Terra Australis Templar (A Peter Wilks Archaeological Mystery)
Page 40
Then, as he tried for a snake substitute meal, he received another surprise. A funny looking spotted cat like creature with a long tail was hoeing into his pack. The furry thief had already snaffled a couple of the fruit and nut energy bars.
“Hoy leave it, that’s my dinner you miserable bar stealing marsupial!”
At his cry Lampie switched her attention away from the taipan biltong, smoking over the fire, to watch the tussle with evident amusement. “Y’know Pete, I’d watch out for that little bloke. He packs quite a bite!”
Peter actually had his hand on one end of a bar and was winning the tug of war before she said that. At the warning he promptly dropped it and the bar-nivore triumphantly shredded the packet. “
“Yeah, as I said quite a bite – if you’re a lizard!” A loud Lampie laugh echoed around the campfire.
Peter lashed up his pack and shoved it behind him, watching his competitor warily. “What is that, a Tasmanian devil?”
Lampie let out another short laugh and shook her head. “Nah. If it was one of those, he’d have had your pack and arm already. It’s a northern spotted quoll. Some people call them native cats. They hunt small lizards, frogs, insects, and occasionally bats and birds. They’re pretty harmless.”
Peter gave his uninvited guest another glare as it munched unconcerned on its prize.
“Y’know if they don’t pull their freakin’ fingers out, we won’t have them any more.”
The whole tenor of that conversation passed him by. As he glared resentfully at the small carnivorous marsupial, it was busy ignoring him and devouring his energy bar. “What?”
“Northern Spotted Quolls – poor little beggars. Soon they’ll be extinct.”
Peter continued to watch his rapidly disappearing treat, thinking that this single pack pillaging specimen’s end wasn’t soon enough, though a twinge of curiosity prompted him to ask why.
“Freakin’ cane toads.”
Peter shook his head at the reply. There must be something in that he missed. It still didn’t make any sense. For the hundredth time over the past few days he put it down to the common language thing.
“What – do cane toads eat them?” Peter continued to eye the little creature apprehensively as it made probing feints towards his tightly sealed pack.
“Nah. It’s the other way around. They usually go after frogs and lizards, except the cane toad is bloody poisonous. One bite and you’ve had it!”
“Then why hunt them? Wouldn’t the furry little critters know that?”
“Nah. Some moron in Queensland at a government research institute introduced them from Hawaii to eat the snakes that lived in sugarcane fields, so that the cane cutters wouldn’t get bitten.”
That seemed to him to be a pretty bizarre solution. He’d seen cane toads at Skaze – well actually he’d seen them all over the Gold Coast. The locals had treated their presence so casually he had naturally assumed them part of the local wildlife. Now he discovered that some boffin thought they where a good addition to the natural fauna. Oh dear, that sounded just like the red squirrel problem at home. Some idiot had thought they’d look attractive in English forests, making them so much more colourful so now they were out competing the British grey squirrel. “I take it that the cane toads got bored and decided to expand their horizons?”
“Yeah, a bit like that. I remember when I was a kid, scientists on the tellie were warning us that if we didn’t pull out all the stops to eradicate them, cane toads would be all over the Top End within a few decades.”
That sounded awfully ominous. Peter ignored the attempts of his resident wildlife to concentrate on Lampie. She had acquired an unsettling demeanor, maybe a cross between anger and resignation.
“So did you stop them?”
“Nah, we really dropped it. All the states and feds reckoned that it wasn’t their fault or their responsibility. As for the joker who brought them in, there’s this great film called Cane Toads an Unnatural History made some time in the eighties. It’s a real hoot, but anyway this joker, they interviewed him and he kept on saying that it wasn’t his fault and the whole thing had been blown up out of all proportion. Freakin’ wanker! You know they found one in Port Hedland a few weeks ago. It had hitched a lift on a truck, so I guess they got here right on time!”
Peter looked back at his small spotted acquaintance. The pack was still foiling its attempts. He felt very sad. Could this little marsupial be one of the last of its kind, and all because of the ignorance and arrogance of some fool who was too lazy to think about a more viable and less risky solution to a minor agricultural problem?
For such a large country, the Australians appeared to be racking up an awfully careless attitude to natural stewardship. He remembered helping out on one of Fiona’s fads back home, ‘saving the hedgerows’. With the expansion of agribusinesses, the traditional millennia old small fields were being wiped out to fit industrial sized machinery. He’d had to admit the campaign was very worthwhile in trying to save the smaller creatures that existed in the English countryside. They were really passionate and gained a lot of support, possibly because the countryside was so visible and accessible to every one in Britain. Here the distances were so much larger. As a consequence it seemed difficult for Aussies to get the motivation to stop environmental perils before they wrought enormous damage. But why should they listen to him? He was just a visiting Pom.
That was a difficult conundrum and one that he’d try and solve later, once his muscles stopped screaming at him for their daily abuse. So he settled down, giving his pack a last check for security but only after he’d slipped out another fruit bar and tossed it to the circling quoll. Good luck little beastie – looks like we’re both going to need it.
Chapter 31 Speleologist’s Delight
Why was it that the Grand Architect’s design for this continent included such difficult ridges? From a distance the whole display of the ledges and terraces looked no more an obstruction than a collection of children’s’ building blocks. Then as the day’s travel had progressed in all its burning intensity, the enormity of the broken walls of the plateau had become more apparent. As for the terrain they passed through, though he wasn’t a naturalist, the flora and fauna was fascinating if only he didn’t have to concentrate on two things – firstly putting one foot after the other and secondly the all too infrequent water stops as dictated by the Mistress of Pain, Mademoiselle Lampierre. To think gentlemen of more distinguished backgrounds than his paid hundred of pounds to be ‘dominated’ and driven by scantily clad girls of Lampie like proportions. At this instant Peter would cheerfully swap places, even risking a sound birching for the imminent prospect of his torture ending.
When they’d hit the first small ridge and dropped down into the valley, there set twenty metres above the burbling creek was one of the strangest sights yet, two stone barrows seven foot long and four foot high, made up of carefully placed rocks. Peter dropped his pack with a groan and staggered over to the closest pile. He ran his hands along the side. It consisted of large heavy blocks at the base, medium in the middle levels and small double fist sized at the top. While Lampie watched bemused, he paced out the measurement then pulled out his site compass from his waistcoat. No doubt about it, this ran east-west. Now he wasn’t one to leap to conclusions, but that was the same orientation as Christian burials, and here they had a matching pair.
“Lampie, does your friend Grey mention anything like this?”
The bane of his current existence sauntered over. Why was it that he looked an absolute mess – dirty, scratched, muddy, skin burnt by the fierce sun, parched with thirst and so on? Mlle Yvette however only appeared slightly ruffled by their wilderness trek. True she was also warmed by the exertions but unlike him, dripping with rank sweat she only glistened, while the smears of dirt merely served to highlight the shape of her legs and the curve of those thighs! Flipping hell it just wasn’t fair! “Yeah he does. According to his journal, his expedition came across a few of the
se in this region.”
Peter gave a nod then pulled out his camera. Of all the regretted weight in the pack that wasn’t one. Now into day three of the Death March he was prepared to admit, but not to Lampie, that his insistence to include the Skaze laptop was a monumentally stupid move! He should have left it back on Wally’s barge. However he claimed mitigating circumstances, the overwhelming need to record whatever they found and considering how valuable that knowledge was, having a backup looked like a good idea – especially since according to Lampie they were going to be travelling by boat. Bloody Wallace and his goons! Now with every flipping step he was tempted to dump it, as the weight of his pack expedientially increased with every metre travelled. The only thing holding him back from using it as an impromptu stepping stone was the dire implications of explaining its loss when he returned to the Gold Coast.
“Did Grey say anything useful about these?”
Lampie shrugged as did her blonde plait and other interesting features. Despite his exhaustion and weariness, Peter felt a sudden constriction of the trousers. Easing his cramp he turned back to the not so new discovery. “He said he excavated one but found nothing, though he noted that the rocks were not local in origin – they’d been carried from the ridge.”
Peter shook his head puzzled. This land was full of contradictions. If this was native, then they did construct monuments, a fact ignored by colonial claimants. If not, then outside influences had more of an impact than previously historians had believed. Whichever was the answer it wasn’t going to be solved by a Pommie historian wandering through the bush. Not today at any rate. Lampie made one of her impatient growls, so after taking a few last shots, he dragged the anvil weighted pack onto his shoulders and trudged off towards the red stained cliffs. With that wash of rusted blood colour, they looked loaded with the kind of portents that earned scraggly haired mystics their palmful of silver for warning of the dire perils on the path ahead. Oh well, at least up there they’d be clear of the clouds of midges and mosquitoes. It had to be an improvement over this valley.
Under the strain of unnatural pressure the fragment of sandstone cracked and broke off, beginning its bouncing tumble from broken edged ledge to rock face as it clattered its way down to the waters of the creek below. He nervously wiped the sweat from his eyes and tried for a less risky footing away from his latest threat as it hissed in his ear.
“Pete, what the freakin’ hell are you doing?”
He was ignoring Lampie for one thing, as well as trying to keep his grip on the ledge. He had no desire to slide down this slope nor was he interested in providing lunch for this menacing monster with claws large enough to shred tree limbs! He edged further way from the fierce creature and its gaping jaws. “Lampie, you didn’t tell me crocodiles could climb trees!”
“Come on Pete, it’s not a croc, you dozy Pom and well, yeah they can climb trees but not here. Stop playing with the goanna and move to the next ledge!”
Peter stared at the open mouth not three feet away. The ‘goanna’ definitely needed breath freshener. A distinct odour of overly mature and aged galah wafted over him. By his sainted aunt, he was glad that he hadn’t had enough to eat, or his lunch ration would have sprayed out over the cliff as he barfed at the rank miasma. What, did this creature hunt by expelling poison gas?
“Come on Pete, it’s not going to eat you!”
The large crocodile shaped, tree climbing lizard made a lunge at him, snapping its jaws meaningfully, and he shuffled further along the crumbling ledge. It wasn’t a great drop to the creek below but he didn’t feel like suffering the myriad bruises and possible snapped bones to find out. “You tell your friend that!”
The giant lizard looked at him with an unfriendly eye and expanded an ominous set of frills around its neck. Suddenly it reminded Peter of the poisonous little dinosaur at the start of Jurassic Park I, the one that ate the first of the cast, that annoying computer geek who stole the genetic samples.
“Ahh Pete, they’re not poisonous!”
Yes of course Lampie! Peter made a mental list of all the creatures she had said weren’t that dangerous. Strangely it also consisted of a lot that were.
“Listen you dozy Pom. Stop playing with it. They’re a bloody protected species!”
The recipient of government protection wasn’t interested in its legal status more in its available meal options and lashed its long tail at him, catching him a stinging slap across his buttocks. Damn but that hurt! This just wasn’t fair, snakes, scorpions, crocodiles and now a protected carnivorous land lizard that fancied him for lunch and all Lampie would do to help him was offer the advice that he shouldn’t hurt it! What about some Wilks protection here – you know, the Endangered English Remittance Man Act? Well he wasn’t sticking around. Peter stretched and put his foot onto the next rock down and…
“Pete! Pete! Pete?”
That was his name, why was Lampie calling it? He shook his head and coughed, then spat out a mound of dirt. What the flipping hell happened? He was cautiously edging his way down that slope, then he slipped and now he was here. Arrrh, where was here? He tried looking around. Either he’d gone blind or someone had turned off the light. Peter fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, pulled out his small torch and flicked it on. Well that sorted out one problem. The pale luminance gave him a view of his surroundings. He must have trod on a cover of branches and leaves over a sinkhole. That was a risk back home. One of his friends had broken a leg when she had fallen into a camouflaged crevice. This sudden recall had him trembling and rapidly giving his limbs the once over. Okay, luck was sort of with him, no serious injuries just scrapes and bruises. However now assured of relative good health, where was he and how did he could he get out?
“Pete!” Lampie’s voice came from above and held a muffled quality.
He must be still dazed because rather than reply he swung the torch around the dark space surrounding him. At his back was a steep slope of dirt and rock. His thinking parts supplied the hint that it must be what he slid down. Luckily it lacked the sort of large jagged rocks that had injured his friend so badly. He took a couple of steps into the darkness, probing it with his narrow beam of light. In the sweep he caught the rippling lines of something and walked closer. His torch wasn’t the strongest. Mainly he used it for checking out hollows or crevices at excavations, so it was several paces until he was close enough to see more clearly the objects that had caught his attention. Slowly his pale beam of light travelled over the rock wall. It could only dimly display the intriguing features though that was enough to make him step back and gasp.
Another disturbance had him spin around. At the top of the slope a small hole of yellow sunlight punched into the cavern and a familiar voice echoed in the space. “Pete! Pete, are yeah there? For chrissake answer me!”
Finally at the startling prompt of Lampie’s cry, he shook off the last of the cloying muzziness and answered. “Ahh I’m down here Lampie! Can you grab a torch and join me? I need you to look at something!”
Either the acoustics of the cavern were distorting his hearing or he got a bump on the head because he could have sworn that Lampie muttered a number of unflattering curses in French as well as ‘first the idiot falls down a hole now he wants me to follow him’. Peter sat down or collapsed – it was difficult to tell. He had a great desire to drain his water bottle but knew that would be a bad idea and instead tipped out a small palmful and splashed his face. Blinking but a tad clearer, Peter checked himself again just to be on the safe side, in case he’d missed something the first time when his clarity was, well, less clear. His medical review was interrupted by a cascade of dirt and rocks as Lampie slid down, landing in a fountain of scree, a couple of feet away. “Okay Pete, what was so important that I came down and you couldn’t come up!”
Peter waved his hand in the direction of the darkness. One or two rock ridges could be seen from the spill of light above. The rest of the space was still a murky shroud. “Have a look over there.”
The torch clicked on and immediately lit up the nearest cave wall. A figure glowed into being. It was about ten foot in length and three foot high, laid out in the fine red ochre lines that Peter had seen before on old rock art
“Oh wow!!!” After that exclamation the long silence returned as the torch slowly played along the figure, then slipped across to a few more. Lampie kept up her quiet inspection for minutes. Peter felt a touch of relief. When he’d first beheld the image of the beastie he’d been struck dumb by its beauty and presence. It was like entering Chartres Cathedral and looking up into the radiance of the stained glass windows.
“Lampie? Lampie!” Even though he was standing next to her, not even a prod or two received an answer from his companion.
“Wha… What is it Pete!” Lampie’s attention was still fixed on the profusion of figures and he got the impression she’d only answered him because he’d got tired of waiting and kicked her.
“What are these figures? I haven’t seen anything like them.” Lampie’s torch swung back over the large beastie, spanning it from nose to tail.