Part One.1

 

1: Dreamtime

Eighty-five miles Southwest of Port Darling, the Spay River makes a great U-shaped loop in the spinifex plains. At the bottom of the U bend is the homestead of Table-Tops Station, where there is a concrete ramp across the river. Below the crossing, cranes, herons and brolgas stroll the mud flats; despite quarrelling cockatoos in the gum trees, crocodiles sleep in distended bliss. The warm, muddy water with its dash of foam is like a rich chocolate with a spoon of cream.

The Spay is not a sacred river but it is well to know how it came to be there and why. The Abunda tribe say: “The Rainbow Serpent came out of the sea, from the west.” The God of Water was travelling inland to create soaks and springs and swamps and rock-holes throughout the tribal lands. The sacred caves of the Ashton Ranges were fashioned as his claws gouged a purchase in the steep cliffs. The bed of the Spay, being merely the track of the Serpent’s body, has no religious meaning; yet it is not wise to interfere with any of the works of the Rainbow Serpent. While the crossing was being constructed, one of the truck drivers had sickened and died. The doctor said it was heart failure, but the Abunda were only surprised that the God had been so easily satisfied. After all, he had put all the water on the land, and he could just as easily take it all away again; as the Abunda had long ago found out. In the time when the tribe lived in the Macdonnell Ranges there had been a drought of seven years, when no rain fell at all.

In the wet season the mighty Spay covers the crossing with up to sixty feet of deep brown floodwater. The cement and metal pipes make no pretence of taming the river. She throws huge rounded boulders against the concrete; eats her way up the barren earth of the steep banks; irritably tears and rips at the crumbling mud of the erosion gullies. In December or January the Spay reaches possessive fingers far out across the heat scarred land. Great slices of the red earth are undercut and gulped down by the racing waters. Dead trees and bullocks and petrol drums go sailing high over the crossing at twenty knots.

 

At the beginning of the dry season; in the sweltering midday heat, Illuta walked the baking concrete of the crossing. The calloused soles of her bare feet felt no discomfort. Although completely naked she carried a string dilly-bag in one hand and a heavily barbed spear in the other. A calico dress was rolled into a ball and tucked under her arm.

At fifteen Illuta had the grace and bloom and balance of early maturity. Her slender legs, protruding lips and squat nose were classical Abunda. She possessed a blending harmony with her country that transcended beauty and can belong only to the functionally perfect; whether it be a tree, a piston, a pistol or a woman.

She was going fishing. It was a little early in the season for the mud still discoloured the water and the Spay tossed and grumbled fitfully before settling down to the long dry season sleep. For a time Illuta stood on the low parapet and watched giant jets of water that came from the pipes just below the level of the crossing roadway. She knew the sweet-fleshed barramundi were down there in the swirling waters – waiting. The fish halt in their journey from the sea and stay at the crossing until the water runs at about half-bore through the huge pipes.

Illuta decided against risking the loss of a spear at this spot; besides the importance of the day warranted the maximum of privacy. Not that there is any great lack of seclusion at the Table Tops crossing. In the dry season a great plume of dust can be seen long before the vehicle. In the wet all the little creeks along the road rise, as well as the river, and there are no vehicles at all. However, at this time of the year the possibility of intruders was not to be discounted.

At first Illuta didn’t bother to put on the dress when the cars came. The crossing was comparatively new when she first came to Table-Tops and aside from the station owners’ utilities and occasional donkey teams there were few other users of the heavily corrugated road. Now dust-covered cars were becoming more frequent; the sedans swept down through the steep cutting and almost always stopped in the middle of the crossing.

Illuta was neither shocked nor puzzled by the behaviour of the strangers. A little nervous, but the touch of fear only added to the shivering thrill of it all. She rather enjoyed the horrors. The combination of stiff legs and high heel shoes was one sight that never failed to evoke a giggle and a shudder. And the stink and incredible profusion of their sweat! Illuta’s wide nostrils dilated whenever the jangaga came near. The women were the worst with their silken slips and panties shutting off the air from flabby bodies. At one hundred and nine in the shade and one hundred and thirty or more on the crossing, she worried lest these people should melt altogether and either evaporate on the concrete or trickle into the river.

Illuta imagined the wet lips and goggle eyes of the jangaga men to be natural to the species; but she was a little bewildered by them talking to a spot directly between her legs and giving occasional confirming glances at her breasts. The puzzling habit caused Illuta to wonder if some of the jangaga women were capable of talking from either end. The feat wouldn’t have surprised her.

Illuta did not mind the questions of the tourists about the fish and the crocodiles and the state of the road. She always gave the reply she thought would please them most. If they seemed to want the river packed with fish; Illuta said it was. The numbers of fish available could make no difference to people who had no intention of fishing. If they expected the corrugated dirt of the road to turn to smooth stone around the next bend; why not let them have the pleasure until they got there.

Of course most of the queries did not make a great deal of sense. Illuta’s section of the Abunda tribe originally came from the Central Desert and were comparative newcomers to the Spay. In fact Illuta had never seen a white man until she was eight years of age. However the story of the land was written large and clear for all to read. To a geologist who jokingly asked her what happened to the peaks of the Table-Top mountains, Illuta replied: ‘S’posem all’a time longa rain, wash away.’ He remarked to his wife that these primitive people evidently had a rough knowledge of geology.

It didn’t seem important to Illuta what had happened to the tops of the mountains after Boangilla cut them off. Even small Abunda children knew that in the dreaming Boangilla had hunted the Dog-tribe through the country of the Warrumunga. He had become impatient when the Dog-men hid behind the mountains. Hurling his boomerang, Boangilla cut the hills to flat platforms; so he could stride across them with ease. He then killed the entire tribe as punishment for rape and incest. That is why, although there are still plenty of wild dogs in the area, there are no Dog-men or a tribe of the dingo totem. The great arcs of the Table-Top hills on each side of the Spay, roughly follow the sweeping curve of a boomerang in flight. It could hardly be otherwise.

Neither the questions nor the eyes of the jangaga made Illuta ashamed. But now when the cars came she put the dress on. She herself was of the Erlia or emu totem, because an emu had stared at her mother just before the swelling started. Illuta had no desire to mother the sweat dripping, spirit child of the tourist tribe; no matter how innocently acquired.

On this day Illuta left the crossing and fished from a flat rock, around the bend and almost in the middle of the river. From her bark-string dilly-bag she took a one-pound tin of butter that her mother had stolen from the homestead kitchen. A grade, Golden Glow butter, although a little rancid in taste, is far superior to goanna fat for greasing the body. Illuta sat on the rock, dipping her fingers into the tin and carefully massaging the oil into her skin. She rubbed the grease in until her whole body shone with the lustre of a black opal. A generous dob then went into her hair. She rubbed with a circular motion and this caused the short black hair to curl into tight ringlets. She did the same with the pubic hair. With the supply of butter almost exhausted, Illuta ran her fingers around the tin and gave the cicatrix scars above each breast an added touch. The tribal markings had been made irregular in depth; owing to the shaking hand of the old woman who made the incisions. After the ash had been rubbed in the wounds and slow process of healing completed, Illuta had raised half moon weals across the top of each breast like a string of dusky pearls. She was tremendously proud of the result and the envy of her girlfriends.

Having completed her toilet Illuta stood looking down at herself with some degree of satisfaction. This was a preview of how she would look on the wedding night; a sort of undress rehearsal. For although the husband she had never seen was arriving this day, the event itself was still some weeks off.

Now she was ready to commence fishing. Naked on a rock in midstream, Illuta was ready for anything the tribe might demand of her, either as a woman or a huntress. She held the spear lightly poised; only the thick leathery soles of her feet gripped the rock. The Abunda female of the dreamtime floated free. A ripe fifteen and a deep song in her like the song of the Spay. Illuta was keenly aware that her song had changed; it was no longer the girlish chatter of the babbling brook. The rhythm was deeper and held the swift currents, the free, surging power of a mighty river ... From her body would spring a host of Abunda warriors to go on down through time and eternity ... She would not only people the earth, but in time would people the heavens with the burning, star bright bodies of her sons ... The Abunda would look up for evermore. They would say: ‘See small one, there is Illuta, the Mother! The seven bright ones around her are her sons.’ ...

There was a ripple near the rock. The dark, dreaming eyes sharply focused; as she shifted position rounded calf muscles slid beneath glistening flesh. The buttocks and soft curve of belly hardened and laced with sinew. Illuta raised the spear and her young swelling breasts were lifted; the copper circles around the nipples gleamed in the bright sun. She was waiting to spear a fish a barramundi. She was also waiting for me.

 

I was standing by the ship’s rail – the Cygnet – looking across a quarter mile of dirty water at the Meat Works of Port Darling. There is a twenty-five-foot rise and fall of tide in the muddy little harbour. We were waiting for the tide to come in, so we could berth at the jetty.

My foster father, Fred Carson, and Captain Cliff Sweetman sprawled in deck chairs behind me. Their feet on the rail and the pointless conversation tumbling from their lips like the aimless roll of the ship. I wasn’t really listening. Just standing there – like God – dressed in a cream coloured tropical suit, suede shoes, gold cufflinks, Panama hat. It was too hot for the coat but. I wasn’t going to take it off and spoil the effect. The effect on me, that is; nobody else seemed over impressed. Old Fred was halfway through one of his endless stories of the North:

‘... so Moody searches the cabin of his truck until he is certain the money is not there. He has only been asleep for half an hour. There’s no footprints, no trees and a clear view all around him across the sand plains ...’

I knew the old man was trying to say: ‘I am a pioneer, I have lived all my life in the rugged North. I know it and its people – I passed this way – therefore I am. I wished he would stop trying to prove it.

The Captain said: ‘Myall! They wear shoes made from emu feathers. Leave no tracks.’

He didn’t care who took the truck driver’s money any more than I did. Captain Cliff Sweetman, who talked of a great ocean liner and jewelled women on a floating palace. Twenty years captain of a coastal cattle boat – a bullock bucko. And now the Cygnet was converted to carry passengers as well as cows – but the Captain was not. It was too late. The swagger and the deep belly laugh didn’t quite cover the unease of the Captain in his expensively panelled dining room. The air conditioning smothered him and he spent almost his entire sea time on deck.

‘That’s right? Isn’t it, Chalky?’ Cliff asked for confirmation. ‘Those emu feather shoes don’t leave any tracks?’

‘How the hell would I know!’ I answered indignantly. The Chalky tag annoyed me almost as much as the question.

‘You mind your manners, boy,’ Fred said in mild reproof.

‘The only thing I knew about the shoes was from an anthropology book I read. The kadachi shoes were only worn for ceremonial killings. The layers of feathers were stuck together with blood; the wearer had to cut off a toe before he put them on ... They both called me Chalky. It started as an affectionate joke when I was a small boy.

The old man sucked at an empty pipe. ‘Wasn’t Myalls. There were a couple of goats nibbling at the salt bush, some distance off. Moody shot them, opened up their guts and got the money back. Six hundred and fifty quid all chewed into little bits. The bank cashed it. Most of it anyway.’

The Captain rumbled with laughter. ‘Reminds me of the Duck. You know Peter Waddell, Fred?’

We had been on the boat for ten days. If I had listened to these two long enough I would have been stuck with the impression that the whole of the North was populated with lunatics. Voices droning on about nothing ... Welcome home, Chalky ... Happy Birthday to me.

‘... prospector over towards the Alice’?

‘That’s him!’ the Captain said with satisfaction. It makes a difference when someone knows who and what you are talking about. I. would have liked to talk about the Abunda with someone who understood. Someone like God. The Captain and I had one thing in common. It wasn’t that the tourists, at his table in the dining saloon, didn’t laugh at his jokes; some of them damn near went into hysterics. We shared a mutual unease. It was related to having a different coloured skin; only in his case it had to do with a white dress shirt and gold braid and a sprinkling of cow dung over his dignity.

‘... had a partner called Yellow Albert. The Duck was in town when young Fletcher was the new copper; fresh from the police school in the south. Fletcher told the Duck there had been a couple of poison cases among the boongs in his area and in future the bodies were to be brought in from the bush for an autopsy ...’

It’s hard to find enchantment or become enthralled by the scenic views of Port Darling. From the ship it’s a collection of weatherboard walls and glaring iron roofs patterned with rust. A paintless motley of shanties crouched on a narrow ledge of rock, with the mangrove swamps bordering the sea front. A dogleg jetty stacked with empty petrol drums. Then a mile wide strip of tidal mud flats, flashing morse with their inset jewellery of broken glass and pieces of tin. Above the town there is a great rampart two hundred feet high and a mile long, it isn’t a mountain; it used to be – about a million years ago. Now all the soil has washed into the sea or blown away. It’s a bone polished rock. A burnished metal eye staring blankly back at the burning sun, Cliff was saying: ‘About six months later the Duck comes back to town and walks into the cop-shop…’

The bulge of the eye hangs over the single street of Port Darling. The rock soaks up the sun, holds the heat and shuts off the land breeze. In the long wet season nights the whole population crawl under their mosquito nets; broil in their own sweat and scratch at the maddening itch of prickly-heat. It was eight years since I had been back. I spent Christmas holidays that year at Bindora; the creeks started to rise and I had to stay a week in Port Darling before Fred could get in to pick me up. In the dry season the nights are a little cooler and it’s not too bad – not too good either.

‘... The Duck sez to Fletcher: “Yellow Albert died in the mine, so I brought him in on a pack horse. Got held up at the Table-Tops crossing. Been on the track fifteen days ...” ’

I stared hard at the fascinating display of the mud flats. Old tyres, tin cans, broken bottles and sinister lumps in sacks. All the things that should wash out to sea but never do. Near the jetty the creeping fingers of water were beginning to crawl across the banks. The red mud shimmered under the sun; felt the advancing tide and began to gently heave – as though digesting all that rubbish made it sick.

‘... Fletcher sez: “Jesus Christ! Fifteen days! He must be a bit ripe by now?” The Duck sez: “Nope, he ain’t too bad I gutted him and salted him down before we left ...” ’

From the ship it looks as though a brass-studded door is set into the great rock. A real Treasure Island of a door.

The Captain was off on another tack: ‘... Ten miles out to sea and the ocean still brown with the mud of the Spay ...’

‘What’s that brass studded door up there?’ I interrupted.

‘Handles’ Cliff replied. ‘Door knobs; Ah Fong got stuck with a crate full of them. He used the brass knobs to bolt the planks of the door together ... Every year the mouth of the Spay spewing out the land ...’

I cut in again. ‘What’s behind the door?’

He shattered the illusion without seriously breaking the monologue. ‘That! It’s Ah Fong’s shit-house ... Bloody lot of good cattle country going to waste. Sinking to the bottom of the ocean. Erosion; that’s what does it! Bloody erosion.’

I was losing the habit of listening. There were too many years of study, too much feverish concentration. Two thousand years of culture to be assimilated in less than two decades. The reaction set in on failing the exam …

‘What are you brooding about, Chalky?’ the Captain complained.

‘Nothing. Just thinking about what you were saying,’ I lied. ‘The blood of the land on the sea. The whole of the North bleeding to death with erosion; overstocked and under-fenced.’ They were both looking at me so I thought I had better rave on. ‘The cattle ate the grass and ate the seed of the grass ...’

‘Fenced!’ Fred exclaimed indignantly. ‘That’s a dirty word, Chalky.’

I looked across to the shit-house door. Eight years ago Lilly Ah Fong was a China doll with a pigtail. A half-caste – a yellow girl ...

Fred was still talking to me. ‘... Had a young Government bloke over to Bindora a couple of years ago ... Twenty five thousand head I told him. He said, that’s a lot of cattle, Mr Carson ...’

The nose and lips were not quite as broad and flat as Abunda girls, and the skin not so dark – more like copper ...

‘... I said, Son, fifteen thousand head are kangaroos and emus, about five hundred are boongs. What’s left are mostly scrub bulls. Do you want me to fence that useless lot of bastards in, or out?’

The Captain roared with laughter. ‘How about it, Chalky?’ He spluttered. ‘Fence ’em in – or out? You got the wrong idea, son. That ain’t blood on the water of the gulf; it’s a brown stain.’ He went off into another fit of laughter. ‘What else would you expect to see around the arsehole of Australia?’

I carefully inspected the lighter skin on the palms of my hands and forgot to laugh ... Maybe the colour wears off ... Don’t be a racial problem! Use Dr MacKenzie’s medicated sandpaper ...

My silence cut the laughter short. They looked at each other and then back to me. Both faces had deep laughter crinkles around the eyes and mouth.

‘You know what you should do, Chalky?’ Fred asked.

‘No.’ I replied with resigned conviction. ‘I don’t know, Fred.’

‘Stay on board.’ The old man pulled at his drooping moustache before spitting over the side. All three of us watched the spitball hit the sea. ‘Go back to Stuart with Cliff.’

The Captain nodded approval. ‘Sure, make a round trip of it. We are picking up the Deacon sisters again in Port Gregory.’

‘What have they got to do with it?’ I asked wearily.

‘That Madge Deacon goes for you, Chalky,’ Cliff said with a slow wink.

‘I intend to visit my relations,’ I said dogmatically. ‘I have told you before, Fred. I want to live with them for a while.’

‘Why?’ Fred half nodded to the Captain, as though they had talked this over before and agreed on the verdict. ‘Failing an exam isn’t the end of the world. So you flunked the leaving certificate. Is that any reason to go and live like an animal?’

‘If my people are animals then so am I.’ I wasn’t angry, not even mildly indignant. I knew it wouldn’t take much to talk me out of the idea completely.

‘I didn’t mean that, lad,’ Fred apologised. ‘But the Abunda are primitive, decadent. You have a good education ...’

I cut in on the well-worn theme of my schooling. ‘A primitive human being isn’t necessarily degraded. In fact primitive and decadent are opposites.’

The Captain said: ‘Spoken like a scholar. There is a lot of things you can’t learn from books; you listen to Fred, young fellow, and save yourself a lot of grief.’

‘Wait until you see the Abunda humpies around Table-Tops,’ Fred added in disgust. ‘Dogs and kids and gins all sleeping together in a mess of old iron and dirty flour bags. These fancy theories you picked up at school are due to get knocked on the head.’

The question of why they were forced to live in squalor didn’t seem half as important as it did six weeks ago. I knew what he I said was true and it was partly the fault of the Abunda. I didn’t reply.

Fred thought I was sulking. He said: ‘Have I ever done the wrong thing by you, Chalky?’

The question was a stock phrase. If I ever disagreed with him he said that. The answer was: ‘No, Sir.’ Against the outline of Port Darling the recollection of Bindora Station seemed more vivid ... Two thousand square miles of spinifex plain and impossible heaps of rock like the mountains of the moon. Long horned, lean flanked, wild eyed cattle milling around in their own dust cloud. Savage dogs and only Fred’s ready boot between a small boy and yellow snapping fangs. A succession of gentle gins who shared the house with the dogs, the bed with Fred and the rations of all. My foster mother was one of the house lubras at Bindora. She was crushed to death by a horse in a mustering camp when I was five years old.

I said: ‘Yes, Fred, you did the wrong thing. You didn’t mean to – but you did. When Nellie died you should have returned me to the tribe.’

The old man turned to the Captain. ‘Grateful bastard! Isn’t he?’

Cliff frowned. ‘What do you mean by that sort of senseless yap? Fred has done a lot for you, Chalky.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’ I tried to explain it to Fred. ‘The Abunda wouldn’t desert a child because the parents were dead. I read about it. This professor said: No individual could have special problems of survival which did not affect the tribe as a whole. They lived and practised a pure and perfect form of communism ...’

Fred angrily interrupted. ‘Never mind about the bloody book.’

He leaned forward in the chair and grabbed me by the leg. ‘Ever hear of baby meat?’

I didn’t answer him. I concentrated on the wonderful door of Ah Fong’s shit-house.

‘Baby meat damn fine tucker, Boss.’ He imitated the high pitched singsong of the women and smacked his lips. ‘Me likeum baby meat!’

‘It’s not so long, Chalky, since your tribe were cannibals. They probably still would be, if it wasn’t for fear of the police.’

I thought the reason for the change of diet was more likely to be an abundance of sugar and flour than police. But I said: ‘I still think you were wrong in taking me from the tribe. It doesn’t alter my debt to you, Fred – I’m grateful.’

The old man quietened down a bit. ‘What if you had got your High School Certificate and gone on to the University?’ he asked shrewdly. ‘Would I still have been wrong?’

‘I couldn’t have got through, Fred.’ I owed him the explanation along with the school fees. ‘I was generations behind the rest of the class in primary school. I read “Alice in Wonderland” for the first time while I was studying for the Certificate.’

‘You should have stuck to comics.’ Cliff laughed. ‘That’s all I ever read in high school.’

‘I didn’t have time to read comics.’

It’s a hell of a long way from the primeval to aeroplanes and wireless. Even an ordinary room, with a fireplace and a cloth on the table; Hans Anderson and quilted bed covers and pictures hanging on the walls; all belong to another world. To catch up is like running forever down the long corridors of a midnight library. All the books are there, all unfamiliar. Hundreds of thousands of books and customs and prejudices and traditions.

I said: ‘It’s something to do with Fathers who talk about the war and stick pictures in the family album and barrack for football teams. As you said, Fred, not so long ago my people were cannibals.’

‘Couldn’t you sit for the exam again?’ Cliff asked.

‘I could, but the Universities are crowded and a second try pass wouldn’t gain me admittance.’ Even as I said it I knew I was bloody glad it was all over. ‘They are turning away fairly bright students; there is no room for plodders.’

‘There is always Bindora.’ Fred chuckled with pride. ‘Stutterin’ Joe and I can use a young fellow about the place. Keep the books help with the mustering.’

‘I might take you up on that, Fred.’ I lied. ‘But first I intend to visit my people.’ I liked the sound of ‘visit my people.’ It had a dramatic ring to it, like I was a Martian talking about going home; via the brass-studded door of Ah Fong’s lavatory.

‘OK, Chalky,’ the old man muttered impatiently. ‘Stay at Table-Tops for a few days if you want to, then come over to Bindora.’

‘Where are you going to live?’ Cliff asked. The Captain now spent more time wrestling with social problems than bullocks. He could see this one sticking out a mile. ‘Are you going to live with the Abunda in their gunyas or stay at the homestead?’

‘Neither’ I assured him. ‘My brother got Frank Tipper to send me a letter. There is to be a walkabout as soon as I arrive.’

‘Strike me bloody purple!’ Fred burst out. ‘You never told me this. You’re not thinking of going bush with that mob?’

I felt the blood pumping into my head, making my ears burn and my eyes stick out. ‘With my own brother! Why not?’

Fred jumped up as though he had been stung. He stuck his tobacco stained moustache within a foot of my face. ‘Look, son!’ he mouthed. ‘You were a little boy when I sent you away to school. How old are you now?’

‘Eighteen.’ I murmured in embarrassment. He knew damn well.

‘Thirteen years of missions and schooling,’ he shouted. ‘You couldn’t turn wild nigger now, even if you wanted to.’

‘I merely intend to visit my relatives, Mr Carson.’ I acquired the habit of calling all older men ‘Mister’ at school; particularly if they shouted. Could have bitten my tongue off for snubbing Fred.

Cliff stood up with an apologetic snigger. He half raised his hand as though he was going to pat the old man on the shoulder, then winked instead. ‘If you gentlemen will excuse me,’ he sarcastically remarked, ‘I intend visiting with my shipmates on the bridge.’

The Mister Carson label stung old Fred. ‘You bloody young fool!’ He still had his voice raised. ‘Go into the bush with that mob of savages and they’ll whistle-cock ya before you can pull your pants up.’

I hadn’t thought about that part of it and I didn’t now. If anything I imagined the initiation rites had probably gone out of vogue – like eating people.

‘I am prepared to face the Lartna and Arilta ceremonies if they still exist,’ I said in bravado. They were just a couple of words I had read in a book.

‘You want a good kick in the arse!’ Fred half turned as though he was going to administer the treatment, then slumped back in the deck chair. ‘That settles it, you’re coming to Bindora with me. Go and pack the bags,’ he muttered in disgust. ‘Develop a bit of fuggin sense.’

I think that was most of my trouble. I was tired of trying to develop the brain; it was getting muscle bound. I wanted to have a go at developing the senses. Not reason or rationalism; just instinct – impulse in place of intellect. I don’t know. I had half a mind to go to Bindora, I didn’t really believe I was going to get much of a kick out of chucking spears at kangaroos.

---

 

2: Welcome Home

No massed clan of Abunda warriors were assembled at the end of the wharf to greet me. But seven of my tribe were sitting on Ah Fong’s verandah eating boiled lollies and pickled onions from paper bags.

Fred wanted me to go and have a drink but I didn’t feel like producing my citizenship papers so that a cynical barman could award me a lemon squash. Fred said to think it over and that’s what I did. Sat on the edge of the pub verandah in the full glare of the afternoon sun, and looked across a hundred yards of bubbling bitumen to Ah Fong’s. The welcoming committee didn’t seem to be in any great hurry to rush over and start slapping me on the back. The feeling was mutual.

In the shade of the shop-front were two young women with hair like greasy string; two pot-bellied kids in raggedy shorts; two old men and a young man with a beard. I had never pictured Dhalja with hair on his face, yet I recognised him instantly by the way he carried his head a little to one side.

I pulled a long splinter of wood from the worn steps of the pub, smoothed a place and started doodling in the dust. The face of a man with a beard. A whirling eddy of dust suddenly sucked the ‘I’ out of me ... The hundred yards and the thousand years no longer came between us ... The pattern was already set ... I couldn’t dig the background of the Abunda – because it had already been dug ... Never IS – always WAS. For a few seconds I seemed to lose the white ability to live in the present and think about the future ... I suddenly knew that the group on Ah Fong’s veranda were part of an ever present past ... They would not predict or discuss the future ... They lived entirely in the dreamtime of the Abunda and talked only of the present. There is a great gulf between those who live in the present; thinking about the future ... And those who live in the past; thinking about the present. The Abunda skull slopes back a little from above the eyes and compresses the frontal lobes of the brain – I suppose ambition is squeezed out. In any case it isn’t good to imagine belonging to a group who have a different coloured skin or shape of head. If I let myself think about it without the Abunda ‘past-present’ philosophy I would have to conclude I was a monster. There are no black or white words for the condition of not belonging to a race ... There is an ecliptic hangover from the dreamtime ... It isn’t self-suggestion, it’s suggestion without self. Skip it! What’s it matter? The elements of the monstrous have no stable atoms. In a few seconds the eerie, bizarre merman breaks down into the commonplace. So I’m a freak!

I worked on the face in the dust. The whites christened him Bellybutton, because of a distended navel. My brother answers just as readily to one name as the other – all the boongs do. Mrs Tipper named the entire Kananga section of the Abunda tribe from the family bible; children, adults – the lot. She knew they all had tribal names but said nobody could possibly understand that gibberish. She called her own son Franklin Aloysious Martingale Tipper. His boong playmates call him Erlia – emu. They say it’s his proper totem name.

I rubbed the face out and switched to the pure logic of mathematics. I tried a figure 10 and changed it to 7.
Seven dirty niggers sitting
On their dates
One more nigger,
Then there are eight.

I was about to get up and get it over with; go and tell Dhalja I wasn’t coming on the walkabout. I had a better thought: Bugger him – tell him nothing.

I suddenly felt that there was nothing new about this situation ... I couldn’t have been more than four years old … my memory doesn’t goes back that far; it’s more like hindsight. The impression builds up from what is overheard, read in books; added to the jigsaw puzzle of experience, until a picture forms:

... They came naked – carrying spears. They came early in the morning and laid their spears down and squatted within respectful distance of the camp. Hour after hour the Abunda completely ignored their guests; then a few of the old men painted up, moved out and squatted some sixty paces from the visitors. Not a word spoken by either side ...

Somehow I began to believe that those seven niggers on Ah Fong’s veranda were giving me the red carpet treatment. Playing out a role – without props – against the backdrop of another race in another world. If it was true it gave them a queer dignity. And if it wasn’t true? ... I could go to Bindora.

Just how long I was supposed to wait I didn’t know; but I thought, under the circumstances, tradition would have been sufficiently honoured. The truck was leaving for Table-Tops in about half an hour. Besides, there is a certain amount of diplomatic immunity in a tropical suit and a Panama hat.

The group paid not the slightest attention to me or the suit. Dhalja was drinking from a bottle of lemonade. A congealed fly covered mass of boiled lollies and pickled onions scattered among their legs. The eyes of the men turned away as I approached. Dhalja took the bottle from his lips and thoughtfully examined the level of the liquid. The two young lubras watched my shoes under downcast eyes, while the children hid behind their mothers and sneaked one-eyed peeps at me. The old men, with flaps of shrivelled flesh hanging from their shrunken chests, sat staring straight ahead – toothless jaws solemnly champing.

In strict rotation prehensile fingers reached out and selected a sweet or an onion. They made no attempt to chase the flies away but merely blew gently on the sticky mass before popping it into their mouths. At the corners of all the eyes and mouths were little fixed crusts of flies. I stood near Dhalja, looking down on my kinsmen from the ivory tower of a bath and a clean suit. Hearing a constant buzz of flies against the glass of the window and the soft slap of Ah Fong’s slippers within the shop. But no words – they didn’t invite me down.

For sixty silent seconds I wallowed in waves of revulsion. The dirt-caked pants of the old men and the cracked boots without laces. The swollen bellies of the children and their mothers’ obscene lack of underclothes. They lacked even the decency of stillness. The hands and jaws constantly moved and the women kept up a fanning motion with their thighs.

Dhalja deliberately handed the almost empty bottle to one of the old men. With incredible dignity, he said in the sonorous tone of formal Abunda: ‘Your brother, Dhalja; Inkata of all the Kananga and keeper of the Pertalchera, greets you Irritcha.’

I stared down into the bearded face with the deep-set eyes. This was Bellybutton. A man with red dust deep in the creases of his skin and a wide brimmed hat; snake-proof pants and elastic sided high heel boots. Inkata of all the Kananga! The clown – the funny little nigger kid! The red-shirted keeper of the Pertalchera!

I looked away, into the dust streaked, fly spotted window of Ah Fong’s. The incredible collection of merchandise that only a Chinaman would range side by side helped me make up my mind. A tin kettle sitting on a second-hand saddle had far more practical reality than a cleft in a rock or a hole in the wall of a cave – I wondered where the sacred Alchera Churinga of the Abunda were stored. In the shop window a basket of oriental slippers was topped with packets of dried peas. In the Pertalchera would be a few worn sticks and slivers of stone with holes in them. Nellie used to say that the keeper of the Pertalchera could hold the dream time in the palm of his hand. Poor bloody Nellie!

Inkata of all the Kananga didn’t mean much. Most of the kangaroo section of the tribe worked for Table-Tops. Counting men, women and children there wouldn’t be more than a hundred of us. In no sense a chieftain, the Inkata held his position solely by ability. At one time it might have meant something, but now I looked at Dhalja and wondered. Ability to do what? Sit on Ah Fong’s veranda drinking lemonade.

Without thinking I lit a cigarette and dropped the packet back in my pocket.

‘You gottem smoke for blackfella, boss?’ Dhalja jeered.

I hastily pulled the packet out and handed it to him. ‘How is Hakea?’ I asked in embarrassment.

Dhalja extracted a cigarette and handed the packet to the old men. They calmly took three each and tossed the remaining two to the lubras.

Dhalja dismissed our sister from the living. ‘She gone bush with yella-fella drover.’ He replied without interest. ‘You gottem match?’

I handed him a silver plated cigarette lighter with the initials C.C. embossed on it in gold letters. Charles Carson was the name I used at school. I used it – nobody else did. They all called me Chalky.

Dhalja lit his smoke and handed the lighter to the old man nearest to him. The gnarled old fingers clicked it twice in a vain effort to get it working, then with the petulance of the aged, threw it on the floor. While Dhalja was lighting the other cigarettes from his own the little boy darted out from behind his mother and picked up the lighter. Dhalja grabbed his wrist and forced him to hand it to me.

‘Picaninnies belonga us,’ he offered by way of apology or explanation. I was aware that under tribal law I stood in the relationship of Father to my brother’s children. Fred told me that Dhalja had two kids. He couldn’t have considered it worth mentioning that Dhalja also had two wives.

I smiled at the lubra now holding the little girl by the hand, before turning to my brother. ‘Your wife, Dhalja?’ The greasy hair, the flies, the constant movement of her thighs made the question seem almost lewd.

Dhalja gravely nodded his head. ‘Weejaba wife number one; Goobardi wife number two.’ He made the introductions with apparent apathy. Congratulations seemed out of place.

The little boy was still standing in front of me, fascinated by my cufflinks. I sat on the edge of the veranda and lapsed into the evidently preferred pidgin. ‘What name belonga you?’

He giggled but answered quite distinctly: ‘I’m David and I’m in the first grade.’

‘David?’ I echoed in doubt. ‘Is that your real name?’ I glanced at Dhalja.

‘Him David all right,’ Dhalja confirmed. ‘Mrs Tipper say him David.’ He indicated the girl with a wave of his hand. ‘Her Apmaura; lizard totem. Mrs Tipper say her Betty but her Apmaura all right.’ He finished the sentence in Abunda: ‘Weejaba saw the lizard on the baby stone.’

Just why Weejaba should see an appropriate tribal name for her daughter and Goobardi fail to see anything that could even be construed as a totem name for her son eluded me. So did a lot of other things; nothing associated in my mind. Least of all the keeper of the Pertalchera and his son David.

I jumped up and went into the shop. I think I expected to find a shadow with substance. Sounds crazy I know, but I started to dream about Lilly Ah Fong the year I turned fifteen. I don’t know why it was always her; but it was.

The yellow girl was sorting potatoes from a pile in the middle of the floor. Dropping the rotten ones into a bucket and putting the others on a wire rack. She had her back to me but I could see she was now a grown woman. Her pigtails were gone and the jet-black hair piled on top of her head. I didn’t doubt it was her; as I had grown up she also grew in my mind. Lilly Ah Fong was the centre of an erotic stage – Port Darling – the tribe – the blending of black and white. I don’t want to make a big deal out of a few wet dreams, but there was a little more in it than stained sheets ... All Abunda carry the past around with them ... Once the link between the past and present is broken it dies and becomes history ... In the dream of Lilly Ah Fong I knew that my tap root had never been cut – the dream and the dreamtime were united – the past was a living part of the present ... Rave on! In the dreamtime of the yellow girl, Port Darling was a place full of hot rounded stones with holes in them; like a junkyard full of Henry Moore statues.

I was itching to see what she really looked like; I knocked softly on the counter and she turned around. The dress was just as tight in front as behind. Tighter. The nipples of her breasts pushed the green silk out like hidden spikes, the narrow waist curved outward into wide hips and continued the arc into solid thighs. In the dimness of the shop Lilly had some of the aspects of a rounded silk-covered stone.

She said: ‘Yes, please. Is there something I can get for you?’ The voice carried the liquid Abunda tone combined with a touch of the singsong of the Chinese.

The dark eyes with their touch of slant were straight out of the dream, as were the full lips and the small sharp teeth. But the face was totally different! It had expression and the dream girl’s had none. Her look of curious interest reminded me of something else. She didn’t know me. When I was on holidays I had seen her a few times but we had never spoken. She didn’t know me – she never had.

I said: ‘A bottle of lemonade please and a packet of those jubes.’

She smiled. ‘Something else?’

I informally returned the grin. ‘Better make that five packets of jubes’… I felt as though I should do something to pay for her services.

Back on the veranda I gave the lemonade to the old men and handed the sweets around.

Dhalja said: ‘Dillungan and Bert likeum wine.’

‘Good luck to them,’ I muttered as I watched them taking turns at sucking the bottle.

‘What’s Bert’s other name?’ I asked Dhalja in idle curiosity. I suppose I felt a bit superior as I gazed around at the stuff dreams are made of.

Dhalja looked at me a long time before replying. He ran his eyes from my shoes to the top of my head without seeming over impressed by what he saw. ‘For you, Irritcha, Bert has another name…’ He paused and said the words loud and flat. ‘It is Ilchinkinja!’

For a moment I didn’t understand. I was aware of the sudden tension; the lubras clutched the children and a sort of silent rigidity came over the group. I had learnt to think in English and the sudden switch of tongue took time to penetrate. IIcha! A hand ... Ilkinja! To raise or lift up ... The beckoning hand! I still didn’t quite get it.

Without taking his eyes off me, Bert pulled a filthy bundle of rags from his pocket. He unwrapped them carefully and with an abrupt movement shoved a small case into my hand.

I stood looking down at it, too astounded to even close my fingers. It was beautifully made, of emu feathers, the shape of a small purse.

Dhalja’s voice cut through my surprise. ‘Open it,’ he commanded.

Inside was a lining of pinkish white down from the breast of a galah. In the bottom of the purse lay a flat stone of white quartz about the size and shape of a two shilling piece; lined with the gold thread of iron pyrites and with a hole the centre.

I knew what it was without doubt or conjecture. A magic stone; a personal churinga or talisman. The presenting of it was not only an invitation to attend an initiation ceremony but also carried the threat of sudden death if I didn’t show up at the party. One of the minor differences between learning history and belonging to the dreamtime is awareness of symbolic meanings; twigs on living trees know where the roots go – all the roots. Besides, there is an excellent anthropological section at the Stuart museum, for any twigs who happen to drop off and forget.

As I stood looking at Bert I knew this was my final chance to accept or reject the tribe.

A long time ago the missionaries gave me a little bible with a green leather cover. An invitation to attend my first holy communion. The gift carried a threat of burning brimstone if I failed to both love and fear. All my life I must have known this was going to happen ... The yellow girl and the hot round stones of Port Darling came into it somewhere.

I caught myself looking at the churinga and then back to Bert, while trying hard to associate one with the other ... That’s what I did before – tried to link love with fear. I thought about it until I killed it stone dead – crucified the gentle Jesus with logic. I couldn’t go through that again. Every time a priest had looked at me, between the ages of twelve and fourteen, I knew all about the seed falling on sterile ground. All the sweaty digging and soul searching I had been capable of had failed to produce even a glimmer of a vocation. I never regretted not being a priest but I was sorry I went about it the hard way ... The grave of faith is a poisoned place. Nothing ever grows there – not ever.

It was difficult to invest Bert with the robes of office but I felt obliged to look for some mark of distinction. The Mayor of Stuart gave me my citizenship papers. He wore his robes and chain and explained the papers personally. The Mayor said when we were twenty-one these papers would entitle us to all the privileges of citizenship; like social benefits, the dole; the right to vote and drink in hotels. One of the other boong kids said Sir Gordon owned a couple of pubs himself and was only trying to drum up future custom. Just the same he looked impressive.

There was nothing overpowering about Bert, except his odour. Yet I didn’t doubt the solemnity of the occasion or that the Abunda were willing to try and make a man out of me. I grew a fraction of an inch taller but there wasn’t a great deal of pride associated with the feeling. The chief reason for the increase in stature was a slight lifting of my heels as my testicles shrank up into my guts in ice-cold horror.

It’s a queer feeling to think a whole tribe is interested in your future status. A total acceptance is implied – a belonging to the whole. I had just about come to the conclusion that the outcome may be worth it; even if they did cut my penis right off . Then the reaction set in. It’s not possible to stand starry eyed on Ah Fong’s veranda for any length of time; there are too many flies for one thing.

Dhalja said: ‘You gonna buy bacca, wine, before truck comes?’

‘I’ll get you some tobacco,’ I offered. ‘But they won’t serve me at the pub until I’m twenty-one.’

I went back into the shop and Lilly Ah Fong served me with the tobacco. Her relationship to the nude, dream girl had already perceptibly faded. For no reason at all the feather purse in my pocket seemed to make a difference. I felt more like Irritcha and less like Chalky Carson. The Abunda say that half-castes have a peculiar smell; but I couldn’t smell anything except rotten potatoes.

I gave the kids more lollies and the adults a couple of packets of tobacco each, including Dhalja’s wives. Nobody said thank you. Hastily reminded myself that we Abunda have no need for gratitude as everything is automatically shared under tribal law. Had I been initiated, Dhalja would have willingly presented me with the temporary use of one of his wives. David shyly gave me a sweet and I stood there sucking at the lolly and wondering if I would have decided on the fat Goobardi or the skinny Weejaba. Under some circumstances, where women are scarce, two or even three brothers may possess a common wife. It’s good for togetherness but it must be rough on the girl.

Dhalja said: ‘The yardman would get the wine for you. Give Charlie the money and he will get the wine.’

It didn’t surprise me to hear Dhalja drop the pidgin and speak standard English. I knew for a fact that he spoke at least seven dialects with ease. All of the Abunda are multi-lingual; small boys in a camp take pride in learning little known tongues and speaking them among themselves to annoy the elders. It doesn’t stop them using the bastard language most likely to get results:
“Gibbit bacca, gibbit tea,
Poor fella me, poor fella me ...”

‘You better hurry, Irritcha,’ Dhalja said. ‘The truck’s coming.’

There was never any wine at Bindora – just rum. Alcohol is associated in my mind with the threat of slavering jaws and yellow fangs of dogs, excited yet unwatched by their raving master, and shrill laughter which turned to screaming in the night. In more recent times I have been to parties and felt the cold sweat break out all over me at the smell of rum.

I walked over to the pub and collected my suitcase from the veranda. Stutterin’ Joe was just backing the truck out into the street.

Said to myself: ‘Equal terms with what? Have your dick cut up and become a dirty, stinkin’, fully flyblown Abunda, that’s what!’

A queasy feeling was spreading in my stomach. Too much sun on the back of my neck – or not eating anything all day. Lilly Ah Fong, Abunda, the flies? Don’t know. Kept feeling the feather purse and getting sicker all the time ... This purse could cost me plenty ... It’s the thought not the gift that counts ...

The truck was now outside Ah Fong’s, the relatives were all piling aboard. They sat on a load of petrol drums and all eyes were on my suitcase. I threw it up and Dillungan caught it. He gave the case a slight testing shake and then let it fall between the drums in disgust.

Old Fred was holding the cab door open for me to get in.

‘I’ll get on the back, Fred,’ I volunteered. ‘Give you and Joe a bit more room.’

This started an argument. I kept voting in favour of the back, not for democracy but for the sake of the breeze. I was starting to feel real sick.

Amongst other things Fred said it wouldn’t look right. Joe said: ‘Y-y-y-y w-w-w-would g-g-g-get your suit d-d-d-d ...’

I squeezed into the cab.

Neither Fred nor Stutterin’ Joe were drunk; they were merely talkative. To make sure they stayed that way there were two big paper bags full of bottles wedged behind the seat.

Naturally the talk was about Bindora. Every year after the muster, Fred took the round trip to Stuart and back. He was proud of going all the way and not busting his cheque in Port Darling like Stutterin’ Joe. Fred always stayed in the same dockyard pub in Stuart and seldom left the bar except to eat and sleep. Sometimes, when it was a quick turn around, he never even left the ship. The pub is in the centre of the red light district. Fred’s views on all phases of city life from general prostitution to real estate to hoodlums were all coloured by the Starboard Light Hotel.

After giving his usual version of the wild happenings in Stuart, Fred wanted to know everything that had happened while he was away. With the heat of the cab, the reek of burning oil and Joe driving at a reckless twenty-five miles per hour, I was forced to listen with a kind of sick desperation. Joe said Fred was the father of another yella-fella by Jenny Jump-up.

I had a pain behind the ears waiting for Fred to enquire the sex of the new-born. But he didn’t bother. He seemed more interested in the facts of a windmill that had blown down. The way Stutterin’ Joe told it this story also had an agony of suspense. Fred drank a whole bottle of beer while Joe was putting all the extra w-w-w-w’s in windmill. Then only four words later he has to say bloody windmill all over again. He drank a bottle himself half way through the second lot of w-w-w-w’s.

I tried concentrating on the road but, with Joe driving, it doesn’t pay to look. On the long straight stretches of corrugation twenty-five miles per hour is maddening slow; it prevents the wheels from riding the tops of the ruts and causes a heavy vibration, as though the whole truck is continually shuddering in agony. Always the one speed. Over deep potholes, around hairpin bends, along ten mile straights and down steep slopes into boulder littered creek beds. My foot kept jerking with desire to either stamp on the brake or the accelerator.

‘Four of the horses got the “walkabout” and died,’ Joe pitifully enunciated. ‘We could do with a few more head.’

When we left Port Darling I could hear singing coming from the back of the truck; my relations sounded happy. I thought I would go to Bindora ... To yella fellas and windmills ... I would go on the walkabout. I felt sick as though I had eaten the weed that springs up at the end of the wet season and affects horses’ brains. Makes them begin to walk in a straight line and if they come to a tree or fence the horses just stand there for days on end pushing at the obstacle with their heads. The locals call the disease the ‘Kimberley walkabout’. I was sure I had the symptoms – a feverish desire to keep on butting my head against brick walls. One walkabout disease is much the same as another. Most of the affected horses eventually die.

‘Guess you will have to go to Stuart, Joe, and pick up another herd.’ Fred started to cackle with laughter.

I had to get out of the cab. I knew what was coming. I had heard the story of the horses at least five hundred times. I felt the feathered purse and was sure I wouldn’t go to Bindora. Joe always tells the first half and Fred the other. It’s simply an account of instability and drunken stupidity; but not the way they tell it.

Once, in the early days of Bindora, Joe had taken all the available money and travelled the three thousand miles overland to buy horses in Stuart. He got drunk and lost the money at the races. Then worked for two years until he had saved enough money to buy the horses and then began the long drove home. A few weeks later, in some country town, Joe sold the herd, drank the money and repeated the performance all over again. It was seven years before he finally drove a herd into the homestead paddock of Bindora.

Joe seems to get a big kick out of the fact he came back at all and Fred an even bigger boot out of his alleged faith in Joe’s eventual return.

‘I never doubted it, Joe.’ Fred said for the umpteenth time. ‘They used to laugh at me but I always said: Joe will be back and bring the horses with him. Joe will be back and ...’

I interrupted. ‘Pull up for a minute will you. Joe?’

‘Right oh, boy.’ Joe laughed, delighted with Fred’s continual extolling of faith. ‘I could do with a leak myself.

If he was drunk enough he didn’t stutter at all.

I walked around to the back of the truck and climbed in over the tailboard. Only the kids were awake. The others sat on the drums with their heads lolling on their chests in a peculiar attitude of crumpled relaxation. I thought they were half asleep.

‘Come on, Chalky!’ Fred sang out. ‘We want to get to Table-Tops before the Tippers go to bed.’

‘I feel crook, Fred,’ I assured him. ‘I’ll ride up here for while.’

‘Got a bottle of rum here, Chalky,’ Joe yelled, ‘Have a good swig and you’ll be OK.’

Just the thought of rum made me feel a lot sicker. Dhalja came partly to life and tugged at my pants while frantically nodding his head.

‘No thanks Joe,’ I called ‘I’ll be alright!’

Dhalja was still scowling and muttering to himself as the truck moved off.

I ignored him.

‘Dressum allasame jangaga,’ he murmured while letting his head fall down on his chest. ‘Stink allasame whiteman too,’ he added reflectively.

There were nods and murmurs of assent from the rest of the half stunned group.

I angrily ripped the coat off and threw it on the drums. For good measure I tore off tie, shirt and singlet. ‘That make you feel any better?’ I snarled at Dhalja.

He opened one weary bloodshot eye and regarded the heap of clothing. With slow care he sat up, fingered the material of the coat and put it on.

‘Gettum bloody cold,’ he remarked conversationally and then slumped back asleep.

For a time I sat on my suitcase; leaning back against the tailboard, feeling physically better but equally disgusted. Now that the sun was almost down the real broiling heat had gone out of the day; the breeze from the movement of the truck pleasantly cool.

I had forgotten about the Table-Top Mountains. In the last few years at school I had started to think purple hills were in about the same category as purple people. There was a picture in the dormitory. It showed purple hills rising out of a barren landscape with a group of natives in the foreground. Underneath the picture was written: Save a Black Brother for Jesus.

The Table-Top hills dot the spinifex plains like monuments to creation. Dry watercourses are chopped into the vertical sides; at sunrise and sunset the colour fans out across the eroded pancake layers of rock. They are bright red on the sheer cliffs, heliotrope on the lower slopes. A changing rainbow hue hangs on the white quartz rim around the level tops – like the colours streaming into a chapel from stained glass windows. Like churches where you don’t have to pray or recite the bit about the miserable sinners; just look and get lifted up a little and see better; like a little kid at a parade. I don’t think the Table-Tops have any message about saving a black brother for Jesus; or saving anything. They seem to use their extravagant colours to tempt spending – spending time – suspending destruction. I’m certain they’re not meant to be piggy banks for black souls.

Bert nudged Weejaba and she became partly alive, started to unscrew the bung of the petrol drum between her legs. It was already loosened. She lifted the bung and lowered a long strip of material torn from the bottom of her dress, into the petrol. Weejaba held the rag by the end for a few seconds then whipped it out, rolled the cloth into a dripping ball and tossed it to Bert.

I watched as he cupped the ball in both hands and began sniffing the fumes from between his thumbs. Bert kept up the sucking breaths for about five minutes before tossing the cloth back to Weejaba. She repeated the performance until everybody had taken a turn. I was offered the newly soaked ball.

‘You sniffum, Irritcha?’

I still didn’t quite understand the purpose. ‘What for Weejaba?’

She giggled. ‘Makeum plenty drunk.’

I looked at the lolling heads, jerking with every movement of the truck and then back to Weejaba. Pushed her hand aside but didn’t trust myself to say anything. She shrugged her shoulders and started sniffing at the ball, the petrol dripping from between her fingers and running down her skinny arms.

The kids were huddled together on Fred’s tin trunk, now wedged between a couple of drums. ‘My elephant’s trunk’ he used to call it. The tin box always stood on a couple of flat stones in the corner of the living quarters. I used to sit on it. The kids were watching the petrol ball in Weejaba’s hands as I had watched the rum bottle. Wide-eyed, not outright scared, but scrunched up inside. Not frightened of its effect because cause and effect are not easy to relate at an early age. Not scared of an inanimate object; just suddenly terribly lonely. An adult on whom you depended might shout or scream in the night; might let the nameless, unknown dread loose in the house.

Weejaba and Goobardi shared the petrol ball and the kids watched it being passed from hand to hand. In a little while the women passed out. Their hair fell over their eyes and seemed to sway in an opposite rhythm to their heads and bodies, Goobardi’s fingers opened and the ball slowly unrolled across the drum until one end dangled down into the little well where the kids were sitting. They stared at the swaying end of material and huddled closer to one another; the whites of their eyes were beginning to show in the near dark.

I reached over and pulled the strip of calico towards me. The kids stood up and the three of us watched the rag get caught in the slipstream. It flapped like the tail of a kite and when I let it go it rolled about in the dust cloud and disappeared into the, night. We giggled a bit to be rid of the evil and because it’s fun to chuck things out of trucks.

I knew the kids would be cold. When you are used to a fire at sunset you feel cold when there isn’t one; no matter what the temperature. I ought to know. I felt cold in the nights for years after the camp fires went out – as cold as charity.

I took my shirt from where I had thrown it and handed it to Apmaura. She shyly put it down alongside her.

‘Do you go to school, Apmaura?’ I questioned her.

She hung her head and murmured: ‘Go walkabout.’

I opened the suitcase and found another shirt for David. He sniffed suspiciously before putting it on.

‘Where do you go to school, David?’

‘Up at the homestead,’ he answered with a touch of pride. ‘I fed the goldfish all last week, because mine was the best drawing for three days in a row.’

Apmaura was trying to wrap herself in her brother’s shirt so I gave her the last clean one out of the case. It occurred to me that Dhalja was not just being nasty; I really did stink like a white man. Apmaura gave the shirt a good sniffing over before she put it on. I found out later that the Abunda believe the smell is contagious and the quickest way to catch the disease is not by eating the white man’s food but by wearing his cast off clothing. The theory is strengthened by the monthly issue of new clothing to all station blacks. Actually the issue is part wages and part government law; also three parts necessity for those who associate nude with rude. The Abunda never wash anything; when it gets too dirty they throw it away.

‘Our teacher’s name is Miss Wells,’ Apmaura suddenly volunteered.

‘And what does Miss Wells think about you going on a walkabout?’ I asked for something to say.

David answered for his sister. ‘Miss Wells said a walkabout was a spiritual reunion of the tribe.’

‘Did she!’ I muttered in admiration and surprise. ‘Do you know what Miss Wells meant, David?’

He yawned. ‘She meant we didn’t have to go to school.’

 

The kids were asleep, I was only half awake myself as we rolled into the house paddock of Table-Tops. The dry creek bed lined on the near bank with a row of small fires. I could see the outline of people around the flames, with the dark mound of a humpy at the back of each group. An isolated loneliness about the setting; desolate, because the distant fires seemed to contain light without the promise of warmth or shelter. Yet compelling, I could feel the tug of the fires while they were still little more than a glow in the distance.

As the truck stopped a flutter of laughing expectant shadows gathered around. The lotus eating petrol sniffers sat up, groaning softly to themselves. The kids stood on the elephant’s trunk and sleepily raised their arms to be lifted down. As Dhalja and I lowered the children into the waiting arms a babble of voices broke over the truck. Two uncles, three or four aunts and a grandmother were there in shadowy form. Only their voices and the replies gave them substance and relationship.

An ancient shrill voice kept insisting: ‘Did Dhalja sit down with his brother Irritcha?’

From all around me came the formal chanted answer: ‘Irritcha is here, Kabbarli.’

I jumped down from the truck and the white teeth of the shadows grinned a collective welcome. All but a withered toothless face that stared up into mine, the eyes set deep in a shrunken head. ‘I see you, Kabbarli!’ I said without hesitation. The shadows took a deep breath and loudly exhaled: ‘Aheeee ya!’ There was nothing more to say.

Everybody laughed and reached for the grimy sugar bags Dhalja was passing down. The Abunda don’t ask questions of travellers. It’s not lack of curiosity, just a basic instinct not to rob an individual of personal experience. Later the corroboree of the journey is danced around a central campfire and the visitor is given every opportunity to display his talents for mime and mimicry. Naturally, some are better actors than others, but in any case it is a hell of an improvement over a bored, disinterested voice asking: ‘How was the trip?’

As Dhalja jumped from the truck Fred opened the cab door.

‘You had better hop in here, Chalky,’ he said.

Dhalja was still wearing my coat and Fred grabbed him by the arm and assisted him into the cab. Just as Dhalja philosophically settled back against the seat and closed the door Fred realised his mistake. ‘You’re not Chalky!’ he exclaimed, peering owlishly into Dhalja’s face.

With just the trace of a grin, Dhalja replied: ‘Me Bellybutton, Boss!’

I joined in the general howl of appreciative laughter as Fred opened the cab door and pushed Dhalja out.

‘Where the hell are ya, Chalky?’ He started shouting in a drunken slur. ‘F’Chrissake gein’ere and stop foolin’ about!’

I answered him in Abunda. ‘I am sitting down here, Fred.’ Fred spoke Abunda fluently – he should have.

‘You’re bloody well not!’ he roared his indignation. ‘What’s Jack Tipper going to say?’

‘My brother invited me here,’ I reminded him. Joe said something to Fred and started the engine. ‘You get your bloody clothes on and get up to the homestead.’ He was still yelling at me as the truck moved off.

I never saw Fred again. He died in his room at the Starboard Light twelve months later. It was wrong to let him go unthanked, but just then I was only a bit sad to see the lights of the truck moving away. The bush seemed darker and the fires smaller somehow.

Weejaba and Goobardi had emptied the sugar bags on the ground and were sharing out the canned food with representatives of the other families. Most of the tins had no labels but nobody seemed to care. I think Ah Fong takes half the labels off himself so that his customers can shake the tins and speculate on the contents.

Dhalja didn’t wait for the women. The other men had gone back to the fires, Dhalja beckoned to me and strode off. In single file we walked along a narrow, rubbish-strewn track at the back of the humpies; with a host of shadowy dogs sniffing at our legs. I knew it was only Dhalja’s presence that kept me from losing a leg. From the truck the fires had seemed fairly close together but in fact they were over a hundred yards apart.

As Dhalja stopped at a dark, fireless collection of old bags and rusty sheet iron, two big dogs stepped stiff legged out of the humpy and moved in towards me. ‘Careful,’ Dhalja muttered and spoke softly to the dogs. They completely ignored him, circled a little to come at me from either side. Both were almost pure dingo with just a touch of Alsatian or some similar breed that added to their size and ferocity. The hair on the back of my neck prickled. I held out my hands to them with the fingers closed tightly against the palms. The dogs sniffed at my knuckles, backed off a step, half crouched for the spring then straightened up again for another tentative sniff. Three times they repeated the inspection before accepting me with an almost imperceptible wave of their bushy tails. Dhalja threw his sugar bag on the ground and squatted down with his aching head held in his hands. He made no comment. I realised with a sick jolt that this was home.

I had a bad ten minutes sitting on my suitcase next to the silent Dhalja, while the dogs sniffed me over. The homestead was over the lip of the creek bed and about a quarter of a mile through the bush. I could see a light in an upstairs window. I knew I had temporarily talked my way out of a world. Not out of one world and into another – just out.

After Weejaba and Goobardi arrived with the kids and lit the fire the gloom lifted a little. The women stood five tins next to the blackened tea billy to warm up. The contents turned out to be sausages, spaghetti in tomato sauce, plum jam and baked beans.

The jam tin swelled up like a balloon, when Goobardi jabbed it with a tin opener a thin stream of hot liquid shot high into the air. Everybody laughed and licked the sticky mess off their bellies with apparent enjoyment. The meal was shared out on pieces of dry bread and eaten one tin at a time, regardless of contents. The lot washed down with sweet black tea tipped from the Billy into the now empty tins.

The sleeping arrangements were even simpler than the meal. We lay in a wide circle in the sand with our feet towards the cooking fire. The women brought in a big pile of sticks and started smaller fires between the sleeping positions with a separate pile of twigs for each person.

I had Dhalja on one side and the young niece, who was my tribal daughter, on the other. They were all asleep in five minutes but it took me a while longer to get a satisfactory hip hole. I had a blanket strapped to the outside of the suitcase and used it for a pillow. It was a fairly hot night by southern standards and with a fire on each side of me I was far from cold. Every now and then Dhalja’s hand would creep towards the pile of twigs, select a few and drop them on the fire. I’m sure he was asleep, he was snoring.

I kept the other fire between myself and Apmaura going for a while. Started to think I was a ‘well-man’; not afflicted with the plague that had struck everybody else; immune from the status seeking sickness. Firelight seemed to bridge the gap between the stars and sleeping people; to give a practical reason for being. A reality like plum jam, sausages and beans.

I went to sleep thinking about Madge Deacon. There had been a picture show in the ship’s lounge and we were the last to leave. The picture was called ‘Mombasso’. Madge was giggling and asking stupid questions as usual. She really works at being a dumb blonde although on rare occasions her intelligence would show through. This wasn’t one of them. She asked: ‘Is it true naked black girls swim around in scented pools waiting for the sheikh to join them?’

‘I’m an Australian,’ I reminded her, ‘Same as you are.’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’ She giggled.

‘There are no scented pools at mission schools, Madge. I have no more knowledge of harems than you have.’

She pouted. ‘Don’t be so thin skinned.’

‘Why don’t you ask me if there are any scented pools on Mars? As an impartial observer, what do I think of the human race?’

The little girl stirred in her sleep, I chucked a few more sticks on our fire. Imagined I could try being an Abunda; a bit superior to the common tribesman of course, but Abunda of a sort. Have to stop being Jesus Christ and be Numbukulla instead. Fortunately, the Abunda God doesn’t dwell in heaven. He lives in the alkira aldora, the western sky – much lower down.

---

 

3: Walkabout

At four o’clock in the morning the first hint of dawn began to blow dry heat into the coming day. The breeze shook the hessian and bark walls of the humpies, the frail sapling uprights rocked a little and the roof iron made a sound like violins with loose strings. The noise awoke the dogs. The breath of morning had hardly stirred the bag walls of Dhalja’s humpy when a dog brought up its hind leg and scratched its ribs. Other ears automatically swivelled to pick up the sound; felt the itch in the same place and heard the movement of the breeze. A second flea-bag woke, yawned and sleepily attended to the itch on both sides. All the dogs along the line began to shift their positions and half open their eyes. Like shadowy sacks on a rubbish dump forty-six men, women and children of the Abunda tribe, plus thirty-three dogs, were strewn along the creek bed in front of the humpies. There is strict order in the apparently haphazard arrangement. Women without men have their camp in the centre of the line, with family groups all around them. The bachelor quarters are at both ends.

Dogs have about the same status as children and are subjected to approximately the same discipline; which means they can pretty well do what they like. Abunda kids and dogs have a wonderful time. At one time there were more dogs than people but now the Native Welfare Officer occasionally makes each family select a favourite dog. He shoots the rest. It is not easy to decide which members of the family should be shot. Some of the puppies are buried in the sand with a tin over their heads until the Welfare Officer goes away. Most of the Abunda dogs have been fitted with a tin, buried and dug up again at some stage in their lives. In the old days some of the station owners shot all the dogs, so hunting would be more difficult and the tribesmen would be forced to work for meat. At the same time a lot of the old people and less agile workers also fell to the bark of the rifles. Now it’s dogs only. They are shot purely for reasons of health and hygiene, although neither the Abunda nor the dogs appreciate the subtle distinction.

Some of the tick scratchers got stiffly to their feet and began sniffing about until they found a suitable place for the morning pee. The dogs awake the children either by licking them or simply padding about and scratching. The breeze murmured an excited ‘walkabout’ as the children responded to the dog alarms. Whispers and soft muted giggles began to create an infectious eagerness for the coming day.

David began to whisper the litany of the morning: ‘Is it nearly time for the sun to leave her daughter and hunt the sky?’ The formal tone of the question hung in the semi-darkness as it had since time began.

Apmaura sleepily gave the ritualised answer: ‘The baby cries often and asks its mother not to leave her alone in Buralka.’ The words were lost in the liquid chant but all knew the reply.

Then minutes later David repeated the question. I started to look at my watch, then dropped my hand back in the sand. To David the sun’s arrival was not solely a question of time. The Abunda do not predict the future by believing that one day will automatically follow the next – it might not.

‘She comes,’ Dhalja’s voice took on the tone of assurance. Even the dogs had their ears cocked for the words. ‘See! Burrimba already grows pale from hauling on the rope.’

‘They may have many yams,’ Apmaura answered obstinately. I turned my head to watch the eastern sky. David’s head rested against the dark shadow of Goobardi’s breasts; her dress was open to the waist.

With the sun married to the morning star there can be no certainty of sunrise ... If the sun woman was in labour, their child sick, or even an abundance of food; Burrimba might let his wife stay in their mia-mia and not haul her out to hunt the sky. There is no word in Abunda for ‘tomorrow’.

David was not suckling from his mother but he probably could have if he wanted. The normal tribal diet is unsuitable for the young, the lactation period of the women considerably extended. Nellie fed me until I was five years old; she also fed a dingo pup until it was old enough to eat meat ... In second year high one of the kids had a magazine picture of a New Guinean tribeswoman hidden in the lining of his blazer. Mine was the only black skin in the class so he had to show it to me to get the full erotic flavour. He giggled as he blurted out the question: ‘Does your mother let pigs suck her tits?’ I recovered in time to answer: ‘No but yours did if she fed you.’ I even won the following scuffle but it was a hollow victory. The Abunda have no pigs.

There was a sighing release of breath as the rim of fire crept over the horizon. Squeals of joy from the children and soft chuckles from the parents as the flutter of excitement spread from camp to camp. It’s the same every morning of every day.

Within ten minutes of sunrise there were flies and dust and a smouldering heat. Dishevelled, dirty scarecrows yawned, scratched, rubbed the sleep from their eyes. Didn’t bother to walk more than a few paces from the humpies before emptying their bladders. I felt gritty and degraded. The dead bullock in the creek bed was no longer a moonlit hump of shadow, but a swollen nauseating stink.

Over the top of the bullock and the rim of saltbush, on the far bank of the creek, the red tin roof of the homestead beckoned. Tom Tipper always had grapefruit and bacon and eggs for breakfast. There would be a snow-white cloth on the table and thin glasses near a jug of iced water beaded with a cold sweat. Tom would probably say: “What are you going to do now, Chalky? Had enough of the mia-mias, eh boy?” And his great booming laugh would fill the dining room.

That scenario didn’t stop me heading for the homestead. I stayed because a young man stood by the creekbed on one leg, with the sole of his foot resting against the inside of his thigh. It’s nice to know there are other people with the same length of shinbone as your own, people who find a leg bent making a figure four is a comfortable way to stand and not a screamingly funny contortion.

Trivialities. It wasn’t important to notice Dhalja and the others had the same wide space between their big toes and the next or watch the top joints of other fingers bend when they were required to do so. I never imagined I was a freak and I wasn’t impressed or overjoyed with the confirmation; but I didn’t go up to the homestead.

I tried staying with the growing flurry of excitement in the camp by yelling greetings to cousins, aunts, uncles and nieces. Under the eight moiety tribal system everyone is directly related to everyone else. It‘s easier to know your family tree if you grew up on it. Twice Dhalja corrected me on an exact relationship but on the third occasion he snapped: ‘Barella is not your aunt. You must never look at or speak to that old woman; she is your mother-in-law.’

While this startling information filtered in I sneaked another look at the woman who strode along the creek bank with a battered kerosene tin under each arm. Her hair was so stiff with grease and dirt it hung from her head like a mass of dead caterpillars. The thin, brittle shanks looked as if they might snap off at any moment. Dhalja had not said: ‘She will be your mother-in-law.’ He had said: ‘She is.’ I had an allotted tribal wife??? No! Probably not. Although boys were given a prospective mother-in-law shortly after birth, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they would all get a wife. The mother-in-law had first of all to produce enough daughters to go around.

Dhalja had wandered off so I asked Weejaba: ‘How many daughters does Barella have?’

Weejaba was busy packing a dilly-bag with dry bread. ‘Terra- ma-ninta,’ she mumbled.

I put it into English. ‘Three!’ I exclaimed in shock. ‘Are they all promised to me?’

Weejaba called Goobardi over and whispered to her. Both women tried to keep a straight face and then cackled and shrieked with laughter.

‘Dhalja is much man,’ Goobardi assured me through tears of mirth. ‘You will have to be content with our younger sister, Illuta.’

I punished Dhalja’s cackling hyenas by sitting with my back to them and frowning in sullen annoyance.

The lukwurra, or camp of the women, was only a couple of hundred yards down the line. I could see five or six lubras moving about. They all seemed to be dressed in identical cotton frocks but were featureless at that distance. I assumed that Illuta, besides being the youngest sister, was in all probability the ugliest. Not that it would make any difference. If I went on the walkabout at all it would only be for a couple of weeks holiday, there would be no initiation nonsense. No wedding either. Told myself I would pick my own bride when I was good and ready.

Up to date there hadn’t been a great number of girls queuing for selection. In fact, I held the doubtful distinction of once being refused admission to a brothel. It was after the party following the results of the exam – failure is probably a greater aphrodisiac than success.

The Madam had been firm but polite as she knew how to be. She said: ‘I’m sorry, duckie, but you can’t come in.’

I had been scared stiff and the refusal delighted me; however I felt obliged to register some sort of feeble protest. Unfortunately, I chose a question as a smart answer. ‘Why not?’ I asked.

The Madam replied with motherly pride: I’m sure you’re a nice boy but my girls ain’t takin’ on any niggers while I’m runnin’ the joint.’

I kept looking towards the girls’ camp and remembering this big blowsy dame standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips …

 

Illuta wasn’t in the lukwurra. In fact she had been fishing for half an hour before dawn. When I awoke she was running through the scrub with two large barramundi threaded on a spear across her shoulders. She probably wore a shapeless print frock rolled up around her waist. Illuta always regarded clothes as nothing more than a nuisance. A cream-coloured dog loped at her side; even when both had been running for over a mile, neither puffed nor showed anything other than a keen awareness of the bright morning. There existed a strangely beautiful, yet savage, affinity between the dog and the girl. A free flowing motion which had little to do with exertion of any kind. Emora she called the dog. It had the pointed ears and wolf-like lope of its dingo father. The heavy barrel chest and strength of jaw came from the alsatian mother, while the bushy tail, carried in a high arch and falling onto the shiny cream and gold flecked coat was a gift from both parents.

Illuta was in disgrace over the dog. The fish were a peace offering to her much aggrieved aunt, One-eyed Peggy. Illuta’s widowed aunt had been given two pups by an irate station owner whose pedigreed bitch had been served by a dingo. No verbal agreement was reached but for twelve months Illuta raised the female pup and her aunt the male. Then the aunt’s pup made the fatal error of jumping for a kangaroo’s throat. The dog was promptly slit from throat to tail with one slash of the razor sharp hind claw. The little arm-like front legs of the roo contemptuously threw the body aside.

One-eyed Peggy immediately demanded Iluta’s bitch pointing out that she had never given the pup to Illuta in the first place. The girl refused to part with her pet and the argument went on for several days before they came to blows. As the dog followed Illuta like a shadow and would have remained her property simply by choice, the fight was rather pointless.

Besides, at the age of fifteen, Illuta already had a reputation with the nulla-nulla which few cared to challenge. She was an expert at a type of quarterstaff fighting common among the young. Her reactions were lightning fast, the heavy club a blur of movement in her supple hands.

Three days before I arrived One-eyed Peggy decided to settle the matter. She went to Illuta’s campfire wildly swinging her stick and screaming abuse at her about keeping the bitch. Illuta parried the blow at her legs with insolent ease and crashed her own stick down on her aunt’s head with a crack which could be heard all over the camp. The blow would have smashed a white man’s skull like an eggshell but Abunda have thicker heads. On the second day after the fight Illuta’s aunt started to recover from concussion, her good eye began to focus again.

The incident was strictly a women’s affair and far beneath the dignity of the men to interfere. Just the same, some of the elders shook their heads while agreeing for the eighth or ninth time that the sooner Dhalja’s brother claimed his bride and belted her into obedient wifely shape the better for all.

I learnt that Illuta was fast gaining a reputation in the camp on about the same par as her dog. Emora had none of the timid nature of the possum she was named after and fought with the same joyful efficiency as her mistress. A lot of the camp dogs had already taken a severe maulings and only snarled over the scraps after Emora had eaten her fill.

On this morning the girl and the dog stopped running when they came to the place where the truck had stopped on the previous evening. Illuta could tell a great deal about people from their tracks. Apart from the obvious, like length of stride, the side a burden was carried and its approximate weight; she could also give a startlingly accurate picture of the person. Build, posture, age, athletic capabilities, deformities if any, and to some degree the person’s mood when the tracks were made. However, she had been hiding in the bush when the truck arrived and already knew what I looked like.

Her bare feet made only a slight impression on the baked earth and dead grass but occasionally there would be a softness in the dust and Illuta would deliberately leave the full imprint of her foot. Keen eyes could tell that each footstep was precisely inside the mark of a shoe. It was not a little girl’s game. From then on, whenever she saw my tracks, Illuta would walk in them for a short distance. The entire tribe – with the exception of myself – knew Illuta had accepted the man to whom she was promised. The double tracks were also a warning to other women to stay clear of her man.

 

I continued to sit on the suitcase until it was obvious there wasn’t going to be any breakfast. Weejaba and Goobardi stood up with well-stuffed dilly-bags slung from their head bands and hanging down their backs. They carried digging sticks, nulla-nullas and blackened cooking tins in their hands; yet still managed to keep a couple of fingers free to grab children by the back of the neck and point them in the right direction. Under their arms were the shallow wooden coolibah dishes that serve as plate, cup and pantry. Also a holder for grass seed or a winnowing mill.

A heavy breasted young woman joined Dhalja’s wives. In her coolibah dish was a fat baby boy, entirely naked and with a little heap of clean sand between his legs. Weejaba and Goobardi had their coolibahs and tins stuffed with an incredible collection of junk. There were bits of string, nails, knives, the head of an axe, empty tobacco tins, strips of red cloth, matches, beads and crusts of bread. Dhalja’s spare throwing sticks, plus a lot more assorted rubbish, was rolled in bundles of filthy rags that each woman carried under the opposite arm to the coolibahs. Goobardi topped the load off with a frantically yelping puppy balanced across her dilly-bag. There were two empty canvas water-bags hanging from the rafters, but these were left behind.

As the women and children straggled off, the dogs who had been tearing in and out of the humpies and rolling in the dust in a frenzy of excessive joy, split into two groups. One lot went yelping off after the women while the others sobered down and lay watching the men with anxious eyes and impatient whines.

Although the seeming lack of organisation presented a stupefying air of total chaos the time was still only a little more than half an hour after sunrise. The men had not only refrained from offering advice on what to take and what to leave behind but had gathered in aloof groups, well away from the whirl of feverish activity. I shook the dust out of my blanket, strapped it back on the suitcase and carried my luggage over to where Dhalja and a group of some twenty-odd men were sitting in a rough circle. They were laughing and talking among themselves. All the younger men wore high-heeled riding boots, snake-proof pants, coloured shirts and wide-brimmed hats. Apart from a handful of spears, throwing sticks and an occasional boomerang, they carried no other personal possessions.

‘Cousin Irritcha’s woman will have to be strong in the back,’ a long lean type murmured in sarcastic reference to the suitcase.

‘And blunt in the nose!’ Another wit, crouching alongside me, dilated his nostrils and rolled his eyes.

The joking comments went the round of the circle. Each clown trying to outdo the last; mainly with conjecture on the improbable shape of my genital organs. As the Abunda do not consider any part of the body to be obscene, the mild humour is therefore more childlike than calculated to offend. Dhalja, as befitting a brother, made no comment.

I had finally decided that I had been insulted enough and walking out would be a reasonable reaction, when an old man held up his hand with the fingers extended. There was instant respectful silence. Pride and dignity seemed to emanate from the greybeard’s leathery body as he sat, bare chested, his feet bent under him in the dust. The ancient, half hooded eyes stared into mine.

‘In spite of these cheeky birds, you have a fine brother, Dhalja. His shoulders are broad like yours and you both have your father’s face.’ His words were spoken frankly and with absolute sincerity.

I was slightly embarrassed, yet understood this was praise, not flattery, being extended to us. Dhalja was frankly pleased.

‘My brother is rich in years and possessions,’ Dhalja replied. ‘But poor in title. Irritcha is still of the ulmerka and only through your help and wisdom can he pass through the Lartna ceremony and be worthy to become atua-kurka.’

Courteous silence followed these remarks and then a general murmur of appreciation for the fine speech. I developed a queasy feeling in the stomach at the mention of the word ‘Lartna’. Could still hear old Fred saying: ‘Go into the bush with that mob and they’ll whistle-cock ya ...’ The next day here I am, sitting around listening to my brother calmly discussing my circumcision, as though he, Dhalja, was a surgeon with a well-equipped hospital at his disposal.

Had I any idea beforehand of what is involved in changing the boy title of ulmerka for the atua-kurka of the fully initiated man, I probably wouldn’t have gone on the walkabout. My sole experience during the transformation from boy to man had been the swapping of short pants for slacks. The Abunda consider this proves nothing at all.

 

I felt like an idiot as I tramped across the horse-paddock with the suitcase bumping against my legs. For the first couple of miles I prayed Frank Tipper wouldn’t come bouncing across the paddock in his truck. Then a little later I reversed the request and prayed he would.

Lost time looking over my shoulder and digging pebbles out of my shoes. I would have sat down for a rest but there were no trees, only the spiny spinifex grass underfoot. Besides, the last group of men were now a good way ahead and I had developed some sort of fixation about not losing sight of them. Their broad brimmed hats and shirts seemed to blend into the harsh landscape of spinifex and red dust as though they had always been there, forever walking across a paddock.

I stuck out like a boil on a backside ... No rucksack! Hell no! Not me ... A bloody suitcase ... Imitation pigskin with C.C. in gold letter. Just the thing for a walkabout. I kept looking back towards the homestead. Frank Tipper was probably too busy sucking at his grapefruit to worry about me; or perhaps he thought a man was entitled to visit with his relatives if he wished. Either way, he didn’t appear.

I caught up with the horde at the eight-mile windmill. Most of the kids were sitting shoulder to shoulder in the long cattle troughs, squealing with delight as they splashed the water over one another. I would have given anything, except my precious dignity, to flop in with them.

Nobody took the slightest notice of my late arrival. The women had a dozen little fires going and were cooking immense quantities of damper and boiling buckets of tea. The flour and sugar ration that several of the younger men had carried from the homestead was already more than a quarter gone. The bags stood in the centre of the camp and a couple of the opened ones had fallen on their sides; the dogs were helping themselves. Nobody seemed to care. Why should I worry!

I sat on the pipes running down to the troughs from the tank, sipping at a hat full of water tasting of hair oil. A small boy stood watching in fascination. He conversationally remarked: ‘Horses and kangaroos suck at their drink.’

I knew for some reason the Abunda never put their lips to water but scoop it into their open mouths with a flutter of the fingers.

‘Go and drown yourself,’ I snarled at my pint sized critic. He ran off yelling at top pitch: ‘Go and drown yourself, go and drown yourself.’ Several of his companions, amused by the unusual combination of Abunda words, took up the refrain. In seconds all the kids were chanting it. Their mothers were giving me some very dirty looks.

I sullenly glared back while estimating my chance of getting any breakfast to be fairly remote. However, in due course, Dhalja wandered over with a great stack of damper in a coolibah dish. The dough had been cooked on the coals, the resulting cakes covered in equal quantities of ash and sugar, with twigs and bits of charcoal embedded in them. I was not accustomed to an eight-mile hike before breakfast and ate the lot, ash and all. Then sat on the pipe, half stunned by the sinker of flour and water, while the tribe prepared to move on.

The kids began taking turns to stand at the end of the pipe where the water ran into the troughs. They took on enormous loads by letting the full flow run down their necks. Their already distended stomachs literally blew up like balloons; the skin grew tight and shiny and their bellybuttons stood out like nipples. Even little toddlers turned themselves into bloated drums. Some were promptly sick on the spot but it didn’t seem to worry them at all. Those who spewed trotted back to the end of the queue and had another try.

The mothers began to come over and collect their younger offspring. They ran a critical eye over the incredibly distended bellies and gave little pats to test the tightness of the drums. Any child who seemed slightly less ready to burst than the others was sent back to the pipe for another gallon or two.

I asked Dhalja how far it was to the next bore. ‘About ten mile,’ he muttered, frowning at my suitcase. He didn’t bother to add the tribe was not heading in that direction. A few days later I regretted not phrasing the question differently.

‘You will probably find the walkabout more to your liking in company with the ulmerka,’ Dhalja remarked. As he stalked off he pointed with his spear to a group of young men who had started gathering up what was left of the flour and sugar bags.

I thought at the time he was telling me to keep up with the others and not drag behind. But I was soon to find out that what Dhalja really meant was to stick with the bachelors and keep away from the married men and women. I didn’t realise at the time that the comparative luxury of being my brother’s guest had now come to an end.

 

By three o’clock in the afternoon the red pancake layers of the cliffs began to stand out. I licked dry lips, started to believe we were really getting near to the Oswalds and not just closer. Bareega now carried my suitcase balanced on his head. He had apparently forgotten it was there as he pursed his lips, rolled his eyes and concentrated on explaining to me the origin of the Lartna ceremony.

Less than an hour after leaving the eight-mile windmill the main body of the tribe turned south-west; but we of the ulmerka still headed straight for the western ramparts of the Oswald Ranges. In desperation I had asked Manala if he would mind carrying the suitcase while I smoked a cigarette. In spite of having a handful of spears, a woomera and an elaborately carved shield, Manala seemed delighted with the idea. He not only balanced the case on his head while jumping over clumps of spinifex but at the same time managed to give a flawless imitation of a woman. Manala’s undulating hip movements and cupped hands under his breasts whenever he jumped made our other three companions anxious to display their talents for mimicry. They all insisted on a turn with my suitcase then improved on their act during the afternoon with imaginary children on the hip; suckling babes, extreme pregnancy and other cruder variations on the theme.

Even so, I would not have been able to maintain the deceptive speed of their normal pace if those not carrying the flour or the case had not spent their time at target practice. Any stunted tree or likely looking target was promptly stuck with spears and the leaves clipped by whirling boomerangs. However, when the occasional kangaroo bounded out of its midday shade into the path of the hunters it was not promptly struck down. These great spearers and pruners of trees suddenly developed a remarkable inaccuracy when it came to live game. I determinedly plodded on in a sweat-soaked stupor. Too concerned with myself to think it peculiar that a man who could bury a spear in a narrow hardwood tree trunk at twenty paces was apparently unable to hit a much broader patch of soft hide. The boomerang experts were no better. From time to time they had shots at the flocks of black cockatoos that came to investigate. The cockies flew around screaming at each other as though they had merely come over to settle a bet. They were quite safe and apparently knew it. After a couple of slow circles and a squawking babble of derisive comment on the harmless boomerangs, they resumed their usual ragged formation. Probably flew back to the cool trees by the river.

Some considerable time was being lost in retrieving the carelessly thrown weapons. Gradually I became aware that this apparent excess of high spirits occurred only when I began to lag behind. The suspicion grew that without me my considerate cousins would have been many miles closer to their destination. What I didn’t know was that the dreaded Oswalds were completely dry at this time of the year; but the others did. They also knew delay was dangerous. Every hour added to the chance of a man losing too much sweat and choking to death behind his swollen tongue.

Bareega said nothing of the ordeal to come as he tried to explain why we must cross the ranges and not take the easier route around them as Dhalja and the rest of the tribe were doing.

‘This is the way the kananga of the Alchera came,’ Bareega laboriously explained. ‘We of the ulmerka must approach the sacred Churinga by the same route as the Alchera kananga.’

My heat fogged brain made half hearted attempts to translate the meaning into English and common sense: ‘The way the kangaroos of the dreamtime came ... to the place of the sacred stones ... totemic ancestors ... half man half kangaroo ... For some strange reason it made sense. Maybe it was heat stroke but I looked up at the looming rock faces now beginning to change from red to violet in the afternoon light. There was something in the stark austerity of the bald hills. It had to be like this. I must go this way – not only to be of the Abunda – but to be at all.

The Oswald Ranges aren’t mountains. They’re not even high hills. I didn’t exactly envisage snow-capped summits but I did imagine there would be water holes in the gorges. In the middle of the wet season rocky pools form but during the dry the blistering heat evaporates the water like a suction hose. The heat of the spinifex plains a mild warmth in comparison to the fiery rocks of the Oswalds. Where prickle bush takes over from spinifex it is more than just hot. Deep in the Oswalds there are miles of jagged stone where even the thorn and the prickle cannot survive. From midday until late afternoon the hills ring with sharp sound, like rifle shots, as the granite cracks and explodes with the heat.

‘The ritual path leads through these hills into the world of the past,’ I said half to myself.

‘Only time belongs to the past,’ Bareega corrected me. ‘We of the kananga have always been here; and go now to the place of Lartna.’

Bareega lived entirely in the past and merely acted out the present. He couldn’t go back to some place he had never been away from.

A little while later he pointed to a chalky flaw in a rock and murmured: ‘The bones of the Echidna Alchera are here in the rocks.’

I blinked the sweat out of my eyes. ‘The only Echidna I ever heard of are the ant-eating animals with the long snouts. Is there an Echidna tribe?’

Bareega promptly launched into a long story of how the ‘leilira’ or stone knives were given to the tribes by the Alchera men. ‘There was a big day of Lartna,’ he explained. ‘A great many tribes were gathered together and many ulmerka were made arakurta and then circumcised. A man of the Echidna totem insisted on doing the last operation of the day and he cut the initiate’s penis and scrotum right off. The arakurta fell down dead.’

I stared at him. ‘How often does that happen?’

Bareega laughed. ‘Not often. The old Echidna man ran away but was followed by the other men who killed him. They threw so many spears into his back there was no room for any more.’

‘It’s the first I ever heard of an Echidna totem,’ I sceptically remarked.

‘No Echidna man or woman was ever born in this country after that,’ Bareega seriously agreed. ‘Only the animal covered in spines was born.’

I managed a dry croaky laugh. ‘So that’s how the anteater got its spines. I thought you believed all the animals were always here.’

‘They were’ Bareega seemed puzzled by the scepticism. ‘You can see their bones in the rocks.’ He explained carefully so there would be no mistake. ‘Before the killing there were echidna but they had no spines.’

We were now well into the foothills, I was too concerned with the added effort of clambering over rocks to argue about the evolution of the anteater. Manala held out his hand and helped me up onto a narrow ledge. He must have noticed I was having troubles and pointed to the mouth of a cave halfway up a steep cliff.

‘It is cool inside the cave,’ he remarked by way of consolation.

‘If I don’t get a drink soon, Manala,’ I mumbled, ‘I’m going to be stone cold dead.’

Up to date I had put off asking the vital question for fear of the answer. But now it would wait no longer. I asked Bareega: ‘How far is it to the nearest water?’ Then I remembered Dhalja’s evasive reply and qualified the question so there could be no doubt. ‘The water that we are going to drink when we get there.’ Bareega had begun to climb the cliff but he stopped for a second and courteously replied: ‘Quatcha atua nummina.’

Abunda lends itself to vague answers. There are only words for two numerals: Ninta: one, Terra: two. Three is terra-ma-ninta; above five this slide rule precision cuts out and degenerates into the obscure: atua nummina; literally, a small mob.

I thought he meant there would be water in a few hours; but a small mob can apply equally as well to days, weeks, months, years.

 

The cave was little more than a shallow scoop in the wall of the cliff, but as it faced to the north and missed the direct rays of the sun, the air inside was at least ten degrees cooler. The cutting action of the wind had produced numerous deep niches and alcoves in the sandstone. All but the central portion of the back wall had been sculptured by the wind – a grain at a time. There were rounded holes, knobs and humps between the alcoves; three bulbous columns, a dome and a cupola all carved in bas-relief.

As Bareega helped me climb onto the ledge of the cave mouth he said: ‘See, Irritchal The shape of the wind is here.’

The concave and convex whirls among the cups and craters, arches and funnels didn’t mean anything to me. I saw a cave about twelve to fourteen feet deep with a few inches of powdery dry dust on the floor. Waiting until I was well inside I let my legs fold under me. My head rested against a bulge in the wall, cool stone pressed against the burning flesh on the back of my neck; a dry mildness in the still air. I opened my mouth wide and sucked the coolness into my heat racked body. Imagined I was extremely thirsty.

At the back of the cave a fairly smooth slab of pink rock had been missed by the main force of the northerly winds. At one time it had been deeply carved by an ancient artist and white and yellow ochre had been plastered into the outlines. Now the sandblast had worn the surface down until only the suggestion of painted line remained. There were two animals, a goanna and an echidna, repeated eight times and following each other up the wall, nose to tail. They were both enormously fat, the bodies so wide the legs looked more like stumps. Before we left I asked Manala about the paintings. He said: ‘The artists always drew fat animals because the fat ones are the best to eat.’

They were drawn in the caves during the increase ceremonies so that the gods would be certain to recognise the species of animal the tribe wished to be increased and not grant a plague of grasshoppers, ants or something equally unsuitable. In dealing with gods it is just as well to draw a clear picture and prevent costly errors.

I imagined I knew a good deal about art and increase ceremonies. The book I read was right about there having to be sufficient water where one or more tribes are gathered together for ceremonial reasons. But cave paintings do not necessarily indicate the proximity of water. During the wet season half the land is flooded and there is no shortage almost anywhere.

The boys had dumped the provisions and my suitcase in the middle of the floor, then rested for about five minutes. They pulled their boots off and let their toes enjoy an ecstatic wriggle. All were half smiling, nobody said anything. Hats were removed and the pleasure of coolness on sweaty hair dreamily savoured. The buttons of sweat-soaked shirts carefully undone; deliberate fingers seized the little metal tags and pulled the zips of their pants right down to the bottom of the fly. Only then did they stand up, each man wore a vague sensuous smile as his pants fell around his ankles and he kicked them off. Shirts were peeled from sweaty skin in slow motion. Each selected a niche in the wall and placed his clothing in it with the boots and hat on top. Their smiles were wider and less dreamy as shoulders were flexed and backs arched to test the new found freedom. All took a couple of shuffling experimental steps, as though getting used to the idea of walking naked.

Manala and Parula lifted their scrotums and pulled their buttocks outward to dry the sweat. I took off shirt and shoes but left my pants on; feeling certain to drop my tweeds would make me the only one who seemed naked. The others didn’t even look as though they had just stripped, it was more as if they had put something on. Natural dignity is the phrase but if it existed it didn’t apply for long.

Bareega and Manala took a handful of dust, as though it were soap powder, and thoughtfully washed themselves. Parula followed their example, but Isaac wasn’t satisfied with the natural cleansing agent; he grabbed a handful of flour and smeared it all over himself. The idea proved immediately popular and the resultant white skins caused a fit of the giggles. Manala couldn’t leave the idea alone, he rubbed a double handful into his hair and the giggles turned to laughter. The ham in Parula promptly came to the fore; in desperation for a new act he spat on his penis, dipped it in the flour, then did a little dance around the cave before concluding the ballet by jumping over my head. ‘Proper white man, me!’ Parula bellowed with laughter. ‘You ever see a whiter worra-paira? Eh, Irritcha?’

The comic turn had Bareega and the boys clutching their bellies in an agony of delight. I never had a chance to answer. Isaac threw a handful of flour at Parula that missed and hit Manala. In seconds the cave was lost in a blinding snowstorm. Manala picked up a whole bag by the bottom corners and whirled it around his head. Flour flew in all directions. By the time I stopped coughing and choking then dug enough flour out of my eyes to be able to get to my feet, the fight was over. The bags were empty. From the walls and ceiling big white blobs kept plopping down like snow. The cave was peopled by coughing, chuckling blond ghosts. Partly in sheer despair I joined in the general laughter. We laughed until the tears made black furrows down our white cheeks.

It was getting dusk by the time all the excitement had died down and three of the boys went out to look for firewood. I had tried them all on the question of getting a drink. The replies varied from the inevitable: ‘Not far’, to the equally popular: ‘Attua nummina’. I gave up, when after asking Isaac why nobody had bothered to bring a water bag, he replied: ‘Water is heavy, we had to carry the flour.’

I was the only one who possessed any matches and lighting the fire was left to me. Manala brought in a big bundle of sticks, as he threw them on the floor the white choking cloud rose around me.

I coughed and spat on the floor. ‘It doesn’t seem so funny now, Manala.’

He shrugged his shoulders and built the sticks into a little pyramid. ‘We intended to throw it away. It was just as well to have the fun of throwing it at one another.’

I was beginning to think there was something wrong with my translating ability. I would either have to start thinking in Abunda or give up altogether.

‘You carried the flour all this distance just to throw it away?’ Manala nodded his head.

‘Why not leave it at the homestead?’

‘The Welfare man makes all the station owners issue full rations for a walkabout.’ Manala grinned. ‘Tomtip does not come here, he will think we ate the flour.’

I rubbed my eyes in a weary attempt to follow the reasoning. ‘Dhalja and the rest of the tribe will know by their empty bellies that they didn’t eat it. What will the old men say when they find the rations have all been thrown away?’

Manala seemed puzzled by the question. ‘Nobody will talk of flour.’ He dismissed the idea. ‘We are all sick of the white man’s food. It is better to live on bush tucker while we walkabout.’

I lay down near the fire, looking into the flames in quiet despair. Remembered the derisive squawk of the cockies. The flames made dancing shadows on the walls of the cave and established a semi-familiar pattern. There is nothing nostalgic about the lounge-room of a boarding house, the recreation-room of a mission home or the fire of a comparative stranger. Neither is there any similarity with a dusty hole in a cliff; yet this place didn’t feel strange at all.

Manala sat cross legged in serene contentment. From time to time he dropped a few twigs on the blaze. We could hear the other boys laughing and talking as they climbed back to the cave.

‘We must dance a corroboree!’ Manala suddenly exclaimed. ‘We will show both the Abunda and the Myall how it was at the time of the flour fight.’ He chuckled to himself and rocked with pleasure as he worked out the details. ‘You must sit down, Irritcha and Parula must paint his worra-paira with white ochre ...’

I wasn’t listening. I fell asleep wondering how long it would take to die of starvation; providing some miracle should prevent me dying of thirst.

---

 

4: Quatcha Ingwunta

When we left the cave my suitcase remained in the middle of the floor, near the ashes of the fire. It is impossible to find a path through the Oswalds at night and there is no hope of avoiding the seething heat. By midday the rocks sizzle when sweat falls on them. Only stunted prickle bush grows between the broken slabs; the wiry roots go down deep in splintered rock before they touch the earth. If there was ever any topsoil it has long since dried up and blown away. The Oswalds are a lifeless sea of stone, where boulder and jagged rock rise from gorge to ridge in endless waves. From the crest of the ridges heat haze hangs like spray in the white hot light of this static ocean.

In the early afternoon Bareega and the boys were strung out in single file, picking their way along a rim of rotted rock. On either side the ground fell away into narrow gorges, chocked with boulders and the rubble of exploded granite. I was last in the line following Bareega and Manala. The other two were almost half a mile ahead. I stumbled along hanging on to the butt of Bareega’s spear with both hands. He hauled me over rocks and carefully lowered me down the other side. From time to time Manala and Bareega changed places but I was hardly aware of shifting my grip from one spear to the other.

It doesn’t take a week to die of thirst in the Oswalds. Forty-eight hours can be more than ample for flesh accustomed to the mild southern climate. There were occasions now when I started to forget my thirst for five minutes or more at time. All the morning the educated boong had muttered: ‘Christ it’s hot! ... This place is like a bloody oven! ... You all knew we were coming to this and none of you thought to bring a water bag! ... How much longer? ... Let’s sit down for a while! ...’

Now the stark reality of the Oswalds began to take on a depth and meaning that made the conventional summer phrases seem like the ravings of an idiot. In between five-minute holidays of being Charles Carson, the uncomfortably hot gent, I began to see an ant crawling across the stones of a fireplace and pathetically bleating: ‘Christ it’s hot! ... Let’s sit down! ... The picture started to fan out so that I knew we were not only heading west but literally walking into the sun. Crawling into the molten fire of its mass. Bareega and the boys skipped from rock to rock with an easy flowing stride, yet already I had begun to stumble across the hearth stones of hell.

While the torrent of sweat poured from my shocked body I was nowhere near as hot as I imagined. It was only after the sweat stopped dripping and an oily film gathered that I ceased the requests to sit down and started mumbling to myself. The flesh begins to retain more and more of the broiling heat as the fat beneath the skin turns to oil and forces its way through the pores. I no longer confused real heat with the slight discomfort after a tennis match. The pebble Manala had given me to suck seemed to grow in size and I spat it out.

An hour later the saliva glands commenced to dry and puff up. I was scared before but a mouth filled by a swelling tongue carries a special brand of fear, an additive of horror and terror that far surpasses the inferior scary kind of fright. A hazy outline begins to form at the outer edges of vision. At the time I lacked experience in the degree of discomfort that precedes death by thirst; although even then I had collected most of the symptoms. Only needed a little time to become an authority on the subject.

Neither Bareega nor Manala had ever crossed the Oswalds or seen a map. Yet they had heard it described in the constant repetition of the song-cycles and knew almost exactly what lay in front of them. The song of the Oswalds told of great heat and flying feet. Always the singer boasted of the tremendous distance covered in a day, as he took the path that led to the earth mother – to Lartna. It is not only wrong to deviate from the catechism of the song-cycles; it can also be fatal.

For the tenth or twelfth time since noon I slipped and fell. On this last occasion I let go of Bareega’s spear and tumbled halfway down the gorge before a boulder and a prickle bush stopped me rolling the rest of the way. I was a little stunned by the fall, but not injured. The only reason I continued to lie there was a semiconscious belief that I was entitled to and due for sympathy. Manala and Bareego looked to the west before they glanced down and their seeming indifference made me more eager to punish them. Even as the callous pigs slid down the loose shale, flickering sign language was passing between them. My tender nursemaids squatted on each side of me, but their eyes had a blank stony stare as they measured the distance between the disc of the sun and the horizon. Not once did they look at the consciously pathetic form of the victim at their feet. They offered neither word nor hand.

Finally Bareega stood up. ‘The song of the burning rocks talks much of the swift hop of the kangaroo,’ he said. ‘Only those of the kananga totem come this way to Lartna; they jump quickly across the stones before they melt in the heat.’

‘Dhalja will ask why his brother is not with us,’ Manala replied matter of factly. ‘We will say he was unable to walk with sure feet.’

I sat up. There was something in the voices that not only penetrated the heat haze but partly drove the idea of sympathy out of my head. It suddenly occurred to me that the Abunda would know nothing of martyrs; would feel only contempt for a man who threw his life away in a needless cause. I began to suspect allowing myself the privilege of weakness was equal to signing my death warrant.

‘You two go on,’ I croaked in a final effort to reduce Manala and Bareega to the stature of schoolboy heroes. Neither offered any chivalrous protest at the suggestion; they just turned on their heels. I hastily scrambled to my feet; Bareega took one arm and Manala the other. Between them they half carried me back to the ridge; here they not only dropped my arms but also a fair portion of their responsibility for me. Nothing was said, yet I knew if I fell and rolled down the gorge again I would stay there.

Manala let a spear stick out behind him as he strode off. I took hold of it with both hands, clenching both fist and jaw against the pain of movement. I made an honest attempt to keep the pace and for a long time the spear was slack in Manala’s hand. The impression that I was unlikely to achieve Abunda manhood before my death grew in strength.

I didn’t see the sun go down. For hours only the shooting pain of moving my legs counteracted the intolerable hurt of blistered feet. The choking spasms from dried out mouth and throat were carefully directed down to meet the agony rising from the soles of feet and sweeping up through aching groins. The two streams of torment hit the buffer of cramp in my stomach and were dispersed in fiery arcs. It became important that pain should meet pain and neither wave must travel unchecked through the full length of the body. In the end I achieved a kind of rhythm of agony. The inclination of the spear told me when to jump and the pull of it how far. When Manala finally stopped, my brain refused the responsibility for a dried out body; it allowed the mechanical function of walking to continue. I leant against the spear in an attempt to keep in motion; Manala twisted the shaft and I went down on my knees. At the edge of vision was a blurred impression of Isaac and Parula squatting near a fire.

The change of position must have opened the circuits of a dozen new nerve ends, the pain buffer in my belly withered under the attack and lancing fire began to arc from the top of my head to the blisters on the soles of my feet. The brain gave a convulsive jump as though the whole inside of the skull had torn loose from its mountings. Manala brushed his hand across my back, judged the amount of oil in the sweat by rubbing it between his fingers. I saw him look at Bareega and make the sign of approaching death. For half a second Manala’s fist lay on his chest, the hand clenched, unclenched and lay still. Bareega nodded his head. I felt a fuse blow and pitched forward on my face in merciful darkness.

 

I awoke at about four o’clock in the morning. My tongue felt like a roll of blotting paper, pressure on the back of the throat made me want to be sick. Sitting up a shoe scraped against a rock, the pain washed the lobes of the brain free of muzziness; all the detail stood out stark and raw. In the pale light of the false dawn, dark sleeping figures were strewn around the ashes of a fire. They were stretched full length to counter the warmth of the coming day, trying to draw the last vestiges of cold from the night. There was something about the lack of curve or roundness in the long thin bodies suggesting perfect accord with the background of splintered rock and prickle bush. Against the lighter stone of the hills the shrubs seemed fashioned of barbed wire. A peculiar affinity existed between the long lanky legs of the boys; the bushes; even the slender spears lying by their owners’ sides. I looked at the scene across the obscene roundness of my shoulder, knowing for certain that here the scale of values had been upset. Rounded plumpness was not the normal, only the meagre and the emaciated belonged to this spectral land. I lent forward to stare at curved calf muscles, disgusted to find sinuous whipcord had not replaced flabby flesh. Then I saw my feet! A greedy, furtive cunning took over and I sneaked a peep at the sleepers to make sure my secret was unobserved. I couldn’t be sure the deep wells of Parula’s eye-sockets were closed; craftily I looked up at the sky while my fingers stroked the smooth, tight bag of water growing on the instep of the left foot. The delicious thrill of the find made my swollen tongue curl in expectation of the drooling pleasure to come. I drew up the right foot and risked a glance in order to assess the amount of treasure available. With disappointment I saw that the blister on this foot had broken; wrinkled skin lay like black silk stocking against the instep. It didn’t matter. I took another sly peek at the left foot. The smooth dome of the blister began above the ankle joint and filled the entire opening of the shoe. The fancy leather tongue had slapped against the instep until the giant blister had risen from the expensive walking shoes like a dusky balloon. My throat worked in anticipation and my teeth ached to cut the flesh and get at the contents. The blister blotted out everything else and I forgot the sleepers who might covert my nectar. Thinking out the next move, with desperate cunning I hit on the solution; a grimace of a smile made cracks in my dry lips and traces of blood appear.

Cautiously, I pulled the pants pocket lining inside out and tore the sweat-rotted cloth. After making a small neat wad I untied a shoelace and held the little metal tag on the end of the lace firmly in my fingers. I started to worry now lest some the water should be lost. The first tentative prods with the tag only dented the elastic surface of the bag. Then I chose an angular portion near the ankle and pushed the tag in one side and out the other. While pulling it back a tiny fountain of water squirted up but I quickly slapped on the wad. Only a few drops trickled down into my shoe. I was shaking with excitement as the rag began to turn wet and sloppy; yet waited until it was properly saturated before holding a finger over the hole in the blister and cramming the wad between my teeth. I closed my lips tightly so nothing could get out, let the rag lie wedged between the top of the tongue and the roof of the mouth. Some of the swelling went from the tongue immediately and I sucked hard to increase the flow of moisture. When it was almost dry I put the rag back on the blister and methodically forced the little bubbles of water from the pockets of skin. After it was all gone the skin was wrinkled and flat as the spidery stocking that clung to the other foot. The salty water did not decrease my thirst, but it did dull the constricting pain in jaws and throat. It also provided sufficient moisture to open the tubes to the lungs and make breathing easier. For a short time the wetness in my mouth persisted, I sucked at my tongue in a vain attempt to begin the flow of saliva.

Manala was the first to sit up. I saw him yawn and shake the sleep from his head before he flexed his shoulders; there seemed to be hope for me in this evident reserve of strength. The water could not be far away or the distance would show in Manala’s movements. For me it must not be more than two or three hours journey at the most. I put off asking the question while the hope mounted until it was almost a promise. As Manala came to his feet I tried to frame the words; my mouth worked but nothing came out. I made another attempt and this time a throaty croak rewarded the effort. I heard myself say: ‘How far?’ The sheer daring of the question, took my breath away.

Manala seemed surprised to see me sitting up. He frowned and pursed his lips as he searched for the right words; yet even when he knew there could only be the truth.

Manala eased the blow. ‘Quatcha ingwunta,’ he murmured. The words came out as a slurred mumble; they ran together and attempted to make nothing of their terrible meaning. I felt myself collapse inwardly. It was as though my rib cage had only been held out from the hollow shell of pain by the promise of water. I stared at Manala but didn’t doubt what I had heard, or the correctness of the statement. Only the shocked horror of the death sentence was in my brain and I did not question it in any way. The words rang like a funeral bell in my head: ‘Quatcha ingwunta – water tomorrow! Quatcha ingwunta – water tomorrow.’ I knew with absolute certainty for me there would be no tomorrow.

As Manala gathered his spears the rattle of the wood awoke the others. They yawned, licked at dry lips before immediately rising to their feet. Dry mouths and the lack of urge to make water put the haste of fear into normal lazy movements; less than a minute after Manala had stood up, the other three had gathered their weapons and were ready to go. Thirty seconds before this I had no intention of going with them. I knew I could not survive the day and there was no point in adding to the torture without reason; yet when Bareega stood in front of me and extended his spear I grabbed at it, drew my legs under me and lurched to my feet. A groaning rattle came from my open mouth as the raw flesh of my feet cracked open under the weight. I dry retched a few times. The pain helped to reduce the shock of approaching death. After the first few shuffling steps I began to welcome the curtain of torment starting to envelop me. It was no worse than the previous day – it couldn’t be.

Before we were more than a few hundred yards from the camp. Isaac and Parula had begun to disappear into the grey light. Something in the swift lope and light spring from rock to rock made me sure they were not acting as pacemakers but clearing out completely. There is no Abunda word for goodbye, I did not resent their silent departure; before much longer Bareega and Manala would also leave in the same wordless manner.

For a time the routine agony of hop, step and jump blotted out the primal fact of death. The occasional wrench of the spear in my hand and its pressure against my palm were nothing but an extension of pain flowing out towards Bareega; yet not touching him in any way. I began to believe I might walk this twilight world for hours. Then over a gigantic boulder the rim of the sun appeared.

My half glazed eyes widened in terror. In seconds the rocks began to acquire a glitter like hot gunmetal and the smell of heat was in my nostrils and burning on cracked lips. I looked at my murderer and stumbled almost to my knees. In panic at being left alone I gripped Bareega’s spear with both hands, my knuckles stood out white with the pressure of the grip. I concentrated on the wood of the spear, the ground under it and the nightmare of walking. In time the hypnotic movement of my feet tended to shut out the sun; the Oswalds; finally the pain.

The sun was almost overhead before it struck me down. Bareega and Manala dragged me a few yards into the sparse shade of a clump of prickle bush. Even this effort cost them sweat they could ill afford. Bareega had to prize my fingers open one by one before he could release my grip on his spear.

Manala pulled up a few prickle bushes and added them to the clump over my head. ‘Dhalja should not have sent his brother with us,’ he flatly stated.

Bareega banked up a little mound of earth and lifted my head. ‘Irritcha came a good part of the way,’ he said in a lame effort to justify my presence. ‘Perhaps in the Alchera it is better to have begun the walk to Lartna.’

‘It would make no difference,’ Manala irritably snapped. ‘He is still Ulmerka and cannot take his place among the men.’

Manala walked back to the ridge and wedged one of his spears upright between two rocks. Bareega joined him and without another word or a backward glance they moved off.

I saw them go. The shade and the brief spell of unconsciousness gave me a few seconds of clarity. When I opened my eyes again the two thin figures were just disappearing over the crest of the ridge.

---

 

5: Atna Arilta-Kuma

In the semiarid gorges on the western slopes of the Oswalds are chains of deep rock pools. This is the tail of the Snake River. Although the mouth of the Snake emerges in a steaming mangrove swamp, and the last fifty-mile of its journey to the sea is through tropical forest, the tail of the Snake brushes the outer edge of the Central Desert. It is not all sandy wasteland. Here towering cliffs of vivid coloured rock wear a pale green cap of spinifex all the year round. Ghost gums and larani trees are reflected in the warm still waters. There are patches of yellow sand and water-rounded stones between the incredibly blue and mirror-like pools. It is almost always high summer – a perpetual December. Only occasional monsoon clouds get this far south – rain is a miracle. Perhaps once a year the fat black clouds ride the desert air; they are forced upward by the eastern slopes of the Oswalds and dump their moisture in a single torrential downpour. The warm rain washes the dust from the ghost gums so that their leaves gleam and the trunks are like white porcelain against the red rock backdrop. Spinifex turns from grey to vivid green within a few hours and the air tastes clean and cool. The rock holes fill to brimming; if there is enough overflow one pool links up with the next. For maybe one week in every fifth or sixth year the Snake booms through the gorges and uproots a few of the trees growing in its seldom-used bed. Usually there is just enough rain to fill the pools and no more. The Snake is the child of the Rainbow Serpent.

The Alchilpa gorge is at the very tip of the Snake’s tail; but this year the broad bed had been washed clean and the fires of the Abunda were built on fresh sand instead of last year’s ash. As it grew dark the numerous fires reflected both from the pools and the western cliff. There is a lot of mica among the crumbling rock of the cliff face which glitters in the firelight. Of course everything in the vicinity of the Snake River belongs to, or is part of, the Snake – mica has a remarkable resemblance to scales and vice versa. The Abunda say the cliffs have been built up from the shedded snakeskins of countless years.

The gorge of the wildcat is open at both ends and the eastern side rises to the central plateau in a series of steep yet far from vertical slopes. Hundreds of pads are worn through the spinifex and they converge on the pools like the veins of a fan. In the dry season the kangaroos and emus have to come in for water; most of the lesser animals use these well worn pads, the exceptions being lizards and goannas who prefer to be independent and have a private path all to themselves. The reptiles are to the Snake River what fleas are to a dog.

In the strictly male, ungunga section of the gorge, Dhalja and a group of men sat in council. Like ebony statues they squatted in a rough semicircle on a patch of clean white sand; the flickering light of their fire losing itself in the shadows and impressive vastness of the council hall. Dhalja rocked on his heels and wondered if he should have taken the old man’s advice.

‘Your brother should have been kept with the tribe,’ Bert repeated for the eighth or ninth time. ‘At least until he dropped the suitcase and stopped wallowing in his own sweat.’

Dhalja was concerned but not as yet unduly worried. He had given serious consideration to the problem but would say nothing unless directly asked for an opinion. As lnkata, he accepted the small amount of responsibility invested in him without the slightest attempt to convert it to either authority or power. This is the test of kings.

‘When the night has gone we should go and look for them,’ Manala’s father said with quiet decision.

‘There are many paths they might come by,’ Old Bert reminded Dillungan.

‘Let another day pass before we interfere with the ways of Lartna,’ Apilquirka said with a shaky display of confidence in his son Bareega.

Dhalja listened, what he heard was not argument but the voice of the tribe. For five months of the year, Dhalja the stockman became a subjective part of the complex organism that is the tribe: a number of independent cells functioning for the common welfare of the whole – like the limbs of a dog. Neither the tribe nor the dog can be divided into separate units. All were concerned with the welfare of the ulmerka.

‘If you sit by the waterhole the kangaroo will jump on your spear,’ an old man remarked with the smug satisfaction of the semi-senile.

‘There has been much heat in these last days,’ Dillungan said with a frown. ‘They should have been here this morning.’

‘Dhalja’s brother would not come so soon,’ Isaac’s father answered with a touch of malice. ‘I carried no woman’s load and all of four days passed before I drank from this pool.’

‘You have no need to recount the days, Umbulla,’ Dillungan apologised for his blood brother. ‘I came with you on your path to Lartna. So did Bert.’

‘So all three of us know how quickly a man can travel without a burden,’ Umbulla mumbled sarcastically.

Dhalja seldom strayed from the deep inherent laws of the tribe in settling his mind, his stomach or an argument. He knew the ulmerka were in the direct care of the Earth Mother from the time they began their journey. Satisfied this was the truth and all the talk was merely his fellow tribesmen taking the comfort of worrying in public, Dhalja sat back and ruminated. Deep within the womb of the tribal territory no Abunda could die a natural death. He might be transferred from the living to the Alchera, but this was only possible through outside influence either malignant or otherwise. The mischievous actions of evil spirits would be watched by the Earth Mother and her greed for the promised penis blood of the ulmerka should prevent them from coming to any harm.

‘A leg might be broken,’ Wangalla muttered half to himself.

‘One leg might be,’ Bert conceded, ‘but between them the ulmerka have many legs.’

Dhalja decided that there could only be one reason for the delay. The Earth Mother slept. There were various methods of awakening her but by far the surest and easiest was a fresh offering of blood. He decided to end the futile talk and added emphasis to the change of subject by throwing a handful of dust on the fire. The flame died down then flared up again. .

‘Not all the women of the ulmerka are yet prepared,’ Dhalja loudly stated. The others were grateful for the opportunity to forget their worries and revert to action.

‘Manala’s woman has already felt the stone,’ Dillungan replied with smug complacency in the fitness of things.

‘And Isaac’s and Parula’s,’ Bert echoed in the same tone of voice. ‘Bareega’s woman comes with the Myall.’

‘Illuta is unbroken,’ Dhalja muttered impatiently. ‘No blood of hers is on the stone.’

‘There is much of other’s blood on her nulla-nulla,’ Apilquirka remarked with the trace of a grin.

Dhalja frowned. ‘Atna arilta-kuma may curb her temper.’ His prospective sister-in-law’s growing fame with the club did nothing to recommend her in Dhalja’s eyes. ‘You have the stone?’ he asked Bert.

The old man stood up and squared his shoulders. ‘I will get it for you,’ he said with the dignity proper to the keeper of a sacred sword.

‘You will assist me?’ Apilquirkar Dhalja questioned. ‘I, and at least one other,’ Apilquirka spoke lightly but he was not joking. ‘Dillungan boasts of his strength.’

‘We may need the whole tribe to hold that one,’ Dillungan managed a slight grin, but the concern for his son was deep in his eyes.

Bert returned and unwrapped a paper-bark covering before he handed the long thin implement to Dhalja. ‘When will you do this?’ he asked.

Dhalja held the blunt eighteen-inch tool in both hands. He didn’t answer immediately as the group around the fire stared at the black surface of the stone. Imprisoned in the ebony rod were the screams of countless women. It was said the stone had the voice of a seashell, but instead of whispering in the ear the message vibrated through the pores of the skin. Its knowledge of millenniums and shrill protests of ancient and modern women were all contained in the sensuous pulsations that entered through the fingertips and echoed down the pathway of the years. A faint night breeze filtered across the gorge and none doubted the Snake breathed over the shoulder of the man who held the stone. Dhalja’s fingers caressed the polished surface. Blood had filled and refilled the minute pores in the granite rod until it had attained the glazed appearance of burnt steel or porcelain, Dhalja weighed the heavy stone in his hands and ran his thumbs over the blunt ends.

‘At dawn,’ he said decisively. ‘We will go to the lukwurra while the girl still sleeps.’

 

Illuta was not unaware of her fate. Unlike the pain of childbirth, atna arilta-kuma does not carry the reassuring, if vague possibility, that it might not happen. There is no doubt in the mind of the virgin Abunda. Iluta knew from the time of her first menstrual period that she would have to face the ceremony; she was surprised it had not happened sooner. Ever since she had first bled and been sent from her parents’ campfire to the lukwurra the whispered story of the long broad stone had been in her ears. There were those who said it was better to let the body go loose and floppy like that of a newly killed animal. It was better to hold the legs stiff; scream, bite on a stick; relax. Illuta had made up her mind on only one thing; no matter how great the pain she would not scream. One-eyed Peggy often spoke in anger of her barren daughter. She said her lack of grandchildren was caused by Bareena screaming so loudly at the entrance of the stone into her body that the jim-bim were frightened away. Illuta was determined the spirit children would have no cause to fear her. She was a good deal fonder of children and dogs than adults of either sex. On this night, while Dhalja still held the stone in his hands, Illuta told David and Apmaura about the Snake River.

Most of the children who were old enough to walk spent their evenings in the lukwurra. Apart from being out from under the parental eye there was the added attraction of supper. In the lukwurra there were no babies or men to be attended. Lovers were generous with the better cuts of meat and elder sisters, cousins, widowed aunts and grandmothers could be relied on to fill in the hollows between meals. There were also many stories told without any particular moral. The parental myths tended to have an element of threat in them for those who didn’t behave themselves. Illuta was good at story telling; she recited the song-cycles as though she had been there when the heroes of the Alchera performed their prodigious feats.

‘My father is teaching me to play the didgeridoo,’ David proudly remarked.

Illuto continued searching Emora’s fur for cattle ticks. She smiled and secretly hoped David would learn to play with less enthusiasm and more skill than the notoriously tone deaf Dhalja. ‘Wabgurra of the Myall played the drone pipe here,’ she said half to herself. ‘It was three seasons ago.’ Illuta’s first awareness of her growing sexual potential had come with this man’s music. ‘The whole of the Alchilpa gorge throbbed to his playing,’ she murmured. ‘The men danced for three days and nights as they called on the Rainbow Serpent to fill the dry belly of her child the Snake.’ Illuta had been about twelve that year; the Abunda do not remember birthdays. She had lain in the warm sand by her new campfire in the lukwurra and the measured cadence of Wabgurra’s music had entered her belly and throbbed in her thighs. The snake was a writhing presence all around her.

‘There will be no dance of the rainmakers this year,’ David remarked with some disappointment. ‘My father says the Snake has already gorged itself.’

‘The Myalls must have asked the Rainbow Serpent for the rain,’ Apmaura added with the complete assurance of her seven years.

Emora whined and Illuta grunted with satisfaction as she pulled a bloated tick from the soft hollow beneath the dog’s shoulder.

‘The Snake does not always need the pleas of the rain makers,’ she replied. At the same time pinching off the tick’s head and throwing the inch-long body into the fire.

‘The song-cycles tell of times when the clouds were slow to give,’ Illuta’s voice took on the slow measured chant that denotes the spoken bible of the Abunda. ‘When there is no rain for a long time the feathered head of the Snake may begin to lift into the sky,’ her arms began to float upward. ‘The head of the Snake rises until its neck is straight and the hinged jaws are opened.’ Her wrists bent in an arched curve. ‘There is a great groan from the miserly clouds when they feel the breath of the Snake: David and Apmaura watched in fascination as the four fingers of Illuta’s hands became hooked teeth dripping with venom. ‘The Snake breathes bolts of fire and the terrible fangs tear open the belly of the clouds.’ Illuta’s arms fell to her sides. ‘Rain falls upon the earth.’

‘Miss Wells said there is no Snake,’ Apmaura said without emphasis. She did not question either belief.

Illuta pouted expressive lips. It was the only answer she considered necessary. That the cartographers, who hurried across this heat-scarred land, denied the Snake meant nothing to Illuta. If they saw no connection between the series of painted gorges with occasional rock pools, it was hardly surprising. Illuta was firmly convinced the entire jangaga tribe were three parts blind. To really see the Snake is to be one with the Alchera. It is necessary to prevent the protective portals of the mind from clicking shut – awareness is just beyond the field of vision. Like the hour after the first rains when the green bloom of new grass is still beneath the barren surface – as the quickened seed is to the earth, the Snake is to the Abunda. A phoenix, which does not rise rejuvenated from its ashes, but from the Alchera.

Once a year Illuta waded in the sucking mud, among the eerie stilt-like roots that are the quills of the Snake’s feathers; she hunted the giant clawed mangrove crab. Real trees grow with the base of their trunks sitting on solid earth; but the mangrove doesn’t. It thickens high up on monstrous roots, well clear of the decomposing muck it feeds on. From every branch tendrils, like long white maggots, hang limp in the fetid air of the saltwater swamp; overhead the thick canopy of leaves shut out the sun. The mangroves spread for miles along the gulf; the head of the Snake is flattened and hooded like a cobra. Under the feathers, and up to her thighs in the mud that rots and reeks and turns into liquid fertiliser IIluta caught meat for the cooking fires. At the same time she rendered the Snake a service. For just as Illuta pulled the ticks from Emora, so did she take the crabs from the Snake – they are the lice of the feathers. And Illuta? She is the handmaiden of the Gods.

For twenty miles along the gulf the plumed jaws of the Snake rest on the edge of the sea. Fifty miles of the neck is also feathered with jungle trees; the rest of the body is just as scaly and sinuous as any other reptile.

For a time Illuta and the children sat in silence, feeding the fire with sticks. ‘Miss Wells has a big map,’ David said in tardy support of his sister. He held a long stick in his hand and indicated the size of the map with marks in the sand. We showed her where we go walkabout. The Snake is not on the map.’

You sit in the Snake’s belly,’ Illuta said acidly. She raked the coals aside and uncovered a few small yams. ‘Put these in your own bellies and go back to your father’s fire. It is time to sleep.’

Illuta felt the vague disquiet which now often came with the talk of the children, She sensed a closing in. Every year of her life the tribe had united at the tail and walked to the head of the Snake. Each year Illuta marvelled afresh at the prodigious size of the child of the Rainbow Serpent. The cold fingers reached out but did not quite touch her warm velvet flesh; an icy breath was vaguely related to petrol sniffing; a faint after taste existed in bread and beef and plum jam; a hint of wrong which took a little of the pleasure from eating. Not much – just a little. The background noise of the camps held a subtle change that touched the skin of the girl more than her ears; the distant voices of children held a diluted note of difference. In play they seldom recited the song-cycles; the new meaningless words tumbled from their lips in an ever increasing flood: “Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, ... Mary had a little lamb ... The rain in Spain ...”

Illuta shifted a pile of twigs to within a couple of feet of the fire. She took a coolibah dish, scraped it across the sand and made a shallow bed. The dog Emora waited until her mistress had wriggled into a comfortable position, then she turned around twice and lay with her jaws resting against Illuta’s shoulder. Towards the dawn the dog pressed closer to feel the warm breath; the left wrist of the girl was covered by the heavy ruff of fur around Emora’s neck. Illuta’s other hand rested palm down on the handle of her nulla-nulla. In sleep all the wild things seek as much warmth and security as possible.

 

The three men closing in on the sleeping place were dark shadows, crouched low to the ground and moving with the slow care of infinite caution. They came from three sides, relying on the sheer cliff face to prevent Illuta escaping in that direction. None were armed. A warrior cannot carry weapons of defence into the lukwurra – even when he is certain a single snapping twig or rolling stone will awake an avenging fury.

Dhalja and Apilquirka were now within sixty feet of the dying campfire; trying to control their breathing as they carefully placed each foot free of sticks and loose stones. The movement required a tentative, exploratory feeling of the ground with the toes and was particularly difficult from the crouched position. It was also undignified and ludicrous for three atua-kurka to hunt a mere girl with such extreme care. In his heart each man prayed she wouldn’t wake. The strong white fangs of Emora and the expert club of her mistress would be bad enough; but the resulting wounds would be nothing to the derisive sting of the camp laughter if Illuta won her struggle and escaped.

A faint puff of morning breeze wafted down the gorge. Emora’s nostrils slightly flared to the breath of the Snake and picked up the scent of Dillungan. The dog’s nose catalogued the thousand smells into their rightful group; water, leaf, animal, grass, woman. The man scent hovered as a question mark and the pale gold eyes opened. Hardly lifting her head from Illuta’s arm Emora studied the three creeping figures; the low rumble that began in her chest was half greeting and half warning. Illuta’s breathing changed even as her eyes flicked open; a fraction of a second after Emora’s growl she was both wide-awake and fully aware of the danger. Her fingers had already closed around the club.

The glitter in Illuta’s dark eyes, as she calculated the distance between the three men, was instantly relayed to supple sinew.

Her heels dug into the sand and her back began to arch like a steel spring. Emora tuned to Illuta’s reaction, the hackles rose on her neck and bristled down her spine; simultaneously the lips of the dog and the girl drew back from their teeth. Not two seconds had passed and Dhalja had made only one step since the dog growled. Yet now it was not the sleeping they crept up on but a spine-chilling female ferocity.

Neither flight nor fight resulted. In the instant of bounding to her feet, Illuta the untamed was rejected by the woman. A change came over the girl’s face; the full lips slid back over bared teeth and the steely glitter in the dark eyes was replaced by resigned sadness. The arch went out of her spine as her body sank back into the sand. Illuta squeezed the dog’s neck in a gesture of reassurance and Emora’s hackles dropped as her fingers unclenched from the nulla-nulla. With the unconscious gesture of any timid, frightened girl, Illuta placed a hand between her legs.

In the eternity of waiting she lay shivering, the fear like a ball of ice in her cramped stomach. Yet three times IIluta whispered a demand for obedience from the dog before the men sprang on her.

The woman offered no resistance. Even as the weight of the three men drove the breath from her body, IIluta gasped a final word to Emora. For a few seconds of stunned surprise Dhalja and the others waited for the struggle to begin. Then as they raised their heads and one by one looked into the terror stricken eyes of the girl, they released her hands and legs and rose a little guiltily to their feet. In the reaction of relief the men began to laugh, Emora joined in with something between a bark and a growl.

‘We came for a wildcat and caught a mouse,’ Dillungan chuckled.

They were still laughing as Apilquirka put his hands under IIluta’s shoulders and lifted her from the ground. Dhalja and Dillungan took a leg each.

‘It is time for you to become a woman, IIluta,’ Dhalja explained with some kindness.

IIluta’s head pressed against Dillungan’s stomach. She was staring up into his face. ‘It will soon be over IIluta,’ he comforted. Although he wished IIluta no harm Dillungan hoped there would be enough blood to awaken the Earth Mother and bring his son safely to the Alchilpa.

The frantically barking Emora circled the group in nervous distraction as the men carried IIluta away. She made furious darting runs at their legs, snapping viciously a fraction of an inch from the tempting flesh of thighs. One word to Emora would have brought remorseless revenge. The word never came. Illuta had no desire to remain barren. The spirit children were waiting to enter her body and a passage must be made for them.

The atna arilta-kuma ceremony is usually performed in a blind gully which leads off the Alchilpa gorge. It is a convenient place, for there is a semi-flattened boulder about five feet long and three feet high. The top has been indented by the rain in half a dozen places and there are several cracks and fissures running through it. Most of the time it is half covered with wiry spinifex, no effort is made to keep the grass down. The stone is not an altar; it merely serves as a table where the vaginal cord can be broken. Once a year some of the cup like hollows in the rock fill with virgin blood.

A pair of dugite snakes have a hole in the cliff face, a few yards up from the stone. It is a good place to raise their young, for hawks and wedge-tailed eagles dislike to drop into a narrow gorge where a beating wing might strike a rock. There are other desirable features. One wall of the narrow passage is always in shadow and the right temperature for basking snakes can easily be maintained, merely by slithering from one side to the other. Not a great deal of small game finds its way into the gorge, but dugites are prepared for long waits between meals. The stone is a part guarantee against starvation. When the screams have died down the snakes come out from their hole in the cliff and drink from the sticky pools. Later on in the season they come back and lick at the dried flaky crust and reach their forked tongues down into the cracks. They are not the guardians of the stone – they are just hungry snakes.

Illuta began to struggle feebly as she was carried up the gorge. It was more the reflex of fear than a desire to escape. Emora, sensing Illuta’s submission, had stopped at the entrance to the pass and lain down with her head on her forepaws in an attitude of reluctant resignation. Somehow the loss of the dog’s female company sharply increased Illuta’s awareness of her own femininity. The silent bearers of her body seemed more male, more rampant.

For a few moments after being spread-eagled on the boulder the harsh physical contact of the rock helped to dull the mental anguish. Apilquirka held her arms pinned over her head and Dillungan forced her legs wide apart. He crouched with each of IIluta’s ankles held in an iron grip; the rough edges of the rock cut into her back and buttocks and a few spiky strands of spinifex were trapped beneath her shoulders. Illuta welcomed the trivial pain and discomfort of the moment.

Dhalja took the paper-bark parcel from among the grass, where he had hidden it the night before. The unwrapping was done just below Iluta’s line of sight; she could only see the tops of her knees and Dhalja’s fingers working on the string. Nobody said anything. Dillungan’s face was set in grim concentration, as he stared at the object being uncovered between her ankles.

It might have been easier if she had not seen the arilta-kuma stone but as Dhalja turned to place the wrapping aside he unconsciously lifted his left hand. Clearly, on level with her eyes, Illuta saw a huge blunt sword; far more terrible in its shining reality than any of the stories she had heard. Shocking in its width and length. For a moment she panicked and in a desperate writhing movement almost succeeded in freeing herself. Then Apilquirka threw his full weight on her outstretched arms and Dillungan jerked savagely down on her ankles.

Illuta had intended to be relaxed but her stomach muscles were cramped into steel bands even before the stone touched the flesh. She felt its cold dryness between her legs and stopped breathing. Dhalja’s hand slowly lifted with the flat of the palm poised ready. He gauged the distance for the strike; lifted the palm another three inches; slightly adjusted the angle. In one quick hard blow the stone was driven deep into her body.

Illuta did not scream. A bubbling gasp of agony exploded from her lips; her body arched and flopped convulsively against the rock. The spasm abated then began again with the searing hurt of Dhalja withdrawing the rod. The wracking torture continued for a few more seconds as the waves of pain travelled like red-hot knives through her body; before settling to a raw, throbbing soreness.

Even with the ceremonial breaking of the cord completed, Illuta was not yet free to go. It was customary for either one or all three of the initiates to have access to the newly created woman. Illuta knew this to be the accepted price of the operation; she had no moral ground for refusal.

While Dhalja was rewrapping the stone, Dillungan shifted his grip from her ankles to her thighs and began to climb up on the rock. The girl stared into his face, saw the parted lips, the quick rise and fall of his chest; she turned her head to the side and a sob constricted the sinews of her throat. Dillungan had almost reached a kneeling position on the rock when Illuta went berserk. Her legs snapped up and shot out like twin pile-drivers; Dillungan took the solid kick from both feet full in the face. He yelled as he went flying backwards and landed on his head in the spinifex. Dhalja spun around but it was too late; Illuta had torn herself free of Apilquirka’s relaxed grip and was running as she threw herself clear of the boulder. She easily side-stepped Dhalja’s fumbling grab. A high pitched call came from her lips as she sprinted for the end of the gully.

Dhalja and Apilquirka lost what little enthusiasm they had for the chase even before they came to the opening of the Alchilpa. Emora held them off until Illuta was well clear. Then the dog and the girl were running down the gorge in full view of the camp and the sacrifice of dignity was not worth the improbable chance of capture.

The mail plane from Darwin flew overhead while the men were making their way back to camp. Dillungan was rubbing his head and spitting blood from a cut lip, while the other two were making valiant attempts to stop laughing and sympathise with their fellow councillor. Illuta heard the plane; she was crouched by a small rock pool out of sight of the camp. Emora was trying to dig a lizard out from between two rocks and Illuta was scooping handfuls of water out of the pool and washing her thighs. Neither bothered to look up.

---

Intro | Part One.1 | Part One.2 | Part Two | Title