The Lake Frome Monster. Arthur W. Upfield
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The aborigine’s black eyes re-examined the stranger. Bony lit the smoke from an ember. “I get around. Worked in all States bar Tasmania. Was spending a cheque in the Hill when I heard there was a chance of work on the Fence.”
Bony hoped this explanation would suffice, but glanced up to find Nugget’s gaze passing over his clothes, his expression in the firelight hinting that the questioner would have liked to look at body cicatrices indicative of initiation. They were on Bony’s back, but he was not going to oblige.
“What’s this Siberia you mentioned?”
Nugget laughed outright, somewhat too heartily, Bony thought.
“Wait till you see it, Ed. Wait till you see Everest. The Boss calls it Everest, but it never rests. You get a windstorm and the buckbush piles against the Fence and catches the sand and raises her so that the Fence is only a coupla feet high. You lashes posts to the old ones, strings netting and wire to the proper height, and you comes back to find the next storm has took off the top of Everest and the Fence is twelve-fourteen feet high. So you can get to work taking off the top you put on last time.”
“Quite a job,” Bony agreed, believing his leg was being pulled.
“Yeah, you’ll say it is.”
“Don’t happen often,” Newton observed dryly. “Anyway, Nugget and his gang will find the south section so easy they’ll sleep six days of the week.”
The conversation fell into generalities concerning men and bores and local gossip. Bony smoked and listened and forgot nothing. He learned that the name of the new manager at Lake Frome was Jack Levvey. That he had only recently come to the area and had brought with him a full-blood aborigine woman who had already borne him two sons. He learned, too, that the name of the section man at the far northern end of the Fence was Looney Pete, that Looney Pete had religion, and often preached to his hat jammed on a fence post.
He was told that when at the top end of his section, where Three States met, Looney Pete lit a fire to boil his billy in New South Wales, tossed the tea leaves into Queensland and the meat bones or tins into South Australia. But Bony learned nothing he did not already know of the murder of Maidstone.
At ten o’clock by the Three Sisters, evenly spaced stars, the three men turned in, merely unrolling swags beside the embers of the fire. It was a cold night in mid-winter. Wakened by a movement, Bony raised his head to see Newton loading his pipe; as there was no sign of dawn, he went to sleep again. Daybreak found Bony stirring the fire embers and starting a blaze. An hour later Bony saw one of Nugget’s women tossing wood on their fire, and shortly after Nugget arose and lit his pipe and warmed himself while the others worked preparing breakfast and re-rolling swags. The sun had risen when Nugget came up.
“The women and kids want to go into Quinambie for the day,” he announced. “You won’t want me, so I’ll go with ’em. The mokes will want watering anyway. Anything you forgot?”
Newton said there was not. The camels were brought. A tucker box was strapped to the lead riding camel, and various packs, among which Bony suspected were the dingo scalps. All the camels were strung together, and off they went. The two women led the train, the children played games as they ran and Nugget followed after, the boss of the gang.
The morning was spent sorting out the gear. First the riding saddle and the pack saddle belonging to the late-departed section man was looked over for repairs, and then the tools were examined. These, oddly enough, included a pitchfork and a garden rake. Then there was the baking of soda bread, or dampers, and more than half the fresh beef was sliced and salted.
Bony was now wearing go-to-work clothes of worn drill, and elastic-sided boots. His felt hat was disreputable, and had obviously been used to lift pots off the fire.
The aborigines returned just after sundown, the children tired and several of them clinging to the humps of the saddle-free camels. Bulging saddle bags carried by one of them denoted good shopping. One of the dogs limped badly and evidently had been in a fight. It seemed that a good day had been had by all.
By seven o’clock the next morning Bony and the overseer were leading their respective camels along the pad to the Fence. Bony was allotted two camels: Rosie was the leading riding animal, and Old George carried the heavier pack saddle. Soon they arrived at the Fence and turned north. The Fence, six feet high and seemingly never-ending at that point, passed over flats studded with annual saltbush presenting their blue-grey leaves to a grey-blue sky which threatened wind. Topped with two barbed wires above the netting, it looked an impressive barrier; as it was in fact.
The dog-proof Fence, as its name implies, was intended to turn back wild dogs from entering New South Wales, as well as to halt rabbit migrations. To Bony’s experienced eyes it was well maintained. The flats gave place to a long series of low, undulating sand-dunes, and there the new buckbush tinted green large areas which contained none of the old and dead weed of the previous year. The mulgas were stunted, as were the many other acacias, and they offered no protection against the westerly winds sweeping in from the desolate region of Lake Frome. Before noon they came to dense scrub and to one of Nugget’s camp sites. He had put up a windbreak of tree branches and wired together poles on which to erect his tent. To the east, so that sparks would not burn the tent and gear, was the usual fireplace; a pole supported by forked sticks, and from which were slung wire hooks to carry billy-cans above the embers.
Bony noted that Newton passed this place to stop and tether his camels to trees.
Having led his camels to other trees, Bony hooshed Rosie to her knees and removed the tucker box from the front end of the iron saddle. Newton, meanwhile, had lit the fire. The billy was filled from a water-bag and whilst waiting for the water to boil, Bony said:
“I saw dog tracks an hour ago on the far side of the Fence. Nugget set his traps on the far side, I suppose, to save his own dogs being trapped.”
“That’s so,” agreed Newton. The be-whiskered giant chuckled, adding: “Never do to catch a dog this side what’s supposed to be protected against dingoes. What d’you think of Nugget?”
“Usual type. Talks too much for a three-quarter-caste, and that hints at craftiness. Were he and his crew called to do any tracking on the Maidstone affair?”
“Don’t think so. He was camped when it happened.”
“How many windstorms have you had since it happened?”
“One. Came at the time it happened. Blew out tracks just after the blacks had done their stuff.”
“H’m! Leaves nothing for me.”
Shortly after lunch they came to Siberia. The undulating country ended at the foot of a sand range, and the Fence rose to take it like a horse at a jump. Beyond it the Fence descended to a narrow flat, then crossed it to take another hump. At the summit of this one it became evident that these ranges ran east-west and parallel, and the farther north they proceeded the higher and ever more ragged they became. The flats were bare of scrub, but the slopes carried the new buck-bush, and the summits bore saltbush and wind-tormented trees. The ranges were not travellers, but permanent.
Everest had a flat top some hundred yards across. Here there were no trees. The foot of the Fence was clear of rubbish and grass. The Fence was strapped to one under it, and down on the flat they had just crossed was a stack of netting rolls and spare posts.
“Sixteen of these ranges,” said Newton. “Job is to keep the ground clean either side of the Fence. Hoe the young buck-bush and rake it away to let the sand pass through the netting, otherwise the sand is caught and she rises like magic.”
“Nugget seems to have done a good job,” commented Bony.
“His women and kids do the job. He sits on his stern and smokes. Fine life for a married man with a family. You married? Any kids?”
“One of one kind, three of the other, but I’m not bringing them here. The Number One Rabbit Fence in WA is a king to this. The old spinifex might cut loose, but there’s no buck-bush.”
“Charges