A Long Way From Home Read online

  15

  While anthropologists might frown on the practice, or deny the very possibility, I cannot believe this is the first and only time the subject of an anthropological study saw the final published paper or that the recipient of Oceania No. 43, like anyone living a quotidian life, was not affected by the sight of his name in print.

  ‘Tom the Tailor’ was certainly Tom Tailor or the Punka Wallah. The thrust of the paper confirmed that he certainly had a ‘new Law’ and this was occasion, in the writer’s view, for considerable amazement i.e. final proof that Aboriginal Australians were no different from other peoples who had suffered from colonial oppression. ‘Few societies under foreign domination accept that position in silence. Objections are indicated in a collectively anti-colonial mood, and in more specific movements of emancipation.’ The article in Oceania showed how certain survivors in the West Kimberley had raided the Christian Bible, taken possession of Noah’s Ark and turned it into an instrument of resistance against the white oppressors. I don’t know if it might be called a cult, a Law, or a religion, but it was certainly in a ‘book’.

  It was ancestral beings, I learned in Oceania, who had appeared to Tom the Tailor and given him this ark. It was on no whitefellah map, but was said to be somewhere near the old trade routes beyond Mardowarra. In its hold were gold and jewels and crystals.

  The former mission tailor had declared himself the boss of the Law of the Ark which said a mighty rain would come to flood his country, that it would be a rain of Holy Water which would make the skins of blackfellahs turn white. The blackfellahs would be ready for the deluge and they would climb aboard the ark and all the kartiya would drown. This ark was not a made up story. It was attested to by sacred boards. It was a real ark in a real place and it was a secret, so dangerous that if you saw it accidentally you must be killed.

  As he was not a popular figure in the camp, I doubted the Punka Wallah had many followers. Just the same he possessed a certain malevolent power and I was not pleased to find myself the object of his will.

  Doctor Battery had a bad eye but the other one was good, and he was respected for his marksmanship, always returning to the camp with tucker for those whose totem forbade them to eat kangaroo. All he needed was a car to take him shooting in the bush. He could drive himself, as he often said, which was why I kept the distributor rotor in my pocket, so my precious getaway was safe in my control.

  Crowbar also hunted but, more importantly, he was a father of four girls and thus had his own uses for my car. The other teacher – my poor predecessor – had driven girls and boys to the Fifteen Mile where there was a reliable swimming hole, even in the dry. As the weather had become unbearably hot, I had followed his Volkswagen tracks to water, and you would never guess how many pupils I fitted into that Peugeot, fifteen inside and more on the roof rack. During those happy days I would be quite astonished to see what my life had become – faster, faster, Uncle Redex – those bare feet hanging over the windscreen and over the side.

  As long as I lived at Quamby Downs, there was no escape from this responsibility. Carter eked out petrol for us and sometimes it was a gift, and sometimes he charged me on my store account, but it was never more than four of five gallons, not enough for me to do a bunk. As a result we were forever running out, and filth was then sucked from the tank into the carburettor miles from home and the next week’s work would all centre on getting the vehicle back to life, transporting Doctor Battery and petrol and a plastic basin in which to wash the parts. I was only one of many servants to the cause.

  I had never had so satisfying a class in all my life, which does not mean that I stopped preparing for my escape, collecting my own bottles and flagons of petrol, stashing them behind a stack of timber offcuts in the storeroom where Alice, on some professional mission of her own, discovered them.

  She took my hand and led me to my stash and, for once, I could not make her smile no matter how I clowned for her. She worried what might be done to me as punishment for being complicitous in Tom Tailor’s bad business.

  As for that particular business, I am still not at liberty to disclose any more than what is publicly known but I did discover, in my own classroom, more evidence of the resistance that white anthropologists had hitherto denied. This came from my shyest pupil, Charley Hobbes.

  Charley was small and sleek and delicate with large dark eyes and, while generally displaying the most anxious disposition, had it in his power to lift your heart with his lovely smile. He chose to sit furthest from the front, closest to the outside, the hottest part of the room but the one from which he might effect a fast escape and where he had sat on a particular morning, with Oliver Emu close on one side and Susie Shuttle on the other.

  Charley had come to the station with his father who had been employed on the company’s other property. The story he brought into our classroom was like a leaf that had blown hundreds of miles from its source at Victoria Downs where Charley’s family were descendants of survivors of a massacre. He was one of those of whom Carter said ‘he gives no trouble’.

  His voice was quiet as moth wings and I could not hear a single word he said. It was calm barrel chested Susie Shuttle whose ear he spoke into and Susie Shuttle who repeated every word in a good strong voice, doing him the honour I never heard her grant another child. I mean, she did not correct his English, or attempt to make his ‘Captain Cook’ comply with the historical record which would have kept the Englishman skulking around the coast. She enlivened Charley’s injured whisper with sarcasm and indignation and many other registers which never survived the class transcription but are horribly easy to imagine as you read.

  Captain Cook came out from Big England. He got to Sydney. He git all the books from London, Big England. Bring a lot of men, a lot of horse, rifle, bullock. ‘Ah, this nice country. You got fish here?’ Yes, we got plenty fish kangaroo everything. Captain Cook look around. ‘Very pretty country. Any more people around here?’

  ‘Oh yes, there’s a mob in the bush, looking for a bit of fish and tucker. A lot of food old people get easy.’

  Captain Cook got a big ship. He got a jetty. He roll down guns and he been shooting there for maybe three weeks. Shooting all the people. Women get shot shot [sic], kids get knocked out. Then he packs up his gear and gets back in his boat go up around Australia. Goes in this pocket there. Big mob of Aboriginal people by this bay.

  ‘This we country. We never look at whitefellah come through here. We can be ready for you. Git a big mob spear.’

  Captain Cook put the bullet in his magazine, start to shooting people, same like Sydney. ‘Really beautiful country,’ Captain Cook reckoned. ‘That’s why I’m cleaning up people, take it away.’

  Captain Cook follow the sea right around. ‘I’d like to put my building there. I like to put my horses there.’

  Captain Cook been sendem over shooting lotta people. Horses been galloping all over Australia, hunting all these people. Still, people been running away, still. Can’t catch up. Horse can’t gallop in over rough place or them caves.

  That’s right. We been ready for whitefellahs alright. Our people been really, really cranky. They don’t want white people here. Hit em with a spear, kill em.

  They been fight whitefellah. They been have a spear and whitefellah been have a rifle. If whitefellow been come up got no bit of a gun, couldn’t been roundem up, killing all the people. They never been give him fair go.

  Captain Cook reckons, ‘This no more blackfellah country. Belong to me fellow,’ he said. ‘I’m going to put my place. Anywhere I can put him.’ Him been bring lotta book from Big England right here now. They got that book for Captain Cook from England. And that’s his Law. Book belong to Captain Cook, that means all belong to Captain Cook.

  The old people really frighten for the white people coming from Big England. And they been really, really sad, poor buggers. Anybody sick, anybody sick in the guts or in the head, Captain Cook orders: ‘Don’t give him medicine. Don’t give him medi
cine. When they getting crook old people, you killem him first. When they on the job, that’s right, you can have them on the job. But don’t payem him. Let him work for free. Any children come round, you can have the stockman killem. We’ll still hold that people, and don’t letem go. Any man come sick, boy, anything like that, blind man, don’t give him medicine. You take him in a dry gully and knock him.’

  Susie Shuttle touched Charley’s little hand and whispered in his ear.

  ‘And after that,’ she said (and Doctor Battery’s grandson wrote), ‘women, women got a bit of baby, don’t let him grow that baby. Just kill that baby.’

  Charley was shaking now, anyone could see that the carcass of his history was just too big for his skinny body and he began to weep and Susie Shuttle and Oliver Emu wept with him and my entire class became very silent and I was frightened of what I had done, but also emotional, and angry, and I promised them that I would do all I could do, that I would begin now and not stop, no matter how long it took, until I had completely inscribed the entire saga on the wall.

  I was not thinking about Cricket Carter or the Western Australian education department. I was not thinking of anything but my own rage and so, blinded by self-righteousness, I had completely forgotten that I had inscribed CAPTAIN COOK 1770 and that it now lay hidden, like a landmine, beneath the kalsomine.

  16

  Sebastian Laski

  Appraiser rare books, maps, early manuscripts.

  26 Glenhaven Court, Box Hill, Victoria. Tel: BW-9628

  Dear Willy-willy, Oceania daubed with blood and ochre? Well blow me down. What would our favourite Collection Manager do to get his gloved hands on that ‘votive object’? I assume it is now beyond his reach (and your reach too, which is probably just as well). You have shown an amazing talent for finding trouble. I write ‘trouble’ thinking not of Adelina or your son – although they can never be absent from my mind – but of our recent visit to your rentier in Bacchus Marsh who we found in a state of great anxiety about your arrears. He had already advertised your house, ‘vacant possession’, and was beside himself with relief when Dorotea and I arrived to remove your library. He seemed a decent enough chap (for a rentier) but he did find it necessary to twice remind me that we would be paid nothing for our work. At the same time he stressed that he lacked the legal authority to grant me possession of your goods and chattels. He resolved this by cleverly deciding that we had come as prospective tenants and that he would leave the keys on his desk for us to make our own inspection. Having said that, he typed up a PERMISSION TO INSPECT and signed it and we drove up the hill to Lerderderg Street presumably intent on larceny.

  He had given us due warning of the condition of your kitchen which seemed to me (if not Dorotea) what one would expect of a desperado in your circumstances. In any case, we were bibliophiles not kitchen maids and it was your library we had come for after all.

  To this end we had brought with us he who was to inherit it from you, young Neil. Dorotea had thought this a psychologically ill-conceived idea but Adelina had already told the little fellow what we were to do, and then he could talk of nothing else but you, his father, and where you had lived and all the books that would be now his to read or sell as he thought fit. I thought this normal, Dorotea peculiar.

  He is only six but, having spent many Saturdays at his mother’s table at the South Melbourne Market, is no slouch in the selling department. Your wife, as I am sure you have reason to know, has a rare eye and that cluttered table has always yielded treasure each time we have visited. We never bought from pity (as she clearly thought we did) but from amazement that such art nouveau might be found so far from Europe. In any case, there is little doubt that your books will soon find their way to that table and there serve a useful purpose.

  It was the thought of his inheritance that had the little fellow so bright and jumpy in the rentier’s dank office and that gentleman, for his part, could not take his eyes off the black child, the very first he’d seen, so he told me sotto voce.

  Dorotea was irate but very quiet through all of this, standing close beside Neil with her hand on his level little shoulder, clearly imagining some great racist damage would be done to him, but it was not so at all. Once we were inside your residence it was as sweet as Christmas morning. What fun to hear his smart questions, about the bindings, for instance.

  How, I wondered, can a boy love his father via the medium of a dusty book? Well, he can and does. He was also strangely curious about the value of his inheritance and I soon had to declare a ban on all estimates until the books were back in St Kilda.

  Dorotea, of course, continually prevented me from exerting myself, as if a box of books would cause a second stroke. That was patent nonsense, although I must admit to being a less effective machine than previously.

  We were in the middle of our work when I had a new reason to reflect on your talent for finding trouble, for we were set upon by a pert little creature, by no means unattractive even if she was dressed for a square dance.

  This was Missus from next door, demanding to know who we thought we were.

  When we declared ourselves your servants she as good as called us liars and demanded proof, which we obviously could not supply.

  You were returning home to Bacchus Marsh, she said, as fervent as a Christian.

  I said our information was quite otherwise and it then became embarrassingly clear from her tremor that you had formed some intimate alliance with her. Dorotea kicked my ankle and what could I do but insist on the veracity of my statement. Your neighbour left in distress and there was nothing for it but to fill the little van with books.

  I stood guard in the street waiting to explain myself to the police.

  Instead the next door Missus returned, red eyed and contrite, carrying a pot of tea and cups and milk and biscuits on a tray which she set down on the front verandah. It was then Neil saw her and it seemed he had met her in Melbourne and she was a Redex driver and you, good grief, had been a navigator.

  As far as we had known you could not even drive, so we were gobsmacked by this new persona. And then further surprised that the pert Missus was previously familiar with Neil and Adelina and the noble Madison. Seeing all of these connections I thought there could be no harm in giving her what she craved: your address in Quamby Downs.

  Now my ankles are bruised blue and I am informed by my wife that I am a grand old fool but I hardly think it likely your admirer will come knocking on your door. Dorotea, who is very concerned for you, sends you a frowning sort of love. I have rescued a few Oceanias from your very sneezy house and, seeing you are caught in a new craze, will send them to you, together with some of A.B. Paterson’s doggerel which will say better than I can that we miss you very much.

  I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better

  Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,

  He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,

  Just ‘on spec’, addressed as follows, ‘Clancy, of The Overflow’.

  And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,

  (And I think the same was written in a thumb-nail dipped in tar)

  ‘Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:

  ‘Clancy’s gone to Queensland droving, and we don’t know where he are.’

  Sebastian

  17

  In Bacchus Marsh, the nights turned hot. The fire brigade became busy. It being almost Christmas, pine saplings were tied to verandah posts of the Courthouse Hotel. The Courthouse introduced a bargain counter lunch (T-bone for five shillings) and I was happy being spared the job of cooking for Titch and his ‘associates’. It was in this pub, supposedly, that Titch hatched the plan for buying Federal Tyre Discount.

  This deal stank of Thacker, Green and Dunstan, and all those blowflies who had descended on our life. Left to himself Titch would be content to be a dealer with a franchise.

  The syndicate had made bi
g money on their bet, although the actual amount of the winnings went up and down according to the beer or the moon or the tides at Ocean Grove. Izzie Green patted my hand and said I was a nervous little mouse.

  After that I shut my trap and did my best to make sure the Bacchus Marsh business survived all this fame and fortune. Many afternoons there was no-one but me on the showroom floor. Of course the customers did not expect to find a woman. Sometimes they could not see me. They asked to see a salesman and I said that was me and often they were deaf. This proved difficult for all concerned but I had a nice smile and I began wearing skirts and if I could get a cup of tea into their hand they would have time to learn I knew my onions. I never contradicted or argued. I never said it was me, Mrs Bobs, who had been the co-winner of the Redex Trial. Nine times out of ten I would take the vehicle around to the prospect’s house ‘after tea so your missus can try it on for size’. Sometimes the house was on a potato farm at Bullengarook and then I took the kids as well. I was no Titch, but I was no slouch. My husband was generous enough to say so and I liked the praise. I also liked how busy I became, for the new demands of life took my mind off certain disappointments. I was almost thirty, and of course the honeymoon was over. Alas, the more capable I became, the more my husband felt free to be away.

  I never thought life would be a fairytale. The trussed-up pine saplings wilted and lost their needles. The syndicate formed a Pty Ltd Company to buy the chain of tyre stores with five outlets in the Melbourne suburbs. Mr Green explained that the mortgage was ‘self financing’, whatever that meant. He had just made a fortune when Rising Fast failed to win at Flemington, but I was not convinced. I was waiting for a crash that didn’t seem to come.