Daughter of the Territory

by Jacqueline Hammar

  With a woomera, Spider skilfully fended off one spear after another, including a final attack with a big waddy directed at his head.

  After the aggrieved completed their side of the battle, custom decreed it was Spider’s turn. Out on a bare patch of ground, with no wind that might deflect the flight of a spear, Spider stood ready for battle—fearless, omnipotent.

  ‘Who want him?’ he demanded.

  Silence. Was a woman worth risking a spear in the gut from a sure-thrower?

  There were no takers, so Spider gathered up his weapons and made off with his prize, without payment to Elders either.

  This was the ordained procedure to deal with this crime. If a spear had found its mark, that would have been tribal justice.

  Minnie was Spider’s wife, the prize from that battle long gone. She also lived close to old bush ways, and had a hole through the septum of her nose in the style of her tribespeople.

  Over the years, the hole had enlarged from the weight of an ornament threaded there, although no bone or wooden peg adorned her nose by the time she came to us. In profile the light shone brightly and disconcertingly right through. This fascinated Dominique when she was very young, so Minnie would often unfold a tale of the hole’s origins; depending on her mood, it was sometimes colourfully romantic, other times painfully frightening.

  Dominique was always eager to present Minnie with chicken bones, wooden spoons, toothbrushes, odd pieces of jewellery—anything she felt could replace the original bone—but it remained unadorned, for Min felt her tribal days in the bush were past and she was now of the white man’s world.

  Minnie was good with the children, and all the dogs liked her, even the unsociable ones. When our basset hound joined the family pack, Minnie was dumbfounded: never had she seen such a canine.

  ‘What you reckon, Min?’ we asked.

  She tentatively lifted a long drooping ear and carefully flapped it like a wing. ‘He can have good listen, this un, proper long one earole.’

  Minnie had once lived with a white man who’d named her Buttercup. She was happy to tell of him, and still seemed to harbour some good feeling for him, in spite of a terrible fight they’d had in which he’d swung the hobble chain that took out her eye.

  Now she suffered often and painfully from Spider’s first-aid treatments. Her judgement of distance was poor around horses, due to the loss of her eye.

  On a trip with cattle, Minnie, Spider and Ken were the sole drovers when she was kicked right in the centre of her forehead by a shod horse. When Ken reached her, Spider was already astride her chest, two thumbs pressing her swollen head. ‘Push im back brains,’ he declared with conviction.

  How Minnie survived Spider’s violent nurturing belies belief, but she was a hardy bush-woman and always in good spirits. She especially enjoyed watering the garden, settling by each plant with a fire of a few twigs to keep her pipe alight, a ritual that could fill her entire day. Or Minnie would bustle off importantly to the vegetable garden, telling us, ‘Me gotta go marry im up pumpkin now.’

  She plucked off male flowers for this purpose and wandered through the dense vines, ‘marrying’ the male and female flowers.

  I can certainly say that my household was unique, with a stockman who had pummelled out his two front teeth to ward off thirst and a housemaid with a hole through her nose.

  With roads barely dry, Ken left in the Blitz to make what he hoped would be a quick trip to Cresswell Downs Station.

  On his return journey, he purchased three goats and some hens from Mallapunyah Station, which would provide fresh milk and eggs. A real egg would be a welcome change from the army-style powdered stuff that tasted and smelled awful, and did nothing to inspire a cook to produce anything of merit.

  During Ken’s absence, several horses broke through the paddock fence and went bush, Dominique became quite sick with a fever, and my top lip tripled in size to resemble that of an African Ubangi woman. And, to top it all, the hand pump our house girls used with much effort to fill the water tank from the creek had fallen to bits.

  Time came for Ken’s return, but a few days later there was still no truck, so I sent Spider off, mounted on a mule. He found Ken some miles out, bogged deep in black soil, the goats tethered in shade nearby.

  ‘How’s everything at the station?’ Ken asked.

  ‘Good, all good,’ Spider replied. Then, as an afterthought, he added, ‘Dominique him got temperature 250 degrees.’

  ‘That’s high,’ said Ken. ‘Everything else all right?’

  ‘Uwai, ebinthyn good!’ Spider answered, before adding another snippet: ‘Mob horse bin go bush.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Ken, with some uneasiness.

  ‘Missus bin swell up big face.’

  ‘What else?’ asked Ken, with mounting alarm.

  Spider thought awhile, desperate to find something equally catastrophic to report. Then, with his big gap-toothed smile, he remembered the broken water pump.

  CHAPTER 48

  The Good Old Bush Life

  My mother was somewhere in other parts of the world—we rarely saw her now. People who knew her and were aware of our financial straits sometimes enquired if she assisted in that regard. No, there was nothing forthcoming from her direction, other than nice gifts from foreign parts.

  Mother believed she had done her duty toward her child and it was better for a person’s character to make one’s own way, with one’s own successes and failures. I must say I agree with that philosophy. How else, later in life, could I have taken the pride I did in my achievements and actually proven to myself of what I was capable?

  There was a time in the dim past I would never have believed I could take on anything more arduous than lifting a cocktail glass or spreading my beach towel on the sand. The very suggestion I would participate in some of the bush undertakings I did would have left me a chittering idiot. I can say, not without a certain cynicism, ‘Ah, for the good old bush life, to make a real woman of you.’

  I hadn’t been back to Borroloola since the flying doctor, on his monthly visit, had given me news of my second pregnancy seven months earlier. During that time I hadn’t seen a white person other than Ken. There had been longer stretches without company, but this one seemed longest.

  The isolation on Grasshopper presented a much more hazardous situation if medical problems arose during labour than it had at Top Springs, and Ken was made nervous by the thought the road might be unpassable when I was due. As a result, he loaded the old Blitz with several big fuel drums filled with water to ease travel over the rough road, and we began a slow, careful trip into Borroloola.

  The Festing family were no longer administering the Aboriginal Welfare settlement. We were invited to rig our tarpaulin and make camp at the little bush general store down by Rocky Creek, where Keith Braybrook had become storekeeper—the same one that Jack Bailey had set up a few years earlier.

  Ken and I were giving some thought to what inroads into our practically non-existent bank account a trip south to hospital would make, without even contemplating the accompanying medical bills. Worse still, we had recently received a bill from the Income Tax Department for our work on McArthur River. The bill was for £700—a sizeable sum in those days. I did give a fleeting thought to the tribal midwives doing their stuff, but a sense of self-preservation prevailed.

  Around this time, Jack Camp, who owned Robinson River Station, happened by town and asked Ken if he had any cattle for sale.

  ‘Sure have! Two hundred head, immediate delivery,’ said Ken, although actually he had no cattle at all in hand at that time of year.

  When Jack said he’d buy the cattle, there was a big rush back to muster whatever cattle Ken could find.

  Meanwhile, Dominique and I settled into camp beneath our tent, with folding stretcher, swags and mosquito nets. The heat was horrific under canvas, the storms created a humidity that left one perpetually dripping with sweat, and the Borroloola mosquitoes, renowned for their ferociousness, were in
clouds from late afternoon.

  Pregnant white women and little white girls were alien beings in the lives of the few white men there, but they rallied around, full of kindness and interest, visiting daily and bringing small bush gifts to amuse Dominique.

  We took our meals in the store with Keith, where a perpetual stew simmered steadily throughout the day. Occasionally it was given a rolling boil and odd bits of things that came to hand were gaily cast into its bubbling interior. When the stew became too aged and the enclosing heat of the iron shed caused its fermenting barley to give forth ominous spitting sounds, a can of something was opened and we all fared very well.

  It would have been ungrateful of me not to sit down to the house menu. I had no complaint with it, having been endowed with a cast-iron digestion by my early nursemaids.

  Another white man came to join us in Borroloola. A full-bearded Lithuanian, his surname was Blumental, though to everyone he was ‘Crocodile Harry’.

  Crocodile Harry had fought in the German army during the Second World War and been badly wounded in action. Deep scars criss-crossed his chest and back, which he jokingly passed off as the results of crocodile maulings.

  After emigrating to Australia, he’d settled in a country town, where on Anzac Days he enthusiastically marched in the parade, with good-natured tolerance from local returned servicemen who presumably thought that a soldier was a soldier, and had endured equal horrors whatever army he fought for.

  Harry took up crocodile hunting, a profitable business then. He sailed his small boat up the McArthur River and into Borroloola with his Alsatian dog, Splititz, dropping anchor in the wide, deep waters.

  Jack Mulholland, Roger Jose, Keith Braybrook and Harry would come to chat with me in the evenings and we formed a little clique. Harry brought Splititz to play with Dominique, and it was amusing to see these hard old bushmen settled quietly in a circle watching a little blonde child and a dog playing together with such attention.

  We celebrated Christmas together. The stew was tossed out to be renewed after the festivities, some cans from the store shelves were opened and we enjoyed a good dinner. Late at night, Harry and Splititz swam home to their boat, in waters teeming with crocodile.

  Meanwhile, Ken was on his way with the cattle for Jack Camp, and was camped out not far from Borroloola. Roy and Larry Boy had crept off in the night, with the temptation of corroborees, lubras and company too much to resist, giving little thought to Ken and Jackinabox being left to battle on alone.

  Jackinabox was always a staunch old friend to Ken—he would never leave anyone stranded—and, of course, where Jack was, there was always Dinah. Those three had kept going without much sleep, without much tucker and, as Ken said, with ‘bugger all much of anything at all’.

  Over a waterhole nearby their camp, in daylight flying foxes hung in clustered thousands on trailing branches, their overpowering stench hanging in the air. Crocodiles cruised hopefully beneath them; woe betide the bat who fell, or swooped for water and wasn’t quick enough about it. It wasn’t an enviable roost to be bottom fox.

  On Christmas Day, without awareness it was a festive occasion, Dinah’s hunting had produced a nice bag of five flying foxes, which she’d killed with a long firestick. Placed intact on hot coals, fur and wings peeled back, they were good tucker that Ken gratefully accepted as Dinah’s contribution to their Christmas dinner—although the little fox heads were still attached, their sharp teeth showing under curled-back lips, catching the eye with every bite and quite dampening Ken’s enjoyment.

  Soon after Christmas, Mull drove me out to Ken’s camp in his open Jeep and I bounced around like a very round ball as we swept up at high speed. It was very different to the care Ken had taken with water-filled drums and slow, steady driving in the old truck!

  Cattle were delivered to Jack Camp and paid for. Then, with Dominique, I flew out to Brisbane. Ken joined us later in Brisbane for our son’s birth.

  CHAPTER 49

  A Bush Child Comes Home

  Our son began his journey into this world on my birthday, 5 March 1963, and made his grand entrance at 1 a.m. on 7 March—another monsoon-time baby. We gave much thought to his name. It had to be short and easy for Aboriginals to pronounce and we decided on Kurt.

  Soon after his birth, our family returned to Borroloola by plane. The Aboriginal Welfare officer braved our terrible track and drove us out to Grasshopper in his four-wheel drive.

  It was scorching hot and very dry for March that year, and there was no air-conditioning in bush motors then. We stopped at every receding gilgai and waterhole along the road, where Ken would lie his tiny three-week-old infant son along his forearm, little arms and legs dangling, before pouring water from his head on down to keep Kurt cool throughout the long, hot journey.

  That was Kurt’s christening in the billabongs of old Territory bush where the course of his destiny was firmly established.

  After we arrived home with Kurt, I dusted off Dr Spock, smoothing out dog-eared pages that had dealt with past emergencies, all ready for new developments—none too disquieting, I fervently hoped.

  The lubras settled on Ket-Boy as a nickname for Kurt and later prefixed everything of his with this name. He was given a pony named Stan, which immediately became Ket-Stan, and so on.

  Ken had intended to head back to Borroloola in the Blitz to get a load of fuel and stores, but heavy rains arrived after just one day back. The country was awash and it was too late for a road trip by motor vehicle.

  Despite the dryness of March, a bumper wet was recorded that year, and I settled into our bush home with a new baby and a three-year-old to see it through; one hoped all would be without problems.

  Ken and an old bush blackfella mate, Don, had to ride and swim their horses through miles of floodwater to Tanumbirini Station, hoping Hurtle Lewis might have a better-stocked storeroom. But Hurtle’s cupboards were bare, so they turned back. The return trip took them five days in pouring rain, their swags soaking wet.

  To cross the flooded creeks they had to tie everything into a bundle: a tarpaulin laid flat, their pack saddles placed upon it upside down, pack-bags and swags too, the sides drawn up and tied at the top with rope or swag straps—exactly like a huge plum pudding. They swam beside it, guided it across creeks, then returned to swim the horses across.

  When Ken reached home, Dinah was contentedly fishing on the homestead side of the creek, in spite of everything being rain-soaked. Ken dived in, swam under water and sprung out with a shout in front of her fishing line. Into the air went the line, with a terrifying scream from Dinah, who believed that every debil-debil of Aboriginal lore had come to carry her off.

  Ken was not to be easily forgiven—for days after, whenever they passed each other she mumbled sulkily to herself.

  Devilish deeds were very much part of old Territory life. Sometimes funny, sometimes cruel, oft times very cunning in their execution.

  Johnson was an Aboriginal stockman in Ken’s bush camp and one of his best men, but quite the Lothario, a devil with the lubras, especially those belonging to someone else.

  One dark night in the mustering camp out on the Limmen, all hands and their wives were settled around the camp fire. In the still quiet night a horse was heard making its way down to water, its shape just visible in the shadowy starlight, hobbles clinked rhythmically with each step, then clearly came the sound of splashing as it pawed at the water’s edge, and then there was another jingle of hobble chain.

  Lydja, the young wife of an old man there, suddenly rose from her seat by the fire, picked up the billy-can and announced she was off to the river for water. Ai-yaai! This was another of Johnson’s devilishly arranged trysts. Bent over with a blanket covering his head and along his back, hobbles in hand clinking convincingly with each horsey step.

  Johnson’s unique disguise brought reward of an amorous nature. A romantic interlude that was a little hurried perhaps, but with a momentary pause now and then to tinkle his hobble chain, brought quiet
positive result, and proved well worth the effort for this old philanderer. A disguise never unmasked.

  The myall little piccaninnies could be little devils too, often up to some mischief. Those who had spent time at the mission station with their parents were well versed in the hymns of the Anglican faith and would gather down by the rubbish bins to lustily sing their own versions of popular songs of praise, with little understanding of their content.

  We grew tired of ‘Onward Chris Us Sojers’, so Ken taught them something new, and they took this up with renewed enthusiasm, the quiet bush echoing to:

  I don’t care if it rains or freezes

  I am safe in the arms of Jesus

  I am Jesus little lamb,

  Yes! By Jesus Christ I am.

  CHAPTER 50

  Alone Under the Milky Way

  Were you ever out in the great alone under the Milky Way? Alone is different to loneliness. Loneliness can pervade a life filled with people. Not until you have lived far out in the bush, expecting the return of horsemen in days’ time—in fantasy you imagine no return, and you will be there alone on the earth forever—can you know real solitude.

  For too long I didn’t seen a white-skinned adult other than Ken, and he was away bush a good deal. I had no radio and no contact with anyone beyond our bush world.

  Wander down to the creek in the bush stillness of midday, where drooping branches of paperbark trees hang motionless in the heat. Then a short, swift breeze will excite the leaves to a frantic whispering that wearily sighs away. It’s so quiet here you can hear the silence, and would whisper if you spoke.

  At night, darkness descends, slowly covering everything familiar. Surroundings change and imaginings become decidedly unreal.