They went on, turned a corner, to come suddenly upon an inward curving stretch of overhangs practically all of which even at distance could be seen to be painted galleries. George said, ‘Tchineke Cave number-one,’ meaning that this was the chief centre of the Cult of Tchamala. Perhaps that seeming red river of painting, the serpentine coil which made the background of all such galleries and suggested that the country was bound by it from sea to sea, ended here at Aldinbinyah, The Head.
They entered the galleries. Scarcely an inch of paintable surface that was not painted, from ancient times by the look of some of the least accessible of it, but for the most part even recently. No doubt Bobwirridirridi had been here, of all places, during the brief spell of liberty he had enjoyed through the unwitting indulgence of the King of England. In fact there was his stencilled hand in every section to prove it, as George pointed out. But no tracks. No human tracks at all, only a few bird-prints and those of reptiles and wallabies and a single dingo. There were still no human tracks, because George and Prindy brush-tailed theirs away behind them. The fact that the wherewithal for painting was obviously to hand in each gallery, the pigments in the raw, brushes, grinders, and so much evidence of recent work, yet no trace of who had done it, added to the weirdness of it. Then there was that poom, poom, poom of the wind outside. George spoke in whispers.
There were depictions of the Wind Spirits here, fuzzy-edged circular shapes in various colours, with the usual features of representations of occult beings, the black rings of eyes connected by the loop of nose, but also having each a projection on the left-hand side, which may have been their mouths, since they were more than anything gossips and messengers. George told Prindy what they were, but had nothing to say about other paintings not the conventional ones concerned with the Cult. Perhaps these told something of the history of the Cult, evidence for such a supposition being in a pictograph showing a group of standing human male figures surrounding a prostrate female with arms and legs distorted at the joints and a large snake-like thing entering her exaggerated vulva. Since it had been touched up recently, it might well record the event in which Queeny Peg-leg had been concerned. George stared hard at it. Another that seemed to show a huge snake-mouth vomiting human figures and also recently dealt with could have told that tale of Bobwirridirridi’s first dealings with the Old One. There were others, some so old as to be scarcely visible. Since George said nothing of them and yet was so eager to relate the legends of the Cult, the history might have been regarded as something unmentionable, at least in ordinary terms. No ban on speaking of Cult Men, however. George told Prindy the names of others who’d confessed themselves by leaving their hand-prints behind, one of them Jinbul. And now Prindy had to leave his. White ochre was pounded in a crude mortar and wetted with water from the billy they had brought up stopped with paperbark. Then the paste was put in the mouth, more water added and the mixture worked on with tongue and cheeks. Then with the right hand spread against the red of the river of the Snake, the stuff was sprayed between and around the digits and down to the wrist.
They both did a little touching up in several galleries, recording the event each time with a stencil as signature. By now the morning was well advanced. George said they had better get along and bag a couple of brush-tails, one of which they must leave for the pythons of the place, else the Old One might be koolah. So they came out from the last of the galleries and the blue shadow cast by the head on that side, into a wild tumble of great rocks that came down like a mane from the back of the head, and beyond which, at a distance of some half a mile, began the flat eroded surface of that arm of the plateau.
They stayed amongst the rocks, listening to the Goondalaag, the Wind Spirits. George told Prindy to listen for directions, and sure enough, soon the boy was signalling a spot. They camped to await the appropriate time. It was easy. Out came the Marmaroo — Zip! Zip! They got one each. Prindy could offer his apologies only with silent movement of his lips: ‘Poor bugger!’
The one they would leave for their mates, the Goolgoolgabin, must first be singed, said George, to give the python who took it a good scent for finding it. They made a small fire and did the job, then hung the dead beast up by tied feet to a rocky projection under a ledge from which only a large rearing snake could take it down and carrion birds be scared to enter. Then with the other they set out to find a place to camp on water. Water did not look likely in that blazing wilderness of rock. It would be over the side, George said, and left it to Prindy to find it. So they followed the western rim. The Sun was fairly well down before Prindy saw and heard the signs, a cloud of little birds flitting about tree-tops down about a hundred feet. They went down.
There was no sign of the water, only the smell of it and the greenery. They had to rake away leaves to find it, as a tiny well between the buttressed roots of trees, so small as scarcely to get the hand into it. A series of the little wells went down the steep hill. They drank and filled their billy, then had to look for a spot where they could camp without the risk of rolling down the hill. It was pleasant in there, out of sunlight and wind. They found their place under a shelf of rock, settled down with a fire and a feed, and watched the Sun go down over the country they would soon be going through, the desert land of the unhappy Frog Men.
Meanwhile the unhappy pursuers, following the nose of their tireless little guide, had crossed the northern arm of the plateau and come face to face, as it were, with Aldinbinyah, which even without their knowing of its moah troubled them so much that, although thirsty and presuming from the bird life down in the gully that water was to be had there and also food and presuming as they did that the pursuit could not lead up that sheer wall yonder but must go straight westward out across what looked like flat country, scared them so that they dared go no further that evening than the plateau’s edge. The Head did not blaze an angry red for them with the sunset, but reared against the crimson sky, looked no less menacing for being purple. Queeny said of it, ‘When Bible God mek de world in six day, I don’ reckon he mek dat mountain. Satan mek dat-lot I reckon. No-goot place dis. No-goot all-away. Spone any goot, whiteman tek it.’ Nell looked at the peak with equal distrust, but gave her attention mostly to the view straight ahead, looking for smoke, which a couple of times she thought she saw. They huddled closer than ever during the long night, while Aldinbinyah winked at them with his endless stock of eyes.
While Aldinbinyah was still black against the last of the night sky, the pair went down with their dog, found the camp of yesterday night in the overhang, and were so hungry as to vie with Mungus for the half-picked wallaby bones, sandy and anty as they were. Then on down to the water, to dally there gorging the berries and hearts of palms small enough to strip by hand — while the red moah glared above them. They missed it all. Again they emerged from the rainforest, toiling up the steep, it was just a huge rock they saw, even though one frightening because it looked as if ready to drop on them like a giant hand and crush them. All the while, struggling, panting, they watched it, and sighed with relief when clear of it to the right, and again when free of the labour and on the level ground of the first overhangs. But then they turned that bend and saw the galleries, and stopped dead — those who were looking, not Mungus, who, free of the leash because of the difficulty of the going and seeing not with eyes but with nose, went sniffing on. The two women breathed together: ‘Eh, look out!’
Mungus went some little way, actually to the entrance to the first gallery, before realising that he was alone. Then he turned, and yapped. The women stood rigid with terror. Then he came trotting back, whimpering, seemingly afraid that he had done something wrong. They had been able to avoid looking at the other painted galleries they had seen on the other side of the plateau, and probably realised with some special faculty that they hadn’t mattered so much, anyway, as these.
Queeny breathed, ‘We can’t go dere.’
‘Wha’ we goin’ ’o do?’
They viewed the alternate route round through a
frightful heap of boulders, impossible for Queeny to have negotiated; or go right down to the bottom again and then climb back up when the fearsome region was by-passed. They debated it, talking of singing to Jesus to protect them as they went through, but lacked the faith. ‘Some-t’ing no-goot in dere, I know,’ said Queeny. ‘Jesus can beat anyt’ing, but not debil. Dat old debil Satan been beat’ Jesus Gardener Heden. I t’ink it Satan live in dere all right. Come on, we go down.’
The descent was nearly as laborious as the climb had been, made more difficult by Mungus’s dismay at being baulked, which he kept on expressing by refusing to budge and howling as he sat. The strange sound brought the birds around, amongst them some white cockatoos that made the caverns ring with their screeching. They were particularly worried because, as they were climbing up again, they smelt smoke, just a whiff, but unmistakable.
If only they had followed their own noses then they would have spared themselves a lot of labour and time and perhaps even a great deal more; unless, in the strange circumstances Chance could be utterly ruled out. For that smoke was from the still smouldering fire on which George and Prindy had cooked a late breakfast of brush-tail before going on downhill, finished with the plateau. It was no more than a hundred yards to the right of the women’s toilsome climb, that deserted camp. But for the smoke Mungus might have picked up the scent of his male friends, since the wind was blowing from there. Perhaps his nose was doing less at the moment than his memory urging him to get back to that point from which he had been snatched off the scent that had become the sole purpose of his life. He whimpered with impatience as Nell dragged on the leash to prevent his rushing madly to the top and betraying them. As if the cockatoos had not done that already to anyone on top.
Reaching the top, Mungus at once dragged them back towards the galleries, which because of the tumble of rock were not to be seen from here. They were alarmed again, but for no reason, as soon revealed by Mungus’s picking up the outcoming track of the men, and turning with it, to follow them over the course they had taken in their hunt, and so eventually to where the brush-tail had been left as a gesture to the pythons. If there were any pythons about, they were too well fed just then to have bothered with the gift. It still hung there, and not in any way to scare the hungry ones who viewed it now, because the tracks they knew so well were beneath it. The dead beast seemed to be quite fresh. Not more than half a dozen bluebottles were on it. The women did express wonder at why it had been hung like that, And for a moment looked about doubtfully. But hunger got the better of them. Queeny hooked it down with her crutch. They built up a fire on the spot where the wallaby had been smoked, and hacked the meat up with flints they had already gathered, and soon were gorging. Exhausted as well as replete with food they slept, slept long. The Sun was well down before they woke.
But this was no place to camp, even if they had time to tarry. They must have water. On they went again — and down, and found how close they had been to accomplishment of their mission. In fact they believed that the men must have been there when they passed, because the fire was only just dead when they reached it. Therefore, after drinking deeply and filling their can, they went on down. But night fell on them in dense forest. They had to stop. Still in sight of Aldinbinyah, who with ruddy countenance in the last light, seemed very definitely to be watching them.
George’s determination for that same day was to get through the forest country below the plateau, and travelling South of West, make camp on a waterhole he called Gubbindah Wiyan, which was on the stony edge of the Frog Country. It went to plan. With the Sun on the one horizon, and Aldinbinyah as a ruddy spot on the other, they came out of the thinning timber into a region of great pinkish grey slabs of rock that lay like giant’s paving, gently sloping to red infinity, it seemed. Mostly only small bushes and spinifex grew from the cracks; but here and there, standing starkly against the sunset, were so-called bottle-trees, Bamgulut. Water was obtainable from a bottle-tree, of course, as George would show Prindy, who was now looking on the odd things for the first time; but the water they wanted was from a gubbindah, which meant a gecko. In many places throughout the rocks, according to George, were these holes, which led down to the great river through which Tchamala made his way about his nether world. Each was guarded by a gubbindah. Only certain creatures favoured by the Old One, amongst them Snake Men, might drink. If others tried, the gecko in charge would call in his tiny voice, which became thunder down below; whereupon the Old One would suck the water back, and the intruder with it. One of the favoured was Bilbilgah, the Night Parrot of the desert country, who kept a lookout for Tchamala during the night and always reported to a gubbindah before dawn, when the flock went for the one drink they had from dawn till dawn of each day. The easiest way to find a gubbindah hole was to listen for the parrots coming to drink, because they made a lot of noise about it. However, failing that, you could pick out the spot by their goona on the rock. Because there was magic in the droppings you could see them in the dark. They would go look-about.
In this case, as so often, the blackman’s idea of the geological history of the locality fairly fitted the whiteman’s, while being so much more picturesque. Undoubtedly here had been a great lake, of which the mass of flat cracked sedimentary rock had been the bed. George’s full story of its origin was that the Ol’Goomun-Ol’Goomun had made the great swamp for the Beral People, the Frogs. Living according to the rules she had taught them, the Beral had been as happy as the frogs of today are when the rains come, singing all day and all night long. Then Tchamala had come along and asked them what sort of life was it when you did the same thing all the while. The Beral asked him how to break the monotony. He said, simply by breaking those crazy rules — do a bit of tchinekin now and again. But the Beral, who were giants, did their tchinekin in such a big way that it led to a battle royal. Koonapippi (or Kurrawaddi) came along to stop it. Then it was that Tchamala made a hole in the swamp from underneath, so that all the water ran out into his river. The Beral perished. Prindy would see their Shades in rock away over there where the sand was. The swamp frogs of today, called Gulladulla, were a new lot made by the Ol’Goomun. She fixed it with them so that they would never go Wrong Side like the Beral. They didn’t have husbands and wives like other creatures. The females simply laid their eggs; and the males came along and had a big corroboree to show that they were happy with the arrangement. But what a life, as the Old One had said so long ago!
The Bamgulut, the bottle-trees, said George, were people in the Beginning, the ancestors of the yam called Miyakka. They’d been mixed up in the great fight of the Beral, but had more sense than the Frogs in filling themselves with water before it disappeared. They were able to show a few of the Beral the trick in time, but very few, and these shrunk to mere handfuls. However, they continued to exist, and were to be found still, dug deep in the sand of the desert and came in handy if you were perishing for a drink; although you had to be a desert blackfellow to find them.
They went on out over the baked remains of the paradise that had been, carrying a few sticks of wood with them from the forest, and also a bagful of larrama, the pods of the so-called Kapok, the seeds of which make good eating roasted. Dark descended. It seemed a hopeless venture, searching for water there; and probably it was; but according to George they were not searching, but being called by a gubbindah, even if in a voice so tiny that it could not be heard. Sure enough, there at last in the darkness was a faint glowing. They headed for it. Spinifex grew profusely here between the rocks. George rolled a bundle of it about a stick to make a torch, lit it with a match. There was a widish space between slabs and a concavity beneath one of them. You had to crawl to get in; but inside was quite a cave, with a little hole in the bottom that showed the glint of water. And there, coming out of a crack in the wall ahead was a little white gecko, with bulging black eyes that flashed fire, challenging them in a tiny voice: Gekk-gekk-gee! George replied in lingo, at such length that the torch died. But the gecko remain
ed glowing. Gekk-gekk-gee! the gecko said — and no doubt about it, a rumbling echo from below! George bent down to fill the billy. Prindy, behind him, stared. Then as George turned, Prindy backed out. They got into another hollow between slabs and built their fire and made their bedding-down places.
The wind moaned across the wilderness of rock. George said several times, ‘I don’ like it wha’ dat-lot talk-talk. I can’t-mek-it-out . . . but I don’ like it.’ Again he sang quietly to himself for hours while his small companion slept.
The night parrots woke them in coming to water, swooped over and around them in a twittering cloud dark against the stars, then went to water, evidently learnt from the gecko that all was in order, because, sitting on the white rock while taking turns at the water, they were silent. Then, like a puff of smoke against the paling eastern sky, they were gone. George said that they dwelt in other caves in the ground during daylight, scared of coming out till dark, because the Ol’Goomun, for whom, like all the cocky species, they had been scouts in the Beginning, would blind them with that eye of hers, the Sun, for having betrayed her at the time of the Frog People bijnitch, by not reporting to her what Tchamala was doing with the waters of the swamp. It was because of this connexion with the Old One that they were permitted to drink of the secret waters.
After eating up the rest of their larrama seeds, they went down again to the water, filled their bellies to bursting for a long and perhaps waterless leg and took leave of little Gubbindah, the custodian, who duly came out of his crack and spoke. Then away again, west-southwestward.
The westward fall of the rocky waste was perceptible, but only just. That is in looking ahead. To look back was to see what looked like a purple mountain range, growing in size as they went, sometimes, as the Sun got up and mirage rolled everywhere, seeming even to be pushing after them. George said he didn’t like it, that it might be a warning from the wind spirits that there were enemies behind. But who could be behind there? And what enemies could they have, now they were out of whitefellow country and had full warranty for passage through this domain of their own kind?
Poor Fellow My Country Page 79
