Terra Australis Templar (A Peter Wilks Archaeological Mystery)

by Gregory House

  “Look Lampie, this isn’t conclusive evidence. If we check out the headland, it will settle the matter. Either we’ll find extensive ruins or nothing.”

  That seemed like a fair deal – it wasn’t that far away, maybe two hundred meters. She gave a simple nod of acceptance and then pulled him up short when he made to set off first. “Either I lead or I’ll tie you up and dump you in the RIB!” She had absolutely no intention of losing him again.

  Peter must have been learning – he didn’t even try a debate. Lampie gave a satisfied smile and stepped off into the shattered rock scrub. Broken terrain was the official description. Well freck, this was a damned lot more than broken. The hike up to the peninsular tip took the best part of half an hour, until they finally struggled onto the peak. On the chart it was listed as approximately one hundred metres above the shoreline. Lampie leant against a scraggly gum and wiped the sweat off her face. “Okay Mr Pommie genius, what do y’ think?”

  Peter was currently squatting in the shade, his back against Lampie’s tree. Taking a swig from his water bottle, he got up and wandered over the twenty metre square summit, poking at crevices and occasionally scraping at pockets of soil. The afternoon sun was hitting the last quarter of its westwards arc by the time he’d finished. He staggered back to the shade and accepted the proffered water bottle “I don’t think this is it. As far as I can tell, no one has tried to build anything more substantial here than a small lookout post. There’s the smallest pile over that way that could the remains of a footing,” Peter waved his hand towards the edge of the peak, “but that’s it. All these rocks are natural. Sorry Lampie, no castle here. It’s a spiffing observation post though. You can see any vessel sailing this channel, like that one over there.”

  Once more Peter waved his hand in a nor-east direction, pointing at the white crest powering up from Kuri Bay. Lampie grabbed the field glasses from her pack and focused on the incoming vessel. A few minutes later she’d determined its course, speed and target. As to identity, Lampie clenched her teeth and snarled. Two cruisers the size of an ocean liner were unlikely in these waters. “Feeling fit Pete?”

  “Ahh I suppose so. Why?”

  “I reckon we get the hell out of here, unless you want to say hello to yer mate Wallace!” What do you know, that did get a reaction. Peter was up and moving before she could finish. What a great incentive. Lampie filed that away for future use. With a final glance at the white cruiser, she slipped off the ridge shaking her head. Damn, but that bastard Wallace moved fast!

  Map Camden Harbour inland to the McLarty and MacDonald ranges

  Chapter 30 A Pleasant Day’s Hike

  Peter dropped wearily into the niggardly cover of the boab tree. He was tired, hot and his shoulders hurt more than at anytime since he’d come to this blasted country! They were supposed to be cruising along, rocked by the lapping waves, caressed by a gentle sea breeze, taking their ease in a tour of the coast. Why was it that nothing on this expedition was as it should be – a duplicitous mate, an excavation that raised dangerous questions, a ruthless patron ready for mayhem and an attractive blonde surveyor whom circumstance kept at a frustrating distance. Why, why couldn’t he have stayed back on the east coast? At least all he had to contend with there was the politics of Skaze and the perils of the Queensland bush, which he was almost certain, did not contain crocodiles. Well at least not around Gympie it didn’t. He pulled out his water bottle and took a sip while he surveyed his surroundings. He wasn’t sure he liked what he saw. What was it that Lampie said about this place? Some erstwhile British explorer, Captain George Grey, in eighteen thirty eight to forty, had advanced the cause of Empire and tramped all around this place, recording every manner of detail. She’d said the two volume journal was quite a good read. Evidently the good captain was an excellent artist and keen observer of his surroundings, except it appeared, when it came to judging land fit for agriculture. Peter failed to comprehend how this rugged and scrubby terrain fitted into the broadest concept of arable land, even by Aussie standards.

  Lampie, his new partner in adversity, former surveyor and now bush guide, strode into the clearing. In the late afternoon light, her arrival had all the overtones of a dramatic entrance beloved of Hollywood directors. Her long legs flickered past the mottled spray of shadows from the pandanus palm, while her measured stride spoke of determination. As for the hazel eyes, they sparkled with deep anger. Peter edged back just a smidgen as her frown swung towards him. He earnestly hoped that her anger wasn’t directed at him. Lampie swung her pack down and glared at him. “What the freck is goin on? That scummy weasel, Wallace, has his goons all over the government camp site!”

  Ahh a reason – now he understood the flashing eyes. Cute though they were he was a little apprehensive when they targeted him with such singular intensity. That could have been why he blurted out a simple excuse. “You can probably blame Sid for that.”

  Her eyes narrowed as if measuring him up for a wall trophy. Perhaps that wasn’t the most diplomatic of replies. Lampie had worked with Sid for four years and despite suspecting he was chronically untrustworthy, the fact of his betrayal must have hit her hard. Peter tried to focus her animosity elsewhere, at least away from him “Look, if I got this clue from Sid, it was only to be expected that at some stage he was going to tell Wallace, if only to give him more leverage at Deception Bay.”

  Lampie’s eyes lost that Stalingrad sniper stare and refocused on him as a human, not as a potential target. Excellent, he felt his lifespan extend past the next five minutes. The situation was looking up. In a further effort to spare himself grief he shifted on to the immediate future. “When do you think we should head back to the boat?”

  In reply he received a bitter laugh. “We aren’t, Pete.”

  “What! Why not?”

  “I reckon cos Wallace’s goons might not want to give it back. Y’ can ask them if y’ like.”

  Lost the boat? Lost the boat! But that was tantamount to disaster. How could they survey the coast, as well as check out the other two sites? Their whole situation had collapsed. How could they leave this forsaken wilderness? Peter began to have an inkling about how those Association settlers felt when the Calliance was wrecked, their last contact with the wider world gone. “Oh, oh dear. Well that’s torn it. What are we going to do?”

  “Simple. Walk!”

  “Oh, all right…” Then the reality of Lampie’s suggestion penetrated the little grey cells, and Peter’s mouth froze in mid agreement. A moment later the neurons reengaged vocal gearing in complaint mode. “What! Walk there?!!

  “Yeah. Shouldn’t be too difficult – it’s only thirty klicks to St George Basin. That’s where you reckoned the best site was going to be anyway. Grey did it so should be easy, say three days max.”

  Peter staggered up right and looked around the dismal landscape. It looked straight back at him with the accumulated millennia of indifference. Thirty kilometres, thirty kilometres – the words set up a repeating lament a bit like that MacGarrigle sisters song Matapedia. Sixty minutes sixty miles, thirty minutes thirty miles twenty minutes twenty miles. Oh he wished!

  Lampie looked at him with a wary stare. “Why are you humming Pete?”

  “Oh sorry, nothing. Just a tune that came to mind. How the flipping hell, are we supposed to get there? I mean, do you know anybody who’s done this route since Captain Grey?”

  At his very reasonable question, Peter noticed that Lampie had shifted from the full gung ho explorer stance, ready to brave the perils of the Amazon, to something a shade more reticent. It also took her an uncommonly long time to answer. “Yeah kinda.”

  Kinda? That wasn’t an answer – kinda was a classic evasion. Peter became focused more on his companion and not just her legs. “Please define ‘kinda’?”

  “Yeah, well a few years ago some idiot decided to go hiking on his own. It was up one of the rivers emptying into Doubtful Bay, down a bit from here. Well the freakin’ moron had an EPIRB which was on
e blessing and he’d also made an arrangement for helicopters to drop supplies at set points and swing by on set days.”

  “So what happened?”

  “The tosser based all his travel calculations on a flat freakin’ map at home. Talk about dumber than a pile of roo droppings! Then to compound his problems, he marked out his route based on the reports in Grey’s journal. In the end he got choppered out after one accident too many.”

  He tried very, very hard not to respond rudely to that reply, by pointing out that so far all of Lampie’s information for this area had been based on that same journal. Instead he went for the relaxed, unflappable English gentlemen pose. He didn’t think it worth mentioning that helicopters were not an option for them. That would have been too low a blow for a gentleman, though a part of his subconscious was suggesting honour be damned – rub in the omission!

  “Yes I can understand the confusion, with trying to translate ravines and sheer escarpments from a few close together squiggly lines on a map, and the report of some chap who’s keener on beating off the crocodiles than making proper notes. I must say I’ve seen that back home, during territorial exercises. So what exactly is the problem with using Captain Grey’s report?”

  Lampie gave him the stare of all stares. If it was supposed to brow beat him into submission, it wasn’t working. This was his hide she was risking. He wanted, no demanded, to be given the truth! “Grey had over a dozen men, several horses and a flock of sheep. Also he didn’t know where he was going.”

  That answer made so much sense he felt relieved. Here he was worried about minor problems like distance, terrain and food. “So let me get this correct. We are fortunate not to have all the extensive support, supply and experience of a renowned explorer backed by the might of the British Empire and thus because of that lack, we will succeed?”

  Lampie gave one of her generous smiles and slung the pack onto her back. “Yeah. Jeez Pete, you’re not near as dumb as y’ look. Come on.”

  With that over-the-shoulder comment, his bush guide headed off. Peter suddenly felt like the playwright George Bernard Shaw, talking about the Americans and the British – ‘we are two countries divided by a common language’. Hadn’t he just poured scorn on her suggestion, ridiculed it in the most humbling fashion, and politely refused. Well if he had, Lampie wasn’t listening or his understanding of the English language in Australia was not what he thought. Shaking his head and with little choice or enthusiasm, he picked up his own gear and trudged after Yvette Ginevre du Chesney Lampierre, the Kimberley’s very own ‘Jungle Jane’.

  * * * * *

  Peter tried to maintain both a lofty, disdainful distance and at the same time edge closer to the fire. In the small hollow chosen by Lampie for their campsite that wasn’t so easy. Despite that difficulty, he still felt he portrayed the solitary isolation and cold shoulder of the deeply offended.

  “Geez Pete, I said I was sorry. For Chrissake, stop sulking. Here, have a bite of this – its yummy.” Lampie stretched a stick across the fire, extending a charred morsel of roasted wildlife. Its barbeque aroma teased his taste buds, but remembrance of its acquisition chilled his hunger. He’d considered his progress so far extremely admirable. The previous afternoon’s march had been particularly grueling, what with the failing afternoon light and his constant apprehension of tripping over some wild denizen of the bush who’d be partial to a ‘Wilks sized snack’ and the constant urgings of ‘team leader’ Lampie who claimed they only had a little further to go. Oh flipping hell why was it he had developed a weakness for leggy blondes? Well after this he swore to stick to red heads! It had been miles and fully dark before Madam Sergeant Major Memsahib had called a halt to their replay of the Beau Geste march. The last hour had been torture. Peter had been stricken by thirst and could do nothing about it, but stagger on. Lampie had stolen his water bottle during the last of her too short ‘rest’ halts and refused to give it back until they made camp. Of all the meanly vindictive acts – she claimed that he’d been guzzling away with no regard to the limited water supply. That had been a blatant misrepresentation of the facts. It was only that she always chose to look over her shoulder at the few times he was taking a sip!

  You’d think that once they’d made camp, his troubles would have diminished. He‘d wished in vain. First after Lampie had built the fire, he had gone off to do what needed to be done out there in the bush, as it where. And the blasted wildlife had taken delight in tormenting him. First off the rank were some small biting ants that had hopped aboard when he brushed up against a tree. Now he wasn’t by nature a blasphemer or one to let loose a steady stream of coarse invective, but those ants cured him of that impediment. Within minutes of leaving, he’d been running or rather leaping and bounding back into camp screaming and slapping himself on the chest and shoulders like one possessed. Lampie of course, had been an angel of mercy, cosseting and comforting him. If only! On his dramatic reappearance in such an alarming manner, she had for a moment looked shocked, then burst out in howls of laughter. That hadn’t done either his ego or his stings any good at all! Nor had her asking if the ants had a taste for Pommie. She reckoned green ants also afflicted Grey’s men in the same manner. Great, he got to repeat history!

  Once more he had retired to the bush, torch in hand, to seek more urgent relief. He had even found an untenanted tree, completely free of ant infestation and he was just finishing when a large dark shape growled at him through the bushes. He had discovered that you can actually run clutching your trousers, even if you do trip over every rock and root on the way. At his first cry for assistance Lampie had the rifle ready and when he stumbled back into camp, she had his rear covered. Unfortunately for his already battered ego, his description of the dreaded creature that had menaced him sent her off into more howls of laughter. The answering chorus of growls from the dark shadows of the bush didn’t make him any less embarrassed. How the flipping hell was he to know what a wombat was or sounded like?

  Yesterday when he had awoken to the sound of chirping parakeets and thought himself back at Deception Bay, he’d been minded to stagger up and see what Uncle Bill was preparing for breakfast. Then reality hit him between the eyes – or actually across the forehead when he sat up too fast and hit a low branch. The painful experience had told him this venture had not been a nightmare – it was real. He was in the middle of the Kimberleys’ wilderness. The morning then took a turn for the worse since, as he soon discovered his packing preparation hadn’t included ‘the lost in wilderness selection,’ he lacked any form of caffeine! As he now recalled with bleak despair, the bag with coffee and sugar was all so carefully stowed in the now lost RIB. A coffee deprived start to the day wasn’t his only difficulty. Uruk-hia sub commander Lampie then decided that they were traveling too slowly and insisted that they pick up the pace. Oh flipping hell, just what he needed – him cast as a hobbit in his own version of the trek across Rohan to Isengard. Well, as he trudged through the bush at least he could consol himself that it couldn’t get much worse.

  Later in the evening he had sworn on his immortal soul not to make such rash judgments again. The landscape itself turned against him. Rocks crumbled beneath his tread threatening to twist an ankle. They also had this spiky plant everywhere called Spinifex grass that exuded a black sticky sap at its base, with a needle sharp tip growing in dense thickets. It was particularly unpleasant to push through. A stroll in the Kimberleys would be an S&M addicts delight. If only Madam Lash had a supply of this, her business in the bondage parlour would treble. As for him though, he could cheerfully live without it. Lampie, in one of her few water breaks, was kind enough to tell him that Spinifex was a mainstay of koori culture, since the seed could be ground for flour and that sap made a wonderfully handy hot resin glue for spearheads.

  As for the wildlife, well that was in fact his only consolation during the Death March to St George Basin. The multicolored parrots, cockatoos and galahs were incredible to behold. In flight they looked like a floatin
g tapestry of colour that wove in broad ribbons through the hammer blue sky. He could have taken his ease under a tree and watched them for hours, if he’d had the chance. As for the more terrestrial animals, he’d managed to see quite a few when he wasn’t consumed by the need to empty his water bottle (still in the possession of slave driver Lampie!). She’d occasionally pointed out to him the low level bounds of the rock wallabies with their long tails whipping behind and their more graceful cousin the kangaroo. Peter was amazed to find so many animals in the Kimberleys that didn’t want to munch him. Maybe he’d a chance to survive this expedition after all.

  That was until this evening’s affair. He had staggered off a few metres to find some firewood and listening to Lampie’s warning about being cautious, had carefully examined each stick before he picked it up. It was the return that almost did him in. He’d dumped the load by a dead log and was about to sit down when a slithery beastie reared up angry at being disturbed. Initially he was concerned, but on second glance it looked just like Uncle Bill’s pets, so nonchalantly he ignored it and then casually pointed it out to Lampie, as it glided towards his boot.

  Thank God she was a flipping good shot! Another inch and he’d have been hobbling. The sudden discharge of the rifle and its too close impact hadn’t helped his nervous state, or the ricochet that chipped off the rock beside him. Nor had the revelation that his new little friend was a western taipan – deadly, extremely deadly, absolutely flipping deadly, and it had been slithering towards him with distinctly malevolent intent. Then even worse, Lampie had nonchalantly skinned the monstrous beastie and set it up as an improvised barbeque. He wasn’t sure which upset him more, the threat, the non mention of the threat (though Lampie gave the weak justification that if they had to go through all the little beasties that could cause harm out here, they’d be at it for days) or the fact that it had turned into tonight’s dinner.