Ha! I thought. No horse pulling a wagon could have come this far.
Day after day we walked—into grassland now. I kept waiting for Mr Burke to signal us to stop, like any good head man would. Then we and the horses could eat our fill put on some fat again, to make up for the weight we’d lost with all this travelling. This grass would soon dry up, and I could smell no more rain on the horizon. We needed to eat lots while we could!
But Mr Burke just kept us walking. No longer did I think he knew what he was doing. We plodded on from the moment the sun came up until the shadows lengthened in the evening.
I smelt the wind. It brought the scent of rain, and grass to come—but not in the direction we were travelling. We should face the wind and find its secrets! If only I were free, I thought again, not tethered in a caravan, bound to foolish men like Mr Burke. If only I could follow the wind instead of being forced to go where the foolish led…
It was the second time I had thought that, what it would be like to be free. But it was not the last.
We came to a creek of sand, where the men had to dig until water at last seeped through. The horses (phut!) drank nearly all of it, so we camels only had a mouthful each. But that was life. We could survive on far less water than they could.
We trudged past scattered misshapen trees and over sandhills. We walked across fine flats of grass but didn’t even pause to browse. We drank at waterholes, some of them good ones, with cool water, that smelt like they were never dry.
This is a good land, I thought, spoilt only by the humans and their (phooey!) horses.
For the first time I didn’t miss my home. This was starting to become my land now. I was learning as we walked, learning to feel the land with my broad feet, learning its smells, learning to sense the hint of moisture in the breeze upon my skin.
We came to a river, with mud flats that stank and made it hard to get to the water. There were high sandhills along its banks, and dry bushes that tasted good. We walked through strange woodlands of manytrunked, crooked trees, with so many fallen branches it was hard to find a place to put my feet. The horses found it even harder going.
But soon the ground was dust instead of grass. There were only tussocks now, and too far apart for us to eat much. My feet were happy, even if my stomach missed the grass, At least there were still salty-tasting bushes around.
The days were growing hotter, and longer too.
At last I smelt water, a day or two ahead. If horses spoke camel I might have told them, for I could see that they were thin and thirsty, and suffering from the loads they carried, while we camels still strode ahead. But horses don’t speak camel, so they had to wait till they could smell it too. Oh, how they strained and pulled to reach it, while we camels swayed along, our dignity intact as always!
Horses! Phut! And phooey too!
CHAPTER 34
John King’s Story
Near Cooper’s Creek, 18 November 1860
Burke had hired a local Menindie man, William Wright, to take us two hundred miles north as far as Torowotto Swamp. There Burke made Wright third in command, and sent him back to take charge of the men and camels left at Menindie. Wright would wait there for money from Melbourne to buy supplies, and bring them up to us at Cooper’s Creek.
I will never forget that morning at Torowotto. The sun blazed as it rose beyond the flat horizon. Burke’s whiskers were stained with dust. ’Well,’ he said. ’I give you all a choice. You know what we face now. You may go back with Wright here, and none will think the worse of you. Or you can come with me, into the unknown.’
I had my doubts of him before. But not now. At this moment Burke was truly great. For the first time I knew that no matter what we would face Burke would get us to the coast. The land would try to beat us. But we would win.
We cheered him then. A big black crowd of crows rose squawking at our noise.
When Wright walked back that morning there was not one of us who chose to go with him.
And so we walked through the dun-coloured plains, across the scattered tussocks, up towards the Cooper, towards the lands that no white man had seen.
The dust got into everything. In our food at night, our water in the morning. It seeped up our nostrils and made our eyes weep, and sucked the moisture from our lips so they cracked and swelled. At times I even envied the sepoy his turban. He wrapped it round his face, so he didn’t breathe in dust. The sky was so blue it looked unreal, and the only relief from its blueness was the red haze. I couldn’t remember when I’d last seen a cloud.
At night we heard the dingoes howl about our camp. It was a lonely sound, reminding us how far we were from all that is civilised. Even the dogs in this country didn’t bark properly. It was strange, but exciting too, to think that we were on the edge of unknown country. Soon we’d be at Cooper’s Creek. And after that Burke, Grey, Wills and I would venture forth where no white man had gone before. The sheer hugeness of what we were attempting thrilled me.
Sometimes I looked at the land around us and thought of the roads and railways that would eventually follow us, tethering this land to the Empire. It was wild land now. But soon we would control it, too. Yes, I thought. Finding new lands, expanding the Empire—how could soldiering compare to this?
Yet one night I woke with the horrors, the sweat dripping off me. I’d dreamt I was back in India, in the Mutiny. I saw the women’s bodies, ripped from throat to sternum…
It was strange to wake and find myself in the tent, my air pillow under my head. It was the first time I’d had the nightmare since I left India. Was it because we were finally heading into unknown country? Who knew what the natives would be like there, or what we’d face?
Suddenly I felt responsibility weigh on me like a blanket. No one else in this expedition knew how natives can smile on you one day, then turn on you the next. Perhaps this is why God spared me back in India, I thought, to help protect this great project. I stepped out and breathed in the still, cool air. Dawn was breaking, a faint pink across the horizon. Even this land looked soft at dawn. No one was about, except for the sepoy, fetching in the camels.
I looked down at my hands. They were shaking. Had I got the fever again? Why in the midst of this quiet had I been dreaming about India, about the blood and death?
Was it a warning? Were there dangers here I hadn’t realised? I went to help the sepoy. He was a silent man. He worked hard too.
Of course he knew I had my eye on him and would make sure he toed the line. It was one of the first lessons a white man learnt when he went to the colonies. You must have respect. You must be in control.
Mr Wills had calculated that we would reach Cooper’s Creek tomorrow or the next day, where we would set up our second base camp. It had been three months since we left Melbourne. Soon the true adventure would begin.
CHAPTER 35
The Camel’s Story
Cooper’s Creek, 20 November 1860
At last we reached a stretch of sand and trees. The men all smiled, as though we had reached some important place. I could see the sand had been a river once, and would be a river again. When the waters flowed the river would run high and wide, branching into many channels then flooding across the country. I had grown up with rivers like that, which came as the snow melted then disappeared as the summer’s heat dried them up.
This land was hard on the horses and men. But it was like home for me.
Mr Burke signalled to us to follow the dry creekbed. Finally we came to a giant waterhole where the water rippled in the breeze, with boggy land around, and high sandhills and big trees leaning over the water.
I sniffed the air. A flood had been here not long ago, I realised. It had shifted all those branches up onto the sandhills.
I could smell something else as well. This waterhole would vanish when summer came.
The men put up the tents, and Mr Burke’s fine table, which Rajah had carried all the way from the last camp. The men gathered wood and lit the fire. We camels nosed abou
t for food, then wandered down to the waterhole.
The horses kept out of our way. The silly beasts had trouble reaching the water through the mud, but later I saw that they had managed it, at one end of the waterhole, while we drank in peace at the other.
Now, if Mr Burke had known how to run a proper caravan, like the head man did back home, we would have settled here in peace to eat the grass and drink the water. But no, as soon as the tents were up some of the men set out again to explore across the sand dunes, riding their horses with bags of food and water too.
Horses! Phut! How could they cope in a land like this? Soon the horses came limping back, panting and rolling their eyes and desperate for a drink.
The next time the men rode us camels instead: me, of course, the biggest and strongest of them all, and Jambel, Gotch and Boocha. The four of us plodded along the sand to more waterholes, then up across the sand dunes into open country.
It was dry, and covered in giant ant hills—so dry it seemed that even the ants had formed a caravan of their own and moved away, for there were plenty of ant tracks but no ants to be seen. Far off there were ranges, where I could smell new greenery. There was a smell of smoke, too, from one of the black-skinned people’s fires. Their smoke smelt different from the fires of our caravan—the wood was much the same, but they cooked different foods upon it.
I hoped we might head for the hills, for I could smell storm clouds hovering there. But instead we just turned back.
The camp was almost as we’d left it. But three camels were missing—Siva, Nono and Bunjib. They had gone exploring with some other men, and the men had come back without them.
What had happened to them? It does not feel right when camels vanish like the night.
I gazed around the camp. It stank of human droppings. The horses had already eaten the grass, and looked thinner than ever, and despondent. I exchanged a ‘Gmmfft’ with Rajah. He had found some interesting bushes the night before, so I followed him. Just as I did, thunder growled from the ranges I had seen the day before.
I hesitated. Rajah and I exchanged looks. Back home the head man would have broken camp, and gone towards the storm. Somewhere rain was falling and good grass growing. But we would see none of it in a caravan like this.
Dingoes howled nearby. I shivered. I could kick a dingo so hard he flew. But a pack of them was another matter.
‘Grnh,’ said Rajah, which meant, Don’t worry. Remember I am here, my friend. Dingoes may attack a lone camel, but not two big ones like us.
‘Whnngggh,’ I replied. But the dingoes’ call had made me thoughtful.
Dingoes were dogs, and dogs obeyed men, just as we camels did. But some dogs were free…
Is it possible, I thought, for a camel to do that too? Was that what had happened to the missing camels—had they escaped to freedom? I could happily live without men. But live without my companions, without the routine of the caravan? That would be lonely indeed.
I took a bite of salty bush, just as Mr Burke gave one of his yells.
‘Rats!’ he yelled. ‘Rats in the flour! Rats in the sugar!’ He held up a chewed bit of candle, which is what men use to make a tiny fire so they can see at night.
And so we moved the next day, to yet another waterhole, with dusty hills nearby where Mr Burke hoped the rats would not find us. But any camel worth his hump could smell that there were rats here too.
CHAPTER 36
Dost Mahomet’s Story
Cooper’s Creek, 28 November 1860
The work was so hard my body screamed for rest. There were twelve camels left to care for now. I tried to show Mr King and the other men how to load and unload them, and how to give the right commands. But it takes many years to understand a camel properly, and learn to work with them. Already they had let three camels stray on a trip away from camp. And it was still left to me to hobble them all each night, and bring them in each morning. Now feed was getting scarce they wandered further every night.
I was even lonelier than before. Old Uncle’s saying was true: Five fingers are brothers, but not equals. It was hard working with Mr King too. He spoke to me with words from one of the languages of India, as though there was just one tongue for all the many peoples the Britishers called ‘sepoys’. When I did not understand he just spoke louder.
My father would have slit your throat, I thought. But I was not my father. My father would have left this expedition long ago, with the first doubt about our wages.
Mr King spent most of his time now helping put up a stockade about our camp, to keep the black-skinned men away. It is true they stole things in the night. But we had rifles and they did not, and enough men to keep a lookout in the dark.
It was hard without Belooch. I had not known you could feel so alone with others around you. I wondered whether Belooch felt the same, back in Menindie.
There was no one to talk to now except the camels. Even if I had known more words of their language, the other men would still have ignored me.
There was no one to pray with at the set times of the day. Nor was there clean running water to wash myself, as it is written a man must do before he prays. I used the cloth of my turban to filter the water from the waterhole, for it was soon filthy with the droppings of the horses and the camels.
I tried to keep to the laws of diet as best I could. It was not difficult, for there was so little fresh meat, except a bird one of the men managed to shoot, or sometimes a fish. But they did not share them with me. Instead I ate bread from our supplies of flour and rice, and a small bit of the dried beef left from Melbourne. It was so tough and black now I could not cut it with my knife. At times I longed for a familiar bowl of rice and goat, with the hands of kinsmen scooping the food with me. But no. Instead each man was given his portion once a day. So much flour, or rice, or dried meat, like we were little children who had not learnt how to share. We cooked our own, holding the food close to us, as though we did not trust each other not to snatch it away.
Why didn’t Mr Wright come with the stores up from Menindie? Belooch could get the camels up here, I thought, if anyone could. Had they all died, trying to cross the summer desert, that had been so green for us in spring? Would we starve here at Cooper’s Creek?
The heat rose about us, like breath from a bread oven. The grass our animals had eaten on the way up would have shrivelled now.
Frustration ate at me, like the rats nibbling our stores. Here we sat starving, our waterhole growing filthy, the flies breeding in our muck.
Old Uncle had been right, as well as wrong. Some ferenghis washed. But none of them knew how to keep a camp clean, and men and camels healthy.
There were fresh waterholes down the river. There was food for the camels to eat. But we sat here, starving and growing sick. The black-skinned men were strong, while we faded into bones.
Day after day they came, silent as shadows through the white-trunked trees, offering fish they’d caught, and sometimes birds. Mr Burke or the others fired into the air to frighten them away.
Yet they came back, with still more fish.
I did not understand it. Why did they keep trying to give us food? Did the black men want us to help them fight their enemies with our guns?
I would have been glad to help them fight, in exchange for food, for their knowledge of this land. Better than sitting here, as food for flies. But no enemies appeared.
And we grew thinner still.
CHAPTER 37
John King’s Story
Cooper’s Creek, 15 December 1860
I had been right. I knew it when the first tools were stolen, when the natives began offering us fish. My nightmares came every night now, warning me to beware. Sepoys back there, with murder in their hearts. Black men here, trying to steal our food, our tools, our lives…
I’d seen it all before. ‘Sahib, sahib,’ they would say, back in India, salaaming almost to the ground. Then the next night they’d be sneaking up, wielding their knives.
The natives her
e were just the same. Time after time they brought their fish to our camp, offering them as gifts. Some of the men would have taken them—they were good big fish, and we were on reduced rations, and hungry.
But I’d have none of it. I ordered the men to let off a revolver if the savages came too close.
Here we were, on the edge of the unknown, and they were lurking, just as they had been in the Mutiny back in India. Waiting till we were asleep, and defenceless. Waiting to attack.
‘We must build a stockade,’ I said to Mr Burke, and he agreed. Mr Burke didn’t trust the natives either. Time after time there’d been things missing from the camp—nails or bread or bits of cloth. Thieving savages, the lot of them.
Most of our men had never even seen a stockade built—had no idea how to sharpen the tops of every pole, to make it impossible for the enemy to climb over them in the night, or how to bury the other end deep enough so that no matter how hard the enemy pushed they couldn’t force it over.
The men would be safe inside the stockade. The stores would be safe too, those precious stores we’d need when we returned, victorious. We would only take supplies for about three months. Brahe’s men had enough for about the same length of time. Surely by then Wright would have come up from Menindie, with more food and men. A bigger party would help keep the savages at bay.
Mr Burke, Wills, Charley Grey and I would head north tomorrow. At last! This was what we’d come all this way for! Grey was good with horses. I’d be in charge of the camels. Wills would survey our route.
Brahe would be left in charge at Cooper’s Creek. He was a good chap. Not educated, or a leader—he’d been a drover when he’d joined the expedition. But all he had to do was obey orders. He would wait at Cooper’s Creek Camp for us for three months—plenty of time, said Burke, for us to get to the coast and back. If we weren’t back then we’d have headed off on an easier route via one of the Queensland stations. Or we’d be dead.
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