Tiger was ready beside his four camels, grinning widely. Tamalji, who looked even more savage in the daylight, stood beside him. A few feet behind were three more natives and behind them again another half dozen.
‘Ready, Tiger?’
He hesitated.
‘These men like to come, too,’ he said.
‘No!’ I snapped. ‘Only Tamalji come.’
Tiger was disappointed, though he appeared to be acting a part arranged by others. He looked at a fat youth of about fifteen who stepped forward.
‘This one boy belong to me,’ he announced. ‘Maybe he come?’
I made a rapid mental calculation of what an extra hand might mean to the ration supply and equipment.
‘He is a properly good boy,’ Tiger continued. ‘He only eat little bit tucker. He catchem pappy-dawg, and kangaroo and euro for tuckout and fresh meat for everybody. Good camel boy. Help me a lot.’
I agreed with some misgiving, and roughly ordered the rest of the wanderers away. Tiger soon put the camels up before more relatives waylaid us, and we moved off slowly across the sandy river, heading dead west.
It was my intention to walk at least during the cool of the day, and perhaps ride at midday; but there are few things more monotonous and trying than the first day of a long camel journey. We proceeded half a mile to the first sandhill, then stopped to repair a broken nose-line. Another few hundred yards, and another stop to readjust packs, and so it went on for several miles in a staccato procession of stop and start, only to stop and adjust again. Only one camel had the usual nose-peg inserted in the fleshy part of the nose. The other three were linked in line, eight or ten feet apart, with lengths of thin cord and frayed rope. They were quiet, painfully slow, obstinate, smelly; and snuffled, belched, groaned, dribbled, and spat. The saddles were old; but the large wooden food-boxes and six five-gallon water canteens were substantial and good.
Tiger obviously understood the camels; and avoided their vicious biting and spitting with the agility of an acrobat. His main problem was to nurse them into agreeable marching order, and to get them all moving at the same easy pace at which they will swish-swish quietly on through sand and over clay-pan hour after hour. By midday we had travelled about five miles along a sandy valley and through the rocky Intulkuna-iwara* Gap, to a large clay-pan filled with fresh yellow water. Tiger unloaded the camels, and pointed to numerous recent tracks of natives heading south towards Ernabella Mission. Tiger was becoming voluble and cheerful, though anxious to impress and tell all about his previous trip with ‘Misser Borgell and Ol’ Man Thommasin’. Tamalji had remarkable energy, and was ready to scout along on foot over sandhills, rocky ridges, or up steep hillsides. Through rocky gorges and valleys his terrific laughter echoed like the devil let loose. Fat little Njunowa watched every movement I made, obviously amused; and gave a running commentary in Pitjentjara dialect to the other two. When he wasn’t doing that, he was eating anything he could lay hands on, or dozing drunkenly as he rode.
At the midday halt the three boys threw raw beef straight on the ashes, and Njunowa added a lizard two feet long. I grilled a pound of juicy steak on a green stick, and baked some onions. No chef could have prepared a better feast. Njunowa was amused and watchful, and Tamalji laughed outright until Tiger called them to order, shed his hat, and bowed. There was immediate silence while he repeated grace in the Pitjentjara tongue. It was a simple tribute that I did not forget throughout the journey. The little ceremony was repeated quietly before and after every meal.
The track led into a broad valley separating the red Levi Range, two miles southward, from an unnamed and lower parallel ridge running across the north. There were acres of golden cassia-bushes in bloom, white daisies up since the rain, and odd parakeelia in bright purple points over the light-pink sandhills. On clay-pans and in shallow gullies there were light-blue bell-shaped flowers on bushes waist-high, and a dainty white heath. Black cockatoos circled above us and flew in wavering formation into the west, just as they had flown over me in the Macdonnells some weeks before. It seems to be an evening habit. Strings of Tempe Downs cattle started up at a distance, ran closer in, circling and sniffing, then with a sudden snort and flurry, and up-flung tails, they would wheel and thunder away half a mile or so, to turn quickly and stand in simulated anger awhile before feeding quietly away. The camels travelled steadily at about two and a half miles an hour. It gave me time to wander off with cameras and water-bottles north or south of the route, up on to the low hills and outcrops, or over the few sandhills that seemed out of place against the red walls of the Levi. Tiger called loud commentaries and advice with much pointing and waving of battered hat.
‘Everything going all right. We all right. Tiger knows good track. We go a long way today – allaway. Make camp – thataway,’ pointing well ahead up the valley with a small mulga camel-switch. ‘You want to ride? Maybe you get tired walkabout all day.’
But I preferred to walk. I had plenty to think about, and plenty to see. By mid-afternoon I had named the four camels. The leader was a small hairy cow camel with sudden temperamental turns. I gave it the name of Cranky Beggar, with variations. The second, a large, lumbering brute, was already known as ‘Ol’ Man’; and Tiger declared he was very old, very reliable, and that his filthy habits and noises were harmless. The third camel was a timid, dark-eyed cow, quickly christened ‘Darkie’; and the fourth, moving along slowly and heavily, at the rear, breaking the leading line every mile or so, was named ‘Lady-in-Waiting’ (the second). Tiger was worried about her. ‘Maybe tonight little camel come up belong to that one. Maybe she go two, three, four days. I dunno; but I think little camel come up sometime all right. No good. We can’t travel with baby camel. Must kill him – we go long way today – allaway – thataway!’ And another pointing into the west with his mulga switch. ‘Come on – Ol’ Man! you’m good camel; not cranky feller. You know me – you know Tige. You know – I’m take you an’ Misser Borgell and Ol’ Man Thommasin, las’ year. Come – on! You know this road.’
Tiger’s definition of a road meant anything from a dingo track to a highway.
We camped about eighteen miles out from Tempe Downs Station, within a great red-walled bay of the Levi** Range. The heavy rains had swept the floor of Petermann Creek clean, and the fresh marks of birds, snakes, kangaroos, and some other creatures I could not recognize, were clear and numerous in the rippled sand. Tiger found fresh water beside a large gum-tree, watered the camels and turned them towards the towering cliffs. They hobbled off, nibbling at the mulga-shoots, and were soon silent in the dusk. I took stock of all our food and utensils. The missionaries had sent out tinned fruits, tinned meats, sauces, jams, honey, syrup, dried fruits, bacon, a large bottle of brandy, and first-aid equipment, many packets of biscuits, potatoes, a bag of onions, beetroot, carrots, kohlrabi, nuts, cheese, oranges, prunes, plenty of tea, and not much sugar; but somewhere along the route, eating utensils had been forgotten. Between the four of us we had two plates, one large Bedourie camp-oven, one iron pot, three mugs, one spoon, and one large knife as the only cutting implement in the whole turn-out. It was with an inward sense of humour that I realized that I had two valuable cameras and many films that filled one whole camel-box; but no clock or watch between us, no compass, pocket-knife, needle, string, mirror, or axe; we had no tent or cover in case of rain! no lantern, torch, or means of artificial light.
In some ways we were a ragtime show; but what of it?
I mixed several dampers on an old piece of bagging – the first for many years. They were particularly good, but the boys were not enthusiastic. Tiger informed me: ‘Bread, he much better he not got too many hole. Treacle run away too fast!’
The following day was Tuesday, 26 August. It might have been the beginning of spring. We got away early in the deep shadows of the hills, and twisted away up the valley through further masses of flowering yellow cassia, and within three miles turned south round the shoulder of spectacular Mount Levi***, which faced the west like an immense three-tiered rainbow-cake in colour. I scrambled over its rocky sides and watched the camels half a mile out, several hundred feet below, curving about as they slowly changed direction. South-west, the eastern end of the George Gill† Range, rose up above the broad barren flat separating it by several miles from the Levi. Fantastic cloud-drifts floated over during the whole day from west to east. We lunched beside a long waterhole and sent up some ducks. Tiger had a gun and two cartridges to last him the whole journey. I was unarmed, my most serious weapon being a box of matches. The eastern end of the George Gill Range is strangely spectacular. At a distance it appears tremendous, sheer, and almost overpowering, but close approach across the broad clay-pans kills the illusion. The heights fall back into ordinary red rock slopes, and closeness brings some disappointment. We went slowly between the two ranges, then, with the George Gill now to northward, turned west again along its southern base. The camels were on their best behaviour; but for some miles the scenery was decidedly monotonous except for fantastic cloud-drifts over the hills. Just before sundown we moved out of the mulga on to a natural runway continuing for nearly three miles, about a furlong in width. A plane could have landed almost anywhere along it. Kangaroos were common, and two emus raced frantically across the runway. I dropped some distance behind to study the clouds colouring-up towards sunset, and to watch the camels in silhouette as they moved slowly and silently along the strange wide pathway that seemed to head directly into the crimson orb of the sun.
It was hard to imagine anything else but peace in the world.
At sunset, Tiger took a long shot at a kangaroo at about sixty yards’ range, and saw it stumble. He leapt from the leading camel, raced after it on foot into the mulga. Half an hour later he walked up beside the camel line, exhausted, and tossed the carcass down on the pebbles. ‘Got him – he go close up Oolra††. I been run – and – chase – him – and just about when I close up fall over meself, him fall over first.’ One pellet had entered the chest. Tamalji whooped and laughed; picked up a stone, smashed it into sharp flint edges, and disembowelled the animal swiftly. Ol’ Man Camel got an extra load of bleeding, furry carcass, thrown over the tucker-boxes. That night we camped in a mulga thicket, with the George Gill Range standing up silently half a mile northward, and to southward the desert stretched on a hundred miles to Oolra and Kuttatuta†††. A brilliant moon played havoc with racing, tossing clouds, piled them above the range, threw them aside, and rode merrily above them until midnight, when the clouds darkened and thickened, and it drizzled until morning, with a bitterly cold wind gushing in from all directions.
The camels roared and moaned, grunted and protested, and twisted away from the stinging drizzle, broke leading lines, and gave trouble until nearly midday. Progress was slow and interrupted. At one stage Tiger gave a loud yell and pointed to a broad expanse of green. Tamalji rolled from his perch on Cranky Beggar, and he and Njunowa went racing wildly over the flats. I was left walking beside Tiger, who was leading the team.
‘Pituri,’ Tiger explained. ‘We take plenty back to Areyonga people. We get three shilling a sugar-bag, sometimes get more.’
We travelled through about a hundred acres of the pituri, growing about three feet high, very much like tobacco. Tamalji and Njunowa darted through it, selected and pulled leaves, and piled them in bundles on the camels until we resembled a travelling market garden. Hardly had that period of excitement passed when two large dingoes leapt away from the rotting carcass of a large calf, and raced for the shelter of the hills. I pointed them out to Tiger. Within a few seconds Tamalji and Njunowa had left the camels once again, and were running after the fleeing dingoes.
‘They go catchem pappy-dawg,’ Tiger explained. ‘Lot of wild dawg in this country. Have little pappy now. Tamalji know ’em track everywhere. He catch ’em. You see. We take pappy skin back to Mission and sell him to Gov’ment.’
About a third along its length, the George Gill plateau-topped range is severed by a broad pass out of which emerge Bagot’s Creek and Stokes’ Creek. More pituri grew in the piled-up sand beside the fresh-water Walpmara Springs at Bagot’s Creek. Three miles farther on we crossed Stokes’ Creek, a broad watercourse of sand emerging from its canyon in the red hills, to disappear a few miles south of the range into the sands of the desert.
So far the George Gill Range had been somewhat monotonous and less spectacular repetition of the curving red bluffs and intervening gullies so common to many of the ranges within a hundred miles; but west of Stokes’ the escarpments changed rapidly. Oddly grotesque shapes and huge domed outcrops of sandstone stood up above the plateau. Some were like mammoth red animals of a prehistoric age; some were isolated monoliths, hollowed with caves and terraces. It was like looking up to a gallery of leviathan figures modelled from the past. The walking at the base of the range was heavy going in sand, and I had to proceed cautiously to avoid sharp twigs and thorns. The small creek at Kathleen’s*† Rock Hole emerged from a low wide red canyon. An uncertain wind whipped up from the south-west and annoyed the camels. Tiger halted and unloaded them; I built a fire that scattered smoke and cinders in all directions; and then Tamalji and Njunowa came in silently from converging directions, stood about moodily for some minutes; then, as always, characteristic of them in disappointment, Tiger’s consoling remark in English: ‘Maybe those pappy-dawgs cranky beggars today. Catch ’em all another day.’ A few seconds of continued silence, a reply muttered by Tamalji in guttural Pitjentjara, and the three men burst into violent, continuous laughter, with Tamalji’s enormous, high scream drawing a look of haughty concern even from the squatting camels. I had never seen or heard any man, black or white, laugh with such physical power or volume as Tamalji. His laughter rose up and up, until it seemed to reach a crisis where it could continue no longer; and then down from his amazing high guffaw with a long-drawn, dying scream of finality.
It was enough to wake all the skeletons of the desert.
Sand in the tea, sand in the damper and meat, a belching, stinking camel, paper and clothes blown about, worried the boys only for a few seconds. Each incident was followed by temporary solemnity, giving way to riotous laughter.
Njunowa had brought in a bunch of spinifex. He patiently stripped each needle to get at a rare gum substance no larger than a pin’s head, used to fasten spearheads.
Reedy**† Creek, some eight miles ahead, was our destination for the night. I left the camels with the three boys, and clambered up on to the terraces above Kathleen’s Rock Hole, and turned west-north-west along the crest of a ridge that had the regular formation of a parapet. The camels plodded slowly along half a mile out on the sand, and perhaps seven hundred or eight hundred feet below the crest, waving in and out between mulgas and tall desert oaks. The trees were spaced with mathematical regularity, so that near at hand the straw and pink of the desert sand and grass was the base upon which the deep-green blobs of the trees stood up sharply; but, twenty, thirty, and more miles southward the trees covered the desert in a continuing dark-green mass that went on and on over the flat horizon. At one point right on the centre horizon, a low faint-blue dome curved a little above the horizon. Was it Ayers Rock? More likely it was some unmapped, little-known mountain beside Lake Amadeus.
I clambered over a prominent red bluff half-way between Kathleen’s Rock Hole and Reedy Creek, and found on the plateau above it running water and long rock-holes from the recent rain. White daisies were flowering against the red rock. The camels still moved in parallel; but about a hundred yards south of them two emus moved cautiously in the same direction, obviously unseen by Tiger and his companions.
On the western side of the neck of the large bluff, where it joined the main range, an immense cave continued beneath a jagged cliff for about two hundred yards, and just below it a stream gurgled down a deep ravine. The cave held remains of old native fires and some sandstone slabs about a foot across, originally flat, but now hollowed with the grinding and pounding of native food throughout the years. High up in the walls and shadows were crude rock paintings of lizards, birds, snakes, kangaroos, and circular symbols. It was a monument to the tragedy of dispossession; with yet another probable tragedy of the future if ever this deserted living-place of an ancient people is desecrated by the signwriting of the white vandal.
I scrambled down the gully, and eventually overtook the camels as they were about to turn a rocky corner into Reedy Creek. The bay in the range is about a mile deep and a mile across at the mouth, shaped like a horseshoe; the sandy floor is almost flat, and the cliffs curve about, high, red, and sheer, giving close protection from most of the winds. Surmounting the cliffs, the eroded sandstone domes and monoliths stand up like the buildings of an ancient city. I estimated some of them to be as high as a six-story city building, each one separated from the next by a shadowy crevice in a maze of deep passageways that would take years to explore.
The camels moved slowly in to anchor and looked about with obvious interest. They evidently sensed the end of at least one important stage in a long journey, and moved faster. They knew of water ahead, good feed in the trees, and even a little saltbush a mile or so out. Tiger talked to them, and there seemed to be a bond of understanding between man and animal.
‘Come on, you ol’ camella. We been make good time, an’ you all sit down here an’ walkabout all day tomorrow. I take everybody up King’s Creek – hey?’ A riot of laughter from Tamalji and Njunowa. ‘Ol’ Man – you know’m this country las’ year with Misser Borgell and Ol’ Man Thommasin. You tell all these other cammella where good tuckout tonight – get him all fat and full to go ’cross desert. You tell ’em all camella Tiger take you all Lake Amadeus country an’ Ayers Rock. Must drink plenty water. Don’t you all run away. Everybody go cranky beggar at you!’
More laughter, and Tamalji’s high, bloodcurdling scream echoing from the cliffs. We moved up beside the creek with its sheer white, fine sand, running water, tall, graceful, and spreading gums over the sand with no undergrowth; all encircled by the gleaming red cliffs!
We unloaded and camped beside a shattered gum-tree. The tree had been cut and barked deeply with an axe. Its bared weathered timber had clearly marked on it, some ten or twelve inches high, the initial G, by explorer Ernest Giles or W. C. Gosse between October 1872 and July 1873. The tree won’t last very much longer. A few more years, and it will fall or burn away in a desert fire.
I rolled out a large damper, sodden, and only half-cooked in the drizzle of the previous night. Tiger came forward. ‘You good cook now; that bread good one.’ I cut it in two. It was solid dough; but Tiger was enthusiastic. ‘Don’t throw him away. He is properly good bread; no got little hole everywhere for treacle run out.’
This time I laughed with them; and perhaps it was the peace of the place, or perhaps the associations of years ago when Gosse and Giles moved over Australia’s heart in their epic explorations, returning again and again to the cliff-bound haven for water and rest; but I felt a deep contentment and well-being. Within a hundred yards of the camp Reedy Creek descended from the George Gill plateau in a waterfall of its own, delayed awhile in a deep gloomy pool about which there was a small fringe of reeds, and then continued some miles into the desert, to vanish into the great depth of sand like all the other watercourses of the George Gill. The tall, white-boled trees were of vivid green, drooping like willows. In summer, no doubt, it would be a hot inferno of heat radiated from the rock.
A moon sailed up over the eastern walls, and once again tossed light clouds about. Curlews, owls, and frogs called; and a bright patch of moonlight played on the G marked on the decaying tree within ten feet. It was easy to skip back over the intervening seventy-five years. Ernest Giles had approached from the north-west, and named the range after George Duff Gill, of Melbourne, who had helped to finance his expedition. Apparently he named Reedy Creek, Penny’s Creek after Mr Penny of Yorke Peninsula; King’s Creek after Fielden King of Gottleib Wells and Black Rock; and, as he continued east, he named Stokes’ Creek after Frank Stokes of Coonatto; Bagot’s Creek and springs after John Bagot of Peake Station, the Levi Range after Philip Levi of Adelaide, the Petermann Hills and Petermann Creek after Professor Petermann of Gotha, and Middleton Ponds after A. D. Middleton of the Darling River. Giles wandered up and back, eastward, then westward, eastward again along the southern base of the George Gill; but nearly every attempt to penetrate the wilderness of its canyons and ravines was met by hostile demonstrations from many natives.
W. C. Gosse reached the George Gill up from the south in July 1873, turned and went south again. Either man could have carved the big G, now being flecked with moonlight three-quarters of a century later.
It was a strange night. Tiger stood up and sang a hymn, patiently encouraging the other two boys to follow. Heavy clouds overwhelmed the moon, and a slight drizzle set in and continued until an hour before dawn, when all trace of cloud vanished suddenly, and the bitter chill of fine weather penetrated my sleeping-bag. I lay awake, waiting for daylight; but before there was any definite light in the eastern sky, one lone sentinel of a vast feathered colony called somewhere down the creek. It was a clear note I had never heard before, continuous and determined, obviously a signal. It was followed immediately by a bird chorus that filled the whole valley, and continued rapidly for several minutes, as though every bird within the encircling cliffs was determined to greet the day. As daylight strengthened the chorus died down to many scattered chirps.
We breakfasted before sunrise, packed some food, and set out on foot on the three-mile walk to King’s Creek and Canyon. Our route lay round the base of the range, which curved to the north-west, and now rose abruptly to nearly one thousand feet. There were bushes of blue bell-flowers, and white bell-flowers, acres of a new type of golden cassia, numerous white sandhill daisies, and a bushy wattle new to me. The boys ran from one desert quandong-tree to another, picking and eating the ripe red fruit; and also found edible figs in narrow clefts of rock. We walked in through acres of stunted bushes to King’s***† Creek, and paused beside MacNamara’s deserted old bush hut, built by W. H. Liddle. Built originally of sandstone, saplings, and clay, it had fallen and crumbled. The creek was running strongly; lined with vivid-white ghost gums, in an intricate pattern of velvet white and deep green. The gums were in the bed of the creek with running water at their roots; they were spread-rooted over massive, fallen red squares and straight-sided shapes of sandstone; they were lined along one rock terrace above another, jutting crazily out of narrow cracks high up the sides of towering cliffs that walled the canyon like a great inverted V nearly a mile long.
We all drank a lot of water from the crystal-clear pools; and as we climbed and scrambled, the whole place absorbed a light-pink reflection from the tremendous, smooth red walls above. Zamia palms were dotted oddly here and there. King’s Creek and Canyon had necessitated a long detour from the usual straight desert route from Tempe Downs to Ayers Rock; but I would have travelled ten times the distance to enjoy the grandeur and colour of the place. There is nothing like it in Australia. Its past is steeped in native lore and ceremony. It was and still is one of the main waters and hunting places of Central Australia, and the pilgrimage place of nomadic wanderers who feel its call hundreds of miles away. As we clambered higher and higher with extended vision, we could see distant ‘smokes’ in almost every direction, mostly out in the great native reserve. Tiger and Tamalji and Njunowa held urgent conferences and pointed excitedly to the smokes. They were trying to work out the direction of travel of those who had fired them. Tiger explained some of them: ‘Thata one – might belong to half-caste feller – maybe – go out with one camella to get pappy-dawg scalp. ’Nother one – thataway.’ He pointed directly south. ‘Maybe Ernabella men go back across desert, and walkabout little while in rocky country, spear kangaroo – euro.’ He then indicated a line of smokes extending for several miles. ‘Maybe someone come up tonight from Petermann country – long way thataway – camp close by Reedy Creek country – maybe we see ’em.’
Tamalji was excited, and leapt from rock to rock, and scrambled up and along terraces. Njunowa puffed his way slowly, and only went where he had to go. He was getting fatter and lazy, and was a bit of a nuisance. Tiger was proud of his childhood country, and patted himself on the chest time and time again with closed fist. ‘This one good country all the time. I live here – runabout – when little boy. Good country altogether. Reedy Creek we call Lilla. Bagotty Spring country we call Wynmurra. All good country. My country – go all the way across Lake Amadeus and Oolra and Kuttatuta. I take you and show you. Tomorrow – we go ’cross desert? We take them ol’ camella – plenty water canteen – we got good tucker – good! We go three, maybe four, days, thataway – right up by lake country – right up Ayers Rock, we go!’
And as Tiger talked and patted, and filled the other two boys with some measure of excitement, we scrambled up a jagged, narrow razorback, rising higher and higher beneath a red bluff, topped with an unbelievable wilderness of red domes; stopping every now and then to look about over a wonderland that seemed to have no place in Australia’s ‘dead heart’. The stops were twofold: to absorb the grandeur of it all, and to wait for Njunowa’s puffing, sweating carcass to labour slowly higher. For once I had to throw all thought of travel by landmark or direction to one side, and patiently follow old Tiger through passageway and crevice between the giant domes, several miles towards the plateau’s edge above Reedy Creek. At one point we laboured up a corridor almost straight for nearly a furlong to emerge on the crest of a dome. It was the last of its group to northward. We were now nearly a mile over the rim of the plateau. The domes continued west, then north-west, to curve in a horseshoe several miles across; but in the intervening space a desert of rolling sandhills, seldom seen by white men, had been lifted some eight hundred or a thousand feet up to form the centre of this strange plateau. What enormous and patient power of wind had swept the sands from the lowlands up over the massive red ramparts of rock, to lie and form and move slowly in waves across the flat, saucer-like depression? Tiger’s voice came as though from a distance. He pointed to a thin spiral of smoke some miles ahead. ‘Somebody walkabout there. Might be catch rabbit!’
What a country!
The proposed route to Ayers Rock lay down past the eastern end of Lake Amadeus, which was reputed to contain treacherous bog. A straight line from Reedy Creek to Ayers Rock would pass over the lake about one-third of the way from the eastern end of its eighty-mile length. Tiger knew of a direct route across the lake: the route where Giles bogged his horses when proceeding south on Sunday, 20 October 1872, and turned back to King’s Creek. Tiger was obviously concerned. The recent rains might have filled the lake and bogged its clay-pan approaches. Giles had named the lake Amadeus after a king of Spain.
But Tiger cheered himself. ‘Maybe we be all right,’ he called out. ‘Tiger knows good road that way. S’pose it too much bog, we go – east – turn around lake country – then see Ayers Rock. I know good road across that desert country. You’m see. We go all right. Right up Ayers Rock – sit down little while – look about every place – then we go to Olga country, too.’
As I baked several dampers and boiled meat and beetroot, to save using limited canteen water in the desert, the three boys chanted about their fire, jumping up now and then in black silhouette against the flames. Tiger called loudly into the darkness, and his voice rolled along the red cliffs. ‘We go right up to Ayers Rock, and touch him like that—’ He leapt to a tree-trunk and patted it. ‘We go through desert country alla way, sandy country, crazy country. Tiger takem you. Show’m you everything. Good country. Only Tiger know ’em properly.’ Then he would wave his hands about, followed by echoing round of laughter, with Tamalji always first and last, and loudest. ‘Camella! Hey! You camella – out there eatem mulga tuckout! Hey! You hear me? Tiger sing out to you. Don’t you run away tonight. You stay close about. We catch you tomorrow morning – quick smart – pack up – quick smart. Boss makem plenty damper make you grunt like ol’ man. Breakem your back. Breakem tucker-box. Don’t you camella be cranky beggar now, or we’m kick your guts in.’
_______
* Carpet Snake.
** Ngarkinti.
*** Ngangkali.
† Aluruka.
†† Ayers Rock.
††† Mount Olga.
*† Ipitilkita.
**† Lilla.
***† Watarka.