The Explorers (57 page)

The strong one, the hating one, the powerful one was mocking me, laughing at me.

‘You've gone too far this time. I've got you now and I hate you. You're disgusting, aren't you? You're nothing. And I have you now, I knew it would come, sooner or later. There's no use fighting me you know, there's no one to help you. I've got you, I've got you.'

Another voice was calm and warm. She commanded me to lie down and be calm. She instructed me to not let go, not give in. She reassured me that I would find myself again if I could just hold on, be quiet and lie down.

The third voice was screaming.

Diggity woke me at dawn. I was some distance from camp, cramped, and cold to my bones. The sky was cold, pale blue and pitiless, like an Austrian psychopath's eyes. I walked out into the time warp again. I was only half there, like an automaton. I knew what I had to do. ‘You must do this, it will keep you alive. Remember.' I walked out into that evil whispering sea. Like an animal, I sensed a menace, everything was quite still, but threatening, icy, beneath the sun's heat. I felt it watching me, following me, waiting for me.

I tried to conquer the presence with my own voice. It croaked out into the silence and was swallowed by it. ‘All we have to do,' it said, ‘is reach Mount Fanny, and there is certain to be water there. Just one step and another, that's all I have to do, I must not panic' I could see what had to be Mount Fanny in the hot blue distance, and I wanted to be there, protected by those rocks, more than anything I'd ever wanted. I knew I was being unreasonable. There was more than enough water to get by on to Wingelinna. But the camels, I'd been so sure they'd do a week comfortably. I hadn't planned on the sudden dryness—the lack of green feed. ‘But there'll be water there, of course there will. Haven't they told me so? What if there's not? What if the mill's run dry? What if I miss it? What if this thin little piece of string that keeps me tied to my camels breaks? What then? Walk walk walk, sandhills for ever, they all looked the same. I walked as if on a treadmill—no progress, no change. The hill came closer so slowly. ‘How long is it now? A day? This is the longest day. Careful. Remember, it's just a day. Hold on, mustn't let go. Maybe a car will come. No cars. What if there's no water, what will I do? Must stop this. Must stop. Just keep walking. Just one step at a time, that's all it takes.' And on and on and on went that dialogue in my head. Over and over and round and round.

Late in the afternoon—long creeping shadows. The hill was close. ‘Please please let me be there before night. Please don't let me be here in the dark. It will engulf me.'

It must be over the next sandhill surely. No, then the next one. OK, all right, the next, no the next, no the next. Please god, am I mad. The hill is there, I can almost touch it. I started to yell. I started to shout stupidly at the dunes. Diggity licked my hand and whined but I could not stop. I had being doing this for ever. I walked in slow motion. Everything was slowing down.

And then, over the last sandhill, I was out of the dunes. I crouched on the rocks, weeping, feeling their substance with my hands. I climbed steadily, up the rocky escarpment, away from that terrible ocean of sand. The rocks were heavy and dark and strong. They rose up like an island. I crawled over this giant spine, where it emerged from the waves in a fuzz of green. I looked back to the immensity of where I had been. Already the memory was receding—the time, the aching time of it. Already, I had forgotten most of the days. They had sunk away from memory, leaving only a few peaks that I could recall. I was safe.

W. J. P
EASLEY

A Frontier Closes, 1977

The great drought of the late 1970s had the Aboriginal people of Wiluna worried. They knew that there was still one old couple ‘out there' in the western Gibson Desert, living as their people had always done. But could they survive, alone, in the extreme conditions of the drought? Their concern prompted Western Australian doctor W. J. Peasley to undertake his epic search by four-wheel drive for ‘The Last of the Nomads'. Its successful conclusion ended a major phase of Australian exploration, for with the removal of Warri and Yatungka from the desert, the frontier between autonomous Aboriginal and European cultures had vanished, just 189 years after it opened in Sydney Cove.

Soon after leaving the depot we crossed an area of burnt country and Mudjon again found the footprints of Warri and Yatungka. They were moving towards the east-north-east, heading towards the waterhole that existed out in that direction.

Nine and a half kilometres further on we came to a well known as Ngargin, located amongst some rather pathetic looking mulga trees. Several small windbreaks had been erected in the vicinity, suggesting that Warri and Yatungka had been able to obtain a little water and had remained there until the well was dry.

We continued to the east-north-east for another twenty-one kilometres to the well of Wangabaddi. Mudjon was our navigator, we relied on his knowledge of the country to guide us. He was leading us from one waterhole to another through almost featureless country, without tracks to guide him or a compass to assist him. He shrugged his shoulders, as was his fashion, when we commented on his skill, saying it ‘was nothing,' that he was following the ‘main road.' By this he meant we were travelling the same paths that his people had trodden for centuries as they moved between the wells. But one associates a main road with a broad track of cleared country along which vehicles of all descriptions can travel, while the ‘road' we moved along was unmarked by a single vehicle. There was not even the faintest suggestion of a footpath to indicate that the desert people once moved to and fro across the land.

Wangabaddi soak was located in the centre of a flat stony clearing about a hundred metres in diameter. A few spindly mulga trees struggled to survive in the rocky ground, although on the northern edge of the clearing grew a little clump of healthier looking specimens.

The well was three and a half metres deep, and it would have been an extremely difficult and even dangerous undertaking to climb into, and out of, the shaft, especially if one was in a weakened condition. The well was dry and not even the slightest moisture could be found after extensive digging.

Warri and Yatungka had camped at Wangabaddi on many occasions in the past. The remains of many fires and several windbreaks were discovered, and at one of their old campsites was a spear, a digging stick, several old cans and a grinding stone. What was of special interest was something wrapped in a piece of ancient canvas wedged in the fork of a mulga tree about forty-six metres from the well. Mudjon appeared not to notice the object and made no comment although I was certain his keen eyes would have seen it long before we did. We were fascinated by it but as Mudjon was acting in a peculiar manner we did not wish to investigate immediately for fear of offending him.

Our first thought was that either Warri or Yatungka had died and the remains had been placed in the tree, and Mudjon's actions reinforced that assumption. We waited until he had moved off to the north, past the clump of mulga and out onto the sandy spinifex plain to search for footprints before we attempted to examine it.

John Hanrahan climbed the tree and passed the bundle down for inspection. The covering was a piece of tattered canvas, possibly the remains of a groundsheet that Warri had been given long ago. It was unfolded carefully and with some trepidation, and the contents were found to be not human remains as we expected, but the bones of an animal! What on earth was the reason for wrapping animal bones in canvas and placing them high in a mulga tree at Wangabaddi? Was it possible that one of the Aboriginal couple's dogs had died and they had given it a tree burial? Closer examination showed the remains to be those of a kangaroo, but the mystery remained.

When Mudjon returned from his excursion out on the plain the bundle had been replaced in position in the tree and once more he made no reference to it, passing close by without a glance towards it. Anxious to hear his explanation I mentioned our discovery to him. His eyes remained on the ground, indicating that he was fully aware of its presence and that he was a little afraid of it.

We did not inform him that we had taken it down and had some knowledge of the contents because, again, we did not wish to offend him. He offered no suggestion as to what the bundle might contain but in response to my question as to whether it might be ‘secret business' he replied, ‘Might be,' and did not wish to talk about the matter any further.

Ninety metres south of the well was a semicircle composed of five stones of the same type of greyish-white quartz we had seen at Walloogoobal. They were firmly set into the ground and a distance of six metres separated the two ends of the arrangement. These, too, were the work of Warrida of the Dreamtime. He had found water at Wangabaddi, he had camped there and had left the mysterious stones to indicate he had passed that way.

A little further to the south was a small cleared area with several artefacts on the periphery. The place, said Mudjon, was a little dancing ground where formerly his people, when camped at the well, would dance and follow a path that wound past the stones of Warrida towards the waterhole.

On leaving Wangabaddi we continued in an easterly direction towards the sandhills to the north, and after travelling twenty-four kilometres a remarkable little hill capped with yellow-pink sandstone was visible a little to the south-east. Although it was off the ‘main road' it had often been visited by the Mandildjara in the past, for near its base was a rockhole, and the waterhole and hill were together known as Birri Birri.

Here, at Mudjon's request, we halted in a clearing for he wished to fire some high spinifex and scrub which grew in a shallow depression running across the open space. The tinder-dry grass burned with an intense heat, igniting the green scrub and sending enormous columns of black smoke skywards.

From the top of the vehicle we looked towards Ngarinarri, about thirty kilometres distant, but the sky remained clear. Mudjon did not appear at all surprised for, he said, Warri and Yatungka had not replied to our earlier signals and he did not expect an answer on that occasion. They did not send up smoke because they could not and he again indicated that they were dead.

We pushed on towards Ngarinarri and after going six and a half kilometres further to the east, we rounded the eastern extremity of the sandhills and turned to the north-east. There were sandhills still to be crossed before we could reach the well but they were no longer an obstacle to our progress.

In the cabin of the vehicle it was hot and noisy as we ground along for another nine and a half kilometres. There was little talk, for all us had been affected by Mudjon's profound depression: we wanted desperately to get to Ngarinarri but feared what we might discover there. It was late afternoon and we knew we could not reach the well that day and we were pleased, for it would be better to approach it in the morning, rather than stumble onto it in the darkness.

The vehicle heaved itself up a low sand ridge and as we reached the crest Mudjon, who had been sitting quietly beside me, apparently uninterested in the world about him, suddenly shouted and pointed excitedly to the north. There was smoke out there, he said, he was sure he had seen smoke. We peered in the direction he indicated and there it was, a faint wisp of smoke spiralling into the blue-grey sky of that late hour of the day.

There were great cries of joy from all members of the party. There was somebody alive out there, somebody had survived the long walk to Ngarinarri. Was it Warri or was it Yatungka or were, by some miracle, both of them alive? Mudjon was overjoyed that at least one of his people would be found alive after having convinced himself that his old friends had perished.

I took a fix on the smoke and found it bore two degrees from north, and on looking at the map I found that the spot that Mudjon had indicated previously as being Ngarinarri's position, was within half a degree of that bearing.

We wanted to press on with all speed to reach the well but it was an impossible task and darkness forced us to make camp in a valley between sand ridges where there was a little wood for our fire. On top of the ridge to the north grew a large and rather gnarled tree and Mudjon, who was now in a euphoric mood, said that it had been growing for a very long time. He had seen it many times before on his journeys between Ngarinarri and Wangabaddi and the old people had told him it had always been there, that it had been planted there in the Dreamtime.

As we sat round our camp fire that night, Mudjon spoke animatedly of the times that he had roamed the desert with Warri, where they had hunted and what they had hunted. He was obviously tremendously relieved by the sighting a few hours previously and he talked about his people far into the night.

We were all excited at the prospect of finding the Aboriginal couple alive, but at the same time I had a strange feeling of uneasiness, perhaps it was sadness. I could not help feeling that that night would be the last that Warri and Yatungka (presuming both were alive) would spend alone in the desert together if they chose to return to Wiluna with us. The long years they had spent together without the company of other human beings, wandering their ancestral land, might come to an end within a few short hours. We were about to intrude into the lives of the last nomadic people in the Western Gibson Desert, and in doing so it was possible that we might be responsible for bringing to an end a way of life that had gone on for several thousand years.