Remembering Babylon Read Free

there as a living marker with all the glow of the white man’s authority about you, reverted to being a creek-bed or ridge of granite like any other, and gave no indication that six hundred miles away, in the Lands Office in Brisbane, this bit of country had a name set against it on a numbered document, and a line drawn that was empowered with all the authority of the Law.
    Most unnerving of all was the knowledge that, just three years back, the very patch of earth you were standing on had itself been on the other side of things, part of the unknown, and might still, for all your coming and going over it, and the sweat you had poured into its acre or two of ploughed earth, have the last of mystery upon it, in jungle brakes between paddocks and ferny places out of the sun. Good reason, that,for stripping it, as soon as you could manage, of every vestige of the native; for ringbarking and clearing and reducing it to what would make it, at last, just a bit like home.
    It was from this standpoint that the little crowd of settlers, drawn together in such an unusual manner at this time of day, faced the black white man the children had brought in.
     
    Little by little, as the afternoon wore on, an explanation came forth – but slowly. They were in no hurry to have things resolved and an occasion ended that offered so much in the way of the marvellous, and was, besides, such fun.
    His name was Jimmy or Gemmy according to how you heard it (by the end of the day they had settled for Gemmy and were thus, in a familiar way, addressing him) and his other name was Fairley or Farrelly. Sixteen years before, when he was not much older than Lachlan Beattie, he had been cast overboard from a passing ship and had been living since in the scrub country to the north with blacks. All of which he made them understand partly with signs, partly with words that he dragged up at need, but in such a distorted form, as he hummed and hooted and shot spittle out of his mouth, and tried to get his tongue around them, that it was the signs their understanding leapt at. Guessing what he intended became a game, and at last, as they eased themselves into the unaccustomed jollity of it, a noisy carnival.
    Occasionally, in the dead light of a paddock, all bandaged stumps and bone-white antlers, there would come a flash of colour, red or blue or yellow, and it would strike a man, but in a disconcerting way, as his heart lifted, that a country that was mostly devilish could also at times be playful; that there might be doors here, hidden as yet, into some lighter world. There was something of that too in the occasion, as, standing in a clump on one side with Jimmy, or Gemmy on the other, they scratched their pates, turned from one to the other, and he signed, mouthed, shook his head at their failure to catch on, till one of their number, quicker than the rest, or more foolhardy, piped up and said: ‘Well I don’t know. Maybe he’s up a ladder. Pickin’ cherries. Or hops – what about hops?’
    The others scoffed. ‘Don’t be daft, Jack, that couldn’t be it. What a noodle! Hark at the ninny! Hops!’
    Amendments were offered, new suggestions made, and at last, after a good deal of argument, they settled on something between the lot of them that made sense.
    ‘A ship! He was a sailor.’
    ‘Something’s got him scared.’
    ‘No, I’ve got it, a fever! He means he was sick.’
    Some of the younger fellows, rowdy youths not easily subdued, were very solemn about it, as if the guessing game was a test. Eager to be right, they vied with one another, got hot under the collar, shouted, and when they were defeated, went mean at the mouth and sulked. Others thought it a fine chance to act the goat.
    Children, whose only experience of such communal get-togethers was Sunday church and the gatherings organised by Mr Frazer, their minister, where their parents, constrained by collars, ties, bonnet strings, buttons, remained stiffly intimidated, were astonished