Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  Appropriately (according to the negative turn of things) the greatest change herabout had been wrought in the very centre of the location, Lily Lagoons as known formerly, now again called Knowles Creek. Some would say it was poetic justice that gave the place back the name by which the primary disturber of its pristine peace had sought to immortalise himself. Not that there were many about now who knew the history of the place or, of the multitude of strangers, who cared even about its future. As to its future, that was already foregone, as that of every place upon which strangers converge simply to exploit what can be torn from it.

  The boom in exploitation of the entire country had begun here. That was soon after the war ended, when Nugget Knowles, still employed by the still existent Vaiseys (Aust.), acting on a tip from Yankee Army Geologists, discovered that it was rich in that mineral then prized above all things on earth since the smart Yank had shown that in clever hands a chunk of it had the might of a Bolt of Jove — Uranium. It was ironic that the same tip had been given to the interloper Jeremy Delacy (by the Jewish Communist Zangwill) when it had no value, just as the Tantalium that had caused the ancient feud between Knowleses and Delacys had none during the former’s tenure.

  Most likely the old feud had much to do with Nugget’s luck. Surely it was that made him watch for the opportunity to pounce on the lease of Lily Lagoons the moment it lapsed. From rags of gossip still fluttering about, it would seem that Nugget had become aware of Jeremy’s defiance of the evacuation order (from having found the tracks of the cavalcade in the region of Catfish Gorge when he went there in search of his mare, Knobby’s Luck, lured away by the stallion Elektron) but had been prevented from betraying it to the authorities by his boss, Martin Delacy. Subsequently he could scarcely have cared about revenge, since the discovery of the Uranium brought him a reward of £20,000 from the Government, along with an OBE, and another large sum from sale of the lease to Vaiseys.

  Last heard of Nugget was in a full-page report in Truth of divorce proceedings taken against him by his wife Philly (nee Lilyponds) for adultery with a halfcaste girl. The affair was no mere bit of bush play-about. Nugget was described as a wealthy man, resident in Sydney, and the girl one he had taken out of the lousy Aboriginal Settlement of La Perouse and installed in Kings Cross luxury as his mistress. As it was said at the time, Nugget must have had to use a burnt cork on Philly to get her with those couple of kids for which she claimed princely maintenance. That was long ago. Probably no one now of the thousands dependent on the luck of Nugget Knowles had ever heard of him.

  Knowles Creek Uranium was no longer a Vaisey enterprise. For that matter, the name Vaisey was now only a cypher in a business consortium of the kind that had come to be called Multinational, the full title of which was Matsu-Arkansas-Vaisey Inc. (Aust.) generally called MAVIS. Germans had a hand in it, too.

  To the ordinary simple citizen it was understandable that the Yanks should have control of the country, seeing that it had been handed over to them in sheer funk to defend, but a mystery how the others got into it, after their frightful beating. The grand old warmongers who had started it, like Krupp and Mitsubishi, had become masters of those who had supposed they were the victors. Now, along with the generous Yank who had discovered the spoil for them, they were exploiting the natural wealth of the country from the desert to the sea. How right were those Yanks who had complained to Stephen Glascock of the sloth of his countrymen getting corns on their butts sitting on a billion dollars’ worth of Alumina, Manganese, Iron, Copper, Calcium, Platinum, Molybdenum, Uranium — name it, and all you had to do was pull down a hill, drain a billabong, level a forest, tear up a beach, to become a millionaire! What matter if you left a desert behind, when you didn’t have to live there?

  The original Uranium find was made a little to southward of the so-called Lagoons, on the line of fault dividing sandstone from limestone. In fact it was revealed by intensive blasting that the two sedimentary formations shallowly overlay a mass of thermal origin of which the red micaceous hill that was the site of the early Tin and Tantalite mining was the only outcrop. The blasting also disclosed that mysterious underground stream which was the real head of the Beatrice River. The stream, which was perennial, draining the southern immensity of the Plateau hereabout as it did, was diverted to supply the great Uranium Treatment Plant set up on the site of Lily Lagoons Homestead. That meant the end of the Rainbow Pool, at least as the Place of Moah it had been from the Beginning. Except during Wet Season it was now dry. The fact that it was still subject to flooding made it a useful rubbish dump, since it was scoured out annually. By now the western river system must have been bedded with insoluble rubbish all the way to the sea, and not only owing to the efforts of the populace of Knowles Creek, but of the entire district. Beer cans especially were to be seen winking in shallows everywhere when the river was running clear. Indeed the beer can had become symbolic of the final conquest of the land. Travellers now carried them as the pioneers had their water-bags and pack-canteens, blazing their trails with the empties, even the Aborigines, what few of them still wandered.

  A spur of railway now followed the river to its head from the boom-town called Elizabeth that had replaced the old township of Beatrice. Diesel-electric trains bright-coloured and ear-splittingly rackety like everything else in the modern style, had long since driven the cockatoos away. In fact, native birds and animals of most species had vanished, mostly not because they had cleared out in dudgeon like the ever-irascible cockies, but had fallen victim to the new economy, either through unwitting contribution to it or inability to survive beside it. For instance, since the population explosion of humanity at large (following the period of decimation through wholesale slaughter) had created critical food shortage and rendered anything eatable marketable, the hunting of the bigger marsupials had become such big business that the breeds herabout had been all but exterminated. And as the poor of the world got poorer, so did the rich get richer, causing such a demand for fancy leathers like those made from the skins of reptiles that even a kookaburra would be hard put to find a snake or lizard of any size. Not that there were so many kookaburras about, either, they having been cleaned up by so-called New Australians of Mediterranean and Balkan types who weren’t so fussy about what they ate. Also, a lot of these newcomers, never having had living creatures other than humans to destroy before, killed for the human joy of it. Most active of these killers were the Germans, young Germans, perhaps outletting blood-lust denied them by youth in that grand orgy enjoyed by their elders.

  A first-class road also ran up the river, not as a mere artery of commerce, but for the convenience of the tourists who, as everywhere now, came in droves, and particularly to this region, because the Uranium Plant surely attracted them not only as proof of the advancement long sung-for with Advance Australia Fair, but as symbolic of Man’s having beaten God to the power to destroy the Earth And All That In There Is. For those who came not fully appreciating the devastation that could be wrought with Uranium, along with bits of the pretty green ore that could be bought as souvenirs, were picture postcards of nuclear-bomb-blasts and of the ruins of Hiroshima. Also of interest to tourists was the Plant Manager’s Residence, a beautiful old two-storey house set in a bright garden and screened from the Works by a grove of ancient mangoes. If few visitors came in season to enjoy the edible bounty of the great trees, this was made up for with the liberty to carve mementoes in trunks and limbs, which were for ever weeping milky tears for the attention — or was it for the past? Postcards of the Big House and its garden also were on sale. However, these made no mention of its origin.

  Another Tourist Attraction of the locality was the Painted Caves. These were now part of a National Park, under the caretakership of Aboriginal Rangers. No old-timer would recognise the Turtle Hole in its new surroundings — a wide expanse of playground with swings and things for kids and Department-of-Works-built picnic shelters and lavatories. The Hole was still there, although certainly without turtles, whi
ch could never have survived along with the pump that supplied the reticulated system. Anyway, of those who sojourned there now, anyone seeing the long neck of a Kudjalinga popping out of the reeds and lilies probably would have yelled Snake and bolted — even the Rangers, who were just as much strangers as the rest and not much nearer to being blackfellows except in breed.

  Generally, the only blacks who worked these days were from Southern centres, people far removed from old tribal ways, having regard for the kuttabah’s economics, hence not content with the Social Service Payments. Social Service had become the blackman’s livelihood since the acquirement of citizenship, which, although designed by benign authorities to keep unemployed citizens in reasonable comfort, was barely enough to keep in booze such booze artists as the Aboriginal Race had proved to be with the lifting of restrictions. Those who worked, like the Rangers here, wanted the things that proved their emancipation — fine clothes, radios, guitars, motor cars — above all motor cars. Above their wages, the Rangers profited from the sale of Aboriginal Artifacts, which were in such demand since the Nation had come to feel fully guilty about its former ill-treatment of the blackfellow that they were mass-produced in factories, even imported from Japan. However, there were occasions when these smart fellows reverted to type, went in to Elizabeth and got on the booze with their happy-go-lucky brethren from the Aboriginal Settlement popularly known as Boongville, and joined in the new Aboriginal sport of calling whites White Bastards and telling them to get to hell off their sacred soil. Thus visitors to the Painted Caves had the freedom now and then to identify themselves with the Dream Time by making their own contributions to the paintings, or even to hack out chunks to take home. Notices declared that defacement of the galleries or removal of any part thereof was a serious offence. Still, no one had ever been charged therefor — and for good reason. Officialdom was in a difficult position here, it being well known that Professor Fabian Cootes, in his capacity as Director of Aboriginal Culture, had had the very best of the paintings chopped out by experts, to ensure their perpetual preservation in museums. The catch was that not all of the collection went to Australian institutions, or the price the others fetched into revenue. There was a national row about it. The Coot was not sacked, but, expressing high indignation over the defamation of one who had served his country so well as he, as scholar, soldier, public servant, resigned, to take the Chair of Anthropology at a leading university overseas. No doubt about him — as old acquaintances of his would have said.

  The Plateau afforded yet another attraction for visitors, although in a negative sort of way; which is to say as something luring, awesome, but forbidden. For here the Army of Occupation had set up one of the many Super Sentry-boxes with which Uncle Sam had been moved to gird the Globe since forces stupidly antagonistic to his benevolence had stolen his Jove-given secret of how to strike Divine Fire from Uranium. The entire Plateau was now classified as a prohibited area, as notices proclaimed. Although not fenced except for a bit located in the Catfish Gorge, the region was safe enough from intrusion, watched over as it was by electronic devices sensitive enough to record the movements of birds and beasts — supposing such life had survived the experimentation therein with the holocaustic contraptions now accepted as engines of war. Anyway, no one but a lunatic would venture past those notices, since it was well known that such experimentation rendered the localities where they took place as uninhabitable as the Moon. Why they bothered to fence the Gorge was a mystery, when the Australian people had proved to be so unconcerned about the alienation and devastation of vast tracts of their country by foreigners as scarcely to have raised a voice in protest. In fact, the only protestors were Communists, who probably were only doing what ordered to do by their own masters beyond the seas. Speaking of seas: those of the North Coast in the region of what once might have been thought to resemble The Ocean Island, not far this side of the Terrestrial Paradise, were now under electronic taboo.

  Still Australians sang Advance Australia Fair (For we are Young and Free!) and with even more solemn fervour, since it had been adopted as the Australian National Anthem. The British National Anthem still had its place — For Occasions, as it was declared. That, too, now had special significance, since the Monarch (currently a female) had metamorphosed from a mere symbol to a glorious reality by having set gracious foot upon this long benighted region of the Realm. Her Gracious Majesty, Elizabeth II, had been right here, which was why old Beatrice (named after her great-great-grand-aunt) had been renamed.

  No one who had known the old township and not been witness to its transition, if dumped there from afar (as was possible now it was a major port in the National Airways), would ever have known it. Even that landmark which might have been expected to last indefinitely, so solidly had it been constructed, the railway bridge, was gone. Old Tchamala at last had had his way with it. This was in the so-called record flood of ’52, when the township had been all but obliterated. Cluttered with a huge amount of debris that was the result of wholesale timber-cutting up river, the bridge had acted as a dam, causing the river to cut deeply into the curving bank on the town side and to carry away those other seeming permanencies, Cemetery, Police Station, Railway yards, leaving the formerly easy-sloping bank almost sheer, and a long deep reach in place of the former camping ground.

  Camping was a thing of the past, even though the Race Meeting remained the main social event of the year. The elite stopped at the Royal Hotel. There were three good hotels. A fourth, commonly called ‘The Boongs’, catered almost exclusively for Aborigines, who while not denied service in the others (there was now a strict law against what was called Discrimination) evidently preferred their own company. Likewise these people preferred a residential area of their own, so-called Boongville, which was situated down river, in the old style as regards location, but constructed in nothing like that style, having been established by the Government as a model for Nationwide acknowledgement of the guilt for ancient wrongs now freely expressed. The site was that of the long-forgotten White Russian Settlement, which also had failed in its purpose. Officially it was called Weeanjingalla, meaning running water, the significance being that here the river ran shallow and swift. The common name was not entirely undeserved, when all its establishment had proved was that a blackfellow’s natural habitat was still the bush. Despite tremendous efforts on the part of experts of all kinds, it had quickly degenerated into a slum, and not only as regards domestic squalor, but social.

  The centre of Elizabeth comprised some half a dozen blocks of modern shops, offices, restaurants, and the like. It now lay between the river and the railway, instead of vice versa as formerly. A pleasant park now occupied the space between built-up area and river — Queen’s Park, where stood a fine memorial to the visitation of Our Sovereign Lady. It was grassed and planted with flowers and exotic trees, and kept remarkably well ordered, considering the fact that it was a haunt of the denizens of Boongville when they came to town, who in trading on the guilt of the kuttabah were never much concerned about their behaviour these days. It was the scene of black brawling pretty well every night. If things got so bad as to move the police to intervene, there was a handy escape route for the boisterous ones by way of the river. All you had to do was slide down the curving concrete bank and float home to Boongville.

  The railway bound the city blocks on the up river side, crossing the river now by a handsome suspension bridge that also carried traffic. No railway yards with ugly whitewashed sheds and coal-hopper and stinking stockpen here now, but a neat station that, with potted plants and bright tourist posters, would have done credit to a scenic railway in Bavaria or some such place, whence its efficient and courteous staff had its origins. Perhaps it was that passion of theirs for order that had caused the Germans, after eliminating the native animals that might have seemed to them pesky things like the Jews and Gypsies their elders had dealt with so efficiently in essaying to establish the Reich that was to last a Thousand Years, to take over the running
of that hitherto ragtime show, the railway system of these parts. Most of the Running and Traffic staffs were now Square’eads. Maintenance was now largely in the hands of Italians, who perhaps saw fettling here as easy means to fulfilling their poor-peasant’s passion for ownership of land, since most of them had taken up blocks in the vicinity of their camps, to work in spare time. Yes, the ragtime railway system, so much a part of the outback Australia of old, was gone for ever.

  The Railway Yards were now situated on the other side of the river, upstream from the Racecourse. Railway workers, as indeed all working class types, lived over that side. The middle class was distributed in suburban blocks close to the centre. The upper class mostly had river frontages, except in the vicinity of what had been the site of the old Beatrice Homestead, where dwelt the Master Class who ran the show on which the new economy was based, MAVIS. The homestead had been replaced by a complex of modern offices and laboratories. The name of Delacy meant nothing here now. Martin had departed when MAVIS took over, to live in Sydney, where he died soon afterwards of heart failure, but with the merit of being named in his epitaph Sir Martin. His mother had gone to her second husband’s home in England. No one now knew of the Pioneer of the District, Patrick Delacy, it not having been thought worthwhile to replace his monument lost in the flood. The only record of the name was on the new War Memorial, at the river end of Beatrice Street: two inscriptions with crosses against them, one in the World War I panel, Lt. Jack Delacy, the other in that of World War II, Lt. Clancy Delacy. There were two other inscribed panels, for the Korean War and the Viet Nam War, and a blank fourth that well might be awaiting World War III, the way things were going in the world. Anzac Day was still celebrated in much the same old way, the only difference being that the Germans and Japanese discreetly laid their wreaths on the memorial while the Anzacs were boozing in the RSL Club.