Daughter of the Territory

by Jacqueline Hammar

  ‘It’s a fine day to-day, A good day to die!’ This cheerful observation is attributed to the American Plains Indian riding out to battle.

  Perhaps I was a romantic, but probably just pessimistic, for in the misty light of early morning, when I saw those two stern, hard-faced men ride out, silent and straight in the saddle, their men-at-arms behind them, or when a man left the saddle at a gallop to throw a huge bull thrusting his horns in fury, I held my breath and thought of gloomy consequences.

  They would have laughed at such extravagant imaginings, and toward the end of our time out there, in spite of some heart-stopping incidents, I pretty much disregarded mishaps between man and beast, as did everyone else.

  In country like this, cattle yards could be made of posts and rails, with the fresh hide of an old bull cut into strips to tie them in place. Greenhide tightened as it dried and became hard as iron, so yards like this could stand for years. But when camping in the right area, yards could also be walled by natural stone, with cliffs forming a pocket that need only a few rails across a narrow entrance.

  Among the escarpments, ridges and valleys of the Limmen run these rock walls, high and straight as though cleanly sliced with a giant’s knife. In a place known as the Lost City, a perfect ball of stone, shaped through centuries of winds, balances loosely atop tall pillars, and low arches link stone chambers together.

  While exploring caves in the Limmen, Ken once came upon bleached human skulls and masses of bones—an ancient burial site, or something more sinister? His Aboriginal companions refused to venture too close to where they believed prowling spirits of the dead hovered.

  One of the most remarkable stone yards is the Limmen Gate, located on the western side of the river. A natural pass, it opens onto good grasses and springs in a perfect circular yard. Its narrow entrance could be barricaded to hold a mob of 3000. The old bush people, like Dinah, were restless there and avoided its silent interior. Slanting through rocks, the late afternoon sunlight made it seem haunted.

  CHAPTER 37

  Graveyards in the Grasses

  ‘

  The earth his bed, the sky his canopy,’ wrote William Dampier of the Australian Aboriginal, and so it was with us out there on the Limmen.

  We were travelling the Old Coast Road in the footsteps of prospectors, cattle drovers and adventurers who had journeyed through here in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. We rode past lonely, overgrown graves of long-forgotten men, just a few moss-covered stones sunk deep in the earth. If there had ever been a name to these graves, they were long gone.

  Men lay there who had sweated and plodded along this very track. With great plans and high hopes of a rich gold strike or successful settlement, they’d died without help or comfort, succumbing to fever or speared by Aboriginals. This was as far as they’d come with their dreams.

  The stars that had guided men for centuries were still there to guide us. On the cold, crystal-clear nights of the dry season, it shone so brightly in the glittering, crowded sky that it pointed direction and marked the march of time. At night a cattleman would say, ‘When that star moves across to there, call me for my watch.’

  A long time ago, the local Aboriginal people believed that when each new moon appeared, it was newborn and hungry. It ate its way so ravenously across the night sky that its stomach swelled full and round, and it lit the country bright as daylight. Then, as it continued along its starry pathway, there was no more food to be found. Slowly it starved, grew ever smaller, then died, only to be replaced with another moon, ready to repeat this mythical journey, dodging stars as it moved across the heavens.

  To the old Aboriginal of that area, dinner time was midday, so when referring to midnight it was naturally: ‘Dinner time belon’ta moon.’

  We welcomed the few days’ break planned for the next camp. Horses needed attention; a beast had to be killed and salted down; there was laundry to be done. This last was simple—everything went into a bucket made from a flour drum, flakes shaved from a bar of homemade caustic soap were added, the whole lot boiled on the campfire, then rinsed and draped over low bushes to dry.

  This area is known as Albinjula, which means ‘Valley of Springs’. Seventy years earlier, the abundance of water had so appealed to John Costello, a member of the pioneering Durack family, that he’d decided to form a station there. He brought in stock, built his homestead and settled his family.

  The project was a failure, doomed from the very beginning. Although water was plentiful, the area was poor cattle country. And the Aboriginal tribes were hostile: fences were no sooner erected than they were torn down, the wire used to make spears—more than one man in the bush has taken a spearing from a weapon made from his own fence. Costello and other cattlemen of that time left coils of wire beside their newly erected fences, hoping this would discourage tribesmen from dismantling them with their tools. Not a chance of that: they ignored the coils and continued to hack patiently away with their stone axes.

  They also devoured Costello’s horses and cattle, and raided his vegetable garden; on one raid they got off with a season’s entire potato crop. At last he gave up, moved to take up Lake Nash Station and built the first homestead there.

  In the silence of this abandoned place, flowering shrubs planted 70 years earlier still grew among the grasses. An enormous tamarind tree cast shade; perhaps Mrs Costello had envisioned sitting beneath it in years to come, her family about her. I filled my hat with tamarind fruit and rode on out of that deserted place.

  Throughout the months of our muster I carried one of these tamarind seeds in my pocket. Later, at Borroloola, I germinated it in a jam tin. It travelled with me wherever I could take it, graduating into larger tins. Finally I planted it with the same hopes for its future as that pioneering lady of long ago.

  We grew fond of some of our animals. My favourite riding horse was Blue Eyes, named for her one cloudy eye. She was a sleek chestnut mare, her good looks marred by long, deep scars down each side of her rump where a crocodile had raked her with its claws as she scrambled away up the bank of a creek.

  Dinah’s two hunting dogs trotted behind her horse. Big nondescript hounds, they were useful for tracking down special treats for her dinner, including goanna. Placed whole on the fire to cook, the skin is pulled back and guts removed. They are greasy—the fat tastes not unlike chicken. The Aboriginal people I knew really relished a good feed of goanna and always kept a keen lookout for the lizards.

  Along the way, one dog produced a litter of pups. Each morning before mounting her horse, Dinah settled the pups inside her shirt; there they travelled all day, joining their mother for a feed at midday dinner camp. If the day was hot, Dinah dunked them in a waterhole, then back into her shirt went the wet pups.

  Throughout the muster, Bessie carried her baby Colin—six months old when we’d set off—on a small cushion in front of her saddle. If a bull came charging out, we rode for our lives, sometimes with a sharp horn uncomfortably close to our horses’ tails, threatening to add further scars to Blue Eyes’ rump. On these wild rides, Colin bobbed about, his little sou’wester hat, with its pattern of yellow ducks, flying in the wind. I can’t recall ever hearing him cry while on horseback; I think he quite enjoyed the noise and activity.

  Dinah—always one to avoid risky situations—usually managed to be out of harm’s way. She employed the strategy that it wasn’t the bull she need outrun but the other riders, so she’d try to keep us between her and immediate danger. Dinah was no fool!

  Bessie and I, with Colin, were on foot one day when an exceptionally large and irate bull came snorting and charging out of the cattle mob, straight for us. Our only refuge was a tangled clump of thorny konkerberry bushes—hardly protection from an angry scrub bull, but it was all to be had. We dived into it, oblivious to the sharp thorns raking our faces.

  We huddled there with Colin between us, the bull stamping his feet, his massive head almost within reach, blowing hot frothy breath at us in snorting p
uffs. He swept his horns through our fragile shelter—first in a wide arc, then with an upward toss of his head that brought a glaring red eye so close it seemed unnaturally huge. The sharp, shiny tips of his horns were surrounded with frayed, ragged fringes, the result of rubbing on trees to ensure a lethal edge. I thought of the times I’d seen such a horn pierce deep into another beast with one thrust.

  We were totally silent, numb with fear. We held our breath and leaned away from him, almost atop each other. Not a sound from Colin, just wide-eyed interest. I hoped there was a god up there and tried to think of a quick prayer. The Hail Mary? The Ten Commandments! I had never coveted my neighbour’s wife (eh! husband), nor his oxen (well, maybe), but never had I bowed down to a graven image (really, not ever). A timely memory lapse here, for the times in Convent School spent kneeling before statues of the Virgin, and numerous saints, to ingratiate ourselves into their good graces.

  Then horses galloped up—whips cracking, men shouting, a flurry of hoof-beats, and he was driven back to join the mob in hand.

  We emerged from our konkerberry fortress on shaky legs, covered with bleeding scratches. I don’t know how long we’d huddled there. Only Colin was unfazed, grinning happily from beneath his yellow duck hat, which was balanced at a rakish angle from the frantic manoeuvring among prickly branches.

  I can’t think how I lived to tell this tale. Why didn’t the big bull charge straight in at us? Perhaps the thorny tangle proved some restraint, perhaps our terrified silence helped, or was it just good luck? To say it was a trifle unsettling to a person of my delicate temperament is to put it mildly.

  If the big bull could think such thoughts he may have reasoned with some relish, three humans pieced to their fundaments with his spear tipped horns would be just revenge for all bulls of the bush who had fallen to man’s rapaciousness, and he came very close. Still, one cannot begrudge him his moment!

  Of course it provided some amusement for the stock boys: ‘Told ya, Jack, ya gotta be quick or they’ll go ya.’

  Looking back, a fleeting thought crosses my mind of the movie-screen hero rescuing his heroine from certain death, then clasping her to his chest in spite of vile villains in close pursuit. We, on the other hand, standing scratched and dejected, were severely reprimanded for being in the wrong place on foot.

  CHAPTER 38

  Naming Butterfly Spring

  We were moving south, away from the coast, and mustering part of the grazing licence Ken shared with Les MacFarlane. Mac had sent George Lewis, Elmore’s brother, with some stock boys to meet up with our camp and claim his share of the cattle mustered: those bearing the NNT brand. They followed the fires we lit to burn off rank grass as we passed; smoke spiralling high is visible for miles.

  George was one of a passing breed, a fine old cattleman who knew no other life. He was getting on in years, taking a fraction longer to mount his horse in the early morning. He and his two brothers had been droving and working cattle from childhood; they were real nomads of the cattle trails. They could neither read nor write and George believed this a good thing; it kept his mind clear of unnecessary clutter, he said.

  George’s arrival was quite an event for us: he brought news from outside and the extra men were welcome in camp.

  Several years earlier, George and Ken, with Aboriginal stockmen, had travelled 600 head of bullocks from Mac’s Moroak Station for sale in Queensland. Late one night they settled the cattle well back in a stone yard. Instead of erecting a barrier across the entrance, which was about 30 metres wide, they made camp there. Night horses were tethered in readiness and a campfire burned brightly; the men unrolled their swags and settled.

  George’s eyesight was poor and he wore glasses. When he got into his swag, he placed them on his hat beside him as usual.

  During the night, the cattle rushed, set off in fright by a sudden sound among the surrounding rocks. They tore through the yard’s narrow entrance in panicked flight, sweeping the night horses away.

  At the first movement from the yard, the younger, more active men managed a quick getaway up into the rocks—but George, almost blind without glasses, floundered a moment.

  Edric, one of the stockmen, took hold of him just as the mob was upon them and threw him behind a slim sapling, the only barrier available. Grasping George by the shoulders, Edric swung him left then right to avoid the slashing horns visible in the pale starlight.

  A couple of thousand hooves careering through a 30-metre space left barely an inch of ground untouched—except, as was discovered in the morning, George’s hat and glasses. They were exactly as he had left them, thickly powdered with dust but without a scratch.

  Before moving on from camp in the morning, we’d get the bread started in the camp oven, tie the lid down and pack it firmly on top of the load, preferably on one of the more docile mules; a couple of our mules were only recently broken in and devils to catch.

  As well as being hardy and seemingly impervious to sickness, mules are notoriously fractious and stubborn animals that could try the patience of the most even-tempered handler. Ken, not a patient man at the best of times, once took out his pistol and shot dead a fully packed, uncooperative mule in utter exasperation late one evening in the bush.

  Some years before this muster, Ken and Jim had lost a saddled riding mule out bush. In the miles of surrounding unfenced country, it was six months before he was found. Still saddled, he had weathered an entire wet season; the girth strap had chafed deep and skin had grown over in part, saddle cloth and reins had gone, but otherwise he was lively and in good condition.

  When watching a mule jog along with bread dough in its camp oven on top of the load, it wasn’t unusual to see the rising dough overflowing its lid and cascading in heavy elastic streamers down the sides of the mule. What to do? Catch the mule, if it was in a mood to be caught. If not, then run about after a crazy bucking animal with dough flying like snowflakes, unload, knead the dough, repack, move on to catch up with the cattle, cook the bread at the evening camp. If the day was hectic and bread not set, a damper was quickly cooked.

  Flour, water, cream of tartar, carb-soda—this mixture can be made into small, flat scones cooked directly on hot ashes; johnnycakes, they were called. Carried loose in a pack-bag for days, they became as hard as stone; dunking in tea was the only way a tooth could pierce them.

  When there was no rising medium, these small scones were made with just flour and water, and derisively called ‘mission johnnycakes’.

  A waterlily-covered billabong provided additions to the menu. Lily roots—their bush name guneyas—were dug out of the mud and roasted or boiled in corned-beef water; Aboriginals had traditionally pounded them into flour. The fat seedpods in the centre of the flower have a pleasant, nutty taste, raw or cooked; the long, moist stems, though tasteless, are useful to chew for their moisture.

  At water’s edge, pandanus palms produce a big pineapple-shaped cone, bright orange when ripe, with small tasty nuts that are hard to extract. Other bush tucker includes yams, konkerberries, bush plums and currants, all seasonal. Best of all, as any bush kid knows, is sugarbag or wild honey. The small black native bees are more like flies and do not sting; they’re drawn to a sweaty shirt on the back of a horse-rider and cluster there for the moisture.

  We had been two months out in wild country when one evening we made camp early, some ways from a creek dense with the round green leaves and huge blue flowers of waterlilies. I decided to take a swim before the cattle were yarded and the men returned to camp. I splashed about, collecting a few guneyas to cook with our dinner.

  As I emerged naked from the water, trailing my purple lilies, I glanced up to be confronted with two white men standing on the high bank. For a few moments we stood as absolutely still as statues, staring at each other, our mutual shock inspiring total silence. Then, without a word, they turned together and disappeared over the bank, and I made swift departure to camp.

  That evening, with the din of cattle camp echoing aroun
d the ridges, two men approached our camp. They were part of a national mapping team, travelling the bush in a Jeep, working as they went.

  After joining us around the fire for their first meal of fresh meat for quite some time, they described their total shock to see a young white woman, naked, rising silently from the water with a bouquet of flowers in her hand. They told how they’d just as silently gone back to their vehicle, produced a treasured, hoarded bottle and had a hefty shot of rum, then returned to the waterhole and gazed down on the silent, deathly still water.

  Naked? Carrying a bunch of flowers? Been in the bush too long, mate.

  Country around the Limmen varies: black soil flats close to the river, long valleys, numerous springs and a wide variety of tall trees.

  By the river grows our old coolabah tree, whose qualities are eulogised in poems and bush ballads such as the famous ‘Waltzing Matilda’.

  Carbeens, straight as marble pillars, have pure silver-white trunks, cool and silky, on which to press one’s cheek after a scorching day of riding in bush. On the plains at night they catch the glint of moonlight, which earned them the sobriquet ‘ghost gums’.

  The skeletal kapok trees cluster on dry, stony ridges; their velvety, brilliant-yellow flowers can be eaten if one is desperate enough.

  In or close to water, the melaleuca or paperbark tree grows to great height and girth. Its hundreds of layers of tissue-fine, waterproof, papery bark are used for everything: rafts, coolamons, waterproofing dwellings, and to wrap meat for cooking in a mongoo or ground oven. Its thin trails of drooping, willow-like branches sweep across the water in a breeze—the long, thin beards of the old men that these great trees really are—while the silver needles of its disintegrating, honey-scented bottlebrush flowers thickly coat the water’s surface.