Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  ‘What’s this . . . a session?’

  ‘No . . . it struck me the best way to come home is have a spell with another old Bushie. I’d like you to drop me down with Billy Brew. I’ll travel up to the Charlotte with him. I want some donkeys off him, you know. I’ll bring ’em up myself. Suit you?’

  ‘Sure. I can nip back to Whiskers on the Gulf from there.’

  ‘I’m not making a session of it . . . but I’ll need some grog for Billy. He’s a rum hound. Would you mind first nipping over to Finnucane’s and getting a small case for me to take to him. I don’t want to be seen there.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll nip over right now, if you like. When d’you want to leave?’

  ‘As soon after breakfast as possible. It takes the old bloke hours to yoke up . . . but he starts before dawn. Want to catch him while he’s still at the bore and you can land.’

  Nan was coming with a slab of steak and a bowl of eggs. ‘Steak and eggs?’ she asked.

  ‘Bless you,’ said Jeremy.

  V

  Billy Brew’s plant was already on the move when the Junkers reached it. The landing wasn’t the simple thing it could have been yesterday, when the worst to be expected to happen if scary ones amongst the donkey mob took flight at the aerial monster’s coming to earth would be a general scatter that a couple of hours’ rounding-up would rectify. No one concerned had any experience of how donkeys would behave in the eventuality, not even old Billy, who boasted he knew the creatures so well that he could tell when they were expressing their opinion of him in their sing-songs. He and they were well enough used to aircraft flying low over them, since the Flying Doctor always paid his respects in passing and others took a look out of curiosity. However, none had yet landed near them. Billy himself thought that this was merely a salute, the several low runs made to signify intent to land, and merely pulled up his team and stood up on the driving seat to wave. As yet his assistant, Barney Ninyarra, was not helping to control the team on horseback, but having got the team started, was behind with his lubra getting the spare beasts, the Tail, so-called, on the move away from the bore. Fergus had to scatter the milling Tail to ensure a safe landing.

  When the Tail saw the huge bird amongst them, raising enough dust and din for a thousand donks, they bolted — not just anywhere, but up the track after the waggon, passed it at full pelt and, as Billy put it, ‘Singin’ to beat the ’Eavenly ’Ost beefin’ it out round the Throne o’ God.’ Naturally the team joined in — with a jerk into action that knocked old Billy off his perch and left the turn-out completely without control. All went bush, the team to finish its wild careering in a heap of tangled harness and torn scrub and the waggon sitting on an uprooted kapok like a bustard on the nest, the Tail to keep going, ‘Headin’ for flamin’ India, where their bloody puggin ancestors come from!’ according to Billy Brew. Comical as these remarks of Billy’s sounded, so that Jeremy, coming to his aid had difficulty in restraining his amusement, they were uttered in no comical mood. When Jeremy did lose control for a moment, the old man turned on him with white beard bristling, pale blue eyes blazing, yelling, ‘What’s so bloody puggin funny ’bout buggerin’ a man’s plant for a flamin’ month?’

  Fergus didn’t come near, except to fly at a respectful height to take a look at things in departing. Billy shook a fist at him, then turned on Jeremy. ‘What’re you doin’ stoppin’ behind. Not ’lectioneerin’ for your loony party, are you?’

  Jeremy explained that he’d come to get the taste of it all out of his mouth by spending a few days with a true old mate, and that he had brought a nice drop of grog along to help. Although Billy must have been Doing a Perish, as he’d have called it, after the long dry haul from the Prospectors’ Alms, as betrayed by his swallowing and licking his lips over that last bit of news, he was not to be appeased by it yet. He answered savagely, ‘I never drink while I got work to do . . . and, Sweet Jesus, jes take a look-see at the work you got for me to do!’ Then, turning his back on Jeremy, he added. ‘I ain’t a piss-pot like others I could name!’

  He remained intractable for hours, taking it out on Jeremy as they worked side by side putting things to rights, mostly by scoffing about his adventure in politics: ‘To think I’d ever live to see the day when Jerry Delacy turned politician! Christ Jesus . . . gettin’ mixed up with them mongrel bastards! And here’s me all these years thinkin’ you’s the most hintelligent man in the country. Hain’t I told you a ’undred times there hain’t no ’ope for that Australia Felix lunacy? We’re an Asiatic country. It follers that some kind o’ slant-eyed bastards, Japs or Chows, are goin’ ’o grab the place someday . . . same’s we grabbed it off the poor Abos. Only ’ope I’m ’ere to see it. ’Oly bloody ’olocaust . . . but wouldn’t I love to see them squatter bastards and silvertail turds takin’ poor ol’ Jackie’s place with the stockwhip round ’em . . . doin’ the dirty work for five-bob a week and ’avin’ to live on stewed dawg and bird-shit, eaten with chopsticks . . . Pohetic justice!’

  He harped on Jeremy’s adventure, refusing to acknowledge the assertions that much of what was in those papers was incorrect: ‘Jesus wept . . . to think o’ Jeremy Delacy bein’ pelted off a political platform with rotten haigs! Don’ know whether to laugh or cry. No wonder you’re ashamed to face nobody but an old bush-whacker like me! Still I’d’a’ been a lot better pleased if you’d’a’ spared me that . . . the way you went about it . . . you and your bloody bunny-faced haeronautical mate. Strike me bloody black . . . look at them hames! I’ll be blacksmithin’ for a puggin month to straighten ’em . . . thanks to a pair o’ flamin’ flyin’ ijits!’

  Jeremy took it cheerfully, seeing to it that the old fellow had a good lunch of fresh Lily Lagoons bread and butter with spiced beef and cake, even if he could not induce him to join him in at least slaking his alcoholic thirst. He also saw to it that the brace of geese he had brought and the sweetbucks were put in the huge camp-oven to cook ready for supper, attended by Ninyarra’s lubra.

  Things weren’t nearly as bad as the old fellow made out. They had the plant well enough to rights to be able to take it back to the bore before sunset. Billy steadfastly refused to drink until camp was made. Then he had a long rum and lime-juice, and immediately began to unbend. Nevertheless, when after the good meal they were settled down by the camp-fire to a bit of steady drinking, he became perverse again when Jeremy broached the subject that was the real reason for his being there: ‘Bill, would you remember an occasion, a few years back, when you were out my way buying a horse, and talking of Aboriginal superstition, you mentioned an experience you’d had yourself of . . . well, of a supernatural kind?’

  Billy’s answer was a bristling of the beard and a suspicious glare.

  Undeterred, Jeremy took a swig from his pannikin, went on: ‘You told me how you’d seen a Moomboo . . . remember?’

  Billy snapped, ‘What you getting at, Jerry?’

  ‘Nothing offensive, I assure you. In fact, I’d like to say I’m sorry I stopped you from telling your yarn. Would you mind telling me now?’

  Billy growled. ‘That time you told me you wasn’t hinterested in superstition except from a scientific point of view. What’s happened to you in your old age? Is it the politics . . . or them young white girls you get mixed up with?’

  ‘Now, that’s unkind. You know I’m a burnt-cork man. I’ve said I’m sorry. At the time I thought you were shooting some of your bullshit. We were talking seriously of the effect of magic in the lives of Aborigines. We’re both nonbelievers in supernatural things. You know how silly whites, although mocking at everything else a blackfellow does or thinks, still has a tall story of some magical event concerning them. Well, I thought you were putting the same thing over . . . but as one of your leg-pulls. It’s occurred to me I was wrong.’

  ‘Why the sudden change? Not so long. Cahoon’s funeral. Something to do with that?’

  ‘No.’

  When Jeremy remained silent, Billy asked, ‘It’s about this you come to
look me up, ain’t it?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, yes.’

  ‘I thought there was more behind it than you reckoned. What . . . you writin’ a book on Aboriginal Superstition, or sumpin? If so, you leave me out of it, mate. I don’t go for this Anthropology stuff . . . no more than Politics. They’re both rackets. Those that go for both them things are only in it for what they can get out of it.’

  ‘No, Bill. This is purely personal.’

  Billy waited this time, almost challengingly, until Jeremy came out with it: ‘As a matter of fact, Bill, I’ve had a similar sort of . . . well, supernatural-like experience.’

  The beard split in a grin. ‘Don’t come under the headin’ o’ silly tall stories in your case, I don’t suppose.’

  Jeremy replied somewhat stiffly, ‘I inferred that I didn’t regard it as supernatural. I realise that it was an hallucination . . . or, better, a metempirical experience. Do you know the word Metempirical from Websters International?’

  Billy asked, ‘Anything to do with Metaphysics?’

  ‘No. A metempirical experience is one such as a saint has . . . seeing Christ, or the Virgin, or some such thing . . . or a blackfellow has when he sees a moomboo. It’s more than an hallucination, which can be due to a physical condition. It’s not just a fancy or a dream, either. It’s a concept arising from some deep emotional state . . . a need for a manifestation of a belief, I guess . . . conceived as actual experience.’

  ‘You’re talkin’ like a book, even if you ain’t writin’ one, Jerry. We’d have to get the Dictionary out for me to follow you properly.’

  ‘It isn’t necessary. I’m using words I looked up in trying to understand it myself. The explanation of it isn’t important. It’s what was seen . . . and whether others . . . bushmen like ourselves, who live close to the real country . . . have had similar experiences . . . otherwise it could be just freakish. I remembered that experience of yours that I so rudely and unwisely interrupted you in telling.’

  ‘Okay . . . apology accepted. What’d you see?’

  ‘I’d rather hear that experience of yours first.’

  Billy was silent for a moment. Then: ‘It’s hard to tell about these things. That’s why you’re cagey. I’ve never told anyone . . . a whiteman . . . about mine. You were the only one I ever broached it to . . . and you laughed . . .’

  ‘I didn’t exactly laugh, Bill. I just told you to cut out the bullshit with me. I realise now that you did me a great honour. It is hard. I couldn’t tell any whiteman but you . . . doubt if I could tell even a blackfellow yet. So . . . if you don’t mind . . .’

  ‘No, Jerry . . . I reckon it’s up to you to tell me yours first. By the way, it wasn’t any moomboo I saw. A moomboo’s a spirit, either good or evil. This was something different. Right . . . what’d you see?’

  Jeremy took a swig first, took a little while to get going, gazing away into the moonlit scrub, as if conjuring the scene again: ‘Well . . . I was camped in a bit of a wash up on the Plateau last night. I’d been sound asleep some hours . . . tired after a long day. It was about midnight when I woke. I’ll swear I was awake when I saw it . . . wide awake. I remember distinctly how I lay there staring at it, trying to figure out what it was. I’d remember the face again . . . not the face of anyone I knew . . . a blackfellow’s face . . . truly Aboriginal, and with all the beauty and nobility you can often see in the faces of some of them.’ Jeremy stopped to take a deep breath.

  Billy drew a deep breath, too, leaned forward, beard upthrust, eyes wide with staring. Jeremy only glanced at him, then away again: ‘He was tall . . . taller than any man I’ve ever seen . . . and blacker. He was standing with arms folded, looking down at me. I could see the glint in his eyes. His skin shone like polished boot-leather in the moonlight. I wasn’t scared . . . only startled . . . just as when someone you know comes on you suddenly. I was even going to ask who he was. I just opened my mouth to do so . . . when he . . . well, he just wasn’t there . . . only the empty sky. But so convinced was I that it was real, that I got up and looked for tracks. Nothing, of course. An apparition.’ Another deep breath. Then Jeremy looked back, to see the eyes fairly popping at him. He added, now sounding matter of fact, whereas his voice was vibrant before: ‘Well, that’s all . . . except how it struck me.’

  Billy all but breathed the question, ‘How did it strike you?’

  ‘Tell me your experience first.’

  Billy inhaled deeply. ‘Nothin’ to tell now . . . ’cause it was practic’ly the same.’ They stared at each other. Billy broke the silence: ‘Like I told you that time, I was camped on a waterhole over the Murranjai. The donks were a fair bit away, where there was grass. Moonlight. Just like you did, I find meself awake lookin’ at this big blackfeller watchin’ me. Real as real. Only thing is I did speak to him. I asked him, ‘Who’re you?’ Then he vanished. I was so certain it was someone, that I roused Ninyarra, who says right off it’s a Lamala . . . what the mob over your way call Yalmaru . . . a man’s second Shade . . . my Lamala. I want him to look for tracks. He won’t look. He explained to me how your Lamala or Talmaru doesn’t live in your body, like your ordinary Shade, the one you’re born from, your soul . . . but a familiar spirit that attaches itself to you through all your lives, to look out for you, warn you of danger, tell you what to do in trouble. Not so silly when you think about subconscious and unconscious and all that sort of modern stuff, which’s only dealing with ancient things. The only thing was . . . How come I, a whitefeller, to get a Lamala? That’s what I asks Ninyarra. He says, “Now properly you belong country. That Lamala belong to some old blackfeller before, finish now for good. He lonely. He grab ’old o’ you. Now you all-same blackfeller . . . belong country!”

  Jeremy drew a long shuddering breath, breathed it out, repeating the words, ‘Belong country!’ He looked half around, into the distance, murmuring, ‘That’s what struck me . . . if I see things like a blackfellow, then I must belong like one.’

  ‘Yeah . . that’s it . . . belongin’. I used to feel ashamed o’ belongin’ . . . even with halfcaste kids. Livin’ in a blackman’s country, with blackmen . . . like a parasite. After that experience I felt completely different.’

  ‘I do, too . . . sort of at peace with it.’ Jeremy reached and took up a handful of dust, let it fall, sparkling in the moonlight, through his fingers. Then he asked, ‘Tell me . . . did you ever see your . . . your Talmaru again?’

  ‘Not like that. But I sort o’ know he’s round all the time. Sometimes I nearly catch sight of him . . . sort o’ vanishin’. He speaks to me, too . . . in my mind. It was him told me to look out for young Prindy.’

  Staring into the staring eyes, Jeremy murmured, ‘How wonderful!’

  ‘You know Shakespeare, Jerry . . . ’Amlet? “There are more things in ’Eaven and Hearth, ’Oratio, than dreamt of in your philosophy”.’

  Jeremy shot out his hand. Billy gripped it.

  ‘Countryman!’ whispered Jeremy.

  Billy Brew breathed it back, ‘Countryman!’

  Then, releasing each other’s hands, they grabbed for their pannikins, drank.

  BOOK THREE

  DAY OF SHAME

  21

  I

  Surely in the history of human affairs, never were the changes rung more rapidly nor with further-reaching percussion than in the year 1939. How, otherwise, could occur a circumstance so drastic in its little way as postponement of the Beatrice River Races? In that Year of Destiny, what a lot of postponing of events long established there must have been — and not simply to a Date to be Fixed, as the Beatrice Race Club’s announcement stated; but for ever! As a matter of fact, the Beatrice Races need not have been put off at all. It was only that the Committee agreed that they ought to Make a Gesture in view of the Seriousness of Things. Not that anything really serious was happening thereabout. The trouble was a good ten thousand miles away. Still, that’s the way the Committee felt. They didn’t go into it. They didn’t have to, being
all of one mind in such matters. The implication was that if they didn’t make a showing of some sort they wouldn’t have been doing the Decent Thing. We were at war again — or at any rate, Old England was, which amounted to the same thing.

  As to the Seriousness of Things, the event that precipitated the war in Europe — that most astonishing piece of political jugglery, the suddenly declared Non-aggression Pact between the former arch-enemies, Hitler and Stalin — in effect removed the threat of war in this region so much harped on of late by dismal Jimmies like General Sir Mark Esk, which is to say the expansion policy of the Japanese and their hostility towards the British Empire. So angered were the Japanese by the somersaulting of their ally in the bullying of weak nations, Germany, that promptly they broke the alliance, changed their policy to one much milder, and turned back towards their traditional friends, the British. If any proof were needed of how unwarlike things were on the Home Front, surely it was to be seen in the conduct of General Esk himself. Whereas, immediately on Britain’s declaration of war on Germany, as Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Military Forces, he had hastened from the North to General Headquarters down South, excusing himself from the role of Patron of the Race Meeting again assigned him, here he was wiring to say that he would be returning to attend the festival after all.

  The Meeting, formerly always held in the first or second week of September, eventually was fixed for late October. This put it to the hazard of the first thunderstorms. However, there was great compensation for the risk. At least, that’s how most saw it. The interlude had encouraged a number of young men to offer themselves for enlistment in the Second Australian Imperial Force, a recruiting depot for which had been established at the Garrison, Port Palmeston. Thus a very special feature of the festival this time would be the honouring of Our Boys, as the recruits were being called. Arrangements had been made for their being granted final leave to attend the Races before embarkation for the South to join the so-called Sixth Division. Although this Division was in fact the First, it was being called the Sixth with the idea of preserving continuity with the original AIF of 1914–19, which had consisted of five Divisions. The idea emanated from that august body of Lest-We-Forget-The-Gloryists, now called the Returned Soldiers’, Sailors’ and Airmen’s Imperial League of Australia, or for somewhat short, the RSSAILA, whose idea behind it was that these young men already might feel themselves comrades of the scores of thousands of their kind of the last generation, of whom it was so truly stated on the Anzac Memorials and mouthed with boozy solemnity on the Day of Days, They Shall Not Grow Old. A goodly portion of the profit expected from the Race Meeting already had been spent on a so-far secret presentation to Our Boys at the Cup Ball, which, in effect, would be their Send-off.