Spirits of the Ghan

by Judy Nunn

  ‘Very well,’ he agrees, humouring his brother, ‘we will bury the young pair side by side.’

  Once again they set to digging and their labour is hard, intense, for they wish to bury the bodies before night falls.

  Upon completion, the grave proves perfectly adequate in its dimensions. Its depth will ensure the corpses do not fall prey to keen-scented animals and its breadth will comfortably house the bodies so that they lie in alignment facing Mecca.

  The brothers are selective in their placement. The older man and woman are placed together at the head of the line in the assumption they are the family elders and the rest of the family follows in order of seniority. The younger woman is buried with her infant in her arms, and the last bodies to be placed in the grave are those of the young man and the white girl. At Abdullah’s insistence, the white girl is laid to rest at the end of the line with her arm draped over the waist of the young man, as if they lie together in sleep.

  ‘They are now reunited in death,’ he says solemnly.

  Looking down at the bodies so neatly laid out and so apparently at peace, Mustafa does not scorn his brother, believing after all that Abdullah may be right.

  By the time they have filled in the grave and all is in place, dusk is falling.

  Mustafa returns to where the camels sit, quietly dozing off for the most part. He gathers wood and starts building a fire amongst the scrub well distant from the clearing. They will not stay in this place ever again, but they must set about the practicalities of making camp nonetheless.

  But Abdullah has one final thing to do. Selecting a sharp piece of quartz from the loose rocks that abound, he climbs the larger of the two hillocks and halfway to the top he carves a sign. The sign is in Arabic. It says Peace.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘I know what the sign means.’

  They were the words that greeted him as soon as he arrived at her flat. He hadn’t even stepped inside the door. He stared at her blankly.

  ‘The sign at the site,’ she said with a touch of impatience, as if he were a schoolboy who hadn’t been paying attention, ‘the sign on the rock.’

  ‘Ah, that sign.’

  ‘Come in. The fans are on and the beer’s freezing.’

  Matt followed her into the living room where both the ceiling fan and the fan on her desk were whirring away at top speed. Jess’s flat didn’t boast air-conditioning and the afternoon was a scorcher, with the temperature hovering just above forty, not unusual for Alice in January.

  She fetched two icy cans of beer, which they drank from stubby-holders as they sat at the dining table.

  ‘I thought you said the sign was probably just some old graffiti left by workers on the Overland Telegraph Line,’ he said.

  ‘I did. I was wrong.’

  He could tell she was excited, but then she’d sounded excited when she’d rung several days earlier asking him to call around on Saturday. By choice he was staying at the Heavitree Gap Hotel full-time these days; he and his team now working closer to town than to the donga camp.

  ‘So I take it the sign does have some Aboriginal significance after all,’ he queried.

  ‘No, none whatsoever, I was right about that part.’

  ‘I see.’ A brief pause … ‘Well, are you going to let me in on the secret?’

  ‘It’s an Arabic word,’ she said with a ring of triumph. ‘It says Salaam, which means peace.’

  ‘Right.’ He nodded, still somewhat in the dark. ‘And what does that tell us?’

  ‘Judging by the age of the sign it tells us that it was most probably left by a Muslim cameleer.’ Following her return from Sydney the previous week Jess had done a little homework. ‘The man could have been either an Afghan or a Pakistani,’ she went on. ‘Both races worked on the camel trains that transported materials for the Overland Telegraph Line and nearly all of them were Muslim. Many of these men were brought out to Australia by the government, along with hundreds of camels for the specific purpose of constructing the Line.’

  ‘Right,’ he repeated, fully aware of the history himself, but no less in the dark as to its relevance, ‘and what exactly does all this mean?’

  ‘It means our cameleer knew of the site’s importance to the ancestors,’ she said, ‘of course’ inherent in her tone. ‘That’s what led him to leave a sign saying peace,’ she added, and again Matt registered he was supposed to have grasped this fact.

  ‘I can’t help but feel there’s a certain degree of supposition at play here,’ he replied drily. ‘You do realise, don’t you, that there might be absolutely no connection whatsoever.’

  ‘Oh but there has to be,’ Jess said in all earnestness, ‘it’s far too much of a coincidence to be anything other than a deliberate comment. I mean why else would he have left the sign?’

  Any number of reasons sprang instantly to Matt’s mind. A religious man perhaps, intent upon spreading the word of Islam; a man wishing to state his presence in a new world; or perhaps as she’d suggested right from the start a form of graffiti, a man who had simply carved a word he knew in order to leave his mark. Matt rather favoured the latter himself, but didn’t say so, knowing that if he were to offer any one of his suggestions it would lead to a lengthy and futile discussion. Instead, he got straight to the point.

  ‘And where exactly does this discovery of yours lead us, Jess?’ he asked. ‘What exactly does it tell us about the site and its Aboriginal history?’

  She was stumped. She’d been so excited by the discovery itself she hadn’t given thought to the practical answers it might offer up. Which were what? she now asked herself. Forced to acknowledge defeat she gave in with good grace.

  ‘Nothing,’ she admitted, ‘it tells us absolutely nothing and it leads us absolutely nowhere.’ True to form she refused to be daunted however: ‘But isn’t it wonderful, Matt! How extraordinary to be so transported to the past. Wouldn’t you just love to have been there? Wouldn’t you just love to know what happened at that place?’

  Her enthusiasm, infectious at the best of times, made its customary impact. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes, I would.’

  A month later, on 7 February 2003, a path was blasted through the rock cuttings that formed an imposing barrier just under seven kilometres north of Alice Springs.

  Matt invited Jess along to the blasting as an ‘official observer’, although she was really there at his personal invitation.

  ‘I thought you might be interested in seeing it,’ he said, ‘should be pretty spectacular.’

  ‘I’m most certainly interested,’ she replied.

  ‘To keep the contractors happy I told them you’ll be present in an official capacity,’ he explained, ‘I said you’ll be able to reassure the locals if there’s concern raised after the blasting.’

  ‘As there may well be,’ she responded archly, ‘and as would be perfectly justifiable.’ Jess was critical of the decision to keep the news of the blasting from the local population. She understood the reason behind the decision being the wish to avoid panic, but this was their land after all – surely they had a right to be informed.

  The event proved every bit as spectacular as Matt had promised – indeed even more so, certainly to Jess.

  Standing beside him in the safe area along with the other spectators, she looked out at the vista of ancient rocks that had stood from time immemorial, a scene of rugged splendour. It’s a pity, she thought, to destroy something so beautiful.

  A sense of expectation rippled through the gathering as the moment approached. Then a series of detonations rent the air and before their very eyes it seemed the whole world exploded. Audible gasps sounded from many as the earth erupted sending angry towers of grey smoke billowing ever upwards into a cloudless sky. Huge boulders were hurtled high into the air, rocks and stones whizzed in every direction, lethal missiles and shrapnel all. The landscape looked like a battlefield.

  As she watched, Jess was glad the local people were not there to witness the magnitude of the destru
ction. She could just picture the horror on the faces of the aunties at such wanton defilement of this land of their ancestors.

  She found the sight strangely unsettling herself, although she told herself she mustn’t. The blasting was necessary in the name of progress. No sacred sites were being affected and the creation of this path through the northern cuttings to Alice Springs was essential to the Ghan. But much as she reasoned with herself, Jess found it unnerving to see the earth so desecrated.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ Back on familiar ground at their window table in the tavern, toasting the event’s success over a beer, Matt was pleased that the blasting hadn’t disappointed. ‘Spectacular, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘it was certainly spectacular.’ She decided not to share with him her personal reaction to the blasting. What would be the point? Besides, there was another item on the agenda that demanded discussion.

  ‘The rail corridor to Alice is completed now, isn’t it?’ she queried in seeming innocence.

  ‘More or less. There’s the earthwork that’ll follow the blasting of course, and there are major overpasses and road works to be constructed, but the actual path of the corridor is completed, yes.’

  ‘So when do we go?’ she asked. She’d dropped the innocent act. ‘You said we’d visit the site when the corridor was completed. Actually,’ she corrected herself, ‘you said we’d go after the rock blasting. You were quite specific.’

  ‘Yes, I was.’ He’d known exactly where she was heading. ‘And yes, we will visit the site.’

  ‘Good. It’s important we do, or rather that you do.’

  ‘Why?’ He was intrigued. ‘Why is it important, Jess?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ she admitted with one of those smiles that always disarmed him, ‘but I do know I’m right. Just as I know when we get there you’ll find out for yourself. They’ll tell you, Matt. They’ll make their presence known.’

  They, he thought, the ancestors. ‘Right you are then.’ He stood. ‘Ready for another beer?’

  ‘When?’ she demanded. ‘When do we go?’

  ‘What’s wrong with tomorrow?’

  ‘Fine. Settled. Yes, I’d love another beer.’

  The drive out to the site the following morning was pleasant. He picked her up in the Land Rover at nine. Even at that hour the day was turning into a scorcher, but as neither of them minded the heat they didn’t turn the air-conditioning on, preferring to travel with the windows down and the desert air whipping about them.

  They didn’t talk much as they went, there didn’t seem to be the need, although Jess initially wondered whether he might be feeling some trepidation at the prospect of what lay ahead. He’d certainly been wary on their last visit, she recalled. A quick glance told her that this time he wasn’t.

  After turning off the Stuart Highway into one of the newly created access roads that led directly to the rail corridor it wasn’t long before they reached what had previously been the old surveyor’s track.

  ‘Wow,’ she said as they turned right, back-tracking a short way south in the direction of Alice Springs, ‘bit of a difference.’

  The surveyor’s track was no longer just a track, but had been widened to form a service road; and beside it, stretching north and south across the desert as far as the eye could see, was the wide, red path of the rail corridor.

  ‘Yep, pretty impressive,’ he agreed. ‘All ready for the track-laying phase now and that’s a much speedier process. The Ghan’ll be finished way ahead of schedule.’

  Before long the two rocky hillocks came into view up ahead. They were to the right on the other side of the corridor, with its attendant service roads either side.

  ‘There they are,’ Matt said as if sighting old friends.

  He appeared equally relaxed five minutes or so later when he pulled up the vehicle and climbed from the driver’s side. Jess was keeping a close eye on him by now, waiting for any signs of change. She expected that at some stage there would be.

  They crossed the rail corridor and the service road on the other side and walked towards the site. But when they arrived at the edge of the clearing he halted. She came to a halt herself, not saying anything, just watching him.

  ‘I’m trying to make out the sign,’ he said by way of explanation, squinting up at the larger of the outcrops and feeling suddenly self-conscious. Why was he hesitant? He’d experienced no adverse effects when he’d visited the site with Bisley, the engineer. Perhaps it was simply being here in Jess’s company. She was obviously intent upon invoking some form of supernatural phenomenon.

  ‘You can’t see it from here,’ she said. Then, giving him time to adjust to his apparent wave of insecurity, she turned and looked at the rail corridor behind them.

  She pictured the mighty Ghan passing by. She could see it now roaring across the flood plains and red spinifex country, people peering from its windows out at the wilderness, city people who had never witnessed the beauty of the desert. They’ll be able to see the site, she thought, but they won’t be able to see the sign. She was thankful for the fact. If discovered, the cameleer’s sign, as a relic from the past and a link with the Overland Telegraph Line, could well become a tourist attraction drawing visitors to the site. It mustn’t, Jess thought. The sign must remain undiscovered and the site simply an unremarkable spot in the middle of the desert.

  She turned back to Matt. ‘You can only see the sign from the centre of the clearing,’ she said. ‘Come on,’ and she took his hand.

  He allowed himself to be led, following her without question. But he didn’t need her guidance anyway. Something other than Jess was already leading him.

  When they reached the centre of the clearing she pointed to the sign where it sat half way up the hillock. ‘See,’ she said, ‘there it is.’ Then she realised that he wasn’t looking. He was somewhere else altogether.

  She felt similarly distracted and, letting go of his hand, they stood side by side in silence, both aware of a presence other than their own.

  Jess embraced the familiar sensation, knowing she was being welcomed. The restlessness she’d felt emanating from the land on her last visit had gone. The spirits are content now, she thought, this is a peaceful place.

  ‘You can feel it, can’t you?’ she whispered, knowing that he could. ‘You can feel it, Matt: they’re welcoming us.’

  Matt wasn’t sure what it was he felt, and he wasn’t sure he liked it. The sensation was altogether too weird. Some strange energy seemed to surround him like an electric field, making his skin tingle. He recalled the first time he’d met Jess, how when they shook hands he’d felt an electric current run through her fingers into his. This was similar, but it was happening to his whole body and he couldn’t control it. If he was being welcomed then he wasn’t at all sure he wanted to be.

  Beside him, Jess sensed his resistance. ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ she said, ‘there’s nothing to be afraid of here. This is a beautiful place, a peaceful place.’

  She could see immediately that her reassurance had made no impression whatsoever, so she went on, telling him what he needed to hear, and Matt found himself compelled to listen.

  ‘Our people believe that we come from the land and that we go back to the land, Matt,’ she said. ‘We believe we are part of Apmere, which was created by the Ancestral Beings. Apmere is the Arunta word for land, but it really means so very much more. We belong to Apmere and Apmere belongs to us, we are part of the rocks and the earth and the creek beds and trees. Apmere is who we are, this is what our people believe.’

  She smiled, breaking the solemnity of the moment. ‘Now I don’t know why,’ she continued, ‘but for some reason this particular piece of land where we’re standing right now is of great personal significance to the ancestors who contacted you.’ She stopped herself saying ‘your ancestors’, much as she wanted to. ‘You saved this site for the ancestors, Matt, and they’re grateful. Don’t resist. Be polite. Give yourself to them and accept their thanks.’
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  He nodded obediently. It seemed he had no option other than to obey, but it also seemed right he should place his trust in her as he had before. ‘Same as last time, I take it?’

  She nodded in return. ‘Same as last time,’ she said and she watched as he closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, preparing himself. She closed her eyes and did the same.

  But Matt could never have prepared himself for what happened next: he could never have believed such connection possible. Hands were touching him, lightly, softly, unseen hands. The tingling sensation he’d experienced had now become the gentlest caress, an all-encompassing presence, embracing him in its warmth, the faintest breeze of its breath fanning his face. The sensation was eerily physical, yet there was no-one there. Obeying her instruction, he stopped resisting and surrendered his will to the force that surrounded him.

  Beside him Jess did the same, giving herself wholeheartedly to the spiritual presence that enveloped her.

  Neither knew exactly when the embrace became real, when the hands became their hands and the breath their breath. A delicate transition had taken place. The touch was now physical, no longer an unearthly phenomenon and no longer unseen, this was flesh and blood. Drawn to each other by a power not their own, the embrace had become their embrace, and looking into each other’s eyes they saw no surprise there. Both knew this was destined to happen.

  They kissed, becoming one with each other and also with the presence that had willed this to happen. All were fused, timeless, existing on some other plane.

  Then the moment slowly faded. The presence was no longer with them. They were just a couple alone in the desert. It was only then, when they had returned to reality, that Jess spoke.

  ‘Perhaps this is why you were brought here, Matt,’ she said, ‘perhaps this is what your ancestors intended all along.’ It was now right that she refer personally to his ancestors, she thought. Given the warmth of the reception they’d received and the resulting outcome it was only polite that she should.