Walkabout - James Vance Marshall [18]
Soon they came to a valley, gently-rising, coiling like a lifeless snake aslant a range of low granite hills. Here the country was heavily timbered: stately white-barked eucalyptus, tatty yellow-jackets, saw-leafed banksias, and occasional patches of sandalwood – source of the incense-shedding joss-sticks that smoulder beneath the images of a million oriental gods. And as the trees increased in number, so did the birds. There hadn’t been many beside the hill-that-had-fallen-out-of-the-moon; but here, in the shade of the eucalyptus, they were in their thousands: gang-gangs and finches; honey-suckers and soldier-birds; budgerigars (love-birds to the romantically-minded; tiny flitting gems of mauve and olive, gold, jade-green, and cobalt-blue); and, perched on the branches of the gum trees, row after row of wonga-wongas: sad-faced, motionless, silent as the desert itself.
After the children had pushed some way into the valley, another type of bird made its presence known: a strange, sorrowful bird that followed their tracks, hopping from branch to branch with piteous, heartrending cries.
‘It isn’t yours,’ he wailed. ‘It isn’t yours.’
The children paused; looked back. At first they could see nothing. Then, with a sudden fluttering swoop, a red-breasted pardalote swept over their heads to settle on the branch of a nearby eucalyptus.
‘It isn’t yours. It isn’t yours.’ The mournful cry echoed among the leaves.
The bush boy turned to Peter, explaining by mime the pardalote’s behaviour. Ahead was water – thirstily the bush boy gulped – where the bird was accustomed to drink; and he was loath to share his private reservoir with strangers. For the pardalote was a bird with an abnormal thirst; he drank eighty to a hundred times a day, and not by the normal process of imbibing through the beak, but by settling himself on top of the water, spreading his wings and absorbing liquid through the delicate membrane of his skin. No wonder he wanted to keep his pool to himself! Yet by his very loquaciousness he guided others straight to the water he sought to hide. The bush boy led on, knowing that should he take a wrong turning the pardalote’s contented silence would warn him of his mistake. And soon they came to a small, fern-ringed basin, fed by an underground spring.
The pardalote, by now, had stopped his wailing. In angry silence he watched the children drinking his water, refreshing themselves at his pool.
It was midday. The sun was hot; and the boys scooped up great palmfuls of water and sloshed them over their heads. Mary too. But she wouldn’t go near the bush boy; and whenever he looked at her, she shrank away.
For lunch they ate the worwora: uncooked.
During the meal Peter tried to comfort his sister: asked her what she was frightened of. But he soon gave up. She was, he decided, in one of her incomprehensible moods. Girls were like that. Sometimes the only thing to do was to leave them alone. He wandered across to the bush boy and lay down beside him, in the shade of an outcrop of rock.
They stayed by the pool for three hours, avoiding the worst of the heat; then the bush boy decided it was time they moved on. Soon they were again on their way, traversing the upper slopes of the gently-sloping valley.
That day they covered fifteen miles. The bush boy could have walked twice as far. But Peter tired easily; and the Aboriginal adjusted his pace accordingly. Also Peter had lost his shoes – had left them together with his shirt somewhere beside the billabongs – and his feet, unused to hard going, had started to blister.
Late in the evening they came to the head of the valley, to where it petered out on the edge of a million-acre plateau. The