Territory (52 page)

Kit breathed a sigh of relief.

He was waiting for them when they came out of the bathroom a full fifteen minutes later. Lisa seemed in much better condition, he thankfully observed.

Lisa was. Aggie had suggested that they both wash their faces, touch up their makeup and drink two large glasses of water each.

‘A little alcohol goes to my head very badly these days,' Aggie had said. ‘And I'm feeling so terribly tired.'

‘I've said we'll give Aggie a lift home, Kit,' Lisa said, ‘is that all right?'

‘Fine by me.' Kit grinned, another Aggie Marshall miracle. But Aggie didn't meet his eye. She and Lisa
walked arm in arm down the stairs, Lisa still a little unsteady, but Kit didn't offer his assistance, aware that Aggie had the situation under control. He and Lisa were drifting apart, he thought. The sad thing was, he didn't really care all that much.

When they dropped Aggie off, she bade a fond goodnight to Lisa, kissing the girl on the cheek. ‘You looked lovely tonight, dear,' she said, ‘quite lovely. Goodnight, Kit.'

Both Terence Galloway and Lisa herself had been quite wrong in their assessment of Aggie's attitude. She neither disapproved of, nor disliked the girl. She felt sorry for her. It would be only a matter of time before Kit tired of Lisa, Aggie thought. He would need more than the obvious sexuality their relationship offered. And what would happen to Lisa after that? Another sexual liaison? Another man dumping her? Lisa had ‘victim' written all over her in Aggie's estimation.

Aggie's surmise proved correct on one score. Kit and Lisa broke up a month later, but it wasn't Kit who did the dumping, it was Lisa. Her life had taken a different direction, she told him. She'd earned a lot of money from the commercials, she was moving out of the old house in Mitchell Street, she could afford a place of her own. A stylish place too, she said. Classy. And they moved in different circles now, didn't they? They really didn't have much in common anymore.

Kit wasn't offended. There was something so desperate in Lisa's manner as she rattled on. It was as if she was apologising. But she didn't need to, he thought, he quite understood. He said all the right things. He'd miss her, he wished her every success, but in fact he was secretly relieved. Besides, there was the excitement of his promotion. He'd served his one-year cadetship and was now a fully fledged, fully paid journalist for the
Northern Territory News
.

The two years of Jessica's masters degree were enlightening to say the least. In the first year she lost her virginity to a law student. On purpose. At twenty-one she was far too old to be a virgin, she'd decided. She also decided that sex was overrated, until the following month when she lost her heart to a final-year medical student who dumped her six months later. She got over it, she was determined to be tough.

Despite her sexual awakening, Jessica did not neglect her studies, she had always been adept at living life to the full. Much of her time was focussed on the mystery of the oval symbol which she had seen painted in kaolin clay by the inland Yamatji people. She could find no historical record of it so, with Catherine Berndt's encouragement, she made a field trip in the summer vacation of 1972 into the desert area of the Oakover region. This time she travelled alone in the second-hand Landrover her father had bought her for Christmas, a gift of which Enid had strongly disapproved.

‘It's a good car,' Grahame had insisted, misguidedly thinking his wife disapproved of the fact it was second-hand. Enid had never driven a second-hand vehicle in her life.

‘But a Landrover!' No respectable young woman drove about in a Landrover!

‘She needs a four wheel drive for her field research.'

They'd ganged up on her and Enid realised that she didn't have any say in the matter. But when she discovered that Jessica was going to travel alone she was horrified.

‘Dr Berndt's arranged an Aboriginal guide for me once I get to the Jigalong Mission, Mum,' Jessica assured her, ‘and she's given me contacts all along the way. I have maps, I've studied the route I'll be taking, she's marked the few towns and the best campsites and …'

Enid wouldn't listen, it was quite unheard of, she said, and it took Grahame a long time to calm her down enough to pay any attention at all.

‘She's twenty-two years old and she's a modern young woman, my dear,' he insisted. ‘Besides, she's an anthropologist and she's doing what anthropologists do.' Deep down Grahame rather wished Jessica had a travelling companion, and had suggested as much.

‘Can't a fellow student go with you, sweetheart?'

‘I'm studying this symbol for my thesis, Dad,' she said. ‘I can't expect anyone else to have the same interest in it. Heck, I don't want them to,' she gave one of her attractively throaty laughs, ‘it's my personal discovery, I might be onto a whole new breakthrough.' She could see that he was concerned. ‘Jessica Williams!' she theatrically announced, ‘Youngest anthropologist in history to unearth one of the mysteries of ancient Aboriginal culture!' She threw her arms around his neck. ‘Wouldn't you be proud?'

He hugged her warmly, she could always get around him. ‘Of course I would, Jess,' he said. He was already proud of her beyond measure, but he knew he'd worry nonetheless.

Jessica herself had no misgivings whatsoever. She was excited and, in the brash confidence of youth, eagerly optimistic that she would discover the rock paintings
which the elders had told her of during her field trip with Catherine Berndt. Her starting point was the Jigalong Mission roughly ninety kilometres east of Newman. From there, with the help of her Aboriginal guide, she would initiate her enquiries as to the exact whereabouts of the paintings.

She travelled inland along the Great Northern Highway, staying overnight at Paynes Find and Meekatharra, but for the most part choosing to make camp. She liked to squat by her campfire, surrounded by the red earth and the hardy scrub. She liked to watch the glow of the sunset fade to night and the ensuing brilliance of the stars emerge like diamonds in the clear black sky, so close she felt she could touch them. And when she was tired, she simply rolled out her swag by the dying embers of the campfire and slept as she had never slept before.

Jessica's field trip with Catherine had opened her eyes to the wonders of her country and she had felt an affiliation with the land, but now, alone, without the companionable fireside chat by way of distraction, her surrounds begged questions of her which she had never before asked. She found herself wondering what her life might have been, had she not been taken from her birth mother. Would she be nomadically wandering the land with her people? Would she be settled in a mission with her extended family? Would she perhaps be one of the lost and hapless city Aborigines she'd seen hanging around the railway station?

She was not in turmoil. Even as she wondered who she might have been had her life followed its natural path, Jessica knew very well who she was. She was Jessica Williams, anthropologist, loved by her white parents and comfortable in the white society in which she had been raised. But deep inside, Jessica could feel the stirring of her Aboriginal blood. She was proud of her ancestry and felt a tremendous sense of peace in the harsh, outback country of her people.

She stayed overnight at Newman and, when she finally reached the Jigalong Mission, she was a little taken aback by the Aboriginal guide whom Catherine had arranged for her to meet up with.

In his mid-thirties, Wallawambalyl Djarranda wore loud floral shirts, boots with footie socks and gabbled in a twangy ocker accent at such a rate it was sometimes difficult to discern what he was saying.

‘Call me Wally,' he said with the cheeky grin which was always at the ready, ‘most people call me Wally.' Most white people he really meant, they mucked it up when they tried to say his name, so he preferred Wally.

Wally was a larrikin. But a larrikin, as Jessica quickly discovered, who possessed a great knowledge of, and pride in, the culture of his people. After her initial surprise, she quickly warmed to Wally, it was difficult not to.

There were a number of ancient paintings in the region, he assured her, and he was only too happy to show them to her. ‘Got some pretty good stuff around here, I can tell you, it'll open your eyes, I'll bet.'

By way of introduction, he took her north-east up the Oakover River and showed her the white sandstone columns of Hanging Rock. Temple-like, they stood pristine and gleaming as they had for centuries, nature's place of worship, mysterious and spiritual. Wally remained silent as she wandered amongst them and, when she returned, he whispered, ‘Told you, good stuff eh?'

He took her on a tour of the waterholes and campsites where there were a number of drawings and, as Jessica had anticipated, with the use of ochre, the paintings of the desert people were far more colourful than those of their inland river cousins. In brilliant reds and yellows and oranges, the drawings were also more intricate and more detailed than the simple kaolin clay outlines she had seen on her previous trip.

She and Wally chatted avidly when they set up camp;
Wally liked a good chat. He was surprised and delighted when she told him her story.

‘You don't look black,' he said, stating the obvious. ‘Where you get that hair, all ginger like that? And them eyes. Green, they are, you got green eyes.' Jessica laughed, he said it as if she wasn't aware of the fact. Wally often made her laugh, mostly when he didn't intend to. ‘Black people don't have green eyes.' He pursued his conversation in all seriousness. ‘Where you come from, Jess?'

‘My father was a drover. ' She smiled as she shrugged, ‘Who knows? I sure as hell don't.'

It was in a cave near Nimberra Well that she found the symbol she'd been seeking. The oval shape. And within it was a vivid red mountain peak which met with a bright yellow sun. But, alongside the symbol, there was another painting which took her breath away. A ship with masts and, within its outline, the small figures of men indicating the size of the vessel. She knew of such paintings and rock carvings. Many existed. Some rock carvings on the coast at the Burrup Peninsula depicted men wearing hats which resembled helmets. Anthropologists had concluded that it was quite possible the Aborigines had been recording the arrival of the first European explorers. Spaniards? Dutch? French? William Dampier's men? Who could tell.

Jessica was overwhelmed with the excitement of her find. Here, in the desert region where there were no boats, was a picture of a massive sea-going vessel and alongside it a painting of the symbol she sought. Of course! The two were linked. The symbol had come from a European ship, it was an artifact of some kind. In one of the kaolin clay paintings it had been hanging about a man's neck. Was it some form of pendant? Had it come ashore amongst the flotsam of a shipwreck off the western coast of the continent? Many a Dutch merchant vessel had foundered on its hazardous route to the East Indies. If so, the pendant
had become important enough to the Aborigines for them to record it in their paintings. What part had it played in their lives?

Wally, like the elders she'd encountered on her previous field trip, had no idea. ‘No-one knows,' he said, ‘no-one from round here anyway, just bin there for years, just a picture, you know?'

They returned to the mission and Jessica took her leave, eager to follow up her research in Perth.

Wally was sorry to see her go. ‘You bin a good mate, Jess,' he said, ‘had fun with you. Some of these do-gooders and people studying their stuff,' he gave a disinterested shrug, ‘well you can tell they don't care, you know? But you different, you one of us, all right.'

‘Thanks, Wally.' She was touched.

‘You can call me Wallawambalyl if you like. That's my real name.'

‘Wallawambalyl,' she said.

He grinned. ‘You say it good, just like us.'

So she should, she thought, indigenous language had formed a major part of her studies over the past five years, but she didn't tell him that.

‘Goodbye, Wallawambalyl.'

‘Goodbye, Jess.'

Upon her return to Perth, Jessica researched the early Dutch shipwrecks off the Western Australian coast. The skeletal remains of the
Batavia,
wrecked on the Houtman Abrolhos in 1629, had, after lengthy explorations, been discovered only nine years previously in 1963. A great deal had been written about the mutiny aboard the
Batavia
and the grisly fate of her passengers and crew. And, most interestingly, the riches of her cargo had been itemised. Piece by piece, jewel by jewel. She'd been carrying a king's ransom. Little wonder she'd proved such a temptation. But there was no mention of the pendant. Could it have been a personal item belonging to a passenger? Perhaps it had not
been washed up amongst the wreckage at all. Perhaps it had come ashore with a survivor.

But further research proved that, according to the journals of Commandeur Francisco Pelsaert which he'd recorded after the trials and which were well documented, only two men had been left behind. Eighteen-year-old Jan Pelgrom de Bye, a cabin boy, and Wouter Loos, a soldier, had been spared execution despite their involvement in the mutiny, and had been marooned on the mainland and left to their fate. It was unlikely that the pendant would have belonged to either of them.

Jessica turned her attention to the
Verguide Draeck,
the ‘Gilt Dragon' wrecked off Lancelin just north of Perth in 1656. A crew of seven had set sail in a small lifeboat leaving sixty-eight survivors on the mainland, who were never to be seen again. Then there was the
Zuytdorp,
which had foundered against the cliffs near the mouth of the Murchison River in 1712. As many as fifty survivors had made it ashore from the
Zuytdorp
to the mainland to fend for themselves. They too had disappeared. There was no further record of any of these Europeans, but surely the pendant had been the property of one of them.

The most exciting prospect of all resulted from Jessica's further research into genetic differences which had been noted in Aborigines, particularly amongst the coastal people. Even a hundred years ago, the strange sight of light-complexioned Aborigines with blue or green eyes and fair or red hair had been documented, proof that shipwreck survivors had cohabited with the local natives and a strain of ‘European' Aborigines had resulted.

Jessica felt a chill run down her spine as she read it. ‘Green eyes and red hair'. Five years ago she had embarked upon her anthropology course as a means to discover her black ancestry. Had she unintentionally been tracing a white ancestor too? It was a fanciful notion, she knew it, but it was thrilling nonetheless.

She was satisfied that she had finally pieced together the story of the pendant drawings though. The pendant had to have come ashore with a shipwreck survivor who had been accepted by the black people and had lived amongst them. They in turn must have acknowledged the object as a personal talisman belonging to their clan; it was therefore not a part of Aboriginal mythology.

Her history of the symbol was hypothetical, and she had unearthed no mystery of Aboriginal culture, but Jessica's eventual thesis received top marks and she graduated from the University of Western Australia in early 1974 with a Master of Arts in Anthropology.

But Jessica Williams left university with more than an MA (Anthrop) to add to her name. She left with an obsession to discover everything she could about the pendant. Perhaps, one day, even its whereabouts.