The White Earth (24 page)
It was a penance, both John and Harriet knew. There was no question of sending him to an institution for care by strangers. He would never go. Nor could they just abandon him to his fate. Hadn’t they already done that once? They weren’t to blame for his condition, they knew, and yet the guilt remained. But it was far from easy. John had to take over the running of Dudley’s farm, even though he could barely spare the time from his own. And at home Dudley could be difficult. He remained haphazard about his personal hygiene, so the smell of him was everywhere. Often he refused food for days at a time, angrily if they tried to force it on him. And there was no denying him the solace of alcohol. When drunk, he was prone to outbursts of weak rage, and in his sleep he raved incoherently with nightmares. But they dealt with it all as patiently as they could, because of who he was, and because, in his better moments, he was patently so happy to be included in their lives. He still regarded John as his unfailing best friend, and remained utterly devoted to Harriet.
But it was Ruth who had really captured his heart. She turned ten during his first year in the house, and seemed to be maturing effortlessly into adolescence, an unaffected girl, very much her father’s daughter, dark and handsome. Dudley trailed after her faithfully, and outside of school hours she watched over him and helped with the small tasks he was still able to perform around his own property. She called him her uncle, and didn’t seem to mind that he smelled bad, or that his breath stank of rum, or that his wild beard was often stiff with grease or with phlegm from his constant coughing. He was a member of her family, that was all, and she was not the sort of girl, John noted with pride, to be put off by a little ugliness.
Indeed, John had long since ceased regretting the lack of a son. Ruth was as good as any boy. And while she had inherited her father’s looks, she had none of his grim temperament. She was happy and keen, and repeatedly a look or a word from her could melt the winter in John’s heart with a confused rush of love that was acute in its nakedness. But his dreams for his daughter — Kuran House and the station with it — remained as elusive as ever. The truth was, John had begun to despair of the farming life. The longer he laboured, the more wealth and fortune seemed to recede before him like a mirage. There was a string of poor seasons though ’53 and ’54, and the harvests were mediocre.
Even the plains themselves began to oppress him. There was no space any more, where once everything had been open sky and clear horizons. His neighbours too grated on him. They rode proudly on their tractors and called themselves hardened folk, country folk, but to John they looked as soft as any city-dweller mowing a quarter-acre lawn. Where were the bold pioneers that he remembered, the stockmen, the shearers? Lesser men had inherited the earth, and John knew that he alone was different, that an older and more vital blood flowed in his veins. So it was a source of immense dissatisfaction to him that he couldn’t rise to the level which that blood demanded. In the darker moments of the night he would lie in bed next to his sleeping wife, gazing bitterly into a future that might see him die there on his little farm, amongst his inferiors. The same as them, in fact.
Then in 1955 Dudley’s health began to fail seriously. The drinking, the fasting, they were a mortal strain upon a body already severely debilitated. An attack of influenza prostrated him for several months, racking his worn-out frame with shivers and aches, and even long afterwards he suffered from a persistent whooping and wheezing like emphysema. By his forty-first birthday Dudley looked like a grandfather of seventy. John and Harriet could see what the end of all this must inevitably be. But John was still unsuspecting when Dudley came to him one afternoon with some legal documents. The first gave John power of attorney over all Dudley’s affairs. The second was his last will and testament, in which he left his farm to John and Harriet.
John didn’t know what to make of it. Was it even proper? For instance, Dudley had relatives. There was an aunt, the sister of Dudley’s father. Shouldn’t the farm stay in the family and go to her? Dudley disagreed. John and Harriet and Ruth were his family, he insisted. The farm was the only thing he had, and he wanted to give it to them, in gratitude for everything they had done. That way, Dudley concluded, he could die in peace. There was no need to talk of death, John protested, no one was about to die … but Dudley only smiled, completely his old self for once, and John fell silent.
So the documents were allowed to stand. And if from that moment on John threw himself more eagerly into the management of Dudley’s farm, and even came to view the property with a certain propriety air, there was nothing sinister in his motives. It was all really for Ruth, anyway. Ruth was the one Dudley loved most, and it was her future of which Dudley was surely thinking. Even so, John felt that a weight had been lifted from him. It was progress at last. At a stroke he had effectively doubled his land and his revenue. And like magic, as the winter of 1955 advanced into spring, the rain and sunshine came in perfect balance, the pests and diseases stayed away, and a bumper crop of wheat began to ripen in the paddocks of both Dudley’s farm and his own. For a time John even dared to believe that Kuran Station was not so impossibly far away after all.
Strange, then, that it was around this time that the dreams began.
T
HE DAY OF THE RALLY FINALLY DAWNED. WILLIAM WAS UP AT FIRST light, and then had to wait impatiently for everyone else to get out of bed and finish their breakfasts. His mother was staying home, and his uncle was occupied with some last-minute work in the office, so William rode out to the camp site with Terry Butterworth and Henry Lasseter in the big safari truck. The morning was already bright and warm, and everything was in order. The toilets had been delivered, the generator was primed, and the great marquee, all red and green and strung with ropes, had risen like a giant fungus out of the yellow grass. And high upon the hill, within the circle of stones, a flagpole had been raised. From down below William could just see the tip of it, rising over the surrounding trees. But there was no flag upon it yet — that would be part of the opening ceremony, after everyone else had arrived.
Terry and Henry got busy with the final touches around their own camp. They were easily William’s favourites from the central committee — Terry because he was so loud and cheerful, and Henry because he was all crusty and bad-tempered on the outside, but quite harmless underneath. The two men had adopted William in turn, addressing him as ‘Captain Bill’ because of his hat, and including him in everything they did. They had even found a little nylon tent for him, and set it up next to theirs — a great big canvas tent that you could stand in, flanked by tables and chairs and a barbecue and, most importantly, two giant metal bins full of ice and beer. The site was high on the hill, and once everything was organised and the first bottle of beer opened, the three of them sat back to watch the cavalcade roll in below.
The first car came bumping along the track about an hour before noon, trailing dust. By the time its occupants had climbed out, another car had pulled in, and then another. From then on there came a steady stream of vehicles of all shapes and sizes — farm utilities and family sedans; four-wheel drives, big and small, some covered in mud and dirt, others pristine; sports cars, low to the ground and picking their way carefully around the rocks; campervans and minibuses; and two huge prime movers, devoid of trailers, that rumbled up the hill together like glistening behemoths, their air horns blaring bravely. There was even a gang of motorbikes that roared up the track in formation, all noise and dust and chrome, the riders clad in black leather — the effect spoiled only a little by the two old station wagons that wheezed along behind them, toting their wives and kids. William counted each arrival, but after fifty he lost count. There must have been over one hundred cars by the end, and over three hundred people.
They swarmed over the hill, setting up camp. There were young men and old men, wearing wide-brimmed Akubras or oily farming caps, some in checked shirts and boots, others in loose shorts, colourful shirts and thongs. There were young women and old women, country and town, their outfits ranging from cut-off jeans and bikini tops through to floral sundresses and straw hats. There were children of every age. And lastly there were the dogs, entire packs of them, of all different breeds. Every family seemed to have brought one. They ran about everywhere, barking madly and adding to the chaos. Mothers yelled at children, fathers yelled at each other and engines growled as latecomers hunted for parking spots. By early afternoon there were campfires burning right across the hill and tea was boiling in fifty billycans. Smoke drifted through the trees. Men stood about drinking beer, and music from half a dozen radios and portable stereos competed back and forth across the slope.
For the first hour or so William stayed close to Terry and Henry’s camp. When they lit the barbecue, he ate a hamburger. But the two committee members seemed very popular and soon he was lost in a crowd that had gathered around their tent. William set off on his own. He could see that his uncle had arrived and was moving about the hill, as well as Dr Moffat and Kevin Goodwin, but he didn’t try to intersect with any of them. He joined an admiring circle of children that were standing around the motorbikes. The riders were drinking beer and tinkering lazily with their engines, revving one occasionally, shooting out clouds of blue smoke. William studied their jackets, impressed by the pictures of skulls and fists, and wondering about words like ‘Vietnam’, and various enigmatic acronyms stitched on the backs.
From there he trailed the other kids as they headed over to inspect the two prime movers. They all gazed up at the huge chrome grilles and massive bull bars, and some climbed up on the steps to peer into the cabins. A lucky few even got to sit behind the wheel and play with the CB radios. The big trucks were veritable homes on wheels, with beds and fridges and televisions, and the two men who owned them were almost as gargantuan as their rigs, red-faced giants with huge bellies spilling forth from their blue singlets. They were drinking beer and regaling their young audience with tales about wild pigs and crocodiles and roads so straight you didn’t have to turn the wheel for a hundred miles. The whole of Australia was their home. Why, only this morning they’d been up north near Gladstone, hundred of miles away, fishing on the Great Barrier Reef at dawn. To prove it they revealed a battered old esky and plucked from it, to everyone’s astonishment, several mammoth crabs and crayfish, horribly alive with their legs waving in the air.
The day rolled on. Under the marquee, a serious group of men gathered to discuss League matters, William’s uncle among them, but the bulk of the crowd was bent on fun. An impromptu sports carnival began down towards the bottom of the hill, with younger children running various races. Some of the older boys and younger men started kicking footballs around, and then a game of cricket was organised. William watched it all but took no part. He felt perfectly happy by himself, roaming about with his hat settled firmly on his head. His only worry was that his ear was still aching. And he’d become aware of a bad smell. It was fleeting amidst the smoke of campfires and barbecues, but it came and went persistently throughout the day. The smell of something rotten. It reminded him of a dead animal. Oddly enough, it was strongest when he crawled back inside his little tent for a moment. But he searched the surrounding area, finding nothing. And no one else seemed to notice anything at all.
Finally, towards four o’clock, there came the sputtering sound of the generator kicking into life. Shortly afterwards, the public address system echoed out from the top of the hill. Distorted as it was, William recognised Terry Butterworth’s voice. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the national anthem.’
People all across the hill paused what they were doing, and stood waiting. Strains of familiar music began to waft down from above, faint at first, and scratchy, but then, after several squawks and screeches, ringing out load and clear.
Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong,
Under the shade of a coolabah tree;
And he sang as he watched and waited ’til his billy boiled,
‘Who’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?’
William stared — it was the wrong song. He knew ‘Waltzing Matilda’, of course, but it wasn’t the national anthem. And yet no one else seemed to think it was a mistake. Some people were singing along, and others had their drinks raised in salute. The thin voices sounded weirdly sad, out there under the blue sky, with the hills and bush all around. And now all eyes were turned to the top of the hill, to where the flagpole stood. A banner was being raised — the white Southern Cross on a blue background. And the song was coming to a close, the swagman drowned and the troopers foiled.
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong,
‘You’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.’
A breeze took the flag, fluttered it out proudly, dark blue against the paler sky. There was silence for a long moment, and then the PA spoke again, solemn.
‘Welcome, all, to the inaugural rally of the Australian Independence League.’
Everyone broke into cheers and applause, and the rally was officially launched. Then there came a string of announcements — new members were to report to the registration tent, could parents please ensure their children didn’t wander off into the bush and get lost, did the owner of a yellow Holden Commodore know that his lights were on, and everyone should remember to gather at the top of the hill at eight o’clock sharp, once dinner was out of the way. The crowd milled about happily, and William drifted up towards the marquee again. He spotted his uncle off to one side, alone for the moment, sitting on a log and taking the chance to eat a hamburger.
William went over.‘That wasn’t the national anthem,’ he said.
‘Wasn’t it?’ The old man was in good humour, smiling over his food. ‘Says who?’