Long Gone the Corroboree

by Tony Parsons

  These were some of the questions I tossed around in my head when I wasn’t pondering my immediate future. There didn’t seem to be anything more I could do to progress my search for Steele other than to watch out for a sharp-eyed journalist to report his reappearance in Australia. But while I waited, there was one thing I was sure about. If the charismatic author remained true to form, the flame of his talent would be difficult to extinguish, and sooner or later, he would do something remarkable.

  And I was so right.

  Chapter Three

  Steele came to the cottage when the moon was just peeping over the eastern horizon. The birds that had sung all day in the trees that surrounded the cottage, were silent now. He nosed his van close to the southern wall then got out stiffly and sniffed the air. It was heavy with the perfume of roses, bougainvillea, magnolia and peach blossoms… so heavy as to be almost overpowering. In no place he’d ever been could he recall perfume so voluptuous and he’d visited many lovely places. Nothing had ever been done to curtail the prolific growth, so every tree and shrub grew to its full potential and some were still growing. In places, the flowers of one variety had invaded the branches of other varieties, producing a vibrant multi-coloured effect. This was particularly true of the bougainvillea, which had climbed through the giant magnolia in great crimson and purple swathes of colour.

  Steele pulled out his collapsible table and chair, switched on his light and set it on the table. He lit his small gas stove and proceeded to prepare and cook two fillets of fish, which he cooked in a small frying pan. While the fish was cooking, he prepared a fresh salad to have with the fish. In deference to his recent medical condition, he drank two small glasses of fruit and vegetable juices with his meal. He’d once been rather partial to a glass of wine with his meals but he seldom drank wine now.

  As he sat and ate his meal, Steele sniffed the sweetness of the night and felt exhilarated by it. Overhead, he heard fruit bats squealing as they zeroed in on ripe fruits beyond his property. There was a peculiar bird-like call emanating from the mango tree and from trees along the creek, which he’d discovered from his first visit to be made by grey ring-tailed possums. These animals of the night had catholic tastes in food and moved from one variety of trees to another with contemptuous ease. He ate his meal as they did, happy to be, what he now considered, home.

  After his meal, Steele sat for a little while taking in his surroundings. It was so good to simply sit and absorb all that the property offered in sound and smell. He’d waited so long for this moment that it was hard to believe he was here at last. But he couldn’t remain where he was all night and finally headed to the van to ready himself for bed. It’d been a long drive to reach the cottage before nightfall. He could’ve taken a shorter route if he’d opted to come in via Brisbane but he felt that there’d have been a far greater chance of being recognised there than further north. In any case, he was here now, home, and he was so tired that he drifted off easily and slept right through until daybreak, with the sounds of Jerogeree lulling him to sleep.

  When Steele woke, the bird orchestra was in full voice. It seemed to him that birds regarded this place as something special, just as he did, as there were so many varieties. At that moment, he decided he would learn the names and habits of all of them.

  Steele took a bucket from the van and strolled down to the creek to fill it, keeping watch for any wildlife out sharing the morning with him.

  The water in the creek was clear, though its bed was dark and red. Shadows moved in the water and he wondered what kind of fish they might be and if there were craybobs, or crayfish, too. He’d heard a lot about craybobs but had never seen them.

  Back at the van, Steele heated water from his own creek on his stove and had a rough wash before he cooked his breakfast. The doctors had told him to eat nutritious food regularly and not to overtire himself, and he was determined to follow their advice. He’d been given a second chance and he wasn’t about to waste it.

  When he sat down to have his breakfast, he was mindful again of how unique the property really was and how fortunate he’d been to acquire it. He could’ve been in an uninhabited land because there was no other person and no other building in sight. There were farms not far distant but they were hidden from view by the screen of trees and shrubs that surrounded the property. It gave him a sense of freedom he’d seldom experienced, and not for some time. The hut in the Blue Mountains had been in a lonely spot with nothing and nobody to divert one’s attention, but it had been a spartan place and vastly dissimilar to this property. He thought of Bombay and Delhi with their teeming millions and of Los Angeles with its smog, its eccentric people and its layers of road that carried the cars so beloved of Americans. Sydney was bad enough and getting worse all the time, but at least there was the wonderful harbour to which one could escape for relief.

  After he’d eaten breakfast, Steele made a detailed inspection of the old cottage. It was a much larger building than it appeared from the road and could hardly be described as a cottage at all. It had three peaked roof sections and three chimneys, two at one side of the building and the third at its rear. Steele wondered why, in this temperate region, the original owners had seen the need to incorporate three chimneys. One chimney stemmed from the kitchen, which was understandable, one was in the laundry and the other was in the rather large room which had obviously been a living room. Did it ever get cold enough to warrant a fire? The chimneys were still in surprisingly good order as they seemed to have been constructed with sturdy bricks, while the walls of the building had been constructed from wide wooden slabs cut with a squaring axe.

  Steele looked up. There was no ceiling, just bare beams on the underside of the roof, and the roof was made of corrugated iron, now rusty and full of holes. Beneath his feet, the floor was earthen, or ant bed, and strewn with years of debris and animal faeces. He shook his head and moved on.

  Further on, there were two rooms that Steele took to have been bedrooms and a big central room that had probably been the main living area. At the back of the cottage was a largish kitchen and a pantry, plus a laundry that he realised had doubled as a bathroom because the old washing tub was still in place.

  Steele took a breath and stepped through the back door. There were covered verandas leaning precariously both at the front and rear of the building, and beyond, two tanks, one large and one much smaller, were both full of holes and would need replacing. At the time of its construction, Steele imagined that it would have been considered quite a comfortable dwelling. Now, as he looked at it, Steele realised that the building would require a fairly considerable makeover, with just about everything having to be replaced to make it habitable again.

  Would the local council give its approval? Given its current state of disrepair, they might require the building to be demolished. Besides his concerns about council approval, Steele’s second major consideration was whether it would be even possible to restore the building to something like its original form. Given its current state, he was beginning to have his doubts.

  Steele walked out of the old building and looked at it from the road. He knew, knew in his heart and in his mind, that no modern house would blend so beautifully into the wild beauty of the property as a building in the form of the original dwelling. It was as if the old building and the property were meant for each other. Or that what had been the original garden had grown more wildly beautiful to compensate for the old building’s gradual disintegration. If it were humanly possible, he wanted the old dwelling to have a second chance to live again.

  As he walked beside the verge of the road, Steele became aware that electricity now ran past his property. It hadn’t been there on his first visit to the property and was an indication of the increased interest in local real estate. One pole was all he would need and then, he would have electricity available for the rebuilding. He was aware that modern tradesmen used a variety of power tools, so getting the electricity supplied to his property was essential.

&
nbsp; As Steele walked back to his van, he felt a kind of exhilaration. This was the first property that he’d owned that had been paid for by his own efforts and the books he’d written. It was his and his alone and he was determined that it was going to be the cornerstone on which the next phase of his life would be built.

  Steele wasted no time and paid a visit to the local council office, which elicited a promise from the building inspector that he’d come and inspect the cottage at his first free moment.

  True to his word, John Delaney came early the following morning and looked gravely at the wreck of the old dwelling with a shake of his head. The building inspector was a stout, red-headed man with a florid face and grey-green eyes. He had the look of a man who drank heavily but as Steele subsequently discovered, was more of a sportsman than a drinker, a fine bowls player who’d played in the state championships.

  Steele told the inspector what he had in mind and though initially sceptical that the building was worth restoration, Steele’s quiet confidence and enthusiasm gradually won him over.

  “Well,” he said carefully, “if you replace all the old materials with new stuff and put in a timber floor, that would make a difference. I don’t have to tell you that the place isn’t habitable now. The roof leaks and it’s full of spiders. I’ll tell you what I suggest. There’s a youngish builder by the name of Josh Evans who might be just the man for you. Josh has done some good work in the past couple of years. This could be the kind of challenge he might enjoy, though he’s more likely to tell you it needs bulldozing. I’ll get Josh to come and see you if you like,” the building inspector said.

  Steele thanked him and told him he appreciated his help and that he could see that he was interested in retaining a building that had obviously been part of the early development of the area. This was a shrewd double-pronged response on Steele’s part because the building inspector had probably copped criticism for insisting on building standards being strictly adhered to and now, he was faced with giving agreement to the restoration of a building that had great historical value. Steele had very quickly picked up on the fact that Delaney was a proud local and both he and the council would almost certainly be congratulated for their support for Steele’s project. There was kudos to be gained from this endeavour, which was the first of its kind that had come Delaney’s way.

  “Why do you want to restore the old place rather than build a new one?” the building inspector asked Steele.

  “Because it’s so beautifully in harmony with its surroundings,” Steele said. “I’d like to see the house restored to what it was or better. And I want to live here. I do a bit of writing and this is the most perfect place I’ve seen for my purposes. And believe me, I’ve seen a substantial part of the world. Perhaps you’ll imagine I’m an odd kind of bloke, but I want to see the old place live again,” Steele said.

  “I’ll grant you it’s a beautiful spot. I suppose you’ve wondered why someone else didn’t snap it up,” Delaney said.

  Steele scanned the wilderness around him. “Yes, I’ve wondered about that.”

  “It’s been advertised for sale several times at a massive price reduction because of the rates owing on it. But the fact of the matter is, locals wouldn’t touch it because the place is supposed to be haunted. Only someone like you wouldn’t have been aware of that. If you hadn’t bought it, some other outsider would have bought it sooner or later.”

  “How seriously is that story taken locally?”

  “Fairly seriously, especially by the older people. It’s still talked about in the pubs.”

  Steele surveyed the property. “What’s the basis for it?”

  The building inspector told him that the original owner, Jack Hewitt Senior, was supposed to have been a very hard man who’d poisoned the local Aborigines, the Gubbi Gubbi, with flour laced with strychnine, and about his son, Jack Hewitt Junior, who’d lived, so it was said, to be one hundred and three.

  “Some of the Gubbi Gubbi who were off hunting got old Jack in the end. They bashed his head in and he’s buried here,” Delaney said, pointing his finger at the ground. “There was a lot more to old Jack Hewitt than that. He was supposed to have been a bushranger in New South Wales and to have come up here with a heap of gold. It was never found, but Jack’s son, that was Jack Junior, lived a very long life and was never short of money. The story is that for a large part of his life, he lived off his father’s gold.”

  “How interesting,” Steele said.

  “Yeah. Two local fellows came out here to fish and to have a booze-up and they swore they saw something very peculiar under your mango tree. They were so spooked that they got in their vehicle and drove for their lives,” Delaney said, scrutinising Steele’s face for a reaction.

  “After what I’ve been through, a few spirits won’t concern me,” Steele said with a smile. “If they leave me alone, they can have the run of the place. But I wouldn’t put much credence in what two boozers reckoned they saw.”

  “You’re probably right at that,” Delaney agreed. “It might be like the story of the black panther down Emmaville way. Some stories get blown out of all proportion. I’d say there never was a black panther at Emmaville, or any other place it was supposed to be, and there was never a ghost under your mango tree. But these stories get around and are difficult to stamp out. Actually, the ghost story originally came from the old Murris who said that an evil spirit or some such thing lived here.”

  “I suppose you mean the Gubbi Gubbi people, the original ones? Are there any left around here?” Steele asked.

  “Not to speak of. The ones around here are as much white as Murri. But one eighth Murri, seven eighths white and you’re indigenous. It’s about lifestyle and family apparently, not the colour of your skin. Funny that you should ask about old-timers though. The local crowd say there’s one of the old-timers still living in North Queensland. They say that he’s the last full descendent of the tribe that lived here along Jerogeree Creek. He’d be a very old man now. Local legend says that one day, he’ll come back here to die and then this land will revert to Gubbi Gubbi ownership. This old chap was one of their mystics and supposed to have psychic powers. I’ve never given that sort of thing much credence but I read a book by a Professor Elkin once and he wrote that some of the old Aborigines and Torres Straight Islanders definitely possessed this psychic power. I thought that with you being a writer and all, you’d find it interesting,” Delaney said.

  “I do, Mr Delaney. And thanks for your help, along with the information,” Steele said warmly.

  “Good luck with your venture. I’ll tell Josh Evans to call and see you. I presume, you’ll be camping here in the van?”

  “Indefinitely,” Steele said, and laughed.

  Steele watched Delaney drive away in a newish Commodore and thought about what the building inspector had told him. He felt the talk of spirits added to, rather than detracted from the uniqueness of the property. Not so very many years ago, the Gubbi Gubbi people had lived at Jerogeree and had done so for perhaps 40,000 years, give or take a few thousand. But they’d been brushed aside as if of no account by newcomers desperate to acquire timber and land. The Europeans were supposed to be Christian people and to have Christian principles, but they’d shot and poisoned the traditional occupiers and in many instances, been rewarded for doing so.

  Steele knew that one day, he’d have to write about those early years along Jerogeree Creek. It was his duty.

  Chapter Four

  Josh Evans was a tall, gangly, fair-headed fellow with blue eyes and a long jaw to match his height. There was a look in his eyes that suggested to Steele that he might be a bit of a devil. He arrived a few days after the building inspector’s visit and just as Steele had sat down to resume writing up his impressions of the places he had visited on his overseas sojourn. He’d made notes as he went along but these needed to be expanded to more fully describe his impressions. He was working at his table, which he’d placed in the shade cast by the huge mango tree
when Evans climbed out of his one-tonner and walked with long strides towards him.

  “Josh Evans,” the long fellow said by way of introduction. “‘Blue’ Delaney asked me to come and see ya. Sez ya want to restore the old cottage.” And in the next breath, “Anyone tell ya yer gotta to be careful handling mangoes. They got a white sap where you break off the fruit and it can cause heaps of trouble. You get these huge mango boils, see. Some people are real allergic to it. I saw a yank tourist with his face swollen up like a cow’s udder.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Steele said grinning. “I’ll be careful how I handle them.”

  “Bloody shame ’cause they’re bloody good to eat,” Evans said. “You fair dinkum about wanting to restore that pile of junk there?”

  “I’m fair dinkum,” Steele said equably.

  The lean builder looked at the building and shook his head. He pulled an old stump across to Steele’s table and sat down on it. “You’d do better to let me pull it down and build you a nice new house.”

  “I don’t want a nice new house. I want this building restored. I want the roof lifted so that I can have timber floors installed and I want a few other extras, but I want the restored building to look as much like the old one as possible. It suits this garden and this place. A new house wouldn’t suit this site at all,” Steele said firmly.

  Evans gave the building another long evaluation in case he’d missed something about it, but as far as he could see, he hadn’t.

  “Orl right, let’s have a look at the bugger. I’ll make some notes and tell ya what I’ll need to make a job of it. It’ll be a bloody challenge, I tell ya.”

  Evans produced a stub of pencil and a small, dog-eared notebook then walked across to the front of the building. His first action was to kick one of the posts that supported the front veranda.

  “I want this veranda to have a new timber floor with steps up to it and I want it gauzed,” Steele said. "Same goes for the back veranda.’