The Mission Board members were to inspect Haast’s Bluff Mission, eighty miles a little north of west from Hermannsburg. The morning was spent in loading the big truck with flour, tea, sugar, tinned food, and all manner of stores for sale and free distribution. The Mission policy, strongly backed by the Commonwealth Government, is to overcome the native’s tendency to seek the doubtful benefits of town life by providing, firstly, the basic tenets of a living in his own primitive wilderness. It is gradually bringing to the native a sense of comparative values. There are still many whites who defraud the full-blood native and half-caste at every opportunity. The Mission has to act as a protecting barrier between such a parasite and the aboriginal hunting grounds so well placed geographically a hundred and more miles west of Alice Springs, and continuing beyond the South Australian and Western Australian borders. The native is easy prey to rumour and promise, and drifts easily towards civilization, where sudden contact with white mannerisms quickly undermines any little moral resistance he may have had. It was particularly noticeable during the second world war, when money was cheap and plentiful.
In 1937 a pastoral company was formed, with headquarters at Alice Springs, to exploit much of the country now within the Haast’s Bluff Aboriginal Reserve. Had the project been allowed, one of the last native hunting grounds would have been invaded; tribal and family life would have been dispersed immediately without compensation or remedy; a few more wretches would have drifted in to sit idly about homesteads and other settlements, to beg, bargain, and live on greasy scraps of food without thought of diet or balance.
The Mission fought hard against the invasion, and with the help of Dr Charles Duiguid of Adelaide, and others, the threat was averted; and Haast’s Bluff Aboriginal Mission, controlled by the Government under the supervision of the Hermannsburg Mission, was the result. The Government has already put down and equipped several sub-artesian bores, and further money is to be spent in providing permanent waters.
We left Hermannsburg at midday, with Pastor Gross driving; and once again I sat on top of a large drum of water behind the cabin of the truck, with Rex Battarbee on another. Pastor Simpfendorfer squatted before us with a shotgun. At every bump the iron roof beneath him boomed noisily. Every few hundred yards a line of kangaroos would start up to right or left, race madly in parallel, and then leap at frantic speed across the road ahead. The good Pastor blazed away in the hope of providing a wayside native camp with fresh kangaroo meat. He announced his progress with disturbing bangs on the cabin roof with the butt of his gun. The usual collection of natives squatted on soft bags of flour, and held on like monkeys over the larger bumps and sandy skids. One was returning from hospital at Alice Springs. Another had attempted to by-pass the Mission on an ill-advised walkabout to Alice Springs: a quiet talk had persuaded him that he would be better off back where he belonged. He seemed quite happy about things, and the lure of ‘pitchers’ and sly beer was fading before the knowledge of lizards and kangaroo meat ahead. Another native was setting out on a long periodical ‘walkabout’ into the Aboriginal Reserve, and the truck would ease his feet for a few miles at least.
We turned west from the Finke, crossed over the wire mesh laid on the sandy bed of the Gilbert; and then Gosse’s Range stood sharply up before us. The colours of this red crown of solid rock changed rapidly as we curved about it; but basically it was red. Its sides were sheer, creviced, and crumbling slowly. Now, from the west, its colour glowed high into the evening sky. At sunset, Gosse’s was dropping starkly down to the northeast behind us, and we were travelling heavily down a long, sandy slope through desert oaks and grass-trees towards the Krichauff Range, which stood up boldly. Before it, a sea of windswept grass was tinted with pink reflection from the red.
Once again the impossible happened. The range opened up, and we turned south, then east into Kuttaputta Gap. Dusk, and the mystery of driving between rising walls hemmed us in, and made our sturdy motor throb loudly from hill to hill. Several miles along there were loud calls from a massive eastern rock silhouetted against the stars; and Battarbee spoke out of the chilliness of the night.
‘Natives camped at Amulda Gap. They’ll be in at Areyonga by morning.’ We called back to them. Our way down the sixteen miles of valley was heralded by call after call thrown and echoing from one dark bluff to another.
Our nine o’clock arrival at Areyonga Mission brought an excited medley of native men, women, and children. They climbed over the truck, shook hands, peered closely, laughed and got in the way. A few were well spoken. It has been the policy of the missionaries not to encourage pidgin-English. The native has proved himself quite capable of clear diction if encouraged, just as his flair for copying causes him to adopt the broken English flung at him by those who do not know any better. Once a native has grown accustomed to pidgin-English, it remains with him for life and considerably damns his progress.
The day was icy cold and clear, with a slight breeze from the north-east, against which we drove full tilt. Those of us who were perched up high, hung on and shivered. Sonder, Zeil, Razorback, and Heughlin stood up jagged and blue to northward, all not much under five thousand feet; each one defiant, individual, and clear. Each one would alter colour through the day. Battarbee had remained at Areyonga to paint and instruct any natives who showed genuine desire to decorate the white man’s paper, instead of red cliff walls.
We passed into good cattle country with grassed flats, and paused beside an abandoned tourist caravan camp, clearly indicated by empty tins and rows of bottles. At sunset Pastor Gross stopped the truck and we all climbed high up on top of the load. Haast’s Bluff lay ahead, tilted sideways and standing out clear before several peaks to west of it. The rich blue had the transparency and delicacy of tremendous distance, yet it appeared to be magnified and stereoscopic, and one felt that an outstretched hand might touch it. Deep in the blue shadows, I knew the rock was red, a fantasy of light and colour. Pastor Gross set up his colour camera to record the brilliant crimson and purple of the Mareeni Range ten miles southward, running nearly east and west, and with the soft revealing light of the dying sun full upon it. The Mareeni is nearly one thousand feet high, with a cliff rampart extending many miles like corrugated iron on end. It vanished over the south-western horizon.
Starry night took over, and blanketed Haast’s Bluff in black shadow against the stars, while we drove on almost within the silence of its tremendous overhang; and then turned south, then west, to the Mission Depot. On Thursday 12 September 1872 Haast’s Bluff was named after Dr Haast, a geologist, of Canterbury, New Zealand, by Ernest Giles, who with his companions – Carmichael, Alexander Robinson, and a little dog, Monkey – stood in awe before the colossal mass, tilting so oddly, and in rebellion against the hills to westward.
Most of the Haast’s Bluff natives were away ‘bush’. The little Mission hut of one room was not big enough to hold the party, and most of us slept outside in a night temperature of twenty-four degrees. Old Titus the evangelist was in charge, and had Evangelist Epafras to assist him. These two native men controlled several hundred natives, held devotional services, issued rations with the help of Edwin the storekeeper, ministered to the sick, acted as builders and foremen. They were accredited receivers of kangaroo skins and dingo scalps. Haast’s Bluff area is rich in kangaroos, euros, and rock wallabies, and is first-class cattle country for the native stockmen breeding their own small herds. Its choice as a native depot within the reserve has justified itself. Pastor Pech and his wife, a trained nursing sister, have since taken over the spiritual administration of Haast’s Bluff, installed a wireless transceiver station, moved the depot to a better position near a permanent bore-supply put down by the Government, and have built a landing field by using a team of native workmen.
The Mission Board members wanted to inspect the cattle country to the west. It was hoped to set up more native stockmen with their own herds of cattle. At 9 a.m., devotion was held beside the ration store. Titus was verger and community leader. I watched the natives come in from every direction; some popped up out of the grass, some from distant bushes. One second there was just bare plain, the next second a string of natives were walking in as though they had been coming for many miles. Mr Weckerts had a large tin of boiled lollies to distribute. No one had said a word. No shout or call was conveyed; but he was the definite goal of many from near and far. They came singly, and in groups, with hand outstretched and a grin from ear to ear; and I listened to the musical ‘Xanku’, rarely ‘Thank you’, and now and then ‘Owa’* or ‘Culla’†; but all with the same meaning. Many of them were naked on that frosty morning, particularly the children, who raced all over the sandy flat; and I was not sure whether Titus’s call to devotion had called them all in, or whether by some magic they had smelt the lollies miles out across the plains. By the time we were ready to continue westward, perhaps two hundred had wandered in, devotion was finished, and handshaking and mutual admiration once again the order of the day. Haast’s Bluff is beyond the end of the Macdonnell Ranges system. West of it a new series begins: strange hills, remnants of isolated eroded peaks, scattered ramparts beginning and ending in disorder, millions of tons of rubble in the valleys. Our journey led first to Mangaraka, a deep-red, isolated old plateau about two or three miles across, standing abruptly on its broad plain, with a gorge cutting darkly in from the north-eastern corner. We parked the old truck half a mile out and walked up a small gully. The red bluffs towered high above us, and ghost gums and cypress pines clung precariously to dizzy ledges. Mangaraka has an important native water reservoir several hundred yards up the gorge. We found its black water deeply shadowed in a swirled-out round hole perhaps eight feet across. It might have been ten or twenty feet deep. A dead rat floated in the gloom. How the natives got down to the water is a mystery. I went with Pastor Gross and Pastor Simpfendorfer on a wild scramble, contouring the base of the main cliff. Our voices boomed and echoed. Nosepeg the native followed with a small attache case. Pastor Gross was out to get all the colour pictures he could. We turned back at an old landslide of fallen boulders, from where we could look out of the gorge and across a broad plain to Haast’s Bluff, and to Heughlin, Zeil, Sonder, and Razorback beyond, all a brilliant blue now, sharp and clear in the morning light.
We drove west again from Mangaraka, along the narrow sandy track so seldom used. We were more than two hundred miles dead west of Alice Springs, more than half-way to Western Australia, heading into a land of crumbling mountains aged and shattered beyond all knowledge. Plant-growth lessened, trees were scarce; and immense boulders had rolled from the treacherous heights on either side, out onto the level. It was all disorderly, yet peaceful now after the tremendous landslides that once must have echoed in terrifying force from mountain to mountain. We passed Blanche’s Tower, twin-peaked and crumbling, arid and barren, the remains of a great mountain. Beyond Blanche’s Tower, Mount Palmer came up squarely, still in defiance of time’s edict that all mountains must crumble and die. We passed Palmer and went on, twisting in and out between the fallen rubble; and late in the afternoon turned towards a strangely smooth southern wall of the valley, and walked up to a narrow crevice of red. Water had been rushing from the hills at rare intervals over millions of years. This was Tallaputta, the location of an important spring. The rocks were smooth, and we scrambled over boulders of mauve, grey, and purple, with the red long ago scoured out. Cypress pines and ghost gums found sustenance. No doubt their probing roots had followed cracks to moisture many feet below. Tallaputta Crevice ended at a spring running down a red wall some twenty feet high, in a grotto of ferns and moss and clear running water. Nosepeg rooted out some witchetty grubs from the base of a witchetty acacia, and ate while we hungered willingly.
We drove to the north and stopped before the glory of distant Mount Liebig beyond Ianchi Pass**, with the evening light hitting it in an incredible depth of purple. The pass curved before us as a frame; then several miles beyond that another nameless ridge dipped in a curve of brown and red, to frame the broken, saw-toothed peaks of Liebig lying across at right angles. Sunrays and shadow moved slowly across and gave life and warmth to the incredible colour.
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* Yes.
† Okay.
** Also known as Berry Pass.