Coffee For Two

The Journey To Uluru

Jim Henderson

The Lawyer

The Goldsmiths

The Doctor

The Women

The Journey To Wexford

'Somebody’s Darling'

Peter

Janie

Julieanne

Dedicated to Lindy Chamberlain, who endured great pain, grief and sorrow without despair; great cruelty, yet asked no revenge; suffered great humiliations without resentment; and bitter persecution, but kept the faith.

A strong and faithful woman. We have great need of such.

Introduction

When the story began, it was intended to be only the story of a tragic theft, and to express in some way the regret of the main protagonist; of Jim Henderson’s lifelong defense of his daughter. That simple story would have revealed only part of his character.

  The story of his goldmine is indeed based on such a find, but in a different time and place. It is included in the story because it becomes relevant to later events; similarly the story of the lawyer is also based on such a character and is included as a catalyst, provoking other action through the story. The story of the goldsmiths also has some basis in fact, and is included simply because everyone, well almost everyone, loves gold. The good Doctor Smith is also based on such a man. He also has a determining place in bringing out the character of the Henderson’s, and Janie's ultimate perception of the realities of her obsession. Mrs. Granger clearly but only one of the thousands of girls who had their babies stolen from them under psychological pressure. The practice was well established long years both before and after we inflicted it upon our Aboriginal peoples. The simple purpose is to show that such events are common enough in the human story, even as they are implicit in the known evidence of this extraordinary saga. Could this have been the real story? So many people believed the child to have been stolen.

Some may well ask, “What about the lunatic fringe?” Not the critics, but the smart people, hoping for some notoriety, to get their pictures in the papers by claiming to be the baby, who would now be a young woman.

Like the Elvis lookalikes; the old Russian princess thing; bound to be some of these over the years. That risk has been considered, and I must say, that though some foolish child might some day be tempted, there is now, in genetic testing, infallible proof of relationship. So, sorry girls, there is absolutely no hope, so don’t try it on, please, for your own sake.

That I have written of a woman bereaved and deeply hurt, yet living a life of joy and love with a stolen child, should surprise no one who has ever felt the fire and the glow of love. Many will say of Jim Henderson, that he should have restrained her; those of us who have been in that place where it is ‘them’ or my child, will understand his deep distress, his long conflict with conscience; dying was the only shelter for his guilty spirit; but love was his reward. As for Janie, her own grief obscured and veiled her guilt; and her joy in the gift of the gods was her justification, yet in the end the scales were balanced for her, as they must be sooner or later for all.

Some will question my use of the artifact of Fate. It does not conform with today’s materialism; but who can deny the fate which directed, drove and guided David Brett from his home in England across the world; across the Great Dividing Ranges, and across the relentless Simpson Desert, on foot, grossly ill-equipped, and where many better men have perished, to that special and significant place at Ayres Rock, where his death initiated a vindication of the Chamberlain’s. We must ask not only what so drove him, guided him, but why.

This was fate indeed. The thing confounds us. The interaction of life within life is an imponderable mystery. It works upon us all for good and ill, and none can deny it. The soulless intellectualism that is nurtured in the materialism of today has little to do with the realities of existence. The attitude is a product of the hubris of wealth. In the widespread poverty of the world is a clearer understanding of the realities of life.

It is with such reality that the story deals. Most readers will relate to their own experience of life before dismissing the travail of the Chamberlain family, of Janice Henderson and her father, the fated journey of David Brett.

For my own satisfaction, I repeat, this is a story; I have worked to make it a good story; some will find it convincing and will wonder. I am one of the many who, at the time, were convinced that the baby had been stolen, and have wondered ever since.

The trackers traced thus far very clearly, then the track disappeared; the only conclusion was that someone had taken the child from the dingo at that point. In the confusion of the ensuing few minutes escape was simple for someone such as Jim Henderson who had just arrived and had not yet booked into the camp; no one would miss them, no one knew they were there; the fate which has driven them from the beginning would surely guide them now. Thus it was.

As for the official story, that is an infinitely more complex matter. It will be the story of a protracted police investigation of an alleged crime; a crime that was never committed; a story of faulted scientific work; of grave legal inconsistencies. How otherwise can we judge the determined rejection of the eyewitnesses evidence, the patently fallacious ‘scientific’ evidence; the nonsense on the nature and capacity of dingos? This, in the eyes of all who know the animals, to be wrong to the point of absurdity.

Rarely has an Australian jury been so grossly misinformed, and if these events are ever so examined some attention must surely be devoted to what seems to many people to have been political pressure to secure a conviction at whatever cost. These several features of the trial should be subject to serious study, if only to show how easily justice can be perverted, how the media; once, well within living memory, accepted as being ‘the watchdog of public morality’, can prejudge, and mercilessly exploit both evidence and character; and as in this case, destroy a character and ruin a family, however strong, however innocent.

The victim, in this landmark case has had to seek safe haven elsewhere. No refuge here.

So, this is the story of the baby, told as a fiction, but with the hope that those with eyes to see will read it with a greater understanding than the media gave to the tragic Mother.

It well may be, in a year or so, perhaps after the turn of the millennium, when the computer crisis has exhausted it’s ignominies upon us, and the planes are flying again, that there will be the opportunity for yet another story. That well may be the story of Julieanne and her child, and their ‘Journey to Damascus’, and of Janice Henderson’s full salvation, in her renunciation of the child.

Note:
Since the above was written, In the week about April 6, 1998, a baby was stolen by a dingo on Fraser Island. So much for the ‘scientific’ evidence demonstrated to the jury to ‘prove’ that a dingo could not carry a baby away.

The brutes can, and do. The child taken on Fraser Island was larger and heavier than Azaria. The father ran the dingo down and saved his child from a terrible death. Had the animal disappeared with the child the unfortunate parents could well have found themselves suffering the same wretched perversion of justice as inflicted on the Chamberlain family.

For a full account of David Brett and his fateful journey across the world to that place and time see ‘Azaria’ by Richard Shears, published by Hutchinson, Sydney.

Those not informed of the terrible ordeal of Lindy Chamberlain and her family, may care to read ‘Through my Eyes’, Lindy’s own story, published by Heinemann's Pty, Sydney.

Coffee For Two

My first meeting with the man I shall hereafter call Jim, was in the Coast Roast Coffee Shop in Cairns. I like to holiday in Cairns. I like the tropical flavour, and this time I was keen to look through the Casino. Very impressive when you think of it’s purpose. A far cry from the Pakapoo dens of old Chinatown. I also like the Coast Roast - an excellent range of coffees - spotless - delightful aroma - good quality music, and this, thank god, presented quietly. I guess it was coffee time at the local offices, for as I read, the place filled up, and I became aware of this chap. Obviously looking for a seat. With three seats unoccupied at the table there was nothing for it but to say ‘be my guest’.

He muttered the obligatory ‘thanks’, sat down and looked at me, and I at him. He could have been my brother. In his late 70’s I guessed, same long face, similar sun proof eyes, very few of our generation need sunglasses, a modern fad; same white hair, short back and sides, and thinning on top. We both walked with a limp, I later noticed, his an old war injury, mine from a disastrous car accident, and both now compounded with arthritis.

Both of us with telltale work worn hands; his with the strength that comes from long years of work with an axe, the firmness from long years at the control ends of a bridle; in my case some years of mixed affection for a hammer, and the handles of a wheelbarrow, for since I retired I have put in several years of easygoing labouring for a builder son. We were both old men, wear and tear of life plainly visible, both lonely, and both glad of the chance of a yarn and a bit of congenial company.

From that first chance meeting - chance? I now doubt that, the rest of this story followed.

I had Sara Henderson’s ‘From Strength to Strength’ on the table.

“I see you read well,” he said.

“Yes, you’ve read it?”

“Oh yes. She’s a good one that. She and her girls. I’ve known several fellows like Dick. They can’t manage themselves at all. I’ve been over Bullo. Took a mob out of Victoria Downs that way. That Nor-west corner was pretty dangerous when I was a kid. But that was well before they settled in. I preferred the Queensland side of the country. You a stockman?”

“No. I did a bit of work outback before I married. My girl was a squatters daughter. She said, if I wanted her I’d have to get a job in town. She’d had it farming. As you’ll know it was a pretty rough life if you weren’t rich, so that was it. I went to town with her. She was well satisfied, but her old man used to say he was never able to get a hired hand to work as well.”

“I love the country still,” he said, “But haven’t been on a horse since the War. Wrecked me for hard work. Until then it was my job, and I loved it. Been droving since I was a kid.”

“Did you know Kidman?” he asked.

I smiled at the artless link, kid - Kidman.

“No, never met him. Read a bit about him, Ion Idriess, mainly.”

“You mean Jack Idriess, yes I knew him too; I worked for Kidman a bit. I liked him. A very decent chap. Didn’t drink, never lost his temper, never swore, and a mind as big as Australia. A lot of young blokes looked up to him.”

So we rambled on; war years, we both have done our bit, but mainly that wonderful outback country that he loved. The people out there, and the Depression, and the way we coped; that made an indelible impression on the minds of most of our generation.

I noticed that he drank his tea black, no sugar, a Depression habit.

Then my friend arrived. I spotted him in the doorway, looking around.

“Sorry, I must be going,” I said, and uttered the fatuous, “See you round.”

“Good luck, take care,” he said.

That was our first meeting. Nothing to it.

A couple of days later I was on the plane to Sydney. I saw him in the concourse, and again on the plane. I am sure he did not see me. He left the plane at Brisbane. Once is chance, twice is coincidence.

A week or so later I met him in The Queen Victoria Building in Sydney. I was having a few days with my daughter and had not long arrived in town.

“Hullo - hullo.” he greeted me.

“Fancy meeting you again.”

I thought, twice is coincidence. Three times?

“Well you get around a bit yourself,” I countered, “Had a cuppa yet.” It was well into the morning. “I’m meeting my son at the Centrepoint Restaurant at twelve. What about a cuppa, and lunch with us?”

Once again I had seen the loneliness on his face, and he was, as I was, clearly tired. Later I was to learn that like me he was widowed, and that’s the worst loneliness. He brightened up a lot, “Yes, thanks, I’d be glad of a break.”

So we walked through the rush of the heart of Sydney through that very sensible subway, to the restaurant below the Tower. I always eat here when in Sydney. A wide choice always available, and cosy alcoves ensure reasonable privacy. An excellent atmosphere. I usually have a beer, but remembered the Kidman influence, and settled for coffee. He had his pot of the black; no sugar, real camp cooking. When I was outback there was usually a tin of condensed milk. A very old favourite.

As we settled in, I remarked, openly curious, “Surely you’re not selling still, not at your age - our age,” I amended at a look on his face.

“What makes you think that.”

“Well,” I replied, “Perhaps I didn’t think, but meeting you in Cairns, and you left the plane at Brissy, and now I meet you in Sydney CBD. You’re bound to be selling.”

“Look,” he said, “I reckon you’re all right. Look at these little beauties.” And digging into his waistcoat pocket, yes, I had noticed the waistcoat, an old fashioned one, none of your Andy Denton glamour, he laid his closed fist on the table, opened his fingers, and there in the palm of his hand, three beautiful gold nuggets; small but well chosen, beautiful.

“Good god,” I exclaimed, “What little beauties.”

“Nice,” he said, rolling them over, “Well you’re right. I was selling, still selling. I’ve known the buyer in Cairns a long time; since the war; met him in New Guinea. He’s an old friend. Gives me an excuse to go up and have a few days with them. He’s no longer in the business, but he can get rid of as many of these as I let him have. Probably my last trip though. We’re both pretty old. Same in Brisbane, same here. I never have any trouble getting rid of them. Tourists love ‘em, same as I do.”

I saw the look on his face, which I’m pretty sure is shared by gold lovers all over the world. It was plain on my face just then. I picked up one of those lovely little nuggets. The smoothness, shaped in a million years of rolling down some ancient riverbed, you can sense the time; the colour; the strange weight. All the magic of gold flooded through my mind. How well I know it. How deep the love. How strangely the lust for gold has shaped us.

Whether it be that beautiful gold coronet of Nefertiti, or the deathmask of Agamemnon, or the beautiful pebbles in my hand, the fascination is immediate. I dropped the nuggets back into his hand, and looked up into his face. He nodded slightly “I see you know about gold,” he said, “Like to hear a story?”

“Yes indeed. Couldn’t be otherwise.”

So, in the cool of the restaurant, with Sydney steaming overhead, he told me a tale of work, of dreams, of ceaseless search, and at last the intervention of Lady Luck in the finding of his personal El Dorado.

As he traveled hundreds, thousands of miles every year while driving for Kidman and others, it was always with eyes open for hints, signs of the golden prize. As with thousands of others, he had his copy of ‘Prospecting for Gold’, Idriess’s book, commissioned by the Government, well read by thousands, and the talk round countless campfires. The book, as it was intended, kept thousands on the alert for sign of the precious metal. His ‘luck’ came, not in dreaming, but from hard work, and as a reward almost, for a simple decent act.

Dingos had disturbed a mob one night and there was a breakaway. He was sent out after the bunch, but those cattle had purposes of their own. Dawn came, and morning. He was miles from the herd, when, beside a clump of mulga he found the pathetic remains of a swaggie. Little more than a skeleton, the dry bones scattered about with a few bits of clothing; a rusted old billy, a belt, a boot, the prospectors shovel and panning dish. There was nothing to identify the fellow. During the Depression there were many such sad little finds outback. There’s not much left of a man when the others have finished with him. It’s a harsh country for new chums; suicide to go on your own. Still that way.

He dug the grave with the mans own short handled shovel. Four feet below the gibber strewn surface, he dug into gold. Alluvial gold. Gold in plenty. The sands were full of colour. Lady Luck had led him to an ancient river bed, and there was gold all around. What a fate he thought, to be buried penniless with the wealth of kings about him.

He made a tight circle round the cattle to head them back to the mob, and was careful to set up marks for the future location of his El Dorado. He did better than Lassiter, for his marks were reliable, and the find kept him in a simple luxury which he enjoyed for the rest of his life.

Every now and then he would drive out, park the car in a patch of dense scrub, hump his bluey over the last couple of miles, and spend a week or so sifting through the rich gravels and sands, raking out the ancient crevices. Then covering over all traces, careful at all times to preserve his secret. He never had any trouble selling. Alluvial nuggets are a dwindling asset always eagerly sought after.

“I’ve only worked a chain or so of that bonanza. No idea of the size of the field; could be just a rich little pocket; I just don’t know. I’ve always been content with enough; never wanted to be filthy rich. I make a few bob on the Stock Exchange, and with these we’ve got plenty. I’ve let my daughter into the secret; I know she’ll look after it.”

“What would you get for one of these?” I asked.

“They would weigh them up, of course, but roughly two to three hundred this size. The tourists pay more, and when I get a really good one there’s always the collectors.”

“I’d like to have one; want to sell?”

“Would you? Well two hundred flat. No cheques. Cash. Take your pick.”

So I took my pick; had the money with me, and have that lovely nugget still.

By then the place was filling up, and sure enough, my son appeared and found us. I started to introduce them, and realized that I did not know his name.

So, I said to the boy, “Philip, meet -? this a clear question.”

The answer was equally clear, “Jim, just call me Jim. Ships that pass in the night, you know,” and so it was.

Later, during some chat over Sara Henderson's book, my son said, “Do you know that Dad writes.”

Jim instantly perked up, “Do you?”

So I said, “Not much.”

“Published?” he asked.

The answer seemed to disappoint him, when I said, “Not that kind of writing.”

Once again the talk rambled on, the usual small chatter. I said nothing to the boy about the gold. I had a strong sense that the gold story was confidential, in spite of my elation over the nugget in my pocket. When my son stood up to go, I stood with him, but Jim detained me.

“Hang on a minute mate. You and I understand each other. I’d like to tell you something. Got the time?”

So we said goodbye to Philip, and settled down to another pot of tea, black, no sugar, and a good coffee. He started in right away. A typical Australian trait.

“I’ve been trying to write something since Christmas.” he said “Do you know the Chamberlain story?”

“Oh, yes, Lindy and the dingo.”

“That’s right, Mrs. Chamberlain and the dingo,” he corrected me.

I later realized that he had a strong mental bloc against using Lindy’s name. He literally couldn’t use her christian name, and I soon realized that this fixation was very deeply entrenched. He just could not bear to speak of her in any familiar way. God knows what his inmost thoughts were. I think sometimes that he almost worships her. I know that the Chamberlain story had generated enormous polarity at the time, so I did not probe. However I was to discover deeper insights into his feelings, and into the Chamberlain saga.

He was deeply in earnest now, “Did you read the story about her in ‘The Australian’ before Christmas; that was back in December 1995.”

“I guess I did. We get the paper regularly.”

“What did you think about it?”

“Well,” hedging somewhat, “I read it but didn’t think much about it. Just another witch hunt. You know what the papers are like. Any kind of witch hunt is good enough.”

“I read it,” he said, “And I agree with the writer. It’s time something was done for that family. Listen, I can give you some very interesting information about that family. Ever since I read that item, I’ve been trying to write my side, but just can’t manage to get it right. I’m no writer.”

“So you want me to write your story for you. Sorry. Surely you can imagine what the b-----s would have to say. I wouldn’t want to stick my neck into that noose,” and mixed metaphors by adding, “And get my fingers burnt.”

He looked at me, a long moment.

“Someone's got to do it,” he said firmly, “And I think you’re my man. A reporter would be more than useless; dangerous. You know that. I want someone to say simple, plain and clear just what happened. Nothing more. No more inquiry, no questions, no nothing. Just what happened.”

“What happened. What do you mean?”

“I mean, I could settle that matter once and for all.”

“How?” I demanded.

“Look, I can’t say too much. Might have said too much already. But you can write, and I trust you. I can tell you a simple story, not a long one; all the steps laid out clear and simple; but no names, just the few facts. You don’t even know who I am; you never will. Yet we understand each other, and you could help me a lot. Do something for me that I can’t do myself.”

“It’s nothing that you couldn’t handle. Just a short story.”

He was pleading now. “Only a few pages, but it must be clear and simple, so the experts can’t twist it, and the lawyers can’t pull it to pieces, so that the people concerned are fully protected. If I go to that lawyer, or any other lawyer, they could cause untold damage. I’d be helpless in their hands. I can’t risk it. The harm they would do to my family, and Mrs. Chamberlain would be dragged through it all again. Think about it man. You’re as old as I am. How old are you, anyway?”

I told him.

“Hmm, you’re older than me. You’ve weathered well. I’m a bit younger than you, but I guess I’ll be gone first. We’ll both be gone soon, then there’ll be no one for them to hack away at.”

He stopped. It was a good effort. He was clearly deeply moved; and it was at this moment that I realized very surely why he was so strongly begging my help. He could not write; ‘Clancy and his thumb nail dipped in tar’. Perhaps his own name and not much else. Reading Idriess and Sara Henderson would have been long slow and hard work for him, as for thousands of others, even in these days of compulsory education. With thousands of other bush children in those days, myself included, we were working at five years, working like men at ten. Schooling came a poor second. We rarely noticed the loss, working in the country, but when we moved into town, I quickly felt the impact of the weakness and rectified the deficiency. I didn’t speak of it to him. Why make an issue of it?

It was clear enough, and the realization started me thinking furiously. I’ve had very little published. All my work has been reports, surveys, assessments, research for other men to use. I visualised the reception another Chamberlain story might get. A hundred Dimedenko’s. The literary fringe on the warpath; all that venom stirred up; the lawyers, the man in the street. Are there responsible journalists still?

I used to think so. But poor Lindy; poor little Darville. Just a kid making a start. I’m pretty sure that if she hadn’t won the prize, there would have been little rumpus. Many I would have vouched for stooped to pick up one of Garner’s stones.

So, I decided, then and there that I would write his story for him. It was my glimpse of that lack of schooling that converted me. Later though, I had a few serious thoughts about Fate.

He poured another cup of black tea, no sugar. I needed another coffee, but before I went for it, I looked him in the face, and told him.

“OK, Jim, I’ll do your story for you. It’ll have to be incognito. No names, no packdrill.”

“I thought, hoped you would. My thanks.”

I went for my coffee.

When I returned I said, “It’s going to be a risky business. You know what it was like before, I’m not using my name. I don’t even know yours. What if they treat the whole thing as a hoax.”

He sighed. “I don't know. Well there’s nothing more I can do. If your best’s not good enough. I don’t know. What I do know is that I will never reveal my identity. That would lose us everything we have lived for all these years. Nothing more than this; ever.”

“Well, then when I write it for you. They will say hoax.”

“As for hoax,” he said, “What do you think? Do I look like a joker. You judge. I’m happy with you.”

“And what say they throw it in the waste paper basket?”

“I don’t know.” he muttered, and it was clear that in spite of his Aussie toughness, he was close to tears.

“Cheer up,” I said, “If it’s a good story, you’ll get a publisher all right. We’ll give it a go. What’s your story?”

For answer he reached into his anti-Denton pocket, exposed those two lovely nuggets again. “Accept my thanks.” he said.

I looked at him. “You know your man.” I said with a touch of rancour.

“I think so,” he replied, “And I trust him. You can do this for me, I’m sure, and you don’t need to risk your happiness. Protect yourself from the Press, the public and the poison tongues.”

I liked the alliteration.

It was thus, and with Sydney roaring overhead, he with his black bitter tea, me with a fresh coffee, he told me the story.

I have recorded his story quite separately, as nearly as possible in his own words, though I have not ever had any opportunity to check or to verify any small point on which I may have had a doubt, for, other than the contacts reported here, I have not seen him again. I have woven a larger story around his brief account of his journey to Ayres Rock with his daughter. Almost certainly that story on it’s own would have been treated as hoax. Hopefully in this romanticised model it will have a wider readership.

Our chance; if it be a chance meeting, is but remotely related to the Chamberlain tragedy.

Other than as I have told it; and what a story. Of love and tragedy; of gentle care and devotion, a story of love deeply scarred by pain and by guilt; an enduring love sadly tempered by fear, and as he related the story I saw all that love and fear and grief in the face before me, and I was glad that I had offered to do this simple thing for him and the secure little family waiting for his return in some small back country town; or were they equally safe in the suburban anonymity of the City?

I did not take a single note. There was no need. The progression of blind obedience to what befell them, to the clear understanding of the purpose, is plain and uncluttered. In his words, they obeyed orders, so often against his better judgement.

He finished his story; and I wondered and wondered -- and wondered.

“Are you sure that I can do this for you? It’s a darn sight bigger than I imagined. It’s dynamite.”

“Yes,” he replied. “I think you will handle it. The story is simple. Keep it that way. What they do with it afterward is out of your hands. But the older I get the more I am compelled to let Mrs. Chamberlain know. I don’t want to die with this on my mind. I know that my daughter will never say a word; yet that lady had such a terrible time. She well deserves to know.”

“All right. I’ll risk it, and what about these?” I asked, exposing those beautiful nuggets in my hand. “You still happy about these?”

“Oh, yes. You happy with them?”

“Of course. Feel a bit guilty about them really.”

“Don’t. Guilt is terribly corrosive. I wonder if the same fate as used us isn’t fingering you. I can only hope that you can find a decent publisher. If you can’t, will you consider just sending the story to Mrs. Chamberlain. That lawyer would forward it on to her, I’m sure. I trust you as I trusted that Fate.”

"Well, my thanks again, I guess it’s goodbye.”

He offered his hand, shook firmly, and walked out of my life.

I watched him weaving between the tables, he never looked back. It was goodbye all right, and I confess that I felt a loss.

God knows what the end will be; I guess the lawyer he was so fearful of will have some thinking to do; and a lot of other people. Each will do his own thing, some with love, some with logic, some will hold bitterly to their own deceits. The human animal at his best and worst.

While I listened to his simple terrible story, I felt a compassion stronger than caution, a sympathy stronger than self interest.

The drama is already old. Three of the actors already dead; a woman driven so close to the edge of insanity; two others already saying unspoken farewells to friends and family; the Chamberlain’s and the hell they endured; and standing between these two families, both racked with pain and sorrow, an innocent child, her innocence threatened by the miseries of exposure to an utterly indifferent and callous public.

So, I too must remain unknown; as for those who will judge me, I can think of nothing more suitable than ‘Judge not, for you too will be judged’.

The Journey To Uluru

We simply do not care about people ‘out there’. We - I, know what happened at the Rock; we know why, and how. All I want to achieve in this statement, is to let Mrs. Chamberlain and her family know that we; my daughter and I, saved the tiny baby’s life, and that she has been loved and cared for with great devotion, and is now a lovely young woman.

Before you condemn, read how it all happened, and make no judgement until you have felt in your own life the compulsions which drove my daughter and me on our fated journey.

I am now very old; I do not wish to die with this dreadful but lovely crime on my mind. If I do not tell, that other so sorely persecuted family will never know.

I know that my daughter will never; under no circumstances ever reveal our secret, our identity; our location. Nothing ever at all. The shell of our security is fragile indeed. It could so easily be shattered. That we cannot risk, yet for me to go, to die, without letting that other family know, is but compounding the crime.

We have suffered several bad frights over this terrible threat of discovery. When that lawyer’s story appeared in The Australian, that would be December 95, the child concerned read the story in the paper and was deeply touched by the Chamberlain trial and the horrific cause; the injustices heaped on Mrs. Chamberlain; and wanted to know more, as I imagine would many of the younger generation. My daughters old fears were aroused, and she was ill with fear for days, terrified that the child would start to explore the story more thoroughly. Thankfully, other interests diverted her and the danger to our happiness faded.

What I want to make clear to everyone is that every step on our way has been controlled by someone out there, someone or something, planned to take us to that one special place on earth at that one special vital moment of time, and we believe, for that one special purpose.

Why us? Why the Chamberlains? Why, of all things a dingo? Is it because I have shot hundreds of the brutes in my time; so have other stockmen. Why, why, why? we ask, endlessly; and we look at the beautiful young woman given into our care and are answered. But why the horror of the persecution suffered by an innocent family? Why the horror of hate in so many people? Why the venom? Why the follies, the stupidities; the hounding from Government? The incident exposed a naked cruelty, an utterly ruthless cruelty in sections of the Australian media that I had never seen before, and hope never to see again.

Well, it’s exposed now in all it’s senseless folly, it’s ugly cruelty. We can only hope; I’m not a praying man, that having seen the evil, we will turn away from it.

When I go, my daughter must carry the burden alone. I can do no more than my best to protect her; but if I do not write this it will never be done, so determined is the girl to protect their peace and safety. Yet not letting the Chamberlains know that we saved her baby, as precious to them as she now is to us, is as heavy a guilt as the taking of her.

Through it all is the clear knowledge that we obeyed our unwritten instructions at every step on the way; even this one; each step a compelling fate; always the strong conviction that the plot is too well organised ever to be chance.

I do not believe in any afterlife. No ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant’, for us; nor any punishment there.

Our only justification is the knowledge that we went to that child at that critical time; in her moment of greatest need; and that we have loved and cared for her as a gift - yes, a rich gift - from whatever gods may be.

The love, the confidence, the security, and the pleasures and the joy we have shared with her are our reward, saddened every day of our lives by thoughts of the sorrows endured by her own true family.

What fate drove us, what fate drove the Chamberlains, to that place at that time? That beautiful strong character to be savaged by such elemental cruelties, while we ran, devastated with guilt and fear, with an utterly innocent child.

Looking back, the first stroke of that fate, was surely the sudden death, utterly unexpected; no prior warning; of my wife, Julie. Again and again I am compelled to ask, was she taken deliberately, to be the first link in the chain of events driving us to Ayers Rock and all that followed after. Left me, made me free to drive my daughter to receive her fated gift.

This first death was a terrible shock to us. Our daughter is an only child, and was closely bonded with her mother. When her mother died, the girl was in the early stages of pregnancy, the loss of her mother was doubly painful. Then a short three months afterward, her husband died. Again suddenly, without warning, a severe heart attack. A young healthy man, taken without warning. She was utterly devastated.

She asked me if we could make one of our outback camping trips - get away from the house, with its memories and its dark association with death - help her get well again, and I agreed and spent a few days checking the car, and stocking it for the trip, checking the camp gear and supplies. But before we were ready to leave, Fate struck yet another devastating blow. The baby was born prematurely, the mother weakened by the stress and pain from the deaths of her loved mother and husband.

Once again the child worked her way through the stress and the pain. Through it all we wondered who would be the next to be taken. I had the doctor examine me thoroughly, fearing it would be me, or the girl? Or the precious baby so deeply wanted and dearly loved after the terrible losses suffered?

It was a very stressful time for all. We put all thought of a trip outback aside for a few months until my daughter recovered her health and control somewhat. The lovely little prem, a girl, whom she named Julieanne, after the mother so suddenly taken from her; had gained weight, and was holding her own, and appeared strong enough to travel. The doctor strongly advised against taking her into the country, because of the risk. He finally, clearly reluctantly, admitted that the trip could be good for the mother, and for me, for I also was showing signs of the trauma and stress of that terrible year.

We always travel easy on our outback trips. Well equipped in every way, yet at a very simple level. All experienced campers. So we set off, little realizing that this premature birth was but another step leading us to an appointment with destiny; a very decisive step toward the final fated act.

We drove out through the mountains on the old unformed outback roads along which I had worked and driven mobs of cattle for Kidman and others before the war. Along our way were still a few old mates, most married now with families, all of them men like myself who have worked the big stations and the big herds in their youth, and now growing old and glad to meet and have a yarn.

We always stock up well for these trips. You may smile but a few simple things like cottons, matches, candles, toilet paper, a bit of good soap, torch batteries and bulbs; a good can opener (the new ones are marvellous compared with the old ones); tins of peaches and other delicacies. These are nothing when you live in town; out back they are always welcome, as are a few packets of aspirin and painkillers, oil of cloves for toothache, and always with a few sweets and things for the children. Something I learned from Kidman. We always carried a pile of these small things, and stocked up at the small towns as we passed through. This slow trip was foe sheer love of the country, quiet lonely and beautiful.

Not that the coast isn’t beautiful, but it’s so crowded. Out behind the ranges, it’s different. Wonderful country when there’s water. I know the country well, and watched over the years the big bulldozers, and the big trucks and the cars transforming that countryside; the improvements to the roads and the water supply, and the quality of life for the outback.

So we worked our way North, camping for days sometimes at favoured spots, meeting the old mates, sometimes the widow of an old mate, still not quite ready to leave the country and live in town with one of the children.

My daughter loved every minute of it and the baby too. We had often made such trips when her mother was with us; she had been a selectors daughter, and loved the country. We moved into town when we married. In one of the small towns on the edge, but a decent bit of land, where she could make a garden to her hearts content. So the daughter grew up well used to these outback camping trips and was a good experienced camper.

As well as the personal contacts, there is the sheer beauty of the country; the flocks of birds, galahs, parrots, finches of a dozen kinds, emus, roos, wallabys and snakes; depending on just where you are, and all the little fellows hanging round the watering places. Sunsets, when flocks come in for a drink, and the sunset colours, and watching the huge bronze orb of the sun slipping down into nothingness below the horizon; and the quick dark, followed by the stars, and the stillness and the cold of night. The wonder and the beauty always a delight.

All too often we would see rabbits, still eating the heart out of the country. We often had one for an evening meal, carefully screened for traces of myxamytosis, still persisting in some.

One such camp was critical in our journey; it was a lovely spot, and we stayed a week, swimming, exploring, just enjoying the life, and the girl getting better all the time, but on the seventh day, she said, quite out of the blue, “I’ve had enough Dad. I want to move on.”

I asked, “Want to move back home?”

But she was very definite. “Oh, no Dad, Let’s just keep moving.”

Later, though, I realized that fate had an appointment with her elsewhere; and it was now time for us to be moving on, and subconsciously, she was obeying orders.

So we moved even deeper into the country, me thinking that the poor child still could not face up to the pain of that silent house.

We had already been away much longer than usual, and travelled much further than ever before. But I met her wishes. I wanted nothing other than to see colour in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes. So we packed up, and moved north by west, deeper into the country.

The next day we ran into one of those heavy tropic storms. Often dry electric storms heavy with wind. This one was hot, wet and oppressive.

We were lucky. Or were we? The unformed road was becoming impossible when I sighted an old shed. Red with the rust of the outback, but with a roof. Some outbuilding for a distant station, and we took shelter.

Cleaned the place out pretty quickly, and settled in till the storm passed over. It was more than just a flash storm. What with the state of the roads we were trapped there for over two weeks.

On the morning of the third day my daughter wakened to find her beautiful little baby dead in the carrycot beside her. I can never forget her scream as she touched the tiny dead thing; or the shock of horror that swept over me.

This yet another most terrible time for the dear girl. She collapsed again, utterly devastated. Just how much can one be expected to endure? How many of us could take such terrible blows? The sudden death of three deeply loved ones, mother, husband and child, and each one so sudden - no chance to say goodbye, no warnings. Just taken. I was helpless to console or help her. She was so utterly shaken, devastated - hurt beyond healing; unwilling to part with the tiny cold body. The only medication available aspirin, and such small comfort as I could offer.

The rain continued off and on for days, the roads impossible. I buried the tiny thing, in the rain, by necessity. A very bad time. Still so, after all these years. Much of my own faith in life went into that tiny grave. And I know that the keen edge of my daughters sanity was buried there. She broke, that dreadful day and has never regained her old self. I have never heard her laugh since that day. Smile, yes, life goes on even through those sad days when we too could wish to go; but those who have been there know only too well that life is not easily forsaken. One has to live, in spite of it’s calamities.

When the roads were fit, we moved on again. Once again I suggested that we go home. Once again she pleaded ‘just go on’. So we moved on to a main road, and were far enough West to head for Alice. ‘Just where she wanted to go’ she said; so to please her, we went.

I had intended to report the baby’s death at Alice but put it off for the time being, because of my daughters distressed condition. She was in no fit state to withstand a police interrogation. Neither was I. It is never easy reporting a death to the police. They seem to have all the time in the world, and small respect for your needs, however important to you. Everything must give way to that statement they must secure and check and investigate. To have put my daughter through that ordeal at that time could have done grave harm to her.

The police can be very tough when it comes to a death. Properly so, I’m sure. Their questioning can be a traumatic experience, and would have been so for the girl. In the Depression days outback we stockman would sometimes come across a pitiful little heap of dried bones; sometimes more; in some lonely spot. Many a swaggie finished that way, and most of them nameless. Sometimes a gun with the empty shell still in the breech. The lawyers call it suicide, but we never thought of it that way; just common sense. He was lucky if he had a gun. Much better than fighting off dingos in your last moments.

They don’t wait till you’re dead; just helpless.

It would cost a man weeks of sheer nuisance to report them. The delays, and worse still, the implied suspicions were just not worth while. We gave the remains a decent burial, and kept our mouths shut.

So I put off the registration of the baby’s death until the mother was strong enough to stand the ordeal, planning to rest up for a few days and get her to a doctor.

But the girl took yet another fateful step. We had hardly arrived when she said she wanted to drive on down to the Rock.

I was horrified. “Come on girl; we’ve only just arrived. You’re tired and so am I. You’re anything but well enough for another four hundred miles. We should wait till tomorrow at least. You should see a doctor. Get some medication, I’m more than concerned for you. What say we wait till tomorrow.” But she pleaded, was insistent, so once again I gave way to please the child. I checked the car over, and topped everything up for a long drive, for I had in mind to continue on down South from the Rock; and we headed off as the girl wanted.

We were at the Rock only minutes, on our way to check in with the ranger, when she said, “I’m sorry Dad, but can we go now please.”

Frankly I was horrified, indeed angry, a very rare state for me. We had been driving for days; she was plainly ill, plainly very tired, and in no fit state for any more. I was tired too, clearly feeling the pressure.

I did a bit of pleading myself; telling her we were both tired and in need of rest, that we should get some sleep and leave early next morning.

However she was insistent with that blind insistence of the sick mind; and rather than further disturb her, once again I agreed. I well knew that she was really ill from the tragedy of the past year and specially so since the baby’s death. It was a great deal more than just depression; it was heartbreak; despair, a very deep grief and needed a great deal more than a man could offer.

She has never fully recovered. This year has changed her life forever. At that time I feared for her; was deeply afraid that she might never recover.

So I never argued; but treated her very gently, hoping all the time that her natural resilience would lift her out, knowing that this healing would be long and trying for us.

When she asked to go it was late in the afternoon.

Twilight is quick out there. We had not yet entered the camping area. The car was on the road outside. Many of the campers were already cooking tea. We were on our way. I was going to let the ranger know that we were well set up and on our way South.

We were close to the ranger’s house in the deepening dusk, when we spotted a dingo, head up and carrying a bundle. This was no surprise There were several round the campsites; and they are natural scavengers, steal anything eatable. The tourists encourage them throwing bits and pieces just to see the quick upward leap and the snap of the jaws. I have never liked the brutes. No stockman ever does. I have never been able to understand how any outback policeman could listen without protest to the stupid so called ‘Scientific’ evidence that the brutes could not take a baby. They can pull a full grown sheep down, and lambs are an easy prey. I challenged the dingo, and kicked him, He dropped his bundle and snarled at me. I kicked him again, and he ran off, the Aboriginal trackers traced him to that point the following morning. So did the police.

I touched the bundle with my foot. It moved.

My daughter stooped and picked it up.

I can never forget the look on my daughters face; her voice; she whispered, “My God. It’s a baby.”

I know with absolute certainty that her thoughts then were of her own lost child.

She spoke in a whisper, “This is mine, a gift from God.”

She placed the tiny thing against her shoulder, covered it with her jacket. She looked at me with such a fierce intensity as I had never seen before, not even in battle, and by God, you see plenty of spirit there when men are fighting for life with every fibre of savagery in the human frame.

“It’s mine. C’mon Dad Lets go.” She hissed the words.

So we went. Fated yet again. I could not have stopped her without great harm.

The dingo snarled and snapped at her demanding it’s prey. I kicked it again. The brute ran with us to the car, snapping and snarling. I turned the car on to the rough road back to Alice, the brute still in pursuit of it’s prey.

In the car, the girl had already stripped the filthy clothing from the limp child. Blood, saliva and the red dirt of the country, swabbed the worst of the blood with a garment, and threw them out of the window, where the dingo pounced on them and ran into the night.

The first aid box in the car was a godsend. The wounds were foul with saliva and dust; blood already clotting in them. Thank god, plenty of clean water in the bottles, Dettol and sulpha something, I can’t remember, in the first aid kit.

“Thank God,” I heard her say, “No arterial wounds.” But the soft flesh of the throat and shoulder still weeping; the child in shock.

So we drove off into the wilderness. I was deeply disturbed, knowing all too well that we were doing the wrong thing; that we were guilty of a most terrible thing, running with a child stolen in such dreadful circumstances. I was as much disturbed with the thought of the distress of the mother, as I was with concern for the baby and for my daughter. All through that dreadful night was the image of the frantic mother, the hopeless searching in the dark, the agony of the realization that the baby was gone, lost forever to her.

Only once did I stop the car, tell the girl that we must return the child to the mother, but was met with such insensate fury that I could not even try battle with, and so, against all my principles, my concern for the mother, against my better judgment, I drove on, well knowing myself to be a defeated man, and a most unhappy man. And utterly unable to reconcile my own action or even belief, with those of my daughter in the back seat, washing those wounds, crooning over the baby, giving it warmth and life. At that time it was so clear that I could not possibly deny the girl her ‘gift’ without driving her into insanity.

So, torn with conflict I drove on into the night. Never can I forget that journey. All three of us in deep trouble. The girl washing and cleansing the deeper wounds, controlling the bleeding, warming and talking to the child, working with that special energy that comes to us from some deep spiritual source in such emergencies; the wounds dressed, she wrapped the child in her own dead child’s clothing, warming her, yes - the little thing was a girl - with all the love and warmth of her body, reduced the trauma of shock, and rejoiced, thanking God, with every fibre of her spirit, when the little limbs moved, and the child opened unseeing eyes and wailed, and was comforted.

Thus I drove on, wracked with the sure knowledge of the turmoil and distress of the distraught mother so desperately seeking her child in the dark night around the Rock. I know, God, how deeply I know, but don’t blame me; I know, only too well, that I should have turned back to the Rock; I know also, that to have done so would have broken my own child. What real choice does a man have in such circumstances? So I have lived with the guilt and the shame; and my daughter with her strange gift of love and joy. The child has responded beautifully to my daughter, and to this day they are close and responsive to each other.

We topped up in Alice. The girl would not leave the car. We had the gear belonging to little Julieanne still with us in the car. I now made no attempt to register the death of her baby. I clearly saw this as another of those fateful compulsions that have so disturbed and altered our lives; clearly saw here a purpose, unstated, but clear. I was now seeing with equal clarity that I was as deeply an agent of that purpose as was my daughter; but why?

We rarely spoke of such things. My daughter was clearly obsessed with the ‘gift’, was so completely beyond doubt that the events were directed; the loss of mother, lover and child, deliberate, necessary steps toward the final act; and that the purpose was simply the ‘gift’ of the child to her. All through this unwanted drama, we have been led without either understanding or consent, until the last terrible act, and the compulsions at that time almost beyond control. It is with that ‘almost’ that I must live, even as my daughter lives in the joy of her gift. Yet there were times when she too felt the burden of guilt. Guilt and the fear of detection; but most of her days were hours of joy with the baby, sheer happiness.

That happiness was healing very deep wounds in her. It was later that we faced the guilt stirred by grief and concern at the treatment of the Chamberlains. Every day on that long journey home through the country we loved so well, we were saddened by the people talking of the tragedy at the Rock. At that time most outback people thought that the dingo had taken the child The tracks were clear, and everyone out there knew what a dingo could do, and did often enough to lambs and other stock.

It wasn’t until later that some perverted mind engineered the cruel fabrications against the Chamberlains; made a mockery of the evidence of the campers, and of the Aboriginal trackers; made a mockery of the law as perverted by political interference; and still without the courage or the intelligence to finally clear that persecuted family.

What a scarce and precious thing is simple common sense. My daughter is my own flesh and blood. I could not possibly betray her to the terrors being loosed up North. The price of the child was being exacted and as the Chamberlains were dragged through their hell, so my daughter walked into hers, and of my own free will I walked with her. I know that I should have spoken earlier. There may have been some chance to redeem that which we have done, without exposing ourselves to the mob. But the very venom, the mindless persecution, filled us with dread.

We know; we so deeply feel that our only justification is that we saved that innocent child from an awful death; and by the sacrifice of my daughters mother, her husband and her own new born, all deeply loved, and that strange compelled journey to that one special place in Australia, at that one critical moment of time was for this purpose. A woman tormented nearly to insanity. Few people will be able to comprehend the compulsions. of that moment; the blinding realization that the child was indeed a gift. One terrible journey accomplished. Another beginning.

As the wretched attack on that family gathered force, we grew even more fearful of detection, more and more sickened with guilt.

Those dreadful days marked me for the rest of my life. I know I should have done something; at least something like this, to let them know that the baby had been saved from the dingo. But that would have started a search for us; set the newspapers on us; set the public loose on us and that we could not bear. Any good policeman could have found us/ So we kept silent; my daughter in fear; my self in a maze of guilt and fear, until, my death seen clearly near, I can keep silent no longer.

We were terrified when the first inquest ruled; no body; no motive; no evidence. We were sure that some policeman would consider the clear evidence of the trackers. And reach the obvious conclusion, “This is the spot where the baby disappeared; here. Some person, as yet unknown, has taken her from the dog. She is somewhere about, and we will find her. I am sure the Aboriginal people know what happened. Not who? But certainly, how.”

Any policeman worth his salt should have so known. All the signs were there until trampled out by the very people who should have and could have saved the Chamberlains, and started the hunt for us. So, who are we to say that the same fate that led us to that place at that time for that purpose, did not shield us then, and will not guide and shield us now.

All that was then. Now it is different.

Mrs. Chamberlain, we wept with you and your family all through those terrible days. We weep now, for now, not even for a free pardon will we ever reveal our identity. Yes, I know well that this is cruel, but I am sure that you can see that it is necessary to protect the child from the harm and the pain of publicity to which she would be exposed, and above all, to protect and preserve her trust and confidence in the family to whom she was entrusted. I know that I can never justify my actions, but I pray that you will understand the forces driving us; even now, despite the everlasting conviction of guilt, I sometimes think as my daughter does, that the child is indeed ‘a gift from god’, so much joy and goodness has she been in our lives.

So we will never betray the trust placed upon us by fate.

We well understand that when this is known, that there are plenty out there who will judge us as they judged the Chamberlains. So be it. It is agonizingly clear to us that anything that we do now to right the wrong, will destroy our family and again bring harm to them. They would survive again supported by their faith and the strong beautiful spirit of Mrs. Chamberlain, but we would be unable to meet the storm.

We would be utterly crushed by it. Our lives scarred and broken by the mindless publicity. So as we remained silent, we will remain silent, our guilt and fears our own.

The sole reason for this confession is to let Mrs. Chamberlain know that we saved her child and have loved and cared for her, literally, as a gift from God; and to tell those people who believed in her innocence, that their faith was justified.

As for the others. God forgive them.

Mrs. Chamberlain, we bow our heads to you. We dare not even ask your forgiveness. We respect you greatly for the strength and faith you showed all through that terrible ordeal; strangely it helped us bear our own distress.

Please do believe me, we thought the Court must surely clear you. The signs were so clear. We can only hope that you will have some understanding of my daughters state of mind, some sympathy with her in the tragic deaths, such loss, and of her deep and continuing acceptance of the child as a ‘gift from God’.

It well may be, long after I am gone, that my daughter will tell the child of the fate which so strangely guided us to her in her moment of greatest need; and it may be that your child will seek you out of her own free will, privately and safely, to satisfy that bonding established between you in those first precious months with you; if she does so, and the child twinkles her lovely eyes at you, you will then feel that the terrible injustices inflicted on you will not have been entirely in vain.

Mrs. Chamberlain, forgive us; Your child has indeed been a most treasured gift from God.

Jim Henderson

The Jim Henderson of this story was a typical outback man of the early years of this century; some might say, the horse and buggy years, rather than the motor car, computer driven years. He was always a worker, even as a young man about the house, quick and eager to learn, and with the facility to see the cause of the problem and to fix it, and no nonsense. He was not at any time the owner or the lessee of any of the vast stations on which he worked, nor, in the later more prosperous years of this remarkable century, a pilot, a motor cycle stockman, nor the proud owner of a 4WD.

His known ancestry is brief. He is the third generation born in Australia. Both his father and himself the only children of their little families, both stockmen, but the Jim Henderson of whom the story is concerned, died without a son.

His great grandparents were amongst the tens of thousands who colonised the New World; a seeming endless flood of adventurous souls facing the rigours and the unknown dangers of the new lands, and in most instances most glad to put the poverty, the stilted class infected society of the Old World, with its undeclared but brutal class wars, behind them. That they invaded and destroyed the life and culture of the native peoples of those lands hardly impacted on them; it was ‘them or me’ as it ever was and is, even with us to this day. The forced clearances of the Scottish Highlands and of rural Ireland together with the opportunity for millions of the poor of the sprawling industrial cities to escape the tyranny of destitute poverty, drove the great waves of colonists to the shores of the Americas, and into the Pacific countries, and so Jim Henderson's people came to Australia.

The tracing of his ancestors was most simple. They are, simply, his mother and his grandmother. He was told little of his grandmothers parents. She, or they, had severed all contact. He knew that their original home, for many generations, had been the Isle of Burray, in the distant Orkney Islands; and it was that grandmother, who with the rugged beautiful outback of Australia molded and shaped him into the man of this story.

Beyond that any further information meant a personal visit to the Islands and a search of Parish registers, and of land titles. We knew that the family name was Wyllie, the ‘Red Wyllies’ for obvious reasons. The oral tradition led back to the 8^th century, to the settlement of the Orkneys and the Western Isles by Viking families fleeing the excesses of Harald Halfdanarssen, ‘Fine Hair’, King of Norway. The Vikings, pushed the old pagan Celts and Scots back into the harsher outer islands and in the way of colonists, took their land their flocks and the viable girls. As noted earlier the colonising process is as old as the human race. Few indeed have not suffered from it; few have not benefited. The colonising era is nearly over; shadowy, in the future, our history points to the one race of humankind.

The Wyllies arrived with a precut house in the hold of the ship, and four daughters. Their sea journey in the ‘Sirius’ was slow; ninety-six days. The journey was, for the parents, an anxious and trying time. The girls ages ranged from twelve to twenty years; conditions on shipboard were cramped, uncomfortable, and without the privacy they would have chosen for their girls. The girls on their part greatly enjoyed their new liberties; adventures beyond their wildest island dreams.

Originally their destination had been New Zealand. The Sirius dropped anchor in the open waters of New Plymouth, to be immediately encircled by two great Maori war canoes, each with forty warriors, faces deeply tattooed, armed with heavy clublike spears; and not a smile of welcome on any face. There was no further threat, but those grim faced men in their powerful canoes circled the ship and effectively prevented Port officers from visiting, and any possibility of passengers from landing. Few of the passengers slept that night, despite the Captains assurances that the ‘Wars’ were over, and that the natives were ‘Friendly’.

The following day, as they gathered unhappily on the deck awaiting developments, they suffered yet another unexpected and most unwanted shock. A strong earthquake created panic on both ship and shore. They watched in horror the wave like movement of the buildings; saw the solid land heave and ripple, heard the crash of falling chimneys, the cries of terrified children, the agitated screams of terrified horses; and felt the sea trembling and heaving as it had not ever in the 12 thousand miles from Liverpool. The tremors continued through the day as did the terror and distress of the ships company, filling them with a deep anxiety and a most unnatural fear of this new and clearly savage country. The Maori fighters disappeared, and late that afternoon the Health Officer rowed out to the ship. He informed the Captain, that although the war in the Province was settled there was strong opposition to more immigrants. The natives clearly recognised that they were steadily losing control of their land. ‘There is no more land’ they say. He gave the ship a clean ‘Bill of Health’ and advised the Captain to proceed to Wellington, the Capital, where all was quiet; no; not Auckland; still fighting up there; but Wellington would be safe. The Captain held an impromptu meeting with his more important passengers, and with their hearty approval told all that he proposed to sail to Australia; was cheered at that, and whilst building up steam sent a boat ashore with the mail, including many hastily scribbled explanations of the changed plans with the reasons thereof; then headed for Sydney, the favoured port of arrival amongst his passengers.

Thus the Wyllie family arrived in Australia. The parents were James and Jessie; The girls, Betsy, Margaret, Jessie and Janie, short for Janet. All were pleasant, well featured with fresh complexions and sturdy of build, bright of eye and all with the family bronze shaded or auburn tint of abundant hair; piled high on the head as was the style of the day. The older two are already glowing with that nameless grace with which Mother Nature adorns young girls as they enter into their maturity.

They spent a year or so in Sydney, James ‘looking around’ and working hard in the quickly developing city, saving to add to his bit of capital, before buying land. The women hated Sydney, ugly, hot, rude, uncivilized. Jessie wondered wistfully about New Zealand. Her sister with her family had settled at Mosgiel, well down in the South Island. ‘A Scottish settlement, no Maoris, beautiful country gentle hills, and the grasses knee deep and the cattle fattening before your eyes, and some Australian miners have discovered gold in the back country’.

All went gladly enough with James to his farm block, the grant of one hundred acres in a vast flood plain, part of the Nepean - Hawkesbury river system. They were to discover that the plain did indeed flood; a vast turgid flooding, swift and relentless in it’s coming, flooding from horizon to horizon. But that was later.

On this block James chose a reasonably safe site, near to a clear running stream and with some wooded country behind and erected his precut house, Precut for English conditions; designed by a builder with an eye for profit, knowing full well that the house would be erected a long long way from his factory; and designed without the slightest understanding of the harsh summers of Australia; it’s rooms small; hot and impossible to ventilate, the ceilings low, the windows tiny; the finished house stuffy, without grace or comfort.

The girls hated it; Jessie tolerated it. James inordinately proud of it. Had he not erected it with his own hands?

He had, indeed, but that failed to satisfy the girls, already wistfully dreaming of the comforts left behind at Lochellen Farm in the so distant Islands, the brisk sea breezes and the lads, alas back there.

Round this house, Jessie, in time learned to tame the hard soil; learned to read the seasons, and the often unstable weather. Learned the unforgiving way the need for good strong fencing to protect her hard won flowers and vegetables from the voracious little animals, unseen by day but clearly, from ample evidence, about in plenty in the cool soft nights. She loved her garden. It satisfied many of her submerged longings for the old life, many of the unvoiced discontents of the new life; and there was a real challenge to keep her fresh complexion and her mass of beautiful hair soft and bright, under the huge wide brimmed hat she had brought at a street stall in Barbados on the way out; and she did her fair share of the toil which they entered into to develop their block as an orange orchard; and they prospered, Jessie creating a little oasis of beauty around the house, James establishing their place in the community as his work prospered.

The girls learned the subtleties of the inward looking social life; the so different attitudes of the available young men; the slow acceptance; the almost insolent appraisal; the isolation of the so distant neighbours; were somewhat surprised at the ready offers of help in times of real need, and came gradually to realize that this slow acceptance was but a self defense; an essential aspect of survival in the harsh reality of outback life in the torrid climate.

The three younger girls grew slowly into the district with it’s rare entertainment and rather closed society, every social event a reassessment of their place and opportunities.

Janie hated it. To her already settled mind the German neighbours, two miles down the hot dusty unformed road, were rough uncouth foreigners; even though her father found their support and wider knowledge of the land; the care of animals in the intemperate weather, to be invaluable to him, and their friendship a welcome easement into the social life of the district.

So it had to happen.

A young stockman riding by, easy in the saddle, bright of eye, virile, handsome, respectful in the manner of men in those times, caught her eye, and in that electric flash of recognition, she with fresh good appearance, that lovely head of glowing auburn hair, caught his. Without a word between them, she knew that those demands of her maturing femininity, for the good companionship, would be well satisfied with him; she went with gladness and without reserve.

The family opposed her. Betsy said “You are a fool.” She at 18 had already assessed the value of a good woman in the desperate loneliness of the outback world, and knew that she could have her choice of several willing men, but was coolly weighing her prospects, other aspects of worth. Her mother who had hoped for a good marriage for her firstborn, was kinder than Betsy. She said, “Do be careful darling. It may be only a passing whim.”

Margaret and young Jessie wept for her, begging her to keep in touch, “Do write to us, do keep in touch.” Her father became cold, angry. He also had planned a good marriage for his beautiful daughter, a marriage which would have improved the standing of the family in the society of the district very considerably. Now he withheld all support, would not even wish her ‘Good luck’ as she left the house. Thus, Jim Henderson's grandmother, young, beautiful and loved, left home.

She never saw her family again. Her man came for her in a trap. A one horse, light cart, a backed seat across the front, and a canvas hood over all, and took her to his simple home. It was a long journey of more than three weeks; they were in no hurry; they enjoyed a honeymoon more romantic, more intimately satisfying than she could ever have dreamed. Beautiful nights, camping and loving under the stars; wonderful stars, and the wonder of moonlight, marvellous sunsets and glorious dawns, and when there was no moon the darkness so profound you could almost hear it; and every moment of that wonderful journey her wonderful man beside her, learning and teaching the dignity of love, the gentleness of passion, the joy of their companionship; their first steps into a new way of life for them both.

She enjoyed the quick breakfasts over a warm fire, the boiling billy, the warm dampers her Jim knocked up so quickly; she enjoyed the rare encounters in that long journey with the tiny settlements, the local pubs; enjoyed the simple ample meals, and was not offended with the open interest and admiration of the men; was later to learn with a sense of wonder that in that loneliness men would travel miles for the simple deep pleasure of just looking at a woman; remembering with deep insight her father’s often admonition to his girls, ‘That the worth of a good woman is greater than that of rubies’,
“And don’t forget young woman, that rubies are more precious than diamonds.”

Much later on that never forgotten journey, she laughed almost hysterically at a rough hand painted notice tied to a gate at the end of a dirt road leading apparently to nowhere; ‘Wanted women, any sort, ask here, quick’. Later, at the last pub on their way home, she was neither offended nor alarmed when one old fellow, brash, but clearly sincere, asked Jim if he could touch her hand. So she offered her hand, he touched it, and she laid her other hand over their clasped hands, and there were tears on the fresh young face as there were on the grubby bearded face of the old fellow, and a sudden silence over the men at the bar.

It was mid spring when they reached Jim’s place; another hundred acre block, but here the selection had been made with a more experienced mind, and the earth was kinder; here with a wild blaze of flowers, and the grass was thicker after the warm spring rains, as it is so often over wide areas of this land of sudden contradictions. Land, bare for months, years all too often, can bloom, miraculously, after rain. The valleys grow their green carpet, crops get started, stock fattens; and the great myth that this is a rich and fruitful country is uttered yet again; only to be shattered yet again by the following drought.

His home was the typical outback shack. A slab hut with hand cut shingle roof. Large, simple, durable and adequate. Two bedrooms at one end, the huge kitchen-living area dominated by the big fireplace, the walls are only half timbered, and screened with wire mesh against the flies and innumerable other flying creatures, often in vast swarms. The house sparsely furnished, man’s style but adequate. Outside he has made many improvements. He rarely went on the big month-long drives, for he was a careful and skilful man, and usually engaged on the better paid construction and maintenance work available on the big stations. Work well beyond the skills of the average man. He neither smoked, gambled nor drank, was no wowser, just a steady, thoughtful man determined to better himself in a hard world.

He had spent most of his earnings on improvements round the property. A windmill shadowed a big 12,000 gallon concrete tank, feeding into long narrow troughs. These troughs were shaded by coolibahs, paper gums and river oaks and other selected trees, which she watched grow into deep shady groves; the stock access to the water controlled by wing walls, the stands hardened by rock slab embedded in clay; he was not interested in breeding, preferring to buy small lots of store stock and fattening for the market; he rarely had to throw a beast, using a simple narrow race as a crush, and branding his animals with dye rather than the hot iron in general use. Usually he beat the ever threatening drought, with carefully thought plans for conserving both water and feed, never overstocking, and his often the only mob of fat stock offering at the market. Myriad's of birds of many kinds made free use of his water. She counted sixty two varieties in one week of watching. He rotated his small herds through four paddocks, each contoured to feed its own dam, and each of these shaded and the watering places hardened and controlled. Each of these paddocks was harrowed and oversown as the stock moved on. This simple policy she was to discover kept most of the dry seasons at bay. He told her, “Only possible on a small place; on the big places the stock trample everything into dust.”

When the big drought dragged on, draining practically every waterhole in the country, even his little oasis suffered as the water table dropped, and their precious 12000 gallons were poached every evening, every morning by thousands of birds and other creatures, and in the long run she was walking daily to the tiny water hole at the base of the low bluff that stood out in the wide spaces about them.

Not a long journey, about a mile from the house; there she patiently filled a bucket, this the days ration for the house, and was devoutly thankful for it; but thankful as she was, her practical Methodist self wondered why so much of His handiwork should suffer so much for the want of just a little more rain; rain she well knew to be available in such terrible abundance as to be a death dealing flood, and that same practical mind told her that there was no answer to that ancient question.

One hot dry day they walked down to the waterhole, that sweet companionship which is love alive between them, “Why didn’t you build the house down here, Jim?” So he walked her over the ground, pointing out the lay of the land, the gullies, told her of the savage rain storms; storms which she was to experience many times. Showed her how the waters gathered into larger and larger streams; see here and here, and all dry now but in the rare times of heavy rain the waters roared down over the flats until it fans out in sullen flood below them.

“That’s why, dear girl, floods, but you’re safe up there where you are; a bit harder to make a garden, but a lot safer.”

Then he said, “And another thing. This spring has been a watering place for the Aboriginal people for thousands of years, wouldn’t be right to take it. You’ve got the windmill. Suits everyone.” And so it was. That sturdy dependable windmill with it’s no nonsense pumping. In all of her seventy years in that solid simple home, only half a dozen times did the drought drain the water table, empty the big tank and the dams in the paddocks, and then it was a daily walk down to the spring with a bucket to keep her going in the house. Jim never restocked when it was clear that this bunch of stock would be the last to be fattened till the rains came.

In all her years there she was never bothered by the native people. She saw them only occasionally. She respected them; they respected her. Sometimes a neighbour would call to see ‘if she was alright’? She always was. They were good neighbours. Occasionally one of the women would ‘drop in’ for company, and the ever ready ‘cuppa’; sometimes the call from someone for help in an emergency; Mother ill or an accident, all too often serious injury; all the interlocking supportive life of the widely scattered district, but in the main it was herself and Jim, and both were deeply satisfied.

The tiny spring fascinated her, “Where does it come from?” she wondered. “Just out of the earth?”

“Not sure,” said her Jim, “Up North you can see the rivers from the mountains disappear into the sands of the desert. They think there is a huge underground lake. A bit of pressure here and there and it pushes up springs like this. Plenty of settlers put wells down, pretty deep most of them. Some places, like this, the water’s close to the surface. Why I chose this place. This spring never dries out. Even in a bad drought they get water here; sometimes they might have to dig a soak, go down a few feet, but always water. The windmill goes well down into the water table.”

She was to learn, slowly over the years, but with a certainty beyond question, the ageless primitive reality of the words ‘water is life’.

In the vast dry country the lessons are grim. Day after day, sometimes reaching tragically into years, she watched the great flotillas of clouds forming and drifting, rainless over the parched land; come to understand that even the underground waters were daily being sucked up by the relentless sun; that the fragile shield of the land and it’s waters is the forest cover, and watched in shocked disbelief and anger as great stretches of that forest were cleared to make grazing land; sometimes the greater folly of crops, green and gold, but only for the brief good year. Then all too soon, the harsh soil exposed, and reduced to dust and then left to drift into desert. Her mind, conditioned in a culture that nurtured and treasures it’s thin soils, was scarred in those early years, when they lived through the most harsh drought of all her time at Lochellen, and taught her the never forgotten lessons on the constant need to value and conserve water.

She was hurt to the bone to see the deaths without number of animals, all foreign to this soil, this arid country, animals with an ancient heritage of abundant water and lush grasses, dying in their thousands, as the great drought tightened it’s grip on the parched lands, even the tough saltbush and spinifex, native survivors over millennia, now yellow and brittle in the hot blaze, and the dusty soils of those crazy clearings lifting and drifting in vast destructive clouds of dust.

She dreamed of the slow emergence of a vast mountain range rising into the sky, from the edge of the land against the Southern sea, and reaching without a break, icy snowy peaks hard and sharp against the blue sky, and reaching across the continent into the waters of the distant Gulf in the Far North; and in the mornings the sun on the Eastern slopes, the winds heavy with rain against the mountains, filling the streams and the great rivers, draining the Eastern watershed into the plains and the lowlands, now greening with forest, rich with fattening stock, alive with contented men and women; and in the afternoon heat of the day, that same sun lighting the western slopes of the great mountain range, and the rains and the snows and the rivers draining the great Western watershed, and the miracle of the greening of the vast Western plains, and the great cycles of the sun on the sea, and the winds, heavily laden, condensing on the snow covered peaks of the great central backbone of a new land of plenty; but awakened from dreaming to the reality of yet another hot dry day.

He bought her a small ‘lady sized’ shotgun, this for snakes and the even more dangerous rabbit; he made constant improvements to the house; built, a healthy distance from the house, a well fenced yard to contain a brood of chicks; set out, equally well fenced a patch for a vegetable and flower garden, with lemon and orange trees; taught her the value of humus in the hard washed out soil. Plenty of straw for the chooks, and when it’s broken down, used as a deep mulch round your fruit trees; all the house wastes returned to the soil, and warned her, that despite the netting, the snakes would get in.

So, she was never lonely in the little oasis they were creating, and was glad, when, during one of those wonderful nights, she was able to tell him that she was pregnant.

Jim would not hear of her waiting her time out without help, and engaged an half caste aboriginal woman whom Janie knew and liked from her occasional visits to town; those trips when Jim had a mob at the saleyards. Aranta was a capable young woman, though with a different feeling for time as had Janie. The women managed well together, and she was surprised at the ease with which Aranta changed direction and attitudes with her. In town, Aranta had lived mainly the free and easy native style; here the young woman adapted quickly without conscious intention or guile, becoming a good companion, and in time a close friend.

Then, one never to be forgotten day, Jim was asked to give a mate a hand, taking a mob up north. “I’ll only be gone a week or so; you take care darling.”

She never saw him again.

The usual week or so of absence dragged into months, the months into years; long years of hope deferred and the fears and pain of the ultimate acceptance.

The child was born in the house with the solicitous support of her friend, and Janie was soon about again. The baby a boy. She named him Jim after the sorely missed father; she has never met Jim’s people; he had spoken of them only once when she asked about them. Jim’s usually pleasant face had clouded. He said, “It’s a long story. You wouldn’t like it.” But he had held her tightly then, and she guessed that perhaps they, as had her own father, might have had other plans for the marriage partner of their son. It was clear from his attitudes; his respect for women, and the high level of competence he showed that he had come from a good home, and from odd comments she believed his home to be ‘Up North; in the Territory. Thousands of miles away’.

She soldiered on, caring for the farm as he had taught her; Aranta the good companion; teaching the boy their way of life, to read and write, and years too late for him to be interested, sending him off to the little school now started in the district. He disliked school intensely, preferring to help around the farm, and so grew up, as did so many bush children of those times as a hard working, practical young man, good looking, as was his Dad, and with few literary skills, a lack he rarely, if ever found to be any disadvantage.

For seven long years, Janie asked at every opportunity after her Jim, always believing him to be dead, never, for a moment thinking that he might have deserted her. Then, one day at the market, she heard. “Yair, Jim Henderson. I remember him. A young feller, Yair, a steer got him. My word, sorry, You his missus. They was bringing a mob down outer the Channel country. Up North of here. Yair, he’s up there somewhere. Bulloo Downs I reckon, try up there. Might pay to go East a bit from here, Roads better that way.” She found the mans name was Dave Stevens, and where he lived, in case her search failed.

So with young Jim and confident that Aranta would manage reasonably well she set off, walking in the moonlight, or no moon, only in the hours about dawn and sunset, on a journey of nearly five hundred miles, stores in the trap and money for a change of horse and supplies as they passed through the tiny settlements on the way. She walked at the horse’s head, the boy with her a good traveller, alert to everything on the road, till he tired, when she lifted him into the trap to sleep; in the heat of the day sought out shade, often at the side of water, and slept. The rough road lay through low rolling foothills to the mountain range, and the streams were many and the country good, and had nothing to fear from either man nor beast through the entire journey.

Travelling East had indeed brought her on to the through road linking Milparinka, Tiboburra, then Warri Warri on the border; at these places she was able to replenish her stores, rest her horse, enjoy better meals, a bath for both, and a couple of days rest, for she well knew that there would be no warm welcoming arms for her at journey’s end; no loving reunion at Bulloo.

They were well received at the homestead. “My, what a journey, and the boy, my you are a brave little man.” And for Janie the long look, the understanding in the eyes, the warm welcome the quiet sympathy over the tragic little story. Later when they showed her the grave, he was not alone. Several others were there and she found it in her self to wonder if the other wives, the other mothers would like to know where their sons and lovers were laid. They left her with young Jim at the grave side but there were no tears. Janie had long since past tears. She had learned the corrosion of nurtured grief, and shunned it now. To the lad with her, the silent mother was little different from the mother he has always known. He was well acquainted with that sadness, though not knowing the emotions which lay behind it, so he helped her with the small task of tidying the little plot; heard without sadness that it was his fathers grave, for this simple assurance gave him some satisfaction. He well knew that other people had fathers, and had more than once asked if he too had a father, and where was he and was rarely satisfied with Janie’s own unsatisfied, “I don’t know, darling. All I can tell you is that he went droving, and he hasn’t come home yet.”

They stayed for ten days at the pressing invitation of the lady of the house, desperate for the companionship, eager ‘to build you up for your return journey’, avid for news of the little towns on the way, eager for talk of her family, horrified at her home leaving, eager to talk of her Jim, of Aranta, of the tiny farm, and of Jim’s policies. “Really. Why you’re doing better than we are, and on such a tiny place.”

Thus rested and well supplied they returned home, safely, as she had never doubted that they would.

Back at home she asked no help, other than that of Aranta, only too willing to stay with her. Young Jim grew quickly into the life of the farm. He had his fathers good looks was bright eyed and quick to learn and as he matured became the capable enduring man that his father had been, and the source of great pleasure to Janie, and an eagerly sought after partner at the local dances. Young Jim stayed with her until Nature, garbed as a fresh faced and attractive young woman, started to appear at those dances. However, unlike Janie, who was resolute to be partner only for that dance, the newcomer most decidedly had deeper interests. That first eye to eye contact, electric and compelling, was not to be denied. Young Jim Henderson, handsome, alert, capable, with a local reputation as a ‘good bloke, looks after his Mum, keeps a good place’, was her only choice, and she his. As Janie thought, rather sadly, ‘like father, like son’. Margaret did not ever want to go with him to live with Janie, though she loved the delightful shaded oasis they have created in their corner of the foothills. She has an excellent job as cook-housekeeper at one of the big stations, and, incidentally, loved to tell the story of getting that job.

Passing through Walhalla one day, window shopping whilst waiting for a friend, she spotted the notice reproduced here. She said to her companion, “They want a lot in one woman, don’t they; but I think I could match up.” Another woman, reading the same notice, said, “Well. Could you really? That’s not our notice, but I’m in town looking for a cook for the station. Are you really a good cook? Are you looking for work?” Margaret gave the woman a smile, saying, “I’m not sure about all those requirements, but given a bit of leeway, I think I could satisfy. I don’t know about corruption. I havn’t really been tested on that.” The woman returned the smile, “I think you might satisfy us, we’re reasonable people. Would you come out for a month or so and give it a try?”

Margaret went. Was satisfied and found satisfactory, became ex officio, a member of the family and spent her working life with them.

Thus Jim Henderson, with some regret at the thought of leaving his Mum on her own, left home; but he left with a blessing from his Mother and went with his new wife and worked as carpenter cum storeman and maintenance man on the station, higher wages and better conditions, largely because of Margaret’s status in the family.

Janie heard, a year or so later, of the safe birth of their baby, Jim Henderson the third. A short five years later, his father was struck with infantile paralysis, and after a long and terrible illness, died; the women devastated, Margaret supported by the family, Janie by Aranta, and the demands of the farm. In the harsh reality of the outback, life is a precarious thing, all too easily lost, and the times for grieving are quickly submerged by the ever pressing needs of the daily round.

Margaret, busy at the house, increasingly left young Jim to fend for himself through the day.

This never a problem to the boy, who slipped easily into the life of the few Aboriginal children at the stockmen’s quarters; this in a rather different way a reasonable education, although less than satisfactory to Janie, who when she became aware of the state of affairs, promptly came to an arrangement with Margaret, to take the boy to Lochellen, ‘for his own good’. Margaret, at her wits end to keep an eye on him, agreed and so young Jim, the main male character in this story, went to live with his grandmother, to be influenced and moulded by her in a very different tradition.

As with thousands of children in the vast open spaces of the outback there was little opportunity for conventional schooling. His mother, in her scant free hours. gave him some slow competence in reading and writing. The Aboriginal children with whom he shared his happy childhood, shared also their expertise in reading the more intricate life of the flora and fauna of their surroundings, taught him something of their ancient culture, some insights into their way of thinking; so it was an utterly new life for young Jim in the shaded quiet life with his grandmother and Aranta, at Lochellen Farm. He adapted well, easily, quickly in the new routines, and by the time he entered his teen years, was literally the ‘man about the house,’ with much the same abilities and values as the long gone and unknown grandfather; the same enduring qualities as the grandmother. He grew up with the developing technologies of electricity, and the enormous impetus which that source of power brought to the outback; became an excellent hand at ‘bush’ carpentry, and an all round ‘good keen man’ never short of work, never ever having to ‘hump his bluey’ in search of work and the means to just keep alive, the fate of so many young men of his generation.

Although he rarely worked as a stockman, this was sometimes necessary. It was on one such long drive that Lady Luck smiled on him and he dug his way into his El Dorado. She stayed with him, a fortunate man, for only months later, he was caught by that flashing eye, that look of instant recognition, and Julie came into his life. Julie was a squatters daughter, and told him bluntly, “That if you want me, you will have to get a job in town.” Julie knew all too well the trials of women in the country, and even though she loved the country, the quiet life, the dawns and sunsets, the wonderful silences, she did not want the long hours of absences, the days stretching into weeks; the uncertainties, the privations. She wanted a more settled life, the opportunity to have her family, not so much in comfort, as in safety; and because the changing times were making such a life possible for many, Jim agreed with her. At that time she had no knowledge of his access to the gold, that was his secret until his first trip out as a married man, and understandably he wished to surprise her. All his life he remembered her in that hot afternoon sunshine, the air still about them, and she silent, quiet, staring at the first few nuggets in her hand, he leaning on his shovel, watching her face, her reactions. All too clearly Julie realized the implications for her, for them. She looked from the gold treasure in her hand, looked at her man, and burst into tears. So the home they built out of Wexford, was comfortably adequate; and although they could have lived off the gold, he preferred the undoubted pleasure of having constructive work to do and raised quarter horses for the still existing market in the country.

Janie refused several times their invitation to ‘sell the farm and come and live with us in town’. Even after Aranta died and was buried in the shade of the trees she loved, and Janie realized that she too was growing old, she preferred to remain in the simple lovely home that her Jim had built. It was the same with his own mother. She too preferred to remain with the extended family she had so long been a member.

Then one day Janie heard with horror that Jim had been called up and posted to New Guinea, then on to the already well known Kakoda Trail where so many had already died, fighting more for life than for country; then learned that he had been invalided home, though severely wounded. Learned also with some surprise that Jim, somehow, had ‘come into some money’ and would be alright.

Then Janie Henderson, far from the far islands of the Hebrides, died, alone but never lonely, for loneliness is of the spirit, and in the great open plains of outback Australia with it’s so distant neighbours, Janie and thousands of women like her are the real living heart of that great loneliness. The machines and the new technologies creeping in are aids indeed, but in no way defeat the lone days and nights, the days that lengthen into weeks, the weeks into months, waiting for the man to return, for the children in the city to come home, for the mailman to bring a letter.

They sold her farm to a young couple, the wife delighted with the trees and the garden, the chooks; the husband with the simple but adequate routines.

The rest of Jim Henderson's story is told elsewhere, and not the least amongst the regrets and disappointments is the simple fact that he had no son. They called the daughter Janice, after the grand old lady; Janice also would have liked a brother, but New Guinea and the jungle virus that invaded his system and finally killed him, also made a brother impossible.

When the inevitable end came he sought no relief in the vast hospital systems of the cities; had no desire for the senseless prolongation of life with mechanical aids; knew well that death was inevitable and a kindly release from the burden of disease, a welcome release from the terrible burden of guilt from the theft of the child.

He had watched over his daughter with all the care and compassion at his command; had nursed her through black despair, through fear and guilt, those deadly enemies of both body and spirit, and knew as he passed away, that she was now strong in her self confidence; strong in her conviction that she was destined to have. The child was happy that Julieanne was both safe and supremely happy with her, and died deeply satisfied that Janie was beside him, her hand on his.

The Lawyer

There is in Sydney a lawyer; many, as in the way of cities, for ‘where the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered’. There was nothing remarkable about this one, a standard run of the mill lawyer, mentally bound by his training and the unwritten rules of his professional trade union, which, whilst rigorously protecting him, also gave him a very comfortable living. The simple story of the old man and his daughter with their heavy burden of guilt and fear, balanced and justified by their joy and pleasure in the care of a stolen child, secure in their unknown home, somewhere south of the ‘Black Stump’, had intrigued him.

“Justice,” he said to himself, “As well as the Fates, are ancient old women, not at all related to the blind Goddess we worship as the law.”

As for the two he was reading about, it shouldn’t be too difficult to check them out. The attempt at secrecy intrigued him. Anonymous writers are very soon sussed out. The story is just a yarn, there’s no doubt the dingo took the baby, but the little sub story about the gold; that has a different ring. Just too good to be a yarn, for he knew from experience that more than one miner sold his gold over the counter. Well known that the old miners never declared all their finds; just enough to keep the inspectors happy. This chap was just thumbing his nose at the taxman. Much too good a story not to be true.

He was, as he well knew, tainted, as are so many of us, with the ancient lust for gold, and he could smell it here, richly stimulating.

He recalled that no less a genius than the redoubtable George Bernard Shaw once said, “I am myself, labeled liar, coward, thief and so on,” and added, “So is everyone else.” Then qualified the remark by adding, “And it is my deliberate, self respecting and cheerful intention to continue to the end of my life, deceiving people, avoiding danger, and indulging my appetites whenever circumstances commend such actions to my judgement.”

“Well,” he said to himself, “Sharing illegal gold with Jim Henderson commends itself to my judgement.”

He loved gold; gold for it’s own beautiful sake. In his office safe he kept a very respectable collection of gold coins. Gold sovereigns in beautiful tooled leather cases; a complete collection of English sovereigns, the issues spanning the reigns of four monarchs. Most of them in what the dealers call excellent condition. In slightly larger cases was a collection of American Eagles. Adding lustre to the collection and obtained over his more affluent years were Liberty Heads in both the ten and twenty dollar coins; with them some St. Gaudens, a lovely coin, reputed to be the most beautiful coin ever minted. He cherished a first grade ten dollar Indian Head, enjoying the magnificent strongly designed head of the Indian chief, as much as the value of the coin. None of his pieces were special rarities, but for all that, his collection of English and American gold was of great intrinsic value to him, giving many hours of contented enjoyment. Beside these much admired coins he had a more generalised collection of the issues of the Perth Mint, including a full range of the Kangaroo nuggets; the usual range of Kruger Rands, Canadian Maple Leafs, together with a gathering of Mexican Spanish and Dutch and other miscellaneous items. Gold, after all said and done, is gold, and he bought almost anything that came to his notice.

Of all his holdings, that which he most treasured, really enjoyed handling was a small chamois sack containing a dozen or so alluvial gold nuggets. Red gold, yellow gold, and pale yellow gold, straw coloured, near to white, a beautiful collection, gathered over many years and known only to himself.

As he pondered the story, he speculated on the gold, the nuggets, their beautiful colour the strange weight, the primitive joy of possession, and decided that from the story, gold nuggets deliberately mentioned; the fellow was surely boasting about his gold, and that there’s the possibility of a decent sized nugget, somewhere in the background; if and when I catch with this lucky man, we can have a serious talk about gold. He dreamed, as do all those infected with the love of gold, of one day, that wonderful day dreamed of by all the world, the day when our dreams come true; that he might have a really big piece; he knew that it could not be smoothly rounded, all it’s edges worn smooth with thousands of years being washed by the waters of some river; like the precious pieces in his hands; the big pieces are always new, more or less; craggy, with bits of quartz or ironstone or crystals of fools gold; a bit brassy against the real thing; always a bit of mother country showing, and here was this fellow boasting of an unregistered claim and all alluvial; I suppose it’s possible that he too has a little collection of the very best nuggets he’s found. wonder what colour his gold is.

Let’s see now. Coffee house in Cairns. Should be easy enough to verify that. Gold buyer in Cairns. That too; Gold buyer, Brisbane; another, right here in Sydney. All sales in cash, over the counter. I can get him on tax.

He called his receptionist, “Please check the Cairns telephone directory. Is there a Cairns Coast Roast Coffee shop?” Then Brisbane; leave that till later. If the story is true, I could well have the information by then. Then the Queen Vic Building. His receptionist came in and placed a slip of paper on his desk. It read; Cairns Coast Roast Coffee Shop, Lake St Cairns. Phone…….

Now, that was interesting. So much for all the talk of anonymity I wonder why?

He smiled, certain that he was on to something. Smelling gold again he decided to go to Cairns, well aware that his interest was not justice, but gold, not even money, but gold.

He was a lawyer. He knew from long experience, enough about his fellow men to know that many were fools, and most foolish, if not quite fools; that everyone lied when hard enough pressed, even about little things of no consequence; that some are congenital liars, and that many lies are just a proclivity to hyperbole, inexactitudes, evasions, petty escapes. He knew that most people were compassionate and humane, but that the smell of money could change even these into greedy opportunists. He never ceased to be moved by examples of selfless devotion, and by that most powerful emotion which we call love, but is all too often brutalized and reduced to plain loveless sex. His professional experience, the day to day exposure to life in life’s more ugly aspects had made him unduly guarded, for there is much more of good amongst us than bad, but some weak trait made him ever suspicious. This is quickly felt and resented by women, and as a result he had never married; never had a really enjoyable love affair, and was now a dry unemotional man, with no real friends, just professional acquaintances and the rather detached members of his family. He had been in practice long enough to be comfortably wealthy; had never been tempted to spend good money on expensive chambers in the CBD. His little suite in the suburbs has provided all the space necessary to serve a good clientele. Lawyers don’t need to advertise, when people need them they quickly find them. He had never considered a partnership, notoriously difficult, and so he has prospered. He did not own a motorcar, taxi’s were quite adequate to his few needs for transport; an intelligent man of simple tastes, single and absorbed in his professional work and it’s devious intricacies.

He read the story again with the verified existence of the coffee shop in mind. He reasoned, this first story is true, or partly so; it is to give substance to the second story which is sheer romance. Fate doesn’t work that way, but why pick so volatile a subject? That will stir a few tantrums. He was well read and he had, as so many others taken an interest in the Chamberlain case when it exploded into the Australian psyche so long ago.

From the unhappy beginning he had seen the untenable flaws in the prosecution, had clearly understood the undisclosed powers so determined to ensure conviction; had wondered appalled with many others at unlimited use of public money to secure that conviction, the unsustainable ‘scientific’ evidence to distort obvious truth, and had felt a decided relief when in the long extended end, an impartial juror had reviewed and then discarded so much of the painfully contrived evidence and found as had the first coroner, and was glad that justice was at last vindicated and was personally pleased that the profession had justified itself.

However, it seemed a safe assumption that the old fellow sold gold, and, by Jove, he got it for nothing. “Me, or the taxman,” he said, “The rest of the journey may be harder to follow, but it’s well worth following.”

So he had his receptionist book him an open ended flight to Cairns, his first ever flight in an aeroplane; and an interesting search at the end, and hopefully a very profitable one. A few inquiries would soon show if he was on to a sure thing.

He travelled business class, and because it was his first flight, enjoyed the experience immensely. Once off the ground, he enjoyed the impersonal friendliness of the hostess, the cheerful competence of the crew, the freedom of movement, for he had imagined the seating to be crowded and uncomfortable, and he felt, as the airline planners had hoped he would, that he was receiving both good service and good value for his money. He had to change planes at Brisbane, and spend an hour or so there. The huge modern airport fascinated him; the moving walkway a small marvel, the flow of bright animated faces, people obviously going somewhere, so different from the worried looking flow in the city; it seemed a totally different world inside the huge building. As he settled at one of the big observation windows, the huge machines, the sustained roar of the engines filled him with a simple pleasure he had not felt since as a boy, he stood on the overhead bridge at Strathmore, watching the trains roaring by. Then, in another of those wonderful planes, to Cairns.

He took a taxi into the city and was pleasantly surprised at the close proximity to the airport. The fresh tree lined streets such a pleasure compared with the tiring journey to the Sydney airport; the suburbs do nothing for the city there; and was again surprised ant the size and modern crispness of the city, The lush beauty of the tropical growth in almost every street a revelation. In his generalised opinion Queensland was another country, tropical, and either in flood or on fire, drought stricken, humid, and barely civilised, and mostly all at the same time. The reality was a modern, beautifully green city. The taxi took him directly to the coffee shop.

“Yes.” The driver knew it.

“Yes, Cairns is growing, great place to live, but getting too big if you ask me.”

“You on holiday?”

“No, business.”

“Best of luck then.” And left him at the door.

He waited, examining the display cabinets until the counter was clear, and introduced himself as rehearsed. “Good morning, I am a lawyer. I am hoping to obtain information about a writer. He mentioned your shop in a story. Favourably.” He added quickly.

The owner interrupted him, “Yes that’s right. He sent me a copy of it. I gave my consent. A good yarn. Time someone did something for the Chamberlains. He used to come in here. What about it? Nothing wrong, I hope.”

“No. A small matter of some benefit to him.”

“Sorry, all I know is he used to come into the shop sometimes. Why don’t you try his publisher?”

“Good question. We thought that he probably lived in Cairns, and in any case his name might well be a pseudonym. It’s rather a controversial story. Already causing some comment.”

“That’s his name alright. Here, look at this.”

He reached over the counter and picked up a small picture frame. In it a verse, ‘The ambiance of coffee’.

The lawyer read it. A pleasant sonnet on the gift of coffee to the world. It was signed. No doubt about it, this is the name. Shocked somewhat, the lawyer thought; impossible. He quite deliberately said he would write the story anonymously. Why. Why this?

He restrained his surprise. “That’s open enough.” he said, “I wonder if you can remember a companion. Another oldish chap. Both well into their sixties I imagine.”

He could feel a stiffening in the man’s attitude. Too many questions. So he lied. “I am interested because one of my clients feels he needs support and has left a generous sum with us for his sole use.”

“I imagine he could well use that.” said the owner of the shop, “We see all kinds in here; they didn’t look all that wealthy to me.” He indicated the occupied tables with a wave of his hand. “We get a good crowd in here. Plenty of money walks in that doorway. “But the old fellows, always neat, but pretty much run of the mill.”

“Does he live in Cairns, do you know?”

“I wouldn’t think so, only saw them over a few weeks. We’d see more of them if they lived here. They mentioned New Zealand once. Try the telephone book.” He ordered a coffee and a couple of crisp home made biscuits, and sat inside the shop. Warm outside. That was one fact verified, or was it a deliberately contrived ‘proof’ of an assumed name? A double blind?

All men are liars, he thought, recalling his own lie to the coffee vendor. Good coffee, nothing like good coffee, and wondered if the girls in the office could manage a decent machine; brew the stuff properly. Seems a pity to put up with that instant stuff when we could have better. Too often have to tell another lie to support the first. Most are only little perversions, little half truths, sometimes white lies, sometimes deliberate whoppers, sometimes desperate necessities, and the political ones the most devious.

He recalled a client who told him, “Truth is a philosophers fancy; survival is the reality.” A Greek client who said, “Truth only curdles the milk.” In practise, only what can be proved is the truth, and he thought of Francis Bacon, and his bitter, “What is truth? asked jesting Pilate, and would not stop for an answer.”

They call it CPI he thought, really it’s the price of keeping a family going; they call it unemployment but really it’s the inability to support that family; we call it justice, really it’s only the law, society is people; stories are only tarted up yarns, but gold is gold, and the practical realities associated with that thought, awakened him from his reverie, well pleased with his first day in Cairns. The man in the coffee shop was right, the publisher was the obvious first call. He had dismissed such a move as being too risky after the Darville affair. They would be wary of pseudonym, and enquiries about authors. Would almost certainly want to protect an author from any probing lawyer. His mind ran on Henry Handel Richardson, those Victorian ladies Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell, George Sand and Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain and Lewis Carrol and Dr. Seuss and dozens of others, all fancy names, and what’s wrong with them? But this fellow? Makes a point of telling us that he’s writing under an assumed name, then using his own. What is he up to? Surely a bit risky after the Darville affair.

So one of the old fellows went home; to New Zealand, or was it both of them? But using his own name? Perhaps he was scared stiff after the Darville row? But does it matter? They certainly were here, in Cairns. That much is true, how much else? So he enjoyed his coffee, asked the way to the Casino, “Down there. You can see the dome from here.” He walked into the hot sunshine, toward the waterfront, the domed roof of the Casino in view.

Inside the building he stared in shocked disbelief; the huge gaming room with it’s rows of glittering machines, it’s El Dorado’s, King Solomon's Mines, Sheba's Treasure Chests, Lady Luck, Lady Bountiful, and a hundred other deceitfully attractive names, with their promises of rivers of gold; gaming tables, the boutique bars, Kino bars, with their generous jackpot promises, the Great Wheel of Fortune; and not a hundred people in the place. The beautiful opalescent ceiling, the lovely moulded glass paneling, beautiful timber work, all designed for the pleasure of thousands, and, he thought, the coffee shop more busy. Just for luck he put a couple of dollars into the nearest game machine. Once again his luck was in. Within a few minutes his two dollars was four, so he took the money and left while he was still ahead, well aware that was the only way to make money gambling. He walked upstairs and spent a pleasant half hour in the beautiful rainforest garden on the roof, vastly intrigued with the waterfalls and streams all skillfully contoured on the roof of the building. Good workmanship is always admirable. He thought it a pity so fine a place was not better patronised.

That evening he listed the goldsmiths and jewellers in the telephone directory. Less than half a dozen, discounting the couple of dozen retail jewellers and opal houses, and retired, reasonably content with the day.

The morrow was Saturday, in Cairns, for visitors and residents alike, Saturday means Rusty’s Markets. Rusty himself will be there. For the lawyer, fresh from his sheltered restricted life in Sydney. The place was an exotic adventure. Though living in Sydney, he had never been to Paddy’s Market or to any of the other great markets in the region. The local shopping centre supplies most of his modest needs; usually his sister, who keeps house for him does most of the shopping. Never has he experienced so much warm friendly activity; the attractively laden fruit and vegetable stalls were a visual delight, many of the fruits being quite unknown to him; carambola, lychees, guava, mangosteens, durian, rowlina, rambutan, sapote, breadfruit, soursops, all new to him as were many of the vegetables; he saw for the first time ten varieties of tomato, most bush ripened, and wondered yet again about the hard tasteless tomatoes offered back home; then stood fascinated before a plain steel table, displaying thousands of dollars worth of opal jewellery, ‘All my own work’; and to his own surprise took an inviting smile from the tall redhead offering a neck massage, enjoyed the novelty of the experience, and wondered if he could get the same kind of thing in Sydney. The redhead was sure that he could.

Later he drew in his breath, sharply. Here was a working goldsmith, and amongst the small display box’s on that plain steel table at Rusty’s, pins and brooches, all featuring small beautiful alluvial gold nuggets. No ornate shop here, choked with plate glass, dazzling lights and mirrors, just the honest simple work, and a book of photographs showing the miner, the man himself, slaving away at the job in a seeming desolate wilderness, swirling the gold dish in a 44 gallon drum of water ‘worth it’s weight in gold’ out there; and the prices. Without thinking he had imagined the prices to be at the same level as the prices on the fruit and veges.

As he watched, fascinated, a group of chattering Japanese youngsters, all apparently on honeymoon, surrounded the stall and he witnessed an interesting exercise in bargaining, of desire stimulated then satisfied; gold has it’s fatal attraction all over the world, every race and people. After much talk, the broken English spoken with eyes and smiles, and the vendor using much the same universal language, the ladies had chosen, the men demonstrated their worth, the group edged away, well satisfied.

"That was interesting.” He said, noting that the goldsmith had, on his part, noticed him on the edge of the group.

“Yes,” came the reply. “Third time they’ve been here. Heard of me in Kyoto, they said, had a good look, and been round town comparing prices. I notice you’re interested.”

This was an invitation to trade, but it gave him a lead into his own needs. “Yes, everyone’s interested in gold. I see you get your own.”

“Yes. Got a claim back country.” Then Lady Luck smiled at him again, sweetly, right here in Rusty’s. The man said, “Some of the diggers come in with their stuff. Good market for alluvial gold.”

He indicated a dozen or so of the pins, plain pins but each capped with a small alluvial nugget.

“Like these.” he said, and the dealer nodded. He thought of his own precious collection of nuggets. “Gold often has very interesting colour,” he said, “Do you have anything different on hand?”

“Always.” said the dealer with a smile, and from under his counter produced a small bag, and rolled on to the square of black velvet several nuggets of an astonishing and lovely light auburn colour. “Colour of a woman's hair,” he said proudly. “Interested?”

He was, intensely, and selected a thousand dollars worth, the largest of the handful.

“Cash, no cheques.” said the dealer.

He nodded, said, “Don’t let it go; I’ll have to get the money. Any ATM’s round here?”

He could draw only $500 from the ATM, but this allowed him to complete his purchase, his best ever gold deal. He then produced his card.

“I’m looking for an old miner, not a local, from down South; one of his friends has left him a small legacy; an old soldier, fought in New Guinea. All we know of him is he came up to Cairns every couple of years or so with gold. He had a claim down South somewhere. Another of his old wartime mates is a goldsmith up here.”

“Oh yes, that’ll be old Jim. Dad used to buy from an old mate. They stick together these old boys. A real brotherhood.”

The lawyer felt his blood rush. He knew he was right. There’s gold at the end of this road. “You know his name, of course?”

“Sorry, mate not me, he always talked with Dad. I only knew him as Jim.”

“What about your Dad. Could I have a yarn with him?”

“Sorry, Dad’s gone, just after Jim's last visit. I suppose Jim’s gone too.”

“Well, we don’t know. He would be about the same age as your Dad.”

“What about notes, invoices, receipts?”

“Sorry again mate, Dad did all the business. I expect all cash; no names, no packdrill.”

He nodded glumly. So near; so far. But it was a dead end, he smiled at the unintended pun; and wondered at the soldiers phrase ‘no names, no packdrill’. Just like this sale. He had heard the phrase several times in his practice, always with something to hide.

The man was not busy, so he tried again

“Well, thanks for your help. May I leave my card? If you do find a reference to the old chap, perhaps you could let me know. I begin to suspect that he too is gone. It’s for his benefit. Do you know if he supplied any of the other goldsmiths?”

“I wouldn’t think so. Dad would take all that he had. If you do meet up with him tell him Geoff’s running the business, and will be glad to take anything he’s got to sell. Here, you take my card,” and offered his hand and it was goodbye.

Yet another small group of Japanese honeymooners were being shown the delights of the stall. Clearly business was good and he reflected, Jim Henderson’s gold would be well appreciated here; always another crop of honeymooners ripening. He tried the next two goldsmiths on his list, but the instant suspicion his inquiry aroused made the job distasteful to him. Despite his professional acceptance of lying, the practice of the deceit was offensive to him, so he stopped his search, confident that the story of the gold was well and truly confirmed, and well content with the beautiful red gold nugget in his pocket.

Once again the thought crossed his mind that confirmation of the first half of the story had been made relatively easy for the sole purpose of giving credence to the real story, that compelling second half, and wondered again about the Chamberlain trial. That was someone else’s business, he was after gold. So he allowed himself a very pleasant Sunday in Cairns. The weather was a treat, ‘another perfect day in paradise’, the locals say. He spent the morning at Rusty’s, nodded cheerfully at the redhead, and to his surprise shouted himself a neck massage at her hands. She told him that her name is Marylyn, and she is here every weekend.

He later took a taxi to The Pier, “The long way round, please,” he told the driver, “See something of Cairns.”

The long way round took him out to Holloways Beach, through development he did not see in Sydney, and he had a well informed driver. Finishing the trip with a slow run along the Esplanade, where he saw pelicans for the first time, then a light lunch on the wide veranda overlooking Trinity Inlet, busy with watercraft; pored over the glassblowers intricate work, examined yet another goldsmith cum miner’s skills, but only yellow gold there and the equally good work of a score of other craft people. Then back to his hotel, altogether a good time well spent.

Back to Sydney and the comforts of his own home.

In Sydney that same week, his first inquiry in the beautiful Queen Victoria Building struck gold, but he was made to wonder at the fate which appeared to be guarding his quarry, “Yes, I know him well. What do you want of him?”

This a clear statement. ‘If it doesn’t suit me to answer, that’s it’.

So he produced his card and told his little lie. “Nothing wrong in any way. I am a lawyer, and one of his old war mates has left him a small bequest. Neither he nor any family are at the last address we have. They seem to move about a bit.”

“That sounds like an old friend of Dad’s. Used to drop in for a yarn when he was in town. Dad bought gold from him. No, I havn’t done business with him. Dad always handled that. It was always cash, no cheques. No names, no packdrill. A gentleman’s deal.”

A little old lady, seated in an alcove behind the counter with it’s ornate jewellery, so different from the effective plainness of Rusty’s market; the man’s mother, he decided came to the counter. A trim looking woman, pink rinse, well groomed, and he thought, as sharp as a needle. The son said, “You would remember him Mother?”

“You’re talking about Julie Henderson’s husband, Jim. Julie and I were at school together. A little country school. Mrs. Wilson ran if for some years before the place was big enough for the Government to start a proper one, I knew Julie well they had a daughter, Jim ran a few horses. I think Julie’s dead now her daughter Janie lost her husband just after her mother died. It must have been a terrible year for the poor child. Then she had the baby premature. A very bad year. Yes, it’s all of fifteen years since Julie died. She wasn’t much more than a child.; I met her in Grace Bros. A few years ago. She had a new man with her. I never heard his name. He had a little boy and she had the little premature one with her. She’s a lovely looking child. You’d never believe she was born so early. They’re often a bit peaky. Janie seemed very worried about something, said things were not going right. I didn’t question her, she was very upset. I didn’t have time to ask after Jim, but he’s all right, he’s been in once or twice on business. He was always very good on prices, I think his little claim was very good.”

“Do you remember where they lived?” He asked, thinking a direct question would be easier than working through the lady’s memory.

“Oh, yes. I think Jim went to live with Janie when Julie died. I think it was No 7 Eccles St. No, someone else lived there, Julie lived at No 14. Janie lived out a bit. They had a big block. I don’t remember the number.”

“They had a couple of horses there. He was wounded in New Guinea. Jim came into some good money just before they married. He was brought up by his grandmother, a real pioneer woman.”

“Do you recall the town where they lived?”

“Of course. It was Wexford. Well out in the country They were all good country people, they never lived in the city. I lost contact with Julie when I married and came to live in Sydney. Out back of Bourke somewhere; I suppose that’s where his little gold mine was.”

He thanked her warmly, raised his hat to her as he went, and thinking as he threaded his way through the crowd pouring into the building from the railway station, “Thank God. I’ll have him now.”

Back at the shop the goldsmith, who had watched his Mothers effort with some amusement, said, “A bit talkative Mum. I wouldn’t have told him so much. He’s the bloke Geoff rang about from Cairns. He had his little story off pat. I bet he’s after Jim Henderson’s gold.”

His mother smiled, though not at all amused, “I think so too. What I didn’t tell him is that Jim’s dead, and he’ll never find Janie. That I know, and it will serve him right, waste some more of his time, for I’ve sent him off to Wexford on a useless trip.”

The trip out to Bourke was long tiring and expensive; the taxi ride, some thirty miles to Wexford,