by David Mason
Next evening we camped on the Whitula West Bore. I went to the bore to see if there were any cat scats that might be of interest to Walter Boles from the Australian Museum in Sydney. The droppings were a record of recent cat consumption of small things – too often small, almost extinct Australian marsupials. Arriving at the bore I found it full of pigweed and galvanised burr, and even though we were about an hour short of our usual stopping time we made camp and I let the camels free to graze in the bore’s holding paddock. The camels took a long time grazing before they stopped eating, and then settled themselves down to chew the cud.
Then there were birds of prey; from the large wedge-tail eagles to the smaller black falcon and spotted harrier. Beautiful birds. For some reason I felt as though these animals were keeping an eye on me, from the sea eagle on the very first day. I kept an eye out for them and scanned the sky, and somehow, as if it was a reward for continuing to try, every day I would see a bird of prey.
Later in the evening I had a wash in the dam, including a delicious wash of my feet. The level of the water was much higher than the surrounding land, the sides of the dam having been built up over decades. That was why this type of dam is called a turkey nest.
Leaning against the steel leg of the windmill I watched the camels feeding or chewing the cud and looked up to the country around. Just before sunset all I could see were primary colours, the blue of the sky above the purple of the horizon, the yellow of the sun, the red of the earth and the white exclamations of the cockatoos in the dark green trees. I watched Kashgar watching the cockatoos coming to drink at the bore trough. She seemed to find them amusing. I thought the curl in her lips told of a pleasant distraction. Or was it disdain?
That night, and I was not sure why, I dreamed of the Foreign Legion. Perhaps the dream was provoked by some people who drove by and poked cameras out of their car at us. They did not stop, question or smile. What they did was aggressive and insensitive. For I moment I wondered how their memories would sit with their photographs. As for me, I remembered sitting at home thumbing through some old photographs and being taken back to a different time and place. And so I wrote what I dreamed next morning, with the cockatoos screeching their call and the camels waiting patiently. I called the poem ‘Like You’ and it was five years of my life:
Like You
Photograph.
Jesus Christ on your back, a trophy.
Green beret and golden flame sits on the back of your head.
Two golden stripes of rank a velcro tab on your chest.
Hands that could never take a tan, luminous on your hips.
Black boot on the wheel of the truck still holds its sheen.
Your smile is a sucking wound.
Photograph.
Hands red and broken.
Ropes, rifles, rocks and running.
Commando badges on the Red Sea coast.
You are our instructor in all things.
Photograph.
Sunset over the Gulf, bleeding on dark blue.
Above the collar of your shirt the crown of thorns caresses your neck.
Your skin wrinkled and creased by the sun.
The young Legionnaire surrenders and allows your arm to embrace him, a lover.
Photograph.
The jump.
My only friends a rifle and a miracle green wing hanging in the heat of a pale blue dome. Over desert brown and a grey green sea of acacia.
One of us lost, caught in the grey green.
The thorns penetrating, piercing, capturing his body.
His ripped wing a shroud, as silent as his last scream.
My Sergeant says we lose the ones we love. Need to avenge.
Photograph.
The ambush.
Ears ringing from rapid fire rifles and camels and people screaming before death.
Red and white, nostrils flaring and spittle, later blood and bone.
Smell of fear and piss in boots.
Sharp red dots, cigarettes illuminate gaunt faces and the Sergeant herds us together.
He marches us to safety in an ecstasy of stumbling.
Photograph.
The parade ground.
A gravel horizon to lay out the dead.
Sergeant shepherding the ranks of Legionnaires, melted waves licking their boots.
Perfect ranks with bright medals, red, blue and green ribbons, shoulders broad with epaulettes.
Rifles black across chests beneath kepis blanc.
I watch my Sergeant take his shoulders and medals from his body.
He reveals Christ to the light.
I watch the muscles of his back move in anticipation of the work ahead.
The sounds come to me as frozen meat hitting hard ground.
The only grunts from my Sergeant at the sound of knuckle and boot on flesh and bone.
Christ’s eyes are filled, his tears course down my Sergeant’s back.
Photograph.
The corner stabs the base of my palm and my memory.
I half expect to see again the words at Christ’s feet.
The inscription, ‘Comme toi, j’ai suffre’
Like you I have suffered.
Five years in such a place was a long time and the experiences I had in the Foreign Legion remained deep within me. It surprised me, when perhaps it should not, that memories would surface when I least expected them.
Arriving at Canterbury late that day I walked the camels straight to the bore. Only Kashgar drank, and even then it was only a little. After unloading them all near the tanks, Chloe sucked a few sips and Kabul seemed to just wet his lips. So, even after three days they did not seem very thirsty at all. It was clear to me that the pigweed, abundant on the sides of the track, had enough moisture in it to supply their needs.
That evening I lay inside my Gore-Tex bivvy bag inside the swag as the mosquitoes outside whined for my blood. We camped at the Canterbury town bore, on the southern side of the track to Birdsville. Though the township was laid out in 1884 Canterbury was a town of the 1890s. The hotel and township have long disappeared. All that remained was the bore, some ruins and a small cemetery. The hotel was a pisé building and when the nearby landowner purchased the hotel to close its doors – to protect the stockmen from themselves – the roof was pulled off in 1956. It meant that when it rained, the hotel walls turned to mud and melted into the surrounding earth. It appeared that people from Windorah had gone out of their way to care for the cemetery. A well-kept fence and white railings surrounded the ground. With the camels in tow, I visited the cemetery late in the afternoon. I clicked the carabineer just outside the fenced-off ground and walked in.
As well as a number of unmarked graves there was:
In Loving Memory of Our Dear Son George Adam Geiger Who passed away On July 1st 1893 and died from exposure Aged 2 years 4 months
The Geiger family have a presence in the west of Queensland almost as long as Europeans had settled the land.
And a plaque:
In one of these unmarked graves lies the remains of GEORGE TELFORD WEAVE Who died of dysentery here on 9.6.1886 Born London 20.9.1840, Married Isobel Tomkinson 1863, Came to Queensland 1864 and was registered as a surveyor that year.
He mapped much of the Darling Downs until 1881 when his mark took him to SW QLD to survey new pastoral leases. Erected by his descendants in recognition of his pioneering work
The Whitley and Boadle families with Assistance from the Institution of Surveyors Qld. 1996
And others:
In Loving Memory of Kathleen Charlotte Bowman.
Died Nov. 12th 1895 Aged 1 year and 6 months.
EILEEN BOWMAN. Died July 2nd 1901 Aged 2 years and 6 months.
I buried my knees at the foot of the small mounds and wondered what it had been like for those who buried loved ones here; the enormity of the sky, the weight of the heat and the distances to be travelled to a cool drink of lemonade. At least those who lay around me were not alone.
A couple of
hours after leaving Canterbury we came to a small escarpment that dropped abruptly to the Morney Plains. Standing at the crest of the jump I could see a wide plain, that once must have been an inland sea, now covered in a rippling sea of grass. Not far along from this place called Jump Up Gap there was a small red-painted cross with a vertical RIP and on the horizontal bar: ‘Red Atherton 31.12.84 Jingles Jones.’ I wondered if they were headed to a party to see in the New Year. If they were, they never made it. I reflected too on the fact that while there were memorials to some, most had none. Their bodies had become part of the land again and memories of them lost and dissolved into the past. Another reason, I thought, that stories are so important.
Later that night a matronly cook named Shirley, who worked at an oil exploration camp along a track just after Tanbar Creek, stopped with us and set up a barbeque. Seeing the fire some other people pulled in and joined us. The evening was filled with stories of stations and shearing sheds, combs and clips as well as lies that made people laugh. They were shearers from Balranald in western New South Wales and slept in their swags near the fire. The oil crew drove back to camp that night.
The turnoff to Birdsville. Only a few minutes later the journey was almost over.
With so many people close by who laughed, coughed or made too many other noises of massed humanity, I had trouble sleeping. In the brittle night, the fire in the sand and the skeleton branches of acacias black silhouettes against the horizon I sat with Kabul, Chloe and Kashgar. I caressed their muscled necks and spoke gentle words, a reminder to myself that my friends were most important to me. They would see me through the long, difficult days ahead.
After the shearers had gone and just before we moved off, Shirley dropped by again, took some photos and gave me meringues, slice and cake. With a wet kiss on my cheek and a pat for Kabul she said what I was doing was ‘marvellous, wonderful, exciting and moving, all at once’. Then she sighed and wished me well. Finally, with a plume of black smoke from the exhaust of her Toyota diesel, she drove away.
I elected to walk down to the road sign marked ‘Birdsville’ to take a photo and then turned south-west along the track. We had gone two kilometres and were walking into a cool south-westerly breeze. I was walking in the middle of the road with the camels in line abreast behind.
I felt more than heard Kashgar take off first, closely followed by Chloe. I turned to look over my left shoulder. I was greeted to a sight not unlike the etching by Dürer, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, only these were camels and there were only three. My mind registered colour. Red, the colour of the interior of the flared nostrils and mouths. White, the colour of eyes, teeth and spittle. Camel terror.
I normally had time to sidestep Kabul when he took off, but he pushed me into the path of Chloe. She knocked me down. I saw Chloe’s pad come to my head and I thought of the Ethiopian soldier I had seen, his head crushed by the wheel of a truck, his brains squeezed from his skull and splurted over the dusty road like rotten fruit, his face hanging like a mask over the emptiness. For a moment I thought his fate would be mine.
But Chloe missed my head and in tandem the three galloped 200 metres down the road. I lay on the dusty track and thought my dream must be over. I was sure I had broken a femur. I could not move my left leg. I imagined the blood spilling into the tissues of my thigh, slowly killing me and my adventure. After a systematic check I tried moving my leg again, and peeling down my trousers I found nothing other than a couple of scratches and some marks on my thighs beginning to manifest themselves into semi-permanent tattoos.
I hauled myself to my feet, tucked in my shirt and checked the cause of the problem. A car. I had not heard it. Nor had Kashgar until it closed right up. What breeze there was came from the west, into our faces. The driver had moved right up close behind us in an effort to get some good video footage.
I glanced at the camels that had stopped to feed and I hobbled over to the car. Eric and Rohan were on holidays from a Baptist Theological College. Eric had been videotaping ‘the camel man’ and there we were on replay. Me being run down. Eric said he felt very guilty. He even said sorry. He thought I’d be killed. I told him it wasn’t his fault, and anyway, at least he was good enough to wait to see if I was okay.
I walked, or more accurately limped, up to the camels. My intention was to re-tie Chloe’s load and Kashgar’s swag which had worked a little loose in the gallop. I separated Chloe from Kabul and hooshed her down. I left Kabul to continue grazing while I tightened the loads. But for some reason Chloe was not happy. She jumped to her feet and took off at a gallop to the south over the open plain with a bellowing Kashgar in tow. Kabul looked at me for a moment, blinked and then ran off to follow his girls.
Eric and Rohan followed them in the four-wheel drive and I hobbled along as fast as I could. I picked up fallen sheepskin and blankets as they flapped and floated to the ground. The saddles stayed on camel backs and around two kilometres later the camels stopped and resumed grazing. I hooshed Chloe the ringleader, unloaded her and left her in peace. The same with Kashgar. Kabul was fine. He sat himself down and waited. While the camels cooled down, Eric, Rohan and I set up the brew and had a cup of tea. They talked about the journey of life through God. I talked about the journey of life and the search for meaning. We sat and contemplated the small fire and the wisps of smoke that dissipated into the enormous sky.
Kashgar and brumbies on the way to Birdsville.
The two well-intentioned believers left soon enough, though their legacy was pain. Both my thighs wanted to seize up during the afternoon and walking was almost impossible. But this was the test, I reminded myself, was it not? Faced with a setback, pain and fear that it might happen again, take precautions that they will not. I told myself I could not afford to be distracted. I had to stop daydreaming. My body hurt so much there were tears in my eyes, but my heart would never let me stop.
It was only with great difficulty I got out of the swag next morning. I had less than a quarter movement in my left leg. Badly bruised, I clutched onto a tree and leaned back to relieve myself. A tear squeezed from my eye when I started to walk. I could not bend my legs to sit down so I kept moving. I hoped the camels would not decide to try and escape that night. How would I keep up with them?
I was so sore I had trouble moving around the camp and so we got away later than usual. I did not feel too bad as the feed was so good the camels were simply picking or chewing the cud. On the march we paused for a moment, and while the camels grazed I put my arms across my chest, planted my feet better in the sand and tilted my face to the sky. Over the plain I watched a Nankeen kestrel as it hovered for a moment, then began its stepped descent to an unsuspecting prey.
There were lots of tourists. That is, people like me, but unlike me they travelled in four-wheel drives, sometimes with a trailer, to ‘do’ the French Line or the Rig Road across the Simpson Desert. I always said hello and returned their greetings. They were, after all, as much of the landscape as me, and in their way wanted to be part of the odd experience of a bloke and three camels.
Two kilometres short of the Cuddapan Station turnoff we camped on a stand of mimosa and I was sure the camels were fatter. For some reason Kashgar had been quite skittish. Initially I put it down to the brumbies that ghosted our track to the south though maybe it was just being too full of feed and not enough work.
I loved moving across the Morney Plains. The land made my heart beat faster. It was almost Dali; open expanses that left me with the feeling that somehow there were only two dimensions. Here it seemed possible. Rocky outcrops were raw, jagged, dark paintings on the blue sky. The camels ground their plates together, jaws working, chewing their cud. I listened for other life about me and I heard the high-pitched howl of a dingo or the fluttering of a bird, but no insects.
Even though I hurt very much, I loved moving and seeing different things. In fact, while the world’s traditional nomads searched for food, many others searched for meaning. I counted myself among them,
looking across the world’s many landscapes for a meaning beyond bondage to a salary or understandings as to future. Even more than this, the search captured a reaching for meaning, something beyond what was normally understood, but that was within us and only exposed when we really exposed and challenged ourselves.
More to the moment, I only just made it out of the swag next morning. I got up in stages and I was on my feet after 10 minutes. I still could not squat to relieve myself so I looked for trees to grab and leaned back. During the day there were a couple of ‘dancing sessions’ of camels cavorting and bucking. Late in the afternoon one dancing session was led by Kabul. Not long after, I found the map case near the tree where I had tied him for the evening. Only hours before had I thought about needing a better way of attaching it than with a single carabineer and reminded myself that it was important to act on an idea, especially when it was to be an improvement on how I managed the walk.
The moonlight that evening was so bright I could make out the different colours of the camel blankets; green, orange, red and brown. I looked across to Kashgar and she looked at me. I could see the glistening in her eyes before she resumed chewing her cud. She was flighty and at times too nervous but I loved her nonetheless. Of the three camels she was the most likely to bury her head in my armpit, and at night she moved as close to me as possible.
But I hated being sore. Because I was stiff and found it difficult to move I was bowled over twice by the camels. Muscles stretched and ripped as I forced my body to move or was made to move. I simply could not jump out of the way of dancing camels quickly enough. I had to accept the possibility of being trampled again, but I did my damnedest to try and ensure it did not happen. I knew I was vulnerable and I did not like it. Even though my body was tired and skinny I liked it because it did whatever I asked. I did not want to hurt it without good reason.
