A DEVIL MAN
“ … Watching, eerie country … “
Strange are the tales that rarely get told of the mystical Northern Territory in outback Australia.
Tales that are often unexplainable.
Experiences linked with the ancient visions of a dream-time, reaching back through aeons of time and yet still strangely intruding into modern lives, and affecting living people.
There are some who know the truth of such phenomena.
There are many more who deny it, even sneer, as their contemporary logic cannot cope with what seems illogical or impossible …
On a recent dark night while driving along the Ross River highway, near a place called Corroboree Rock, several Aboriginal people experienced something highly peculiar.
Something they will never forget.
The true import of their experience has its origins with the mystical Aboriginal dream-time, a phenomena which is normally beyond the understanding of most white Australians.
Billy Warrigal (not his real name), while driving down the road after sunset, slightly east of Corroboree Rock, began to notice the engine of his vehicle starting to cough and fail.
Repeatedly, the driver, with his wife and child dozing alongside him, alighted from the vehicle, lifted the bonnet and fiddled with plugs and cables, trying to identify the cause of his mechanical mishaps.
“I couldn’t find nothing wrong,” he said.
“Everything seemed to be okay, as far as I could see.
“But the engine kept breaking down.”
Being a Pitjantjatjara man, Billy was not at all familiar with the Eastern Arranta country.
He did not know his precise geographical location.
He only knew he was in transit between Alice Springs and the Ross River homestead..
Watching, eerie country.
Dreaming and lonely.
On occasions, frighteningly isolated and even foreign.
Some, of other cultures, believe that in the earth, trees and water linger ethereal essences of men and women long dead, who once lived in our tangible world, were related to it as surely as if they shared a common pulse.
To them, the land was more than a place to live or exploit; it was an extension of their very being, a benevolent Mother to themselves and every living thing, harbouring all the elements of the physical and spiritual: a mystic silence, magnificently eternal.
Such were people of deeply spiritual commitment to the soil of their birth, evolving from it to life and returning after death to the same nameless sphere, for ever bonded to their tribal lands and ever protective against intruders or those who might harm or destroy their ageless dreaming landscape.
Billy and his wife suddenly felt an impact, as though something solid and heavy had hit their trailer from behind.
“Don’t stop,” his wife instinctively warned him. “Keep going!”
Again, as he drove forward, the engine started to lose power, to splutter and fail.
Stopping the vehicle beside the darkened track, Billy, swearing with frustration, threw open the driver’s side door and stepped outside.
“I started to walk around the car,” he said.
“I wasn’t sure what to do.
“When I was behind the car, about where the towball is, I felt the air around me go dead cold, like I had stepped into a freezer.
“It was a warm night, too.
“But it was like I was surrounded by very cold air.
“The feeling made my flesh crawl, and I could feel the hairs on my body starting to stand up – you know, like when you’re frightened?
“It was like that.
“I was scared, too scared to move.
“Then something grabbed me from behind.
“It felt like it was big and hairy.
“But I couldn’t see it.
“This thing – whatever it was – crushed me in its arms, and then it let me go.
“When I got my brains together again, I got back into the car, as quickly as I could, and turned on the key.”
The engine started at once, strong and hearty, as though nothing had been wrong with it.
Had he been drinking?
“No,” he replied. “I don’t drink now. I gave it up a fair while ago.”
As Billy drove along, his nerves tight and emotions stressed, he suddenly became aware once more of the queer coldness that seemed to surround him like a blanket, causing his body hairs to prickle.
The uncanny chill appeared to penetrate his body and brain, stupifying his senses, and even controlling his mind and muscles, as though an invading spiritual force, something chillingly evil, had somehow totally dominated his entire body, turning him into a numb, dumb robot without a will of his own.
“My two hands were locked on to the wheel,” Billy recalled, “and I could hardly move them an inch.
“I could feel my brain going to sleep, like being in some sort of a trance.
“It felt like this ‘thing’ had taken control of me and was trying to make me crash the car.”
Billy forced himself to stop the vehicle, asking his wife, who was drowsing alongside him with their baby, to take over the driving while he rested on the back seat.
Lying, with eyes closed, on the back seat, Billy’s head started throbbing violently and cruel pains began to tear through his stomach, as though something was inside him, trying to rip its way free with a blunt knife.
From beneath the seat, scratching sounds became evident, like the frantic clawings of a trapped animal.
“I’ve never gone through anything like that before,” Billy said the next morning after a sleepless night, still looking haggard and scared.
“It was some old Arunta thing that was coming after me.”
The old people intuitively understood Billy’s mystifying experience when it was related to them.
In that area of the plains where the incident occurred, they murmered, used to be an old ceremonial meeting place for the old- time ancestors of their people.
“Them old spirits is still there,” they said.
“Aborigines know these things.
“White people know nothing.”
But why should the spirits of ancient tribesmen still so jealously guard their territory?
Why should they try to terrify and injure living people who venture on to their traditional lands?
People like Billy, they explain, are, in the old-time Aboriginal eyes, foreigners, people from other places.
They don’t belong there.
They have no right to be intruding on strange tribal lands, these from the south.
According to the old law, such infringements were punishable by death.
Well, what was that ‘thing’ that caused Billy Warrigal all that trouble the other night?
“That was the old people,” an elderly Arranta said, “giving that young yella-fella a fright.
“He don’t belong this country.
“They was just giving him a little message.
But you white fellas don’t understand things like that …”
