Arthur Upfield - Man of Two Tribes

Bony carried the dog for the first two miles before putting her down and trusting to chance that the aborigines would not cut her tracks. For him the going was much easier, and the dog on the leash added confidence to his feet.

There is nothing worse than walking without mental distraction, and this the old timers knew when they invented the treadmill.

Twice they rested for fifteen minutes before the moon went down. After that, muscular effort, without result, was still worse. With the moon above, they had seen the shadowing shrubs sliding past their feet.

They did not approach the great wall: it rose before them to tower above and blot out half the stars. It ruled each man’s mind.

No! To climb that cliff now… no, no.

Bony said, reassuringly:

“Made only of straw. We have to plough through to the far side, and there we can dare to make a fire and brew tea, and afterwards to rest for a few hours. The dawn will come soon, and we have walked at least nine miles.”

On The Nullarbor

THISwall of straw was something like ten feet high and as many thick, and whether or no it was the same wall he had smashed through with the shovel some twenty miles to the west was not of interest to Bony. He tore and stamped his way through, the others following with little difficulty, and when beyond, he led them to the right for several hundredyards, and there lit a fire well away from it, the wall itself now blanketing the light from anyone north of it.

With the aid of firelight, he checked his companions’ gear and found nothing missing. Then, for a psychological reason, he made them help him scoop and tramp a chamber inside the wall in which to sleep, giving the illusion of safe shelter.

He rationed himself to four hours’sleep, Lucy tethered to an ankle, and on waking found the sun gilding the fragile roof of the sleeping chamber and silvering its walls. It was not unlike being within a case woven by silkworms, the strands of straw like satin opalescence. The straw shimmered and gave forth music, the music of gentle surf beyond the mouth of a silver and gold cave, and Bony knew that the wind was rising-a blessing from the north, because a south wind might carry their scent for a mile and more to be registered by keen aboriginal noses.

The sun said it was nine o’clock as he built a fire on the ashes of the previous one, and filled the billy-can for tea. Squatting on his heels, he tackled the problem of how long to permit his companions to sleep, in view of their present position relative to those wild aborigines.

They were now nine miles from the caverns and twelve from the desert lands where those wild men camped. Although improbable, it was still possible that the aborigines would visit the caverns about sun-rise, and might chance to cross the tracks evidencing the flight of the prisoners. It was a risk that had to be accepted.

Provided the aborigines left the desert lands at sun-rise, and determined to return by sun-set to avoid camping on the Plain at night, their range would be up to twenty miles. And the fugitives were but twelve miles from the desert.

There must be no needless delay.

The water boiled, and tossing a handful of tea into the billy, he waited twenty seconds before removing the brew from the fire. Then, on walking to the wall, he noted that the wind was causing it totremble, and that the sound of the ‘surf’ was now loud and near.

Rousing the sleepers, he told them to come to the fire for breakfast and bring everything with them.

As they emerged from the wall, each one stopped and stared, and Bony watched them to measure their first resistance to the Plain. Their eyes widened. Their faces registered the disbelief of what they saw, and he knew he could give them now no time to think. With the gear in their arms they walked stiffly to the fire.

“Thought you said we could camp all day in that straw stuff,” Riddell complained. “Five minute sleep and you rouse us out.”

“I could sleep for a year,” yawned the girl.“What about awash? I need it.”

“No wash until we find water,” Bony said. “I thought we might camp here for a day, but the wind is now making the wall tremble, and if it rises much more, the wall will begin to move, and also we haven’t come far enough to be safe. So eat anddrink, and we’ll move on.”

They were sullen until Brennan asked how the wall came to be there. The explanation provided opportunity to distract them.

“Certainly looks like something’sgoin ’ to happen to it,” Jenks surmised. He was standing, a pannikin of tea in one hand, and a meat-and-bread sandwich in the other.“Caw! So this is the Great Nullarbor Plain. Well, you can have it for mine. And if I was at sea I’d say it’sgoin ’ to blow like hell.”

“Yes, we’ll pack up and start before that wall rolls on and over us. We’ll find a safer place than this to camp.”

Bony rolled his own swag and that which the girl had to carry. He was obliged to assist the others, too, for they were not yet proficient.

“I’ll carry your swag, Joe, as you will have the water,” he told the big man. “Today I’ll not have to carry the dog.”

“Okay! Every little bit helps as the monkey said when he…”

“Hold my mirror for a second or two,” Myra asked, andD. I. Bonaparte, F.R.M. I. steadied her small mirror while she did her hair and ‘put on her face’ with the aid of a tongue-moistened rag. “What a sight I am. Couldn’t you find me some red ochre or something the blacks use?”

“You never know what we’ll find, Myra. At the moment I find you looking well and attractive. As we walk, make a mental list of all the things you will buy at the shops.”

“Yair,” growled Riddell. “And I’ll be thinking of all the beers I’ll be buying.”

“What do we use for money?” demanded Brennan, and Maddoch cheerfully said he had money enough in a bank to keep them all drunk for a year.

On this note they listened to Bony’s briefing.

“We start off in single file as we did last night. We’ll walk for an hour by the sun, and then spell for a quarter of an hour. You follow me, Myra, and you, Mark, bring up the rear. Now you may talk as much as you like, even sing. In fact, singing would be a help. And don’t look at the Plain too much. It will still be there this evening.”

They moved off, Bony now with no sense of danger of them falling into a hole or over a cliff-like bank into another Bumblefoot Hole. The dog at first strained on the leash, and presently Bony freed her and she trotted on ahead, happy at last.

They were like a small caterpillar crawling across an aerodrome, and soon the wind found them and tore at the girl’s hair, scampered through the men’s hair, and when now and then Bony looked back at them they were staring across the world to the not-so-distant edge, the verge of cliff that couldn’t possibly have any foundation.

Then Maddoch shouted:

“Look at the straw!”

The party stopped, to gaze in wonderment at what was happening. They could see neither the eastern nor the western limit of what appeared as a pale-yellow snake, alive and menacing, its body rippling in effort to digest a meal. Here and there it bulged towardsthem, at places it rolled over and over, and at no place was torn asunder. Bony knew it could roll over a man and do no hurt, but it appeared to be as weighty as molten metal. Brennan said, as though being the last man he would be the first to be trampled:

“Get on. Why wait around here?”

The wall proved to be an opportune spur, the wind coming from the rear being another, and Bony estimated their speed at almost three miles in that first hour. Then the wall appeared to be moving after them as fast as they walked, so that it was no farther back although it was smaller as the twisting action shredded it gradually, leaving a carpet of mush on the ground after it. As there was no suggestion of a spell, Bony kept moving for another hour, when two and a half miles had been added to the day’s total.