The White Earth

by Andrew McGahan

  Something caught William’s attention.‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing.

  His uncle peered down. On the far side of the creek, barely visible amidst the trees, was the red flash of a tent. And yes, there were men moving about down there.

  ‘So you’ve got eyes after all.’

  ‘Who are they?’ William asked.

  The warmth had departed from the old man like an eclipsed sun. ‘I don’t know. But we’ll find out soon enough.’

  Chapter Eleven

  THERE WERE TWO MEN BY THE TENT,AND THEY WERE CROUCHED over what appeared to be a chart spread out upon the ground before them. Their heads lifted as they heard the utility rolling down the hill. When they saw that it was stopping by the fence, they rose and came to the far edge of the creek, then, after a pause, made their way across. Their feet splashed as they came, for this close to the mountains an inch or so of clear water was still trickling across the stony bed.

  William and his uncle climbed out to meet them.

  ‘G’day,’ said the first man, lifting a finger as he came up. He was tanned and unshaven, and dressed, William noted with interest, in a faded ranger’s uniform.

  His uncle returned the greeting watchfully.

  The ranger nodded across the fence.‘This your property, is it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, good.’ He leant on a fence post and pulled out a cigarette, eyeing William for a moment as he lit it, then turning his attention back to the old man. ‘Might be lucky we ran into you.’ He stuck out a hand.‘I’m Ken Coates. National Parks. And this is James. He’s a PhD student I’m showing around.’

  William’s uncle shook hands with them both. The second man wore ordinary clothes and looked much younger than the first, despite a bushy beard. Across the creek the tent sat brightly beneath the trees. There seemed to be a lot of gear stashed about it, and the ashen pile of a fireplace waited nearby. It was a pleasant, shady valley, with the creek running through, but it was far from the campgrounds up on the main range. And William knew that the national park rules were strict. You certainly weren’t allowed to camp just anywhere.

  ‘Yeah, been here since last night,’ the ranger was saying. ‘And it’s cold too, once the sun goes. So what do you run here? Cattle?’

  ‘Mostly.’ But William’s uncle didn’t seem interested in cattle. ‘You’re a long way down.’

  The ranger tilted his cigarette towards his companion. ‘The boy’s doing some research, and I’ve been roped in as a guide.’ He flicked ash into the grass. ‘This your grandson, is he?’

  ‘Nephew. What sort of research?’

  The young man spoke up.‘I’m writing a history of the Hoops.’ He was gazing over the fence.‘This is Kuran Station, isn’t it?’

  William’s uncle ran a measuring eye over him.‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought so. I’ve read a bit about this place. From back when the mountains were part of the lease. Huge bloody place it was.’

  ‘This is as far as it goes now.’

  ‘The original owners—they were quite a famous family. You’re not descended from them, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Pity. I bet they’d have some stories to tell.’

  ‘No doubt.’

  ‘They don’t seem to have left any personal documentation, which is a shame. Is there any of that family left in the district? I should look them up.’

  ‘Not that I know of.’ The old man shifted his feet.‘I think they left back in the ’30s, long before I got the place.’

  The young man shrugged.‘Oh well.’

  ‘What sort of history is it, exactly?’

  ‘I’m mainly interested in presettlement times. Indigenous occupation, the relevance of the mountains to their culture. Mostly I’ve been up on the range, where the big corroborees were held, trying to pinpoint localities.’

  The ranger was smiling wryly. ‘The kid’s had me crawling all over the place. Looking for bora rings and shinning up bunya pines … but all we’ve found so far are a few old logging huts.’

  The student nodded.‘There were gangs all over the mountains, from the 1860s on. And you can still find some of the roads the loggers cut, and those chutes they dug in the mountainsides to slide the logs down to the bottom. Of course it was all in decline by the First World War, and pretty much finished with by the Second. The hoop and bunya pines were logged out, and the red cedar too, except for a few left in the national park,but that was out of bounds by then.’

  William’s uncle said nothing.

  The ranger had finished his cigarette. He stubbed it out on the post, then drew a tobacco tin out of his pocket and stashed the butt away. He glanced at the old man.‘Grew up around here, did you?’

  ‘Out on the plains mostly.’

  ‘Familiar with the mountains at all?’

  ‘I’ve been up there.’

  The student broke in again.‘So what about these bunya pines? You got any theories?’

  William’s uncle regarded him blankly. ‘Theories about what?’

  ‘You know, the scars. On the big old trees, the ones that are a hundred and fifty, two hundred years old. Some people say they were made by Aborigines with stone axes, cutting footholds into the trunks so they could climb up to get the nuts. Other people reckon that’s rubbish and that they’re natural, just marks where branches have fallen off. You ever hear anything, one way or the other?’

  ‘I’ve heard both.’

  ‘What about the balds? Any thoughts?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How about any other old stories? You know, stuff you might have heard from your grandfather about the early days. Strange happenings in the mountains, people stumbling into hidden gullies, that sort of thing.’

  The old man only shook his head. There was a repressive pause. William was standing by, silent and wondering. He could sense that his uncle was being purposely uncommunicative, but didn’t understand why. What about all the tales he’d told William? Didn’t he like the men? He’d said that he didn’t want visitors or tourists on his property, but these two weren’t trespassing. They were in the national park. And one of them was a ranger.

  ‘What are balds?’ William asked at last.

  The ranger grinned at him. He turned and pointed up to the mountains. ‘See those bare patches on some of the higher hills, where there’s only grass, no trees? They call them balds. No one knows why they’re like that. They weren’t cleared by logging or anything, and the soil is fine, but for some reason there were never any trees there, even though there’s forest all around.’

  ‘They might have something to do with the indigenous inhabitants,’ the student said. ‘Or they might not. It’s one of the things I’m investigating.’

  ‘You been up in the mountains, son?’ the ranger asked William.

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Ever eaten a bunya nut?

  ‘No.’

  ‘Bloody beautiful. Fry ’em like potatoes. Fatten you up in no time.’

  William’s uncle had stood by austerely through all this.‘There aren’t any balds down around here,’ he said.‘Or bunya pines.’

  ‘No,’ the ranger admitted.‘We’re after something else, along the creek.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Water holes, actually,’ the student said.

  The old man frowned.‘On this side of the range?’

  The ranger sighed.‘I know, that’s what I told him. We’re in the wrong place. The only decent water holes are in the eastern catchment.’

  ‘It’s there in the oral sources though,’ the student insisted. ‘There was supposed to be a sizeable pool on this side, a water hole that you could rely on, even in droughts. It was pretty important in cultural terms, apparently, so there might be artefacts or other significant finds around it.’

  The ranger was studying the creek. ‘We’ve been tracking all the west-flowing streams, up and down the mountains. Haven’t found a thing so far. That’s what we were wondering. You k
now this area. Nothing you can tell us?’

  William’s uncle scraped a hand across his chin.‘Never heard of a big water hole this side. And anyway, it wouldn’t be so low down. You should be looking higher up.’

  ‘We have been,’ the student said.

  ‘Maybe you heard wrong. What are these sources?’

  ‘Well, there’s people’s letters and journals — early settlers, the loggers, the odd explorer. And old maps, though you can’t always rely on those. But oral sources, I’m talking about older stuff there, like Aboriginal legends. Tribes from all over southeast Queensland gathered here when the bunya nuts ripened, so the mountains feature in the tales of quite a few different tribal groups. All gone now, but I’ve talked to a few old men and women in places like Cherbourg, and they remember a thing or two. Part of my funding comes from their local land council, actually. There’s been some pretty good studies of Aboriginal history in the Darling Downs area, but nothing all that specific about the Hoops.’

  ‘National Parks are funding him too,’ the ranger said. ‘There’s talk of an Aboriginal cultural centre up in the park, if we can get enough information.’

  The young man smiled ironically. ‘Might be more than that, once these new laws come in. With enough historical evidence, who knows, the land council might put in a claim over the park. It’s Crown land, after all.’

  ‘Hmm.’ The ranger shifted his cap unhappily. ‘We’ll see.’ He turned to William’s uncle again.‘So, this creek, it ends up running through your property?’

  The old man nodded. ‘About a mile from here it turns west and crosses the boundary.’

  ‘Yeah, we went that far. No holes, I suppose, along your stretch?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be the water for it, I guess.’

  ‘Most of the time we hardly get any flow at all.’

  The ranger shoved away from the post. ‘I guess that’s that then. ’He gave the student a look.‘It’s back up into the hills for us.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ The young man addressed William’s uncle. ‘Thanks for your help.’

  ‘Yeah,’ the ranger added. ‘Good of you to stop. What brings you up this way anyway? Lost a few beasts or something?’

  ‘Showing the boy around.’

  ‘Ah. Good. Nice-looking piece of land it is, too. Bit dry, of course.’

  ‘It’s the times.’

  The ranger tipped his cap, and the two men turned away.

  ‘Let’s go,’ William’s uncle said coldly.

  They went back to the utility and climbed in. William remained silent while his uncle started up and drove along the fence for a while. The track curved away from the creek finally, and began to climb another hill. Halfway up the old man slowed the vehicle, then turned it around, the wheels jolting on the rough ground. He switched the engine off. William stared about curiously.

  ‘Why have we stopped?’

  ‘Shut up for a minute.’

  His uncle was gazing intently through the windscreen. Abashed, William looked too. They were facing back towards the creek. Far off through the trees, William could see the red splash of the tent, and the men moving about it. His uncle was watching them, his hands gripped tight on the steering wheel. William’s head was full of questions, but obviously his uncle wasn’t in the mood to answer them, so he waited. Eventually the tent was taken down. The ranger went to the creek and dipped something into the water. Was he filling a water bottle? Then the two men set off eastwards. They were visible for a while, as they began to climb upwards, but after a few minutes they were lost in the trees.

  William’s uncle seemed to relax slightly. Without comment, he started the utility, turned it round once more and continued up the rise. They crested the hill and came down the other side. William saw the creek again. It was flowing west now, having left the national park behind. The banks were fringed with long brown grass and overhanging trees. The track took them down to the waterway, and they drove alongside it for maybe half a mile. Then they came to a flat shelf of sandstone, where the land fell away. A stone bench sat there, looking as old as the rock itself, shaded by the long leaves of a willow tree.

  ‘End of the line,’ his uncle said.‘We’ll have lunch.’

  As the old man unloaded the sandwiches and drinks, William ventured onto the stone shelf. The creek came winding down from his left, its bed rocky between the low banks, the water the merest trickle. On reaching the shelf it spread into a small pool that was maybe a foot deep, before spilling through a worn lip in the stone. William stared over the lip in amazement. For the water fell in a sudden drop, a dozen feet perhaps, into a miracle. Nestled in the dry hillside, hidden by trees and high rocky banks, was a water hole. It was long and wide and, judging by the darkness of the water, deep. The stone bench had been set right on the brink of the shelf, and William crouched there, gazing down. Around the edges of the pool he could see rocks that lay just below the surface, and the ghostly limbs of trees that had fallen in from above. At the far end he could tell that the pool became shallow again, before ebbing over another lip of stone, and winding away along the creek bed once more. But in the middle, and directly below him where the water dripped over the shelf, the depths were pitch black and the bottom was invisible.

  His uncle was standing beside him, staring down at the pool, some unreadable emotion in his eyes. William looked up at him in questioning confusion.

  ‘Well,’ the old man said, ‘you wanted somewhere to swim.’

  Chapter Twelve

  DANIEL MCIVOR DIED DURING JOHN’S SECOND YEAR IN THE mountains. The message came up to the logging camp via a human telegraph line of bullock drivers and timber-getters, and it told John that the burial would be delayed until his return to Powell. He put up his axe, walked down out of the mountains, and caught a ride into town. He found that his mother and sister had been evicted from the hotel and were staying with cousins from his mother’s side. His father — officially bankrupt — had seen out his last weeks in a ward at the Powell General Hospital, dying from a disease of the liver. The only thing he’d left to his son was a chest of personal belongings. John glanced through it once, puzzled over some of the contents, then shut it up and stored it away in a warehouse.

  The funeral was small, just the immediate family and a few of the old workers from Kuran Station. There was no representative from the White family, nor any message of condolence. John had no doubt that if his father had died only a few years earlier he would have been buried with honour in the Kuran graveyard, alongside the Whites’ grandiose tombs. Instead, he had a mean plot in the Powell cemetery. Watching the coffin sink, John wondered what it was he should be feeling. Grief? It wasn’t there. His father had failed completely, and his last years had only displayed the shame of it in public. Better that he was dead. As for John’s mother and sister, when he said goodbye after the funeral, he had no expectation of ever seeing them again.

  He hitched a ride back to the mountains. If he belonged anywhere now, if there was such a thing as a home in his exile, it was in the Hoops, high in the logging camps with his fellow timber-getters. There amidst the forest they laboured from dawn to dusk, chopping and sawing, their tents set up in clearings stamped out of the undergrowth. And despite the annoyances of ticks and leeches and damp, it was a strangely satisfying life, following its own patterns and laws. The loggers were quiet men, for the most part, like John himself. They could even be called lonely, but there was nothing small or defeated about them. They measured themselves against the giant trees every day. Not even the drovers or shearers of Kuran Station had impressed John so much, and within his own small gang he felt an irresistible sense of acceptance. There was no hint of the boy about him any longer, he was full grown and strong, an equal amongst independent men.

  His closest friend through the following years was a fellow logger named Dudley Green. They were the same age, but whereas John was tall and dark and silent, Dudley was short, sandy-haired and smiling. He was the second so
n of a wheat farmer — one of those very farmers who had taken up a claim on the old Kuran land. But Dudley had no interest in wheat and so had set out to make his own way. He and John formed a team, alternating axe blows or working at either end of the huge saws. At first, John found his partner’s quick tongue and innate cheerfulness almost grating. But in time he saw what lay beneath — a hardy spirit bent on confronting a grim world, and no less determined about it than John himself. Dudley talked more than John, and drank more and swore more and fought more,but each of them recognised the same resilient quality in the other, and admired it.

  It was something new for John. He’d never had a close friend before, never shared the pains of his life with anyone. He even found himself telling Dudley about his youth on Kuran Station — about what had been promised, and what had been taken away. And Dudley listened, shaking his head with a ready sympathy, but also with an indifference that spoke more than commiserations. After all, what needed to be said? Everyone had been through difficult times with the depression — why should John be any different? At least he was making his own honest living now, wasn’t he? So what more acknowledgment did the great tragedy need than a rueful shrug? In response, John felt an awakening breeze blow through him. His friend was right. The events of his childhood, the grand betrayal … how trivial it all sounded when told aloud over a campfire.

  For a time he lifted his gaze from himself, and regarded the world afresh. It was then that the mountains began to captivate him. Despite years of logging, much of the area was still relatively pristine, especially where the national park had been declared, and it was a place utterly unlike the plains of his youth. Down there it was a flat and featureless world, a great empty space beneath a wide sky. In the mountains the sky was something that was only glimpsed through treetops, or observed as a narrow shard of blue between the hills. There was no horizon. Clouds loomed without warning at any time, sweeping up from below in misty reverse avalanches, or swooping above the mountain tops, their dark bellies pregnant with rain. It was a world of smells. Pine and eucalyptus. Damp earth, rotting leaves,campfire smoke. It was a world of colour too,the deep glistening green of ferns and creepers in the rain forests, dappled with sunlight, the dusty khaki of the bush on the lower slopes, the startling red of a parrot, the raw crimson of split and bleeding wood, the fine white shimmer of a waterfall.