The White Earth

by Andrew McGahan

  ‘Is this John McIvor’s place?’ he asked with a frown, his eyes coming to rest dubiously on William’s hat.

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Good Lord.’

  His name, it emerged, was Kevin Goodwin, and he was from Brisbane. He was an accountant, and because of that, William’s uncle had appointed him as League treasurer, even though he was a relatively new member. But William decided he didn’t like him much. The man appeared to think that a boy wearing an army hat was something silly.

  But that was the sentry duty accomplished. William returned to his own wing and settled down to toasted sandwiches in front of television. Occasionally there came distant yells and a hubbub of voices from the office, where his uncle was entertaining the men. It grew very late, and William was nodding off in the chair when his uncle appeared in the doorway.

  ‘First meeting,’ the old man said.‘Come on.’

  The committee had gathered in the dining room, ranging themselves around the table as a naked bulb burned above. They each had drinks in their hands, beer or wine or scotch, and cigarette smoke was already thick in the air. William sat in the corner, and watched wide-eyed as his uncle — seated upright at the head of the table — opened the proceedings. But there were all sorts of formalities to be attended to, and minutes to be read, and William soon grew bored. His gaze drifted towards the ceiling. Great cobwebs floated dreamily in the corners. He watched them drift, growing sleepy, and then blinked suddenly. The meeting proper was under way.

  ‘I’ve seen the maps,’ Terry Butterworth was declaring, fingers jammed under his straining belt buckle.‘No matter who says what — half the country is open to claim. The pastoral industry, the mining industry, they’d both be paralysed. And take Henry there — the places he runs his tours through are all either leasehold or Crown property.’

  ‘I’d be screwed,’ the tour guide rasped. He was hunched forward over the table, scribbling in a ledger that lay open before him, taking the minutes. ‘Suddenly it’s black land and sacred sites and whites aren’t allowed in. Look what’s happened in the Northern Territory. They have independent bloody countries up there, you need fucking passports to go anywhere.’

  ‘It’s a legal fiction anyway,’ the policeman remarked. ‘Either the whole country was stolen, in which case the entire continent’s up for Native Title claims, or none of it was. You can’t just say that freehold is somehow magically immune. Even the blacks are pissed off about that. Freehold, pastoral leases — they reckon it’s all theirs regardless.’

  William’s uncle spoke. ‘Freehold means city properties. The government knows that if they touch the cities there’d be a revolution. They’re not that stupid. But pastoral lease-holders are a tiny minority, so they don’t matter.’

  ‘They?’ This was Kevin Goodwin, looking puzzled. ‘Aren’t you one of them?’

  William’s uncle shook his head.‘The original Kuran Station was all pastoral lease, of course. But when it was broken up the government ceded fifteen thousand acres to the Whites as part of the deal. That land was converted to something called perpetual lease. From a legal point of view, I’m told, it’s just as secure as freehold.’

  A spray of documents surrounded the accountant, and a pen twirled constantly in his fingers. ‘So you’ve got nothing to lose, even if the legislation passes?’

  ‘The principle of the thing is what matters. A man’s land won’t be his own. We all lose if this law gets in.’

  ‘Agreed. But as I see it, the problem is finding a base from which to fight. The League is all very well as a lobby group, but we’ve got no direct political power. Isn’t it time we rethought things and actually ran some candidates in the next election?’

  William’s uncle was firm. ‘We are not going to sign up and join in with the system. It’s the system that’s the problem. As soon as we start running candidates we’re tacitly approving the way things work, and before we knew it we’d be as rotten as any other party.’

  ‘Christ, son,’ said Terry Butterworth, ‘we’re not here to run candidates. Our job is to preserve some true Australian values, so that when everything finally falls apart, there’ll be people like us to pick up the pieces.’

  The accountant was unruffled. ‘And what if things never fall apart?’

  Henry Lasseter glanced up from his ledger. ‘They will, lad, quicker than you might think.’

  ‘Maybe so, but right now we need broader support if we want to stop things like this legislation. Sooner or later we’ll have to build a base in the cities.’

  ‘Fuck the cities,’ said Henry. ‘If I had my way, the bush would just cut the cities loose and declare independence.’

  The policeman laughed.‘Shit, if the blacks can have their own countries up north, why can’t we? If worst comes to worst, we can set up our own state out west somewhere.’

  ‘Why the hell not?’ Henry puffed himself up. ‘The federation isn’t fucking inviolate. Western Australia is always on the verge of pulling out. It never wanted to join in the first place. North Queensland would jump too, if things got bad enough.’

  William’s uncle rapped the table dryly. ‘We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves…’

  The debate rolled from one end of the table to the other, and William slumped further down in his chair. The air was heavy with the scent of alcohol and tobacco, and he was getting drowsy again. He knew that the topic was important, but he wished that these preliminaries could be finished with, and that the rally itself would begin. He yawned, forced his eyes open.

  ‘The legislation will pass in the lower house,’ his uncle was saying. ‘We all know that. But the government doesn’t have the numbers in the Senate. They’ll be relying on the minor parties. Question is, how do we make sure those minor parties vote against it?’

  Kevin Goodwin responded.‘We have to alert the country to the dangers, make people see how much they have to lose. If there’s a popular outcry against the legislation, the Senate will back off. Problem is, the people in the cities don’t feel threatened, they think their back yards are safe. So how do we ram the point home? Should it be some sort of legal angle? Maybe the whole idea of Native Title is unconstitutional.’

  ‘Bugger the courts!’ The old tour guide was scornful. ‘They started this mess.’

  Terry Butterworth shifted his bulk and sat forward. ‘Direct action is what we need. Protests, blockades. I saw enough of them in my days on the force, and the thing is, they work. I reckon we choose one of our members who owns property out west, property that’s under pastoral lease and open to claim if the laws get in. And we set up a picket line around it. We declare that we refuse to accept Native Title, no matter what the government decides, and that we’ll stay there forever if we have to, to protect the boundaries. In fact, we publicly dare any blacks who think different to try and bust through, and just see how far they get. Make a big stink about it, get the newspapers in, and the TV. They’d love it — a struggling farmer and his family, terrified of being kicked off their land, land they’ve worked for generations. And in the meantime we’re screaming at the cameras — You could be next! The government is lying! Your back yards aren’t safe! Your parks aren’t safe, your beaches and your rivers aren’t safe! Native Title will steal the lot!’

  The accountant whirled his pen.‘It might be difficult to set up the right sort of confrontation. We’d have to select a property that was extremely important to the Aboriginal claimants, one they’d be prepared to physically fight for if we denied them access — that way we’d get the sort of violent exchange and publicity you’re hoping for. Black hordes invading white family’s home, that sort of thing. If we mustered enough outrage along those lines, then the Senate would have to take notice. John?’

  A thoughtful pause. ‘It’s got possibilities…’

  It went on and on. William set his head back against the wall and let his hat slip forward over his eyes, the weight of the badge on the front heavy and reassuring. His ear throbbed, and hot red colou
rs seemed to dance through his mind.

  ‘Some training could be useful,’ Terry Butterworth was musing now, ‘if it gets down to blockades and things turn nasty.’

  ‘We should form a proper militia,’ Henry suggested. ‘It’s one of the duties of a democracy, being prepared to fight for the bloody thing. And most of our members already have guns.’

  Kevin Goodwin sounded dubious.‘An armed militia mightn’t look good on TV. We’re supposed to be the good guys.’

  ‘This is bigger than just Native Title,’ the policeman stated. ‘This is about national security. You think the Australian army could defend this country if the Japs ever come back, or if the Indonesians ever invaded, or the Chinese? We’ll need citizen troops, lots of them and well armed, people who know their local areas. The League should be ready to contribute. We could set it up easily enough. What d’you think, John?’

  ‘I’ve got nothing against organising a militia. I was in one during the war. As long as that’s all it is. I’m not having the League turned into a military body.’

  ‘No, no, just an associated militia. Like Henry says, it’s part of our responsibility as Australians. We can put it to the general meeting. Kevin?’

  ‘Well … I suppose it can’t hurt to see what the members think. And I’d be interested to see what sort of force we could actually muster.’

  William’s uncle was insistent.‘Our main business this weekend is formulating a response to Native Title.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said Terry Butterworth. ‘But it can still go on the agenda. I propose the motion that we float the idea of an organised militia to the members.’

  ‘I second,’ said Henry Lasseter.

  William’s uncle sighed. ‘All right then, it’s passed.’

  There was a babble of excited talk from the others.

  ‘We’ll have to think of a name.’

  ‘How about the Australian Independence Militia. AIM — that’s to the point.’

  ‘What about a uniform?’

  ‘Uniform?’

  ‘Okay, not a full kit. Just a badge or something. So we all know who’s who.’

  ‘Like Will over there, with his hat. Hey, Will, you wanna join up? We can make you a field marshal…’

  The men laughed, but William’s head was on his chest. He stirred restlessly at the sound, lost in a half-dream of fire. Then the laughter subsided, and the men got back to their business.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  BY 1950,THE KURAN PLAINS WERE BOOMING AT LAST, RIDING ON the back of wheat prices that had never soared so high. New grain varieties had arrived, resistant to drought and disease, and there were new fertilisers too, new pesticides, new tractors and harvesters and trucks. Sealed roads spread out from Powell, and telephone lines and power cables. The population skyrocketed, the humble shacks of the old selectors disappearing, replaced by sturdy farmhouses crowded with children. Only twenty years earlier the plains had all been open pasture, wide and lonely. Now the lights of a hundred homes glowed there every night, and the dust of a hundred ploughs rose by day.

  And yet, frustratingly, all this prosperity seemed to elude John McIvor. He worked away diligently, planting wheat or barley in the winter, corn or millet in the summer, but he was learning that even in good times, things could go wrong. One year a late frost blighted his wheat just as it was ripening. Another year a sudden hail storm battered his corn. He suffered plagues — of weeds, of mice, even of locusts. And once, during harvest, it stayed wet and dreary for five weeks on end, and his barley rotted in the paddocks. The list went on, and somehow, bumper crops never quite seemed to eventuate. The farm was certainly profitable in a small way, but John needed much more than that.

  He had no intention of tilling this little square of dirt all his life. His plan was to expand, to buy a second farm with the profits from the first, and then a third, and so on, until the day he could sell it all and acquire Kuran Station. But here he was struggling to save a few hundred pounds a year. It was too slow. He could always go to the banks for a loan, of course, but John harboured a deep aversion to the idea of borrowing. The old Kuran Station had been laden with debt, and it was that which had doomed the property, more certainly than anything the Whites had done. Whatever John owned, he wanted to own it outright, not under mortgage. Possession was meaningless if it wasn’t absolute.

  The fact that he now had a family only made his impatience for Kuran all the greater. He wanted his children to grow up on the station. Surely his daughter deserved as much as Elizabeth White — the fine bedroom of floating curtains, the clothes, the education. Indeed, he wanted Ruth to have more, to be better than Elizabeth ever was. What more fitting proof could there be that the station had been his by right all along? And one day he would have a son to carry on the McIvor name. He wanted no uncertainty for the boy, none of the doubts and disasters that had afflicted his own youth. His son must grow up knowing without question that Kuran Station was his to inherit. Then he would look to his father with gratitude and pride, not disappointment.

  But the years passed, harvest after harvest, and not only did Kuran Station remain far beyond John’s grasp, no son arrived either. Harriet fell pregnant again in 1946, but miscarried. She miscarried again in 1948. And after that, there were no more pregnancies. Ruth remained their first and only child — the product of that one encounter amidst the stone and water and hills. John looked at her anew then, and took fresh heart. Her very existence was mingled with the station, after all, so perhaps it was a matter of destiny. He began taking the little girl out with him across the farm. She was quick and clever and unafraid, and far happier, it seemed, with her feet and hands in the dirt than when she was at home playing with dolls or dresses. And yet John continued to worry, for by 1950 Ruth was already seven years old. How was he to secure Kuran Station before she grew up?

  And then there was Dudley Green.

  The soldier had came home a forlorn shadow of the man who went away. He was living with his parents now, on their farm. His older brother had died in the war, so he was all they had left. But of Dudley’s own wartime experiences, John and Harriet knew little. His unit had been encircled during the early battles on the Malay peninsula. After capture, he was interned in several makeshift prisons, until he was finally reunited with the rest of the division in Changhi. He was sent out again to the work camps, the Burma–Thailand railroad among them, yet of all those years of labour and hunger and brutality, Dudley seldom spoke. His body was testimony enough — after enduring long bouts of dysentery, beriberi and malaria, he was permanently shrunken and stooped. His lungs were especially affected, making him readily susceptible to influenza and pneumonia. He was also afflicted with biting arthritis and skin rashes.

  But it was the emotional changes in Dudley that pained John and Harriet most. The camps had leached the brightness out of him, broken something inside. He had become strange and distracted — haunted, it seemed, by his own memories. Upon his return he had taken up none of his old pursuits, and retreated even from contact with his fellow POWs. His solitary social pleasure became to visit John and Harriet’s house — only a few miles from his own — where he lavished shy attention on little Ruth. He openly adored her. And if he resented John and Harriet for what they had done in his absence, he never showed it. So it was that John found himself waking to a clear and damning sense of shame. All through the war he had envied Dudley, and feared his homecoming. He had betrayed their pact out of that fear. But here was John, who had stayed at home, secure now with a farm and a wife and a child. And there was his friend, who had gone to war, with nothing and no one to show for it.

  Dudley’s mother died of cancer in 1951. A year later,worn out with labour and worry, his father followed her, leaving him completely alone on the farm he now owned. In isolation, his nervous condition began to deteriorate. John and Harriet could only watch on helplessly. He neglected the routine work upon his property. His house became cluttered with rubbish. He grew lax about bathing
and washing his clothes, and ceased shaving. Nor was he eating properly, so that the weight he had gained after coming home began to fall away again. And his drinking, only social before the war, turned hard. He took to sleeping all day, and drunkenly roaming his untended farm by night. John began to hear the names he was called by the neighbours. All they saw was his long hair and tangled beard, his dirty clothes and evasive eyes. Poor Dudley, they said, with resigned shakes of the head and mutterings about shell shock. Or Old Dudley, even though he was not old. John suspected that the names were worse out of his own hearing. Mad Dudley, perhaps. Crazy Dudley, just as likely.

  One day in 1953, John arrived at his friend’s house to find him naked and unconscious on the living room floor. Dudley’s body was appallingly thin, laced with faded scars and the pale blotches of poorly healed tropical ulcers. It was some hours before John could rouse him or help him dress. Dudley reeked of rum, but John divined that this was more than just drunkenness. The man was close to starvation. John packed him up and took him home. Harriet prepared a meal and they both watched while he ate. Then they set up a camp bed in John’s office, and sent him off to sleep. They kept him there the next day as well, and the day following. With food and attention he seemed to improve, and there was no real decision to make. They didn’t even consult Dudley. They simply never took him home again. And Dudley, for his part, never asked to go back.

  It was a penance, both John and Harriet knew. There was no question of sending him to an institution for care by strangers. He would never go. Nor could they just abandon him to his fate. Hadn’t they already done that once? They weren’t to blame for his condition, they knew, and yet the guilt remained. But it was far from easy. John had to take over the running of Dudley’s farm, even though he could barely spare the time from his own. And at home Dudley could be difficult. He remained haphazard about his personal hygiene, so the smell of him was everywhere. Often he refused food for days at a time, angrily if they tried to force it on him. And there was no denying him the solace of alcohol. When drunk, he was prone to outbursts of weak rage, and in his sleep he raved incoherently with nightmares. But they dealt with it all as patiently as they could, because of who he was, and because, in his better moments, he was patently so happy to be included in their lives. He still regarded John as his unfailing best friend, and remained utterly devoted to Harriet.