Burke and Wills by Peter FitzSimons

Author:Peter FitzSimons [FITZSIMONS, PETER]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780733634093
Publisher: Hachette Australia
Published: 2017-10-31T04:00:00+00:00

As exhausted as he is, Wills’s thoughts turn guiltily to poor Gray. How many times had they looked askance at his shambling gait, his constant insistence on resting, his slowness to get going in the mornings and thought him ‘shamming’. It is with great shame that he realises Gray was simply suffering, two or three weeks earlier, what they are suffering now. How lucky they are, to have been able to get to at least this point, with some fresh supplies, before the worst of it has come upon them. Already they can feel the beginnings of some strength returning to their limbs, some of the stiffening lifting, as their bodies react to taking in something other than dried Billy. It is so sudden and so strong that both Burke and Wills talk of it, how it is ‘a most decided relief and a strength in the legs greater than we had had for several days’34.

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On this night, a wedge-tailed eagle from its position high in the sky might be able to spot several flickering lights in the night, to go with the impossibly sparkling panorama of stars above.

There directly below are the three tightly placed fires of Burke and Wills, and their faithful trooper, King – a fire for each of them is the best way to keep warm on cold nights, each man lightly curls his body around the small corral of flames. Just 14 miles down the path to Menindee is the rather larger and cheerier fire of Brahe and his companions. Another 125 miles away over the Grey Range, is Wright’s party at Bulloo, still stranded there, after several excursions to the north have failed to reveal either Burke’s forward track or any supplies of water. Besides, it is anyone’s guess where they actually are. ‘Wright,’ Dr Beckler would note, ‘had no way of telling whether we were not already on a part of Cooper’s Creek as none of us were able to make astronomical observations – although from all we knew, Cooper’s Creek had to be quite distant from Bulloo.’35

And those other sparkles across the vast wilderness? They are the Yandruwandha people, who have not only survived, but prospered in these parts for something like the last 18,000 years. To them, it is just another night of the Dreamtime or Pukudurnanga. Their bellies are full, in this land where food abounds in this season of plenty. Their families are secure in the gunyahs and among their kin. All is right with the world, as the spirits of the Dreamtime play across the sparkling night sky.

22 April ’61, Koorliatto, portrait of a parlay in black and white

Noises in the night! A chanting in the distance. And there, too, comes the sound of the rhythmic tapping together of heavy wood on wood, even as the haunting, pulsing chant rises and falls.

It sounds … menacing.

Something is going on, and it is more than enough to put the Wright camp at Bulloo on edge, and perhaps even over it.

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