Daughter of the Territory

by Jacqueline Hammar

  We set off at a very steady pace. We camped at No. 2 well that night, only about twenty miles out, but we had travelled slowly: it was a rough track, and a horse-drawn buckboard would not be an easy ride for a sick man.

  Next morning on daylight, Tom and I went to take a look at him, and ‘Damn me’ if he wasn’t dead too. All we could do was bury him there and return to the depot.

  Three good men had died as a result of Wickham’s so-called fabulous find: had he done the right thing in the first place, this would not have happened and he may even have found his gold again. I am convinced there is gold out there, just waiting to be found. Perhaps Lasseter did come by a serious gold seam.

  I’ve had Munjong blacks come into my camp—naked, primitive tribesmen from the desert, with not a word of English. They brought in good nuggets of gold; somewhere in that wilderness they learned the white man coveted it.

  They held the gold there on the palm of the hand. A nod, a grin. ‘Tabac, tabac,’ they said, tobacco already something of value to them.

  I asked these Munjongs, ‘How far, which way?’ waving my hand out yonder.

  ‘How far, which way?’ they repeated, imitating exactly without understanding.

  I pointed to the gold nuggets. ‘You got more, this kind?’

  They repeated again, ‘You got more, this kind?’

  ‘I give you tobacco,’ I said.

  ‘Tabac, tabac.’

  They took their tobacco and silently drifted on back into the stony ridges and the desert beyond.

  The Wickham party had buried Albert in a very shallow grave. Paddy and my father reburied him and placed a cairn of stones above the spot, as a marker and to keep dingoes away. Charlie Schultz was grateful for this clearing of his uncle’s grave and through the years always remembered it.

  Some years later, Charlie’s father went out to bring back Albert’s remains. It was a comfort to him to take them to Victoria River Downs and lie them beside those of another of his brothers, Billy. Charlie’s father had strong suspicions that Albert had been murdered by his prospecting partners, perhaps poisoned, but my father was sure that fever had killed Albert and Jack.

  In those days, ‘fever’ covered a wide range of unrecognised illness. A stiff dose of ‘Old Gulf Cure’ had its followers. This was concocted from:

  2 weights of quinine (for fever)

  60 drops of laudanum (opium)

  60 drops of spirits of nitre in water (potassium nitrate)

  1½ packets of Epsom salts

  The mixture was usually carried in a rum or brandy bottle, and given a vigorous shake before patients were liberally dosed. If you recovered, all credit went to the Old Gulf Cure—failure was put down to bad luck.

  CHAPTER 6

  Murder in the Desert

  One morning a very old Aboriginal man appeared in my father’s camp. He must have travelled some distance as he was dirty and footsore.

  ‘Boss,’ he said, ‘you know that old man Beckney, near that spring, gottum goat and garden?’

  This was the old fellow the police party had spent the night with on their first trip out.

  ‘I know him!’ my father said.

  ‘Well, him dead. One bad nigger come night time shoot him, take everything he want, then he bin run away.’

  ‘Which way him bin run?’

  The man pouted his lips to the west. ‘That ai, sun go down.’

  My father gave the old man food and a place to rest, then hurried to pack, took Paddy with them and set off to Beckney’s camp. They rode all day, coming into camp in the stillness of early evening. A heavy silence lay over the camp. The old natives, Beckney’s companions, were nowhere to be seen; they would not linger in a place where a death like this had occurred.

  My father’s party dismounted and, leading their horses, cautiously approached the doorway of the hut. Sure enough, there Beckney was, shot through the head. They buried him beside his garden and made camp for the night.

  My father continues:

  Next morning we rode on towards Gordon Downs. From there I sent word to Wave Hill to advise Darwin of Beckney’s murder by an unknown Aborigine, who had then taken off into heavy limestone country.

  I received this reply:

  This native to be captured at all cost; am sending someone from Wave Hill to assist you. Please await his arrival.

  I waited a few days, then late one afternoon Tracker George—whom I knew—and another police boy, both armed to the teeth, came jogging into our camp, driving their packhorses. George was a perfect shot, and would happily shoot anyone at all in the line of duty.

  I explained about the murder and that the murderer must be found.

  ‘Alright Boss, we find him.’

  ‘Now! If he comes along peacefully, we’ll take him prisoner,’ I said, ‘but if he tries to escape, shoot him. Remember, he has a rifle too, and he has killed a man.’

  We mounted and headed off into the rugged ridges, riding slowly and carefully. But before long the razor-sharp limestone proved too much for the horses’ feet, and we had no choice but to turn back and plan an approach on foot.

  At Gordon Downs, Egan suggested I let the trackers go out alone, but that wouldn’t do—I had to be certain the murderer had been caught; I had to see him, not just have their word on it.

  I went down to George’s camp, sat with him and asked what he thought about going without me.

  ‘Uwai (yes), we can walk faster, track him better than you.’

  ‘If you find him, you must bring him back. I have to see his face, you understand?’

  ‘I understand!’

  We sent them off with a good supply of tucker and ammunition, and awaited result.

  A week went by and they hadn’t returned, so it seemed I would need to go out after all, but we decided to give them a little more time.

  Then one afternoon there was a hell of a fuss from the station blacks’ camp: dogs barking, piccaninnies excitedly calling out, the usual noise that heralded an arrival or unusual happening. The lubras were calling, ‘Police Boy come up! Police Boy come up!’

  We saw them in the distance, but without a prisoner. They sat down a short way off, as was their way, then George, alone, came toward the house. He carried a large hessian sugar bag over his shoulder.

  As he drew near, I said, ‘You nomore bin catchum that boy, eh?’

  ‘Oh, we bin catchum alright, Boss.’

  ‘But I told you to bring him in. Now I’ll have to ride out there to see him. I told you I must see his face.’

  ‘Him a big boy,’ George told me, ‘too heavy to carry, but you can look his face alright.’

  With that he upended the bag and out rolled the murderer’s large, odorous head, quickly covered by a swarm of flies.

  George grinned at my reaction. He was extraordinarily pleased with himself and in the satisfaction of a job well done.

  Over time I came to have a lot of respect for George. Although heartless with a rifle in his hand, he was always in good humour and his loyalty was unquestionable. He proved to be a good man to have behind you in a tight corner, and we later faced quite a few such times together.

  George’s grizzly prize was identified as the native who killed old Beckney.

  I said to Egan, ‘My report will sure cause a stir when I say his head’s been cut off.’

  ‘Don’t mention it; just say he was shot in the execution of duty, no need for gruesome detail.’

  Off went this report to Darwin, and that was the last I heard of it.

  My father and George called in to Beckney’s camp, collecting the goats and the old blackfellas who had returned there. Like a nomadic tribe of ancient times, with a slow-moving herd of goats, people on foot and a few horsemen leading the way, they came back to Tanami.

  CHAPTER 7

  Hard Times

  There was much for a white man to learn about life in the desert. In the freezing nights and the scorching hot season, we came to understand why the naked tribes were lean,
and hard as the stone of their desert country.

  Their lives were spent in the constant search for food and their skinny bodies could travel enormous distances. With spears and throwing sticks, they were accurate hunters of snake, wallaby and goanna, as well as the desert rats that had sustained the early miners on the Tanami diggings.

  In the wet season there was a greater diversity of food than one might imagine. Berries and edible plants sprouted in the early rains. There were fat round honey ants, and the lubras dug huge quantities of small frogs out of the ground and threw them live onto hot coals. Those that sprang off were, with the flick of a hand, quickly returned by women sitting in a circle around the fire. The frogs were a special delicacy, eaten guts and all.

  According to my father, the desert Aboriginal people were cannibals. When riding in the ranges, on several occasions he came upon blackened human remains in old fireplaces. They were mostly of children, but not always.

  The tribes were always on the move; the old and sick were left behind, with a little food and water beside them, to die alone. What else could the tribes do? They had to wander, burn the country for small game, wander on—the tribe must survive. It is an easy thing for us to pass judgement.

  In the western regions, the Aboriginal word for horse was yowerda (it also meant ‘ears’). Horses were easy to kill, and a towering feast compared to the bush animals that for centuries had supplied the protein in the tribal diet.

  My father wrote of this in this journal:

  One day an old Aborigine came rushing into the police depot in a hell of a fuss. ‘Allabout blackfella killum horse, Boss!’

  ‘How he killum?’ I asked.

  He described in grim detail, with talented theatrical mime, how the horse was caught by its neck strap, its throat cut, then left to gallop about in a frenzy of terror until it fell dead.

  We had good horses; kept them hobbled at a spring out from our camp. We could not afford to lose any, as they were our only means of transport, packhorses carried our gear, and in a life or death situation we relied entirely on our horses for a quick getaway.

  We rode out to the spring to see if the situation was as bad as described—sure enough, the old fella was right. We found one of our packhorses dead, its throat cut and a haunch cut off. They had taken enough for their immediate needs and left the remains to rot in the sun—as always, never a thought beyond the next feed. Meat was not cooked or sundried to be carried on, to provide for leaner times. The blacks often killed for sport or ran cattle off pasture and burnt it out. Worse was when a large portion of flesh was cut from a living beast that was left to roam—a slow cruel death. This came to be referred to by cattlemen, with much bitterness, as ‘Abyssinian steak’.

  We knew the Munjongs would be back for another easy kill before too long, so we fired shots that reverberated around the stony gorge, hoping to warn them off. George and Paddy were ready to go right after them, but I felt our shots would keep them away—for a few weeks, anyway.

  We had continuous trouble, our horse numbers dwindled alarmingly, and it became necessary to take further action. So, one morning when we found our quiet old packhorse killed, George, Paddy and I made early departure for the spring, armed with our Martini-Henry .310 rifles, which were police issue at that time. We settled down to wait. The sun moved slowly; shadows lengthened through our hideout.

  We heard a horse snort and then bolt out in fright. The Munjongs—I counted sixteen, the late sun catching the sweat streaks on their naked dusty bodies—were driving the horses, who were plunging and circling in confusion toward the Gorge where they could easily be caught.

  We waited until we were well within the rocky barrier, then rode in behind the Munjongs. They spotted us, turned, let fly with a shower of spears; we fired among them; they retreated up the stony sides of the enclosure and climbed to where they found a good position to again cast their spears. Those that got away clambered higher; they turned to watch us, the old men angrily chewing on their straggly beards. They realised they were out of range of our rifles; stood there on a high ridge presenting their buttocks to us and making obscene gestures.

  We camped hidden among rocks that night, intending to bury the dead next day, and we were completely unaware that the dead had all been silently removed in the darkness.

  George had received a shoulder wound in the skirmish and was seething for revenge. The Munjong drove him mad, keeping just out of rifle range, taunting him with gestures and ostentatious boldness. He was all for following them; Paddy too—no doubt Alec’s death, the manner in which he died, tormented him, but I felt our horses would have a couple of months’ reprieve, and we turned back to camp.

  Later we were issued with .303 rifles—more powerful, with longer range—and George and Paddy had their revenge on their tormentors, with some superb buttock shots.

  Sometime later, toward the end of the dry, late one afternoon, the old cry, ‘All about packhorse coming, Boss.’

  ‘Whatname?’ I asked (the native way of asking who or what). ‘Him whiteman?’

  ‘No more, (no) him policeman!’

  Aborigines admired the uniformed troopers, respected their authority in the bush. One could ask, ‘Who that man?’ and be answered, ‘That nomore man, him policeman.’ If a part-Aborigine were approaching, the answer would be a disparaging, ‘That not man, that arp-carse (half-caste) or that yella fella.’ A derisive term for the pale-skinned mixed blood. Half-caste children born in tribal camps were not received with much joy, and sometimes were disposed of early—I know this to be so, for I have found their remains on more than one occasion during early years, in various parts of the bush.

  Well! The police troopers were Don Hood and Ben Toohey; they had appeared right out of the blue to relieve me with a casual, ‘I believe you’re going on leave.’ I hadn’t had leave in seven years of service, and this with their unexpected arrival was all good news.

  Hood and Toohey were to begin establishing a permanent police depot on my camp. I prepared to leave; there wasn’t much to pack. I told them of the tribes who roamed the distant ranges, that our horse numbers were down, and that some must be returned to Gordon Downs Station.

  George insisted he leave with me; Paddy was to remain on duty at the depot. After farewelling my mining mates, we rode off towards Gordon Downs, then later on to Wave Hill Station. There George and I said goodbye; he was happily back in his own country again.

  I couldn’t have chosen a more reliable and loyal companion to ride beside me in those harsh times. We sat together and talked awhile, then shook hands.

  With his hand on my shoulder, he gave me a steady look and said, ‘My good old boss.’

  We never met again, but I had news of him from time to time through police channels.

  Soon after my father left, the local Aboriginal people attempted to burn out the police camp by lighting dry spinifex grass. Hood’s best riding horse was speared; in his report, he said that he followed the tracks and shot the man responsible.

  CHAPTER 8

  My Parents Wed

  My father returned to Darwin, where he took berth on the Marella, a P&O passenger ship, to Adelaide. He had met my mother, Valeska Marie Hese, who was generally known as Marie, years before, and they renewed their old friendship during this visit, which led to their deciding to get married.

  My mother’s father, Heinrich Hese, was born in Silesia, Prussia in 1861. On 24 February 1882 he left Plymouth, England on the sailing ship Clyde, and arrived in Adelaide almost four months later on 6 June 1882. In 1889 he married my grandmother, Ernestine Henrietta Totschek, in Hackney, South Australia. My grandmother’s parents were from Katowice in Poland. In the years after they married Ernestine had seven children. Of this large brood, my mother—who was born in 1902—was the youngest.

  All three of my mother’s brothers went off to fight with the Australian army in the First World War. According to my mother, in the very anti-German atmosphere of that time, it became a family joke that
the large portrait on their drawing-room wall of Emperor Franz Joseph I, complete with gold epaulets, copious medals and drooping moustaches, was passed off to the curious as ‘our old grandpa’. It remained there unchallenged all through the war years.

  By all accounts Papa Heinie ruled his large family with an iron rod. He refused to allow my mother to study medicine with a view to becoming a doctor. When she reached 21 he did, however, consent to her training as a nurse, which he considered a more suitable pursuit for a woman. Perhaps he had a notion that nursing only entailed bandaging injured limbs, a la Florence Nightingale, and genteelly dosing with medicine—not poking about on naked male bodies, as he supposed a doctor must do.

  After four years my mother graduated as a fully trained nurse from the Royal Adelaide Hospital, and went on to complete midwifery training at Yorketown Hospital in South Australia. This was to be of immense value to her in the remote country where she would later live.

  In 1927 my parents were married in the Alberton Methodist Church in Adelaide. A newspaper notice listed my mother’s parents as living at ‘Murray View’ Caloote, River Murray at the time. In the manner of the times, it went on to say, ‘The bride was given away by her father, and wore a dress of white Milanese silk and georgette, with silver shoes and hose to match . . .’ and so on, right down to a detailed description of her veil and the bouquet she carried. My mother’s brother Theo was the best man. A lavish reception followed. The guests were almost all my mother’s friends and relatives, as my father had lost touch with his large family since the war. He was not particularly close to them and told me once that he had an older brother he had never seen. In the newspaper notice my mother’s travelling dress was described as ‘of fawn georgette, with a bodice and overskirt of silk lace, and she had a silk straw hat to match’.

  With his savings my father bought a new cloth-hooded Dodge touring car, the very latest model, and my parents spent their honeymoon exploring the country areas of South Australia while they waited for the wet season to end so they could travel to Darwin.