Mianjin Crossing 1 .........................................................................................................................2 2 .........................................................................................................................8 3 .......................................................................................................................47 4 .......................................................................................................................69 5 .....................................................................................................................108 6 .....................................................................................................................152 7 .....................................................................................................................200 8 .....................................................................................................................244 9 .....................................................................................................................273 10 ...................................................................................................................300 Postscript .......................................................................................................321 1 Mianjin Crossing 1 He was found in the shade of a tree by Worrim Creek. People came and cast their shadows over the miraculous child, then, one by one, they went away, leaving the him in the care of an old woman who, years earlier, had been found drifting on a raft out in the channel and adopted by the island people. The old woman wrapped the child in the softest tea-tree bark and took him to her camp on the far side of the dunes. From an early age he followed the men on long hunting and fishing expeditions across the island. In this way he got to know bit by bit and in intimate detail all of the land that was the place of his people. It was a world of tidal pools and freshwater creeks, dark swamps and coastal rainforests and, high up on the great sand hills, fresh water lakes alive with fish. In the quieter bays along the sheltered western shore Dugong swam in the shallow waters amongst the sea grasses. These the people caught as needed. On the wild surf beaches of the ocean side there were ugaries that he learnt to gather with simple twists of his bare feet in the wet sand at the edge of the surf. There were fish and ducks and lizards and snakes and roots of swamp plants that the women gathered. It was a world that provided for all his peoples needs. He moved through this warm sea-closed land, hunting with the men across the high dunes and wading amongst the fish traps in the shallow bays. Bit by bit he learnt the names of all these things. He learnt to know dolphins by their given names and how to call them in to herd the fish into the shallow water so that the men could spear them. Other times he followed the women into their secret places, gathering roots and yams. He was alert and keen to learn and grew in confidence. He understood that the world could provide for all the things that his people needed. He saw beauty, like the sun going down over the bay at the end of a perfect winters day. But he also saw pain, like when women went pregnant into their own secret places and returned crying, wailing, childless. The world, he realised, was complex. 2 Mianjin Crossing One day, in the twelfth year of his life the boy stood beneath the shade of pines near the shore, gazing out over an empty beach. Grey seawater lapped the shore. The sea merged with the grey sky. There was no horizon. It was a scene devoid of life, a humid stillness of sea and sky where nothing moved. The boy was about to step out of the shade onto the beach when he sensed movement. At the far end of the curving beach a thin dark shape emerged out of the haze. It was a white man, staggering along the beach, pushing hard against the soft sand and oppressive air. The white man continued on until, just there in front of the watching boy, he stumbled and fell. The white man lay on the sand, chest heaving. What was he running from, the white man? Why was he out there on the hot beach? Even as the boy pondered these questions other figures came running hard along the sand. The boy had seen the soldiers guarding the convicts building the landing dock at the dolphin beach, had seen their wrath and been disturbed by the violent way they treat the convicts under their command. He was afraid. From the shelter of the bushes he watched as the soldiers closed in on the man who rose and stumbled on, his sun-darkened face wet with running sweat, distorted in fear. Just there he was, so close the boy could hear his heavy breathing. Why did he not seek the shelter of the bushes? Why did he continue to stumble along out there on the open beach? Twenty paces from the stumbling man the soldiers dropped to their knees and brought their long glinting rifles up to their shoulders. The boy watched in silence as the naked man tried to push on against the soft sand. But it was no use. The boy wanted to help the man, wanted to call out, ‘come here old man, come into the safety of the trees’. But he dared not. Instead he watched in silent wonder as a puff of smoke came like a harmless little cloud from a gun barrel. Almost instantly the man arched backwards. Only then, as the man fell, did the boy hear the sound of the bullet bang and thud. More puffs of smoke rose from rifle barrels and drifted to humid air. For just one moment the man struggled to rise. Then, with one last shudder, he fell to the sand and was still. The soldiers approached, cautious still. They were young, hardly more 3 Mianjin Crossing than boys really, their faces already hardened to the desperation and disappointments of penal life. They stood over the body with no sign of pity on their faces. They were hot and angry, their sweating faces brutal. They swore and cursed and kicked at the useless bloody body, turning it over with their boots. And as the body rolled over its eyes, unseeing yet open wide in eternal fear, stared into the eyes of the young boy watching from the shadows. Their rage vented, the soldiers turned and trudged back up the beach from where they had come. Leaving a blackened form lying like a stranded dolphin at the high water mark. The only person at my birth, apart from my mother, was an old nurse who made excuses for the doctor. My father came later in his boilermaker’s overalls, carrying the smell of the shipyards. He took us to a wooden house in Roseleigh Street and when it was time I was taken to St Andrews Church of England and christened Will Traverse. My name was recorded on a birth certificate that was kept, along with my baby book, birth certificate and various other legal documents, in a special drawer in my mother’s dressing table, including a diary, which is how I came to know all this. That house was full of people. There was my grandmother, a Treloar who, according to family mythology, had connections back to the British Royal Family (a bit of a joke for some, especially my father). There was grandfather Braithwaite whose connections were never discussed. There was Uncle Harry who was in the Army but who only got as far as Darwin because Singapore had fallen. There was Aunty Ruth and her husband Uncle Andy who was also in the Army. One of my first memories was waking in the middle of the night and seeing a light glowing through stained glass high up and far away. People were moving about in the half dark, heavy boots shuffling and someone behind a closed door crying. The boots were Uncle Andy going off to war, clumping down the front steps and fading away, leaving Aunty Ruth softly sobbing from behind the closed door of her room. 4 Mianjin Crossing The house was one of a line of wooden houses on wooden stumps facing out across the street to the open expanses of Melrose Park. From the front veranda of each house wooden stairs ran down to front gardens of buffalo grass, beds of chrysanthemums and various flowering bushes, including two frangipani trees that lost all their leaves in winter. Along the northern side of the house was a line of mango trees that dropped their fruit onto the driveway and by the end of summer stank. At the rear of the house a narrow flight of stairs went down from a landing to the back yard. If I ever ran out of things to do there among the chook runs and banana clumps and hedges where giant grasshoppers lived, or among the cool bushes on the southern side where tiny shiny green tree frogs clung to red stemmed plants with their tiny red feet, there was always under-the-house where it was dark and cool and you never knew what you’d find among the cast-off furniture and packing cases and piled up discarded things from upstairs. Under-the-house there were big lazy wet green frogs in summer and dry brown lizards in winter. Sometimes after big rains under- the-house flooded and the bit that my father had dug out and cemented in for his workshop was like a swimming pool. Only the water was dark and scary. For a time I was content to see that as my world. The back yard and under- the-house offered all that I needed and I never thought of a world beyond. Warm breezes from the northeast blew across Melrose Park and over the garden and through the front door and across the veranda and down the hall and through all the rooms and out all the windows. Which were always open. Except sometimes in winter when chill westerlies would blow down from the mountains, or on evenings of fierce summer storms. The house would be shut up then and I’d feel safe and cosy. Winter mornings I’d sit on the front veranda gazing out over the park while my parents read the papers.