THE SONG MASTER Read online

  The next afternoon, on the drive about the immediate property, Andrew told her snippets of family history.

  They passed the headstones of family members which dotted one side of a hill. Below it were casually arranged unmarked stones that Andrew explained were itinerant workers or Aborigines. ‘The station blacks won’t come near here, they reckon it’s haunted by trapped spirits or something.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘In the old days, the blacks used to dig up the remains of their own, but Grandad put a stop to that. He said they should have a decent Christian burial and go to meet their maker in a box with their boots on and not wrapped in grass and bark and left in a tree, or whatever the old men wanted to do.’

  ‘Would it have mattered? The bloke was dead, why not let them do their ceremonial thing?’

  Andrew looked thoughtful. ‘I guess the family was trying to do the right thing. The blacks on Yandoo were regarded as part of the place, it was their home too, so they had to fit in with Yandoo’s ways. But listen, Susan, I don’t think you should challenge how we do things so much, when you’ve had no experience out here yet.’

  ‘Point taken,’ said Susan, easily. ‘So what’s the situation, now?’

  Andrew went on. ‘The last fellow I remember dying here, a black fellow that is, wanted to be buried in the town cemetery with a stone with his name on it and have the priest say the right words. Dad said it was a bit of a hassle getting it done, but old Jacko lies in state in Katherine cemetery. I would imagine most of the Yandoo mob now just assume they’ll end up here on the underside of the hill.’

  ‘But if they wanted to have a traditional burial ceremony in their home country, they could?’

  ‘I suppose if they wanted to be taken back to their country by their people and they had access, that’s what they’d do.’ Andrew eased out the clutch and moved on. ‘Some of them are here because they can’t get to their traditional land, it’s inaccessible, their people have dispersed, or it’s on a pastoral lease.’

  ‘But you said Yandoo was their home. Is that because it once belonged to them, the land that is, or because your family just allow them to stay?

  He smiled at her, shaking his head. ‘Susan, stop being a lawyer and just enjoy the scenery.’

  They drove to machinery sheds and looked at tractors and generators, and on to stables to look at harnesses and saddles, to the stockyards where four Aboriginal ringers and the head stockman were branding cattle and clipping horns. They watched while the stock were herded into a chute with a metal base, their weight registering in digital green on a battered calculator. The weights were carefully recorded in the head stockman’s notebook. Andrew boosted Susan up on the fence so she could watch the weighing process. As the head stockman finished noting the last numbers Andrew called out, ‘Earl, this is my friend, Susan. This is Earl, our head stockman.’

  The wiry Aborigine gave a quick nod and a grin. ‘Pleased-t-meet-ya’ came out as one word and he turned back to where a young jackaroo was jabbing the next bull with an electric prodder to hasten it into the chute. After weighing, the jackaroo slammed down a handle, which lifted the heavy metal slide that closed off the chute, and the animal was released into a holding yard.

  ‘They’re so big,’ exclaimed Susan. ‘So powerful.’

  ‘What are they running at, Earl?’

  ‘Round the five-fifty boss.’

  ‘That’s five hundred and fifty kilos. They’ll lose a bit of that before they get to auction.’

  ‘It looks like dangerous work.’

  ‘Not while they’re in the yard. Mustering them in the scrub is the challenge. We sometimes use the chopper but mostly horses and motorbikes. Strike a rogue bull out there and you have to watch out.’ He held up his arms and lifted her down from the top railing. ‘There’s more to Yandoo, come on. See ya, Earl.’

  The stockman waved his arm but didn’t take his eyes off the electronic calculator.

  They crossed low hills in the four-wheel drive to see views that gave Susan a greater appreciation of the vastness of the Frazer property. It was so much larger when you stared at its limitless horizons compared with the view from the plane. She was conscious of a sense of infinity, that Yandoo just went on for ever and ever, an incalculable distance beyond the horizons. It seemed to Susan that Andrew knew intimately every corner of his beloved country.

  ‘You love it, don’t you?’ she said softly and took his hand as they stood beside the vehicle on one hill watching the colours soften and shadows lengthen as the sun sank.

  He didn’t speak but looked slowly around the country sprawling below him. ‘Yes, I do love it. Ever since I was a kid and started exploring the place with Hunter. He’d learned to track, so we never got lost. Even though we were just youngsters, I knew I was safe with him.’ He fell silent.

  ‘What do you suppose happened to him?’

  ‘I dunno. I think about him occasionally. Hope things worked out for him. I always felt bad about him. It was hard coming back from boarding school and finding that he’d just . . . gone.’ He paused again then pointed to a clump of trees near a windmill. ‘See that pump, those trees?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was one of my first camps out with Dad when I was a boy. My first camp with only stockmen. I was seven or eight at the time. There have been a few thousand campfires since then. Great learning experiences. Sometimes I reckon I learned more around those fires than I ever did at school,’ he grinned.

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Oh, all about horses, cattle, women . . .’ he laughed. ‘My brother and I used to call it bush school . . . it was the best.’

  At dinner that night, as Ian Frazer helped himself to several potatoes, he turned to Susan. ‘Andrew says you’re headed out into the Kimberley desert. Camping with some tribal people?’ He sounded bemused.

  ‘Yes, it’s a sort of outback cultural exercise. Take a group of city whites and let them live and learn from traditional people.’

  ‘And what good is that going to do you as a solicitor? Do you work in the field of native title or something?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Susan decided against mentioning she’d just represented an Aborigine in court in a civil case. ‘I’m just going to see how Aborigines live, people keeping up traditional ways.’

  Ian Frazer poured more gravy on his roast beef. ‘Depends what you mean by traditional Aborigines. Grant you, the drunks you see in town have lost the plot. Katherine’s full of long-grass blacks. Hopeless bloody cases. The blacks here on Yandoo are just as real as any supposedly living traditionally. You can’t tell me those bush fellas don’t live off their government handouts as much as hunt their own food.’

  Susan rested her knife and fork on the edge of her plate. ‘What do you mean about your Yandoo people being real? They don’t hunt, go walkabout, do their tribal things do they? Where’s their traditional land?’ Andrew gave Susan a wary look that she pretended not to see.

  ‘If any of them made a spurious land claim for Yandoo, I’d run ’em off,’ continued Ian. ‘Like I said, my family have been here three generations. We have as much right to be here and they recognise that. We give them work, look after their families and visiting relatives, and we all work this land together. They like it that way. They take off occasionally for ceremonial things, and we can live with that. Always have.’ He paused for breath. ‘I’d much rather have blacks camped on my place than white tourists and pig shooters. The blacks shut the gates, don’t leave fires burning and look after the land and the water.’

  ‘So you can all get along together? It’s not what some politicians seem to believe.’

  ‘Bugger the politicians. Excuse my language. Get them out of Canberra and get them talking face to face to blacks and pastoralists. This is my land and I have every right to it. But I will concede the point you made this afternoon. We do have a shared history with the Aborigines. We mightn’t mix outside working hours, but we respect each other.’

&nb
sp; ‘Do pass the wine, dear.’ Ellen signalled it was time to change the subject.

  Susan made small talk with Ellen as Andrew talked over some other business with his father. But while she talked she was thinking about what Andrew’s father had said. She wondered if Beth’s mob, Ardjani and the Barradja elders, agreed with the views of wealthy pastoralists like Ian Frazer.

  After dessert, Andrew excused them and took Susan outside for a walk around the garden, ‘to see our Yandoo moon’.

  He held her hand as they wandered amongst his mother’s carefully tended flowers. ‘I’m really glad you’re here. I’m beginning to think Dad likes you giving him a run for his money. That doesn’t happen too often.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to be impolite. I’m just used to speaking my mind.’

  ‘It’s all right. He wasn’t offended. But, Susan, I think they’d also like to hear about your life and family, rather than just your views on Aborigines, particularly when you’ve hardly met any yet. As you’ve probably realised, there’s a different thinking out here to what city trendies may think back in Balmain.’

  ‘Is that what I am? A city trendy? I did try to come with an open mind. That’s the whole idea.’ There was an edge to her voice.

  Andrew laughed. He didn’t want to spoil the romantic evening. ‘I’ll tell you what you are . . . you’re gorgeous and smart and very special.’ He pulled her to him and they kissed.

  Susan hugged him, marvelling at the open affection of this man who played none of the games of the city men she knew. ‘I’m glad I’m here too.’

  They pulled apart and he touched her cheek, smiling at her. Then he turned her around so she was leaning against him. ‘I was serious about the moon – look up there.’

  Susan tilted her head back against Andrew’s shoulder and caught her breath. ‘Good Lord. It’s unbelievable!’

  The full fat moon, yellow and ripe, hung against a curtain packed with glittering stars. The Milky Way was a creamy slash of massed stars. ‘You can’t put a pin between them! I’ve never seen the sky like this.’

  ‘It’s because there aren’t any city or town lights. But I like to think it’s Yandoo magic. In fact, that reminds me, I should take you out to show you our special moon place. Yep, we’ll put that on the agenda for tomorrow.’

  ‘What do you mean we’re going to see the moon? It’s blazing hot.’ Susan fanned herself as the four-wheel drive bounced over small rocks and thick clumps of grass stubble. ‘Where exactly are we going?’

  ‘That outcrop over there.’ He pointed to a low, craggy line of orange-red boulders.

  ‘I hope we’re not going rock climbing in the middle of the day.’

  She was glad they only had to scramble a short way through the soft sandstone rocks and then spied the shady overhangs and what looked like shallow caves.

  ‘There’s a rock shelter along to the right. I haven’t been up here for years. Hunter first took me here.’

  He crouched down and ducked under a ledge then stood in the centre of a shallow cave. The roof arched over them, exposed on one side; the floor was rough sandy soil. Susan turned and looked out the entrance. From the slight rise she saw a view of the surrounding Yandoo land.

  ‘This is lovely. A secret cubby house.’

  ‘More than that, look up here.’ He took her hand and pointed to the roof and wall that were covered in faded ochre, white and dark red Aboriginal paintings.

  ‘My God, these are wonderful. They must be ancient.’ Susan went up to them, loath to touch the faded and crumbling artwork. ‘What do you know about these? How old are they?’

  ‘Wouldn’t have a clue. Pretty old. Those ones are more recent. I mean, Hunter told me they were done in my grandfather’s day. See, there’s Grandad Frazer.’

  He pointed to a stick figure, different from the others. This figure had a hat on, and beside him was the child-like outline of a four-legged creature.

  ‘And his favourite horse!’ Susan found her mind reeling as she recalled the photographs in Andrew’s father’s study. Family history, version two. Slowly she walked along the rough wall, seeing a panel of recorded events. ‘Some of these must go back hundreds, thousands of years. There’s nothing much after your grandfather’s . . . portrait.’

  ‘No. I suppose they stopped bothering once we settled in.’ Andrew sat down and pulled the bottle from his belt. ‘Want some water?’

  ‘But surely it means these people were here, living here, going about their lives. Doesn’t that indicate some sort of belonging? Some ownership?’ Susan couldn’t tear her eyes away from the paintings. ‘Look, this is a picture of the outcrop where we are. And I wonder what this is, all these animals? Hunting, do you think? Andrew? Aren’t you interested?’

  ‘I’ve seen them.’ He handed her the water and stood up. ‘Look over here, this is the one I wanted you to see.’ He took her to the far end of the shelter and pointed to the roof. Spread across the sandy rock canopy was a painting of the moon wearing a headdress above a small diagrammatic body. Susan twisted her head to each side to get the full effect of this strange and wonderful depiction of the fat, full moon she’d seen outside the night before.

  ‘It’s fantastic. God, how old must this be? Have you ever had experts come and date or document this work?’

  ‘What for?’

  Susan stopped the protestations that sprang to her lips. She realised he really wasn’t interested. This was just a minor novelty on Yandoo, small in comparison to the new Droughtmaster cattle, the improvements, the heritage which his family had created so recently. Susan reached out to touch the warm grainy surface of the painted wall, trying to imagine what hands had done these paintings, so long ago, recording the times in which they lived, their glories and the symbols of their eventual demise.

  Very early on the fourth morning, she braved a horseback ride down to the large dam where Andrew checked and oiled a windmill and a water pump. While there, they heard the thwack-thwack-thwack of a helicopter that suddenly roared across them at treetop height, did a quick circle, then headed for the homestead.

  ‘Julian,’ shouted Andrew as the chopper banked towards home. ‘Come on. Race you back for breakfast.’

  ‘Not likely, Andrew. I’m not in that class with a strange horse.’

  ‘Okay then.’ He reined in beside her.

  Julian was already at the table with his parents when Andrew bounded into the informal breakfast room off the kitchen towing Susan by the hand.

  ‘Hey, Andrew,’ said Julian standing up at the table and giving Susan an appreciative look.

  Andrew slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Lovely stage entrance you made over the mill. Impressed us no end. Julian, meet Susan, the lady lawyer from Sydney I told you about.’

  ‘Several times,’ added Julian with a wink as they shook hands. ‘Always knew he went to Sydney for more than a look at the bulls on offer.’

  Andrew gave him another playful punch and in good spirits they all settled down at the table.

  ‘You were telling us about the new ideas you have for the practice, dear,’ said Ellen getting the conversation back as they all settled down at the table.

  ‘Started a new technique on horses, massage. Works wonders. I have a girl to help me who knows all about it. Used to be a nurse, became a masseuse, and because she used to be a show jumper, decided to try the technique on horses. Could be onto something here.’

  ‘Very handy,’ grinned Andrew. ‘So what are we doing?’ He turned to Susan. ‘Julian always has a good idea of how to get into trouble.’

  ‘Fishing. You fish, Susan?’

  ‘Ah, not really. But I’d love to see the scenery at least. And I’m game to throw a line in.

  ‘If we get going we could have the first barra in the boat in an hour. Let’s get the gear,’ said Julian.

  Once they’d risen and banked above the homestead, Julian straightened the helicopter and turned north, and Susan forgot her nerves as the panorama of Yandoo spread below. She felt she was in
a glass bubble, punctured by the two holes where the doors had been taken off. Andrew sat behind her, occasionally touching her hair or reassuringly squeezing her shoulder. They headed towards the coast where the deep estuary flowed out to the sea. They flew up the river to where they could discern the salt water mingling with the fresh.

  ‘Where are we going to land? It looks pretty rugged down there,’ she asked Julian in the microphone attached to her earphones.

  He pointed out the port side of the chopper to a cleared dirt circle a little distance from the river bank.

  They carried fishing gear and a small outboard motor to an upside-down aluminium dinghy tethered to a tree. The brothers picked it up and carried it down to the bank as Susan followed them with the first load of fishing gear.

  Soon they were chugging down the river, Andrew at the tiller, Julian trawling a lure behind them. It was a little cramped with three of them on board and Susan didn’t think much of the stability factor. She was happier once they’d found their favourite spot, a large flat rock protruding from the river several metres out. Deep water flowed between them and the bank and, as Julian got on the rock, Andrew handed over his rod and motored back. ‘We’ll work along here. The idea is to cast into the deep water and keep your lure moving.’ He set her rod, tying on a brilliantly coloured plastic lure. ‘We call this lure a Peter Allen. It dances through the water like live bait. The fish won’t be able to resist it.’

  Susan watched the two men cast and wind in their lines with expert ease while she struggled with tangles of line, getting it caught in weeds and even an overhanging tree branch. Despite this, she was enjoying herself till Julian called from the rock.

  ‘Watch for crocs. Don’t get too close to the water.’

  ‘Oh sure!’ answered Susan. Then did a double take. ‘You’re not serious!’