The Explorers (55 page)

Michael Terry was a prospector who has been characterised as ‘the last explorer', and in a sense he was, for in the 1930s he pushed deep into the uncharted and hostile deserts of Western Australia on camel back. There he encountered ‘warramulla blacks' in meetings and confrontations reminiscent of those experienced by Sturt and others a century before. He also had a wonderful sense of humour, and an impeccable sense of when to turn back. We first encounter him west of Alice Springs as he gets to know his camels, and then at Lake Mackay where he gives up the chase for his el dorado.

Having selected a dead bush for firewood, and two less than usually denuded tress for shade, the camels were wooshed down.

‘Quiet feller Lockey, and quiet feller Jack,' Ben admonished the boys not to hurry them. Nothing irritates a camel more than to have its noseline jerked. One light pull, perhaps a tap on its knee with your foot is enough. It may look round a bit as though composing itself for descent; that's its style so leave it alone and move on to the next.

In a jiffy Stan had dried timber in flame. The boys mustered the quart pots, their own and ours, filled them from a tap in a canteen, put them by the fire. Ben and I undid a flap on one of the kitchen boxes, pulled out the tucker box, carried it over to the tree, spread a piece of cloth on the table (the ground) and set out the rations.

A chunk of corned beef on a slab of damper and a lump of brownie
^*
for the boys. Carved corned beef and slices of damper with butter on a plate for us—what we had they had.

‘Boil-oh; up and at it,' sang out Stan from the fire, ‘bring over the tea.'

‘Tucker ready, Lockey. Come up.'

The boys walked over from their own shade, stood at the table whilst I handed them their rations, walked to the fire to collect their quart pots of tea, brought them to me for sugar, and returned to their own camp whilst we settled down in ours.

Barely had we begun to feed when Dolly, for no apparent reason, stood up. Down went Ben's plate, up went his hand to her noseline, down went Dolly.

That's the trial of crib time. Some days the team sits quietly; other days one after another they get up and destroy the peace and rest of the hour.

Now whilst we sat at food, my riding camel, Rocket, so far unnamed, sort of christened himself. We noticed a habit peculiar in that his stomach gases seemed to ricochet through his body. Watching him, we went into hoots of laughter.

He would open his mouth and belch noisily. Then almost immediately up would go his tail as a sort of rebound of internal gases issued beneath. That was nothing special, but what was peculiar was the odd pellet or two ejected at the same time. He had a range of six to eight feet and hit the camel behind!

‘My word, that's marvellous, never seen it before. Like a gun going off. No, it's not, it's like… it's like… I know what—one of those weird rocket cars some cranky Hun invented.' So Rocket got his name…

How interesting it was to gaze, about ten miles west, on the vast white expanse of Lake Mackay, knowing we were probably the first of our kind to see it from the ground as Mackay reported it from the air only two years before.

Shimmering in the mirage, its brilliant glare threw up into strong relief the redness of the desert, the sombre hue of such herbage as crept to its shores. Samphire flats dense with low saline-loving shrubs and stunted ti-tree lined the lake edge. In the distance this border, almost black to the eye, became an irregular line of cleavage, a third component in a colour scheme hitherto predominated by the mingled hue of spinifex and sand. Sharp and clear were the nearest shores of the lake; the further ones quite indistinguishable, for a screen of ghostly white vapour, the mirage curtain, hid all sights a few miles out. Low promontories of scrub-covered sand protruded into the lake, deep bays between, and like long palsied fingers seeking to clutch the unwary, attenuated arms of this dead white sea ran out from the main bed. Islands here, islands there, some mere dots, others many acres in extent, one in particular seemingly dense with tall dark trees, took monotony from the scene, which, though not at all of beauty, possessed a certain wild majestic grandeur, a ferocity, a savagery wholly in keeping with the scene of which it was but a part.

Once possibly deep with calm sweet waters, forest bound where curious animals and quaint folk may have dwelt before the skies became pitiless, this vast lake gave one to ponder on its first happiness. For though geology is not an exact science it does admit this huge hinterland to have become its present deadened self beneath the merciless inquisition of its agents. Denudation by frost and wind and rain, aridity resultant from the change of climate and other agents in all powerful array have conquered and remodelled such a place as this. Deserts have not existed in their present shapes and places through the world since the dawn of time—time and nature have evolved them as partners to the present easy lands in a scheme beyond the true conception of enlightened man.

Which, after all, to those who gazed upon this scene was of interest great and strong—but of no comfort at all. We had to live, and pondering would not deepen native wells nor quench the thirst of dry-throated camels…

Soon Lake Mackay, probably larger than Lake Amadeus, hitherto regarded as largest of all west of the Overland Telegraph line, was reached.

We took the camels on to the surface, but the test was far from satisfactory. The briny character of the surface caused their large pads to slip. They slithered about, broke noselines, ran dire risk of tumbling over altogether, being not built by nature for boggy places.

‘No good, we'll have to stick to the shore'.

So northwards we moved till the sun was low. Over each high sandhill which ran to the very edge of the lake the camels struggled slowly, then across the loose incompact surface of a samphire swamp to the next sandhill. Their pads sank in six inches; laboriously they made each step, at times refusing altogether to go ahead, fearful always of ground at all treacherous. We had to beat the riding camels to make them lead the way and break the track, an exertion which made one sweat profusely, for of late the weather had warmed up considerably; the air had a distinct touch of summer and, as the lonely outfit struggled along, a dust of fine briny particles rose all about to make matters worse. Eyes smarted; throats became dry, the voice hoarse. Thirsty and filthy, begrimed and without any hope of a wash, we slept uncleansed. An evil odour pervaded each man; he hated it but in philosophy disregarded it. Arms, necks, faces, dust-coated on top of sunburnt flesh a mixture of white from the swamp and black from the camp fires, where sweat had streaked down. Eyes sticky and gummy with unwashed lids, clothes whitened in the folds where perspiration had dried, we must have looked a pretty sight. But cheerful withal for, being absorbed by the task, thoughts ever ahead on the far horizon, one was able to rise above dirt and discomfort, the ever present flies and the hard tucker, to see the purpose behind these trials, to understand the reason of our tribulations. And able to laugh as well (which the leader should always encourage, no matter what the subject) for if one loses that golden faculty then life becomes a serious matter, and as I once heard a man say in this type of country, ‘It seems to be clutching at me'. That is the start of ‘cafard', the beginning of a desert madness with which one unfitted for this task can be seized, lose his balance, become panicky, and a misery to his mates. Incidentally, he may perish himself for no just reason.

That night was the first warm one of the trip, even sultry, and flickers of lightning played about the southern horizon. Oh! for a thunderstorm—how I prayed for it before sleep, deep and refreshing, banished care till piccaninny daylight.

By crib time we had encircled the north-east corner of the lake and had made some progress westwards. Having eaten, we climbed a high sandhill, for the time of decision had arrived. All camels were dry, Rocket in particular was causing me anxiety and by his crying made matters far worse for himself.

Gathered in a little group we studied the horizon, the landscape near and far with eyes and glasses until…

‘My word look at that!'

Isn't it a beauty!'

‘Something to look at anyway.'

The spectacle which riveted the attention of all hands was a new range, a tall imposing one, even at that distance strong in the mirage. Far away to the west, distant no more than thirty miles (although it seemed to be fifty miles, but that was distortion by mirage) stood this feature whose high points appeared to be 800 feet above the surrounding country.

‘Might' em spring that way,' said the boys.

‘What do you think about it, Stan?'

‘I'm willing to go ahead—should be a good water there.'

‘What about you, Ben?'

‘No, too great a risk. Looks a sure thing if it wasn't for the drought.'

‘What'Ve you got to say, Boss?' they asked.

For a while I gazed through the glasses, put them down, smoked thoughtfully. It was indeed the hour of decision, an hour of particular difficulty by reason of that cursed new range which, like the finger of a devilish siren, beckoned, oh so temptingly! almost mocked one's courage to proceed where each man so fervently desired. Without this sight the decision to retreat, already partly formed, would have been so easy, so obvious.

‘Well, boys, here's where each man has his say. You've had yours; mine's the casting vote. And this is how I sum it up. It's darned easy to walk into a tragedy, and a hell of a scramble to get out. In fact, it's pretty clear if we go ahead and that range lets us down none of us'll ever see home and mother again. If the camels don't get a drink in a very little over three days we're going to have a smash. The risk isn't good enough, so I vote no.'

Silent, depressed, we turned down the sandhill. What a miserable decision, right on the border of Western Australia, with rocks to tempt for hope of water and gold, far far out from our base, deep in the arid desert, to have to turn our backs on the promised land for a few miserable, invaluable, essential gallons of water. But life is very sweet; and judgment, experience, appreciation of all factors, is the unseen hand which places the weights correctly to determine the true values, keeps wisely poised the balance between life and death.
^†

^*
Bush cake.

^†
A year later Terry learned from Aborigines that the range in question, the Ross Range, was dry when he saw it. To have gone on would have meant certain death.

O
LIVE
P
INK

Stabbed in Back by Fates, 1933

Miss Olive Pink was a formidable individual who, in the early 1930s, left depression-struck Sydney for life as a field anthropologist among the Walbiri of central Australia. Her letters to her doctoral supervisor, Professor A. P. Elkin of Sydney University, are numerous and lengthy, her mounting frustration at delays in receiving funding indicated first by capitals, then red underlining, and finally by entirely vermilion missives. She is the only explorer in this anthology who sends a telegram. Ill with severe dysentery, she wired Elkin: ‘
STABBED IN BACK BY FATES
'. On 30 October 1933 she headed a letter: ‘Oonmundjee, Central Australia, about 280 miles W of Alice Springs (perhaps 230 only, am not sure until I return).'

A lost explorer maybe, but one who returned with fascinating insights. She scribbled into her notebook this list of items carried by an Aboriginal woman. It is a detailed inventory of a kind never made by male explorers.

A W
OMAN'S
P
OSSESSIONS
& R
EQUIREMENTS

Domestic Utensils
four types of wooden vessels (sometimes more than one of a
kind)
two grinding stones, one large and flat, one small
old digging sticks for pokers and loosening earth
fine grass or fine vine used to prevent water slopping over…

Personal Use
yam stick (digging-stick) used like spade
fire stick (i.e., a short piece of wood with smouldering embers still attached)
ligatures and bandages of vine
a waddi (have not seen it in use)
flints for cutting food (now European knives)
native tobacco (chewed now, but whether prior to whites'
introduction to their tobacco I don't know)
improvised handkerchiefs (of grass or leaves)
? pubic apron only used at certain periods (if at all?) (This is quite
uncertain. I have never seen one worn. Whether adults wear this
is uncertain. A bride does on her wedding night apparently.)
fur string upper chest protector
rabbit-bandicoot tails (for head)
neck bands of fur string
head bands of fur string
nose bone, whether of wood or bone (uncertain for women).
Men use both.

Cosmetics etc
larvae of termites
grease from animals and lizards
red ochre
yellow ochre
white lime
(charcoal—for women—uncertain. I think not used.)