The Stone Gate

by Mark Mann

  At dusk Pullawarra makes a fire and Billy comes to sit with us.

  “I’m sorry you had to go walkabout for so long,” Billy says as we watch the flames flicker, “but I was far away collecting medicine plants. When Pullawarra saw you, they sent a boy to fetch me. But I’m old. I can’t walk fast no more. Took me four days to get back. Then I told Pullawarra to bring you here.”

  “But why did Pullawarra hide from us?” I wonder.

  Billy strokes his thick white beard. “It’s been many generations since the last binjin spirit came through the binjin rock, see. Now everyone thinks that old binjin story is just that ... a story. When you appeared, everyone was amazed. And frightened. That’s why they hid from you, see, waiting for me to get back.”

  Billy says Pullawarra has been chosen by the spirits to be the next binjin man—Billy’s apprentice, so to speak—but he was too scared to meet us until Billy got back.

  “But he left you food,” Billy says.

  “Those piles of berries?” Kaya asks.

  “Yeah, he didn’t know what binjin spirits ate, so he just left what he’d seen you eat. He left you fish too, but you didn’t eat it. And eggs.”

  I look at Pullawarra. He’s watching us talk.

  “Does Pullawarra speak English?”

  “Not yet. Maybe you can teach ‘im.”

  ***

  We spend the next days at our camp. Billy and Pullawarra sleep next to us. It seems the Dunjini are still too spooked to let us move into the main camp but we’re free to visit during the day.

  At first they back away and gawp at us as if we’re aliens from another planet. I guess we are, in a way. From another world, anyway. Children run to hide behind a hut or a tree when we look at them. But slowly they get more used to us. We get a few shy smiles. A little boy called Jumaji starts to follows us around. He likes to sit next to us and touch our soft pale skin. He obviously doesn’t realise we’re meant to be ghosts, or spirits, or whatever we are.

  I feel much better now we know we’re going home. And we don’t have to worry about finding food either. I wouldn’t say I’m enjoying myself exactly, but it’s interesting. I mean, it’s not often you get to hang out in a parallel universe—although personally I’d have preferred one with more cool gadgets and sci-fi stuff. It’s perfect for Kaya, though. She loves all the bushtucker business. Especially when Pullawarra takes us for walks and shows us stuff, like animal footprints and what plants to eat and how to make spears and axes.

  I wonder if there are cool gadget sci-fi worlds. Or is this the only other reality?

  One evening we ask Billy how the Dunjini found out about the Stone Gate.

  “Nobody knows for sure. Binjin knowledge is real old. It goes right back to the ancestors. I reckon they found it by accident, like you. That’s the thing, see. In your Dreaming, living in them cities and big houses, you’ve lost your feeling for the real world. You don’t feel the power things no more. But the binjin rock, the Stone Gate ... anyone can feel it’s a power place. It would have been a ceremony place, for sure. The maala crystal too, you just gotta hold it to know it’s got power. Something like that would have been prized, traded all over. I reckon some ancestor was up there doing ceremony with his maala crystal on a full moon and, like you, he seen the light ...”

  KAYA

  Pullawarra shows us how to make glue by heating the sap from an acacia tree, and how to shape a stone into a spear tip and, best of all, how to make fire. Even Jack finds it interesting, although he won’t admit it.

  Today, while Jack is off somewhere with Pullawarra, a girl of about my age comes and sits next to me. Like everyone she’s naked except for her waist string and the little woven shoulder bag that all the girls and women carry. Her curly black hair is coloured red with clay and there are three lines of scars above her bare breasts.

  She sits quietly for a while, watching me try to plait some grass together into cord. I try to remember what Pullawarra showed me. Finally the girl says something and reaches out and takes the lengths of grass. She carefully weaves them together, shows me and smiles shyly. I smile back.

  “Mullimby,” the girl says, tapping herself. I guess that’s her name. She smiles again, takes some berries from her bag and holds them out. I take a few and eat them.

  “Miya,” I say. It means thank you. Billy taught us. Mullimby laughs and claps her hands. She reaches out cautiously and strokes my T-shirt. She snatches her hand away. Now it’s my turn to laugh. I realise she’s never touched clothes before. Not these sorts of clothes, anyway, although at night some of the Dunjini wear loose coats made from animal skins.

  Mullimby, who is barefoot like all the Dunjini, stares at my running shoes. I take one off and hand it to her. She touches it, lets out a shriek and drops it. We both laugh. Mullimby hesitates, then plucks up courage and picks up the shoe again. She turns it around in her hands, fascinated.

  I point to it. “Shoe,” I say. I lift up my leg and show her my foot. “Obviously, I’ve got feet too,” I say. Mullimby pokes the soft sole of my foot with her finger. Again, she snatches her hand back in surprise. She shows me her own foot. Her sole is as hard as leather. We both laugh.

  An older woman calls out something to Mullimby. She puts my shoe down and runs off to join the other women.

  ***

  Mullimby has become my regular companion. It’s like she’s decided Pullawarra can look after Jack, but I need to learn all the women’s business, like which plants you can eat, and how to make string and baskets from reeds. Of course I don’t need to learn any of this stuff. I mean, we’re going home in a couple of weeks and in the meantime we’re getting waited on hand and foot. But I want to learn about it.

  The Dunjini are getting more used to us now. They’re starting to treat us as human beings instead of aliens. The women start taking me out into the forest with them. The children come too, playing while their mums and older sisters gather plants. The women break open rotting branches with their digging sticks and scoop out fat grubs, or dig up thin white tubers to roast on the fire. In the middle of the day we rest or swim at a waterhole, or sit beneath a shady tree and weave long grass into baskets and string. We return to camp with baskets full of berries and seeds and duck eggs.

  I’d like to go naked like everyone else, but I know my lighter skin will burn quickly.

  We dig for mud crabs in the mangrove swamps that line the shore of the lake and the banks of the river that flows from the lake to the ocean. We collect oysters from the rocks around the headland. Sometimes the women go out into the lake or the ocean in canoes made from scooped-out tree trunks, and catch fish in reed nets. There seem to be more fish than in our Baytown. Every day the women set fire to small area of forest, then quickly beat the flames out with giant palm leaves before the fire can get out of control.

  Back in camp, in the afternoons, we prepare food. We cook any animals the men have hunted. We roast the tubers or grind them between stones into a flour. Mullimby shows me how to mix this flour with water to make dough. Cooked on the ashes of the fire, it makes a sort of hot bread.

  I’m learning so much. Who needs Wolf Meares when you’ve got the real thing?

  JAC K

  While Kaya goes out with Mullimby and the women, the men take me hunting. They fish with spears at the lake, or track animals. They light fires to drive kangaroos into ambushes, and spear large lizards. One day we dig a pit and cover it with thin sticks and leaves. In the morning we return to find a kangaroo has fallen in. One of the men spears it. We scare ducks into a wide net strung between two trees.

  Another time, one of the men climbs a tree and puts smouldering grass into a beehive, then scoops out the honeycomb while the bees are stunned by the smoke. He throws it to the ground and we each take a fistful of honey. It’s sweet and delicious.

  I’m learning how to throw a spear, and how to use a sling to make the spear go farther.

  In the afternoons we march proudly back into camp with our catch, for th
e women to cook on the fire.

  At first the men all laugh at my attempts to throw a spear, but with practice I get a little better and on what feels like my ten-thousandth try I actually hit a kangaroo. It’s part of a mob we’ve been stalking, nibbling grass in a clearing. We approach downwind so our smell is carried away from the kangaroos. To my amazement, my throw goes straight and fast and buries itself in the animal’s side and it falls to the ground. Pullawarra spears another before the rest of the mob bounds away to safety.

  It’s probably the first animal I’ve killed in my life, if you don’t count things like ants and mosquitoes. I’m sort of sad for the kangaroo, but it makes me feel like a real hunter.

  ***

  Billy tells Kaya and me about visiting our Dreaming, as he calls it. He says a local Aboriginal man called Steve found him wandering the streets. Steve let him stay with his family and taught him English. Billy lived with Steve for many months, and returned many times.

  “I brought Steve back ‘ere once,” Billy adds. “He wanted to see where I came from. Because he was a blackfella, nobody knew he was a binjin spirit. Best to keep that a secret. I told everyone he was a binjin man from up north. But with your white skin everyone knew you had to be binjin spirits.”

  “Why didn’t you want anyone to know Steve was a binjin spirit?” Kaya asks.

  “Because of the sickness.”

  Billy pauses to stir the fire before continuing.

  “See, whitefellas brought a sickness to your Dreaming. Plants and animals began to die. Something was broken. Our binjin men saw it when they visited your Dreaming. So they held a great meeting out in the desert and agreed we mustn’t bring anything—or anyone—back from your Dreaming. That became part of the binjin law. They didn’t want the sickness to come to our Dreaming.”

  “So ... we shouldn’t be here,” I say.

  “Maybe. But you are, so we gotta look after you.”

  “Will we make everyone sick?”

  “No. It’s not whitefellas who are sick. It’s the Whitefella Dreaming.”

  We wait for Billy to explain, but the old man just stares at the fire. He’s said all he’s going to say today.

  ***

  Kaya is off with the women when I walk into the main camp to find two men arguing with Billy, Bambalaroo and the other Dunjini men. The strangers turn and stare at me wild-eyed, like they’ve seen a ghost. Their whole bodies, including their faces, are smeared in some sort of white chalk or paint.

  They don’t look friendly.

  One of the strangers is a real giant. He’s got a deep scar on one cheek, as if he’s been slashed with an axe. The other man is younger and skinny. His eyes dart nervously while his companion speaks.

  I don’t like this. It feels wrong.

  The man with the scar turns back to Billy. He speaks again. He points at me then jabs his finger into Billy’s chest.

  “Jack, go back to your camp,” Billy says.

  I retreat into the forest. As soon as I’m out of sight, I hide behind a tree and watch through the bushes.

  The strangers and the Dunjini stand toe to toe. The giant stranger, the one with the scarred cheek, is talking. He sounds agitated, angry. Suddenly he jumps back and raises his axe. The Dunjini raise their weapons too. Axes and spears and clubs.

  For a moment no one moves. But, seeing he’s outnumbered, the stranger lowers his axe. He mutters something to his skinny companion and they turn and march out of camp.

  The Dunjini watch them go in silence.

  “Jack, you can come out now,” Billy says.

  Sheepishly, I step out of the bushes. This breaks the tension and the Dunjini men laugh.

  “That was about us, wasn’t it?” I ask Billy.

  “Don’t worry,” Billy says. “It was nothing.”

  Billy is holding something back from me. What I saw wasn’t nothing.

  ***

  Last night Billy made Kaya and me sleep in the main camp. They’ve built a new hut for us here. And when we wake up everyone’s busy. The women and girls have their baskets packed and the men have their axes and boomerangs tucked into their waistbands.

  “Time to move,” Billy says.

  Bambalaroo leads the tribe into the forest. As we walk the Dunjini sing. First the men sing, then the women. Billy says it’s a walking song.

  We march across the Baytown plain until we can hear the surf pounding on Bay Beach. The bush looks familiar. We’re back near the end of the beach where the creek flows into the ocean, near where we camped when we were alone.

  Bambalaroo stops and claps his hands and calls out something and everyone sets to work. The women hack away the low scrub with their stone axes. They burn away the stumps and roots and use leafy branches to sweep the ground clear. The men cut down branches and lash them together to make the frames of dome-shaped huts, which they cover with large leaves.

  “Why have we moved?” Kaya asks. “It’s those two strangers, isn’t it?” I’ve told her about the argument.

  Billy nods. “Yeah. Those men are Girrokool. The big man is Bantara. Their country is to the north, across the lake, but sometimes they come here to hunt. That’s when they saw you. Now some of their tribe are sick and they think you brought the sickness. They think you are binjin spirits ‘cos you’re white, see. And they know the story, that binjin spirits have a sickness. Now they want me to do a healing ceremony. But they’re wrong. You didn’t bring that sickness.”

  “Couldn’t you just do the ceremony anyway?” Kaya suggests.

  “I’m afraid not,” Billy says. “That ceremony involves putting a medicine spear through your heart, see. They think we’ve got to kill you—at least one of you—to stop the sickness.”

  “Whoa, that’s not good,” I say.

  “Those Girrokool don’t understand. The law says we must protect binjin spirits, not kill ‘em. To kill a binjin spirit is forbidden. It will bring bad luck. But they wouldn’t listen. That Bantara, he’s a hothead. He don’t listen to anybody.”

  I think of the way Bantara looked at me and shudder.

  “They could have killed me right then,” I say.

  “Nah, we’d have got ‘em first. There were too many of us. Anyway, a healing ceremony can only be done by a medicine man like me. Bantara can’t do it himself. And I won’t do it. That’s what we was arguing about. They’d have to take you back to their own medicine man.”

  ***

  At the new camp, the mood is different. Life goes on as normal but everyone seems more alert and ready for action. The men carry their spears and clubs all the time. At night some men sit by the fire, keeping watch, their spears by their sides. Billy warns us not to wander off alone. We even need an armed guard to go to the toilet at night.

  That doesn’t mean Kaya and I are confined to camp. If anything, it’s the opposite. Now I go everywhere with the men, even when they’re stalking kangaroos and I clearly slow them down. And Kaya still goes out with the women and children to gather food. Except now, two of the young men—the warriors, I guess you’d call them—go everywhere with them as guards.

  ***

  It’s been four days now since we moved camp. It’s amazing how the time has passed. It’s starting to feel almost like we belong here. But the moon will be full in two days and we will be going home. Billy says the Dunjini will hold a ceremony to see us off.

  “We’ll dance all night to ask the spirits to guide you safely back through the binjin rock to your Dreaming,” Billy says. “We’ll get painted up and cook kangaroo and fish and maybe a goanna.”

  I notice the mood has changed yet again. Everyone is getting ready for the big ceremony. The women plait grass into bracelets. Two men return with baskets full of coloured rocks; the women grind them up and mix the powder with water to make orange and white and brown body paint. Other men return with white cockatoos and green lorikeets; their colourful feathers are used for headdresses. The children seem to sense the excitement and run around playing chase and prac
tising dances.

  KAYA

  Jack says I’d stay here for ever if I could. That’s not true. Of course I want to go home. But I’ll still be sad to leave. It’s exciting being here and learning all this stuff about living off nature. And I’ve become good friends with Mullimby. Even though we can’t speak each other’s language, somehow we make each other laugh. I’ll be sorry to say goodbye to her.

  Right now I’m down by the lake with the women, sitting in the grass making baskets. The women are in a playful mood. There’s been no further sign of the Girrokool men who Jack saw, and everyone seems excited about the big ceremony to see us off. It’s sort of like the last days of school before summer holidays.

  Mullimby takes my hand and pulls me away from the rest of the group. I think she wants to show me something. One of our guards, a boy called Mabaya, sees us walking away and hurries over to join us. The other guard, Namallaba, is too busy flirting with one of the other girls. Mabaya calls out something to him and everyone laughs.

  The three of us—me, Mullimby and Mabaya—head into the forest. Mullimby chats away in her sing-song voice and points out flowers and animal footprints. But now I’m starting to worry that we’ve strayed too far. We can no longer hear the chatter of the other women. We should go back.

  Suddenly there’s a crash in the bushes. I spin round and see a man charging towards us. He strikes Mabaya with his club. The Dunjini boy crumples to the ground.

  Before I can react, someone else grabs me from behind. He’s got his arm around me, pinning my arms to my sides. I try to struggle but he’s too strong. I feel his powerful body pressing against my back. I can smell his sweat. He puts his other hand over my mouth.

  The man who hit Mabaya now has Mullimby. He’s still a boy, really, probably not much older than me. He’s tall and lean and his body and face are smeared with white paint. It gives him a strange, ghostly appearance. I can see Mullimby struggling and twisting, trying to break free.