THE SONG MASTER

by Di Morrissey

  ‘Like I said, defamation suits would’ve rained on me like confetti.’

  ‘You just need a good lawyer,’ grinned Alistair, who’d won a number of spectacular defamation suits. ‘And think of the publicity for your book.’

  Rosalie, the pastoralist’s wife, looked pained. ‘I don’t believe one should wash dirty linen in public. I think you’re quite right to maintain a dignified silence.’

  ‘I’m not being dignified or silent, I’m just not writing a book,’ said Mick Duffy, downing his beer.

  Esme spoke up in a clear, firm voice. ‘If one knows about corruption or misuse of power or any wrongdoing in an area you can expose, I believe one has a moral duty to do so. Staying silent is the cause of the apathy that is ruining this country. I’ve always spoken out.’

  ‘And always been in strife for it,’ added Beth. ‘Be honest, Esme, would you really put yourself through all of that again, for a principle that cost you at least one career?’

  ‘I most certainly would. In fact, I’m probably about to dive into another controversy in the coming months. You don’t lose your principles and beliefs along with your eyesight, hearing, hair and teeth, you know.’

  ‘Bully for you, Esme, you’re my kind of girl,’ exclaimed the judge. ‘Let me buy you another drink.’

  ‘I’m doing very nicely thank you.’ She took a sip of gin.

  Susan added, ‘I hope I’m as strong as you, when I’m your age. I wish you were coming with us, Esme.’

  ‘I’m too busy,’ said Esme.

  ‘So, Alan, tell us about the art we might see out . . . where exactly are we going again?’ asked Veronica turning to Beth.

  ‘The King Edward River. Wandjina country. The country of the Barradja people is a sanctuary protected by the Wandjina spirits.’

  ‘So what exactly are . . . is . . . a Wandjina?’ asked Veronica.

  Beth lit a cigarette and spoke through a plume of smoke, her voice taking on what the group would come to recognise as her interpreter’s tone. ‘They’re the creator spirits . . . but the most powerful. We say “they” but it’s unclear whether it is plural or one all-powerful spirit. The Barradja believe they were once in human form and came from the clouds. They walked the country when it was soft like a jelly, creating the landscape, and then went back into the earth leaving their images on the rocks, in shelters. The halo effect around their heads on the paintings represents the clouds and lightning.’

  ‘So the Barradja believe that the paintings weren’t done by certain people, they just appeared there?’ asked the QC, clarifying the point. And as Beth nodded and dragged again on her cigarette, he added, ‘It’s a hard concept to grasp.’

  ‘It’s at the core of their belief system, their law. The spirits of the Wandjina are immortal; they are the creators of this land, and they’re very powerful and must be honoured and treated with respect. Anger them, and you’ll be punished.’

  ‘Haven’t there been some wild theories about these paintings over the years?’ asked the judge. ‘I’ve read that they inspired Erich von Daniken’s book, Chariots of the Gods.’

  ‘Who found them?’ asked Susan.

  ‘The custodians and law men have always known about them. It’s part of their law to observe ceremonies and care for them. But in recent years that’s proved difficult. Ardjani will talk to you about their significance. But, Susan, the Wandjina figure was first recorded by white men when explorer George Grey went looking for an inland sea in 1837. I bet he felt spooked when he found himself being watched by a giant figure on the rock,’ laughed Beth.

  ‘What did he make of it?’

  ‘He wrote of it as an ancient figure in clothing wearing a halo with old script on it. He probably saw it as biblical. A hundred years later explorers started photographing and speculating and they came up with everything from aliens to Macassans, Hindus, Asians, all number of cultures they presumed had passed through.’

  ‘Nobody asked the Aborigines, one assumes?’ commented Judge Duffy.

  ‘Do modern Barradja Aborigines subscribe to the view of continuity since creation?’ asked Alistair MacKenzie.

  ‘You’ll find Ardjani interesting on that,’ said Beth. ‘They have never questioned such a theory. Never needed to. It’s their belief in law and culture.’

  Susan listened to the two legal men, wondering where their train of questioning was leading. Then Esme jumped in with surprising acerbity. ‘Ivory-tower academics. They go at things from the wrong end of the stick, time and again. It’s the people who get out in the field, the archaeologists, anthropologists, palaeontologists, art historians, the people who go and look at the things with clear eyes, clear heads, talk to the local people and really listen, and haven’t written their paper before they get there, they’re the ones who start to see the true picture. Politicians, bureaucrats . . . psshaw . . . they’re as bad as academics.’

  ‘I don’t know about you people but I would like to eat,’ announced Rosalie, stopping the conversation dead.

  Beth whispered to Veronica beside her. ‘Don’t mind old Esme, she’s somewhat bitter about the tertiary scene. She had a falling out years ago and funds for her research were cut off by the university. Long story. Tell you round the campfire one night.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to these fireside chats,’ said Veronica as the group began to rise from the table. ‘What are we eating?’

  ‘Looks like motel Chinese,’ shrugged Alan.

  ‘Beth, aren’t there any other choices in town?’ asked Mick Duffy.

  Beth checked her watch. ‘There are, but by the time we get served and straggle back it will be late and frankly, I don’t think any of the girls should walk without a bloke, it’s a bit dangerous.’ She clapped her hands. ‘Listen to Billy, he’s in charge till we get to Marrenyikka.’

  Billy tucked in his shirt and cleared his throat. ‘Reckon we need to get away no later than 5 a.m. Be at the front entrance with your gear between four thirty and quarter to five.’

  Veronica, not an early riser, stared at Susan, her jaw dropping. ‘The man is mad.’

  ‘What are we travelling in? Is it airconditioned?’ asked Susan.

  ‘You bet. All mod cons. Made in Western Australia. It’s an Oka.’

  ‘I’m not travelling in an okker,’ hissed Veronica in mock alarm.

  ‘You’ll be asleep, you won’t notice,’ retorted Susan.

  ‘No sleeping in the Oka. Too much to see and learn. Best part of the trip,’ declared Beth joining them as they moved towards Digby’s Restaurant. ‘Get some fruit and bread rolls to take with you for an early breakfast, nothing will be open.’

  It was still dark as the two legal men stood at the shut and silent entrance to the motel. Mick Duffy sniffed the air. ‘Piccaninny daylight they call it out here. Or at least they used to. You can smell dawn coming. A blind man could tell it’s coming. Feel that breeze? Feels soft, like in some far-off place the sun is starting to warm the sky.’

  ‘You miss those days in the bush, when you were a youngster, Mick?’

  ‘Yeah. I also did a stint in a mine at the Isa. Took off to find opals and sapphires. Had a bit of luck, but mostly bad luck. Decided to go back to the city. But some things about the bush never leave you, isn’t that what they say out here?’

  ‘I don’t know. I never experienced the genuine thing. I’m a city boy from generations of city lawyers. Sleeping on the beach after a surf club party has been about as rugged as I’ve known.’

  ‘No camping, caravan holidays?’ The judge gave him a pitying look.

  ‘No. I suppose this will make up for it. I always felt I was deprived of those particular boyhood experiences. We used to spend holidays at our family beach house.’

  Beth appeared silently behind them. ‘Morning, gentlemen. You are not the people I had imagined would be ready first.’

  ‘We can look after ourselves. Those sheilas are the ones that need rounding up,’ grinned Mick.

  Alistair glanced at his watch. ‘
Ten to five. Deadline approaches.’

  The sound of a motor and a set of headlights bore towards them, the brightness bouncing off the glass front doors. It was a rugged-looking vehicle. Capable of seating ten people, it wore a square hat of a railed roof rack and at its tail was a squat van-like trailer.

  The Oka stopped and Billy swung down and hurried to Beth, apologetic. ‘Sorry I’m late, had trouble with the trailer. So where’s everybody?’ he mumbled. ‘It’s going to take time loading the gear up top.’

  ‘Good morning, William,’ said Beth pointedly, but with a smile. ‘Calm down, we’ll get there. Here’s two blokes, there’s their stuff.’ She pointed at the duffle bag and smart suitcase. ‘You blokes get first pick of the seats. Hop on board.’

  Billy looked troubled. ‘Not good to start like this. If they can’t get together on time first morning out, it’ll only get worse. When we break camp we should be up and away, breakfast done in an hour. Be hanging round all morning at this rate,’ he grumbled, as he mounted the small iron ladder attached to the side and flung the judge’s duffle bag on top.

  ‘You want our stuff?’ Susan and Veronica appeared dragging their gear forward. Both carried plastic bags and large carry-alls to keep with them in the Oka.

  ‘What’s all that?’ asked Beth.

  ‘Things to keep us occupied in the bus. Food, magazines, bottled water, you said to bring breakfast, so we grabbed stuff from the restaurant last night.’

  ‘Cold spring rolls. Ugh.’

  ‘Carry breakfast and water, that’s all you need.’ Beth watched Billy stow her only luggage, a small sports bag, on the roof. ‘Right. Just Alan to come. He was last to leave the restaurant, said he had a phone call to make. It was late, so I left him.’

  ‘Maybe someone better get him. I bet he’s still sleeping. You should all have arranged to wake each other, or used an alarm clock,’ said Billy, standing by the door looking worried.

  Beth stepped out of the Oka. ‘I’ll get him.’ She strode into the dim gardens.

  Inside the van, they left the front seat behind Billy for Beth, and Veronica and Susan took one side. Mick headed straight to the back seat. ‘Always sit in the back seat. Always have.’ Alistair sat opposite him. ‘This is first class back here, eh?’ commented the judge. ‘Nice upholstery, individual aircon units, tinted windows, plenty of room. I can camp in here for a bit, no trouble.’

  ‘Four-wheel drive, of course,’ said Veronica.

  ‘You bet, with forward control. She’s the best, this baby.’ Billy saw Beth approach alone, and stepped down to meet her.

  ‘Billy told me last night he thought this trip would be a feather in his cap and he’d be able to promote his tours a lot better after this,’ said Veronica. ‘I got the impression he might want to run his own trips up here.’

  Beth appeared in the doorway and held up her hands in despair. ‘He’s not coming.’

  ‘What!’ Susan was immediately disappointed. ‘We can wait for him, can’t we?’

  ‘He’s going to join us later today. He’s going to ask Rosalie for a lift in her plane. We’ll pick him up at The Avenue, the Wards’ place. It’s not out of the way.’

  ‘Has he overslept? Surely we can wait a bit?’

  Beth settled herself in the front seat. ‘Business. Some big deal that has to be fixed now. He’s on the phone with a European dealer sorting out a problem with an overseas exhibition. We’ll check in with him in a couple of hours to make sure we get him from the Wards’ place.’

  ‘How are we going to do that?’

  Billy stuck his head in the door and pointed to the long silver aerial on the bonnet. ‘Radio phone. Only communication that works out there.’

  Billy swung into the seat and ran through his control check like a pilot. They drove into the hint of dawn light and, as they left the sleeping town of Kununurra behind, a silence fell over the small group.

  Forty minutes later they were rolling down the smooth bitumen, past irrigated fields – a legacy of the Ord River Project. ‘It’s taken forty years but the Ord is finally paying its way,’ commented Mick. ‘You wouldn’t have been born when it started in 1958, Susan.’

  ‘The idea started earlier than that, Mick,’ interrupted Beth. ‘Kimberley Durack started experimenting back in the late thirties. It was a simple idea, throw enough water at the rich clay soil and you could grow anything.’

  ‘Except they picked the wrong crops, didn’t they?’ asked Veronica.

  ‘They started with cotton but, by the early 1970s, some caterpillar and the end of government subsidies had killed it off.’

  Alistair picked up the story from Beth. ‘They tried rice next. What the magpie geese didn’t eat, economic factors finished.’

  ‘You know what saved the Ord River Project?’ Mick was emphatic. ‘Cutting out government handouts and making farms pay their own way. Should be more of it in other sectors.’

  ‘They grow rockmelons, cashews, peanuts, chickpeas, grain, sorghum, bananas today, and there’s a lot of feed being grown to fatten up cattle for export to Asia.’ Beth sighed. ‘There’ve been so many big changes in the cattle industry. Now it’s road trains instead of those long cattle drives on the stock route.’

  After watching the first hues of lavender and lemon dribble across the deep violet sky, Beth turned to the group again. ‘This is the night raking up the dawn. Like pulling a curtain, the night rakes away the darkness to reveal the piccaninny light. This is a special time for the Barradja. I will try to explain how they feel.’ She smiled. ‘This is my official cultural interpreting.’ Her voice took on a strong resonance. ‘When the morning star pales beneath the veil of dawning, the Barradja people say that inside them they feel the wudu, the knowledge and the vision, like the first flickering of a fire. Each day is a new beginning, a gift from the Daughter Sun whose Mother Earth reflects her beauty and life in nature’s growth.’

  As the first light glowed, Beth told them the story of the snake that bites the sun and causes her to sink down the sky into the embrace of her mother.

  Her gentle interpretion of the dawn floated in the confines of the cabin as the Oka skittered across the stony and scrubby landscape.

  Billy drove into the brightness of morning, steelrimmed aviator glasses secured to his nose, his attention on the road, alert for kangaroos, emus or giant goannas that might dash from the scrub. The great Ord River farms gave way to Crown land that bordered million-hectare cattle stations, the heavy-duty tyres of the Oka rolling over land created millions of years ago.

  ‘There are stories out there that we will never know,’ said Beth softly. ‘But certain eyes with knowledge can see into the past and the future and tell us things, if we listen. The Songmaster for one.’

  ‘Who is the Songmaster?’ asked Veronica. ‘Will we meet him?’

  Beth shrugged. ‘If he wishes. This is where we adopt Aboriginal thinking. Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. Whatever happens, that’s the way it is.’ She gave a broad smile. ‘It’s an attitude whitefellas find frustrating. The concept of planning, schedules, organisation, even time, doesn’t exist for the Barradja. They don’t even have a word for time.’

  ‘How can one live without an awareness of time?’ asked Susan.

  ‘For the Barradja, time is eternal. A space all around, not a sense of forward or backward.’

  ‘So how do they keep tabs on where they’re supposed to be?’ asked Veronica.

  ‘They break what we call time into cycles. Each person can be in ordinary time, social time, Dreaming time, or spiritual time – which means you live and will keep living. You have to learn to time your life by the rhythms of the earth.’

  ‘Right.’ Veronica took off her watch, grinning. ‘I’m going onto local time, where there is no time. Might as well get into the swing of it.’

  The others in the bus followed suit, though Alistair hesitated, looking at his expensive gold watch.

  ‘You still on Mosman time?’ grinned the judge.

 
They passed around Billy’s map and tried to imagine what they’d find at the end of this journey – Marrenyikka was not marked on the map. Several hours later, Beth’s announcement of a break for a proper breakfast was greeted with enthusiasm. Billy turned onto a dirt road. The signpost read, El Questro.

  ‘It’s a camping area the owners have developed in addition to the main homestead, which is very glamorous, very expensive. A dream come to fruition for a young English couple. The jetsetters fly in and stay at the homestead. We’re going to the more down-market travellers’ camping area but it’s still charming,’ explained Beth.

  Several log cabin-style buildings housing a restaurant with a verandah and bar, a shop and community facilities were set in lawns and shady trees. Billy parked in the small parking lot and everyone got out, stretching stiff legs and backs. There was a barbecue area where tourists were cooking bacon and chops. From the restaurant came the smell of coffee and toast. The group settled themselves on the verandah, most ordering the bacon, chops and eggs with tomato.

  ‘This isn’t how I imagined our first meal in the wilderness,’ declared Alistair looking appreciatively at his eggs benedict.

  Later they examined the permanent camping sites – family-sized tents, secured in small gardens like play houses, where a man was seated in a canvas director’s chair reading a book.

  ‘You look like you’re settling in for a long stay,’ said the judge. ‘I’m Mick, from Sydney.’

  ‘Frank, Melbourne. Bloody wonderful, isn’t it? Spectacular scenery, Emma Gorge is up there. Two kilometres, bit of a hike but worth it. Beautiful swimming hole. My kids are up there already, the wife has gone horse riding, but this suits me. We came for two days and we’ve been here a week.’

  ‘I’d love to get up that gorge,’ said Alistair wistfully.

  ‘Sorry about that, Alistair,’ said Billy. ‘No time, I’m afraid. Have to keep moving, I don’t want to try getting into Marrenyikka in the dark. There’s no real road and Beth has pretty flimsy instructions. And we have to pick up Alan yet.’