Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  It looked as if it would be a bright night. Anyway, if it rained, it would be only a light shower or two, as had fallen during the day. Igulgul, close to First Quarter, was just past the zenith. Pat reckoned they would have a moonlight trip till ten. It was good travelling like that, he said, because you had less trouble with animals on the track. Besides, they would have a better idea of what they were passing. He believed they could expect to find people camped at all the main stops, which meant the watering points, except their destination, Granite Springs, which was off the road. He reckoned that the double-headed train wouldn’t get beyond Helena River tonight. With a train like that he wouldn’t care to tackle those long stretches of water-logged plain beyond the Helena. Old Porky would be even more reluctant. Anyway, before they left, he would telephone through to estimate the situation. If Porky was at the Helena he would have a word with him.

  They went across to Pat’s place to have a meal and collect whatever they might need for the journey and beyond. Daylight was gone by the time they were ready. At the station Pat got on the telephone, cranked — Two Longs, a Short. A couple of crankings. Then a flat official voice spoke: ‘Helena River . . . working.’

  Pat said, ‘Thought you’d be at the Head o’ the Road be now, Col. What happened . . . you run out o’ panic?’

  The voice of Col Collings snapped, ‘Who’s that?’ Then in a moment: ‘Hannaford, eh?’

  ‘Porky there?’ asked Pat.

  ‘Where you speaking from?’

  ‘I don’ know what they call the place now. They renamed Singapore right away, ’cordin’ to the radio . . . Queen City o’ the South, or sumpin.’

  ‘You mean the Japs’ve landed?’

  ‘Ain’t that what you expected?”

  A moment of silence. Then Collings asked, ‘What’re you calling for?’

  ‘Told you I want to speak to Porky Jones.’

  ‘I’m in charge. I handle anything official.’

  ‘Who says it’s official?’

  ‘If it’s not, what’re you speaking on a railway telephone for?’

  ‘The Post Office ain’t open.’ Then Pat raised his voice: ‘Listen, Collings . . . I said I want to talk to Porky. What I got to say to him’s no business of yours. Nothing’s no business of yours no more. You did a bunk, remember. I’m the one official left in this place dealing with railway matters. If you don’ get me Porky right away, I’ll take the matter to a higher authority.’

  Another silence. Pat appeared to be about to break it angrily, when Collings’s voice could be heard somewhat muffled: ‘It’s that mad bastard Hannaford. He wants to speak to Porky Jones. Where is he?’

  Porky was soon there, puffing: ‘Yeah, Pat . . . wha’s happen’ . . . they landed?’

  ‘Tell you when I see you. Jes wanted to know where you are. You campin’ the night there?’

  ‘Yeah . . . providin’ everything’s okay up there. Is it?’

  ‘If I said they was here, would you blow through?’

  ‘You’re kiddin’ . . . they ain’t there.’

  ‘Not for the moment. But look, we’re organisin’ a way to deal with ’em when they do . . . fittin’ out an armoured train. Like to be in it?’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’

  ‘Think about it. What I really want to know is can I get past you if I come down tonight?’

  ‘What in?’

  ‘The armoured train, o’ course.’

  ‘You been boozin’, Pat?’

  ‘No. Now listen. You don’t know what’s been goin’ on up ’ere. We got this train all fitted out . . .’cept for guns and things . . .’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘All top secret. We want to give her a trial run tonight . . .’

  ‘But there ain’t an injin up there runnin’.’

  ‘Will you listen? This is dead hush-hush. Are you clear of the points so’s I can go through there without stoppin’?’

  ‘Why ain’t you stoppin’?’

  Pat bawled, ‘Because it’s top secret, bugger you! Can I bloody well get past you?’

  ‘Well . . . if it’s that bloody important, I’ll see you can.’

  ‘Thanks, mate. Be seein’ you.’

  ‘Wha’ time?’

  ‘For chrissake . . . do I have to keep on tellin’ you it’s hush-hush? Now, not a word of what I’ve told you to anyone . . . anyone, you hear?’

  Porky groaned: ‘Jesus . . . the things you get me into. I thought it’d finished when you got off the foot-plate.’

  ‘I’m back on it again. Now, I’m relyin’ on you, mate . . . and you ain’t never let me down yet. So long.’ Pat hung up, grinned at Rifkah.

  She asked doubtful, ‘Is it all right?’

  ‘She’s sweet, girl.’

  ‘It von’t mek trouble for you after?’

  ‘Who’s going to be game to make trouble after the way they bolted? Come on . . . let’s get goin’.’

  Bobwirridirridi and Savitra were put into the accommodation section of the brake-van. However they felt about one another was not evident. Each acted as if the other didn’t exist. Savitra made a fuss at first, wanting not to travel on the engine, of which she was scared, but Prindy to travel with her in the van. She was quieted by being told that he would be coming back from time to time to operate the brake to facilitate stopping.

  They started off very quietly, merely whispering out of the yards onto the main line. In fact, it was not till they were past the smouldering ruins of what had been the Air Force Depot that they really got going. Pat pulled the whistle-cord. For all its size, that big brass whistle crowed like a bantam: Keek-a-keek-a-keeeeee! They laughed at the squeak. Igulgul came out of a silver cloud to laugh. Keek-a-keek-a-keeeeeeee! But when Pat opened the regulator, she showed that like all bantams she lacked nothing in spirit. Her drivers fairly chewed up the silver track, spitting it out in a long gold-spangled cloud from her long skinny funnel. Pat sang to the hammer of the piston-rods:

  Patanna ’ad a hinjin, and be jees he made her go,

  Took him ’xactly sixteen minutes, Ballarat to Bendigo,

  Bendigo-ho, Bendigo-ho,

  Start to stop jes sixteen minutes,

  Ballarat to Bendigo!

  They all sang it. It became the theme song of the magic journey.

  Pat himself said it was magic — without realising that magicians were aboard and that their way was lit for most of it by the Master of Magic. In no time they were at the Palmeston River water-tank, taking a long long drink that must serve them a hundred miles. Soldiers were camped not far away, on the river crossing, no doubt those riotous ones they had seen passing the Three-mile. These would have come to see what was doing, only Pat, with bayoneted rifle, met them at the pump-house and telling them that it was a top-secret train, held them till he heard — Kee-ee-ee-ee-eek!

  Then on again, keek-ing at the creatures of the wild that became too venturesome in their curiosity over the astonishing sight. Kangaroos tried to race them. Curlews flew up over them to try to take a peek inside. Frogs in the billabongs yelled to try and drown the rival music of panting cylinders and whirring wheels. Mopokes called of magic abroad. Igulgul smirked his way down the sky.

  Helena River announced itself with a spot of green light. So the way through was clear for certain, said Pat, because the distant signal of a siding need not be set at clear. It was the home signal that said Yea or Nay to admittance. ‘Old Porky give us that green light,’ he declared, ‘Jes to show us we’re sweet. Good old Porky!’

  There were sentries on the bridge with blades flashing in the last of the moonlight, but without challenge in their stance. Pat yelled for them as they passed, ‘Pass friend!’ The steel bridge took it up in a rolling shout: Pass Friend!

  Then they were racing through the siding, on one side of the double-headed train, on the other its multitude of passengers and more. Numerous familiar faces were seen gaping in the acetylene glare: good old Porky, and some would say good old Col Collings, and His Honour the Admin
istrator reduced to such dishonour, Major Bullco, and the Coot, and old Malters; too many to recall, so swiftly were they swallowed in the smoke, obliterated as if it were part of the magic to create them for the moment for their several purposes and leave them as nothing but laid-ghosts.

  Over the down-line points and out on the main line again, the engine crew embraced and laughed. Old Igulgul had a last laugh as he vanished behind the western trees.

  First stop was to be the 120-Mile Siding. A fettler’s camp there. But stop they must, or Drop Their Plug, as Pat said. The Plug, he explained, was a soft-metal device set low in the boiler. Let your water get too low and it would melt and let the steam blow into the firebox and dowse the fire. To Drop Your Plug was the worst thing that could possibly happen to an engine driver. Anyone who did it got straight down from his engine, walked to the nearest water-tank, and there hung himself under it either with his belt or braces — ‘So keep your eyes on that bloomin’ gauge!’ he cried. ‘And easy with that bloody banjo. We got plenty o’ coal . . . but coal don’t only ’eat water, but eats it . . . if you get what I mean. Watch the gauge . . . or I’ll have you out bucketin’ water from a creek!’ But the threats were accompanied with hugs.

  They made the 120-Mile all right, pulled up at the hydrant. The fettling gang would have sticky-beaked like those soldiers back at the Palmeston. But again Pat left the watering to his firemen, and came loping back with his rifle and his talk of Top Secret. The gang would have heard all about it on the telephone. That was soon made manifest by Ganger Walsh’s remarking, ‘They reckon you gone round the bend, Pat.’

  Pat answered readily, ‘That’s nothin’ new. They’d’a’ certified me years ago if they’d’a’ got the chance.’

  ‘They reckon you’re bomb-happy now.’

  ‘Maybe I am Mick. But I’d rather be that way than shit-scared like them. They left a trail o’ goona you can smell for a hundred mile. Tell ’em that when you ring ’em . . . and tell ’em, too, that that old smell’ll be hangin’ around for a hundred years and more to come . . .’

  The clanging of the engine’s tank-lids told him the job was done. Then — Ker-ee-ee-ee-eek!

  So on their wondrous way again, tunnelling through the darkness, singing again of those heroes of railway legend, Paddy of Nanty Glo, Casey Jones, Patannaford — So he pulled her by a string all the way to Nanty Glo, Nanty Glo-ho!

  Now they had water to take them to their destination, and only Caroline River Siding remaining as a human hazard. The distant signal at the Caroline showed red. That need not mean anything, of course. Then the home signal showed up green. ‘She’s sweet!’ cried Pat. Caroline either had decided or been instructed to let them pass. Who would want to bar the way of a Locomotive Loony, anyway? as Pat asked. But that didn’t mean the population was indifferent to their passing. Everybody was there to see them pass: white, black, and brindle. Again a flash of faces, of upturned astonished eyes. Then back on the open road.

  Only thirty miles to go, and all hazards behind them — provided the magic held. The ’prentice magician fell asleep over his coal-shovel — his banjo, as called by Pat. Pat stopped, roused him, sent him back to sleep beside the brake in the van. Because his other fireman began to nod in her seat, Pat had her over into his, and stood with artificial arm behind so that she could not fall out. At last she let her head fall on his shoulder. How the copper gleamed in the little light of the kerosene lamp above the gauges! He kissed it. He talked to her softly of the magic ride and of how he wished it would never end and hoped that it might be renewed for ever by her soon getting sick of the wilds and coming back to be his. She would not be able to hear him above the din. Yet sometimes she smiled, as if she liked what he said. So he kissed her again — not only her hair, but her brow, her cheek, and at last, as the rocks of Granite Creek loomed out of the blackness, on the mouth. As she started awake, he called in her ear, ‘Brakes!’ She fairly leapt to her job. He reached for the whistle: Kee-ee-ee-ee-eek! In a moment there was responsive grinding of brakes from the van.

  A flashing light below, and voices. Prindy and Savitra were there, bringing the dunnage for the trip across country. Pat and Rifkah got down. ‘Well,’ said Pat, ‘better give me a bit of coal in the tender to take me on to Beatrice . . . she’s jes about out. Then clean up all tracks. You never know, as I said, the buggers may be follerin’ us on a trolley.’

  Soon everything was done, and the trio were standing on the rough wet stairway leading up to the water-supply. Pat took their hands in last farewell, saying, ‘I ’spect to wake up any minute find it’s only a dream.’ Then suddenly he asked, ‘Where’s the old bloke . . . I ain’t seen him?’

  Prindy answered, ‘He get off long way back.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’ know properly. When I go back van one time I find he gone. Pookarakka like that always. He go . . . he come . . . nobody know.’

  ‘He wouldn’t go and tell white people ’bout Rifkah, would he?’

  The blur of fair hair was seen to shake in the glow of starlight. ‘He can’t talk white people. He go bush tell him all-about blackfeller whiteman finish now.’

  ‘Hmm . . . that’s the way he sees it, eh? He might be right at that. Anyway . . . this is the finish for us . . . for the time bein’, I mean. Don’t forget by’n’by . . . don’t forget it’s only Mummuk, yawarra.’ He reached to squeeze their hands.

  ‘Mummuk, yawarra, Pat,’ they all said.

  He climbed aboard the engine, gave her steam. Her wheels spun on the wet track, bit when he gave them a spill of sand. Then she was on her way — Keek-ee-keek-ee-keeeeee!

  In a moment she was out of sight round the bend. In a minute or two she was out of sound amongst the gullies and the hills.

  Strange silence now after all the din of this long long day. Only the soft music of the tumbling water. The eyes of the trio sought the clear sky, where the story of the Dream Time was being told eternally. There was the Ol’Goomun-Ol’Goomun slipping over the West, trailing her Dilly-bag of Souls, her Cat’s Cradle of Right Side Relationship. The Broken Fish-trap, the so-called Cross, was swinging up from South, futilely, as for ever, trying to block that bolt-hole in the Old One’s Road, the Milky Way, from which now his red eye was taking a peep to see how things were before he came forth to dominate the sky in that pattern of brilliance called by the kuttabah The Scorpion — the kuttabah, who did not realise that he still lived largely by folk lore, too.

  A sound — up over the rocky wall — Mopoke — Mopoke! So the way was safe in that direction.

  Prindy began to lead the climb. On top he caught another sound. It came from southward, from those hills beyond which lay the flats stretching to the Beatrice. A faint breeze brought it a little louder. It would be the Sandfly, perhaps climbing that last long bank. What was she saying? Yawarra, Yawarra, Yawarra, Yawarra . . . Farewell till we meet again!

  III

  Yawarra happened to be the last word spoken between this trio doomed always to be runaways and Jeremy, for them their only certain refuge. That was when they had parted with him at the edge of the mangroves of the Leopold River estuary, not so long ago in time, but what a little age in experience!

  The end of a spell of Yawarra is, of course, reunion, conventionally announced, where approach to other people needs must be circumspect since always potentially dangerous,- with the call — Ku!

  There was the call now, three months and more later, ringing echoes from the northern escarpment of the Sandstone Plateau in the region of Jeremy’s permanent camp — Ku . . . u-u . . . u-uuuu!

  Jeremy heard, and looked out from his new keep, through the tumbled rocks and banyans, northward. The action betrayed him as a kuttabah, as little else might, because the source of the call was at variance with the direction of his seeking it by a good ninety degrees. However, the lapse from his usual astuteness might be excused on the grounds that he was used to looking that way for visitors, which is to say the Aborigines of the maritime plains, and a
lso that at the moment he was listening to the radio with obviously intense interest.

  The radio was giving the ABC midday news broadcast, much of which concerned the official appointment of the American General, Douglas MacArthur, as Commander-in-Chief of the South Pacific Zone of War (dubbed Sowpak in the usage of the day) and hence C-in-C of the Australian Military Forces. No mention was made of who had appointed the man. Unnecessary, no doubt, when only the President of the United States could have done so. The Prime Minister of Australia could hardly have any say in the matter, when he had hollered so urgently to Uncle Sam for help — help! In fact, the news made it sound as if Australia had become the Fifty-first State in the Union and should feel profoundly happy about it. Even with the enemy practically at the gates all fear of him seemed to have been banished by the appointment — so confident was General MacArthur. The fact that he’d had to fly for his life from the Philippines made no difference to his presumption to have the Jap on his knees in no time. He was bringing in men and equipment from the USA as fast as fast ships and planes could carry them. His men would do the fighting. All that would be required of Australians militarily would be to stand guard here and there. Otherwise they would be profitably employed in behind-the-lines service to his legions. Money was no object. Instead of having to raise money to raise men, as had always been the case in fighting Old England’s battles, the USA had an easy-going system called Lend-Lease, by means of which you could have what you liked on security so vague that it didn’t seem to matter. Apparently all you did was to tie yourself to the USA for ever. What arrangement could be happier for a people who had never been free or aspired to freedom?