THE SONG MASTER Page 10

  The little boy nodded his head emphatically. He, like all the young boys for thousands of years before him, had been told of the importance of law, and of the consequences of lawlessness in Barradja society.

  His lesson over, he scampered to the women cooking fish and damper on the big fire. He sat beside his older brother and waited for the food that would be given to him once the old men had eaten.

  Ardjani broke off a blackened end of his damper and threw it to his favourite dog, a lean yellowed-eyed hunting dog that was the only one of the dogs allowed to sit close to the old man. He was the favoured one as he was the best hunter. The dogs were good at chasing up game and they worked in tandem with the hunters.

  Many years ago, when Ardjani was a young boy like Luke, he remembered how the white men had given the Aborigines flour for damper and many of his people got sick and died. As did other people from drinking at the waterholes that had been poisoned. So many wrongs. White people took their land, their women, and their children. Black people suffered. White people too. Now it was time to fix these matters. Time to heal and to start again. He knew it would not be easy. But the Songmaster had sung that it was time to begin the healing, or soon it would be too late. The government, the leaders, the mining people, all the people on this land must sit down and talk. And start to listen to each other.

  Ardjani had a plan for these white people coming. They would help him. Beth said she would find good people. When they came, they would learn and understand why they had come here. He did not question whether they knew why they were coming or what they were being charged with achieving, or whether they even knew of his plans. He knew when they came here, to this special place, their lives would be changed, the ancestor spirits would guide each of them.

  The tread of the sedan’s tyres was packed tight with orange-red dirt, spinning a fine spray of powder behind the old Corolla. Travelling at a near-constant eighty kilometres an hour, the wheels rode across the top of the hard dirt corrugations that were as regular as the ripples in a tin roof. Any slower and the car would shake and vibrate even more than it was, any faster and the driver ran the risk of losing control in the patches where loose talcum dirt smothered the surface.

  The woman driving was unfazed by the conditions, this car had rocked across country worse than the Kimberley. She couldn’t afford a four-wheel drive and in the remote towns she passed through, she ignored the flash up-market vehicles that tourists cautiously drove. Accessorised with endless accoutrements, with bull-bars, searchlights, waterbags and screen protectors, they sat in upholstered airconditioning and gazed at the passing landscape. In her view, they were missing out on much of the adventure they sought. There was no participation, no real contact with the land they’d come to see.

  Beth Van Horton ignored the hot air in her face, breathed in the smell of the desert, the heated engine, the tang of a recently sucked orange. Her arms were tinged with sunburn, her face streaked with dirt, but she sat straight, her blue eyes steady as she held the steering wheel in her firm grip, controlling the car. It was how she approached life, going forward, calm, straight and unwavering.

  Beth had travelled this road many times in the past twenty years but no trip had had the impact of that first sight of the Kimberley half her age ago when, as a twenty-year-old nun, she’d made her first journey.

  Sitting neatly beside Father Thomas, despite the bouncing in the misson truck, she’d looked at the scenery as if they’d landed on some foreign planet. At first it seemed to her eyes to be a land dominated by hot earth ochres and a cobalt sky. As the hours passed, her eye began to discern the subtleties, silver greens and greys where trees and thin scrubland softened the harshness. A stark ridge of bulky square-edged boulders rose in a narrow line from the surrounding flat country. A large bird hovered, a distant speck, the only sign of life.

  Her head was turned so long to the window, the old priest driving the truck wondered if the novice was hiding tears, or second thoughts.

  ‘Barren eh? No souls to save out there. Hardly a beast or plant. Gets a bit better closer to Marrenjowan.’

  She’d nodded but hadn’t looked convinced. She was struggling to identify the emotions beginning to churn deep in some unknown part of her body. She wanted to go out into that country. She didn’t believe it was barren. Father Thomas had made it sound like a barren woman, whose lack of fecundity branded her of little worth.

  While motherhood was not in her life’s plan, servitude, giving and caring were driving forces. Ever since a small girl, Beth had been the first to murmur childish words of comfort to anyone she thought needed the loving touch of a hand. Her interested little face and earnest eyes, her open loving heart, gave all about her moments of appreciation that there was goodness in this world.

  The Church was part of her daily life and it was a natural progression for her to announce she was entering the convent when she finished school. Protected by the nuns since childhood, Beth saw her womanhood as a gift, and what better use of this prize than to offer it to God.

  She understood the beauty and necessity of the love of man for woman. But her passion spurned the idea of a man’s arms, bearing children, and being acquiescent. She would stride forth and advance God’s plan. She dreamed of her marriage to Him, of the beautiful wedding ceremony when the novices cast off their habits and were dressed in the finery of a bride, white lace and silken train beneath the covering veil as they walked down the aisle to prostrate themselves on the floor before the altar of God. Soon Beth would be ready to make her final vows and receive the silver wedding ring, which was the earthly sign that she was one of the chosen brides of Christ.

  Rattling along in the old Corolla all these years later, Beth had come to realise that there were many choices in life. And by making those choices we set the pattern of our life’s journey. She sometimes marvelled at how her path had swerved as she retraced her steps or plunged in new directions. Now she was entering her middle years with the beginnings of wisdom. Her maiden years were behind her. When she had started soul searching, questioning the faint disturbances that quivered at the edges of her religious faith, she had gone back to the Kimberley where she’d begun to find answers. She owed much to the wise women of Ardjani’s community and she hoped in return she could now help the Barradja.

  She knew the people she was taking to them would also be affected – physically and metaphysically – by the place that the Barradja inhabited. It would be a soulless person who remained unaffected by the beauty and mystery of the Kimberley and its people.

  This Kimberley country, once alien to the young woman, was now familiar and loved. Looking at a ridge as she drove, Beth saw it through Barradja eyes, not as escarpments and boulders. This was Crocodile Dreaming, where he entered the earth to escape the giant devil bird and was turned to stone, and this ridge was the spine of the crocodile.

  She also knew there was life out there, not just plants and animals and people, but spirits and stories and an energy that was a living connection with the earth, that had made her appreciate what higher consciousness and higher beings were. She had learned that every manifestation of the physical, be it a leaf or a rock, had its own soul, its own innate ‘aliveness’. She no longer subscribed to the arrogance of a faith that only recognised intelligence in man, led by a male God figure, and tried still to rationalise the unfathomable.

  Beth didn’t often think about that young girl and the long and eventful journey she’d made. But on the occasions she did, she felt a gratitude for the strength that had changed her life to what it was today.

  Before flying into Kununurra, where she had stored her car at a friend’s house, Beth had woven her web of charm, dangling the carrot of adventure before her chosen few. A once-in-a-lifetime trip, as the tourist brochures say. By phone and facsimile she’d threaded the group together – organising flights, juggling logistics and personal itineraries. Then she’d arrived at her friend Esme’s place to collect the car and point it towards her meeting with
Ardjani.

  Esme Jordan was regarded by the townsfolk in Kununurra as an ‘eccentric old bag’. But Beth knew her story and to her, the still fiery eighty-year-old represented all an old woman should be in her crone years. She had wisdom and wildness and, when not cantankerous and complaining about the government, the United Nations or the lack of her favourite bottled sauce in the supermarket, she cackled with mirth through ill-fitting false teeth. This eminent anthropologist, who still favoured Edwardian dress and still spoke in cultured British tones, had taught Beth much about Aboriginal history.

  They’d first met when Beth was working at the mission outside Derby and it was Esme, doing research for Cambridge University, who had sparked her interest in the tribespeople of the Kimberley. Esme had published papers and her groundbreaking studies on Aboriginal lifestyle and beliefs had refuted many of the early suppositions of her male colleagues in the 1930s.

  She had been a rebel who didn’t play by the old boys’ rules and so, eventually, funding for most of her university projects had dried up. Undaunted, she’d sold all her possessions, lived out of an early model Ford in the communities of the Kimberley and had continued to record her observations and hypothesise about the origins of Australia’s indigenous people, plants and fauna.

  Esme had become notorious in the 1970s for criticising the elders of the Lutheran mission who had been collecting sacred Aboriginal artefacts for many years. Esme had called a press conference and told the media that the local tribespeople wanted the artefacts returned to their rightful places for ceremonial and sacred use. She’d been particularly outraged when she’d discovered that the collection was going to be sold to an overseas art dealer. She’d fought vociferously to stop the sale. Esme had taken a lesson from Emily Pankhurst and a group of women anti-Vietnam protestors. She’d brought women tribal elders to Canberra, to chain themselves to the handrails of one of the public galleries of the old Parliament House, to publicise the ‘theft of native culture’. The sale of the collection had been blocked and it was now housed in a leading Australian university. Esme still hoped that one day the pieces could be safely returned to their sacred sites.

  It was Esme who had first given the young nun awareness and knowledge of the deep spirituality and powerful culture of the indigenous people. As she was exposed to Esme’s scientific background and the Aboriginal creation stories she had translated, Beth began to question the rigidity of her Catholic faith. It had come at the same time as her conflicts with the religious system and her personal questioning of the path she had chosen in life. So it was no surprise to Esme that, after a lengthy battle with the parish priest and nuns of her order, Beth had left the Church.

  Beth now stayed with Esme, making her home base in the modest cottage in Kununurra, ‘the gateway to the Kimberley’. She felt an obligation to watch out for the old lady who had no family. For Beth, time spent with her wise friend was like dipping into a well of energy, knowledge and power.

  This visit was no different from the others, but Beth could see the frailty beginning to weaken the small frame. Esme’s collarbone and shoulder blades jutted through the fine lawn blouse. Her hands trembled more often and she paused in her steps to catch her breath, which Beth had never seen her do before. But she had marched to the front gate as Beth’s taxi arrived. Esme wore the shredding straw boater that she clamped over her knot of thin white hair. Her riding boots, wrinkled with age, shone from energetic polishing.

  ‘So, you’ve come. And I’m still here,’ she rasped, her face wreathed in smiles. Few people saw this unabridged joy in her stern features.

  ‘You’ll always be here, Esme. You’re going to haunt this place in your next life, I know it.’

  ‘I’m coming back as a willy wagtail. Watch out. I’ll be on your fence, checking up on you, wherever you go.’ They embraced and Beth felt the lightness of the woman she’d always thought was made of steel.

  They went into the house where scones and tea waited. ‘Figured you’d be here round this time. Wash yourself and tell me what you’re up to.’ She fussed with the mismatched china as Beth washed her hands at the sink in the simple kitchen where a small laminex table spread with a plastic cloth was set for morning tea.

  ‘The battle goes on. Still helping the Barradja,’ answered Beth. ‘Ardjani and I have done a few lectures for the university and got a bit of cash in the kick. But this time I think we’re getting something practical worked out that will move their land claim along a bit. I’m on my way to meet with the old men.’

  Esme poured the tea and, scarcely pausing for breath, brought Beth up to date with the news of not only town identities but the movers and shakers through the Territory and the north-west. Beth had stopped being surprised at the influential network Esme maintained with prolific letter writing, reading, attending local meetings, and generally keeping her ear to the ground. She was not in retreat in her latter years, and was fearless in her views and actions for, as she told Beth, she had little to lose at this stage of her life.

  ‘There’s a new thorn poking into the thin fabric of local politics. If you ask me, given a chance this woman will get out of control,’ Esme announced.

  Beth bit into a scone. ‘Hmmm?’

  ‘Shareen Beckridge. Used to be from Campbelltown in Sydney. Married Bobby Beckridge who ran the caravan park here. When he dropped off the perch, she sold the place, ran a video store and steak house for a bit. The restaurant got closed down.’

  ‘No good?’

  ‘Chuck house it was called. Served rotten meat, including roo and emu, once too often. She’s not known for spending a dollar if it can go into her pocket instead.’

  Beth wondered where the conversation was going. It wasn’t like Esme to gossip. She had no time for trivia or idle chit chat. She’d always told Beth that unless she saw it, heard it or was told it from the person involved, she would not give lip service to hearsay.

  ‘But now she’s got a new career,’ said Esme.

  Beth looked up with a knowing smile. She knew it was time for the punchline. ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Running as an Independent for one of the State seats. Maybe here, against Bingo Robertson.’

  ‘Politics? Bingo is everyone’s favourite bloke. She wouldn’t have much of a hope. Why is she doing this?’

  ‘She says she has been inspired by Pauline Hanson, you know that MP in Canberra who’s got the whole country talking about Aborigines and Asians. I’ve heard Shareen talk at council meetings. She’s a bitter and angry woman and lays not only our town’s woes, but the entire country’s problems, at the feet of the Aborigines.’

  ‘What!’ Beth burst out laughing. ‘What rubbish. How’s she reached that conclusion?’

  ‘Shareen is no intellectual but she’s clever like a rat. And devious.’

  ‘What’s her plan?’

  ‘She has two fellows up here backing her. A councillor and a maverick Labor MP. Probably got some Liberal or National Party right-wingers encouraging her as well. She’s been getting a lot of write-ups in the papers and she’s been on television, so I hear.’ Esme didn’t believe in viewing the world in a box. ‘She says enough to sound reasonable so the radical nonsense slides past under a sliver of sense.’

  Things like . . .?’

  ‘Too much money being wasted on Aboriginal administration services, the money isn’t going where it’s needed.’

  ‘I agree with that.’

  ‘The trouble is, she’s started harping on about special treatment and handouts being given to Aborigines that the rest of the country doesn’t get, and about how so many of them aren’t “real” anyway. And how what they do get they waste, trash, and then simply ask the government agencies for more.’

  ‘At the expense of the hard-done-by, hardworking whitefellas.’ Beth rolled her eyes.

  ‘So she says. She makes wild accusations, generalisations that are factually incorrect and offers simplistic, improbable solutions. The scary thing is that up here no one corrects her and peopl
e are starting to listen.’

  ‘It’s a load of bigoted crap. No one outside this town is going to take her seriously.’

  ‘She’s been on national radio and there’s talk of some TV current affairs show coming up here.’

  Beth had let her tea go cold. ‘That’s a worry. Tell me more about the politicians that are backing her.’

  ‘I talked to them after a few meetings. Seems to me the plan is to try to stop all the land claims, so vested interests like real estate developers and mining people can get in and go after dollars without the inconvenience of Aboriginal heritage or rights getting in the way,’ said Esme with thinly disguised disgust.

  ‘That would make things easier for them. Sounds to me like there could be even bigger fish behind the local political boys. Do you know if there is any hint of mining strikes out there? And why are real estate developers interested in a small town like this?’

  ‘They’re looking at the Kimberley. Tourist and resort development. Some of the world’s most spectacular scenery – the Bungle Bungles, gorges, rivers. Great potential for big overseas-style ranches and resorts. And everybody hopes there’s more iron ore as well as gold, diamonds, you name it, to be dug up. But while there are questions of Aboriginal ownership of the land, developers can’t just go in and let rip.’

  ‘Our Barradja situation is all of that in microcosm. All they’re asking for is the right to live on a portion of their own land. Their land claim doesn’t encroach on any pastoral leases, yet the authorities are acting as if they want the moon.’