The White Earth (25 page)

‘It was “Waltzing Matilda”.’

‘That’s right. Banjo Paterson, 1895.’

‘But it’s wrong.’

The smile lingered. ‘It all really happened, you know. Out in western Queensland. The swagman, the troopers, the squatter, the lot.’

William was surprised. ‘He really drowned himself?’

‘Doesn’t make sense, does it? Stealing sheep was hardly a hanging offence. So when the troopers came for him, why didn’t he just go along? But no, instead he cries out,“You’ll never catch me alive!” like he’s some sort of famous bushranger, and jumps into the water and drowns.’

‘Why?’

‘Well … the truth wasn’t really much like the poem, although a man certainly died. It was during the great shearers’ strike of 1894. The shearers had unionised, you see. They were demanding better conditions, and the station owners hated that, so the two sides were at each other’s throats and the entire outback was at a standstill. It was like Eureka all over again. The government was sending in troops to support the squatters,thousands of men were unemployed and shearing sheds were burning down. Then one of the union leaders was found dead by a water hole. Murder, suicide, no one knows, and it doesn’t matter. Paterson wasn’t writing a news report. He was making a point, and the point was that the little man had had enough. Enough of high-handed governments that only worked for the rich, enough of penny pinching squatters who controlled everything, enough of the police always siding with landowners, enough of hunger and misery and all the injustice of those days. So Paterson has his swagman say, That’s it. A little man can’t win, so to hell with you all. And he jumps into the water. But it’s got nothing to do with stealing a sheep. It’s all about oppression. It’s a protest song.’

The old man rose from the log, wiped his lips.

‘And you’re right, it’s not the national anthem. But the real national anthem tells you nothing whatsoever about Australia, whereas “Waltzing Matilda” has got something important to say. It gets right to the heart of everything that can go wrong in this country, if we don’t watch out. Everything that these people here are fighting against. So that’s what we sing. I’ll see you up at the bonfire.’

He strode off to rejoin the discussion in the marquee.

Nonplussed, William sat on the log himself, watching people come and go. He thought about shearers and swagmen and squatters for a while. Hadn’t Kuran Station been like that once?

Did that mean there were dead bodies in billabongs here too? He stifled a yawn. A moment later he heard what sounded like gunshots. People stared about, startled. The shots continued, from somewhere up over the hill, and men were shouting. But they were laughing too. The crowd relaxed, began to move towards the sound. William followed. On the far side of the hill he found a group of men with rifles, firing at tin cans and plastic bottles, set up along a fallen tree trunk about thirty yards away.

Terry Butterworth appeared, beer in hand.‘All right, you kids keep well back. You can watch, but I don’t want anyone in the line of fire.’

‘You still got your old police special?’ someone yelled to him.

Grinning, Terry dug into his pocket and pulled out a handgun. There were appreciative murmurs. Terry turned, took aim, and blazed away at the targets. He didn’t hit anything, but there were cheers all the same.

Other men were arriving now, with more guns. William sat and watched the shooting, fascinated. There were so many different weapons. Some of them made light cracking sounds that you hardly noticed, but others, like the shotguns a few of the motorbike riders brandished, made sharp echoing booms. Sometimes the cans skipped and spun when hit, sometimes they exploded. The bottles might fall apart in large pieces, or shatter into dust. Eventually Henry Lasseter came up the hill, struggling under the weight of something big. The crowd craned heads with interest. It was a weapon unlike any other they’d seen so far. It was long and thick, with protruding sections, and had to be set up on its own low stand. William heard the words ‘machine gun’ and ‘M16’ being passed about. Finally a circle was cleared, and Henry lay down behind the gun, took hold of the stock, sighted along the barrel, and let fly. The noise was shattering, it seemed to drill painfully right into William’s bad ear. The targets shuddered and jumped and flew away, and the tree trunk itself splintered into chips. The crowd was applauding.

The men all began taking turns with the M16. Terry Butterworth was one, laughing uproariously as the gun chattered in his hand. William was amazed to see that even Kevin Goodwin had a go. The accountant, who had looked ill at ease all day, appeared even more uncomfortable now, as he hunkered down on the ground, and squinted earnestly along the barrel. But the gun hammered away regardless when he pulled the trigger, and when Kevin rose, flushed and grinning, William hardly recognised him. It was as if the gun could perform magic on a man. And others were lining up for a turn. There was no talk in the crowd any more, just an awed hush between firings.

The air grew heavy with smoke and gunpowder, and the noise seemed to work its way into William’s head, until the throbbing in his ear became a headache. But he couldn’t turn away. The men, who had appeared so aimless and amiable earlier in the afternoon, had somehow become a pack, a tightly knit gang clustered about the weapons, full of importance and power.

It was only when William noticed orange flashes of flame at the muzzles of the guns that he realised it was getting dark. He stood up then, swaying, aware of sudden pangs of nausea. He took a few steps away from the crowd and smoke. Looking up to the crown of the hill, he could see the looming stones, and amidst them, alone, his uncle standing beneath the flagpole. The old man was watching the crowd, and even from that distance William could sense his disapproval. It all felt strange, the sunny afternoon with its flag fluttering brightly, gone forever. William’s head thumped furiously. Dogs crept about in the fading light, growling with hunger. Somewhere, someone was banging a billy can like a gong. Campfires glowed, and behind him the gunfire petered off to a few last shots, then died away to silence.

Chapter Twenty-six

N
IGHT STOLE OVER THE RALLY. WILLIAM LOITERED ABOUT HIS camp, where Terry and Henry were entertaining their friends. They had the barbecue alight, blue flames hissing under the grill. William could smell sausages frying, and steak, and onions, and yet he didn’t feel hungry. His nausea hadn’t gone away. And maybe it was only the smoke from the campfires hanging in the air, but there seemed to be a haze over his vision. The world looked distant and flat. When Terry offered him a sandwich crammed with sausages and onions, William turned it down.

‘You okay, champ?’ the policeman wanted to know.

‘I guess so.’

‘Maybe you should lie down for a bit, before things get started.’

William nodded and went to his tent, curling up on his sleeping bag. But whatever was wrong, it wasn’t making him sleepy. He rolled about, restless. The noises from outside the tent — people talking and laughing — sounded jarring and strange. And the rotting smell was back, as elusive as ever, but undeniable.

Eventually,Terry poked his head inside and announced that the meeting was about to start. William got up. Lying down wasn’t working anyway — the more he kept his eyes closed, the dizzier he felt. He emerged from the tent. All across the hillside shadowy figures could be seen making their way towards the top. William followed them. There was a muttering of conversation, but the speakers were faceless in the dark, and no one spoke to him. He felt very alone. Below the voices and the other sounds of movement, he was aware of the steady clatter of the generator, and below that again, all around, there was the deeper silence of the bush. He cast his eyes to the sky, but there was no moon and the stars were a blur. He blinked and blinked, yet his vision refused to clear. Then the stone circle loomed upon the crown of the hill. The rocks and trees formed black shapes against a leaping brightness. A bonfire had been built at one end of the circle, and was blazing brightly, casting back the darkness. Shadows jumped and danced, and within the ring hundreds of people were gathering, their voices low, their faces reflecting red from the flames.

William felt he had stepped into another world. He could see his uncle now, framed against the fire, standing next to a microphone. A few paces behind him, side by side, stood the other four members of the central committee. The crowd was organising itself in a wide arc about them, settling down on the grass or on blankets or in folding chairs. William remained at the rear, his back against one of the stones. It felt cool and solid, reassuring, and he needed a foundation, for the dizziness would not go away. The crowd, the fire, it all pressed upon him, noisome and stifling. He looked outwards, off to the south. The treetops hung white and grey in the flickering light. Beyond them, dying campfires sprinkled the hillside, and further below still was the wide blackness of the plains. Pinpricks of light shone out there, from farmhouses and sheds where people worked and moved, and far off on the horizon was the glow of Powell, with its ten thousand souls going about their lives. But that was the normal world, impossibly distant, and it had nothing to do with what was happening up on the hill.

William’s uncle stepped to the microphone.

‘Welcome,’ he said.

Even amplified and crackling, his voice was quiet, and a hush fell over the circle. He glanced at the sky and smiled.

‘Well, we’ve a fine night for it.’

The crowd murmured appreciatively. William looked around at each of the stones, and they too waited, listening.

‘Many of you won’t know this,’ his uncle said,‘but hundreds of years ago, I’m sure that Aborigines used to meet on this very spot. It was a sacred site to them. Now, we’re going to be hearing a lot about Aboriginal history and sacred sites in the coming years, and it might seem strange that we, of all people, should gather at one of their special places. But there’s a message in this. The Aborigines are gone. And that’s the point. This is my property now. This is all your properties,your farms,your houses,your yards — this hill represents them all. We must be prepared to defend what we own.’ The crowd bent forward, approving, and the old man’s voice went low. ‘Australia — every square inch of it — is
our
sacred site.’

Then Terry Butterworth was clapping, firm and slow, and after a moment all the other committee members joined in, followed by the crowd. The applause swelled into thunder, and William’s uncle waited for the noise to die away.

‘There are those who want to deny the truth of history. Those who want to divide this nation up into camps, black and white, and tell us where we can and can’t go in our own country. Apartheid is what they’re talking about. Rights for some, but not for others. Our government in Canberra is at this very moment debating ways to deny all of us here the basic entitlements of ownership over land, and security in that ownership. Which is why it is so important that we are here, in this place that we have claimed. To meet. To talk. And to make our battle plans.’

More applause, and more cheers.

And so the meeting was underway. Yet for William, nothing felt right. It all looked distorted, and his empty stomach rolled queasily. He sank down against the stone and held his head in his hands. Meanwhile, his uncle gave way to other speakers — first Terry Butterworth and then Kevin Goodwin. They spoke of things with which William was already familiar. The government and Native Title and the rights of people over their own properties. But through his misery, none of it mattered. And on the edges of his sight, away from the fire, the night seemed to be crowding in, heavier and heavier, and utterly black. Then there were other speakers at the microphone, people William didn’t know, and then men and women who simply stood up from the crowd to say what they wanted.

‘…we’re the ones who suffer, not the city people…’

‘…what do they know, they’ve never owned a property, worked it for generations…’

‘…black and white always got along out here, everyone knew their place, but now the blacks are getting cocky, they think they’re gonna end up owning everything…’

‘…they don’t even have to pay for it like we do, they just get it handed over…’

‘…and no one’s listening to
us
, no one gives a damn…’

They were angry words, and angry people. Their mood reeked of frustration and stale sunscreen and beer. Then Terry was up at the microphone again, discussing the committee’s plan to find a property that would be threatened by the new laws, and to set up a barricade around it. Hands were raised, volunteering to man picket lines, while half a dozen people offered their properties for selection. The debate surged back and forth. William felt he was growing seasick on an ocean of talk.

Someone raised the question of whether the men on the barricades should bear arms. Suddenly Kevin Goodwin was up again — still swollen, it seemed, from his moment with the machine gun. He declared that the only answer was an organised militia. William’s head was whirring. A militia? Hadn’t that been Terry’s idea, or Henry’s? But the crowd was inspired.

‘…a hundred men right here…’

‘…do it now, before the bastards take our guns away…’

‘…show them armed men can defend their rights…’

‘…defend our fucking borders, you mean, no one else is doing it, might as well put out a bloody welcome mat…’

‘…it’s open house, it’s Asians and Arabs and God knows who else, and it’s a proven fact, those people bring all their old problems with them…’

‘…you saw it, all of us, today, that was the real Australia for you…’

‘…and what’s so wrong with it, why should
we
feel guilty…’

But then William’s uncle was at the microphone, his hands raised for calm.‘Let’s not stray too far. Immigration is certainly an issue, but it can wait. As for a militia, if people want one, well and good, but that’s a long-term thing. A response to the Native Title legislation is what we’re here to organise.’

But William could sense an impatience in the crowd now. An ugly stubbornness. What had happened to everyone? He stared about, trying to focus on faces, but recognised no one from the sunny afternoon. This was a different collection of people, here in the ring and the firelight.