The Animal Stars Collection

by Jackie French

  I find I must close this, that it may be planted but I will write some more, although it has not so good a chance of reaching you as this. You have great claims on the committee for their neglect. I leave you in sole charge of what is coming to me. The whole of my money I desire to leave to my sisters; other matters I pass over for the present.

  Adieu, my dear Father. Love to Tom.

  W.J. Wills.

  I think to live about four or five days. Spirits are excellent.

  Spirits are excellent, I thought. Yes, my friend. Through desert, flood and starvation, they always were.

  I was too weak to gather more nardoo. But then I saw the fresh footprints in the sand. They will lead me to the natives, I thought vaguely. I followed them, staggering from one to another. I shot crows and hawks as I plodded on, and tethered their feet to my belt.

  The natives heard my shots. They took me and sat me by a tree. They brought me fish. They cooked my birds for me, and brought me the meat to eat. They took me to a gunyah to sleep with three other men.

  I woke in the dawn to see black faces next to mine. But for the first time since the Mutiny I felt no terror. I closed my eyes and slept again.

  That day they fed me once more. I made signs to show them I was alone, and that my friends were dead. They showed such pity. They were so very kind.

  They tried to make me go downstream, I think to the outpost at Mount Hopeless. But finally I convinced them that I must stay with them. I moved camp with them. They made me a gunyah to shelter me. They brought me nardoo cakes and fed me meat from the birds I shot.

  How can the natives wander so freely here, their children playing and laughing, when English heroes stagger through the heat?

  I should feel like a hero who has walked across a continent, the hero I always felt destined to be. But instead I am a fretful baby, grateful for the hands that feed me gruel.

  Tomorrow I will try to shoot a crow. It is all I can do to thank these people, all I can do to repay them.

  This wretched, unforgiving country!

  But I have never known such kindness.

  CHAPTER 59

  The Camel’s Story

  Central Australia, 1862

  My new life was lonely at first. At times I even thought I’d welcome a (phut!) horse for company—yes, I was that desperate! I don’t know how long I walked alone. The stars made their great shift across the heavens. The rains came and went, and still I walked.

  But I grew stronger during those years. My hump swelled, my legs became tough with muscle. I grew to know the smells of this new country as well as my mother had known hers. The horizon held no mystery for me now.

  At first I hoped that if I walked far enough I might find my mother’s land. But no matter how far I plodded the scents were still wrong. Finally I accepted it. The Great Sea lay between those snow-topped mountains and me. The red sands and grey stone plains were my country now.

  I was alone. But I was king. No dingo dared approach me. The kangaroos scattered when I galloped to a waterhole. Even the dark-skinned people pointed and chattered as I strode by.

  But it’s lonely, being a king.

  Once I saw other camels in the distance. But they were in a caravan, all roped together, led by humans.

  Was one of them Dost Mahomet, my old friend? I didn’t know. But I did know I couldn’t risk being chained up again.

  I turned to stride the other way. Then something stopped me. The scent of other camels, perhaps. It had been so long since I’d smelt that.

  I stopped. And then I planned.

  I waited till the darkness was a blanket that covered all the world. Till the moon was just a trickle in the sky, like a seep of silvery water between the rocks.

  I waited till the fires of the caravan were only glowing coals. I waited for the snores. I waited till the camels hobbled away from their camp, shuffling their legs inside the ropes.

  And then I called.

  For a moment no one answered. Then someone squealed back.

  It was a female camel’s cry. I could smell her now, that sweet stink on the wind. I called again.

  Would she come to me? We would have to go slowly, with her hobbles. The men might catch us still. But it was worth the risk.

  I heard footsteps in the darkness. Camel steps…

  Unhobbled!

  What had happened? Had they set her free?

  And then she came closer, and I saw the answer.

  This wasn’t the adult camel that I’d smelt. This was a youngster, still smelling of her mother’s milk.

  She stared at me, her brown eyes wide, nervous and unsure.

  The adult female called again. But it was not to me. It was to her daughter. Her mother was telling her to run. Now, while she was still too young to hobble, before the men realised she could survive without her mother’s milk.

  Her mother was telling her to run with me, and to be free.

  And so we did. And she grew up. Other camels joined us, one by one—camels who broke free, camels who pushed against their hobbles, step by step, till finally their straps rotted. Camels like you, who ran before they thought to hobble you.

  Camels like us, who follow the wind. Camels who are free.

  CHAPTER 60

  Dost Mahomet’s Story

  Menindie, 14 August 1861

  I stood with Belooch on the veranda of the bakery, the smell of good fresh bread about us, and watched Mr Howitt’s rescue party vanish into the world of dust and grasslands, the men, the horses and fresh camels.

  Had it only been a year ago that we had strode out to face the wilderness like them? Now these men were searching for the lost explorers. Mr Brahe was with them.

  ‘Could Mr Burke and the others really be alive?’ asked Belooch, as we walked slowly down to the grass by the river where the camels grazed. My legs were still weak from scurvy.

  I shook my head. ‘Sandy and Frank may find their graves. Or men’s or camels’ bones bleached by the sun.’ Sandy and Frank were black-skinned men. They knew this country, as the white men did not.

  The camels snorted as we grew near. They were still weak—each morning I wondered if we’d find poor Mutwala dead. I brought down bread for them, a present from the good Ah Chee who owned the bakery. He was a Chinese man, an Unbeliever. But he had tended us when we were weak.

  I smiled. Two years ago I could never have imagined having a Chinese as a friend. Who would have thought I would think a camel was my friend, either?

  Sometimes I looked at the horizon, wondering if I would see Bell Sing plodding back across the desert. But all I saw was the hot air shimmering from the ground.

  ‘I am staying,’ said Belooch suddenly.

  I stared at him. ‘Of course. To care for the camels till Mr Howitt and his expedition come back.’

  ‘No. In this land. For good.’ He waved a hand, as though to take in the months of desert, the grasslands and the ranges. ‘Bloom where you are planted, my friend. We are here. We should make the best of it.’

  I shook my head. Not go home? To take my wages and be rich. To marry, to settle back in the familiar world, feuding with the clans across the hills…

  There was nothing for us here. Nothing but adventure, and camels, and a country to explore…

  I shook my head again. But this time I was laughing. ‘I will think about it,’ I said. ‘Perhaps.’

  CHAPTER 61

  John King’s Story

  Yandruwandha Camp, Cooper’s Creek, 15 September 1861

  I was slumped against a tree in the shade when I heard the noise. At first I thought the sound of hoof beats was just another strange bird of this country. But then my native friends began to yell, waving and shouting at something in the distance.

  I forced myself to my feet. I tottered over to them. There across the creek was a man on horseback. I blinked, but he was still there. Not a dream, not a mirage…

  The man lifted his pistol. At once my friends began to run. They knew now what a pistol could do.
I stood there, waiting for my rescue…

  The man rode past.

  He didn’t recognise me! With my skin burnt dark, my tattered rags…he thought I was a native!

  I fell to my knees. I lifted up my hands. I shut my eyes.

  I prayed.

  When I opened my eyes again the man was back. I tried to stagger to my feet. The man dismounted.

  ‘Who in the name of wonder are you?’

  ‘I am King, sir.’

  He stared at me. ‘King?’

  How long had it been since I had spoken English? My lips found it hard to form the words. ‘Yes. The last man of the Exploring Expedition.’

  ‘What, Burke’s?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He looked at me as though he wondered if I were real. ‘Where is he?’ he demanded. ‘Where’s Wills?’

  ‘Dead. Both dead. Long ago.’ The world swayed about me. I fell onto the sand again.

  Rescue…I thought vaguely, as the man helped me to sit, went to fetch me food from his saddlebags. I would be a hero. The last hero, the one who had survived. They would cheer me down in Melbourne. My name would live for a hundred years.

  But the dream shimmered, like the air above the hot baked ground. Instead I shut my eyes. I thanked my God, my comrades, dead in this harsh land. I thanked my friends, the black hands that were so kind.

  I will tell the world, I thought, of bravery and kindness. That story is my duty now.

  CHAPTER 62

  The Camel’s Story

  Central Australia, 1873

  I think of them sometimes, you know. The men from those far-off days. Did they all die in that desert—even my good friend, Dost Mahomet?

  ‘Go with Allah,’ he said to me. I hope that prayer was answered for him too.

  I remember, I remember, but I do not understand. It’s such a generous land you and I live in now. There are rains and there is grass, and even if you’re human and can’t smell it, you can learn to follow those who do.

  I think of the dark-skinned people, watching those men in hats. The dark-skinned people stride across their world, almost like we camels do. I think of dingoes, kangaroos, of all of us, not just surviving, but flourishing in this good land.

  Why couldn’t those men listen? Why would they never understand?

  But they were only men. Maybe, young camel, that is all the answer there is.

  What Happened Next

  The Camel

  Bell Sing almost certainly did survive. Even though there were very few camels in Australia at the time, soon after the Burke and Wills expedition there were many accounts of stray camels seen in the distance and around station homesteads—a sign that those who had strayed from the expedition not only lived, but soon began to breed.

  We know pretty much where Bell Sing came from. We know what happened to him and the other camels on the expedition. We know he wandered away on 16 May 1861. We don’t know what happened when he vanished. But we can make a pretty good guess.

  Bell Sing may simply have strayed. But the camels, like the men and horses, were extremely weak by then and were hobbled every night. I think that it’s possible that Dost Mahomet did decide to give one of the camels from his homeland at least a chance of survival.

  Bell Sing is probably one of the ancestors of the thousands of feral camels now contentedly wandering across central Australia.

  Dost Mahomet

  Dost Mahomet returned to Menindee (spelt ‘Menindie’ till 1918). On 3 January 1862, a big male camel called Nero, who had been on the first expedition, grabbed Dost Mahomet and lifted him into the air, perhaps dislocating his shoulder and breaking his arm. From then on his arm was either useless, or amputated—the records aren’t clear.

  Dost Mahomet went back to Melbourne. In July 1862 he put in a claim for compensation to the expedition, as well as claiming that Landells had promised him his fare back to Karachi and the same pay of £10 a month that the other men had been receiving. (The cameleers were paid either £6 a month, £3 a month or 8 shillings a month—the records vary.)

  But he was never given the extra pay he’d been promised, or his fare home. The Victorian Government paid him £200 compensation, but that was all. The Expedition Committee, which had even paid for dandruff brushes and a candelabrum for the ‘explorers’ (i.e. the white men), gave him nothing. He was twenty-three, in a strange land and unfit for most work, including the job he was best at, working with camels. In his homeland men ate only with their right hands in the common food bowl and wiped themselves with their left. Life would not have been easy for a one-armed man.

  Dost Mahomet settled back in Menindie and worked in the bakery of William Ah Chee, who also established one of the first market gardens in the town. Dost Mahomet died in 1880 or 1881, and is buried about a kilometre out of town on the road towards Broken Hill. His gravestone was erected in the 1950s by the local progress association, and the Central Darling Shire restored it in 2006. (If you are passing, leave some flowers there, for a brave man who died far from home.)

  Belooch

  Belooch remained in Menindie to look after Dost Mahomet and then went to Melbourne with him, where he too demanded his back salary and fare back to Karachi. Unlike Dost Mahomet, Belooch was paid first his salary, and then his fare back. He returned to Australia almost at once, though, in March 1863, bringing his wife with him. But she tried to return to India in August that year. She died on the voyage. He may also have been joined by Esau Khan—who may also have been his brother (or a different man with the same name as the Esau Khan of the expedition). The records are so few and so contradictory that it is difficult to be sure of the facts. Belooch was sometimes referred to as ‘Belooch Khan’. But he was also called ‘Ali Belooch’ and ‘Ali Black’. An ‘Ali Belooch’ probably would have come from a different homeland from a ‘Belooch Khan’, and had a different religion too.

  Belooch seems to have been employed by other exploration parties. He is known to have travelled to Queensland to investigate reports that a camel had been seen near Mount Murchison and on the Barwon River.

  Belooch and Esau Khan also joined Duncan McIntyre’s Search Expedition to find the lost explorer Ludwig Leichhardt. In 1886, McIntyre arrived in Camooweal and claimed he had found Leichhardt’s remains.

  I haven’t been able to find out what happened to Belooch after that. By that time there were many more camels and cameleers in Australia. He may have started his own transport company, or joined someone else’s. It would be good to think that one member of the expedition, at least, lived a long and peaceful life.

  John King

  After John King was rescued he returned to Melbourne a hero. He was given a gold watch and a life pension of £180 a year. But he died young, at thirty-three, exhausted by the hardships he’d endured both in Australia and in India.

  George Landells

  Landells’s reputation was greatly damaged by the inquiry that was held into the deaths that occurred on the Burke and Wills expedition, even though he had resigned long before the end. After the inquiry he left Australia and went back to India, although I don’t know if he continued to ship horses from Australia to India, or how he made his living. He died in Rawalpindi in 1871, aged forty-six.

  Burke wrote few records of his journey; Wills mostly only wrote about the land he’d surveyed, and other records are scanty and contradictory. Even less was written about the ‘sepoys’, those men who were so essential to the expedition. I have had to choose which out of several versions of events were the most likely, or had to reconstruct what might have happened. And of course I have had to leave out many details we do know, or the book would have been too long.

  Author’s Note

  Why did I choose a camel to tell the story of what’s perhaps Australia’s best known and most disastrous expedition? Partly because I wanted a happy ending—and there wasn’t one for most of the men, or the horses. Partly, too, because camels have a certain look in their eye that says they have no very good opinion of hum
ans…and in the case of the Burke and Wills expedition, there was every reason for a camel to suspect that the leader didn’t know what he was doing.

  But mostly it was because I have watched feral camels in the outback, striding across a dry world with their eyes on the horizon, or—the last time I was there—standing contemplating the universe and their stomachs in a world of green and flowers.

  Most of the animals that humans have domesticated, like dogs and cats and even milking cows and elephants, are happy to stay near their owners, either for love or at least the hope of dinner. But camels look as though they always dream of freedom, no matter what the burdens on their back—just like the camel in this book.

  The Burke and Wills camels

  By the late 1830s, as the British settlers learnt more about the arid inland of the Australian colonies, many suggested camels should be brought to Australia, as they might survive where horses couldn’t and be able to pull or carry heavy loads where even bullock teams wouldn’t make it. It was hoped that they would be able to take supplies to the scattered homesteads of the dry outback, especially in newly settled South Australia, and bring back wheat or wool, or precious metals from the remote mines.

  Australia was already exporting horses and cattle to India, so it seemed logical to use those ships to bring back camels. The first camel to come to Australia arrived at Port Adelaide on 12 October 1840, from Tenerife. Its five companions had died on the voyage.