T G H Strehlow

by Journey to Horseshoe Bend (retail) (epub)

  At Ultjua the Finke turned north-east for some miles till it hit one of the most mountainous sandhill ridges situated at the eastern termination of the Britannia Sandhills. This towering ridge turned the river back in a south-eastward direction once more. The salty waterhole of Uratanga, which was situated at the extreme northern point of this bend, marked the final point in the travels of the Unmatjera-Aranda fish ancestors. The Uratanga dune ridge symbolised the fish weir of gum branches thrown up by the local ntapitnja fish ancestress Palupaltjura, which she had used in order to trap secretly the larger fish that had been swept down by the northern floodwaters from distant Ankurowunga. Palupaltjura, who could assume the guise of a female ntapitnja fish, had turned into a woman whenever she caught and ate other fish. She had been so successful in her surreptitious trapping activities that the great crayfish ancestor who had come down in pursuit from the north, and who had been wondering why he could secure only small fish with his fish-spear, decided to lie in wait for the unknown poacher. One day he surprised Palupaltjura, who was too busy catching fish to notice his approach. He took up his stance at the northern end of the high Uratanga sandridge, at a place later marked by a tall bloodwood tree, stabbed Palupaltjura in the shoulder with his long, slim fish-spear, pulled her up from the edge of the pool, and flung her – all in one action – into the sandhills lying north of the Finke bank.

  In addition to these larger waterholes located on the middle Finke River between Ekngata and Talpanama, there existed numerous smaller permanent pools in the river bed, and all of these had mythological episodes attached to them. This wealth of sacred traditions had been comparatively easy to preserve during the pre-white days. The wide and fertile Finke flats carried a profusion of the larger game animals, in particular of kangaroos, emus, and rat kangaroos; and the sandhills were rich in carpet snakes and all those smaller marsupials that stood in no need of drinking water. Since the Britannia Sandhills had, in the old days, yielded these additional highly prized food supplies, the middle Finke Valley dwellers had once been a very numerous group. There had never been any dearth of males who could be called upon to preserve the rich local heritage of myths, songs, and ceremonial acts from one generation to the next.

  The depth of this wide river valley could be gauged from the fact that the Hermannsburg travellers who had taken the road from Takalalama to Talpanama across the Britannia Sandhills could catch no glimpses of the Finke or its gums from any point along the camel track. Theo, moving forward slowly by the side of the creeping van, was aware only of the apparently limitless vastness of undulating red sand all around him.

  On a sunny winter’s day the dune country would have looked beautiful because of its rich colourings. The flourishing desert oaks, standing well-spaced apart, looked magnificent. Their straight, dark, ridge-barked trunks rose to an average height of from twelve to fifteen feet before the first strong, crooked branches were reached; and the many hundreds of young desert oaks which soared up around the big trees in the form of slim, straight saplings showed that the Britannia Sandhills had enjoyed a long run of good seasons in recent years. Had successions of droughts been a normal occurrence in this area, this would have been revealed by the crookedness of the saplings and by the low height of the trunks of the full-grown trees. The fresh bluish-green needles of the desert oaks contrasted with the shiny dark-green leaves of the willowfoliaged ironwoods, and with the grey-green leaves of the mulgas. The spinifex tussocks on the flats between the dune crests, expanded by a succession of excellent years till each spiky clump touched its neighbour, were in full ear; and the swollen spinifex seed-heads closely resembled the heavy ears of a waving, ripe cornfield. On the sides of the tall dunes the spinifex clumps were spaced apart rather more widely, permitting the rich colour of the sand to peep through; and the bare crests of the dune tops shone a blazing red in the full light of the sun. The wind-rippled sand on the crest tops was intricately patterned as by an artist’s hand; and all animal and bird tracks on it stood out clearly, revealing to an experienced hunter’s eye whatever movements had recently gone on in the sandhill country. Emus, kangaroos, lizards, snakes, rabbits, crows, hawks, dingoes: all of these creatures had their homes among these dunes, and roamed over them in quest of food. Some of these birds and animals had to turn back south to the Finke Valley from time to time to slake their thirst; other species had learnt to live without water when they adapted their habits to their environment. To the eye of a white man the sandhill country might have looked a useless waste, almost devoid of life; but the nomad Aranda hunters living at the middle Finke waterholes had once found the bordering dune country to be a rich source of food.

  But on this particular morning Theo was conscious only of the heat and the menace of the dune country. It seemed to him a merciless, intimidating waste; and as he pulled out some spinifex ears in order to suck the sweet base ends of their stems, his one wish was to get out of this cruel red land as quickly as he could. By ten in the morning the blazing heat of the sand, which had begun to burn the tender parts of his feet between his toes, compelled him to climb back on the van. He sat down on the front seat with a gasp of relief, and watched the iron-shod wheels relentlessly cutting two deep parallel furrows through the sea of red sand and spinifex tussocks. It was about midday when the party reached the end of the Britannia Sandhills. Njitiaka stopped and pointed south to a long and mountainous red dune which overtopped all other sandhill crests by scores of feet. ‘That is the Uratanga sandhill,’ he told Theo. ‘The Finke is just on the other side of it, and there is a large waterhole here, the Uratanga waterhole, which the whites call Salt Hole.’ Uratanga, which marked the end of the trail of the ancestral fish travellers, was more than two hundred miles distant from Ankurowunga, their original mythical starting point. The high sandridge that rose so menacingly into the air against the southern sky fell down with sudden abruptness towards the Finke on the other side. Both its shape and its position made it a perfect symbol of the final fish weir cast up against the mythical flood at the beginning of time.

  From the point where the sandhills ended the country sloped down noticeably. Soon a box gum watercourse was struck which came down from the northern plains and turned eastward towards some strikingly shaped purple hills, the largest of which was a high table mountain rising from a rounded base. The track followed this watercourse for a short distance, and then the van passed through Ankarinta Tuatja, a ‘gap’ between two low edges of rock. Here some old, white-bearded totemic ancestors, who had travelled down from Albeitinta, a hill north of Takalalama, had gone to their last rest, according to the local myth. The white man’s name for this gap was Hell’s Gates: this name had almost certainly been given to it by one of the old pioneers who was leaving the shady Finke Valley on a hot summer’s day on his way westward into the Britannia Sandhills. The track leading from Hell’s Gates to the Finke passed quite close to the high and striking, round-based table mountain. Theo enquired after its name. ‘Its correct name is “Karalananga”,’ replied Njitiaka, ‘but the young folk of today insist on calling it “the Talpanama mountain”. That is because our young people spend all their time with the white folk, and grow up just as ignorant as the white men. Otherwise they would remember that “Talpanama” is the name of a clay-flat north of the Intjinjera waterhole where we will be stopping shortly for our meal. That waterhole, too, the ignorant young people today call “the Talpanama waterhole”.’ However, since the name ‘Talpanama’ meant ‘(Where) the moon is’, it seemed to Theo most appropriate that such an unusually shaped mountain should be associated with the moon in the minds of the younger generation.

  Three miles on from the edge of the sandhills the Finke came into view. After completing, in a long series of gigantic loops and twists, its wide sweeping course around the southern border of the dune country, the river had begun to head northward once more. It was now reaching forward to the Talpanama complex of hills, where it would end its long northward sweep and turn east again. The donkeys bega
n to move more briskly as soon as they reached the shady expanse of the flanking box gum flats: the thirsty animals had already begun to sniff the welcome scent of water. Some minutes later the van descended into the broad white sand of the Finke at a point close to the most advanced point of its northward curve. Njitiaka guided the donkeys across the heavy sand to the further bank and pulled up the van under a magnificent gum with wide-spreading branches. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and the hottest hour of the day.

  As soon as the donkeys had been unharnessed from the van, they made their own way to the wrongly named waterhole of Talpanama, and joined their loose mates, who were already slaking their thirst. After that they rolled about in the sand and then lay down for a quick midday rest. Only their heads and tails could not remain still because of the vicious flies. During the whole of the midday halt the swishing of their tails and the noisy clapping together of their long, stiff ears showed the extent to which the donkeys were being annoyed by their fiendish tormentors. Similarly, the constant angry hand-swipes of the travellers as they were hurrying through their quick midday snack afforded unmistakable evidence of their fly-ruffled tempers. Talpanama was only one of several open Finke waterholes in this region; and a considerable proportion of the cattle on Idracowra Station were grazing in this part of the Finke Valley. In consequence the swarms of local flies had assumed near-plague proportions. Theo and his companions had a difficult time in waving the flies away from their food and their faces. Their hands could not remain still for a minute while they were having their meal. Nevertheless, it was a refreshing break for them to sit in the shade of the large gum tree and look down at the long waterhole stretching against the northern bank of the river. After the sun-scorched furnace atmosphere of the Britannia Sandhills, the much lower temperature in the shade of the tree, though undoubtedly still high in the nineties, felt like a pleasant cool change to the travellers; and the sight of the commonplace, reed-fringed waterhole turned the midday rest camp for them into a soothing place of refuge in a weary land. Talpanama seemed a place infinitely more beautiful than the finest oasis shown in the desert landscape pictures of other countries.

  But with Idracowra Station still twelve miles away, the midday rest could not be a long one. At a quarter to three in the afternoon the donkeys that had pulled the van on the previous day were once more harnessed to it, and shortly afterwards the travellers continued their journey.

  For the rest of the distance the road ran through wide box gum flats, first along the northern, then along the southern side of the Finke. This portion of the Finke Valley was beautifully wooded country. The wide, loamy flood flats were densely studded with flourishing stands of twisted, brown, rough-barked box gums. So thick was the timber that the Finke Valley at times looked almost like forest country through which a broad white ribbon of sand kept on running and shimmering. Even at this distance from their source in the northern mountain country, the swiftflowing floods that came down as far as Idracowra, perhaps at two-year intervals or even less frequently, were still sufficiently powerful to rip out any young gums that had shot up in the main channel during a lengthy dry period. In between these major floods portions of the river bed were sometimes filled for a distance of ten or twenty miles by the red-brown waters contributed by the numerous small box gum watercourses which came rushing down from the adjacent plains and low hills after cloudbursts. Flourishing patches of giant saltbush ran through these box gum stands, particularly in the southern river flats. This flood valley was flanked in the south by towering red dunes, among whose brilliant fires the luxuriant shapes of hardy desert shrubs raised their green heads, challenging and defying the soft, drifting sand crests to drown them. On the northern flank a number of low and barren stonehills approached close to the river over the first six mile stretch below Talpanama; then the sandhills encroached upon the northern bank of the river also.

  A maze of cattle pads traversed this region; for the Finke Valley was first-class grazing country, with the saltbush providing a safe standby in dry seasons to eke out the excellent herbage which in normal times grew both on the flood flats and on the sandhills. With this proliferation of cattle pads came a great increase of dust; for the whole country had been powdered and churned up by the twin-clawed hoofs of hundreds of wandering cattle. The strong smell of the cattle and their droppings kept on increasing with each mile that brought the travellers closer to Idracowra.

  When the sun was sinking low in the west, the red-and-white cattle could be seen moving through the box gum flats towards the waterholes in bellowing mobs, with the beasts normally advancing in single file. Most of them were in prime condition. The larger mobs usually had a heavy, broad-shouldered bull, with red-rimmed eyes, lumbering ponderously in their rear. Sometimes a bull would stop and give out three or four short, high-pitched calls to the cows, after which he would lower his voice to a menacing growl, ending on a long-drawn-out bass note. If answered by another bull, he might pause, lower his magnificent broad head, and begin to throw dust over his flanks with his powerful front hoofs in token of his challenge and angry defiance. After that he would go on, taking slightly longer and more hurried strides till he had caught up with his own mob again.

  The sun was about to touch the western horizon when its evening rays lit up yet another low hill standing close to the northern bank of the Finke. Though Theo was not given its name, this hill was called Tjina, and it sheltered in two of its caves the sacred tjurunga of the Idracowra local group. For it was at Tjina that the local gecko ancestors were believed to have originated at the beginning of time; and it was from Tjina that the fierce gecko ancestor Itirkawara, wearing a bunch of red-and-black cockatoo tail feathers, had set out on his long journey north-east towards Queensland in order to fight his hand-to-hand battles with other totemic ancestors, each of whom he finally cut in halves at the waist with his sharp stone knife.

  Shortly afterwards the sun sank like a blazing, fiery ball below the western horizon, giving the tortured land a most welcome respite from its searing heat. Soon darkness had fallen on the box gum forest. The tired donkeys continued to plod on gamely. Sometimes they panted a little louder than they had done when they had first been harnessed to the van; and the clouds of dust now being stirred up by the cattle made them snort and clear their noses at more frequent intervals. But the strong-hearted little animals never faltered in their resolute steps. They took no heed of the bellowing cattle around them; and the intertwined network of cattle pads, which sometimes followed the road and sometimes criss-crossed over it, could not disturb their vision or confuse their sense of direction.

  It was a little after half past eight when the kerosene lanterns and the campfires of Idracowra Station finally began to show up on the northern bank of the Finke. The van moved from the southern box gum flats across the Finke bed, here roughened into thousands of pits and bumps by the multitudinous feet of milling cattle, over to the open northern bank of the river. A loud chorus of welcoming voices greeted the weary travellers. Heinrich moved out from one of the log-houses, holding a lantern high in the air to show where the van should pull up for the night. The figure of an elderly white man could be seen standing under the verandah of the same log-house. This man was Allan Breaden, the manager of Idracowra Station. As soon as the van had halted, Allan came forward. His eyesight was very poor, and he had to move about carefully at night since the light cast by the storm lanterns was rather too dim for his vision. He invited Theo to come in for a late evening meal, and instructed his half-caste spouse Jessie to give Theo’s companions their food to take over to the camp with them. At this moment Mrs Strehlow came out from another log-house and greeted her son affectionately. Then she hurried back to her sick husband. ‘Your father has had a shocking day,’ explained Heinrich to Theo, ‘and Mr Breaden has given up his own log-house to your father and mother. We will have to rest here tomorrow to see how your father is getting on. And now go in and have your meal.’ Theo, who had met Jessie at Hermannsburg, lo
st no time before going in and enjoying a hearty meal after his long day’s journey. When he came out, his swag had already been unfolded and put down on an iron camp stretcher in the open air alongside the log-house kitchen where he had eaten his meal. Heinrich was lying on his swag on a second iron stretcher about ten feet away, and Allan Breaden’s stretcher stood a few yards further on. His son, Johnson Breaden, was already sleeping soundly on another stretcher placed around a corner of the building.

  Soon all three of them were sleeping soundly under the steady light of the blazing stars, utterly unmindful of the charging noises and the loud bellowing of the thirsty cattle at the station troughs a couple of hundred yards away.

  BREAKFAST WAS SERVED SOON after sunrise on the following morning; and Allan Breaden, Jessie, Heinrich, Johnson, and Theo sat down to the breakfast table in the log-house, which served both as station kitchen and dining-room. Since he had never eaten out before, Theo was perturbed when no one said grace before the meal: even on the two previous days Titus and he had said grace in Aranda before touching their food outdoors. Finally he said grace for himself, and in a firm voice, too, despite the horrified protests of Heinrich who had already fallen with relish to his meal with the three others. Allan Breaden paused for a moment and looked up from his plate at Theo with his usual placid and benevolent gaze, but said nothing. Heinrich, on the other hand, was thrown into complete and confused agitation. After breakfast he took Theo aside and told him in pressing and anxious tones never to do such a silly thing again in case it deeply offended his hosts. Full of indignation at Heinrich’s sharp rebuke, Theo went over to the other log cabin and reported the incident to his mother. He had always been told by her never to disguise or hide his Christian beliefs before outsiders, since such an action would amount to a denial of his Saviour; and he confidently expected her sympathy and approval. But she merely replied, ‘When you are eating at the table of people who don’t believe in religion, you must say grace silently to yourself’; and she refused to pass any comments on Heinrich’s rebuke. Theo turned away, bitterly offended. Her advice seemed sound and reasonable enough. But why had he never been given this advice before by his mother or by anyone else? Instead he had always been taught the all-overriding importance of saying grace before a meal. He had been assured that it was a sin to touch food without a prayer of thanksgiving to God; and this prayer had to be said audibly and with deep conviction. And now it was suddenly being explained to him that he had merely made a fool of himself. If this was the case, why had not his religious training taken into account the sober realities of life? He felt that religious instruction should not merely serve to make people fit for living in their own homes but for conducting themselves appropriately in the outside world as well. Deeply humiliated, Theo made no reply to his mother. He left her in silence, but decided to be more circumspect in future in accepting religious advice from anyone, and to keep his most deeply felt convictions strictly to himself.