Corroboree (43 page)

Yonguldye knew very little English. Most of it he had picked up during the bad dry of 1838, when he and his tribe had been forced to camp close to a mission at New Norcia in order to survive the summer. He quickly lapsed into Nyungar, and Eyre had to depend on Joolonga's translation to follow the conversation. He felt uneasy about that: Joolonga seemed to be in a peculiarly uneasy mood this evening, snappy with Eyre and exaggeratedly subservient towards Yonguldye.

‘You have come to ask me to journey to Adelaide and bury the boy Yanluga according to proper ritual?' Yonguldye asked Eyre, through Joolonga.

‘That's right,' Eyre told him. ‘He was given a Christian burial; but his soul will never join his ancestors unless he is given the rites in which he believed.'

‘You were responsible for his death. Why should you be so concerned about his burial?'

‘Because it is my duty.'

‘And not simply because you are frightened that his spirit will never give you rest?'

‘I am already at rest.'

Yonguldye nodded in assent. This was obviously a good reply.

‘Will I be rewarded for journeying to Adelaide?' he wanted to know.

‘Whatever you want. Food, clothing, knives.'

‘Who will give me these things?'

‘Captain Sturt. In fact, Captain Sturt will give you many more things if you help him further.'

Yonguldye looked suspicious. ‘What further help does he want? This is not part of the legend.'

Joolonga interrupted here, and raised a hand towards Eyre to warn him not say any more. Yonguldye listened carefully to what Joolonga was saying occasionally sucking back the saliva from his toothless gums, and grunting to indicate that he understood.

‘What's going on?' asked Eyre.

Joolonga said, ‘Yonguldye has agreed to travel to Adelaide to perform the proper burial rites over Yanluga's body. He thanks you for your concern for Yanluga's soul. He says that you are obviously a wise and compassionate
djanga
.'

‘Anything else?'

‘He has agreed that in return for your magical knowledge, he will help us to locate a place he knows where there are firestones to be found.'

‘Firestones?'

‘Opals, Mr Walker-sir. He says there is a place near Caddibarrawinnacarra where firestones can be found; but this is a difficult place to reach, and he will have to guide us there. He cannot describe it to us.'

‘Where the hell's Caddibarrawinnacarra?' Dogger wanted to know. ‘I've never heard of the place.'

‘Beyond,' said Joolonga. ‘Yonguldye says
kononda
, which means northwest'.

‘There's nothing out there but fried
charra
,' growled
Dogger. For Yonguldye's benefit, he had deliberately used the Aboriginal word for ‘emu shit'.

‘Nonetheless, Yonguldye says the firestones are there; very many of them. Tomorrow he can show us some of the firestones that his own people have dug up.'

Eyre said, ‘What about the route to the inland sea? Does he know anything about that?'

Joolonga spoke to Yonguldye for three or four minutes. There was more nodding between them, and then Joolonga said, ‘He knows of a route northwards, and he says his ancestors came that way, but he has never been further north himself than the place where the magic kangaroo came to slake its thirst.'

‘Where's that?' asked Dogger, with a sniff. ‘The Queen's Head Tavern in Kermode Street?'

‘No, a place called Callanna,' said Joolonga, humourlessly.

Eyre put in, ‘If the magic kangaroo came there to drink, then surely there must be water there.'

‘Probably just a waterhole,' said Christopher.

Joolonga spoke to Yonguldye further, and this time Yonguldye rose up on to his knees, his ghost-gum spigot sticking straight out from between his legs, and stretched his arm wildly towards the north, again and again, and talked in a furious babble.

Joolonga said, ‘Yonguldye has seen the ocean himself from Callanna. He looked in the distance and it was there. The sea-birds were flying that way, and he is sure that the shoreline can be reached in less than a day's walking.'

Eyre looked around at Christopher and Dogger and his eyes were bright with pleasure. ‘Well, my friends,' he said. ‘It seems that we may be able to achieve everything we set out to achieve. Yanluga's burial, Captain Sturt's opal mine, and the discovery of the great inland sea. We're going to be rich and celebrated yet.'

‘If only you could drink to that,' said Christopher.

‘Yes,' agreed Eyre. ‘If only I could.'

That evening, the gorge rang with the chanting and singing of the greatest corroboree that had been held in South Australia since the days before the white men came. That, at least, was the opinion of the old grey-haired woman who turned out to be Yonguldye's senior wife, and to whom he always referred as
unkeegeega
, which, whether he meant it ironically or not, meant ‘young girl'.

Eyre saw nothing that evening of the pretty young girl who had been sitting at the back of Yonguldye's shelter, but that was hardly surprising. He was surrounded all evening by warriors from six or seven different tribes, all of whom seemed to feel that sitting close to the mythical white-skinned
djanga
was a matter of great prestige; and all of whom were very curious about his paleness, and his uncircumcised penis. None of them spoke any English whatsoever; and so Eyre was restricted to smiles and nods and indulgent shakes of his head.

The food came first. Roasted emu, bloody and scorched, but smelling delicious to men who hadn't eaten fresh meat for days. Mallee fowl, their eggs served raw. Skinks, stripped of their legs and peeled of their skins, and dangled over the fire on spits. And with all of this feast, plenty of cold fresh water and Bunya Bunya pine-nuts.

Only Eyre had to remain hungry and thirsty; sitting cross-legged in the centre of his circle of inquisitive protectors; while Christopher and Dogger and Midgegooroo sat around a fire not far away, laughing and talking with a small group of Aborigines who had travelled here from Streaky Bay, and devouring as they did so whole breasts of emu until their feces glistened and the fat ran in rivers down their stomachs and into their pubic hair.

Later, the women silently withdrew to their shelters and to their own cooking-fires; and the men performed a sacred dance. Joolonga told Eyre that this was the dance usually
seen at funerals, when the body had been interred, and fires were burned for days on end, while the family looked around for magical signs explaining what had caused the death.

The men looked ferocious and other-worldly in the firelight. Most of them had circles of white painted around their eyes, and skeletal outlines painted on their bodies. They jumped and shuffled and spun around; shaking their spears and swinging their clubs; while scores of sticks were tapped and beaten, and boomerangs were clapped together, and hollow wooden flutes blew that deep, vibrant song that now and forever would make the hairs rise on the back of Eyre's neck.

Sparks flew from the cooking-fires into the darkness; dancers whirled and shouted; and from the entrance to his shelter, Yonguldye the Mabarn Man watched the corroboree with the air of an elderly hawk, watching his revelling young.

After the dancing was over, the tribesmen gathered around, and Yonguldye stepped forward and spoke to them. His speech was long, and involved, and sounded very discursive, because Eyre saw several of the tribesmen yawning and looking impatiently around. It amused him to think that even in a primitive society which had remained almost completely unchanged since the dawn of time, there were still men who gave tedious speeches, and still men who had to stand around and listen to them.

Over and over again, Yonguldye talked about the
djanga
, and shook his bony arm towards Eyre; and every time he did so, there would be a responsive murmur from the assembled tribesmen. It sounded like
‘moomoomoomery'
, and incongruously it reminded Eyre of Mrs McMurtry, Lathrop Lindsay's cook on the day that he had gone around to Waikerie Lodge to take Charlotte for a romantic constitutional.

Eventually, Yonguldye untied from his belt a kind of rattle, made of the skull of a young rock-wallaby hafted with gum on to the leg-bone of a kangaroo. Inside the
skull there must have been pebbles, or dried macrozamia nuts, because when Yonguldye shook it there was a hollow, echoing sound, like a man desperately trying not to die of cholera. As soon as he shook it, a short imperative burst of noise, all the tribesmen sank silently to their knees, two hundred bowed black heads against a background of twisting orange camp-fires, and Yonguldye hopped and rattled and danced, and uttered a long, sharp, dry-voiced incantation.

‘He is calling on Baiame to bless this meeting,' said Joolonga. ‘He is telling the people here that this night will be remembered for all time, just as the gods of the dreamtime are always remembered.'

Eyre said nothing, but watched as the tribesmen began to disperse, and return to their shelters and their fires, some of them high up in the rocks, others beside the creek which splashed through the centre of the gorge.

Yonguldye called to Joolonga, and Joolonga said, ‘He wants to talk to you before you sleep.' Eyre thought: thank God he doesn't think that spirits stay awake all night. Together they crossed the rocky ground to the entrance of Yonguldye's shelter, and there Yonguldye stared at Eyre and said, in what sounded like formal and dignified language, ‘The story is complete. You have returned from the sunset and now you are here. Tomorrow you will give me all the magical knowledge that you possess; and we will take back all the lands and the sacred places that we have lost.'

Yonguldye paused, and then he said, ‘You have the stone?'

Eyre beckoned Midgegooroo, who came forward with his satchel. Eyre reached inside it, and produced the engraved tektite which had been given to him on Hindley Street.

‘You are truly the
djanga
,' said Yonguldye. ‘Look—there is a shelter for you where you can sleep tonight. Tomorrow we will talk more. Tomorrow we will celebrate your coming, and your departure.'

Christopher and Dogger had been taken to a humpy shelter on the far side of the gorge. If Eyre knew anything about Dogger, he had eaten and drunk far too much, and had already fallen asleep. Christopher he knew would be awake, and fretful. Christopher always was. But tomorrow they would be able to set out on their journey to find the opal mine; and beyond, to the great inland sea; and that was exciting enough to overwhelm any apprehension that Eyre felt about their safety among the Aborigines. Tomorrow, they would set out on the journey that would make them great men; the journey that would discharge his moral debt to Yanluga; and which would win him Charlotte back. They would be heroes: Walker, Willis, and McConnell. Names to be taught in schools for the rest of recorded time.

Eyre's shelter was constructed of gum branches and brush, woven together, Like Yonguldye's, it was filled with kangaroo skins, in which Eyre could wrap himself up and sleep. His rifle, which he had left in Yonguldye's shelter during the corroboree, had carefully been laid at the far end of the shelter, still loaded, and respectfully polished for him.

Exhausted by a day of travelling and an evening of Aborigine celebration, Eyre crawled naked into the shelter and lay down on the coarse-haired kangaroo skins. He thought of going to talk to Joolonga about what they would be doing in the morning; and whether Weeip was safe, all alone on the far side of the ridge. But even with his face pressed against stinking kangaroo leather, his eyes began to close, and within four or five minutes the tapping rhythm of the boomerangs which was still going on outside began to fade from real perception, and reappear in his dreams.

He dreamed of murmuring voices, and silhouettes of blackfellows, like the strange lithographs of W.H. Fernyhough; black profiles and stylised poses. He heard rattling and shaking, and the whistling they called
bimblegumbie
. And all the time there was the over-and-over motion of
boomerangs, vertiginous and sickening, like riding on a swing-boat at a fair.

He awoke with a shock. Someone had touched his thigh. He twisted his head around so quickly that he tugged the muscle, and hurt himself.

Black against the midnight sky was the shape of a girl, on her hands and knees. She had crawled into the shelter and woken him; and now she was waiting anxiously to see what his reaction would be. He recognised the long soft curly hair. He recognised the sightly slanting eyes. He also recognised the faintly herbal smell of Yonguldye's shelter, which she carried on her skin mingled with the aroma of sour grease and young-womanly perspiration.

‘What do you want?' he whispered. Then, when she didn't answer,
‘Minago?
' which was the same question in dialect.

She covered her mouth with her hand, to tell him that he should be very quiet. Then she wriggled up close to him, and lay down beside him on the kangaroo skins, and whispered back, ‘My name is Minil. I speak English-language. They taught me English-language at mission-school. I was the class top at English-language.'

‘If you speak English, what are you doing here?' Eyre asked her.

‘I was at the mission-school at New Norcia when Yonguldye and his people stayed there. When they left, I followed them. I wanted to find my own people. No longer cooking and washing and learning Holy Scriptures. I wanted to be free like Yonguldye and his people.'

‘But?' asked Eyre.

‘But?' Minil frowned. ‘I didn't say but.'

‘You
say
no but; but there is but in your voice.'

Minil was quiet for a moment; then she said, ‘Yonguldye is a strange cruel man. Now I wish to leave him, go back to mission-school. Mrs Humphreys.'

‘Are you married to Yonguldye? Are you one of his wives?'