3

Hilda woke in the blue pre-dawn light on her slatted bed, her shape imprinted into the grass-filled mattress for the last time. She thought of Bonny, lying in his shelter. Was he also awake? What would he tell his nephew before he left? The boy had asked many questions: ‘Uncle, what will it be like to cross such vast seas? Why are you going? What will you see? What are the people like in the far-off land? What do they eat? What do they wear? What dances do they do? What songs do they sing? Are you afraid? Why are you leaving me?’

Already she had heard Bonny tell the boy that whatever happened in the distant land on the far side of the sea, he would remain a proud Badtjala man. He would always leave his woomera and spear by his side as he slept and would remember the lessons he had been taught during his initiation to manhood. He reminded the boy that, like him, his real name was Bonangera, although the whites called him Bonny, just as they called the boy ‘Little Bonny’, and that no matter where either of them went in the world, they would always be watched over by the great spirit Beeral, and would only have to think of one another to be together again.

Hilda stood and opened the window shutter over her father’s bed so the breeze could fill her nightdress and cool her. Bonny had not yet changed into the clothes the missionary had given him and was walking down to the beach, his eyes fixed on the sea. He lifted his foot and slapped his ankle. Hilda knew well the sharp sting and pictured the ant falling off and being buried in the thick white sand as it caved in around Bonny’s footprints. Bonny tore a leaf of goat’s foot vine and rubbed it against the bite before continuing to the ocean edge where he took a handful of cool water and splashed it on his face. He tilted his head back and looked up at the sky. Standing on the very same beach, he had once told Hilda of the day a bearded white stranger arrived in a wooden boat, much wider than a bark gom’bar, and stole his mother away.

His mother had shouted back at him, her only son, ‘Run!’ He hid in the mangroves, crouching in the mud that made long grey boots of his slender shins. A mangrove root speared him but he did not cry out. He told himself he must be strong like his ancestors had been when, during the Last Time, a generation before, the worst of the killings had taken place.

Hilda pictured the young Bonny calling on the powerful spirit the Melong – the punisher of wrongdoers – to teach the bearded stranger who stole his mother a lesson. She heard him asking the Melong to rub his hands together and to blow on them, to call up a great wind to turn over the thief’s boat and send his mother, a good swimmer, back to him. But it seemed even the Melong’s hands had been tied.

And now Bonny, no longer a boy but a man, had taken matters into his own hands. When Hilda asked him a week ago about his reasons for wanting to travel with them he answered, as her father had said he would, that it was time to go to the place from where the whites were coming and find their leader – the Queen – and tell her, ‘Enough.’

Hilda had explained that she and her father did not live in the same land as the Queen, although they would take Bonny to her.

‘She must hear of the wrongdoings,’ Bonny had said in Badtjala, adding that he would ask for her assurance that the bad treatment and the attacks would stop and that his people would be able to remain in peace on K’gari, which was their home. ‘Then we will dance for her and show the people there our ability with weapons. It is what our old people did when they travelled and met for yabar.’ Hilda replayed the last word in her head and remembered that it meant a large gathering of music, performances and knowledge sharing, the type that she had also heard called a ‘corroboree’.

‘Yes, but we start in Deutschland,’ Hilda had replied in a mix of Badtjala and German. ‘Herr Hagenbeck is paying for our travel. Did Papa explain? He says they will love seeing you in Hamburg, at the thierpark, and you will be given money. We will go to France also, Papa says.’

The combination of languages made her sentences sound broken, but she did not know of words in Badtjala to speak of such foreign things and places. Oftentimes when the settlers spoke in English to the Aborigines, they spoke as if addressing children, leaving out words and changing their tone of voice. Christel had disliked that, but few settlers, apart from Mr Sheridan, openly shared or seemed to understand her concerns, her calls for equality or at least for humanity. Even Louis sometimes asked his wife to be less strident in her views. Hilda continued determinedly, mostly in her imperfect Badtjala, but as she started to speak, she knew she was failing to capture the complexity of what she wanted to convey. It was a difficult language to master, yet she spoke it better than any other white person with whom she was aquainted. Bonny said she spoke it well. He had nodded, confirming that he knew of the travel plans.

‘And when the people there hear what your people have suffered, they will be shocked and angry at the English Queen. Papa thinks it will help make her agree to the reserve that Mama and Mr Sheridan spoke of.’

But already Hilda’s mind had returned to the idea of the first performances in Germany. She longed to see the audiences’ delight and to share her friends’ joy at being so warmly received in her homeland. She imagined standing alongside them, looking out into the applauding crowd. Never had she seen such awe on her mother’s face as that first night on K’gari when they had sat by the fire and Bonny and the others had danced to welcome them. Hilda asked herself what her family had given in return, in the end.

‘You will see many good things. Taste many good foods,’ she had told Bonny, reverting to her own language as she described the German cakes and the many delicious sliced meats. The impressive buildings. Ice cream. ‘Und Schnee.’

‘Schnee?’

‘Snow,’ she said in English. Was there even a Badtjala word for snow? If there was she had not heard it. She continued in the same language. ‘It looks like Fraser Island sand but is cold and settles on rooftops and the branches of trees, so heavily the boughs sometimes break.’

Bonny had looked at her as if she had lost her mind, then a flicker of recognition crossed his face, as if he was remembering a story of such things.

Now, through the window, Hilda watched Bonny dive into the sea and float on his back. Where were Jurano and Dorondera? Still asleep on such a morning? Or out fishing and gathering food as they always did, as if nothing had changed? Hilda didn’t imagine so. In recent days, Dorondera had been insatiably curious, particularly to learn about the women in Europe. Their clothes. Their hair. How they attract young men. Hilda told what she could but, in all honesty, did not know the details herself. She wondered if when she asked Dorondera similar questions, about what a Badtjala man might want in a wife, for example, Dorondera sometimes made things up, too. In the distance, Hilda saw the white sails of a ship approaching. It was in the centre of the strait, and flying from the tallest of the three masts was the German Handelsflagge.

Bonny, Dorondera and Jurano would board first, Hilda’s father told her, and, although she didn’t want to be separated from her friends, in the end she conceded. The longboat the ship was sending was too small for them all plus their luggage and the crate of artefacts; it wasn’t safe.

‘Then I shall pay a last visit to Mama’s grave,’ she announced in German.

‘Go quickly,’ her father said, his voice catching in his throat as she turned away from the camp and started for the cemetery. ‘We will make our way down to the beach.’

It was some minutes before Hilda allowed herself to look through the scrub and trees and down to the water’s edge where her friends were gathering in anticipation of the longboat’s arrival. Bonny, dressed in a calico shirt and rolled-up trousers, was standing straight and tall on the sand. He was embracing Mary and Old Jack, the children also, although Little Bonny was yet to appear. Dorondera was wearing a long brown dress and second-hand boots that the missionary had delivered. Her young cousins were circling her, taking cover from Dorondera’s gentle slaps by hiding under her skirts. Jurano was dressed similarly to Bonny, although also wore a jacket and his clothes were too large. He and his wife were saying their farewells, a small case, formal and out of place, between them. Some of the women were crying, and Hilda was relieved not to be amongst them as her friends departed. It would have been impossible to contain her emotions as her father expected of her.

She wiped the tears from her cheeks and continued on through the coastal forest, her open hands connecting with banksias and tea-trees and the trunks of eucalypts the settlers called scribbly gums for the patterns that appeared drawn on their smooth, pale bark.