by Juliet Wills
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clothes, which had been swept out from under his arm. Unable to reach them, he watched as they disappeared from sight.
Muller pulled Cramerus up onto the bank, but they were
now separated from the others by a stream that was still growing in size.
‘We’ll follow the stream,’ van Romondt yelled.
‘It’s probably best if we separate, anyway,’ Cramerus replied.
‘We’ll have more chance of finding help that way.’
Cramerus and Muller took a more southerly route, waving
farewell to Brinkman and van Romondt who headed north,
hoping to cross the creek upstream. With only his boxer shorts left to wear, the sand and mud burnt Cramerus’s feet and the marauding sandflies and blistering sun tormented his unprotected skin. There was no shade, the going was agonisingly slow, and when they at last emerged onto more solid ground, with low pink and grey coastal heath fringing the swamp, it too was shadeless. The wounds on his head and back, sustained during the attack on the Dakota, throbbed.
Finally, they reached thick, straggly scrub which offered some respite from the sun. They looked back across the swamp but could no longer see Brinkman and van Romondt. The men
pushed aside prickly bushes and long grass which scraped against their skin as they moved inland. A large flock of black cockatoos squabbled and screeched in the trees above them and the thrum of insects filled the air.
On the following night they reached a broad arm of the
ocean. The silver water stretched out into the distance, cutting
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their path and reaching deep inland. They did not know the depth of the inlet or if there were sharks and crocodiles in the water. They sat down on the bank, frustrated and exhausted by yet another obstacle. They decided to sleep, planning to find a place to cross upstream in the morning.
The next day, they were pleasantly surprised to find that the water had subsided with the tide and an inlet narrow enough to swim across lay before them. On the other side they ducked around thick scrub, creeks and mangroves. Where they found a path through the bush they would follow it. At best they were covering two or three kilometres an hour, and their resources were rapidly running out.
Ahead on the horizon a glimmer of shining water filled them with hope. Flayed by spear grass, they pushed forward with renewed vigour, but the mirage disappeared to the distant horizon, always just out of reach. The reality of what lay ahead was a dry salt lake.
On that second day they drank their last drop of water, even though they had stuck to their two-tablespoon ration per every three daylight hours.
In Melbourne, a world away from Cramerus and Muller, the
package of diamonds had not arrived. The Commonwealth
Bank officials and the Dutch trade commissioner became anxious, and fired telegrams back and forth expressing their concerns.
A memo urged the bank to take ‘all practical steps to trace the
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parcel’. In Sydney, a two-minute silence was held in memory of Captain Smirnoff.
Termite mounds stood like tombstones in the bush. A thicket of pandanus palms broke the monotony of the woody scrub.
As Muller and Cramerus neared it, they saw what looked like water nearby. Another mirage, they told themselves, afraid to get their hopes up. But this time, it was not an illusion; a pool of water lay within inches. Fearing it was salt, Cramerus knelt down and wet his mouth. Looking up at Muller, he smiled
through dry, cracked lips. The water was dirty and brown but it was not salty. The clay soil and rocks had held the cool liquid from the clouds above long enough for them to savour it. They jumped into the pool and sat in the water for hours, drinking it up and feeling reborn. Mobs of cockatoos burst through the treetops squawking, as if they found the situation amusing.
Cramerus gazed at the murky water and wondered why it
was that each time he was at the end of his tether, staring death in the face, God threw him another lifeline.
Only four days ago, Pieter Cramerus had been captured by
Japanese soldiers on Java with his commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Beckman. Cramerus had been taken by his captors to a tiny village in the countryside which he didn’t recognise and marched into a deserted office building two storeys high.
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Inside the lobby were chairs where once customers might have waited for service. The morning light streamed in through the window. The room was inoffensive, like a government office or bank. An Australian soldier sat tied to a chair with his head down. His captor pointed at a chair not far from the soldier and Cramerus obediently sat down, allowing the Japanese soldier to tie him to it. Moving outside, Cramerus’s guard left the two men sitting in the agonising quiet of fearful contemplation, neither daring to speak, both completely aware of their own desperate plight. The stories Cramerus had previously heard of the horrific torture endured by POWs at the hands of the
Japanese played through his mind. He did not know what
the Japanese had done with Beckman.
Cramerus was aware of only one guard, although others may have been around. As he fiddled anxiously with the ropes that tied his hands he could hear the guard talking to some local Javanese on the verandah. He wasn’t sure what he would do if he could free himself, but anything was worth a try. Finally Cramerus felt the pressure of the ropes ease and loosen until he was able to slip them from his wrists.
He turned to the Australian and asked if he wanted to go, to try to make a run for it. The language barrier didn’t help.
Looking out the window at the guard, the Australian shook his head; perhaps he considered the Dutchman mad for even trying to escape.
On the porch, the Japanese soldier sat with a sword on his lap, still talking with the group of locals. Cramerus waited until
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his head was turned away in conversation before slipping quietly and fearfully out the door. The Dutch lieutenant did not turn back to see if the soldier had seen him as he vaulted over the porch railing around the corner, his steps gathering pace until he was running for his life.
He ran past a restaurant where a Javanese man was breaking liquor bottles with a hammer. The crash sounded like bullets and he feared this would draw attention to his escape. About a hundred metres ahead lay a sewer drain and he decided to run towards it. Slipping into the open pipe he continued to run breathlessly through the foul water, the sound of the breaking bottles fading into the distance. Beads of sweat dripped down his forehead. He could feel the adrenalin induced by fear seeping through his veins, his pulse racing as the sound of his boots splashing through the water reverberated through the silence.
After about half an hour Pieter reached the end of the drain, and cautiously hoisted himself up into the deserted street. It was still early morning and the tropical heat had not yet developed its sting. There was no time to stop and think or empty his boots. He knew the Japanese would be pouring over the island like an army of ants, and if they caught him he would suffer a certain and painful death.
He headed out of the town and into the countryside,
cautiously ducking behind buildings and trees until he saw a local approaching on a motorcycle and flagged him down.
The motorcyclist, a telephone repairman, slowed to a stop as the Dutchman explained the Japanese lay ahead. Warning the
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motorcyclist that he too could become capt
ive, he convinced the man to alter his course and take him back to Bandung, assuming it had not already fallen. The smelly pilot climbed on the back of the bike and the two men rode back to Bandung.
The motorcyclist dropped Cramerus outside the palatial Italian Renaissance-styled government headquarters, the Gedung Sate.
The colonial masterpiece was a unique blend of east and west, a sprawling whitewashed building with arched verandahs spreading out either side of the central facade, which was adorned with a pagoda roof and spire with six bulbs resembling a satay stick.
Reeking of sewage, Pieter Cramerus made his way through
the immaculate garden of the Sate with its manicured hedges and clipped lawns, through the pillared archway and up the stone staircase to the reception desk. The officer at the reception desk eyed the wet, smelly airman with some suspicion as he pleaded to see the head of government. Finally he was shown down the long well-lit corridor with soaring ceilings into the marble- and wood-lined office of Mr Spit, the head of the executive branch of the Dutch East Indies government. Present were two other government officials. Cramerus advised them his commanding officer had been captured but that he had
managed to escape. They wanted to know the exact position of the invading Japanese forces he had encountered. He warned them the Japanese were moments away. It was time to brace for invasion. As they spoke, the sound of Japanese bombs falling on Bandung resumed. Within days the city would fall.
Pieter Cramerus knew he was lucky to be alive.
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Now, lost somewhere in the Australian bush north of Broome, Pieter Cramerus knew he had to find the will to go on. He was tempted to sit in the waterhole and wait, but that wouldn’t change their predicament, nor ease the suffering of those still languishing back on the beach. Muller had suggested Cramerus should stay, as he lacked protective clothing, was wounded and covered in blistering sunburn, but Cramerus was determined to continue. He had a strong sense of duty and was never one to complain. Smirnoff had asked him to find help and he did not want to let him down.
It was Saturday afternoon, 7 March. They waited for the
heat of the day to ease. Foot pads, possibly cut by cattle, traced a path through the scrub to the north and the two men decided to follow it. The landscape was frustrating in its sameness, a few clumps of bushes and largely deserted terrain, sometimes rocky, sometimes muddy, but always difficult to pass through.
At times they wondered if they had come full circle.
They rested occasionally. They had been walking for three days. Heading off before dawn on Sunday they would again
watch daybreak over the Australian bush. Passing clumps of pandanus palms and tall red termite mounds they trudged on, concerned that they were wandering too far from the coast.
They had followed the only apparent trail they had come across, but it seemed to be taking them northwards. To their knowledge, there was no settlement north. Dense, prickly bushes blocked
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any possible southerly route, but continuing to head away from Broome seemed suicidal. They knew how empty Australian
deserts were, having flown across the vast expanses of the outback, and the idea that they might stray too far from the coast towards the interior of the Great Sandy Desert crossed their minds.
They were considering diverting from the rough track when Muller thought he saw movement in the bushes ahead, some
distance away. Probably just a bird or a kangaroo, he thought, but he pointed it out to Cramerus. The bushes moved again.
Their feet felt as if they were pinned to the ground as they stared at the moving branches. Emerging from the bushes, a barefoot Aborigine carrying a spear came into full view. A wave of relief swept over them. They moved hastily towards the man, then slowed, frightened they might startle him or that he would be hostile. As they neared him they could see from his expression they had nothing to fear.
‘What are you blokes doing out here?’ he asked.
Despite their lack of English, exhaustion and dehydration, they spluttered a few garbled words. The Aborigine understood well enough that they were in need of help. He beckoned them to follow.
Guiding the distressed Dutchmen forward, the Aborigine
took them to a soak where some other Aborigines were camped.
The group looked up, surprised by the visitors. Muller and Cramerus knelt down to drink from the soak and shortly
afterwards the man who had found them returned with a
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kangaroo slung over his shoulder. The women prepared a fire and the kangaroo was soon crackling on the coals.
The animal was pulled apart and handed around among the
group. The best parts were given to the two Dutchmen. Cramerus chewed the food slowly, lingering over each mouthful. Even though he was hungry, Cramerus didn’t find the meat tasty, but it satisfied the gnawing in his stomach. Muller and Cramerus tried to explain that their plane had crashed and that there were others stranded on the beach. They weren’t sure if they had been understood.
The Aborigines pointed out the track the men needed to
travel along. The group could see the Dutchmen were weak
and disoriented. As soon as Cramerus and Muller had arrived at their camp, the man who had found them had instructed
another man to journey on ahead to tell the people at Beagle Bay Mission. Later in the morning, the two weary Dutchmen followed the track towards the mission. They had not gone far when they saw a mule cart approaching.
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BEAGLE BAY RESCUE
Beagle Bay rescue
On 8 March, as Brother Richard Bessenfelder readied himself for Sunday morning mass, he thought about how much more
comfortable he felt in his riding boots and trousers than in the white robe and black sash he had to wear to church. In
the Kimberley wilderness, under the stars, he felt at one with the God he had been called to serve. He knew it would be some time before he could return to the saddle, spending months away from the community on horseback tending the cattle and living on damper, stew and tea. War had suspended the thriving business he had helped his superior, Bishop Raible, build up; the income from the cattle trade rivalled and sometimes exceeded pearling on the north-west coast, but now the ships stayed away and there wasn’t enough labour to run the meatworks in Broome.
Bishop Raible had seen in cattle a chance to make the mission self-sustainable. Expanding their herd to 3400 had allowed the 86
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funding of the leprosarium, the school, and the linguistic and anthropological study of the Nyul Nyul people who inhabited the area.
Prior to Bishop Raible’s practical hand, Beagle Bay Mission, 120 kilometres north of Broome, had often been on the verge of ruin. A rigid order of monks, known as the French Trappists or Cistercians, had founded the mission in 1890 hoping to evangelise the Aborigines. Banned from eating meat, fish and eggs, and required to wear heavy monastical robes, the monks were expected to work long hours and produce enough food
to make the mission self-sufficient. Oppressive heat, floods, disease, isolation, lack of money and the refusal of the locals to be converted to Christian ways led the Trappists to abandon the mission in 1899, and it later passed into the hands of the Society of Catholic Apostolate, a group of German priests and brothers known as the Pallotines.
Together with the Sisters of St John of God, the Pallotines had established Beagle Bay as a model Catholic mission, with its own school, bakery, blacksmiths and brick kiln, as well as dormitories to house the scores of so-called �
�half-caste’ children taken by force from their families as a result of government policy.
On top of this, between 250 and 350 Aborigines of Broome
were evacuated to the Pallotine Mission at Beagle Bay in the month before the Japanese air raid, more than doubling
its population. The Sisters of St John of God had refused to be evacuated, insisting they stay on with their charges. No
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consideration was given to sending Aborigines south, and a plan to send the nuns and native women and children to
Geraldton was abandoned through fear of spreading leprosy.
Leprosy among Aborigines had reached epidemic proportions in the Kimberley and was then untreatable. A 1941 amendment to the Native Administration Act 1905–1936 prevented the movement of Aborigines south of the twentieth parallel,
commonly referred to as the Leper Line.
A hotchpotch of tents now crowded the grounds of the
mission. Aborigines of mixed descent—who had lived inde-
pendent lives in Broome, including running their own
businesses—were seen as troublemakers, and strict rules were enforced, curtailing their freedoms and keeping them in subor-dination similar to mission Aborigines. Under-resourced and with tension rising between the evacuees and mission Aborigines, the missionaries felt stretched to the limit. The authorities who sent people to their care failed to appreciate that in such a remote location supplies were extremely difficult to come by.
Those same authorities, who were happy to entrust the native population to the German missionaries in peacetime, had not displayed the same level of trust at the outbreak of war. When Australia joined Britain in declaring war on Germany in 1939, the seven priests and eight German brothers were jailed initially in Broome, and later in Melbourne. Following an inquiry, two priests and the brothers were paroled back to Beagle Bay, the missionaries of the Sacred Heart stepping in to ensure Beagle Bay survived. The brothers’ and priests’ movements were
