A Single Tree Page 15
Our virgin continent! how long has she tarried her bridal day! Pause and think how she has waited in serene loneliness while the deltas of Nile, Euphrates, and Ganges expanded, inch by inch to spacious provinces, and the Yellow Sea shallowed up with the silt of winters innumerable – waited while the primordial civilisations of Copt, Accadian, Aryan and Mongol crept out step-by-step from palaeolithic silence into the uncertain record of Tradition’s earliest fable – waited still through the long eras of successive empires, while the hard-won light, broadening little by little, moved westward, westward, round the circumference of the planet, at last to overtake and dominate the fixed twilight of its primitive home – waited, ageless, tireless, acquiescent, her history a blank, while the petulant moods of youth gave place to imperial purpose, stern yet beneficent – waited whilst the internal procession of annual, lunar and diurnal alternations lapsed unrecorded into a dead Past, bequeathing no register of good or evil endeavour to the ever-living Present. The mind retires from such speculation, unsatisfied but impressed . . .
3
The swagman approached, plodding steadily along, with his billy in one hand and his water-bag in the other; on his shoulder, horse-shoe fashion, his forty years’ gathering; and in his patient face his forty years’ history, clearly legible to me by reason of a gift which I happily possess. I was roused from my reverie by some one saying:
“How fares our cousin Hamlet? Come and have a drink of tea, and beggar the expense.”
“Good day,” responded Hamlet, still pursuing his journey.
“Come on! come on! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?”
“Eh?” And he stopped, and faced about.
“Come and have a feed!” I shouted.
“I’ll do that ready enough,” said he, laying his fardel down in the shade, and seating himself on it with a satisfied sigh.
I rooted my damper out of its matrix, flogged the ashes off it with a saddle-cloth, and placed it before my guest, together with a large wedge of leathery cheese, a sheath-knife, and the quart pot and pannikin.
“Eat, and good dich thy good heart, Apemantus,” said I cordially. Then, resuming my seat, I took leisure to observe him. He was an everyday sight, but one which never loses its interest to me – the bent and haggard wreck of what should have been a fine soldierly man; the honest face sunken and furrowed; the neglected hair and matted beard thickly strewn with grey. His eyes revealed another victim to the scourge of ophthalmia. This malady, by the way, must not be confounded with sandy blight. The latter is acute; the former, chronic.
“Coming from Moama?” I conjectured, at length.
“Well, to tell you the truth, I ain’t had anything since yesterday afternoon. Course, you of’en go short when you’re travellin’; but I’m a man that don’t like to be makin’ a song about it.”
“Wouldn’t you stand a better show for work on the other side of the river?”
“Eh?”
“Isn’t the Vic. side the best for work?” I shouted.
“Yes; takin’ it generally. But there’s a new saw-mill startin’ on this side, seven or eight mile up from here; an’ I know the two fellers that owns it – two brothers, the name O’ H—. Fact, I got my eyes cooked workin’ at a thresher for them. I’m not frightened but what I’ll git work at the mill. Fine, off-handed, reasonable fellers.”
“Wouldn’t it suit you better to look out for some steady work on a farm?”
“Very carm. Sort o’ carm heat. I think there’s a thunderstorm hangin’ about. We’ll have rain before this moon goes out, for a certainty. She come in on her back – I dunno whether you noticed?”
“I didn’t notice. Don’t you find this kind of weather making your eyes worse?”
“My word, you’re right. Not much chance of a man makin’ a rise the way things is now. Dunno what the country’s comin’ to. I don’t blame people for not givin’ work when they got no work to give, but they might be civil” – he paused, and went on with his repast in silence for a minute. It required no great prescience to read his thought. Man must be subject to sale by auction, or be a wearer of Imperial uniform, before the susceptibility to insult perishes in his soul. “I been carryin’ a swag close on twenty year,” he resumed; “but I never got sich a divil of a blaggardin’ as I got this mornin’. Course, I’m wrong to swear about it, but that’s a thing I ain’t in the habit o’ doin’. It was at a place eight or ten mile down the river, on the Vic. side. I wasn’t cadging, nyther. I jist merely ast for work – not havin’ heard about the H—s till after – an’ I thought the bloke was goin’ to jump down my throat. I didn’t ketch the most o’ what he said, but I foun’ him givin’ me rats for campin’ about as fur off of his place as from here to the other side o’ the river; an’ a lagoon betwixt; an’ not a particle o’ grass for the fire to run on. Fact, I’m a man that’s careful about fire. Mind you, I did set fire to a bit of a dead log on the reserve, but a man has to get a whiff o’ smoke these nights, on account o’ the muskeeters; an’ there was no more danger nor there is with this fire o’ yours. Called me everything but a gentleman.”
“Possess your soul in patience. You have no remedy and no appeal till we gather at the river.”
“O, I was in luck there. Jist after I heard about this saw-mill – bein’ then on the Vic. side – I foun’ a couple o’ swells goin’ to a picnic in a boat; an’ I told them I wanted to git across, an’ they carted me over, an’ no compliment. Difference in people.”
“I know the H—s,” I shouted. “When did you hear about them starting this saw-mill?”
“O! this forenoon. I must ast you to speak loud. I got the misfortune to be a bit hard o’ hearin’. Most people notices it on me, but I was thinkin’ p’r’aps you didn’t remark it. It come through a cold I got in the head, about six year ago, spud-diggin’ among the Bungaree savages.”
“I’m sorry for you.”
“Well, it was this way. After the feller hunted me off of his place this mornin’, who should I meet but a young chap an’ his girl, goin’ to this picnic, with a white horse in the buggy. Now, that’s one o’ these civil, good-hearted sort o’ chaps you’ll sometimes git among the farmers. Name o’ Archie M—. I dunno whether you mightn’t know him; he’s superintender o’ the E— Sunday School. Fact, I’d bin roun’ with the H—’s thresher at his ole man’s place four years runnin’; so when he seen me this mornin’, it was, ‘Hello, Andy! – lookin’ for work?’ An’ the next word was, ‘Well, I’m sorry we ain’t got no work for you’ – or words to that effect – ’ but,’ says he, ‘there’s the H—s startin’a saw-mill fifteen or twenty mile up the river, on the other side. They won’t see you beat,’ says he, ‘but if you don’t git on with them,’ says he, ‘come straight back to our place, an’ we’ll see about something,’ says he. So I’m makin’ my way to the saw-mill.”
“Well, I hope you’ll get on there, mate.”
“You’re right. It’s half the battle. Wust of it is, you can’t stick to a mate when you got him. I was workin’ mates with a raw new-chum feller las’ winter, ringin’ on the Yanko. Grand feller he was – name o’ Tom – but, as it happened, we was workin’ sub-contract for a feller name o’ Joe Collins, an’ we was on for savin’, so we on’y drawed tucker-money; an’ beggar me if this Joe Collins didn’t git paid up on the sly, an’ travelled. So we fell in. Can’t be too careful when you’re workin’ for a workin’ man. But I wouldn’t like to be in Mr. Joe Collins’s boots when Tom ketches him. Scotch chap, Tom is. Well, after bin had like this, we went out on the Lachlan, clean fly-blowed; an’ Tom got a job boundary ridin’, through another feller goin’ to Mount Brown diggin’s; an’ there was no work for me, so we had to shake hands. I’d part my last sprat to that feller.”
“I believe you would. But I’m thinking of Joe Collins. To a student of nominology, this is a most unhappy combination. Joseph denotes sneaking hypocrisy, whilst Collins is a guarantee of probity. Fancy the Broad Arrow and the Cross of the L
egion of Honour woven into a monogram!”
“Rakin’ style o’ dog you got there. I dunno when I seen the like of him. Well, I think I’ll be pushin’ on. I on’y got a sort o’ rough idear where this mill is; an’ there ain’t many people this side o’ the river to inquire off of; an’ my eyes is none o’ the best. I’ll be biddin’ you good day.”
“Are you a smoker?” I asked, replenishing my own sagacious meerschaum. “Because you might try a plug of this tobacco.”
Now that man’s deafness was genuine, and I spoke in my ordinary tone, yet the magic word vibrated accurately and unmistakably on the paralysed tympanum. Let your so-called scientists account for that.
“If you can spare it,” replied the swagman, with animation. “Smokin’s about the on’y pleasure a man’s got in this world; an’ I jist used up the dust out o’ my pockets this mornin’; so this’ll go high. My word! Well, good day. I might be able to do the same for you some time.”
“Thou speakest wiser than thou art ‘ware of,” I soliloquised as I watched his retreating figure, whilst lighting my pipe. “As the other philosopher, Tycho Brahe, found inspiration in the gibberish of his idiot companion, so do I find food for reflection in thy casual courtesy, my friend. Possibly I have reached the highest point of all my greatness, and from that full meridian of my glory, I haste now to my setting. From a Deputy-Assistant-Sub-Inspector – with the mortuary reversion of the Assistant-Sub-Inspectorship itself – to a swagman, bluey on shoulder and billy in hand, is as easy as falling off a playful moke. Such is life.”
The longer I smoked, the more charmed I was with the rounded symmetry and steady lustre of that pearl of truth which the swagman had brought forth out of his treasury. For philosophy is no warrant against destitution, as biography amply vouches. Neither is tireless industry, nor mechanical skill, nor artistic culture – if unaccompanied by that business aptitude which tends to the survival of the shrewdest; and not even then, if a person’s mana is off. Neither is the saintliest piety any safeguard. If the author of the Thirty-seventh Psalm lived at the present time, he would see the righteous well represented among the unemployed, and his seed in the Industrial Schools . . .
Collective humanity holds the key to that kingdom of God on earth, which clear-sighted prophets of all ages have pictured in colours that never fade. The kingdom of God is within us; our all-embracing duty is to give it form and effect, a local habitation and a name. In the meantime, our reluctance to submit to the terms of citizenship has no more effect on the iron law of citizen reciprocity than our disapproval has on the process of the seasons; for see how, in the great human family, the innocent suffer for the guilty; and not only are the sins of the fathers visited upon the children, but my sins are visited upon your children, and your sins upon some one else’s children; so that, if we decline a brotherhood of mutual blessing and honour, we alternatively accept one of mutual injury and ignominy.
Such is Life (1903), Modern Publishing Group, Seaford, Victoria, 1992
Bill Gammage
2011
On 10 July 1890 Alfred Howitt addressed the Royal Society of Victoria, the same which 30 years before had sent him to find Burke and Wills, on ‘The Eucalypts of Gippsland’. His talk was remarkable.
1. He grouped and described 24 species of Gippsland eucalypt, plus numerous forms and local variations. His descriptions were based on up to 26 samples of each species and form taken from scattered Gippsland locations, and showed both typifying characteristics and minute local differences in leaf, bud, flower, fruit and sometimes wood. Dozens of differences were depicted in nine plates drawn by his daughter Annie.
2. He set down where each species and form occurred, whether local or general, on what soils, at what heights, in what terrain. For example he named species which rose from the coast up cool gullies on south facing slopes but gave way to others on warm north facing slopes, or still others in subalpine areas. He argued in detail that it followed that even small climate changes in the past must have affected and in the future would affect eucalypt distribution, perhaps even to extinction. This is accepted today, but on that night in 1890 Ferdinand von Mueller, director of Melbourne’s Botanic Gardens and no mug on eucalypts, observed that it was ‘work in an entirely new direction’.
3. He discussed the ‘Influence of Settlement’ on Gippsland’s eucalypts. This began ‘on the very day when the first hardy pioneers’ arrived. They put an end to the ‘annual’ fires of the Aborigines, letting undergrowth fill open forest and grass revert to bush. Howitt gave examples from all over Gippsland where it was ‘difficult to ride over parts which . . . were at one time open grassy country’, and concluded that in spite of European clearing, Gippsland’s forests were denser and more widespread than in 1788. Howitt’s chairman confessed that he ‘had never heard or dreamt of’ this re-foresting’.
4. He argued that ending Aboriginal fire let insect populations explode. In the 1870s he saw whole forests dying, and found them infested with myriads of insect larvae. These also made headway because stock hardened the ground, causing water which had once seeped in to run off, so weakening the eucalypts by thirst. Hard ground and increased water flow were also why floods were more catastrophic than before Europeans came.
With breathtaking detail and economy, Howitt illuminated much of what this book labours to cover. He could do this because he thought as an Australian. He understood less than the Aborigines, and he knew it. He acknowledged often what they taught him, and his talk began with a list of eucalypts and their Kurnai names, but he never offered what was common then and now: comparison with Europe. He never said eucalypts were less deciduous, less green, less shady than Europe’s trees. He never mentioned England, where he lived his first 21 years. He was not merely describing Australian examples; he was evolving Australian premises.
Important books wait on pre-contact management in other lands, but only in Australia did a mobile people organise a continent with such precision. In some past time, probably distant, their focus tipped from land use to land care. They sanctioned key principles: think long term; leave the world as it is; think globally, act locally; ally with fire; control population. They were active, not passive, striving for balance and continuity to make all life abundant, convenient and predictable. They put the mark of humanity firmly on every place. They kept the faith. The land lived. Its face spoke. ‘Here are managers’, it said, ‘caring, provident, hardworking.’ This is possession in its most fundamental sense. If terra nullius exists anywhere in our country, it was made by Europeans.
This book interrupts Law and country at the moment terra nullius came, and an ancient philosophy was destroyed by the completely unexpected, an invasion of new people and ideas. A majestic achievement ended. Only fragments remain. For the people of 1788 the loss was stupefying. For the newcomers it did not seem great. Until recently few noticed that they had lost anything at all. Knowledge of how to sustain Australia, of how to be Australian, vanished with barely a whisper of regret.
We have a continent to learn. If we are to survive, let alone feel at home, we must begin to understand our country. If we succeed, one day we might become Australian.
The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia,
Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2011
Bill Garner
2013
1
After a slow circumnavigation we choose a grassy spot by the creek between two large gums. Paying careful attention to the condition of branches and where they hang, we face the tent east so that the tree on our northern side will shade us for most of the day and the awning will make shade in the late afternoon. The creek is 5 metres away and the water is fine for washing. There is no-one close on either side and we have a view of bush.
At dusk an anarchic cacophony of cockatoos, kookaburras and crows is threaded with the melodies of magpies and wattlebirds and the cheeping of smaller birds. The noise overwhelms the other senses. Retiring, we leave the tent open, looking out horizontally from
our sleeping bags at the sky, but the chill of the night surprises us and we shut down the tent.
When we emerge in the morning, the birds greet us again. We look around and we are happy with our spot. There is where we will stay.
We do what the other campers do: we sit. A duck sails down the creek. We observe the other campers, as they observe us, occasionally waving small acknowledgments (‘We see you’) but otherwise leaving one another alone. Later in the day, we watch new arrivals make their circuits and selections, relieved when they do not camp next to us. We comment on their vehicles and gear (‘Look what a great big set-up those people have!’), on their choice of spots, how competent they are, on their dogs.
If someone shouts at their children, everyone knows. This is a transparent, self-regulated world. There are no police, no rangers, no exchanges of money. The rules are understood. Or not. Transgression of invisible boundaries can be met with a glare, or in severe cases, the shifting of a camp. Nobody has to be where they are, for other possibilities exist.
We sit and read; occasionally we make more coffee or tea, or go for water or to the toilet or wander a little. Mainly we just sit and stare. As do the other people, despite all the canoes and fishing rods and other paraphernalia of activity they unload, for the main thing is simply to sit around. Only children are restlessly on the move. Adults become tortoises or echidnas, hardly moving at all and then only from necessity, and very slowly. Despite appearances to the contrary, camping is the antithesis of travel. It defies the hegemony of mobility. It is about being stopped, being still. It is a moment of orientation.