THE OLD LADY
“That old lady give me funny feeling, brother …”
My old Aboriginal mate, Johnny Walkabout, searched around the scrubby slope, trying to locate the natural rock altar once used by the architect-priest, Father John Hawse, back in the 1930s.
Resting in the shade of a gumtree, Johnny recalled: “Old Father Hawse used to ride his horse from Mullewa every Sunday and he’d say Mass out here in the bush. All the Yammatji (Aboriginal) mob came here for their Holy Communions ‘cos they didn’t like sittin’ in that little church with them white fellas.”
In an over-grown area, where past bushfires had scorched the tree trunks, he eventually identified the natural rocky formation on the hillside that resembled an altar.
We ran our fingers over the sections where Father Hawse had obviously chipped away protuberances to accommodate his chalice and other paraphernalia. Above the “altar”, we found two very old weathered sticks bound together in the form of a crucifix. Once it had overlooked the makeshift place of Catholic worship, anchored by two stones; now it lay levelled, corrupted by time, the cord partly rotted by the passing seasons.
“Them old black peoples used to sit down all around here,” Johnny explained, indicating a cleared space in front of the altar. “Father had all his vestments and other things in his saddle-bag, even them little white things they stick in your gob for communions. My job … I was just a kid then … was to hold on to his horse and let it get a feed around here on the hill while Father saved their souls …”
From the advantage of our elevated position, we had an unrestricted view of Mullewa’s northern outskirts, and beyond that the sweeping wheatlands reaching away for ever into an infinity of hazy distances.
“See that old lady down there,” Johnny indicated with pursed lips.
Below us to the east a narrow strip of bitumen left the township and ventured north. Down the gravel on the left side was a thin, solitary figure.
Walking slowly. Very slowly. Carrying a large suitcase.
“That one is old white woman,” he said.
“How do you know?” I enquired.
“I see her when she walked into town this morning. She walk all the way from Geraldton.”
“But that’s over a hundred kilometres from here,” I pointed out.
“Might be she got a ride from somebody,” he conceded. “I see her first time yesterday just after we was leaving Geraldton. Anyways, she got here somehow. Now she still heading east… Nothing much up that way.”
Her attire appeared to be all grey. Her walk was extremely slow. Laboured. As though very tired.
The old woman stopped by the roadside, placed down her suitcase and sat on it, using it as a chair. She looked straight ahead into the nothingness of the east.
“She must be waiting for a lift,” I suggested.
“Not many cars go up that way,” said Johnny, doubtfully. “Might be she got no water either. That old woman could get into big trouble going up that road with no water.”
At that moment I made the decision to approach the traveller and to warn her of the dangers of walking long distances under a hot sun through waterless country, and also to alert her to the scarcity of traffic on that particular bush road.
Driving down the bumpy hill track, I told Johnny of my intention.
Nodding, he said: “Can’t see her now. When we get down there we better talk to her straight, eh? She might be a bit silly in the head.”
Reaching the level of the bitumen, we turned right expecting at any second to catch sight of the elderly woman sitting on her suitcase.
Strangely, she was gone.
“That’s odd,” I said. “Where did she go?”
Driving up and down the bush road for a kilometre or so, it became apparent that the elderly woman had somehow vanished.
Stopping the vehicle, I again asked Johnny: “Where did she go?”
“Maybe a car picked her up,” he suggested. “Hang on on minute. I look for her track.”
Johnny walked over to the place where we had watched the traveller pause to rest on her suitcase.
Shaking his head, Johnny returned, plopped down beside me, muttering: “No tracks.”
“There’s got to be tracks,” I replied. “We both saw her walking along the road and then sit down over there.”
The old fellow’s dark eyes were troubled.
“No tracks, brother,” he murmered softly. “No tracks.”
“This is bloody silly,” I snapped impatiently, starting up the engine. “A car must have come along while she was out of our sight and picked her up.”
Johnny Walkabout said nothing.
Later that same day, having completing our research around Mullewa, we set off on the long drive back to Geraldton. Soon after sundown we reached the seaside town, then turned south towards Cape Burney where we were accommodated at a caravan park within cooee of the Indian Ocean.
Roughly ten kilometres south of Geraldton, along the darkening highway ahead, a familiar sight suddenly became illuminated by the highway.
It was the little old lady with the suitcase.
The same grey dress, the weary stride, the seemingly heavy suitcase that made her seem off-balance.
Without thinking, I pulled over to the roadside a short distance behind the solitary walker, our headlights directly on her departing figure.
She did not turn. No curiosity at all in our sudden presence. Her laboured step did not falter. She seemed doggedly intent on following her mysterious route to somewhere.
Steadily, the old lady maintained her determined pace, heading this time towards Perth in the south – more than a hundred kilometres south-west of where we had earlier seen her, and walking in another direction.
“Will we talk to her?” I quietly asked, very unsure of myself.
“No,” Johnny said. “That old lady give me funny feeling, brother … Don’t talk … Something not right.”
Silently, we watched the ambling figure slowly shuffle beyond the reach of our headlights and gradually disappear into the blackness of the Western Australian night.
