Wild Lands

by Nicole Alexander

  Adam ran his hand across the rough surface. ‘A canoe. This bark is ready to be pulled free.’

  Musket shots sounded. At the river they joined Bidjia and then ran into the bush. They headed west following the water-course, running through trees and bushes, spears at the ready, Adam with the musket. In the distance came the unmistakeable sound of musket fire. The shots carried on the breeze, but with a northerly wind they couldn’t be sure from how far away the noise had carried. At the top of a rise they stopped. They could smell smoke and the tang of sheep. They’d hoped for land untouched, unsullied by strangers.

  ‘They have already settled north of here.’ Jardi stuck his spear in the dirt, his anger evident. ‘Did you not once tell us, brother, that there were nineteen counties? That the settlers were to stay in these areas governed by their white king?’

  ‘I also mentioned the Governor is finding it impossible to control his people and has changed the laws. Land outside the boundary can be leased now.’

  Bidjia looked askance. ‘So they go anywhere? They squat on land and make it their own? What of the white king, Bronzewing? Does he not know of us?’

  ‘There is no king,’ Adam explained. ‘A woman now sits upon the English throne.’

  ‘A woman.’ Bidjia shook his head. ‘All will be lost.’

  Jardi pointed to where a wisp of smoke was visible through the trees. ‘I think there is trouble ahead.’

  Turning back in the direction of the river, Bidjia pointed to the scarred trees. Fresh imprints marked the passage of men in the soft river sand. He ran a finger in the dirt, tracing the heel and the spreading toes and then slowly lifted his head.

  At the top of the riverbank five men waited, shields and spears at the ready. Painted with ochre and animal fat, all had bones through their noses, their arms and wrists decorated with bracelets of fur and hide. Only one wore the trousers of a white man. This man, their leader, walked a few paces towards them. A luminous oval shell, engraved with tiny figures, hung from the centre of his string belt. Adam lifted his musket, Jardi his spear, but Bidjia was quick to raise a hand.

  ‘Listen first,’ he commanded.

  The warrior rested his spear in the sand. The stone tip was barbed, a weapon for fighting as it could not be withdrawn from flesh. Although his companions were dark skinned, this man was slightly paler. He talked quickly at first in a strange tongue but gradually it became apparent that he spoke in a mix of his own dialect and English. The warriors had been following them for two days. Bidjia and his party were in the heart of their lands and they were not welcome at this special place.

  When the warrior had completed his address, Bidjia handed over the message stick. As the man studied it, Bidjia introduced them and, announcing his clan name, pointed south to their lands. The stick was well-used. Each new tribal territory demanded introduction and then the granting of permission to pass through it. The message stick seemed to appease the warrior for he handed it back to Bidjia and beckoned the other warriors forward. The leader had a mass of long hair. He was tall with deep scars etched across his torso, his body hairless. He called himself Mundara and gestured to Adam as if it were better he was not present.

  ‘I have raised him since this high.’ Bidjia lifted his hand to indicate that the white man had been a child when he’d found him.

  The warrior pointed his spear. ‘You raise a white and yet they take our lands and kill our people.’

  ‘He is of my clan,’ Bidjia replied calmly.

  The warrior spent long minutes studying Adam, as if sizing him up for a fight. ‘I am a descendant of a great warrior.’

  Bidjia was silent. The names of the dead were not talked of.

  ‘Where do you travel, Bidjia?’

  ‘Across the mountains to the great waterhole.’

  ‘The cold has come. You best move fast. You are far from home.’

  ‘There is no place for us in the lands of our people. The whites have claimed it. My clan is no longer and so we wander.’

  This response seemed to satisfy the warriors for they formed a circle and, as one, sat on the ground cross-legged, leaving spaces for Bidjia, Jardi and Adam. Overhead the sky was a wedge of blue fringed by tawny leaves. Elongated shadows reached across the swirl of water to where the men sat.

  Mundara gestured to the musket. ‘Trade.’

  ‘There is no trade worth the gun,’ Bidjia countered.

  The warrior snarled but knew Bidjia’s words to be true. Instead he pointed to the shell bracelet on Adam’s wrist, offering a cuff of fur from his arm. When this was refused he grew displeased. ‘I have no quarrel. Bronzewing, trade?’

  ‘No trade.’

  Mundara frowned. ‘Across the mountains, by the waters, you will find more.’

  Untying a pouch at his waist Bidjia pulled out a plug of tobacco, sitting the piece in the middle of the circle. He explained that the whites used it as payment along with their version of honey, a grainy substance called sugar. Breaking off a piece of the plug he placed it in his mouth and chewed carefully, the tobacco balling in the side of his cheek. He gestured for Mundara to try some and the warrior snatched it up.

  ‘You tell me nothing I don’t already know. I have worked for a white.’ He gnawed at the knob for some seconds and then offered Bidjia the fur bracelet. This was accepted. The trade was complete.

  The warriors muttered among themselves. ‘You will join our fight,’ Mundara stated. ‘Our lands are rich, we protect them.’

  ‘How do you protect them?’ Adam argued. ‘The whites have muskets and horses. The more you attack, the more they will come, we have seen this. It is better to sit down and make terms for peace.’

  ‘Peace?’ Mundara scowled. ‘When our ancestor, the Sky Father, came down from the sky to the land he created the rivers, the mountains and the forests. He gave us our laws and our songs, he did not do this for the white man, he did it for his people, us. This is what we fight for, what the whites would try to steal. You do not understand because you are white.’

  ‘I understand plenty, and so should you.’ Adam frowned. ‘I can see by your skin that you have the blood of the white man in you.’

  ‘It does not rule me,’ Mundara scowled.

  ‘In this place,’ Bidjia warned, ‘we talk only.’

  ‘So you will fight,’ the warrior stated.

  ‘We wish to move through your lands peacefully. We want no war,’ Bidjia answered.

  ‘Such a word does not exist here.’

  ‘We heard whites have been murdered,’ Jardi said carefully.

  ‘They stole women. Took what is not theirs to take. This was their payback, but the white man can never be bested. He must show that he is stronger. Soon after the whitefellas sent men on horses to kill those of our people who were responsible. Hundreds were slaughtered. They named this place of victory in honour of a Great White Chief.’

  Bidjia offered his sympathies for the tragedy. ‘We have heard of the sorry business. It is a bad thing.’

  ‘If you do not want to fight you should not have come here,’ Mundara said simply. ‘We are at war.’

  ‘Then we will go.’ Bidjia stood.

  ‘Follow the water,’ Mundara directed. ‘There is a crossing place nearby. You will see it. The rains have been slow to come and the river is not full. Go north, then head towards the mountains. Do not come back.’

  From the depth of the timber came a scream. A young black woman appeared, naked except for a strip of hide which hid her woman’s parts from the world. She skirted the edge of the bank as a piece of wood sailed through the air. The throwing stick hit the female in the back and she fell, tumbling down the sandy slope to lay sprawled near the water’s edge.

  The man in pursuit collected the stick he’d used to bring her down and, without slowing his stride, reached the woman and pulled her upright by the hair. She was young, with plump features and large frightened eyes.

  Adam and Jardi got to their feet.

  ‘This is not our bu
siness,’ Bidjia cautioned.

  The girl stretched out her hand to them. She was covered in sand, pale crystals against jet black skin. She called to the men on the riverbank and then, on seeing Mundara, fell silent. The warrior spoke and the man who held the girl replied in apologetic tones. Taking her by the arm he began to drag her away.

  ‘The whites displace the natural order of things.’ Bidjia spoke to placate Mundara as well as Adam, but it was Jardi who grew anxious.

  The younger man recalled the scattered cooking items that he’d come across at dawn. It was possible that the girl had been abducted from that very spot. ‘We should do something.’

  ‘Do nothing,’ his father said quietly. ‘This is not our fight. Her clan will decide what is to become of her.’

  ‘And you think they will sit down with these men to get her back?’ Jardi’s statement hung. ‘You see the scars, the weapons.’

  ‘Does the white man stop another from beating a wife? No,’ Bidjia replied angrily.

  ‘He’s a renegade. Worse, there is white blood within him. This Mundara may speak like a black but the two parts within him means he fights himself.’ Black warriors had crossed Adam’s path over the years. Desperate men who’d left their tribe, some simply intent on causing trouble, others keen to avenge the wrongdoings of the whites. Some were banished by their Elders, others were quietly revered, but those of mixed blood were harder to gauge.

  As the girl was dragged along the riverbank, Jardi followed their progress. She was slim, with shoulder-length hair, and she fought her abductor at every step, digging her heels in the dirt and straining against his grasp. He hit the girl in the face and flung her over his shoulder. Her arms hung lifelessly down his back as he stalked up the bank.

  ‘You leave this place,’ Mundara ordered. His men followed him silently up the incline of the riverbank to disperse into the bush.

  ‘What of the girl?’ Jardi queried. ‘If what you say is true, we should go after her.’

  Bidjia trudged ahead. ‘There will be other women. Ones that don’t come with blood-letting.’

  They followed the river as instructed. The crossing place was indeed close by and they waded through the waist-deep water holding their weapons aloft and filling waterbags. They were soon climbing up the sandy bank on the other side. Bidjia led them cautiously through the dense timber, walking steadily for the remainder of the day and into the next, until the river lay far behind them.

  They came upon the bodies at mid-morning. There had been rain overnight and few tracks were visible. Birds scattered on their arrival and a wild dog growled and ran off into the bush as the three men approached the grisly sight. The first thing Adam noticed were the large number of human heads. These lay separate to a pile of bodies that had been burnt and partly consumed by fire.

  Jardi bent over and sicked up his breakfast. Bidjia was too shocked to speak. The majority of the dead Aboriginals were women and children as well as some old men. It was clear that they’d been either hacked to death, shot or both, and had then been set alight.

  Adam could only guess at the people who’d committed these terrible murders. ‘My god,’ he said loudly. He turned to Bidjia. ‘Women and children? Decapitated?’ There must have been at least thirty dead Aboriginals.

  ‘Whitefellas.’ Bidjia squatted, scraping up some sand and letting the grains trickle through his fingers. Very slowly he let out a low moan. None of them could believe what they were seeing.

  ‘What do you want to do, Bidjia? Bury them?’

  ‘Their essence has already gone, as we should go. Come.’

  Jardi and Bidjia remained quiet for the rest of the day. Adam followed the two men, equally subdued. It seemed that they had unwittingly entered a land at war.

  ‘We make camp here,’ Bidjia told Jardi, stopping in a sheltered clearing. ‘I must rest for a time.’ They had walked a day only.

  Adam thought of Mundara’s warning and the carnage of the previous day. ‘We should go further, Bidjia.’

  ‘I cannot.’ Resting his spear against a tree trunk he surveyed the campsite, nodding as if pleased with the selection. ‘I have seen too much. Jardi will stay with me, you, Bronzewing, will go walkabout. I know you, my son. You will not sit down for a few days while I rest. Go.’

  Adam looked from Bidjia to Jardi. The younger man was clearly not impressed to be left behind, but he didn’t argue. Someone had to care for Bidjia while he regained his strength and Jardi was a capable hunter.

  ‘Go,’ Bidjia urged. ‘On your return we will continue.’

  Adam didn’t know if he should leave them or not. There were white murderers around. But perhaps Bidjia and Jardi were safer without him. Mundara had taken an instant dislike to Adam and his white presence invited trouble for all. Adam guessed that Bidjia had weighed his decision carefully.

  ‘Be safe,’ Jardi warned.

  Adam adjusted the leather strapping of the musket across his shoulder. He guessed that if he came across any farms over the next couple of days that he could warn the occupants about Mundara and tell them of the slaughter. In return he might well learn whether their proposed track to the east was safe. Adam said his goodbyes and walked off into the scrub.

  Thus passed the time, until the moon serene

  Stood over high dominion like a dream

  Of peace: within the white transfigured woods;

  And o’er the vast dew-dripping wilderness

  Of slopes illumined with her silent fires.

  ‘The Glen of Arrawatta’ by Henry Kendall, 1869

  Chapter 19

  1838 June – the Hardy farm

  The edge of the spade hit the ground and vibrated in Kate’s hand. Lifting the implement she struck the frosty soil again and again until the butt of the small tree was ringed with dirt. Into this slight depression she slowly tipped the bucket of water, watching as the liquid was gradually absorbed into the ground. The two plants they’d brought from the Kable farm had survived the hot summer. She was almost proud of their tenacity. When she left this place, with luck they would still be here, standing as a testament to endurance, both theirs and hers. From another bucket Kate scooped out some sheep manure and spread it around the plants. She was due back at the house within the hour. Mrs Hardy wanted the hut swept, the washing completed and hung to dry and was keen to have the curtains in her room altered. Then there were Sophie’s lessons, in between the demands of the kitchen.

  There was movement from the direction of the creek. Kate reached automatically for the pistol and then silently chastised herself. Sally appeared out of the scrub, a baby on one hip and a basket in hand. She’d not seen the girl since the day by the creek, since the storeroom had been raided. The tribe’s absence during this time suggested guilt, but there was no proof of Sally’s people being responsible, although Mr Hardy had condemned them from the first. The robbery had made everyone nervous. Mrs Horton refused to venture further than two hundred yards from the kitchen hut. That was the distance to the privy, a roofless bark structure with a hole in the ground where one had to squat to do one’s business.

  ‘Orange.’ Sally pointed at the sapling, displaying perfectly white teeth.

  The girl was quick to pick up vowels and consonants and imitated Mr Southerland’s phrases with striking accuracy and understanding. Kate was less than adept at learning Sally’s language, and the girl often laughed at her mistakes. ‘Yes, orange. Well, at least one day it may bear fruit.’ Although bare-breasted, Sally had taken to wearing a long skirt, a cast-off of Mrs Hardy’s.

  She held her chubby child out for inspection. ‘I name her Kate,’ she announced.

  ‘You called her Kate after me?’ What should have been an honour was beyond uncomfortable.

  ‘Yes. Kate,’ Sally repeated.

  When the baby was born Kate expected it would have the look of Mr Southerland about it and she’d been right in this suspicion. She took the child in her arms and tickled the baby under the chin. The child was a healthy, creamy
half-caste.

  ‘You come and dig with us today?’

  ‘I can’t.’ She handed the child back.

  ‘That Missus she all work, work, work.’

  ‘I know,’ Kate agreed, ‘but I would like to come and learn more about your medicine. Maybe on Sunday.’

  ‘You come find me after the Boss reads from his book.’

  Mr Hardy was strict with his Sunday service. All those on the farm, except for those shepherds tending sheep and Mr Southerland, were required to sit in the dirt in front of the main dwelling while Mr Hardy read passages from the bible.

  Sally held out the basket. ‘Warringaay.’

  ‘Warringaay,’ Kate repeated with difficulty, lifting a bunch of the long-stemmed grass from the basket.

  The girl laughed.

  Grass-like leaves sprouted from the base of the plant and Kate recognised it as one of a number of sedges that grew near the creek. She knew the plants as nut grass and bush onion. Sally’s tribe dug up and ate the small pale tubers and wove the leaves together to make mats, baskets and fish nets.

  The girl jiggled the baby on her hip. ‘You mix up and it fix plenty.’ Sally gestured to her throat and stomach, to the slight graze on her arm.

  Placing the grasses back in Sally’s basket, Kate touched the baby’s downy head. ‘Sally, did your people take flour and sugar from the store room?’ It was an awkward question to ask but one that Kate hoped their friendship would bridge.