Beyond the Black Stump

by Nevil Shute

  “I’d appreciate it if you would. I see it’s kind of awkward here, but I just don’t like the stuff.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” said Mr. Bruce without much confidence. “I’ll fix that up for you. They’re very hospitable, you know, and that’s about the only hospitality they understand. They’re really very nice people when you get to know them. They’re immensely kind.”

  “Kind?”

  The other nodded. “The kindest people this side of the black stump.”

  “The black stump?”

  “It’s what they say round here. It just means—anywhere.”

  They drove up to the homestead about midday. The single-storey building stood drenched in blazing sunshine under a cloudless sky; its white-painted iron roof hurt the eyes. The men got out of the trucks and Mrs. Regan came out to meet them, with Mollie and the children. The girl said, “Ma, this is Stan Laird, from America.”

  Stanton said, “I’m certainly glad to know you, Mrs. Regan.”

  “You picked a hot time of day to come over,” she said. She was introduced in turn to all the others. “Well, don’t let’s stand here in the sun. Come on into the shade.”

  The geologist laughed. “I guess we’re all used to the sun, Mrs. Regan. We’ll see plenty more of it before we’re through.”

  “No need to stand out in it when you haven’t got to,” she replied. She led the way to the verandah. “Mollie, get the tray and the glasses.” She turned again to Stanton. “You’ve been working up in the north here for some time?”

  “Most of us are new to this country, Mrs. Regan,” he said. “I only landed in Australia a week ago.”

  She wrinkled her forehead. “Is it as hot as this in America?”

  “It gets quite hot down in New Mexico,” he said. “I wouldn’t say it’s quite as hot as this. But most of us came right here from Arabia. That was my last assignment before coming here.”

  “Well,” she said drily, “welcome to the Lunatic.”

  He blinked. “The Lunatic?”

  Donald Bruce said, “I should have told you that one, Stan. It’s what they call this end of the Hammersley Range, the Lunatic Range.”

  He smiled. “Why do they call it that? Because only lunatics live here?”

  “Aye,” said Mrs. Regan. “They’re all right when they come.”

  The girl came down the verandah with the tray and set it down upon the table. Stanton was relieved to see that there was a bottle of lemon squash there by the rum bottle, and a large glass jug of ice-cold water from the refrigerator. Mrs. Regan said, “Help yourself, now, gentlemen.” There was still a faint flavour of the barmaid in her manner.

  Mollie said, “Stan doesn’t drink, Ma.”

  “Do ye tell me that! Would ye have a lemon squash, then, Mr. Laird?”

  “I’d appreciate that, Mrs. Regan. About half of us don’t drink alcohol. Dwight and Tex here, they’re the same as me.”

  “That’s something new for the Lunatic,” said Mrs. Regan. “Well, help yourselves. Mr. Bruce, I know that you’re not one of them.”

  Pat Regan appeared around the corner of the verandah, the mouse perched upon his shoulder. His wife said, “Pat, this is Mr. Laird with his party.”

  “God save you,” said the grazier. He did not seem particularly enthusiastic in his welcome. Stanton studied the old man with some concern, the massive frame, the dour look, the thick red hair only touched with grey, the little creature on his shoulder. Pat Regan’s eye fell on the glass that his wife handed to the geologist. “In the Name of God,” he said, “what would that be you’re after giving him to drink?”

  “Lemon squash,” she said equably. “Mr. Laird and two of his party don’t drink spirits.”

  “There’s queer fellows,” said the grazier. He turned to Stanton. “If it’s the stomach ulcers you’d be suffering, there’s no harm in the rum. The whisky is a poor thing for an ulcer, and the gin will do it no good at all. But rum is a smooth liquor, Mr. Laird; it lies as soft upon an ulcer as the feathers of a goose.”

  Stanton smiled. “I guess I’ll stay on lemon squash,” he said. “I just don’t like the taste of alcohol.”

  “Well, isn’t that a wonder!” He turned to Bruce. “Ye didn’t bring Jock McKenzie with you this time, Don?”

  The Australian laughed. “No, he’s still in Canberra.”

  “Well, give yeself a rum, and make pretence you’re him.” Pat turned to Stanton. “I should be after telling you, this Jock McKenzie from the Mineral Resources down in Canberra, he’s a heavy drinker, Mr. Laird. A very, very heavy drinker. We aren’t like that at all up here.”

  Donald Bruce laughed. “Three drinks to a bottle.”

  “Aye. Isn’t it a queer thing now, and he a public servant working in an office, in Canberra itself? Four drinks it should be. There’s some, like the Judge, would say five, or six even. But four drinks it should be. Four makes a comfortable, friendly kind of drink. Three is too much, too much altogether.” He poured himself a quarter of a bottle of rum into the tumbler and shot it down before the eyes of the startled Americans, following it with a chaser of water. “And now, Mr. Laird, where is it that you want to sink your bore?”

  “I wouldn’t say we’d gotten quite so far as that just yet, Mr. Regan,” said the geologist. “We’ll have quite a bit of exploratory work to do before we make our minds up if we’re going to drill a well right here at all. I haven’t been out on the location yet, of course. I’ve got some air photographs of the district the last party picked as interesting enough for us to investigate more closely. Would you like to see them?”

  “I would so. Would it be pictures that the aeroplane was after taking a while back, and him so high up in the Heaven he might have been the Archangel himself?”

  “He was up here in June,” said Mr. Bruce. “Most of the photographs were taken at fifteen thousand feet.”

  “Well, Glory be to God, isn’t that a great height for a man to be flying? How far would that be in miles?”

  “About three miles.”

  The old man shook his head. “They’ll be no use to you, no use at all. Ye’ll see nothing any good to you at that distance. Ye should have told him to fly lower.”

  “They tell us all we need to know,” said Stanton. “I have the prints right here in the truck.”

  He walked over to the truck, opened one of his dustproof tin boxes, and brought a sheaf of half a dozen large prints back to the verandah. He handed one to the grazier. “This is the best general view,” he said. “The centre of this picture would be about fourteen miles from here, and practically due west. The scale would be about four miles from edge to edge of the print.”

  Mrs. Regan said, “Mollie, go and get your father his glasses. They’re in the right-hand small drawer of the bureau.”

  She did so, and the old man adjusted the unfamiliar things on to his nose and ears. He peered at the print, and the mouse peered with him from his shoulder. “Well, isn’t that the queer thing to be a picture of the property. Ye’d say to look at it that there’d be no feed on the ground, no feed at all, and the countryside in June as green with spinifex as all the fields of County Wicklow put together.”

  “They always look like that,” said Donald Bruce. The photographs were passed from hand to hand. He took one, and said to the grazier. “Look, this is where we are. You see this river bed?” He traced upon the print with his finger. “Well, that’s what you call Brown Ewe Creek.”

  “Do ye tell me that!”

  “And this line, this very faint, straight one. Can you see it? There.” The grazier blinked behind the unaccustomed spectacles. “Well, that’s the fence between your property and Lucinda Station.”

  “Well, Glory be to God! Isn’t it a great wonder to be taking pictures like that from the air?” He turned to his daughter. “Go tell your Uncle Tom to come and see these pictures, and then tell the Judge himself.”

  Presently Tom and the Judge appeared, somewhat the worse for wear, but a neat
rum revived them and they began to take an intelligent interest in the photographs. Stanton took the opportunity to give them a short lecture on the discovery of oil. “This, right here,” he said, tracing it with his finger, “this is a limestone outcrop such as might hold oil. Or it might not. This, here, is another one. Along this southern edge of both there’s a layer of clay. You can’t see it in the picture, but the geological survey says it’s there.”

  “That’s right,” said Mr. Bruce. “There’s nothing much to see upon the surface, but the limestone—just about there—that limestone shows an oil trace when you crack the rock.”

  “I’d say that it’s a typical folded structure with oil traces,” said the geologist. “I’d say this might be a small dead fold, and this. But this one, I’d say he might run right under, with a fold beneath the gypsum outcrops here, and here. I wouldn’t know yet, but it looks like that to me.”

  “Is that where there’d be oil?” asked Tom.

  “I wouldn’t know, Mr. Regan,” said the geologist. “If there’s a fold in the limestone there it’s my job to find it. If we find one or more folds with an impervious layer on top, then that’s the sort of a formation that is capable of holding oil. We do know this much, that there has been oil here once, maybe centuries ago. The traces in the limestone tell us that. Whether there’s any down there now is anybody’s guess.”

  “But if ye find the folds ye talk about, then you’ll sink a bore down to the oil?”

  “We might do that,” said the geologist. “It would depend a lot how promising it looks. We might decide to drill a hole and see what’s there. But that’s no guarantee that we’ll strike oil. We’d be mighty lucky to strike oil with the first hole.” He turned to them. “You know somethin’? For every hole we drill in the United States that produces oil in commercial quantity, we drill five that don’t. That’s about the ratio—five dry holes to every one that produces. Over ’n over again I’ve drilled a hole down maybe to seven or ten thousand feet not expecting to find oil at all with that one, just to examine the rock cores coming up ’n find for certain how the strata run down there. Then with that evidence, maybe we drill a good one in some other place, ’n get the oil.”

  They stared at him, this queer stranger who wouldn’t drink spirits, with some respect. He spoke as if he knew what he was talking about and they could recognise competence when they met it, even in fields remote from their experience. “How much does it cost to drill a hole?” asked Tom.

  “I wouldn’t be able to put a figure on it,” Stanton said. “It depends how deep you go, what sort of rock you strike. On skads of things.”

  “About how much?”

  “In this country here? I’d say perhaps three hundred thousand dollars.”

  “How much would that be in pounds?”

  Donald Bruce said, “About a hundred and thirty thousand.”

  “And ye’d spend that much money on a bore and then maybe to find no oil at all?”

  “That’s right,” said Stanton. “I spend most of my life doing that. Then one day we drill a good producer, and that pays for all the rest.”

  They had no comment to make on that. Such figures were beyond all their experience, or so they thought. In fact the annual gross income of Laragh Station was considerably more than half the figure that had just been mentioned, but this was not real money to them. It is doubtful if any member of the Regan family even knew what the gross income of their property was; the Judge knew the figures, for he kept the books, and the fact that the current account of Laragh Station was just about enough to pay for the restoration of Dunchester Cathedral was a perpetual worry to him, the more so because he could not get the Regans to display the slightest interest in it. Tom was the only one with any money sense, but that was mostly turned to the economies of good management. Mrs. Regan could appreciate the fact that they were wealthy people, but the figures meant little to her in terms of holidays or goods; her instinct always was to save money for a rainy day. Of all the children, Mike, the chartered accountant in Perth, was the only one who really understood the situation of the family, and he knew better than to trouble them about it. Reserves were building up—well, let them build. So long as the Regans had a quiet life upon their property, an occasional new truck, and plenty of rum, they lived as happy and contented people. They had no other ambitions.

  It was arranged that the survey party should stay to dinner and then go out to their location to make their camp. It was the custom upon Laragh Station that the men should eat alone, somewhat in the Moslem style. This curious habit had originated in the old reprobate days before Tom Regan had gone down to Perth to meet Mrs. Foster in the bar. In those days they had lived somewhat indiscriminately with the gins, though the Countess Markievicz had been Pat’s favourite and ranked as the chief wife. The Countess was unaccustomed to a lavatory and her table manners had left much to be desired, so the men had fallen into the habit of dining alone while the black women took their meals out in the kitchen, or in any place they wished. When Mrs. Foster, now Mrs. Tom Regan, had arrived upon the scene with two young children, she had found too much to be reformed to cope with everything at once. Moreover, it was necessary for her to look after the children at their meals, and she did not want to bother the men with them. So she pushed the blacks out of the kitchen to eat in the scullery, and took the kitchen as her own domain, where she ate with the children. The custom, once established, had endured throughout the years.

  Stanton, accustomed as he was to the American way of life, was troubled when the women did not turn up to the meal, though he said nothing. It was hot in the dining-room; over their heads a punkah fan turned slowly. Mrs. Regan and Mollie came in from the kitchen and placed a huge dish on the table with two legs of hot roast mutton in it, with boiled potatoes, sweet potatoes, and cabbage, and retired to their own place. The men ate in virtual silence; conversation at meal times was unknown on Laragh Station. The Countess slopped around in bare feet, huge, black, smiling, and shapeless in a cotton frock worn very evidently with nothing underneath, removing used dishes from the table and carrying them out to wash. Mollie appeared and set down a big steamed pudding with a bowl of hot lemon sauce, and went out to the kitchen again. Perspiration broke out on the American’s forehead and his temples began to throb as he manfully tackled the pudding.

  They said good-bye to the Regans after lunch and set out for their location to make camp before nightfall, having refused an offer of the shearers’ quarters. “I guess we’d better camp out where the work is,” Stanton said. “Fourteen miles is a little far to go and come for meals, ’n we’d be needing gas most every day if we did that.”

  Mollie and Mrs. Regan appeared shortly before they left. “Be sure now to let us know if we can do anything for you,” the mother said. “The laundry, now. What will you be doing about the wash?”

  “Do it ourselves,” said Stanton. “We always do that.”

  “Ye’ll be carting water all the time. Why don’t you run it in here every couple o’ days, and let the gins do it along with ours?”

  The offer was too good to refuse. “It certainly would help us if we could do that,” said the American. “It’s mighty kind of you.”

  “It’s no trouble. They wash every day, saving Sunday. Just bring it in and dump it in the wash house, and they’ll do it.”

  Mollie said, “Can Ma and I come out one afternoon and see what’s going on, Stan?”

  “Why, certainly,” he said. “Come any time you can. I don’t suppose we’ll have much to offer you, except ice cream.”

  “Ice cream? Where on earth would you get that from?”

  He was a little surprised. “We make it. We’ve got a freezer in the truck.” A considerable power plant was necessary to their seismic observations, and the current from this could be used to run a variety of domestic electrical appliances. It would have been hardship indeed to the seismic crew if they had missed out on their ice cream in the outback.

  She laughed. �
��What flavours have you got?”

  “I’d say only strawberry and vanilla,” he said apologetically. He called to the camp cook, “Hey, Ted! What flavours of ice cream do we have?”

  “Strawberry, maple, and vanilla, boss.”

  “I’ll have a maple,” said the girl. “I’ve never tasted maple ice cream.”

  He smiled at her, “I’ll have it ready for you.” He climbed up into the driver’s seat of the truck. “’Bye now.”

  He drove off from the station buildings with Donald Bruce riding in the seat beside him; the Australian directed him on to a faint wheel track that scarred the red earth. “This is actually the road to Lucinda Station,” he said, “where David Cope lives—the young fellow that you met at Mannahill. The best way for us is to go out to the boundary, by the Chinaman’s grave, and then turn north along the fence. It’s two sides of a triangle but there’s a track all the way. It’s a bit rough if you try and go direct over the hills.”

  Stanton nodded, and the truck rolled on in the shimmering heat, following the jeep tracks that wound in and out of the biggest clumps of spinifex. The other two vehicles followed in his dust. After half an hour a gallows-like erection appeared on the horizon. “That’s right,” said Donald Bruce in slight relief. “That’s the cemetery.”

  “The cemetery?”

  “Yes. There’s a cemetery here.”

  The geologist drove on in silence. Presently they came to the erection he had seen in the distance. Two vertical posts supported a cross member which carried a painted board above a gate between the posts, and on this gate was painted,

  SHIRE OF YANTARINGA

  CEMETERY

  A single strand of barbed wire supported on tumbledown posts cut from the bush stretched away into the distance on each side of the gate. Inside the enclosure a single low mound, untended, was marked by a vertical post of sawn timber.

  The geologist slipped the gear out and brought the truck to a standstill, surveying the scene. “I guess there’s not much business,” he said. “Who gets buried here?”

  “Nobody,” said Mr. Bruce.