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| ISBN-13: | 9781742242095 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | UNSW Press |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 376 |
| File size: | 8 MB |
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On Track
Searching Out the Bundian Way
By John Blay
University of New South Wales Press Ltd
Copyright © 2015 John BlayAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74224-740-3
CHAPTER 1
A long walk
When I was young my friends and I used to go bushwalking. It was fun, a few days here, a few days there, just one of those things you do for recreation, until 1982 when I began an extreme walk through the south-eastern coastal ranges. Sometimes I passed many weeks without seeing anyone. The aim was to find how an extended period in wilderness would influence me, and I tried to show this in my book Back Country. But the experience went deep. My eyes began to open. And some of what happened back then is only now beginning to make sense to me.
I couldn't stop there. One year stretched to two. Then another. My journey has continued through the wild countryside of the region and I still can't see it coming to an end. Step by step the walk becomes a meditation, at times more like a pilgrimage. It develops its own rhythms, it sings to me, takes me where I have to go and, for reasons that might become clearer as this walk continues, I feel obliged to follow. But, I must confess, most times I prefer not to take an unnecessary step, even in the course of walking hundreds of kilometres. Maybe I need to feel that each step is special, it's another part of the exploration.
Even when I'm exhausted the excitement of each new pace carries me forward; that keeps me going from day-to-day. I'm never afraid of being lost. I can happily let my feet find their own way through difficult terrain rather than following the line you might draw on a map. This is often what leads me into the Aboriginal connections that have been an essential part of the walking and my journey of discovery. They are everywhere.
Once I had begun searching out the walking route that goes by way of the old Bundian lands, it took some time to realise what was happening to me. Something strange must have been there during my earliest walks. I could call it something of a thrill. A tingle. A special buzz of excitement. Maybe a touch of magic. With time it is more and more recognisable. Then comes an occasion when, in the wild dingo country of Kosciuszko National Park, I realise what it is. My Koori friends figure it is the Bundian Way singing to us. Each of us feel the sensation, whatever it is. It continues, especially in the wilder, most remote country, and, even later, it stays with us through some very difficult times as we work towards official recognition of the route.
I go back to see BJ Cruse in Eden a few days before I start walking, as I have more questions. We sit overlooking the surf of Twofold Bay while I tell him I've read about a place called the Bundian Pass and wonder whether he knows anything about it. Its location? But he just shakes a mop of curly hair that is beginning to whiten round the sides. He listens patiently as I describe my intentions in walking through the national parks of the region while looking for signs of old pathways.
He knows exactly where I am talking about. 'Hmm!' he mutters, squinting at me to check whether I am some kind of crazy man. 'Tough country up there alright.' Emotions play across his face, as I mention the newly declared national park, then comes his wild smile. 'Those national parks don't have anything special to do with us. They run north and south along where nobody else wanted the land. Our people used to go east and west. The way those parks run has got no connection with the old people.' He laughs at the thought of those steep mountainsides, shaking his head. 'Most places there you can't walk. No way.'
'But I reckon there's stuff from the old days still there in the wild country,' I say. 'I've been checking the history, there are places all through, signs, complete pathways even. It's not wasteland. There's a lot more to all that back country than meets the eye, I can tell you that for sure.'
'Yeh, that's right,' he says, a glint in his eyes. 'Old Kooris from Twofold Bay used to walk all the way from here up to the high country. After moths. Them bogongs ...' he pauses. 'They used to feast on 'em. The people came from everywhere, gathered together for the ceremonies and trade. They even played football ... Before the whitefellas caught up with it.' He gestures, showing some AFL moves, before he narrows in on me again. 'No one else'd believe you can still find those routes the old Kooris went, but we know about them. I'll tell you what, you find somewhere like that, I'll come up and walk it with you.'
When I speak with Elders about searching out and mapping one of the old routes and what should be done if its location can be found, we consider the possibility of establishing a public walking route, perhaps even seeking heritage recognition. Ossie Cruse says, 'It's there. It's always been there. We know that, so we don't need recognition.' He pauses, searching the far distance before turning to directly engage me. 'But it could help others understand. What means the most to us is the kinship. It's what connects us Kooris. The way's a symbol. And for the whitefellas, we should do our best to get it recognised.'
When I ask Ossie who owns the pathways, he responds, 'We all do. Or nobody does, unlike the way Europeans own their land, we're custodians of it. We have a responsibility to look after our part for future generations ... You see, we're all one family round here, we're all related. We're proud of what we've got. Sometimes we fight, but we all get on together again afterwards. That's the way things are.'
Then there is the difficult point, how the media focus on the most heart-wrenchingly difficult issues of the Aboriginal Australia – especially from northern parts of the country – and it is as if the Aboriginal people living in south-eastern Australia don't count. In fact, they outnumber those of the north many times over. And while the situation of the local Aboriginal people is downplayed, they are time and again dealt out of the equation, as if invisibility is to be their fate. National Parks have been declared without taking account of Aboriginal interests. Customary work – most recently in the bean-picking, fishing and timber industries – has gone and they seem to have no place in the coming, more high-tech workplaces where, for example, machines clear-fell the forests. It's only too easy to sit back and paint the nation's first people out of the picture. 'They don't fit in anymore,' I'm told by an official who should know better. 'We're in a computer age. The world's moving on.'
Both Ossie and BJ would disagree. Vehemently, I believe. But I don't burden them with it.
We agree that we still have a lot to learn about the countryside and its people. One of my aims in the walk, I say, is to look at our shared history, see how it applies in the countryside. Before I leave, as if in approval of my trek, BJ says how his people were never in the habit of sitting in one spot, they didn't wait for the world to come to them. They used to be able to move on. Find whatever they needed.
In a different world, on top of my historical research, I have to establish an elaborate network of food-drops, water caches and lifts before I can start walking. But one issue that unsettles me is that I still don't exactly know what route I'm going to follow. As the day of departure beckons and I'm feeling stronger pangs of anxiety because I still don't know how far or where I'll be walking from day-to-day, I suddenly think: to hell with it. I'll go in the spirit of the old people.
CHAPTER 2High points
The Geehi Flats appeal to me. They teem with life at this time of year. Trout fishers wade the fast-flowing streams. Campers make themselves at home on the sprawling, flower- studded woodlands, as do many hundreds of kangaroos. The eurabbie and red box eucalypts of the flatlands by the river are loud with birdcalls. At 460-metre elevation, it is a Shangri-La walled in by a line of rocky peaks that rise to a height of 2229 metres and comprise the highest part of the Australian continent. The mountainsides also make an inspiring sight, where a patchwork of forests stand out – the tallest as alpine ash – reducing in height as they approach the subalpine communities of the snowline where ground-hugging alpine species predominate. My eyes scan the daunting walls looking for a way up; there it is! A single long ridge continues all the way to the top. Various huts around the flats were used after World War II to accommodate workers – many of them migrants – for the Snowy Mountains Scheme, whereby the major streams were turned westerly, generating electricity along the way. The signs of earlier occupation by cattlemen are evident, along with the legacy of explorers such as Baron Sir Ferdinand von Mueller who spread blackberry seeds in places like this so they would grow in abundance for those who followed. The old Aboriginal people left more subtle indicators of their occupation.
Today is 16 February. Upstream, away from the campsites, is a hut I want to inspect; a curiosity to mark the start of my walk to the coast. But the signs are not good, maybe. Snow melt and storms have flooded the creek to a chest-high torrent. Keen as I am not to get my clothes and boots wet at the beginning, I detour further upstream looking for a shallower crossing. Of course, midstream, I slip and get soaked anyway. The passage from the creek is blocked by blackberry thickets dense with fruit. Why hurry? I decide my best remedy against the wet and cold is to eat as many blackberries as possible, to pick my way out. An hour later I arrive back at the point across the stream from where I started. The hut, named after a Dr Forbes who used it as a fishing refuge, is as charming and as generally dilapidated as the many other huts of this country that can provide shelter when the weather turns bad. Part cemented riverstones and part weatherboard, it would be a haven with its huge fireplace and improvised furniture. It signals: be alert to the dangers. A strange feeling takes hold of me. The walk, which I thought I had started, has become a dream that moves through time and space randomly, more a meditation on country than its history. I have become an audience for a natural repertory that comes in ancient rhythms, cycles that defy imagining. Time has become irrelevant. Thoughts mingle with place, the landscape is alive calling me forward. But I cannot tell where it will lead.
My clothes begin to dry as I pass beyond any influence of the bustle of the camping areas and thread my way to the track, ominously marked by a line of tall, orange-coloured snow-poles, that leads to Hannels Spur. A sign announces bluntly:
Moira's Flat 6.5 km
Mt Kosciuszko 15.5 km
1800 m ascent
Where it starts to climb steeply, the recent rains have bent trees and shrubs over the track. They hold such a quantity of water in their foliage I'm soon soaking wet again and stay that way the rest of the day. Even though the route goes up and down all the time, it's a reasonably direct way to the top of Australia. By this time after years of explorations in the south-east forests I have found a lightness in my walking. It has become easy, a means to see better, to find out, to know the way of things in my country. This is not to say I desperately need to keep walking, for indeed I am as happy as anyone else to find a shortcut or lift. Walking has become thought. I feel I am in dialogue with nature, I understand it is telling me what I need to know. Unfortunately, my path is not as simple as it appeared from the Geehi Flats. Frequent variations in forest vegetation such as I expected are interesting enough, the scrubs are not. Only too often when the path confronts a wall of the scrub, it splits into byways going in different directions, each of which peters out in the water-laden tangles of leafy bossiaea. This might not sound so bad but the experience is daunting for it grows thick and high. All I can do is choose whichever route seems the easiest and push through as best I can, as often as not resorting to a crawl through its prison-like bars. But so doing in backpacking regalia that includes walking stick, camera and hat, is not an experience I'll look back upon with relish. A few hundred metres later I rediscover the track, so broad and comfortable to walk that it surprises me yet again at how quickly the brain will let go of pain.
There's a very personal side to this part of the walk. I'm looking forward to an extended time to absorb the spirit of the high country, to spend time and get the unique feel of the place. It's something I have experienced before but it all happened so quickly I've been left wondering whether I had really seen those alpine gardens light up, glow, luminesce, shine ... And so in my pack I carry the extra weight of a few weeks' food. It should be enough to buy me all the time I need to find whether that fleeting blissfulness was real, just as it will be a time for refreshment while I gather my strength in preparation to walk that next 285 kilometres through the wild country on my way to the coast. But the eagerness in my steps begins to wane during the long, very testing way up.
Exhaustion hits me just before I stumble upon Moira's Flat, a reasonable camping spot with water only 100 metres away. A sign announces Geehi Flats 6.5 kilometres, Kosciuszko 9 kilometres. The little flat is hemmed in closely by walls of the dreaded scrub. Only a few escape doors are provided. The mistiness thickens. Everything's wet.
This way has links to the old Aboriginal people as an obvious route to the top from the river flats. The cattlemen also started to use it for summer grazing in the late 1800s. In 1930 a newcomer named Hannel was persuaded by an old hand to finance the clearing of a track from the flats to the good summer pasture on top. But his cattle couldn't be persuaded to climb the steepness in the first sections and the route was seldom used. His folly was rewarded by the spur being named in his honour.
In the morning when I lift the tent-fly I'm sitting on, the biggest, most aggressive funnelweb spider dances towards me. It's black and half the size of my fist, fangs dripping poison. Its savage display fascinates me; I back off. Having made a point about being so rudely disturbed, after a while it relaxes, then takes its leave. Further up the track, after I pass the 1600 metre elevation point, the scrub thins somewhat but many trees have fallen over the track. Low-growing snowgums and scrub are a consequence of the terrible 1939 bushfires, which ravaged places on the southerly aspects that are dry enough to burn perhaps once in a lifetime. The snowgum woodlands however would sustain fire every few years, and the old summertime graziers used to burn here whenever possible, firing from the gullies up the hills to get the greatest intensity and heat, with an aim to produce sweeter grass for their cattle, which further trampled and removed the herbaceous groundcovers to bare the soils. After heavy rains the cumulative result was sheet erosion and gully erosion and, later, a 'scrubbing up'. It can take some 40 to 80 years after the earth is scorched for these forms of scrub to die back. Ironically, the withdrawal of cattle grazing after 100 years was another disturbance that resulted in further scrubs.
The only way I can make my way through is to climb and crawl again, which I hate even more than funnelwebs. Traces of the old track, put in by the cattlemen's axes and mattocks, remain. It went straight up whereas this more foot-oriented version winds all over the place. By 1800 metres I can see that far below mist still blankets the Geehi Flats. The flora is now more clearly alpine, lush with billy buttons, dianellas and geraniums. Round midday I arrive at the head of the track and a place known as Byatts Camp, with brilliant views along the Abbott Range. Already the light is infecting me. Everything looks so very beautiful. Sphagnum bogs and the gorgeous new foliage of pineapple-grass lies beside dense low scrubs of mostly alpine shaggy pea. A few cairns stand to mark the way but I distrust them. I have talked with men who claim to have made false cairns and destroyed the proper ones. In the wilderness, they claim, you have to be self-sufficient; we shouldn't 'mark' the landscape. My attitude is it's best to trust my resources and make my own way. I certainly wouldn't like to be following false cairns in a blizzard.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from On Track by John Blay. Copyright © 2015 John Blay. Excerpted by permission of University of New South Wales Press Ltd.
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Table of Contents
Introduction 1
PART 1: THE HIGHER COUNTRY
A long walk 9
High points 13
Moth places 22
The Pilot Wilderness 32
Naming things 42
Cultural matters 48
The Man 58
Byadbo trails 69
Tingaringy and the Howitt country 77
Through the Stockyard 89
PART 2: THE MONARO
Merambego 98
The way to Delegate 104
The Maneroo 114
Economy of the Maneroo 120
NSW Aborigines Protection Board 1884–1942 134
The blankets of Delegate 140
Across the Little Plains 146
Yamfields 154
The Very Reverend WB Clarke 163
Shifting ‘tribes’ 171
PART 3: THE COAST
Coming to Twofold Bay 186
Brierly at Turamullerer 192
Balawan and first appearances 207
Another side 216
Ways through Towamba 226
Master of all he surveys? 237
Scotsmen, rats and lice 242
In the shadow of waratahs 271
Turamullerer: Coming to Bilgalera 277
Afterword 286
Postscript: Keeping on track 293
Notes 295
Notes on terminology 306
Bibliography 313
Index 321