Areyonga Creek ran southward across a valley still held within high red walls, which rose to nearly one thousand feet. It has carved its way through gateway after gateway to join the Illara. I went down through them, following the main pad used by goats, camels, horses, cattle, hunting dogs, dingoes, and natives alike, to the wilder country farther south about Bowson’s Hole, from where little-known pads radiate off through more hills and valleys.
I looked back now and then to wave to Alexander and his followers, and noticed dark figures on rocky crags; some were silhouetted on the high domed ridge directly above Areyonga; minute, jet-black sticks of movement against a heavy grey sky. The rain had brought emerald-green grass on the narrow flats that had been barren a week before. Mulga, ironwood, and some corkwood dotted the sward darkly, backed in every direction by the red walls. A large native camp had been deserted hurriedly. The fires still smouldered; some of the wurlies had been built only for a night or two of crude shelter; green twigs and acacia branches were still strongly scented. The winding camel pad went through rocky Opina Gap, then across another flat towards a great cliff running east and west beyond vision, more imposing and a brighter red than any I had seen in the Krichauff Range. The Areyonga disappeared into its gloomy shadow. It was not the ordinary gap through a narrow ridge. This was a canyon through a plateau, known to the natives as ‘Lbolba’, meaning ‘springtime’, or ‘the time of flowers’. Battarbee had spoken of it as the Beautiful Gap. The walls were sheer and overhanging, but the rocky bed easy to scramble over. The clear pad was marked with many footprints of the Ernabella natives returning southward nearly three hundred miles to their homeland. Scattered ashes had been dropped from their firesticks.
About a mile down in the canyon a lone native approached, naked, walking rapidly, and at first unaware of my intrusion. At about fifty yards he stopped suddenly and leapt behind a large boulder. A loud call brought him out, and eventually he moved quickly and silently past in a wide curve.
After nearly three miles of twisting and turning, the canyon opened onto the grassed plain country about ten miles long and several miles wide, known as Bowson’s Hole, the beautiful and fertile Manjura of the natives. The camel pad was now wide and prominent, and soon joined by old disused pads from the west, and the old faint tracks of a large dray impressed deeply into the clay. Towards sunset I passed by MacNamara’s hut, well built of sandstone blocks by W. H. Liddle, but now silent and deserted, the tragic monument of an attempt to breed cattle in the wild hill country. MacNamara had worked on a theory that the walled valleys would act as secure paddocks and attract heavier rainfall, besides being blessed with some good natural waterholes, but his theory failed in practice. A few hundred yards out on the plain north of the old house a sandstone cross stands above the lonely grave of P. O’Leary, and wandering natives use the old stone house for shelter.
Illara (Illarara) Creek, now containing the Areyonga, ran wide and clean beside the old buildings, and then turned in a grand sweep beneath tall gums towards, and through, the cliff walls flanking the south of Bowson’s Hole. I went on, making good time through further gateways of red stone, and looking for a suitable place to camp.
During the night several horses wandered by and commenced to nibble at the end of my sleeping-bag. Attempts to scare them only sent them beyond the circle of light to shelter temporarily behind a spreading mulga. They took no notice of loud protests, which merely echoed across the creek and back from a cliff. Eventually I found more peace sitting up by the fire.
A daylight start and a couple of hours’ steady walking brought me to running water and bulrush pools, continuing until they ran the river for several miles. The place is known as Illara Water, and has its parallel in the better-known and more accessible Parke’s Running Waters of the Finke River, forty-five miles to the east. It gives credence to the theory that the vast sandstone masses of the Krichauff Range rest upon an immense underground reservoir, from which the surplus waters emerge at the tilted crest of the reservoir’s base on a broad plane, running east and west.
The pools of Illara Water were long and deep, and ducks were plentiful. I climbed a sandstone bluff where the river widened to nearly quarter of a mile between it and the cliffs opposite, some hundreds of feet high, in an impressive formation of vertical slabs separated by deep and narrow cracks. My bluff also was of vertical sandstone. One slip, and I would slither a hundred or more feet into the pitch darkness of one of many cracks several feet wide at the top, but narrowing down to a few inches. It was a thought that brought caution. In one slit the carcass of a bullock or cow had become wedged; and I found two more skeletons in a cave that had been reached by wandering cattle unable to get down again.
It was obvious that the Krichauff and James Ranges were tapering off to the south, with fertile plains some distance beyond, then more scattered hills, and, low down, far away to the right and south-west, the Levi and George Gill Ranges, clear-cut and distant red. Another large sandy watercourse, the Walker, with its lines of large dark-green trees, came down from the west and joined the Illara, to continue as the Palmer, which in turn joins the mighty Finke another hundred miles or so farther on, beyond Henbury Station.
Tempe Downs homestead was hidden in the low hills to the south-east. I plotted a course by landmarks, and walked on beneath a hot sun. The walking was tough and tiring, over and round sandhills, and through groves of tall desert oaks, across the running stream of the river again, and through untidy mallee scrubs where jumbled sandhills had no order and no pattern. It was a rubbish dump of sand and trees, and the most monotonous bit of country I had ever seen.
A tiny person with pigtails, looking no more than a small schoolgirl, emerged from Tempe Downs homestead, stood in astonishment, then raced away to bring out her mother-in-law, Mrs de Brenni, sen., and W. H. Liddle, the pioneer grazier of Angas Downs. He had driven a ramshackle camel-buggy sixty miles across the desert to southward to return a heavy plough. Explanations and introductions, and invitations to lunch and overnight stay were all simultaneous, while black faces peered round corners of the natural stone building to see the person, who might even be a policeman on patrol, who had walked and carried his own food and water.
Tempe homestead is well laid out, and the main buildings are solidly built in coloured sandstone, which was quarried by a master craftsman and shaped to size out in the hills. Little Mrs de Brenni quickly mounted her pedal radio transceiver, listed as Station OE, contacted Reginald Pitts, the Flying Doctor Service radio officer at Alice Springs – one hundred and fifty miles away by road – and arranged a ‘sked’* to enable me to talk over the air with Hermannsburg, Station XH, at 7 o’clock that night. This amazing little woman, wife of the station manager, Bert de Brenni, who was absent trying to bring a loaded truck through bog from Alice Springs, was running the whole show, cooking, administering and controlling several native stockmen and women, and looking after her two-year-old son.
The sked came through as planned. Mrs de Brenni worked the pedals and manipulated the switches. She was like a doll before a large sewing-machine, pedalling away with the action of a trained bike-rider to generate sufficient current to send the messages out, yet finding breath to say: ‘Tempe Downs calling Hermannsburg. Tempe Downs calling Hermannsburg. Can you hear me, Hermannsburg? Can you hear me, Hermannsburg? Over to you. Over to you.’ Then she switched a lever and the broadcasting set became a receiver; and back came the voice from Hermannsburg. ‘Hullo, Tempe Downs. Hullo, Tempe Downs. This is Albrecht speaking. I can hear you, Tempe Downs. I can hear you quite well. Good evening, Mrs de Brenni. Is Mr Groom there? Is Mr Groom there? I should like to speak to him. Over to you, Tempe Downs. Over to you.’
The miracle of the ages; marvel of space conquered in a wilderness!
Then little Mrs de Brenni again:
‘I can hear you, Reverend Albrecht. I can hear you quite well, Reverend Albrecht. Yes, Mr Groom is here. He is listening ready for you to speak. Over to you. Over to you.’
‘Albrecht speaking, Mr Groom. I hope you are well. We have been worried about you. As you know, we have had heavy rain – four inches here, more at Haast’s Bluff, which has been cut off. Our trucks are bogged; and we have not been able to get supplies out. However, last Tuesday, Tiger left here with another lot of camels and supplies for you, and should be at Areyonga by now. He is a good man. I repeat, he is a good man. He will guide you to King’s Creek and Ayers Rock. You can rely on him. He will receive further instructions from Pastor Sherer and follow your tracks to Tempe. You must wait there for him and one other native who will come with Tiger from Areyonga. I received your letter by native messenger from Areyonga. You must not walk across the desert alone. Stick close to your camels. Take them wherever you go, and do not attempt to travel without your water canteens well filled. We have done our best here. You have our good wishes. Trust Tiger. He is a good boy. If you have time to continue south to Ernabella, you may take Tiger and the camels. We are very sorry for the delay….’ Then the voice gradually faded, leaving dramatic silence. I was speechless for a moment.
Bert de Brenni arrived before midnight from Alice Springs. He had been bogged many times, and had mail and fresh supplies and promise of an early trip to Alice Springs for his wife and mother. Late into the night the two women talked of nothing else but what they would buy soon. The big truck was unloaded slowly on the Sunday morning by Jimmy the Pig**, a husky native, whose lone grunting efforts were cheered on by his dark mates.
While I was out watching the play of light on the leaning razorbacks of the Arulba Hills to the east, a small cloud of dust drifted up among the tall trees lining the Palmer River, dark pink in the sunset behind me, and a string of four camels emerged in black silhouette and came slowly in. Six native boys were with Tiger. He handed me a note from Pastor Sherer, whose small handwriting was unreadable in the failing light. Tiger’s introduction was wordy.
‘I’m Tige,’ he commenced, and patted an expanding chest. ‘Talkajyerie my name. Mr Albrecht send me – take you Ayers Rock – long way. King’s Creek we go, too. Lake Amadeus, too – right up – cross him – I know good place. Last year I take Ol’ Man Thommasin an’ Misser Borgell from Adelaide, and Metingeri he come, too – lazy beggar, nearly losem everybody.’
We shook hands and immediately his six mates lined up for the same procedure.
‘Who are these men?’
For a second there was awkward silence.
‘These men all like to come too,’ Tiger announced. ‘All good boys. I know ’em long time. Good boys. Everybody catch kangaroo – plenty fresh meat – catch pappy-dawg, too. Look about for camella not get lost. Look about for camella not eat poison bush.’
‘Only one more boy come,’ I said firmly. ‘Mr Albrecht tell me that. Mr Sherer write me a note here and say a boy called Tamalji is here with you. Which one Tamalji?’
There was a shuffle in the sand, and I looked into the bearded face of a savage whose eyes gleamed white in the dusk, whose teeth were also white and flashing. At first glimpse he was the wildest-looking man I had ever seem
‘This one Tamalji?’ I asked Tiger abruptly.
The man grunted, muttered rapidly to his mates; and then put his head back and laughed with high-pitched, rollicking, demoniacal guffaws. He could not speak a word of English; but in the dusk he looked powerful, almost frightening, and my acceptance of him only was because Pastor Sherer had chosen him; but I was also facing a common problem in Central Australia. A small camel team had set out with rations in the charge of one trusted native; but others had joined; and so strong is the socialist instinct that they must share with all who came along. I knew that the main rations given in trust would be safe; but I knew, also, that the rations actually distributed and given to Tiger and Tamalji for the journey from Areyonga to Tempe probably had been consumed by the whole group on the first night out.
‘Tiger,’ I announced firmly, ‘you and one boy only can come to Ayers Rock. All other boys must go away now. We start tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.’ Then I stumbled through the darkness towards the homestead, hoping the problem would solve itself.
_______
* A pre-arranged conversation.
** Manimani.