HYMN FOR A

HOMELAND

by JOHN A. ALLAN

BOOK ONE

Our historians lie much more

than our journalists

Our fashionable conceptions of the past

change with every fashion

And like most fashions

Are fantastic and hideous.

– G.K. Chesterton

For more than three hundred miles, the sandstone bluffs of the escarpment stretch across the great plateau and plummet from its edge to the floor of the mighty flood plains, six hundred feet below. In Gunumeleng, when the ground-shaking rolls of thunder herald the torrential rains, the sandstone bluffs are sheeted with raging falls that tumble and pitch down their ragged faces. Pockets of monsoon forest hug the creviced walls and stretch out of their shadows onto the flood plains. Rain sheets, so thick and so heavy that each droplet seems to rebound as if exploding from the heat-crazed rock faces. Finger-thick raindrops fall from the turbulent blue-black thunderheads that roll in from the Arafura sea. The palette of the season of Gudjewg turns quickly into a pandemic of green and blue and red and yellow, and the skies are filled with birds of infinite variety, and the sounds they bring with them.

The four great rivers of the flood plain swell over the baked earth. The forests of paperbark reflect ghost-white trunks in the muddy eddies. Each watercourse hides its own magical surprise. The magenta, white, and butter-yellow blooms of the lotus lily sway in vivid contrast to the green growth all around, and their huge pads hold nodules of water that rock gently to and fro on their platter-sized surfaces.

Water is the life-blood of these plains. Geckos scurry in and out of the crevices of the ancient rocks. Rock monitors and ring-tailed dragons abound on the hot sandstone, and still further out, the children of Namarrguru, grasshoppers of beautiful ugliness, display their fantastically coloured bodies of sky blue, black, and yellow. In the storms of Gunumeleng they mate and lay their eggs, in readiness for the following year.

Down there, the tropical heat reflects off the dark green waters. Like dancing diamonds, shards of light play through the lengthening afternoon shadows around this side of the billabong. Most of the warm water’s surface is covered by plate-sized water hyacinths, and in the half-light near the shore, they rise and fall languidly on the gently lapping surface.

The young man stands knee deep, one arm raised above shoulder height. His fist is clenched around the thin, reed-like shaft of the three-pronged gara. He has been motionless now for almost a full minute. His eyes search the waters for the telltale movement of his prey.

The water lilies, suspended as they are by the slender tubers that bend their way from the soft, fine mud of the bottom to the heat-soaked surface, spread out along the full length of the shore. Their white and yellow flowers provide mute contrast to the multi-shaded grasses that grow back from the water’s edge and carry on through the savannah, covering the deep red ochre of the land.

The billabong is rich in food; it teems with fish, and the plants near the edge are home to the swamp turtle, which tastes so succulent and whose meat, when roasted slowly in the coals, falls apart in your fingers. The juices run down your chin to drip, warm and slippery, onto your belly, and are full and sweet and leave a taste in your mouth that makes you yearn for more.

Birds make their nests in the trees around the shore. The jabiru stands on its spindly legs, searching the waters for morsels. Cormorants and pelicans grow fat. As the sun prepares each day to sleep, the air is filled with reverberating calls across the waters. Natali screech and call and play in the branches high above, and their jet-black feathers scatter over the earth and blow onto the water to float like tiny black canoes before catching in the grasses and plants. The breeze breathes across the surface, bringing with it the dusk that quickly settles into night. Soon, campfires reflect on the faces of the clan as they settle to their food. The murmur of voices and the laughter of the children drift with the wind and carry across the land.

But it has not always been so.

Many, many, years ago, the land was not so fertile. It was flat and featureless and dry and desolate and, had the people been in this place, they would have had no food or water. Legend has it that the Great Rainbow Serpent saw that the people would starve and be thirsty, and it stirred its magnificent multi-coloured body and writhed across the land, gouging huge gullies and pushing tremendous amounts of earth to the side as it travelled, creating the hills and the cliffs. Where it burrowed into the surface of the earth, it created huge holes and hollows that filled with the rains and created the billabongs and the creeks and the rivers. The land gave the people its precious foods and together they prospered.

The Great Rainbow Serpent left its spirit in this waterhole and now it teems with life.

With a speed that defies the eye, the young man plunges his spear beneath the surface, his body bending with the throw, one leg extending behind. He grunts “Yeehah” with the effort and immediately withdraws the quivering shaft. His face is a brilliant display of pleasure. His teeth are pearlescent against the deep black-brown of his skin. He hoists the silver body of the barramundi, still transfixed on the barbs, above his head and, laughing and calling to his brothers on the shore, wades through the lilies toward them.

His people have lived with this land forever. Since the time of the great darkness they have lived and camped and walked here. They exist with the land and have no need to defend themselves from savage beasts, so they have developed only simple weapons and tools. They have few enemies and the land provides them with their food and their protection. They have no concept of money and little need for trade — the land provides all: food, water and shelter. His people and their environment are one, and they know their land as intimately as they know their family members. They treat the land with respect and the land returns its bounty to them. The mysteries of the dreaming are their reality, and they are able to see its creation all around. They live it, they celebrate it, they share it with each other.

Invasion is beyond their comprehension.

One: Birth of the Hatred

Magaba had been the first to see them and had attempted to flee; she screamed and scrambled to the other side of the clearing when the men appeared. Japarri did not hear her again. Her sister had screamed too, but was cuffed into silence, and she knew no more of her sister Banapuy.

They took turns at her throughout the morning. Eventually Japarri stopped struggling and she no longer screamed. The big man had been the worst. Each time he came to her, he had hit her across the face. Blood trickled down her neck from her bleeding lips. One poured alcohol over her face and it stung her lips and eyes like a wasp. She gagged and bucked her hips and tried to pull free. The scarred one laughed. The younger man grabbed the bottle and forced it between her lips and the liquid burned her throat and stopped her breath.

By mid-afternoon the men had enough. One by one they made their way to the beach. She did not move until she heard the rhythmic beat of the oars in their locks. She lay there a long time as the sun roasted her skin. She called to her sister. It took a very long time to be able to move her arms and when she did, the pain was red-hot. Blood crusted her face, neck, and thighs and it had the viper’s kiss when she moved. Flies swarmed thick and angry.

“Banapuy!” Japarri whispered hoarsely, “Banapuy!” But her sister did not answer and when she looked, she felt her gorge rise.

Later that night the clan listened to her story. She sat with the rest of the women and they began their wailing. Their voices filled the night skies and the sparks from the fires flew in brilliant orange and yellow towards the stars that hung like lustrous grains in the blackness.

At dawn she made her way to the dunes overlooking the bay. The lugger still lay at anchor and she could just make out its shape. A single pinprick of light reflected in the gently rising swell. She turned at the pad of footsteps as her younger brother made his way across the sand.

“I am with you, yapa — my sister.”

Japarri nodded and turned back to the water. “I am with you, Takiar.”

The boy had just reached the second stage of initiation and the public scars of manhood stood proud around his neck. “Today we will give our sisters to the spirits,” he said.

Slowly she turned and her hatred sharpened her vision, as if it were a flame turned on the world. “I will be there,” she whispered venomously, “to see the spirits guide my brother’s spears into the hearts of the strangers, to avenge our sisters’ death.”

Later she joined the women of the clan in preparations for her sister’s funeral.

The yellow-skinned strangers had been there before and had taken women for their sexual pleasure, but death had never been a part of their visits. She felt no repugnance in lying with strangers, for it was not uncommon for women to be given. A gift was all that was required in return. These narrow-eyed men had been different; along with their loathsome smell they had brought violence with them as part of their pleasure. They were unlike the white men from the missions. Cruelty excited them and, she thought, had given them as much pleasure as when they had entered her. Now, as she daubed her body with ochre, she felt her heart turn to stone and her desire for revenge was overwhelming.

Takiar was a pallbearer for Banapuy and although he was Gurrmul — an initiated adolescent — he felt no shame as his tears burned his eyes and his throat constricted with emotion. Like his elder sister, he too felt hatred for these men who fished the bay for the sea slug. His confusion at the sight of Magaba’s body had turned to anger when he saw the jagged wound hacked into her back, but his anger had turned to a white rage when a few minutes later, he had found his two elder sisters on the edge of the dunes. His elder sister, Japarri, rocked beside the body of Banapuy. Takiar heard the mournful animal sounds of wailing and they cut to his spirit. Loathing and hatred gripped his heart.

At the gravesites the pallbearers knelt with the bodies resting on their heads.

“Who caused your death?” asked the Djirrickay.

And the spirit of Banapuy answered through Takiar. “The strangers in the bay. The yellow-skinned strangers caused my death.”

Holding his two magic sticks, the Djirrickay then addressed Magaba. “Who caused your death?” he demanded.

“The strangers in the bay,” her spirit replied. “The yellow-skinned strangers caused my death.”

A wave of anger swept through the mourners; they turned to each other and some threw themselves to the ground and beat their fists into the burning sands as the spirits confirmed what they already knew. The pallbearers stood and hoisted the corpses above their heads. Shaking with grief, the men threw the bodies headfirst onto the ground. The snap of cracking vertebrae rekindled the wailing of the clan and the group gathered around as one of the men bent to his task. Carefully he cut around the muscles of the faces and thighs of the corpses and, piece by piece, handed the fatty tissue to the relatives. As Takiar ate the flesh of his sister, his heart filled with the desire for revenge.

The clan gave vent to their grief and their mournful sadness carried across the sands to the rippling waters of the bay.

* * *

The men on the lugger heard the off-key voices and grinned and looked at each other and shook their heads, then turned back to their baskets.

The scar running from eyebrow to neck contorted Tanaka’s face further when he grinned. The mournful voices across the bay generated little more than amusement. He had heard similar sounds almost a decade before, when his coastal home, Kanto, had been destroyed. He recalled how the ground lifted before his eyes like the swell of the ocean. Buildings crumbled and the ground shook in its death throes. He had been unable to walk and had crawled into the alleyway that wound through the village like an umbilical cord to the sea. It rose and fell and whipped itself free from the shanties that had been sucked to the earth for so long. He remembered how they tumbled like dominoes, one after the other. Then silence.

On hands and knees, Tanaka had watched the fires come licking through the debris, fed by oil and cooking fires. The flames raced through the tinder-dry sticks.

With the violence of the tremor still fresh in his mind, he launched himself down the narrow alleyway. Logic defied the evidence of his eyes, for the level of the ocean had dropped. Vessels that had been secured at their moorings not a span of breath before now lay on their sides like dying fish. Tanaka gaped, unable to comprehend that which could not be.

“Help me.” Tanaka turned at the voice and saw the mud-encrusted face of an old man who clung desperately to broken timbers. “For pity’s sake,” he croaked, “before it comes and crushes us all.”

Tanaka knelt on one knee. “What do you mean? What comes?” The old man’s desperation shot unknown fear at Tanaka’s heart. “What comes?” he yelled. The heat from the fires scorched his back and the sea emptied still.

“The ocean,” the old one wheezed. “It leaves to return and crush us all.” His fingernails raked at the rough-hewn timber in a desperate attempt to get onto the jetty. “Tsunami.”

Tanaka looked to the horizon and it appeared to swell towards the sun. It was as if the entire ocean had formed into one single wave. He stepped beyond the reach of the old man and stared at the vast blue that stretched forever. He raced back through the fiery rubble towards the sanctuary of the high ground beyond.

The boy Yoritomo joined him at the summit and from their vantage point high to the east, they looked down on the village with awed fascination as the tidal wave swept in from the Pacific Ocean. It came from the deep blue of the unknown depths, rolling across the Pacific, building slowly and deliberately. It crashed through the harbour. Its foaming maw devoured fishing boats like insects and pushed others before it. The rolling mountain of water disintegrated when it reached the village and tripped on the cracked and burning earth. It suddenly became a burnt brown sludge that thundered across the jetty and into the burning buildings, seeking, and devouring everything. From their vantage point they saw the foaming river of seawater grab at the earth like a living thing.

“By all the gods,” Yoritomo breathed. “It is the end of the world.”

The wave stumbled at the esplanade and crashed through the debris. Angry brown foam turned black and suddenly it had everything in its grasp; it thundered across the wasted homes like a serpent searching for its prey, right through to the temple. Then, in that moment of subsidence, it sucked the debris and carnage back to its lair. The weak went with it; the carnage stayed behind.

Tanaka barely looked at the chaos that had been his village, but stared instead at the harbour. “Not the end,” he breathed. “This is merely our chance for a beginning.” He gripped the younger man’s shoulder so tightly that he winced with pain. “Look!” Tanaka pointed to the harbour. “There lies our chance.” Down in the churning waters a lugger, its mast pointing brazenly to the clouding sky, rode the tortured waters with undoubted seaworthiness.

He burned with excitement. “Are you with me?” Tanaka asked the youth. “Are you willing to do what has to be done to leave this cursed place?”

Yoritomo looked down at the chaos, then to the lugger. He nodded. “I am with you,” he said breathlessly.

“We must get out there,” Tanaka hissed. “If it is to be ours, we must not delay.”

Tanaka was the first to reach the lugger. He grabbed at a trailing line and, hand over fist, hauled himself to the deck where, for a few seconds, he lay panting. Then, in a crouching run, he made his way to the wheelhouse. Empty. His pulse pounded. He picked up a wrench and crept towards the hatch. Carefully he peered through the gloom. He took a deep breath, held it for a second or two, and started down the steps. Water slopped ankle deep across the floor. Slowly he made his way forward.

He heard Yoritomo thud onto the deck overhead after clambering up the side. As he did so, Tanaka caught a movement in the shadows forward. He froze, holding the wrench chest-high. Overhead, Yoritomo slipped on the unfamiliar decking and fell, cursing. Tanaka readied himself, muscles taut. An old man reeled from a bunk and stumbled towards him. Even in the gloom Tanaka could see the blood pouring from a cut across his forehead. With one swift movement he brought the wrench down and felt the man’s skull crush under the weight of the blow. Quickly Tanaka stepped over the crumpled body and searched the remainder of the cabin.

Yoritomo appeared in a hatchway. “Help me,” Tanaka breathed. “Over the side.”

The younger man hesitated. He gripped the railing, knuckles white with tension. Water dripped from his matted hair. “What have you done? Murder? I did not agree to—”

Tanaka reached him in one bound and held the bloody wrench aloft. He grabbed Yoritomo by the throat and squeezed. “What did you think?” he hissed. “That he would give us his stinking boat?” His head buzzed with black fury and he pushed the younger man onto the steps. Yoritomo’s eyes were wide with fear. “I can just as easily do it on my own,” he continued. “You are with me or against me. Which is it to be?” With a final shove of disgust, Tanaka turned back to the old man’s body. “Help me or leave,” he said.

Still shaking, Yoritomo gripped the skinny ankles and together they scrabbled the body to the deck and dropped it into the ocean.

They left on the tide and headed for the Bungo Strait. The weather still threatened and clouds hung ominously black, then the wind shifted and blew across the Philippine Sea like a banshee let loose, whipping the ocean into rolling white-capped mountains. The lugger had the bone in her teeth; she ran before the squall like a dog at its prey.

Yoritomo felt the juddering as it pounded at his feet, his knees buckling slightly and the air jarring in his chest. He looked again at the bruised horizon that seemed to pursue them, glowering at the lugger from afar as it came rolling after them, bruised and black and menacing. He felt the familiar weakness in the pit of his belly and issued a silent prayer to the gods to give him strength. He glanced at Tanaka, a surreptitious look, hooded lids in a face screwed up against the rising spray that spewed across the decking. Tanaka faced into the wind that grabbed at his hair and wispy beard, twisting them savagely across his skin. His confidence was overpowering; Yoritomo had found consolation in his partner’s courage, and quietly acquiesced leadership.

The need to escape village life had twisted at his gut and was made no sweeter with the knowledge of insuperable odds. No one left. People lived and worked and died in the villages of their birth. They paid homage to their masters and cowed before their terrible might. No one left. But he and Tanaka had. Without Tanaka, he knew his life would have been as the lives of his forebears had been, and his admiration for the man who gripped the helm engulfed him.

The little craft twisted on the crest. Twisted and rolled. He stayed his grip on a spar that whipped savagely as the sheets took on a belly full of wind. With a crack like cannon they filled, emptied, then filled again; she twisted and rolled, then came off the top and ran side-on down the crashing mountain of water that heaved and broke and pounded at them like the demon it was. He turned his body against the roll, arms out, knuckles white, mouth slack with building terror, and his vision filled. The scream was ripped from his lips by banshee winds. Somewhere behind, Tanaka’s voice seemed to blend with the gale. Yoritomo looked towards the wheel that pulsed like a living thing in Tanaka’s hands. He could see the big man’s face contorted with the effort. He was yelling incomprehensibly.

Yoritomo’s head pounded with fear. His stomach contracted and his bowels squirted. The fury on Tanaka’s face was even more fearsome than the elements. Yoritomo knew that there was some duty to be performed, but what? Again the vessel shuddered as the bow plunged beneath yet another wave. Tanaka still screamed at him and attempted to lash the wheel. Each time he grabbed at the strapping the boat plunged or staggered like a drunkard, and he was forced to lay on her again.

Yoritomo gathered strength and clawed his way aft, pulling himself hand over fist across the deck. Water crashed over him and he slid belly-down along the cold, wet wood. The ropes bit into his flesh and he felt it peel away. Salt spray stung his face like hornets at their enemy. And all the while, Tanaka’s voice came at him, pieces at a time that were grabbed by the wind and flung away, flotsam on a churning grey and white maelstrom.

The realisation came to the boy in a blinding flash that left him light-headed. The enormity of it slid into his gut. He looked aloft. The sail flapped and dripped and filled and emptied and hung accusingly before straining at the rigging like an angry dog. He started across the deck and chanced a quick glance at his partner, who still stood like an oak at the helm. His eyes were black pools of anger. Yoritomo gulped wet air and pulled himself inch by inch towards the mast. The ropes were swollen and tight and his fingers, numb with cold, played ineffectually at the knot. He blubbered aloud in his frustration. Then he felt the rope give and his fingers moved, pulling, pushing and probing, desperate. The rope gave — slowly, then faster and more easily, and suddenly the sheet was coming down.

Yoritomo felt the boat slide in a stomach-churning swoop, and white water crashed across them again. He wrapped his hand and wrist in a line as the lugger rolled to leeward once more. Crashing water above and churning black water below, and then he hung from the mast, his arm extended above him. The rope snapped viciously back against the timber and pain fired through his shoulder. Water cascaded, grey and white and black and green, across him. The scuppers went under, disappearing, then reluctantly pulled back and came upright once more. He crashed back against the mast with a mighty thwack that drove the breath from his body and made him see red-black. He hung limp in the ropes as the lugger steadied herself in the trough, protected for that instant in a mighty gully of water.

Once more she rode like an express towards the crest. They swung across the top bow-first. At least half her length flew like an arrow at the heavens, then, with a crash that they could hear, she belly-flopped back. The lugger shuddered and shook and slid down the wall towards the bottom that seemed to rush to meet them. She jammed her bow beneath the blackness and Yoritomo was thrown like a dart towards it. The rope grabbed at his arm and yanked him back and he felt his shoulder pull from its socket. Pain and fear bubbled from his throat and his stomach churned before vomitus erupted in a silent scream. He had no strength. His chest and shoulder were gripped in a mask of pain. His throat constricted and a coughing fit seized him and shook his body and he could sense his mind slipping towards blackness.

She hit the floor of another valley and shook herself, then bounded towards the next heaving crest. The rope around Yoritomo’s wrist unravelled just enough — his arm came free and he fell like sacking to the deck.

Pain enshrouded Yoritomo and a swirling world of grey and white danced before him. He tried to move and the fire in his shoulder exploded and he screamed on the edge of delirium. He wanted to lie down, to sleep, and let the world go by — just close his eyes and it would be over, hell gone and only peace left. His head fell forward and the world went away.

Tanaka was hoisted from the helm and thrown like a fool’s money against the bulkhead. His great nugget head hit the timber with a ringing crack and for an instant he lay in the wash. The wheel spun crazily in a blur of speed that sang above the gale. She reached the crest and tottered almost sideways and then started down the other side, slipping, slowing, then rolling with her momentum. Fountains of water burst from the scuppers. The stern started to come around before Tanaka reached the wheel. He shook his head and leaned his shoulder to the helm and pulled at it against her weight. She dug into the boiling slide, wanting to surrender. Somewhere a spar broke with a report like cannon-fire. Then the bow came back and once more they careered towards the trough.

The next wave was smaller and Tanaka sensed a drop in the wind. Laboriously the lugger climbed; he could feel her tremble along the hull. A ripple of movement ran through her. He could feel it in his hands. Then the wave broke early and crashed across her bows. White water frothed across her decks and washed and pushed and ran, the white turbulence picking and pulling at everything. It picked up Yoritomo and pushed and pulled at him until it had him over the side.

She rolled down the wave as if unwilling to give up her possessions and scooped him back onto the deck. Tanaka lashed the wheel, his hands moving in a blur, then lunged headlong towards the boy. He grabbed him by the collar and hauled him back. With three quick movements, he roped him to the mast and they lay there, panting like hunted animals.

Tanaka’s head throbbed in perfect time with the beat in his chest, the pain grabbing and beating like a great hammer at the back of his eyes, eyes that stung with the salty spray and fatigue. He gripped a lanyard, his strength gone, and stared stubbornly at the helm that moved only slightly against the straps. The lugger hit the bottom of another trough, again burying the bow, and he wondered absently how long she could last. He checked the boy, then lashed himself to the mast, settling against it limp with relief. Water crashed over them but for the first time, he allowed himself the luxury of relaxation. He felt an indolent pleasure in not holding on and he was smiling when he closed his eyes and exhaustion overtook him.

The familiar nudge of discomfort brought Yoritomo from a fitful night’s sleep and he silently cursed the new day that would see him scratching and slapping and swatting at the thousands of flying, crawling, and biting insects that inhabited this grotesque land in which fate had so cruelly placed him. He glanced at the sleeping forms around him, scattered throughout the camp. The others did not seem to be bothered by the heat and insects and he wondered what type of person remained unaffected by this land. Even now in the pre-dawn chill, Yoritomo could feel the perspiration forming on his brow.

He moved away from the racks of trepang and modestly faced the bay while torpidly watching the urine puddle at his feet. He was careful not to touch any foliage, for he knew that even at this hour, should he brush against a plant, the tiny green ants would swarm over his skin or even worse, he’d connect with one of the hairy caterpillars whose very touch caused the skin to blister and swell in angry red welts that itched so badly, some men had been driven to the point of insanity

A hint of movement a short distance away made Yoritomo squint into the darkness, but scarcely had he lifted his eyes before movement and sound melded and he was knocked backward by what felt like a tremendous weight that drove the breath from his body. The mighty blow came from nowhere. His hands flew automatically to his chest and grasped the finger-thick spear that quivered there. Blackness enshrouded him and he crumpled onto the wet sand.

Takiar ran even as his spear flew towards its mark. He had watched the man make water at the edge of the dunes, and chose his time well. The broad blade cleaved the stranger’s chest in two. As he ran on, Takiar heard the sound of splitting bone as the shadowy figures of his brothers moved through the camp. Their killing sticks rose, then came whistling down. All was blood and bone and torn flesh and the thudding sounds of death.

There was so much noise now. Some strangers groaned, not quite dead. A small one screamed as his arm, flung up in an effort at protection, snapped like a dry twig. Marrara’s killing stick gagged his noise an instant later.

A movement near the bushes, and Takiar altered the direction of his charge, running towards the crouching form in front of him, his spear clutched in both hands. His war cry echoed in his head. His lungs rasped red-hot. At the last moment the stranger dived aside, but Takiar saw the glint of the blade and twisted his body. The shaft of the spear whistled as Takiar brought it around, and he felt the delicious resistance as it caught the fisherman just above the wrist. The Japanese screamed and the knife fell onto the orange sand, still gripped by the severed hand. Again the spear sang and Tanaka’s screams gurgled into silence.

Blood lust pounded in Takiar’s temples. His chest swelled with the need to kill. The awful screaming followed him as he went from body to body. Later, he would shake his downcast head in amusement when he told the story and realised that the screaming was his own.

The timber launch stuck fast on the mud and the four constables jumped to dry land. “Get the gear onto the beach, Paddy,” the older man rapped out. “We may have a long walk ahead of us.”

With humourless authority, Hoare strode across the sand and squatted in the shade. Robert Milton shouldered his own pack and followed Thompson and McCabe to the sparse shadow of acacia. He turned to the black. “Plenty mark here ’bout, Paddy.” He waved a lazy hand at the sand. “You find ’em fresh mark — we follow longa blackfella’s camp, pretty damn quick! Eh?”

“Plenty blackfellas here, boss.” Paddy gestured up and down the beach. “Which blackfellas you want?”

Robert squinted. “Blackfellas kill them Japanese,” he said with more than a hint of impatience. “You take us those blackfellas.” Robert watched momentarily as the four trackers sat on their haunches by the water’s edge. There was much gesticulating.

“What the hell are they doing?” Thompson brushed at the flies around his mouth.

“Probably wondering why the crazy white coppers are concerned with who killed five Japs who shouldn’t have been here in the first place,” offered McCabe.

“It’s their homeland, maybe they should be responsible for what goes on here,” Dan said offhandedly.

Thompson turned to Hoare, his mouth slack with amazement. “Responsible? Responsible? Blacks aren’t responsible for anything. The whole of Australia belongs to Australians, not this one or that one, especially the bloody boongs!”

Hoare scowled. “There’s thirty-two thousand square miles out here in Arnhem Land, Thompson, and these people have lived here for thousands of years.”

Thompson spluttered. “It’s only good for flies and blackfellas.”

Dan cut him off. “Look, son; these people have lived here since…since the dinosaurs, and they’ve lived according to their laws only. God knows what these Jap trepangers did to get killed, but it probably served ’em bloody right.”

“We all live under white man’s law,” Robert said quietly. “Doesn’t matter where we live, whether it be Arnhem Land or Adelaide. One land, one law.”

“Australia for Australians, eh?” Dan said sarcastically. “A great reason for the government to insist on the White Australia Policy, eh, Robert?” McCabe groaned as Dan warmed to his favourite debate. “There’s a good deal of condescension in our dealings with coloureds and foreigners,” he said. “We like to make out that we accept ’em, but the reality is, the whole bloody country is just about as xenophobic as is possible t’be.”

Although they had been friends for longer than he wanted to recall, Robert thought that Hoare often sounded like a Trotskyite. Perhaps that was why, after almost ten years in the job, he was still only a constable. Hoare was comfortable with his own opinions and appeared to enjoy the thrust and parry of argument. Now his eyes drilled into those of the young man opposite.

“Most of these blacks have two or three wives,” he said. “Why don’t we prosecute ’em for bigamy?” He stood and stretched, arms extended in the thinning shade. “White society picks the laws they wish to pursue,” Hoare continued. “One law for one group and another law for another. The entire legal system is about as odious as it can be in its dealings with the blacks, but don’t fool yourselves, gentlemen, these people know little of white man’s law. This is their land and their laws apply.” He turned and looked at the three of them, still squatting in the shade. “It would serve you well if you remembered that while we’re here.” He whacked his hat against dusty trousers. “’less you want to end up like our Japanese friends.”

The sun beat from a liquid blue sky when they found the campfires. Paddy’s fingers danced over the grey embers and he looked at Robert. “Dem blackfellas bin longa here ’bout. Campin’, huntin’.” He studied the embers a second or two more, then looked to the scrubby jungle. “Not longa gone here. Mmm,” he shook his head as his fingers played across the ashes, “maybe a while back.”

Robert sighed and turned to the others. “Well, he doesn’t know.” He shook his head. “God bless me heart ’n soul, maybe a long time, maybe not. He’s havin’ a quid each way, I think.” He snorted in frustration. “If they’re a way off, I suggest we camp for lunch. The blacks can scout around and keep a lookout. The jungle gets pretty damn thick between here and the sea and I feel like having some tucker in my belly before I go on a route march lookin’ for th’ buggers.”

McCabe nodded. “Paddy, you take your boys and look longa blackfellas,” he said, indicating the area around them with his hands. “Savvy?” He watched as the trackers disappeared into the jungle and then flopped in the shade next to Robert and Thompson.

“They’ll probably go into the jungle and just sit,” Thompson suggested. His youthful voice confirmed his inexperience.

“I doubt that, Thomo.” McCabe grinned at the boy. “Most of the blacks around here are Yolngu. Paddy and his boys hate the Yolngu.” He leaned back against his pack and nudged his hat forward, his arms folded across his chest.

Thomo’s gaze wandered from McCabe to the jungle. “Hate them? Hate them? What do you mean, ‘Paddy hates them’? Why? They’re all black, all the same. And what’s this Yol… Yol…”

“Yolngu,” McCabe repeated from under his hat, his voice edged with exasperation. “Just because there’re all blackfellas doesn’t mean they’re all the same.” He sat up, found a stick, and drew a rough map in the sand. “This is what we know as Australia.” His free hand brushed at the incessant flies. “One country. Well, to the blacks, it’s just land that is home to hundreds of clans, of families. Just like white people, not all of them get on with each other. Witness the Great War — ‘the war to end all wars.’” He sighed. “Not all white fellas love each other, either.”

“Bosh! The Great War was between different countries. Different nations.”

“And this land is all different nations to the blacks.” McCabe waved his stick expansively. “Different countries and different laws. If you’re going to work up here with ’em, best you remember that, or you may” — he shook the stick at Thomo’s belly — “end up with a spear in your gizzard.” He looked at Robert and winked, then shoved his hat back over his eyes and leaned back on his pack.

Thompson swallowed hard.

“Don’t worry about it, son,” McCabe added, enthused by the opportunity for raillery. He looked conspiratorially from side to side. “Just remember, if you ever decide that you want a piece, a bit of the old black velvet —”

“Black!” Thompson exploded. “You must be joking! Oh, that’s horrible, just the thought…”

“No, no.” McCabe laughed and propped himself on an elbow. “Some of ’em are lovely.” He waved his hands through the air, indicating the shape of a woman. “Nice firm tits when they’re young.” He laughed again at the expression of horror on Thomo’s face. “Just you wait,” McCabe continued salaciously. “But make sure you’re on your own when you go for it, because these blackfellas can run like buggery and if they catch you with their women and you can’t give ’em something in return — and it won’t be money they want,” he added in a low voice, grinning at the boy’s face “— then you’ll have to be able to run a damn sight faster.”

They all laughed, and Thomo continued his protests.

“You’d best be careful yourself, McCabe,” Hoare said, “or one day your tossle’s going t’fall off.”

“Boss! Lubras!”

No one had heard Paddy return.