The beach never recovered, during the Somers’ stay, the river never subsided into the sand, the sandy foreshore never came back. It was a rocky, boulder-heaped ruin with that stream for an impasse. Harriet would not go down to the sea any more. The waves still raved very high, they would not go back, and they lashed with a venomousness to the cliffs, to cut a man off. Richard would wander cold and alone on this inhospitable shore, looking for shells, out of the storm. And all the time the waves would lash up, and he would scramble out. It seemed to him female and vindictive. ‘Beastly water, beastly water, rolling up so high. Beastly water, beastly water, rolling up so high, breaking all the shells where they lie’—he crooned to himself, crooning a kind of war-croon, malevolent against the malevolence of this ocean.
Yet it was August, and spring was come, it was wattle-day in Sydney, the city full of yellow bloom of mimosa. Richard and Harriet went up to the United States Consul, to the shipping office: everything very easy. But he could not bear to be in Sydney any more. He could hear Kangaroo all the time.
It was August, and spring, and hot, hot sun in a blue sky. Only the sea would not, or could not return to its old beauties. Richard preferred to go inland. The wattle trees and the camellia trees were full in bloom in the bungalow gardens, birds flew quickly about in the sun, the morning was quick with spring, the afternoon already hot and drowsy with summer. Harriet, in her soul, had now left Australia for America, so she could look at this land with new, relieved eyes again. She never more passionately identified herself with it as at first.
Richard hired a little two-wheeled trap, called in Australia a sulky, with a little pony, to drive into the bush. Sometimes they had gone in a motor car, but they both much preferred the little, comfortable sulky. There sat Harriet full and beaming, and the thin Richard beside her, like any Australian couple in a shabby sulky behind a shabby pony, trotting lazily under the gum trees of the high road and up the steep, steep, jungle-dense climb of the mountain to the pass.
Nothing is lovelier than to drive into the Australian bush in spring, on a clear day: and most days are clear and hot. Up the steep climb the tree ferns and the cabbage palms stood dark and unlighted as ever, among the great gums. But once at the top, away from the high road and the sea-face, trotting on the yellow-brown sandy trail through the sunny, thinly-scattered trees of the untouched bush, it was heaven. They splashed through a clear, clear stream, and walked up a bank into the nowhere, the pony peacefully marching.
The bush was in bloom, the wattles were out. Wattle, or mimosa, is the national flower of Australia. There are said to be thirty-two species. Richard found only seven as they wandered along. The little, pale, sulphur wattle with a reddish stem sends its lovely sprays so aerial out of the sand of the trail, only a foot or two high, but such a delicate, spring-like thing. The thorny wattle with its fuzzy pale balls tangles on the banks. Then beautiful heath plants with small bells, like white heather, stand in tall, straight tufts, and above them the gold sprays of the intensely gold bush mimosa, with here and there, on long, thin stalks like hairs almost, beautiful blue flowers, with gold grains, three-petalled, like reed flowers, and blue, blue with a touch of Australian darkness. Then comes a hollow, desolate bare place with empty greyness and a few dead, charred gum trees, where there has been a bushfire. At the side of this bare place great flowers, twelve feet high, like sticky dark lilies in bulb-buds at the top of the shaft, dark, blood-red. Then over another stream, and scattered bush once more, and the last queer, gold-red bushes of the bottlebrush tree, like soft-bristly golden bottlebrushes standing stiffly up, and the queer black-boys on one black leg with a tuft of dark-green spears, sending up the high stick of a seed-stalk, much taller than a man. And here and there the gold bushes of wattle with their narrow dark leaves.
Richard turned and they plunged into the wild grass and strange bushes, following the stream. By the stream the mimosa was all gold, great gold bushes full of spring fire rising over your head, and the scent of the Australian spring, and the most ethereal of all golden bloom, the plumy, many-balled wattle, and the utter loneliness, the manlessness, the untouched blue sky overhead, the gaunt, lightless gum trees rearing a little way off, and sound of strange birds, vivid ones of strange, brilliant birds that flit round. Save for that, and for some weird frog-like sound, indescribable, the age-unbroken silence of the Australian bush.
But it is wonderful, out of the sombreness of gum trees, that seem the same, hoary forever, and that are said to begin to wither from the centre the moment they are mature—out of the hollow bush of gum trees and silent heaths, all at once, in spring, the most delicate feathery yellow of plumes and plumes and plumes and trees and bushes of wattle, as if angels had flown right down out of the softest gold regions of heaven to settle here, in the Australian bush. And the perfume in all the air that might be heaven, and the unutterable stillness, save for strange bright birds and flocks of parrots, and the motionlessness, save for a stream and butterflies and some small brown bees. Yet a stillness, and a manlessness, and an elation, the bush flowering at the gates of heaven.
Somers and Harriet left the pony and clambered along the stream, past trees of the grey, feathery-leaved wattle, most sumptuous of all in soft gold in the sky, and bushes of the grey-hard, queer-leaved wattle, on to the thick green of strange trees narrowing into the water. The water slithered rushing over steep rocks. The two scrambled down, and along after the water, to an abrupt edge. There the water fell in a great roar down a solid rock, and broke and rushed into a round, dark pool, dark, still, fathomless, low down in a gruesome dark cup in the bush, with rocks coming up to the trees. In this tarn the stream disappeared. There was no outlet. Rock and bush shut it in. The river just dived into the ground.
It was a dark, frightening place, famous for snakes. Richard hoped the snakes were still sleeping. But there was a horror of them in the air, rising from the tangled undergrowth, from under the fallen trees, the gum trees that crashed down into the great ferns, eaten out by white ants.
In this place already the Christmas bells were blooming, like some great heath with hanging, bright red bells tipped with white. Other more single bellflowers, a little bit like foxgloves, but stiff and sharp. All the flowers stiff, sharp, like crystals of colour come opaque out of the sombre, stiff, bristly bush plants.
Harriet had armfuls of bloom, gold plumage of many branches of different wattles, and the white heather, the scarlet bells, with the deep-blue reed-blobs. The sulky with all the bloom looked like a corner of paradise. And as they trotted home through the bush evening was coming, the gold sun slanting. But Richard kept jumping out from among the flowers, to plunge into the brake for a new flower. And the little pony looked round watching him impatiently and displeased. But it was a gentle, tolerant, Australian little beast, with untold patience. Only Harriet was frightened of the coming dusk.
So at length they were slipping down the steep slopes again, between the dense, creeper-tangled jungle and tree ferns, dark, chilly. They passed a family moving from nowhere to nowhere, two colts trotting beside the wagon. And they came out at last at the bottom, to the lost, flickering little township, at nightfall.
At home, with all the house full of blossom, but fluffy gold wattle-bloom, they sat at tea in the pleasant room, the bright fire burning, eating boiled eggs and toast. And they looked at one another—and Richard uttered the unspoken thought:
‘Do you wish you were staying?’
‘I—I,’ stammered Harriet, ‘if I had three lives, I’d wish to stay. It’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever known.’
‘I know,’ he answered, laughing. ‘If one could live a hundred years. But since one has only a short time—’
They were both silent. The flowers there in the room were like angel-presences, something out of heaven. The bush! The wonderful Australia.
Yet the day came to go: to give up the keys, and leave the lonely, bare Coo-ee to the next comers. Even the sea had gone flowery again at last. And everybody
was so simple, so kindly, at the departure. Harriet felt she would leave behind her forever something of herself, in that Coo-ee home. And he knew that one of his souls would stand forever out on those rocks beyond the jetty, towards Bulli, advanced into the sea, with the dark magic of the tor standing just inland.
The journey to Sydney was so spring-warm and beautiful, in the fresh morning. The bush now and then glowed gold, and there were almond and apricot trees near the little wooden bungalows, and by the railway unknown flowers, magenta and yellow and white, among the rocks. The frail, wonderful Australian spring, coming out of all the gummy hardness and sombreness of the bush.
Sydney, and the warm harbour. They crossed over once more in the blue afternoon. Kangaroo dead. Sydney lying on its many-lobed blue harbour, in the Australian spring. The many people, all seeming dissolved in the blue air. Revolution—nothingnesses. Nothing could ever matter.
On the last morning Victoria and Jaz’s wife came to see the Somers off. The ship sailed at ten. The sky was all sun, the boat reared her green paint and red funnel to the sun. Down below in the dark shadow of the wharf stood all those who were to be left behind, saying goodbye, standing down in the shadow under the ship and the wharf, their faces turned up to the passengers who hung over the rail. A whole crowd of people down on the wharf, with white uplifted faces, and one little group of quiet Chinese.
Everybody had bought streamers, rolls of coloured paper ribbon, and now the passengers leaning over the rail of the lower and middle decks tossed the unwinding rolls to their friends below. So this was the last tie, this ribbon of coloured paper. Somers had a yellow and a red one: Victoria held the end of the red streamer, Jaz’s wife the end of the yellow. Harriet had blue and green streamers. And from the side of the ship a whole glittering tangle of these colours connecting the departing with the remaining, a criss-cross of brilliant colour that seemed to glitter like a rainbow in the beams of the sun, as it rose higher, shining in between the ship and the wharf shed, touching the faces of the many people below.
The gangway was hoisted—the steamer gave long hoots. Only the criss-crossing web of brilliant streamers went from the hands of the departing to the hands of those who would be left behind. There was a sort of silence: the calling seemed to die out. And already before the cables were cast loose, the gulf seemed to come. Richard held fast to the two streamers, and looked down at the faces of the two women, who held the other ends of his paper threads. He felt a deep pang in his heart, leaving Australia, that strange country that a man might lose so hopelessly. He felt another heartstring going to break like the streamers, leaving Australia, leaving his own British connection. The darkness that comes over the heart at the moment of departure darkens the eyes too, and the last scene is remote, remote, detached inside a darkness.
So now, when the cables were cast loose, and the ship slowly left the side of the wharf and drew gradually towards the easier waters of the harbour, there was a little gulf of water between the ship and the wharf. The streamers lengthened out, they glittered and twinkled across the space almost like music, so many-coloured. And then the engines were going, and the crowd on the wooden quay began to follow slowly, slowly, holding the frail streamers carefully, like the ends of a cloud, following slowly down the quay as the ship melted from shadow to the sun beyond.
One by one the streamers broke and fluttered loose and fell bright and dead on the water. The slow crowd, slow as a funeral, was at the end, the far end of the quay, holding the last streamers. But the ship inexorably drifted out, and every coloured strip was broken: the crowd stood alone at the end of the wharf, the side of the vessel was fluttering with bright, broken ends.
So, it was time to take out handkerchiefs and wave across space. Few people wept. Somers waved and waved his orange silk kerchief in the blue air. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell Victoria and Jaz’s wife, farewell Australia, farewell Britain and the great Empire. Farewell! Farewell! The last streamers blowing away, like broken attachments, broken heartstrings. The crowd on the wharf gone tiny in the sun, and melting away as the ship turned.
Richard watched the Observatory go by: then the Circular Quay, with all its ferry wharves, and a Nippon steamer lying at her berth, and a well-known, big buff and black P and O boat at the P and O wharf, looking so like India. Then that was gone too, and the Governor’s Palace, and the castellated Conservatorium of Music on its hill, where Richard had first seen Jack—the Palace Gardens, and the blue inlet where the Australian ‘Fleet’ lay comfortably rusting. Then they drifted across harbour, nearer to the wild-seeming slope, like bush, where the zoo is. And then they began to wait, to hang round.
There ahead was the open gate of the harbour, the low Heads with the South Lighthouse, and the Pacific beyond, breaking white. On the left was Manly, where Harriet had lost her yellow scarf. And then the tram going to Narrabeen, where they had first seen Jaz. Behind was the great lobed harbour, so blue, and Sydney rather inconspicuous on the south hills, with its one or two skyscrapers. And already, the blue water all round, and a thing of the past.
It was midday before they got out of the Heads, out of the harbour into the open sea. The sun was hot, the wind cold. There were not very many passengers in the first class: and nobody who looked possible to the Somers pair. Richard sat in the sun watching the dark coast of Australia, so sombre, receding. Harriet watched the two seamen casting rubbish overboard: such a funny assortment of rubbish. The iron sank in the deep, dark water, the wood and straw and cardboard drearily floated. The low Sydney Heads were not far off.
Lovat watched till he could see the dark of the mountain, far away, behind Coo-ee. He was almost sure of the shape. He thought of the empty house—the sunny grass in front—the sunny foreshore with its new rocks—the township behind, the dark tor, the bush, the Australian spring. The sea seemed dark and cold and inhospitable.
It was only four days to New Zealand, over a cold, dark, inhospitable sea.
Dancing on Coral
Glenda Adams
Introduced by Susan Wyndham
The True Story of Spit MacPhee
James Aldridge
Introduced by Phillip Gwynne
The Commandant
Jessica Anderson
Introduced by Carmen Callil
A Kindness Cup
Thea Astley
Introduced by Kate Grenville
Reaching Tin River
Thea Astley
Introduced by Jennifer Down
The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow
Thea Astley
Introduced by Chloe Hooper
Drylands
Thea Astley
Introduced by Emily Maguire
Homesickness
Murray Bail
Introduced by Peter Conrad
Sydney Bridge Upside Down
David Ballantyne
Introduced by Kate De Goldi
Bush Studies
Barbara Baynton
Introduced by Helen Garner
Between Sky & Sea
Herz Bergner
Introduced by Arnold Zable
The Cardboard Crown
Martin Boyd
Introduced by Brenda Niall
A Difficult Young Man
Martin Boyd
Introduced by Sonya Hartnett
Outbreak of Love
Martin Boyd
Introduced by Chris Womersley
When Blackbirds Sing
Martin Boyd
Introduced by Chris Wallace-Crabbe
The Australian Ugliness
Robin Boyd
Introduced by Christos Tsiolkas
The Life and Adventures of
William Buckley
Introduced by Tim Flannery
The Dyehouse
Mena Calthorpe
Introduced by Fiona McFarlane
All the Green Year
Don Charlwood
Introduced by Michael McGirr
They Found a Cave
Nan Chauncy
Introduced by John Marsden
The Even More Complete
Book of Australian Verse
John Clarke
The Tournament
John Clarke
Introduced by Michael Heyward
For the Term of His Natural Life
Marcus Clarke
Introduced by Rohan Wilson
Dancing with Strangers
Inga Clendinnen
Introduced by James Boyce
Diary of a Bad Year
J. M. Coetzee
Introduced by Peter Goldsworthy
Wake in Fright
Kenneth Cook
Introduced by Peter Temple
The Dying Trade
Peter Corris
Introduced by Charles Waterstreet
They’re a Weird Mob
Nino Culotta
Introduced by Jacinta Tynan
Aunts Up the Cross
Robin Dalton
Introduced by Clive James
The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke
C. J. Dennis
Introduced by Jack Thompson
Careful, He Might Hear You
Sumner Locke Elliott
Introduced by Robyn Nevin
Fairyland
Sumner Locke Elliott
Introduced by Dennis Altman
The Explorers
Edited and introduced by
Tim Flannery
Terra Australis
Matthew Flinders
Introduced by Tim Flannery
Take Me to Paris, Johnny
John Foster
Introduced by Peter Craven
Kangaroo Page 46
