‘The Valley of Lagoons’

Evening Star, Issue 22540, 7 January 1937, Page 2

‘The Valley of Lagoons’

THE LONELY ROAD. So Eric Strong set out on the journey of life without the Grey Dove, and he found it a lonely road. Everything about him reminded him of Margaret—the big pelican, fishing in the river m ' front of his town house; the clean print frocks of the lubras at Green Mountain Station; the dew-decked spiders’ webs oa the grassy plains in the dawn; the neigh of a mare at the- homestead; all creatures seemed to be calling softly, like a child, in his heart: “ Margaret. Margaret I” for she had loved everything about her. Not with the ostentatious love of the professional naturalist, but with the simple, sweet joy of a child, laughing in quiet glee when a bandicoot burst from the grass in front of her horse and scuttled comically for his home; chuckling with genuine delight when a surly-tempered nag on a frosty morning - went into a buck ana. dusted the pants of an over-confident rider; shedding real tears when a kite hawk swooped out of the blue and a .wood pigeon on the wing vanished in 'a flutter of feathers, to make a meal for the kite hawk’s family. She was all « woman, unspoiled, and beloved of all things. ' Even rum-sodden Anvil Annie, the convict, loved her, and there were few people who would believe Anvil Annie capable of so tender a feeling as love. Annie, married to Nigger Williams, a half-caste, from Jamaica, was floriously. drunk and fighting fit on_the ay when the cutter sailed up to Karl Kramm’s wharf with the dreadful news. The shock sobered her. For the first time in 10 years she went home to her hovel and cleaned herself and her habiliments thoroughly. Some higher power seemed to have caught her up and worked a miracle on the woman, for it wm Anvil Annie, in a neat black dress, har hair combed and oiled, her eyes again soft and womanly, and filled with tears, who crept to the back door of the Blair cottage with a big bunch of musk carnations —Margaret’s favourite flowers—and begged to be allowed to place them on the rosewood coffin which Silas, the woodmaker who pulled stroke in Jack Blake’s whaleboat, had made with bis own hands out of timber he was seasoning to build Margaret a. wardrobe. Kitty Bair, who knew what Margaret had tried to do for this poor creature, was amazed at the transformation in Annie, but she held her peace and led her into the dining room, where the coffin lay on Captain Dick’s big oak table, around which the “ Blackboy ” party had gathered in Sydney on the night when the Silver River agreement was signed, and Eric proposed to Margaret. . . Kitty stood back while Annie gazed down on the calm, sweet face in the' rosewood casket. The wasted cheeks of the harridan streamed tears. Her thin frame shook ' with sobs. Her drinksodden voice croaked in wildest grief: “God save us! They had to take her. Her! Of all the creatures in the world it must be the ‘ Grey Dove.’ An’ here’s me—better in hell long agone. An’ her lyin’ there! God save us! 'Soup, she gimme. An’ new clothes. An’ prayed for me. An’ nursed me out o’ the D.T.’s, God help us! An’ •her lyin’ there. An’ me an’ a score spared that should be gone. To hell with the sea, for me. Gently the half-demented creature placed the big bundle of musk carnations" on the-dead Margaret’s face.

A Saga of Australia’s Pioneers • By A. E. YARRA. (AUTHOR OF ‘THE VANISHING HORSEMEN,’ ETC.) (ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.) CHAPTER VIII.

“Smell them, darlin’,” she sobbed. “ Smell the sweet musks that you used to love so. I begged them for you. God save us, ’tis terrible for the Anvil Annies to lose you, sweetheart, foi where will we turn now for aid? Black Marjr painted her body all over with white pipeclay and vanished into the bush to mourn for her dead mistress after the manner of her tribe. She cut her arms and her abdomen with stone flakes, and wailed all night in her grief. Tommy the Stockman, that quiet, manly blackfellow, who had risked so much for love amongst the stone age men of the north, gazed at Eric in silence, but there were tears in his eyes. Presently be said quietly: “ Bad luck, boss.” Eric patted his horseboy s arm, ge “ t ßad luck, Tommy,” ho said. “ Bad luck for all of us.” Tommy rode away to bring m the horses, but Eric noticed that he did not crack his big stockwhip, or shout Hu hi! hi!” us usual. Little Conrad refused to be comforted He sobbed and wailed and refused to eat or talk or play or sleep _ His cry was “ Mama! Mama! Mama! until the little old doctor gave him a sleeping draught for fear the tragedy would affect his mind. It was the same with lettee, and all who knew her—utter grief at their sudden loss. The entire settlement attended the funeral. When the service bad been conducted by a visiting missionary, and the grave filled in, there appeared magically on the mound a hill ot glorious flowers—English flowers from the village gardens and wild blossoms from the forest. At dusk a villager saw a rider on a magnificent chestnut stallion ride slowly .to tho little cemetery and reverently place a wreath of brilliant purple blossoms on the crest of the hill ot flowers. . ~ , . Eric, hearing of the incident, inspected the wreath next day ; and found attached to it a card bearing the inscription, in Denis O’Hegarty s clerky hand; “ Resurgam. The little, spired church for which she worked and died, materialised, and its altar was draped with the cloth Margaret had made and embroidered for it with her ow» hands. The pulpit of rosewood was made, from the same tree that gave the rosewood for her coffin, by Silas, the sevenyear man. / .. , The spire that pointed to the stars and the carpets that softened the tootfalls in the aisle were provided from the balance of Margaret’s pm account, which Eric gave to the building fund. , The choir had her organ, with her bosom friend, Kitty Blair, at the keys. By common consent the congregation and the newly-arrived rector called the church “ St. Margaret’s.” So Eric and little Conrad took up their lonelv journey, hand in hand. The boy went "back to the village school, with his old friend, Yettee, and time softened the grief of the two lads. So Eric carried out the wish of Margaret in the spirit in which it was conceived. He made Black Mary head over the household gins at Green Mountion, and arranged to pay her a pension for life. Yettee he had educated exactly in the same way as Conrad, and when he was not with his mother at

Green Mountain he shared Conrad’s room at the settlement. When tho educational resources of the little village school were exhausted, Eric obtained the services of a tutor fiom Sydney, Monsieur Henri Briand, a French emigre who had fled Paris in a political crisis and taken his Parisian French and his mathematics to London, there to teach in a, boys’ school, until tho call of the new world took him to Sydney town. In all matters of education and deportment, he was told, the black boy was to be given the same opportunities as the white boy. And M. Henri Briand, who, like all Frenchmen, was an enthusiast, threw his soul into making a gentleman of the sturdy little Yettee.

The black boy pricked hfs tutor savagely in the thigh with a toy spear on the only occasion on which he was chastised for laziness in the study. He made the whole settlement roar with laughter when he publicly mimicked the French manners and the English speech of M. Briand. But he learned a little Latin and German, and more French—something of arithmetic, and how to speak like an English gentleman of standing and position, by copying with marvellous patience and penetrating observation his hero, Eric Strong. Yettce’s status was rather that of a powerful friend and ally from abroad than one of the Strong clan, though little Conrad loved and admired him like a brother; he was a kind of ambassador from the Court of Absolam and his tribe, and he developed a wonderful usefulness as Eric’s agent in all dealings with the blacks. From Yettee Eric Strong gained that intimate knowledge and understanding of the psychology of the aboriginals which was to make him famous in the evening of his life, and which was to bring profit to him and to them in the dark days that were coming for the primitive race. Ho learned, for instance, that when a blackfellow spears cattle and kills the owner who tries to punish him for it, tho native is neither a thief nor a murderer by the tribal law, hut rather a warrior who has proved his mettle, and is an object of awe and reverence to his clan. For the black man first owned the hunting grounds from which the white stranger drives the animals on which the natives depend for food. From Yettee Eric discovered how to look at things from the viewpoint of the man who has never learned to plant a seed or reap a crop, but still lives in the stone age, hunting and fishing, roving over the earth within the tribal territory, killing his enemies if need be, Iniying or stealing his women (who are for use as net and basket makers, foragers, porters, and child bearers, rather than for ornament); loafing as men were meant to loaf when their bellies are full; knowing nothing of medicine or surgery, except a little of herbs and the healing properties of certain mud; believing that all death not due to accident or wounds is caused by a death bone or an enchanted rug or other article in the hands of a sorcerer whose magic is stronger than that of one’s own medicine man, and must be avenged with blood swiftly if the ghost of the departed is to be kept from haunting his own tribe. Another thing Eric discovered was that a man’s a man only if he can prove it, to an aboriginal, and that once having proved it he must live up to it. Also that these things count for nothing when the black man has acquired from the white man tho habit ot drinking rum. Then ho sinks to the white man’s lowest level. So Eric was able, where other men failed by their bloody methods, to enlist the tribe of Absolam in his development of Green Mountain Station, and he became a leader in the growing settlement, as well as amongst the cattlemen who grazed their herds on the big runs up and down the river and in the mountains westward. To Eric Strong went the new settlers for advice as to planting a vineyard, clearing a field of timber to grow potatoes, converting their surplus stock in bad times into tallow, investing their savings in a company to run paddlewheel steamers to Sydney town. Ho saw the vineyards and the potato fields, the banana plantations, tobacco crops, arrowroot and, wheat and maize and lucerne farms, and a few riverside paddocks of sugar cane appear where all had been primitive bush. He helped to find new roads, pave the streets o'f the village, establish a hospital; encouraged men with capital to open businesses; and had the satisfaction of seeing in two decades a large and thriving township grow upon the banks of Silver River, from the first little bark store which Absolam and his warriors had helped him to plant, like a seed of civilisation, while tho “ Blackboy’s ” crew watched from the decks with loaded muskets, jn case of treachery from the blacks. “ Strong, of Green Mountain,” with the help of Blair and Dick Galloway, organised a corps of boat crews for the rescue of settlers when Silver River came roaring down in flood and spread across the flats like a great lake. Ho watched the old give place to the new, the gangs of ex-convicts working on the. roads and in the bush replaced by orderly free immigrants: the rum drinking and brawling in the muddy streets disappear, _ and billiard rooms, skittle alleys, cricket clubs, bowling greens, and churches work their influence. The gold discovery in the hills failed to draw him from his Herefords. It served only to provide him with increased means of building up the quality and numbers of bis stock, for the diggers wanted good meat and paid good prices for it. With the gold from the diggings, the town rapidly grew into a city, and the influence of Eric Strong was on every new street that came into being. From the surrounding bush the townsmen brought seeds and young plants of the brilliant flowering, tropical trees, and set them in avenues. They sent to South Africa and India and Japan ; to New Zealand and Tasmania, Germany and France, Queensland and AVestorn Australia, for more flowering trees; and every time a new batch arrived on the river steamer they held a “ planting day,” with the mayor (Karl Kramm), in his robes of office, making a speech, and each leading citizen planting one tree. Little by little these avenues grew into streets of loveliness. Tall, green ibunya pines; red magnolias; vivid flame trees, with their masses of scarlet flowers; pink hibiscus; yellow frangipani; jacerandas. with their powder blue flowers, which in a future day were to arch overhead in summer; tulips and mahogany; Japanese pagoda trees; dark, mysterious cedar of Lebanon ; Moreton Bay figs, spreading their branches like the roof of a house for shade in the hot weather.

When Eric had helped the cattlemen to the right to elect a representative in Parliament and have security of their leases embodied in the statute, they wanted him to go down ns their member, but he refused. They urged it as his duty. He pointed to his son and Ids Herefords, and said; “ My duty is there.” When Conrad was 17 ho announced boldly to Eric that lie intended to marry Kitty Plair’s daughter, Elizabeth, when ho was 21. Elizabeth was

at the village school, aged 13, and she thought it an excellent ioke. A gathering of the clan, the Blairs and the Kramms, and Erie, and Dick Galloway, held a conference. It was decided that the time had certainly arrived for Conrad to go away to a good school. Conrad refused, point blank! They told him it was his duty. He pointed to his father and his Herefords, and said: “My duty is there.” No amount of argument would budge him. So Eric gave way, and they sent Elizabeth to a good school in Sydney, instead. Suddenly Eric realised-that the road was not so lonely. CHAPTER IX. THE VALLEY OF LAGOONS. Two young men sat smoking on a log which was set like a double throne on the edge of a great plateau overlooking wide and smiling valleys, silver streams, and low, timber-covered hills that rose to gorge-cleft heights in the north-west. These were the two outriders of civilisation in a new land—cattlemen who had sought and found fresh stamping grounds for the herds that would feed the world with rich red beef. The white man was just entered into manhood’s estate, but his blue eye already had the glint of achievement, his high-bridged nose the sign of the master. He was neatly clad in the riding clothes of the cattleman. The black man beside him wore similar garb, except that he had a pink sash at his waist, giving him a dashing air. He was, perhaps, 24 years of age. “ Best*cattle country in the world,” said the white man, relighting his pipe and letting it go out again as his kindling blue glance roamed over the rolling downs and spreading plains, cut by the glitter of the streams that reflected the sunshine shimmering down from a lilac sky. The black man’s brown eyes glowed as his gaze rested on a chain of treefringed, lily-starred, reed-bordered lagoons almost at their feet. He spoke in precise, public school English, in startling contrast to his appearance. “ Ducks,” he said, almost gloatingly. “ Every kind of duck there is. White geese and black swans. Pigeons and little grey doves, mud-fat from the grass seed. Galahs in millions, pelicans, turtles, swarms of fish. Wallabies and kangaroos and porcupines. Emus and ’possums and wombats, and paddymelons and kangaroo rats, snakes and goannas. Food for a kingdom, swimming, walking, or Hying about this water and ready to be eaten by the tribe that owns it. It’s the finest blackfellow’s country in the world.” He laughed, with a brilliant flash of white teeth and brown and white eyes, and a suggestion of reckless gaiety. He rose to his feet, swept off his hat like a courtier, bowed low to his white companion, and said in his excellent English: "Your I see you are about to annex a kingdom this beautiful morning. You will have brisk competition. The tribe that makes these waterholes its centre will no doubt have a spare king or two with it to dispute with you your reign.” The white man laughed and stood up as a hissing sound at the camp fire told them the pot was boiling over. They ate their frugal meal of salted kangaroo and damper in silence. When they had finished and were cleaning their tin plates with grass the white man said:— " A hundred square miles for me, and a hundred square miles for you, adjoiriing blocks. We’ll be cattle kings in time.” The black man flashed another ivory smile: " What good would a hundred square miles of cattle country be to a nigger?” A hurt expression crept into the keen blue eyes of the white man. He looked his companion over. He saw a physically perfect aboriginal, a little older than himself, neat as a new pin, in blue shirt and moleskin pants, wide hat, concertina leggings, and real silver spurs, with a yard of pink silk round his waist. His face was a rich chocolate in colour, and his white teeth and brown and white eyes gleamed as he smiled. Stripped of his clothing, with a bunch of spears and a shield, this man would have been a part of the landscape, but his speech and bearing would have passed without remark in a Loudon club. “ Yetto, why can’t you drop that rot?” There was pain and concern in the white man’s voice. The blackfellow flicked a hand with a swift motion of surrender. “Have it your own way, Conrad; I’m not a nigger. I’m an educated coloured gentleman. I can speak French and German and a little Latin. I can quote the classics. To fit the occasion: True love, we know, is blind. Defects that blight The loved one’s charms escape the lover’s sight, And we should treat a friend’s defect With touch most tender and a fond respect— Even as a father treats the child who hints The urchin’s eyes are roguish if he squints! " That’s Horace, my friend, or approximately Horace, and don’t miss that word ‘ defect.’ My defect is a chocolate shade and 'a periodical craving to go for a walkabout amongst the tribes. It’s in my blood. I’d die if I had to be a white man all the time.” The lithe, handsome black stood upright, with his hands clasped behind his head, and smiled down on his white companion, who was rolling a valise: “You haven’t got a sister or I wouldn’t say this, Conrad. How would you like me to marry your sister?” The white man looked up, startled. The black man suddenly dropped his immaculate English and spoke in the pidgin of the more civilised blacks who worked for the cattlemen. As he spoke his brilliant smile broadened with each sentence: “ Boss, this feller been thinket you feller white feller longa big feller god. Bymeby you ketchem wings Hket eaglehawk, live in milky way. This feller Yettee very good "ketchem fish, possum, snake, kjllem wild blackfeller, hndem track, creek, lost bullamacow for white feller. No Murray good this feller writem cheque, keepem station books, managem business. You thinket Shorthorn bull and Devon cow, put era m paddock, they ketchem Jersev calf, boss? No fear! Blackfeller ketchem cattle station, marry white girl, ketchem skew-balled pieaninni, that feller pieaninni grow up Murray Chinaman cook.” Conrad’s eyes grew luminous with sympathy. Yettee’s methods were convincing. He made a gesture of dissent in the sign-language of the inland tribes—learned from Yettee. The black laughed, without bitterness, and returned to his precise English : h “ Don’t answer, Conrad. You can’t fix it. We’vo got to face the facts. J m ns happy as a magpie when I can he a _ nigger in the bush or a white man in Eric’s house, ns I please. If I had to be, a white man all the time it would kill me. That’s why ] clear

out for months at a time and come home a better nigger.” Without another word, Yettee picked up two bridles and strode down the slope of the hill to where half a dozen horses were feeding on a rich, grassy flat. He caught two of them, and, mounting one, bareback, rode up the slope, leading the other, and commenced saddling. For five months the two land seekers from Silver River had been scouring the range that paralleled the coast, penetrating at times country that had never been, seen by white men before. They had travelled north, west, and north again, dodging hostile blacks, risking dry stages, swimming flooded rivers, never quite satisfied with what they found. And here, five months after their starting, they were the first white men to look upon this cattleman’s paradise, waiting for the lessees to claim it. A homestead on the low hill on which they were camped ' was foreordained by Nature. The chain of tree-fringed lagoons at its foot swarmed with fish and fowl and was the watering place of all the animals of the plains and the Great Plateau. The rich grassland would feed hundreds of thousands of stock. The streams that washed the feet of the hills might run dry in a long drought, but the big central water hole of the lagoon system, 40ft deep, a mile wide, and three miles long, would not dry up in 10 years. All Conrad Strong had to do to make this his kingdom was to ride 350 miles back to the Silver River, on the coast, pay his deposit at the Lands Office, and register his application before anyone else. He was the first man to push out over the Great Plateau looking for cattle country. Others would surely come._ In 10 years the whole of this paradise would be taken up by men who followed where he had led. As he watched the black man saddling the horses, while Conrad packed the gear ready for the saddlebags, his mind was already busy with facts and figures, cattle costs, transport difficulties, the black tribes that would dispute his possession of the water holes. But he would not have been human and young had his blood not thrilled a little at the knowledge that he was the potential ruler of a kingdom of wealth and beauty such as he saw rolled out at his feet in the sunlight. That afternoon the two men spent in exploring the stream and the lagoons. They found signs of periodic visits and prolonged camps of a large tribe of blacks. Many gunyas had been dismantled. Broad sheets of bark lay stretched on the ground, held down with stones. The poles that had supported them were still in position. Earth ovens, fish traps, discarded, worn, or broken tools and weapons. Innumerable tracks and other signs caused Yettee to estimate the number of the tribe at 200, and to conclude that it had gone north, probably for the sacred Bora Bora ceremonies, at which the young men were initiated. At sunset the land seekers camped again on the hill near the lagoons, having marked the first corner tree with Conrad Strong’s initials, the date, and an arrow pointing along the boundary. While Conrad attended to preparations for a night’s camp, Yettee stripped off his clothes and entered the big lagoon silently, amongst the reeds at the water’s edge. With only his face and one hand above water the black man fluttered the wing of a wild swan in his hand, and made a frightened, plaintive sound resemMing the cry of a wounded bird. Presently a flotilla of young black swans swam towards the reeds, their heads on one side, their curiosity overcoming natural caution. Nearer and nearer they came, wondering what had happened to one of their mates. Yettee’s long, black left arm stole out beneath the water. His hand seized one of the birds by the legs, and plucked it swiftly under the surface, where he wrung its neck. When ho had silently placed it behind him amongst the reeds, in easy reach, he resumed his wing-fluttering and his plaintive bird cries. In a few minutes he had four fat, black swans on the edge of the bank.

Then Yettee ceased, and lay still. Presently the remainder of the birds, losing interest, swam away. Yettee slipped from the water, i, in a wrapping of wet clay he enclosed each bird whole. These he buried in the ashes of the fire, which Conrad had been feeding for tne purpose. When the birds were baked the two hungry men broke open the clay wrapping. The feathers and skin came away together with the hard clay, leaving a deliciously cooked bird, from which the entrails were taken in one hard piece. With tea and damper and a swan baked with its juices intact, to smack their lips over, they made a meal, under the tall carrabeen trees on the low hill. Then they turned in for the night, rolling in their blankets on the ground. At dawn the two young men would be on their way. The other three boundary trees of the double block must be marked, and a but and horse yards erected on the site for the homestead before they left for Silver River. Lying in his blankets under the stardusted sky, with the soft sounds of the night birds in his ears, and the cool, sweet mountain breeze whispering overhead to the tall trees, the young white man pondered over a world-old problem. “ If you had a sister!” That disquieting phrase came back again and again. Had Yettee fallen in love with some again. Had Yettee fallen in love withi white girl? Strange, through all the years since babyhood, during which ho had looked upon Yettee almost as an elder brother, such a catastrophe had never suggested itself to young Strong. He and Yettee, as boys on Green Mountain station, bad often speculated on the future, when each might choose a mate—but it always seemed natural that Yettee would take one of the goodlooking lubras. Conrad lately had half expected a bright and handsome young gin in his father’s household—Rosie—to become Yettee’s bride. A white man’s sister! Conrad tried to picture it—and he could not. The phrase opened up a totally unexpected vista of possibilities. If, as he had intended, he went into partnership with Yettee, selecting two blocks side by side and working them conjointly as a single station, they would make money. With Strong’s ‘business management and Yettee’s knowledge of stock and the bush, and his white man’s education, there was little chance of failure—given good country and a market. Yettee, the Laughing One, a full-blooded aboriginal, would in time be a rich and powerful cattleman. He w'ould—in the bush amongst the rattle—lose nothing by his colour, for the qualities of bis manhood wore great enough to command respect anywhere. He could marry the comely Rosie and set up a home of his own, and his place in the cattlemen’s world would be as good as that of any white member of it. But would it? “if you had a sister!” Conrad Strong was only 2.1, but he Reused a little of the stark tragedy

hidden in that phrase, and he thanked God that he had no sister. Ho had women friends though—attractive girls whom Yettee had met in the character of bodyguard and playmate—Fraulein Kramm and Betty Blair, for instance. Conrad tried to imagine one of them as tire cause of Yettco's pointed question For tho first time in his life young Strong began to doubt 111© wisdom of his father in giving to a black boy the same education as his -own son, out of gratitude. (To bo continued.)