Corroboree

by Graham Masterton

  ‘You are a walking disaster!’ Lathrop roared at Eyre. ‘You have brought down on me nothing but embarrassment and tragedy!’

  ‘You’re wrong!’ Eyre shouted back at him. ‘I have brought down on you this, as well!’

  So saying, he lifted up from the table a huge cut-glass dish of apple trifle, and promptly upturned it over Lathrop’s head. Custard and apples splattered all over Lathrop’s face and shoulders; and he stood for a moment like an unfinished clay statue, his eyes blinking out through the creamy sliding dessert in utter disbelief at what had happened.

  Unsteadily, like a man on a tightrope, Eyre made his way across the food-strewn floor, and then crossed the reception-room at a pace that was almost a canter. He ran out through the french windows on to the verandah, and then down the stone steps into the garden. The first cries of ‘Where is he? Where is the fellow?’ were beginning to rise up from the house as he jogged around the corner of the stables, and found the carriages assembled there, and the coachmen drinking ginger-beer and playing cards.

  Arthur Mortlock stood up immediately. ‘Anything amiss, sir?’ he asked, picking up his high hat.

  ‘Nothing for you to worry yourself about,’ Eyre panted. ‘But I think it would be wiser if I were to leave directly. Take me back to my lodgings fast as you can; then come back and collect the rest of my party later.’

  Arthur unhooked the feedbags from the horses’ noses, and patted them.

  ‘Trust it’s nothing serious, sir,’ he remarked, as he climbed up on to the box.

  Men in evening dress were running this way and that across the lawns, some of them shouting, some of them laughing hysterically. There were cries from inside the house, and the off-key trumpeting of a French horn from the orchestra. One man had saddled up his grey mare, and was riding her backwards and forwards across the garden, trampling the acacia, frightening the kangaroos, and setting up a whooping and mewling among the peacocks.

  As Arthur Mortlock’s lopsided phaeton rolled noisily out of the gates, and turned back towards Hindley Street, Eyre heard the head footman shouting hoarsely. ‘Stop him if you can! But be careful! He’s violent!’

  Eleven

  Charles Sturt said, ‘On an expedition, you know, you have to learn to control your emotions. You have to take the greatest triumphs and the greatest disasters with equal equanimity. There is no more terrible sight than to come across explorers whose fear has overtaken their judgement; to find their huddled bodies not five miles away from supplies, and food, because they eventually lost confidence in their ability to survive.’

  He paused, and looked out towards the grey glittering waters of the Gulf of St Vincent. ‘I will never forget when we arrived at last at Lake Alexandrina, the lake which I named for our young queen-to-be. It was separated from the Indian Ocean by nothing more than a few sand-bars; and the plan had been to carry our boats over the sandbars to be loaded on to a ship. We could have sailed back to Sydney in complete comfort! But there was no ship there, and our food and water were almost exhausted. Now, the angry and emotional thing to do would have been to curse our luck, and wait for a ship to arrive. But, had we done that, we would most certainly have died. No: we had to resolve ourselves calmly to row back again, all the way up the Murray, and all the way up the Murrumbidgee.’

  He watched Eyre closely; and his voice was so quiet that Eyre could scarcely hear it above the wind.

  ‘We rowed,’ Sturt said, ‘from dawn until dusk, for six weeks, with a single mid-day break of one hour only. We had scarcely anything to eat, and we were too exhausted even to talk to each other. Our hands were blistered until they bled and then the raw flesh became blistered in its turn. Often we fell asleep while still rowing, and dreamed while we rowed. When we got back to Sydney, we were starving wrecks; and, as you know, I myself went blind for several months, through deficiency of diet. But we remained calm, and we never once railed at God, or at our terrible fortune, and all of us are still alive today.’

  They walked a little further down the sand-dune, until they reached the shore. It was a grey, warm, overcast morning, a little after eleven o’clock, and they were strolling southwards on the beach at Port Adelaide. Eyre had arranged for Robert Pope to take care of his bills of lading while he talked with Captain Sturt; and fortunately the head wharfinger, Thomas Taylor, had been called up to Angaston for two days, to discuss the shipment of wool.

  Eyre had half-expected that Sturt would not come, especially after the débâcle in the dining-room at last night’s ball. What he hadn’t known, however, at least until Sturt had told him, was that Sturt disliked Lathrop Lindsay more than almost any other man in South Australia; and that he and Lathrop had fallen out years ago, shortly after Sir Ralph Darling had appointed Sturt as Military Secretary of New South Wales. Sturt had counted the apple-trifle incident as one of the great amusements of the year, and had personally begged Colonel Gawler not to take the matter any further.

  ‘Do you know what they’re saying about you this morning?’ Charles Sturt had said to Eyre, the very first moment he had walked into Eyre’s office this morning. ‘They’re saying, “Beware of Eyre. He is definitely not a man to be trifled with. Especially apple-trifled with.”’

  Eyre said, as they walked on the beach, ‘I’m disgusted with myself.’

  ‘Well,’ said Sturt, ‘it was rather incontinent of you. But, it shows spirit.’

  ‘I wish I’d never seen the girl. The trouble is, I still adore her.’

  Sturt smiled at him. ‘I’m sure that she still adores you. But she’s very young, remember. She’s bound to be influenced by what her father tells her. Give her a chance.’

  Eyre went down on his haunches, his coat-tails trailing on the sand, and selectively picked up shells. ‘I don’t think it’s up to me to give her a chance. I can’t get near her. And after last night, I should think that Lathrop Lindsay would quite happily see me beheaded.’

  ‘You need to become a hero,’ said Sturt.

  Eyre gathered up a handful of cockles, and stood up, and tossed them one by one into the breakers of the sea. ‘Clerks,’ he said, grunting with the effort of throwing, ‘do not become heroes.’

  ‘Come now! Last night you were full of heroism.’

  ‘That was last night. Today, I have a serious headache.’

  ‘Well, I hope you haven’t lost your heroism permanently, because I have decided to put up a considerable sum of my own money to finance your expedition to find Yonguldye, and also to map the interior due north of Adelaide, and beyond; which is where you are most likely to find him.’

  Eyre stared at him. ‘You really believe that I can find him?’

  Sturt nodded. There are several Aboriginals from the Murray River area who frequently help us with tracking, and letter-carrying, and even with escorting prisoners. The best of these is Joolonga; whom I met on my first expedition; and he will go along with you and help you to find the man you seek. He is an interpreter, too, and that should assist you in your search.’

  ‘But will that be the sum of the expedition? Just Joolonga and I?’

  ‘Of course not. You should take with you at least two reliable friends; and two more Aborigine bearers. You may take more, if you wish; but personally I believe it unnecessary, and of course it will add to the expense.’

  Eyre tossed away the last of his shells, and then walked along the beach, close to the line where the surf sizzled, his shoes leaving water-filled tracks in the sand. Sturt followed, a few yards further off, climbing up and down the dunes as he went, holding his hat to prevent it from being blown away.

  Eyre said, ‘Supposing I find Yonguldye straight away, within ten miles of Adelaide? What kind of an expedition will that be?’

  ‘There has to be some give-and-take,’ said Sturt. ‘If I am to finance an exploration; then there must be some results.’

  ‘What sort of results?’

  ‘You spoke yourself of an inland sea, or a Garden of Eden. Perhaps Yonguldye knows how these may be
reached, and will guide you there. Alternatively, he may be able to help you locate a good cattle-herding route to the north. To be able to drive cattle directly from Adelaide to the north coast of Australia would be of tremendous financial advantage. Then again, Yonguldye may know where there are opals to be found.’

  ‘Opals?’

  Sturt took off his hat, tired of keeping it clamped on his head with one hand. ‘Several Aboriginals have spoken of secret opal diggings, rich beyond all imagination. Now think what you could be if you were to find one of those.’

  Eyre turned around, and stopped where he was. Sturt stopped too. Eyre said, ‘All I wanted to do to begin with was find Yonguldye, and bring him back here to Adelaide so that he could bury Yanluga. But now it seems as if I’m also supposed to go looking for seas, and gardens, and cattle-trails, and opals.’

  Sturt came sliding awkwardly down the side of the sand-dune. Above him, a flight of black swans flew through the morning wind, crying that sad, silvery cry. He stood close to Eyre, and said, ‘Australia is not a land for the selfish, Mr Walker. You have your own obligations to fulfil, I understand that. But when I spoke to you yesterday evening about the calling, I was talking about the greater good; the good of all Australians; and you have that calling, and all of the responsibilities that go with it.’

  ‘Well,’ said Eyre, feeling evasive and unsure of himself. ‘I’m not sure that I do.’

  He had dreamed those dreams again last night; in the first heavy sleep of drink; and he had heard those blurred, slow, extraordinary voices, speaking to him in tongues that he was unable to understand. Voices that spoke of yonguldye, the darkness, and tityowe, the death adder. And there were other noises: the hissing of sand in the wind, and the whirring of boomerangs, and that distinctive whiplike sound of a spear launched from a woomera. He had woken, at the very moment that Mrs McConnell’s clock had struck three, and he had walked in his nightshirt to the window and seen that same Aborigine boy sitting across the street, with his scruffy wild dog lying at his feet, while the moon shone through the branches of the gum-trees like a prurient face. He had remembered then the stone that the Aborigine had given to him when their carriage had been ambushed, and he had gone to his wardrobe and searched in his jacket until he had found it.

  He had heard of tjuranga, the sacred stones of the Aborigines, which were supposed to contain the spirits of ancient dreamtime people or animals. Perhaps this was one. Whatever it was, it must have some kind of mystical significance, something to do with Yanluga. Eyre had held it up to the moonlight, and traced the carved patterns on it with his fingertips. He had almost been able to convince himself that he felt a magnetic tug between the stone and the moon itself; as if the stone were an alien mineral, from somewhere unimaginably distant, carved and decorated according to protocols that were not of this earth.

  It frightened him, although he didn’t know why. But it also re-affirmed his determination to seek religious justice for Yanluga; and to discover as much as he could about the primaeval secrets of Australia.

  Today, on the beach with Captain Sturt, he was no less determined to find Yonguldye and to embark on whatever exploration the search would demand. But he had become suspicious of Sturt himself: not only of Sturt’s sudden and copious friendliness, and his immediate readiness to put up the money to send Eyre northwards, but of his repeated explanations that it was necessary for the expedition to be quickly profitable.

  Sturt said, ‘Whenever capital is invested, for whatever purpose, there must always be some return. You appreciate that, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m not sure that the value of burying one black fellow according to his religious beliefs could be totted up in a balance-book,’ replied Eyre, although he did his best not to sound sarcastic.

  ‘Well, of course not,’ said Sturt. ‘But we’re actually hoping for a little more than that; as I’ve been trying to tell you. I mean—I haven’t misjudged you, have I? You are the exploring type? I thought I saw so much vision in you last night. So much imagination. It takes imagination, you know, to be a good explorer. What could lie beyond the next range of mountains? Where could that river run? That wasn’t just liquor, was it, that sense of imagination? I mean—you won’t think that I’m being offensive, or personal. But today you seem to be more—well, how can I put it?— closed-up, as it were. Inward, in your attitudes.’

  Eyre said, ‘I’m not lacking in gratitude, Captain Sturt. Please don’t think that.’

  ‘I don’t, Mr Walker, not for a moment. But I do want you to understand that it wouldn’t be possible for me to finance a venture like this solely for the purpose of finding one Aborigine chief, and bringing him back to Adelaide. There must be benefits for everyone, not just Yanluga; and let us not forget that Yanluga is already dead.’

  Eyre thrust his hands into the pockets of his britches, and walked on a little further. He couldn’t think why Sturt’s proposition disturbed him so much. After all, he was a white man; and he worked for a commercial company which depended on South Australia flourishing, and on the exploitation of whatever riches and facilities the land had to offer. Yet he knew from what Yanluga had told him that the Aborigines had already been dispossessed of many of their magic places, and that scores of sacred caves and creeks had been lost to them for ever. And what the white man did not yet understand—if he ever would—was that the Aborigines depended on being able to visit these places in order to remind themselves of their complicated and mystical past. None of their stories and songs were written down; none of their magic was recorded in books. The places themselves were the culture; the rocks and the creeks were invested with all the knowledge that the Aborigines needed in order to live and die according to what they believed. Once the places were gone, the culture was gone, irrevocably. To deny the Aborigines access to them was like burning down cathedrals.

  Eyre watched a Dutch whaler sailing slowly around the point on its way to the waters of the South Indian Basin, its triangular sails shining in the morning sun. He said, ‘Perhaps I’m just being eccentric. Mr Lindsay is always accusing me of eccentricity. It’s just that I feel that whatever we find in Australia we ought to protect as well as exploit. Scores of Aborigines have died of the measles, because they were infected by British settlers. Some tribes have died out altogether. Who will ever know now what they believed, and why they lived the way they did? Each time we destroy something here, we destroy one more secret. I’m simply afraid that if I find opals, or gold, or even a passable cattle-trail—well, this Garden of Eden will very quickly go the way of all Gardens of Eden. Trampled underfoot.’

  Sturt dragged a large red handkerchief out of his sleeve, and loudly blew his nose. When he had folded the handkerchief back up again, and tucked it out of sight, he said, ‘You’re quite right. Or at least Mr Lindsay’s quite right. You are eccentric. In fact, you’re eccentric enough to be a really great explorer.’

  Eyre picked up more shells; and began to skip them over the surf.

  Sturt said, ‘Let me put it this way, Mr Walker. I have lived among your Aboriginal at very close quarters; and believe me there is no more wretched specimen of humanity. He survives on insects and frogs and all kinds of repulsive creatures; nourishment to which a civilised man could never turn, even in his direst need.’

  ‘Alexander Pearce excepted,’ commented Eyre, skipping another shell.

  Sturt ignored that sharp remark. Alexander Pearce had been a Macquarie Harbour convict, a one-time pie-seller from Hobart, who had twice escaped from prison, and twice survived by eating his companions.

  Sturt went on, ‘Every Aboriginal I have come across who has encountered the white man has benefited from the experience. True, many of them have unfortunately caught diseases not endemic in Australia; but Doctor Clarke tells me that they will eventually form a satisfactory resistance to most of the commoner sicknesses. And a few hundred deaths, no matter how regrettable those deaths may be, is a small price to pay for the advantages of Christianity, and clothing, and a go
od wholesome diet. I must tell you, Mr Walker, that it has long been my dream to teach and train the Aboriginals, to make them into happy servants. Many of them are already useful as constables, and guides, and houseboys. And when they are properly housed, and taught the elements of agriculture and the keeping of sheep and cattle, they will at last be able to develop for themselves the rudiments of civilisation. Do you want to see them forever outcast from normal society? Do you want to see them live in hardship and poverty and shameful nakedness, ignorant and filthy, ridden with venereal diseases, for generation after generation? Do you call that protecting them? They are backward children, Mr Walker; and as such their condition begs every paternal care that we can offer them.’

  Eyre said, ‘Does that mean we have to overrun their land, and dig out of it everything and anything valuable? Does that mean we have to desecrate their sacred places?’

  Sturt laid his hand on Eyre’s shoulder, and smiled at him rather too closely, so that Eyre could see the hairs growing out of his nostrils.

  ‘To use the natural gifts that the land of Australia holds within her bosom, to give succour and support to her natural inhabitants; that is scarcely destructive. Of what use to an Aborigine are opals? Or copper? Or gold, even? Far better that we should take the gold, and the opals, and whatever other minerals might be discovered, and sell them where they are most wanted, and in return give the Aborigines food, and education, and proper clothing, and Goulard’s extract, and Holy Bibles. Come, Mr Walker; you are the son of a minister. What do you think he would have said? Your father?’

  Eyre let his remaining shells fall to the beach, one by one. ‘I suppose he would have agreed with you,’ he said, quietly.