allowance for spoiling the hunting-grounds, Dispersal started. That was the official name for driving the tribes off their country. I understand they started off in a big way . . a punitive expedition . . . a dozen police officers, half of them white, the rest black. The black ones did the actual man-hunting. The blackman would never have been so easily beaten, but for the treachery of his brethren. That treachery is hard to understand. The black policeman doesn’t even get decently treated by his masters. He has no status, wears his master’s cast-off uniforms, even gets only half the pay the regulations demand for other Aboriginal workers . . . that’s to say, twenty shillings a month plus food and clothing. You have to understand that a blackfellow’s loyalty, like everything else in his behaviour, is governed by the Relationship Laws, which have nothing to do with law as we know it, of course, but are based solely on mystic tradition.

  ‘Well, it’s rough country out there . . . and it took months to round up enough of the local tribesmen to ensure Detribalisation, as it’s called. In the end they were forced to abandon it, beaten by Wet Season. They were coming in starving, all of them, heading for the big new homestead, when just short of it they came on what had been the homestead in the old days. They looked in the hope of finding a bit of food . . . found a sack of flour. Nothing exactly is known of what happened. What is known is only what was told by Bobwirridirridi . . . or Tipperary, as for some odd reason he was called at that time. He became Cock-Eye Bob, or Bob the Big-Wind Man, only after his supernatural powers were recognised through this affair . . . that is by the blacks. Officially he was declared insane.

  ‘Undoubtedly that flour was spiced with arsenic. It was an old trick of the grand old pioneers, the founders of our glorious young nation, to get rid of their pesky rivals for the land by leaving poisoned food about for them, as for the dingoes. Normally such a bag as was got on that occasion would have been bragged about. But, of course, half a dozen white policemen were included in it. It’s generally believed that Piggy Trotters was responsible, and that’s what’s made of him the drunk he is. It wasn’t till six months later that any trace of the party was found. First they found Bob wandering about as a living skeleton, claiming that he had wiped out the party himself. His story was that Tchamala, the Rainbow Snake, cut him out from the party, took him away up into the sky to where he lives, in that hole in the Milky Way we call the Coal Sack, and there gave him the powers of Boss Snake Man, and sent him back to earth as a python to swallow the party, police, prisoners and all. This he claimed to have done, and later to have vomited their bones and planted them in termites’ nests. He took the search party and showed them these nests . . . and sure enough there were human bones in some. Termites do consume flesh and bone, and sometimes will build a new nest on top of the remains of some creature. In fact, an Aboriginal way to conceal a murder is to place the body in an antbed. The bones of the party would have been widely scattered by predatory and scavenging creatures. How much arsenic was found officially lord knows. Because it was Vaisey business, apparently it was glossed over by the Coroner, with a verdict of Misadventure. But no doubt about it, old Bob was a victim of arsenical poisoning. He was never able to eat solid food again. His diet in the bush was mainly pijak, or sugar-bag, the honey of native bees, for preference along with the larvae, and leaf-sugar, a kind of manna, and even crushed termites. He spent a couple of years up in town, in hospital or the Native Compound, feeding on bread and milk and soup. He used to go into those trances I was talking about, and claim afterwards that he’d been visiting his Country On Top, that is up with his Master, Tchamala, behind the Milky Way. I understand he used to howl for his celestial country much the same as an ordinary blackfellow does for his native haunts when away from them and feeling the deep nostalgia they often do . . . Poor Fellow My Country!’

  They were cutting across to the creek timber beyond which was that rocky bar at the end of the long waterhole. Bishoff hissed, ‘Thought I saw something over in the trees there.’

  ‘That’s the likely route he’d’ve taken.

  ‘But to cover that distance so quickly . . . across to the
creek and then along!’

  ‘He’s supposed to be able to fly. Don’t forget his proper country now is On Top.’

  There was fluttering and faint scuffling as they neared the timber. Further back a Willy wagtail could be heard faintly. Jeremy said, ‘Everything’s abroad tonight under the influence of old Igulgul, the Moon . . . except our black brethren, who even without a koornung round would be loth to take chances with the magic that’s about . . . and my two sons, who prefer acetylene to moonlight anytime. You can’t do justice to a store catalogue or a copy of Man magazine out in the moonlight.’

  They passed through the timber in silence, listening to the squeaking, twittering, pattering, emerged to see the bar reared dark with the shadows of its unevenness against the blaze of the moonlit sand beyond. Bishoff hissed again, pointing, ‘Look!’

  Jeremy pulled his arm down, murmuring, ‘Don’t point with the finger. It’s dangerous. You project a part of yourself at what you point. This’s how you indicate things in these parts.’ He protruded his lips towards an indistinct form that appeared in the middle of the bar and as quickly disappeared. They went on down to the bar, set out across. Bishoff, soon peering from side to side, said, ‘We’ve just got to find him this time.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just to see how smart he is.’

  ‘You won’t find him unless he wants you to.’

  ‘You sound as if you credit him with special powers.’

  ‘I told you that to live with these people without guilt or hatred you have to accept them as if one of them. If you question at all, it should be only to add to the richness of their complexity and to involve yourself more in it.’

  Bishoff stopped his peeping into cracks and peeking after tracks in the sand below, sat down and stared at Jeremy: ‘You are a strange man, you know . . . for one trained as a scientist.’

  ‘I told you I was trained as a druggist, the nearest you could get to science in my day and environment . . .’

  ‘But you can buy and sell me scientifically, even though I’ve only been out of university three years . . .’

  ‘And I have a halfcaste Aboriginal wife.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it? I found her an intelligent gracious lady.’

  ‘Thank you. You’re the first white person I’ve ever heard say it. She is all that. But what she’s got to do with it is what I’m talking about. She’d rather have her finger cut off than point it, wouldn’t eat possum if she were starving, because it’s her totem and kin, wouldn’t doubt for a moment that our friend here didn’t come and go by magic. At the same time, because she was also mission-trained, she believes in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost . . .’

  ‘You don’t believe in that stuff, though!’

  ‘Definitely not. But I wouldn’t interfere with anyone else’s belief in it . . . unless they tried to shove it down my neck, as the missionaries do down the necks of the Aborigines, saying, Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods But Ours.’

  ‘I’d’ve thought your rejection of Christianity would make you reject all religion.’

  ‘You mean sects, I presume. Properly Religion means having reverence for a divine conception. I can’t think that a man can live fully without revering the marvel of the nature of things. Just take a look at what we see . . . that silver mirror that isn’t a mirror at all, but a quantity of the stuff the likes of us call H2O, a combination of two gases through heat . . . now teaming with fishes, weeds, a myriad things all living complexly . . . and the trees above and masses of other forms of life . . . and the sky above that . . . the Moon . . . the Milky Way with the Coal Sack . . . and who’ll dare say Old Tchamala isn’t peeping out of it to see where there’s trouble he can make . . . which brings us back to our story about my old friend, the Pookarakka, that one I got plenty bread and milk for.’

  No response. Jeremy said, ‘It’s embarrassing talking of present company, even if it can’t be seen or heard. Let’s get going back, eh, and have a drink. The boys ought’ve settled their difference by now.’

  As they climbed back up to the timber, there was plainly movement of something like a human figure in its dappled shade. Bishoff muttered, ‘Now, how the hell’d he do it?’

  ‘Why not give him the credit of special powers . . . even if they’re tricks like Houdini’s? They do have special powers. I’ve known blacks tell when a man would die, almost to the minute, by Sun or Moon. I’ve checked with sticks, asking where the shadow would be. I’ve known ’em to tell of something happening a hundred miles away in a place and to people they haven’t seen in months . . . and sure enough, the news turns up eventually. They customarily follow the fortunes of absent relatives through bodily sensations . . . itches, aches, numbness . . . each part of the body being representative. For instance, the right shoulder represents one’s closest father, actually the man most likely to be your real father. An ache in that will cause you to say, “Belong ’o me Daddy sick, I reckon. Better I go look-see.” You can just about bet it’s right.’

  As they went through the timber, Jeremy said, ‘We’ll follow the track close to the creek this time, to get a better view of things. But I wouldn’t mind betting the next we’ll see of him will be back at the water-tanks.’ He went on: ‘But I’d better finish the story about him . . . that is as far as it goes . . . because I have a feeling there’s going to be an awful lot more, now he’s back in circulation. Now, where was I? He was sick in town, yes. Then he vanished completely. The native supposition was that he had gone back On Top, to join Tchamala . . . and good riddance. Now, I’d best give you some idea of this Rainbow Snake Business. Not that I know a lot about it. Nobody I ever struck ever did . . . white that is. I’ve spoken to Anthropologists who’ve worked round here, who say there’s no such cult at all, that it’s only a racket worked by smart individuals to cause fear and hence get power. My own idea is that it’s something very ancient that keeps waxing and waning in power. I suppose you know that Aboriginal beliefs are exasperatingly diverse. This is due, I think, to natural constant change in interpretation through the generations, and stiff rivalry between tribes . . . really language groups. There were supposed to be no less than five hundred of these groups in the Continent at the time of the coming of the kuttabak, the whiteman. Although they’re great traders, in anything, from women to songs and legends, their trade contacts followed certain patterns that I’d say were dictated by economic history. What I mean is, because certain tribes could benefit from the economy of certain other ones, they’d make friends of these and enemies of others, and over a vast stretch of country would have cultural exchange, while quite close no contact at all, except say in battle. Thus you can find an elaborate system of, say, Young-man Making, initiation, cutting almost from Indian Ocean to Pacific, while from North to South, say, there’ll be a band where the practice is entirely different. But I’m getting too complicated, perhaps. Let me say simply that much of what is ceremonial is unexplained. Even the words of the great chants are not understood. They are spoken just as the actions are made. Yet the purpose is quite clear to the actors.

  ‘Only for the fact that you must always be on the lookout for the complexity in these allegedly simple people, speaking of these northern parts, where over say a million square miles there are a hundred languages, most still spoken, and half a dozen cultural systems that can be said to be distinct, you might say that the basic belief, even if much overlain with innovations, is that everything had its origin with the coming of the Earth Mother, called in these parts Koonapippi, while over in the West, Bobwirridirridi’s country, Kurrawaddi — and other names elsewhere, all sacred, not to be taken in vain. Apparently the name means, although not in current lingo, old woman, or rather, very old woman, which the blacks translate as Ol’Goomun-Ol’Goomun. Curiously, the Sun is supposed to be the old woman in the perpetual celestial existence to which the Dream Time heroes were translated, yet is not spoken of with any sort of reverence that I know of in that form. Perhaps the very o
bvious fact that the Sun is all-powerful in itself is enough. There is the Sun . . . there is the eternal one, as it were. It’s only curious in that most else concerned with Koonapippi or Kurrawaddi is so damned sacred that the slightest sacrilege invites the direst punishment . . . even death.’

  They were following a pad along the line of timber.

  ‘Anyway, the Ol’Goomun-Ol’Goomun came out of the sea on the northern coast. She had with her a dilly-bag containing the Shades, or spirits, or souls . . . Shades is the blackfellow word . . . of all the creatures, animal and vegetable, that were eventually to stock the land, a magic wand with which she created the essentials of the landscape, and which spoke her bidding in its own voice . . . this is represented by the bullroarer used in sacred ceremonies . . . and a string made of stars for playing cat’s cradle. You know the game children play . . . all children, or at least in my time . . . working string into designs for others to guess? The difference was that the old woman’s cat’s cradle was no mere guessing game, but the means by which the law of relationship is worked out. Aboriginal children are still taught their social responsibilities with cat’s cradle. They become very skilled in it. In fact it serves as a means of communication . . . particularly in secret.

  ‘Do you know the stars . . . the constellations . . . the main ones, anyway . . . Orion? Good. It’s the wrong time of year, or rather of night, to see the old woman in her night attire with all her gear. But to the blacks she is the Pleiades . . . Seven Sisters, so-called by us. Tiny as that little cloud of stars is, it just fits the picture with the rest thrown in. She comes up dragging behind her the Dilly-bag, which is roughly the triangle we call Taurus. Then further back and southward trails the wonder of the Cat’s Cradle . . . Orion, in all his blazing splendour. Beautiful, isn’t it? Equal to anything the Greeks created . . . and so much more appropriate for the southern sky. And, yes . . . I forgot . . . Something the Greeks had in common with all this . . . Sirius, the Dog Star. That’s Wanjin the Dingo, the only creature she brought with her in the flesh. Strange that they should have made this distinction . . . when the dingo is the one terrestial animal in all the myriad forms of life in Australia that’s not strictly indigenous. The songs of the Dream Time, the Kudijingah, tell of how he came out of the sea at her heels, shook himself, cocked his leg and piddled. She brought Wanjin as companion and scout. He turned out to be mostly a nuisance . . . as indeed his descendants have remained to this day . . . too smart even for Alfred Vaisey, the new Lord of the Land.’