LOST IN THE BUSH
“ … At times the heat seemed to suck your very blood and leave the body as dry as dust … “
I was lost.
The realisation stabbed through me like a cold blade.
Reining in the mare, I anxiously searched the countryside around me in every direction. It was foreign. Unknown. Nothing around me was familiar. South-western Arnhem Land shimmered in the heat – stark, old and lonely. A sinister watchfulness permeated the moist, humid land, as if dead men’s eyes were secretly gloating beyond the haze, watching and waiting for another victim.
There was a flash of panic. Wheeling the horse, I kicked her into an insane gallop, scrambling to one horizon, then another, frantically searching for something, anything to recognise – perhaps a track, a fence – but there was nothing, nothing but end- less, baking plains stretching away into an infinite solitude.
There was a hunger inside me, a need to share this isolation with anything living, even a solitary bird or scampering wallaby. The trees were skeletons, the red earth split with drought, everything seemingly dead, or gratefully dying, and I was utterly alone, hopelessly stranded in an uninhabited wilderness.
Earlier that morning I had ridden away from the stock camp, based about 15 miles up the Wilton River, heading back to the Yuri homestead to retrieve a forgotten mosquito net, also tobacco supplies for the Aboriginal stockmen. Taking a route which the ringers had described as “little bit close up,” meaning a short cut, I somehow lost my bearing and was bushed in the 30,000 square miles of Arnhem Land. A vague but definite premonition warned me to control myself, to suppress panic, to sit and think, as calmly and logically as possible, and maybe then I might discover a solution to my predicament.
For two hours I squatted in the shade of a coolibah, noting the arc of the sun, so as to determine east and west. The station homestead was somewhere south. Hopefully, I rode in a southerly direction, keeping a wary eye on a wavering rocky landmark far into the distance. Fresh horse’s tracks crossed mine. Instinctively, I moved to follow them, then changed my mind, remembering an old bushman’s warning: “If you’re ever lost, and you come across tracks of unshod horses, don’t follow them. They were probably left by brumbies, and they’ll only get you more lost than you are.”
The overhead sun was a glaring menace, assaulting the country with a malicious intensity. On other days like this elsewhere in Arnhem Land I had seen birds fall from the trees, dead of dehydration. At times the heat seemed to suck your very blood and leave the body as dry as dust. When the sweat stops flowing, that is the danger signal – the onset of thirst. At first the tongue swells, filling the mouth with its hardness, and menacing hallucinations torture the brain. With it comes memories of every precious drop of water you have ever wasted. Even today, years later, I can become deeply angry with anybody who treats water irresponsibly. To those who have thirsted, the stuff is the quintessence of life.
Ahead was a change in the landscape. The plain, flat and barren, was broken by a mass of stones in haphazard heaps. On the brink I paused to look over the edge. Far below, flashing and sparkling, was a river, weaving its way through a crevasse. As the bank was too treacherous for descending on horseback, I dismounted and carefully led the mare down the rocky slope, hooves kicking and dislodging stones as she nervously followed me into the gorge.
On a red rocky wall I spotted a series of pictographic Aboriginal carvings: human figures of hunters, a kangaroo, a goanna. Aeons before other human beings had been here in this lonely place; using a rock hammer they had laboriously pecked out those rude shapes as a timeless memorial. Trying to communicate over the years, I traced some outlines with a finger. The pangs of isolation grew even more intense, so I turned away.
Near the base, the uneven surface levelled into a bed of flat rock and through this weaved the relentless river, wearing a course started thousands of years before. Holding the reins at arm’s length, I stepped into the shallows, clothes and all, and laid back, letting the tepid water wash over me. I must have drunk a gallon between each breath. Alongside me, the horse drank deeply, snorting her delight. Filling my hat, I splashed her shoulders, legs and rump, helping to cool her.
The river, I reflected, must be the Wolga. If so, it runs from north to south, blending with the Rugged River at Yuri Station’s eastern boundary, my destination. One factor confused me. The current was not flowing to what I had calculated to be a southern point. It was going the other way. Then I remembered a crucial fact: a breeze was blowing from south to north, and as it moved along it created a deceptive ripple, causing the superficial impression of a northern flow; but, as I rested in the river I had felt the undertow surging firmly in the opposite direction. To verify my decision, I decided to act on the advice offered me once by a drover: “If you’re not sure which way the current of a river is flowing, look along the bank until you find a tree with the debris stacked up against it. If the debris is on the northern side of the trunk, then the river is flowing south!”
A sensible observation that helped save my life.
Re-mounted, I rode down-stream, bulky boulder piles on either side, shimmering with heat waves, fierce as a fire. Strange indentations in the smooth rock floor attracted my attention. Examining them more closely, I was amazed to recognise the marks as kangaroo tracks that were embedded in solid rock. Ages before, when this bank had been clay, a mob of kangaroos had travelled over the area, and ever since their spoor had remained here undisturbed, preserved for eternity as the clay solidified into stone. How many years does it take, I wondered, for clay to be transformed into stone?
Searching around the ancient site, I found yet another mystery: a petrified human foot print, one with six toes, and at least 12 inches in length. Much later I described my discovered to an old Aboriginal friend of the Ritarrngu tribe. He was familiar with the historic evidence, he nodded; the location had sacred ceremonial significance.
“What about the man’s foot?” I asked. “He must have been a giant.”
“All man bin giant one time,” he smiled. “Me sometime show you cave in Dungullumindinni country. Big mob bone of giant people there.”
The sun was dying, violently, its dying blood staining the horizon in a gory glow. A billabong glinted on the flat, ringed by ghost gums, a steep red cliff rising behind, every detail mirrored perfectly in the iron-brown water. This country was old when Man was young. It radiates age and a timeless wisdom. Wise, tortured by primeval experience, it watches the infant human struggling against its law. To the few who listen, it nourishes and protects.
The mare unsaddled and hobbled, I sought a pandanus tree and plucked a handful of its uppermost fronds. To the Aborigines, this was tucker: pale, fleshy stalks, resembling celery in taste and cool with moisture. To the arrogant white Territorian, this food of nature is condemned as “blackfella tucker.” I fed it to one bigot when his belly button was leaning against his backbone and he devoured it with absolute gratitude. For dessert, he polished off a roasted goanna tail and a boiled cockatoo. Safely restored to life, some days later he squatted comfortably in the shade of a Darwin verandah and again rubbished the black fellow’s traditional menu.
Surveying the immediate vicinity of my camp site, I was surprised to come across a dilapidated cattle yard fashioned with bush timber. It was an old construction. The wood was riddled with termite damage. But still it stood there, defiant against time and the elements. Later, in describing the old cattle yard to Big Red at Yuri Station, he recognised it at once.
“Oh, that’s what we call the ‘Durack Yard.’” he said. “Years ago -back in the 1800s, I think – the Durack’s moved a big mob of cattle from over in the east, right up here into the Territory, then across to the North West. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but the bloke who ran this place before me reckoned the Durack’s went up the Wolga and got holed up there in the wet, and they built that yard while they were waiting for the country to dry out.”
At a Perth writer’s gathering in 1975 I mentioned the ‘Durack Yard’ to the family biographer, Mary Durack, and she remarked:
“I’ve never heard of it before. I wish I had known of it when I was writing Kings In Grass Castles.”
Under submerged rocks I found the fresh water mussel known to the tribal people as “mullabungor”, tasteless but nourishing.
These I kept for breakfast. From a hollow log I pulled a handful of “sugarbag,” or wild honey – sweet, energising, and flecked with bark chips that needed to be strained through the teeth. Immature water lilies from the billabong, their pods crammed with seeds; the stalk and root are all edible and sustaining, so I collected a quantity.
The saddle blanket, stiff and stinking with horse sweat, was utilised as a bed, the saddle my pillow. Aboriginal stockmen had warned me of the dangers of camping alone in the bush without a fire. A camp fire serves as a protection against buffaloes, they said. Sometimes an animal blunders into an unlit camp and will sniff over a prone body. Detecting any sign of life, he will immediately press his whole weight on to his knees and crush the sleeping figure.
With leaves and twigs I set fire to the trunk of a dead gum tree standing nearby, then laid down to sleep, leaving it to smoulder through the dark hours. Waking abruptly, I heard a tremendous splintering crash, with flames exploding and an eruption of sparks showering down. For a second, I imagined the fiends of hell had come to terrorise me. The gum tree, its bole gradually weakened by the fire, had collapsed – luckily, away from my position. Had it fallen otherwise, I might have been squashed and cremated.
At piccaninny daylight I brought the mare back to camp, saddled her, and scribbled a letter to my mother and sister in Melbourne. Securely strapped in the saddle bag, I reasoned that if I did not survive, perhaps the horse would return to the station or be picked up in the annual muster, and some kindly ringer would send the letter on. Down river I continued, following the right bank. When thick scrub barred my way, I forced the mare through. My clothes were soon shredded. Once a deep impassable gully blocked me. Turning the mare into the river, and keeping an eye out for crocodiles, I swam her across to the other side, slipping from the saddle mid-stream and clutching the mane, keeping myself clear of her thrashing hooves. Three times I was compelled to cross the river in this manner, expecting every second to be snatched by a croc. Only two showed themselves. They steered wide of us, thankfully.
Riding around a sharp river bend I spotted an Aboriginal man doing something in the shallows. He apparently did not hear my approach. The fellow was naked. He leaned over, his back to me, arranging rocks in a pattern, probably constructing or repairing a traditional fish trap. When I loudly announced my presence by calling, the man quite obviously received a terrible shock; he sprung upright into an alert stance and turned to face me. Thrust point down into the nearby river bank were two spears. He edged towards the weapons and placed his right hand on one of the shafts.
“It’s okay,” I called again, hoping to reassure him. “I’m from Yuri Station. I’m lost. Where are you from?”
The Aboriginal stood mute. His long, tangled hair reached his shoulders. Across his chest were several bulging cicatrice scars.
Other decorative scars sliced down his upper arms in a decorative pattern. The man’s eyes, highly expressive, troubled me. His darting, terrified glances covered every aspect of my appearance, as though he was inwardly stricken with panic. I did not approach too close as I sensed something unpredictable and dangerous in his behaviour.
When he persisted with his silence, I spoke again, saying: “What’s your name? Where do you live?”
Now he literally trembled. A nervousness moved through his facial muscles like an involuntary tremor and his agitated fingers restlessly handled the spear’s shaft. Then, without a word, he snatched his spears, turned and sprinted through the shallows and up the river bank, never looking back.
When later I mentioned the peculiar encounter to Larrnga at his Yuri camp, the old man said: “Him myall (wild black fellow).
Them fellas can’t talk mununga language. They still in bush, them myalls. We see them fellas sometimes. They no more talk even to same colour. Them fellas always run away. You got to be careful. They can spear you quick.”
“Can you make friends with them?” I asked.
“No more. If you got rifle, it more better you shoot that myall. Then he can’t kill you longa back.”
A full day in that barren, blazing inferno, grilled by a pitiless sun, and no further advanced, it seemed. No sign of habitation. A few kangaroos bounded into the scrub. A startled buffalo lumbered away. Fresh brumby tracks. That was all. Now, thoroughly depressed, I released the hobbled horse, built a fire, smoked my pipe, and recalled that at that time the year before I had been in Tokyo, living a life of luxury in a flash Yankee hotel, playing the didjeridu on stage with the folk-singer, Lionel Long, and being paid a small fortune by the Australian Tourist Commission for assisting in the promotion of our national virtues to a convention of American travel agents.
Look at you now, I mused, plagued by a devastating irony: the backside out of your pants, not two bob to bless yourself with, and bushed in the bum of the continent.
At one stage of my journey, a rather sad and contemplative one, I glanced up as the mare stiffened and snorted. We had emer ged from scrubby gum country into a clearing, wide and lush with grass. Ahead, scattered and mainly feeding, were a mob of about thirty brumbies. Impressed by the unexpected beauty of the scene, I reined in and sat there, quietly watching the wild horses in a natural setting. I did not see the stallion at first; he somehow had galloped up to me from the side, only his pounding hoof beats signalling an approach. He was absolutely spectacular, a light bay colour with a black mane and tail, swishing and swirling at every movement. He was almost infallible. Muscles rippled under his glossy coat in a perfectly co-ordinated rhythm, and dark eyes flashed his challenge as he pranced nearby, half rearing to increase his height, whinnying an alarm. I had always loved horses.
But the sight of this magnificent animal, untamed and beautiful, gave an awful turn of pain to the feeling, creating an indelible memory as perfect as anything can be on God’s earth.
My mount became increasingly nervous as the mob of mares and foals cantered up to stand and stare in a rough half circle, all awaiting a signal to flee into their secret bush haunts. Other brumby mobs I had seen around Yuri’s back country were not nearly as impressive as this. Many bore evidence of in-breeding: misshapen heads and bodies, with long and up-curled hooves restricting all movement to an ungainly stumble, knotted tails and manes, matted coats and thoroughly spiritless. These animals before me were clean and healthy, purely bred, as fine as if they had been hand-reared in stud farm stables and tended with loving care. The snorting stallion stamped his way closer in a threatening posture, his nostrils flared wide and red-veined in the sunlight. I sat motionless, speechless, controlling my mount through the reins.
Satisfied there was no threat, the stallion wheeled and, with tail up-raised, he circled his harem into a group and tailed them off into the scrubby timber country on the opposite side of the clearing. Watching those wonderful horses disappear into the distance, I was surprised to realise that my blood was racing with an almost uncontrollable excitement over the wonder I was privileged to witness.
The realisation stabbed through me like a cold blade.
Reining in the mare, I anxiously searched the countryside around me in every direction. It was foreign. Unknown. Nothing around me was familiar. South-western Arnhem Land shimmered in the heat – stark, old and lonely. A sinister watchfulness permeated the moist, humid land, as if dead men’s eyes were secretly gloating beyond the haze, watching and waiting for another victim.
There was a flash of panic. Wheeling the horse, I kicked her into an insane gallop, scrambling to one horizon, then another, frantically searching for something, anything to recognise – perhaps a track, a fence – but there was nothing, nothing but end- less, baking plains stretching away into an infinite solitude.
There was a hunger inside me, a need to share this isolation with anything living, even a solitary bird or scampering wallaby. The trees were skeletons, the red earth split with drought, everything seemingly dead, or gratefully dying, and I was utterly alone, hopelessly stranded in an uninhabited wilderness.
Earlier that morning I had ridden away from the stock camp, based about 15 miles up the Wilton River, heading back to the Yuri homestead to retrieve a forgotten mosquito net, also tobacco supplies for the Aboriginal stockmen. Taking a route which the ringers had described as “little bit close up,” meaning a short cut, I somehow lost my bearing and was bushed in the 30,000 square miles of Arnhem Land. A vague but definite premonition warned me to control myself, to suppress panic, to sit and think, as calmly and logically as possible, and maybe then I might discover a solution to my predicament.
For two hours I squatted in the shade of a coolibah, noting the arc of the sun, so as to determine east and west. The station homestead was somewhere south. Hopefully, I rode in a southerly direction, keeping a wary eye on a wavering rocky landmark far into the distance. Fresh horse’s tracks crossed mine. Instinctively, I moved to follow them, then changed my mind, remembering an old bushman’s warning: “If you’re ever lost, and you come across tracks of unshod horses, don’t follow them. They were probably left by brumbies, and they’ll only get you more lost than you are.”
The overhead sun was a glaring menace, assaulting the country with a malicious intensity. On other days like this elsewhere in Arnhem Land I had seen birds fall from the trees, dead of dehydration. At times the heat seemed to suck your very blood and leave the body as dry as dust. When the sweat stops flowing, that is the danger signal – the onset of thirst. At first the tongue swells, filling the mouth with its hardness, and menacing hallucinations torture the brain. With it comes memories of every precious drop of water you have ever wasted. Even today, years later, I can become deeply angry with anybody who treats water irresponsibly. To those who have thirsted, the stuff is the quintessence of life.
Ahead was a change in the landscape. The plain, flat and barren, was broken by a mass of stones in haphazard heaps. On the brink I paused to look over the edge. Far below, flashing and sparkling, was a river, weaving its way through a crevasse. As the bank was too treacherous for descending on horseback, I dismounted and carefully led the mare down the rocky slope, hooves kicking and dislodging stones as she nervously followed me into the gorge.
On a red rocky wall I spotted a series of pictographic Aboriginal carvings: human figures of hunters, a kangaroo, a goanna. Aeons before other human beings had been here in this lonely place; using a rock hammer they had laboriously pecked out those rude shapes as a timeless memorial. Trying to communicate over the years, I traced some outlines with a finger. The pangs of isolation grew even more intense, so I turned away.
Near the base, the uneven surface levelled into a bed of flat rock and through this weaved the relentless river, wearing a course started thousands of years before. Holding the reins at arm’s length, I stepped into the shallows, clothes and all, and laid back, letting the tepid water wash over me. I must have drunk a gallon between each breath. Alongside me, the horse drank deeply, snorting her delight. Filling my hat, I splashed her shoulders, legs and rump, helping to cool her.
The river, I reflected, must be the Wolga. If so, it runs from north to south, blending with the Rugged River at Yuri Station’s eastern boundary, my destination. One factor confused me. The current was not flowing to what I had calculated to be a southern point. It was going the other way. Then I remembered a crucial fact: a breeze was blowing from south to north, and as it moved along it created a deceptive ripple, causing the superficial impression of a northern flow; but, as I rested in the river I had felt the undertow surging firmly in the opposite direction. To verify my decision, I decided to act on the advice offered me once by a drover: “If you’re not sure which way the current of a river is flowing, look along the bank until you find a tree with the debris stacked up against it. If the debris is on the northern side of the trunk, then the river is flowing south!”
A sensible observation that helped save my life.
Re-mounted, I rode down-stream, bulky boulder piles on either side, shimmering with heat waves, fierce as a fire. Strange indentations in the smooth rock floor attracted my attention. Examining them more closely, I was amazed to recognise the marks as kangaroo tracks that were embedded in solid rock. Ages before, when this bank had been clay, a mob of kangaroos had travelled over the area, and ever since their spoor had remained here undisturbed, preserved for eternity as the clay solidified into stone. How many years does it take, I wondered, for clay to be transformed into stone?
Searching around the ancient site, I found yet another mystery: a petrified human foot print, one with six toes, and at least 12 inches in length. Much later I described my discovered to an old Aboriginal friend of the Ritarrngu tribe. He was familiar with the historic evidence, he nodded; the location had sacred ceremonial significance.
“What about the man’s foot?” I asked. “He must have been a giant.”
“All man bin giant one time,” he smiled. “Me sometime show you cave in Dungullumindinni country. Big mob bone of giant people there.”
The sun was dying, violently, its dying blood staining the horizon in a gory glow. A billabong glinted on the flat, ringed by ghost gums, a steep red cliff rising behind, every detail mirrored perfectly in the iron-brown water. This country was old when Man was young. It radiates age and a timeless wisdom. Wise, tortured by primeval experience, it watches the infant human struggling against its law. To the few who listen, it nourishes and protects.
The mare unsaddled and hobbled, I sought a pandanus tree and plucked a handful of its uppermost fronds. To the Aborigines, this was tucker: pale, fleshy stalks, resembling celery in taste and cool with moisture. To the arrogant white Territorian, this food of nature is condemned as “blackfella tucker.” I fed it to one bigot when his belly button was leaning against his backbone and he devoured it with absolute gratitude. For dessert, he polished off a roasted goanna tail and a boiled cockatoo. Safely restored to life, some days later he squatted comfortably in the shade of a Darwin verandah and again rubbished the black fellow’s traditional menu.
Surveying the immediate vicinity of my camp site, I was surprised to come across a dilapidated cattle yard fashioned with bush timber. It was an old construction. The wood was riddled with termite damage. But still it stood there, defiant against time and the elements. Later, in describing the old cattle yard to Big Red at Yuri Station, he recognised it at once.
“Oh, that’s what we call the ‘Durack Yard.’” he said. “Years ago -back in the 1800s, I think – the Durack’s moved a big mob of cattle from over in the east, right up here into the Territory, then across to the North West. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but the bloke who ran this place before me reckoned the Durack’s went up the Wolga and got holed up there in the wet, and they built that yard while they were waiting for the country to dry out.”
At a Perth writer’s gathering in 1975 I mentioned the ‘Durack Yard’ to the family biographer, Mary Durack, and she remarked:
“I’ve never heard of it before. I wish I had known of it when I was writing Kings In Grass Castles.”
Under submerged rocks I found the fresh water mussel known to the tribal people as “mullabungor”, tasteless but nourishing.
These I kept for breakfast. From a hollow log I pulled a handful of “sugarbag,” or wild honey – sweet, energising, and flecked with bark chips that needed to be strained through the teeth. Immature water lilies from the billabong, their pods crammed with seeds; the stalk and root are all edible and sustaining, so I collected a quantity.
The saddle blanket, stiff and stinking with horse sweat, was utilised as a bed, the saddle my pillow. Aboriginal stockmen had warned me of the dangers of camping alone in the bush without a fire. A camp fire serves as a protection against buffaloes, they said. Sometimes an animal blunders into an unlit camp and will sniff over a prone body. Detecting any sign of life, he will immediately press his whole weight on to his knees and crush the sleeping figure.
With leaves and twigs I set fire to the trunk of a dead gum tree standing nearby, then laid down to sleep, leaving it to smoulder through the dark hours. Waking abruptly, I heard a tremendous splintering crash, with flames exploding and an eruption of sparks showering down. For a second, I imagined the fiends of hell had come to terrorise me. The gum tree, its bole gradually weakened by the fire, had collapsed – luckily, away from my position. Had it fallen otherwise, I might have been squashed and cremated.
At piccaninny daylight I brought the mare back to camp, saddled her, and scribbled a letter to my mother and sister in Melbourne. Securely strapped in the saddle bag, I reasoned that if I did not survive, perhaps the horse would return to the station or be picked up in the annual muster, and some kindly ringer would send the letter on. Down river I continued, following the right bank. When thick scrub barred my way, I forced the mare through. My clothes were soon shredded. Once a deep impassable gully blocked me. Turning the mare into the river, and keeping an eye out for crocodiles, I swam her across to the other side, slipping from the saddle mid-stream and clutching the mane, keeping myself clear of her thrashing hooves. Three times I was compelled to cross the river in this manner, expecting every second to be snatched by a croc. Only two showed themselves. They steered wide of us, thankfully.
The third day dawned like a furnace. By now I was convinced I would inevitably perish. It was merely a matter of time. Possibly today. Tomorrow. Eventually. Riding along, I thought sadly of all the things I had left undone: stories, poems, songs and books unwritten, valuable time squandered, places unseen and experiences unlived. I deeply regretted the waste of it.
As on the preceding days, every few hours I paused to light a fire, toss on green branches and send a column of smoke spiralling skywards as a signal of distress. The Yuri Aborigines might see it, I thought. Their eyes were always alert to anything out of the ordinary. Smoke meant fire. Regular smokes meant deliberate fires.
That meant man. It also meant communication and need. Or so I reasoned in my befuddled, desperate mind.
No answering smokes responded. The long futile hours dawdled on towards another sunset. The mare seemed to feel as hopeless as myself. Her head lowered wearily and her pace slowed to a monotonous plodding. Her flanks were hollowed and flies caked on the >dried blood around her brisket and legs where bracken had ripped her. She suddenly stopped. Glancing up, puzzled, I was astonished to find an old fence blocking our path. A fence! That surely meant that somewhere around it was a gate and a track, one that might lead me back to people. I hurried my mount along the paddock’s perimeter. I saw a gate, an ordinary old rusted gate, but to me it represented a symbol a safety and life.
It was then I slowly came to recognise my surroundings. A familiar red cliff told me that Yuri homestead was less than a mile away. Emerging from the bush near the homestead, some Aborigines spotted me from their camp and sent out a welcoming cooee.
The owner, Randy Ribbs, lounged against a verandah post, watching with a wry smile as I approached.
“You look like you’ve been lost,” he grinned.
“Lost!” I exclaimed. “I’ve been more than lost. I’ve had one bloody foot in the grave.”
“I saw your smokes,” he drawled. “We’ve been watching them for three days now.”
“Well, why the hell didn’t you send someone out to find me?”
“Why bother?” he shrugged. “You were headed in the right direction.”
NOTE: The above is taken from the book, “Journey Into Dreamtime,” an autobiography of B. Clark, now awaiting publication.
