Tears of the Moon - Di Morrissey [34]
Olivia gave them a grateful smile and indicated the food was good. They nodded with satisfaction. They obviously understood how ill-equipped, mentally as well as physically, she was to survive alone here, and for the first time it fleetingly occurred to Olivia that these people were actually playing host in their own land. Was she, Olivia thought, on land already owned?
Her thoughts were pushed aside when the baby began whimpering. Turning away from the men, she went to put it to her breast, then thought how silly it was to be modest when everybody else was virtually naked. So she ignored her feelings and watched the infant suckle greedily.
At sunset they doused the fire, collected their tools and weapons and the women followed the men into the bush. Only the young girl gave Olivia a backward glance.
Olivia realised the smaller smudge fires of the Aborigines had indeed kept the marauding mosquitoes and sandflies at bay, so she copied them and lit two smaller fires from her campfire, putting the same leaves on them. The pungent smoke was effective and Olivia crawled into her rough brush shelter and curled up to sleep with the baby beside her.
In the morning Olivia found she was following a basic routine just as if she was in a house. She took the baby to the sea and cautiously bathed him in the ocean, returning to the camp to sponge off the salt with fresh water. She felt full of energy, delighted in her placid baby and knew in her heart Conrad was on his way. She tidied her camp, found it too hard to identify and unpack whatever container held baby items, so she ripped a petticoat and made diapers and cotton wraps for him. Then, settling the baby in the Aboriginal sling, she set off along the beach. Olivia found she enjoyed the exercise and was amazed at her ability to be up and about after giving birth, rather than languishing in bed sipping consommé as would have been the expected routine in London.
She found some shells, including a magnificent trochus, wiggled her bare feet in the wet sand as she’d seen the tribal women do, and to her delight collected a half dozen small mussel-like shellfish.
When she returned to her camp several men were at the water’s edge setting off on what she assumed was a fishing expedition. One man pushed off in a small dugout wooden canoe while two others balanced precariously on mangrove log rafts. They were carrying nets and spears. One of the men she recognised from the previous evening lifted an arm in acknowledgement and pointed at her shelter. When Olivia reached it she found a curved and smoothed piece of bark with a soft hide lining it and she realised it was meant to be a baby cradle. Delighted with this gift, she lay the baby in it and he rested comfortably, staring trustingly at her. How right the white man she’d encountered on the beach had been in telling her to make friends with these people. She and Conrad had read the writings of early explorers who described the natives as primitive barbarians. While they could be seen as primitive and their lifestyle simplistic compared to the trappings of Olivia’s civilised world, sitting here she began to consider that maybe they had evolved a system which best suited their needs.
She and Conrad were about to travel to what they believed was free territory, a lapsed leasehold bought from the government in Perth. They had a dream of clearing the land, building a home, planting crops, raising livestock. The dream did not include the Aborigines or the vagaries of nature in an alien land. It did not acknowledge the chance of failure or the