Dutton's River

The whaleboat bucked across the face of the bay. Pull, boys! Come on! Rip your spines out! Henty stood in the stern, both hands gripping the tiller. The convicts squinted into the sun and heaved against the oars. Seaspray lashed their faces in thick torrents and clawed at their exposed arms.

There he is, men! There’s his river! Bring her in to larboard there!

As soon as the whaleboat passed into the estuary the convicts cast aside their blades and collapsed. Henty untied the dogs and with their leads clenched in his fist waded through the shallows. He clambered up onto the strand and surveyed the scene. On the riverbank stood Dutton and his black woman, straight-backed and rooted, like trees. The little patch of land they’d cleared was girt with whale carcasses: some, freshly killed, lay on their backs, their sides bulging with gas-bloated blubber; others were little more than bleached and bloodless skeletons, bare remains that towered up like pagan temples hewn from ivory. A crew of whalers could be seen going about their business. A skinny old lag wielding a mincing-spade taller than he was went at a vertical wall of whale-flesh, while a younger man fed the hunks of cut blubber into the mouth of a cast-iron trypot. From high up on a makeshift scaffold a third stirred the concoction with a ten-foot paddle and sang a tuneless chantey. The pall of smoke that veiled the camp was so thick and unctuous it made them seem apparitions pitted with infernal labours.

Henty approached and stood before Dutton and his black woman. He nodded and forced an awkward smile and said, My name is Edward Henty.

We know who you are.

Dutton spat on the ground. His face was striated, carved by wind and salt. His hair was black like bush pepper and full of oil and lay long and lank against the nape of his neck. Henty looked at the woman too. He ran his gaze over her adolescent hips, her slight breasts and skinny legs. She was pretty despite her hardness.

Ain’t you seen a woman before? she said.

No, I mean yes, I have.

What you lookin’ at then?

Henty wasn’t sure where to look. He offered his hand. It hung there like a piece of meat trying to swim in the air.

And what might your name be? he asked.

Me name’s Renanghi. And don’t pretend like youse fucken pleased to meet me unless youse one o’ them buggers what talks the opposite of what he means.

Henty tried to hide his embarrassment. He turned to Dutton, How are you finding the whaling? There’s talk in Launceston of the price per barrel doubling or even—

What’re you doin’ here, Henty? Dutton’s voice was hard and it seemed strange that his eyes were small and black, not blue or brown.

What do you mean?

What’re you doin’ out here? With them mangy dogs of yours?

Dutton was pointing at the convicts.

I am merely pursuing the conditions of our agreement.

I don’t remember that nowise.

Last time we met.

Yeah?

You said you’d show me the lay of the land.

Did I, now? Dutton looked at the back of his hand.

Things have changed?

I got quotas to meet.

You’re not so busy you’d break your word?

I never made no promises.

Well then, said Henty, perhaps if I make my situation a little clearer. He produced a carefully folded letter from his jacket pocket and offered it to Dutton. Dutton looked at it a moment but did not take it. He spat again.

You read it.

Henty cleared his throat. He was starting to enjoy himself.

It’s a title deed, Dutton. It says that I am the new owner of this whaling station and that you now work for me, all of you. In which case, I’m sure you’ll not mind taking a few days off to show me upriver.

The still gleaming of the stars was the only light as they packed up.

The convicts divvied up the food and cooking gear and untethered the dogs. Dutton sloshed a pail of river water into the billy-pit and watched as Henty handed out the guns.

How many you got?

One each. Why? Not enough?

Too many, I reckon. Dutton looked over to where Renanghi was pouring a stream of black tea into a row of cups.

You don’t want one? What if they attack?

Blacks don’t like guns, mate. They’re more like to put a length of wood between yer ribs if they see yer armed. Dutton’s eyes were small and sharpened to a point. Besides, you won’t need ’em if yer travellin’ with us.

What if we get separated?

What, if you fall behind? Dutton laughed. If that happens, mate, well, a few muskets ain’t gonna make much of a difference either way. Dutton cast a sidelong glance at the clustered Irishmen with their closely cropped heads. It’ll only make it easier for them to do you in.

Henty was about to reply—he was going to recite the numerous native attacks catalogued in the Launceston Gazette—but Dutton had already set off along the narrow track up the riverbank. The whaler strode a good distance out front looking not at his feet but at the dark recesses of the land. Every now and then he would stop and scan the pale boles of the eucalypts and the whispering curves of the river. Renanghi scouted even further ahead, patting the damp earth with open palms. At the rear of the line the convicts shuffled miserably, hunching under the weight of their heavy loads and craning their necks downwards into the dust. They spoke in tones of growing distrust, glancing furtively at one another from beneath the brims of their broad-arrow caps.

What’s to say he ain’t leading us into a ruse?

Too right.

What’s to say she ain’t in cahoots with them other blacks?

Too right.

As the morning grew long the sun started to sear, baking them through their heavy cottons and drawing thick patches of sweat from under their arms. The flies were all about and the men with beards were laughing at the ones who’d made the error of shaving. Occasionally the dogs would howl and go bounding off and the men would see snatches of a lone wallaby or kangaroo streaking through the bush. But the dogs came back with their tongues lolling frothy from empty jaws.

How far does this go? asked Henty.

This stringybark?

Yes.

As far as you want it to, mate.

They had just entered a clearing bounded on one side by a small stream. Henty and the convicts fetched out their pannikins and made for the running water. It was only then that they noticed the humpies, like mushrooms, huddled among the trees. Suddenly the dogs were baying and rushing forward. The black shape turned and ran but the dogs were much faster and they threw themselves and caught it about the legs.

It was a boy, sixteen or seventeen at most. By the time Henty got there he was on the ground defending his face from a whirlwind of snarling, snapping jaws. His legs were torn and his bare wrists bloody and punctured. Henty dragged off the dogs and helped him to his feet. He tried to find the right words to explain what had happened—to apologise—but the boy was already gone and suddenly it was extraordinarily quiet in that little glade with the sun falling in shafts around their feet.

Who undid the dogs?

The convicts stood there looking dumb and stony-faced.

I said, who undid the bloody dogs?

Henty realised he’d made a mistake bringing so many men. He gathered up the convicts and, except for McVea and Clarke, ordered them back to camp. They grumbled about getting lost in the bush or ambushed by blacks; but when Dutton pointed out that if they didn’t get moving they wouldn’t make it before nightfall they quickly picked up their packs and pots and pans and headed off.

Now a party of five, they travelled lightly through the bush. They tramped on through the afternoon, emerging from a monotony of stringbarks into a wide expanse of bosky country timbered with wattle and blackwood. There was very little dead wood, nothing on the ground and nothing hanging from the trees. Renanghi walked further and further ahead, stopping ever more frequently to listen and signal to Dutton.

At last they came upon a noisy little brook, which Henty proclaimed Clarke’s River since Clarke had seen it first. There was a collection of eel baskets hanging out to dry on a stand of tea-tree and a log still smouldering in a stone circle. It was well and truly dark and, as a solemn mass of cloud passed overhead, a hard rain started to fall. Henty glanced over to where Renanghi was pulling swathes off a paperbark and stacking them in a pile. Dutton got up and began arranging them into a pyramid of sorts with a couple of large branches sticking up through the midpoint.

Where do you suppose we’ll stay tonight, Dutton?

Right here I reckon.

The land was cool and quiet when they rose. The clearing shone innocently in the pre-dawn glow and the fallen rain was nowhere to be seen. This, according to Renanghi, augured heat.

If we make the second river before noon, explained Dutton, we can shelter through the worst of it and move on come dusk.

They struck out at once, the sun already level with the treetops. Soon great gusts of fire were washing over them as palpable as molten wax. Their legs were rivers of itchy sweat, which vaporised on freckled skin, or else ran over ankles and pooled in fetid boots. They walked hard and fast and took no rest until they reached the banks of the river. With the sun now streaking for its vertex, Henty and his two convicts ripped off their vestments and plunged into the wet reeds. Meanwhile the dogs drank like crazed beasts, pausing only momentarily to glimpse their master, who had reappeared in the midst of the gill.

The three men emerged cool and clean and settled down next to Dutton and Renanghi under the shade of a giant myrtle. Renanghi produced three eels she’d pinched and handed them around.

Can we eat this? asked Henty.

It’s an eel, mate. You can eat it, said Dutton.

But won’t they think we’re stealing their food?

We give them whale-meat, they give us roo and eel and other blackfella foods, that’s how it goes. But no two mobs’re alike, Dutton chewed the words, his mouth half-full with eel. Some don’t want us here at all. He spat into the dirt, moved his tongue around his mouth, over his teeth and spat again. He jerked his thumb over to where Renanghi was crouched feeding the eel heads to the dogs. Without her we wouldn’t even know they was here till we had spears sticking out of our chests.

After lunch McVea suggested that he and Clarke try to shoot something for dinner. Henty agreed, grateful to be rid of them. From his pack he retrieved his journal and opened it to a blank page. He intended to write in it every day, if only a few lines, to keep a record of the settlement. It was his grand venture, his risk, and he wanted it preserved for posterity. It was also necessary for legal reasons. The last thing he wanted was a run-in with the authorities. The written word had that sort of power, lying soft and serpentine within its outward appearance, to convince, persuade, offer up proof that this or that had actually happened, to posit a truth that others would swear by.

Henty looked out upon the river and the encroaching arms of the eucalypts. Entranced, he tore out a sheet of foolscap and wrote:

This is the place where I shall one day build my hut. A more lovely spot I never beheld. Sheep or cattle sides would soon shake with fat with a taste of the grass here. We have the water in its natural state without making a pond and swans and ducks without training.

A shadow fell lengthwise across the page and he looked up to see Dutton with an idiot grin on his face.

What you got there?

A note to my brother.

You got a brother?

Three actually.

Aye and what do you say to yer brother?

That the land is very fine.

Dutton seemed to be processing that. Will he be comin’ too?

Yes he will, and his wife.

And a great many more?

At that moment a crackle of gunfire reached them from upriver. It was followed hard on by a faint series of cries from the convicts. Henty leapt to his feet, the sheet of paper falling from his knees. The two men craned their necks into the silence; but it was merely a straggle of cloud-white egrets that came wheeling around the river bend and flew up over their heads in the direction of the sea.

The next section of river was far narrower. It was quartered in by prehistoric swale grown thick and tall on all sides. The five of them had to tramp in single-file, sinking into abscesses that sucked up boots, ankles, knees, whole legs at a time. The blistering heat had abated, leaving the afternoon air abuzz with the frantic wing-beats of a thousand bloodsucking insects. Henty discovered on his ankle an engorged leech the size of his ring-finger and when the other men rolled up their britches they found swathes of the bulbous creatures writhing in sanguinary delight.

You got to burn ’em, said Dutton, otherwise the jaws stay in.

But the tinder was packed away. And Henty did not want to call a halt. So they just ripped them off with their pinched fingers, leaving great gouts of blood dribbling down their white legs.

They climbed out of the fen just as the sun was starting to fade from view and were thankful to be back on well-footed land with broad patches of knee-high grass and tall canopies of red and yellow wattle. They were passing through clearings dotted with humpies, four and five of them here, two or three over there. The convicts were nervous and fidgety with their guns.

Where are they?

Must be hiding.

Where could the buggers hide?

Must be thousands of ’em.

Like rats.

Like bloody cockroaches, you ask me.

They ploughed on through the near dark, able to see no more than a few feet ahead.

Bridge! Bridge! came Renanghi’s voice from out front.

The bridge was strung between two weeping monoliths, a spindly thing fashioned from sticks and roots and hidebound flax all spun together. It was swaying gently from side to side. Renanghi crossed it with ease. But it was not a bridge for heavy-footed men with boots and packs. They took to it one at a time, oscillating above the torrent like pendulums incorrectly weighted. If you’ve a mind to build a bridge why not build it bloody proper, moaned Clarke.

Don’t fall in, Clarke! You’ll get wet!

McVea was flashing up his skirts make-pretend like some no-good lady from a Southwark gin hovel. Suddenly Clarke’s legs went out from under him and he was wrong side up in the water, his head gashing against a half-submerged rock. He was flailing and crying out and it was evident he did not know how to swim.

You gonna get your man out of that, Henty?

Should I?

Dutton stripped off and waded into the river. The convict’s head was not so cut as it looked. But his pack and all his gear was soaked and, worst of all, Clarke had been carrying a great deal of what they were due to eat.

By now it was night and any attempt to walk was just an act of wading arms and legs through flesh-stripping scrub. Renanghi herded them over to where a clot of lean-tos stood. She used her sinewy arms to push them inside, not harsh but firm, and the next thing Henty knew there they were—all five of them—side by side.

Not so bad is it, Henty?

Henty couldn’t see Dutton’s face in the darkness, Not bad at all.

Soon Renanghi had a little set of coals on the go, around which they huddled on hands and knees and gratefully received the last of the eel. Too tired to protest, Henty closed his eyes and slept a fitful sleep of dancing shadows and spears like sharpened teeth.

Henty woke shortly before dawn.

Dutton and Renanghi were already gone. The convicts lay together in a strange unconscious clinch. Henty stumbled out to see the sun come creeping up over the blue-fogged mountain at the base of which they were camped. Morning broke and the light came streaming in heavy sheets across the dewed grass. It glimmered and everywhere pooled in corrugated catchments which seemed to spell out an augury of hope.

Henty staggered partway into the bush looking for a place to piss. He pulled out his aching cock and breathed a sigh of relief. He looked up to see two boys, charcoal black, hunkered down among the bulrushes.

Good morning boys.

They didn’t move.

I said—he stopped himself. One of the boys held a length of rough-cut wood in his hand with a jagged point. Henty backed away slowly. He turned and hurried back to the hut, thinking any minute to feel the thud of the spear as it forced its way between his shoulderblades. He fetched his flintlock, tamped down a ball and wandered back over to the bulrushes, but the boys were gone.

Seeing him, Dutton approached with a quizzical look on his face. Henty did not mention the boys but merely pointed at the mountain.

That’s where we need to be. We can survey the land from up there.

It took the two of them an hour to reach the summit, by which time the sun was high in the monochrome sky. They marched under the arms of indifferent eucalypts, and through grassy reaches that swelled up to their waists, then climbed its flanks, treading a substrata of clay awash with cursive gravel and smitten rock.

Mt Clay, we’ll call it, declared Henty.

Spread below like a cartographer’s dream lay Portland Bay embraced by twofold arms of land. Verdant gasps of pasture and snake-shaped waterways could be seen converging at the river’s mouth. It was a spectacle unspoilt by human form, neither trails of rising smoke nor the roof of any dwelling.

Neither man spoke for a long time. Henty produced a spyglass and put it to his eye. After a while he started to chuckle quietly in his throat.

What’s so funny?

He offered Dutton the glass as if that were sufficient explanation.

I’ve seen the land afore, you know.

Henty could no more describe what he saw than speak in hieroglyphs. It was not a feeling but a knowing deep in his fibre that all of it would become his, would transform into something pliable, productive. He would master it, remake every boggy, soggy, sump-sawn morass, engender stolid, firming ground from every sucking fen. He would sweep this nothingness before him, this turf of nullity, break its heads in a hand-vice and mould the clay into a belt of industrious green. A sheep run here, a cattle trail there, every tree a source of fruit or shade for crops. He could already see the clod-booted shepherds trudging over the hills, the creamy sheep milling in the valleys, the fattened pastures giving forth the fruit of foison like freedmen swallowing liberty.

Way out over the gulf a giant rock sat squat and upthrust in the water. A cloud of mutton-bird circled, their wings buffeted by the sea breeze.

Denmaar.

Eh?

That’s Denmaar. Where the spirits congregate.

They believe that?

Dutton pointed down to where a mob of blackfellas were streaming up the beach. A number of them were gathered around what looked to be a black-backed rock, but soon enough it made more sense to see it as a beached whale. They were starting a fire, a mighty bonfire, tall plumes of smoke twisting up off the woodpile.

What are they doing?

Cooking up a feed.

They eat whalemeat? Henty wrinkled his nose at the thought of swallowing down a handful of blubber and guts. We’ll have to put a stop to that. He started to pick his way back down the mountain.

Dutton stood a moment longer, then turned to follow.

© David Mence