The Bunyip Sea © David Hardy
Dan McLeod stumbled across the scorching desert plain. He didn't know where he was or what day it was or even why he was there, only that the fiend that haunted him was very near. The hunger that had gnawed at him had left, but the burning thirst was still present. He had found a seep with a trickle of slimy mud at the bottom and it had given him the strength to carry on, stumbling across the Outback on swollen, lacerated feet. He could stagger forward to where he did not know. The faces of his dead comrades hovered at the corners of his vision, walking easily, free of the terrible burden of living flesh.
But McLeod hardly thought any more. Mostly he just staggered forward, mind clouded by fatigue, hunger and pain, fortunate to have sunk so low as to have lost sight of the bitter spectacle of futility and crushed dreams. His animal self was in control, following only a blind urge to keep moving as long as a spark of life remained.
His boots were shredded by weeks of travel over stony ground. The Colt revolver on his hip dragged at his belt, now loose about his shrunken frame. McLeod cursed the pistol as a useless hunk of rusting metal. Its weight had become intolerable. McLeod decided, with great effort, to cast it away. He reached for the pistol and fumbled at the holster. The weapon stuck in the leather when he tried to pull it free. McLeod pulled harder, frustration lending him strength. Instead of yanking the gun out he tripped and toppled over. He lay panting on the sand, feebly clawing for his hat.
The sun was burning his head. His hair was no protection from the merciless god of fire in the sky. He had to have his hat. Once it was easy to do such things as picking up one's hat, but lying exhausted on the rocks and sand his hat was as far away as Sydney harbor. Without it he was dead, the sun would cook his brain and he would lay there, a mummy forever reaching for a hat, frozen in his last absurd gesture.
McLeod heaved himself forward, stung by the thought of such an undignified fate. His right hand clasped the brim of his hat and lifted it to his head. With a sigh he settled back, too weak to stand. He had his hat though, and would not die for want of it. He would die soon anyway. The beast was close, McLeod could hear its snorting breath and smell its stench of death.
Before McLeod died he had to figure out how he got there, what error had set him on the path to certain doom. He remembered the harborside in Sydney, how cool it was, how easily one could get a glass of beer, whiskey, or water. He had bought the hat and gun there, the day he met Major Braithwaite-Stewart.
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Dan McLeod strolled along the Sydney harbor front, his sea legs imparting a slight roll to his movements. He was just back from two years in California. He had sailed for San Francisco in 1849 when news of the gold strike at Sutter's Mill had come to New South Wales. He had toiled in the manzanita and sage of the California hills making some good strikes and spending far too much of what he made. This year, 1851, he found himself far enough ahead to afford a passage home and have a decent stake left over. Now he was listening to Sydneyside accents again as the Union Jack fluttered overhead. Bales of wool awaited loading while immigrants came ashore. Longshoremen cursed in Irish brogues while sailors from the West Indies, Germany, and England struggled with ropes and hatches.
McLeod calculated how much he would have for supplies and livestock. Land was less of a problem, there was plenty of good land in the back blocks. With the right start and enough grit to see it through, a man could become a substantial squatter. The right start was the issue now. No matter how he added it, he had barely enough to stock a station. About £100 more would do it.
A heavy box crashed at McLeod's feet, shattering his reverie. McLeod jumped back, knocking his hat off. Rapid, angry German began to spill from a bespectacled gentleman. Beside him stood a tall man, ramrod straight in a frock coat, with whiskers that jutted with military aggressiveness.
“Stand easy, Herr doctor,” the soldier said, “That box is not your instruments. I recall it was packed with Yar Ali Khan's supplies.” He turned to McLeod, “Oh I do say, I hope no harm befell you my good fellow.”
“None at all, sir. Only I've lost my hat.” McLeod spoke frankly, in the manner of the American West.
“Please allow the New South Wales Inland Sea Expedition to pay for a replacement. I think the organizing committee can bear the cost of one chapeau.”
“Inland Sea Expedition?”
“We are funded by the New South Wales Geographical Committee. Our goal is to locate the Inland Sea that is reported to lie to the Northwest. There is a £1,500 reward for locating it, as well as a bonus for expedition members.”
“Interesting, the name is Dan McLeod by the way.”
“Yes, I do apologize, I'm Major George Braithwaite-Stewart, late of the Bengal Fusiliers.” He indicated the German with the glasses. “Doctor Gessner is our naturalist and geographer. And here comes Yar Ali Khan.”
A hideous groan came from overhead. A sling was lifting a huge, hairy beast from a ship's hold to the quay. A dark, hawk-faced man in a turban glared over the ship's side. “Yah Allah! Be careful with that son of Shaitan, you wooly-headed sailors! He is to carry the Major sahib's gear on a great hajj!”
“Our camels, are to be led by Yar Ali Khan. We have four of the beasts. They will be able to take us through the dry country until we reach the Inland Sea. We're going to drive some sheep at least part way, we could use a chap who knows the country and how to handle animals.”
“How much was the bonus?”
“In the vicinity of £100.”
“You have your stockman, sir.”
The expedition lingered in Sydney just long enough for the camels to get acclimatized. McLeod, now enrolled as stock handler, met the other explorers. There was Mr. Charleton, an English gentleman who acted as the Major's second-in-command. Parker was a veteran of the Bengal Foot Artillery and Leary was a Dubliner who had served on merchant vessels.
The Major purchased arms for the expedition. In a Sydney gunsmith's shop he selected rifled muskets for the men and a double-barreled carbine for himself. He paused to contemplate a display of Colt six-shooters.
“Mr. McLeod, d'ye know much about these?”
“Yes sir, I always carried a .56 caliber Navy model Colt in California. They are just the thing for dealing with bandits or claim jumpers. Still, we can hardly expect trouble from bushrangers in the interior.”
“It's not bushrangers that concern me. D'ye know aught of the blacks in the interior?”
“Very little, save that they are wild. I learned how to speak the lingo of the mobs around Darling Downs. Mostly blacks are friendly, and seldom attack, except they've been abused by whites and are looking for revenge on the next paleface they meet. D'ye expect trouble with them?”
“Perhaps,” was all the Major said. He bought enough Colts for the entire group.
They crossed New South Wales all the way to the banks of the Murray River with few difficulties. The horses hated the camels like poison and the camels reciprocated heartily. The mob of sheep was impossible for any save McLeod and Yar Ali Khan to handle, and the Afghan considered such work beneath him. Besides he had enough trouble with the camels.
They were truly Sons of Shaitan, as Yar Ali called the devil. Yet he bore with them manfully. After one wearisome day when the camels were at their most obstreperous, not even sparing the Major the gobs of spit they bestowed on the other men, McLeod ventured to talk to the taciturn Afghan.
“Where the devil did the Major find you?”
“I met the Major sahib in the Punjab. He commanded redcoat soldiers and slew hundreds of Sikh infidels in the wars, may they burn in Shaitan's hell. I volunteered to join the British for I had a score to settle with the Sikhs since they had hanged two of my brothers before the gate of Peshawar.
“Later the Major came to look for camels for this great trip and I volunteered to drive them.”
“The £100 bonus is worth all this,” McLeod said, gesturing to the camels.
“Bonus? Inshallah, I will have much more than £100! Why would the Major leave so rich a land as England to go in these barren wastes unless he knows of a hidden treasure? By the Prophet's beard, peace be on him, the Major is seeking something greater than the treasures of the City of Brass!”
McLeod thought on that. He had been carefully studying the land they traversed, looking at the grass and water, the riches of a stockman. What other riches were hidden in this vast land?
They stopped at sheep station at the far limits of the colony. The sheep and horses were more trouble than they were worth. The Major offered them to the squatter for a pittance.
The squatter was a lean, quiet fellow who worked the station with a couple of ticket-of-leave men and some tame blacks. The squatter and one of his white men, a pickpocket whose back was scarred from floggings in Van Deiman's Lad, slaughtered a sheep so the blacks could make a corroboree. The Major and his men watched as the blacks danced.
“What is their song about?” the Major asked.
“I don't exactly know,” McLeod replied. “But the blacks around Darling Downs would corroboree about the devil that haunts the water. A bunyip it's called. There are a few whitefellas who say they've seen one.”
“A beast unknown to science!” Gessner cried. “We should be fortunate to encounter one.”
“Don't be so sure,” McLeod said. “The blacks say the bunyip is the worst sort of luck.”
“These corroborees are a bloody nuisance,” the squatter remarked to McLeod. “But the blacks help around the station a bit and it keeps ‘em from spearin' the stock. If I ran ‘em off, I'd have a lot of wild blacks in here.”
“What would you do then?” McLeod asked.
“What else? Disperse ‘em.”
“You mean you scatter them?” Gessner asked. “And what happens if they regroup and return?”
The squatter laughed. “Why bless my soul! We generally disperse ‘em with a musket. Disperse their bloody brains out o' their wooly heads, mate!”
There was no answer for that.
They plunged into the lands beyond the Murray. McLeod had always thought of them as empty and desolate. But the bush sheltered abundant life, not the exuberant green of the coastlands, but tough and durable forms that defiantly flaunted their existence in the face of harsh conditions. Small mobs of kangaroos furnished meat for man and dingo. Inspected closely it was almost reassuring. But when McLeod studied the horizon and the vastness that slumbered under the desert sun, unease grew in his stomach like a cancer.
From atop a low ridge they saw evidence that the land was not empty of man either. McLeod pointed out the small group of blacks shadowing the party. Soon after the explorers reached a cluster of gunyas, native shelters, around a water hole. The explorers continued their march, but when they made camp, the blacks approached. They came cautiously, as wary of the white men as of their strange animals.
The Major allowed them to enter, and made a gift of a hatchet to one of the men. There were women in the group and McLeod noticed that Parker and Leary eyeing them. The blacks drifted off and the men went about their duties. McLeod noticed that Parker and Leary were gone. Then he saw them coming out of the bush, a black woman trailing them. When she importuned them, the men laughed and pushed her away. Soon another black man entered the camp. By now the explorers were used to the natives, no one paid him heed until he hefted a hatchet and ran off.
With a roar of anger, Charleton whipped out his Colt and fired two shots after the man. The native was long gone and the bullets whistled harmlessly through the bush.
“Bloody thieving darkies!” Charleton snarled.
“I expect he was just collecting for services rendered,” McLeod replied.
They pushed on through the spinifex and brigalow scrub. The Major, Charleton, and Gessner conferred for a long time at one point.
“We bear to the northeast, past the area mapped by Eyre, into the zone where the southern declivities suggest the waters lay,” the Major announced.
“Very good,” Charleton replied. “So long as we carefully map the itinerary between water we should have no problem. The bully-beef supplies are adequate, but water will be critical.”
“Ja, the water is determining factor,” Gessner said, “but only to a point. We can expect to find a degree of potable water the closer we approach our destination. We can make short dry marches if it will bring us closer to the ultimate goal.”
“We shall surmount those obstacles when they arise my friends,” the Major said with a decisive air. And with that the New South Wales Inland Sea Expedition plunged off the edge of the map into the unknown interior.
As they trudged over the endless plains, Leary lit his pipe and hummed a sailor's tune. Parker turned to McLeod and spoke, “What are you planning to do with your end of the bonus, Mate?”
“Set myself up as a squatter. You, mate?”
“Back to Essex. I'm bloody sick of heat and dust and blacks and colonists, no offense.”
“None taken. How'd you end up doing this if you hate the heat and dust so much?”
“Nothin' better to do. I was invalided out after I went down with a fever. I stayed in Bengal and let me tell you, you've a better chance of finding gainful work if you've a brown hide. Nothin' for a white man what ain't in service to the bloody Honorable bloody East bloody India bloody Company. I was down to me last pence, and begging from any who passed in the High Street of Calcutta, white, black or brown so long as they had a pice to spare. I took it too. Major found me, knew I'd served in the wars and talked me into going to Australia.”
“Me, I've a mind to stay,” Leary interjected. “A proper grog shop in Sydney would be just the right income for a sailor home from the sea. That's how I'll spend my bonus.”
“Really, mate?” Parker asked.
Leary shrugged. “Ah, I'm just blatherin'. For sure, I'll spend it all on whiskey and women o' the town and then ship out again.”
There was little to do save keep moving forward. The plains grew dryer. For weeks they kept plodding through the scrub. There were no more kangaroo to be seen, though the howls of dingoes echoed like damned souls in the night. Slowly the sun and the dust and the endless, ever decreasing ration of bully beef seemed to dry the men up, leaving them scarecrow lean and prone to nervous fits.
Then came a terrible stretch of desert. For two days they struggled on over a blasted, scorched barren. They had gathered what water they could from the last water hole, a stagnant, alkali pool that the camels fouled quickly. But it was barely enough to see them through the dry march.
On the third day they found a water hole. They crowded around it, desperately gulping the brown muck inside. McLeod drank his fill and then stood up. Something, perhaps the sense a bushman develops after years in the wild, told him to survey the surrounding area. He scanned carefully and realized his intuition was correct. A group of black men were approaching.
“Major, we have visitors.”
The natives came close. There were five of them. The came warily, spears at the ready. The man in the lead was a powerful fellow, he stood tall and proud. The warrior was naked as the day he was born, save for a sting with his nulla-nulla tucked in it. His muscular limbs glistened in the heat, as the gestured angrily with his spear. All the while the man released a torrent of angry words.
“What the devil is he saying, McLeod?” Charleton asked.
“I'm not sure, he don't speak the same dialect as the blacks in the Darling Downs blacks. I fancy he's angry about us hogging the water.”
“Well, offer him a hatchet then,” the Major said. “We want to keep the blacks in good humor. But be careful.”
McLeod took a hatchet from one of the camel packs. Warily he offered it to the angry warrior. The others watched, keeping a distance. The warrior took the hatchet and hefted it. Then he turned to look at McLeod.
A pistol cracked. The warrior leapt back in surprise. A spear flashed by McLeod's eyes and he heard a cry of pain. Guns began to speak and the blacks fled.
“Bloody Hell!” McLeod snarled. “What was that for, you bloody maniacs!” He glared at the others. A spear had grazed Leary. Charleton held his Colt, smoke curled from its barrel.
“He was getting ready to brain you,” Charleton replied sullenly. “The blacks are a treacherous lot.”
McLeod stared his fellow travelers. He asked himself had the black been ready to murder him? McLeod had felt no fear, yet perhaps he should have. The incident, seemingly clear and logical, was already growing uncertain, slipping away from McLeod's understanding. One thing McLeod knew was that his comrades were his sole link to the world he had left behind, the slender thread of mutual support that kept a man alive in this barren desert. And yet McLeod felt utterly alone.
They loaded their canteens and pushed on. The terrain became more barren, even the spinifex struggled to survive here. There was scarcely a goanna to be seen. The land was not dead, but it lived at a barely perceptible level, as fragile as glass.
Supplies had run out. The Major gave an order and Yar Ali Khan stood by, watching with sad eyes as they killed one of the camels and ate it.
Gessner was utterly absorbed in his observations. Indeed, the more barren the land grew and the lower their supplies dipped, the more the German withdrew into scientific work.
“What will it do for the world if we find the Inland Sea, doctor?” McLeod asked as they stumbled along.
“Once we find it,” Gessner replied, “we will ascertain what mineral and agricultural resources it possesses. Then we can exploit it. Settlers will come, there are many in Europe who would be eager to live in a land as filled with opportunities as this one.”
McLeod stared at the dunes and the spinifex. “Really, mate?”
“Ja, mein freund. You have not seen how the peasants in Silesia or Bohemia live. Their masters take all that is good. Their lot is to toil and to be soldiers in the king's wars. Here, a man is a man.”
At the next halt the Major conferred with Charleton and Gessner. “Chelmsford found water about two days march from here on his 1843 reconnaissance. We can get to there and then turn north again to look for the Inland Sea.”
Charleton looked sour. “We can make it, though it means at least a day's dry-march. If we don't we are in a very bad way.”
Gessner said, “Leary is in bad shape. Do you think he should ride one of the camels?”
The Major thought for a moment. “I don't like it. If a man is on this expedition he must march. The camels are not doing well either.” The beast's humps were hanging slack by now. When water was found it was barely enough to slake the men's thirst. The animals had to do without.
The Major signaled and the men moved out. Weariness and thirst left them numb, moving like automatons. But they all knew they had to find water or die.
They moved across the vast plains. Sky and sun and land formed a single immensity that mocked man's smallness. The very size of it all threatened to draw away their souls, leaving only madness and a will to survive deprived of a means to do so.
They were only a day out when a dust storm blew in. The men tried to make headway, but they were already too weakened by thirst and hunger to force their way ahead. Instead, they huddled together, keeping the sand at bay as it flew into their mouths and noses with every breath. After a time the fury of the storm abated but the men still huddled together for protection from the incessant wind.
“Deuced bad weather, what?” Charleton mumbled, just loud enough that McLeod could hear him over the storm.
“Not like England at all, is it?” McLeod replied.
“Not a bloody bit. As soon as we bag this Inland Sea I'm going home. I'll rest a bit on my laurels, for I think I shall have earned them. Fame and fortune don't come cheap, do they?”
McLeod wondered at that. Charleton was obviously a gentleman, a man who had been born to a comfortable life of money, education, and a career leading to power. Why take up the life of an explorer?
As if in answer to his question Charleton carried on speaking. “It's much easier to inherit a fortune, so long as no one has spent it already. I suppose I had enough to buy a commission in a decent regiment. I thought to find my own way. Now we just need to find our way to water.”
When dawn broke they had only one camel left. The other had broken his tether and had wandered off in the storm. There was worse news, the water was exhausted. Leary was too weak to walk and so had to be carried on the other camel. The group shuffled off, knowing they had to find water.
After a day's dry march, the Major stopped top consult with Gessner and Charleton.
“Dammit man! What do you mean we've missed the water hole?” the Major growled.
“I think we lost our bearings during the storm.” Gessner's voice was grim.
“We also haven't made as much distance as we had hoped.” Charleton added. “We may still be short of the goal. At least then we won't have to backtrack.” His voice held a note of optimism, but it sounded false to McLeod.
They rested there, making a shelter for Leary. When the Major signaled it was time to rise, Leary did not. He was dead.
They headed out, no one seemed to quite know where they were going, only that water was somewhere ahead. The men were moving slower now, weakening under the strain. Thirst was a devil from Hell, sent to torment McLeod for his every sin of commission and omission. It rode him and haunted his thoughts, leaving him foggy brained and weak.
They dug up spinifex and gnawed at its roots, trying to get a modicum of moisture. Crossing a stretch of barren rock, the camel lay down and refused to budge. Despite Yar Ali Khan's cajoling, threats, and beatings, it would not move. Charleton pulled out his colt and shot it twice in the head. The men fell on it and devoured the camel's emaciated flesh with gusto.
They had not seen any natives in a long while, then McLeod spotted movement on the plain. People were moving in the distance. The Major conferred quietly with Charleton. Then he rose and called for a silent advance. The white men came close to the people. It was a small camp of blacks, with about seven men and as many women and a number of children. The explorers came on openly now, and the natives watched in amazement.
They greeted the travelers, evincing amazement at the apparitions that came from the desert. McLeod asked them for water in as many dialects as he knew, but the blacks did not seem to understand. The Major mimed drinking and pointed in different directions. An older man stood and began to talk quickly, pointing off to the distance.
“What the devil is he saying, McLeod?” the Major asked.
“I reckon he's giving directions, though I can't really follow,” McLeod replied.
The Major looked at Charleton and nodded. In a flash their guns were out and they had seized the man. The other natives were visibly astonished. One man raised a nulla-nulla threateningly. Parker's gun was in his hand and it barked twice. The black fell dead and the rest fled, save the captive gripped by the Major.
“Now my lively buck, you'll take us to water,” the Major hissed.
At last the man fully comprehended. McLeod watched, stunned.
“You've bloody scuppered any hope of getting any more cooperation from these blacks, Major. They are honor bound to avenge assaults. Instead of trying to get them to lead us to food, they'll be back with spears.” McLeod was seething.
“When I want your opinion, I'll bloody well ask for it. The darkies are a treacherous lot, this is the only way they'll help.”
Charleton echoed the Major. “You need to show the blacks who is the master.”
True enough the captive led the explorers into a break in the rock. It was cool and shaded from the sun. Most of all clear water stood on the surface. The whites rushed to drink. All except McLeod, he hung back, taking the prisoner from Charleton.
The native began to speak, but McLeod only shook his head. Then the man switched to a Southern dialect. “You end sleep fella live water,” the man said. “You steal water, bunyip come find you.”
McLeod stared at the prisoner and motioned him to go to the water hole. McLeod knelt and joined the others in drinking. As he rose from the water McLeod saw a shadow move fitfully in the depths as if rising purposefully towards the surface. McLeod drew back in alarm.
McLeod glanced at the prisoner. He knew the man would go to his people and demand revenge on the whites, but if he stayed the whites would kill him.
Suddenly Yar Ali Khan shouted, “Yah Allah, the kafiri are upon us!”
Black warriors had crept close to the cleft in the rock. The Major sprang to his feet, gun in hand. His Colt roared and spears began to fly. The first one passed entirely through the Major's throat, he sank down vomiting blood.
As the Major fell McLeod looked the captive in the eye and raised his pistol, aiming for the man's heart. A throw stick slammed into McLeod's left arm, numbing it. He could see dozens of warriors crowding around. The captive was gone.
Charleton was shouting, “Run for it boys! There's too many of them!” The explorers broke away, cutting through the ring of attackers with gunfire. McLeod found himself in the rear, spears were falling at his heels. He turned at bay, pistol in hand. He stood, shooting straight at the onrushing warriors. Six shots blasted out it quick succession. There was no hope of hitting anything save sky and dust but the bullets made their mark anyway. The warriors halted, apparently stunned by the noise and shock of the six-gun.
McLeod realized his gun was empty and he would have no chance to reload it in hand to hand combat. Steadily he raised the smoking barrel and pointed it at the foremost warrior. McLeod searched for the man's eyes. They met and the warrior flinched back, unsure of the meaning of the white man's gesture.
It was the opening McLeod needed. He turned and ran as though the Devil himself were at his heels.
He found the tracks of his comrades. He also saw stains of blood overlaying their boot marks in the sand. Then he found Charleton. He was lying on his side, a broken spear haft protruding from his back. He would never go back to England.
“You showed ‘em alright. Was it worth it, mate?” McLeod asked, more in sorrow than in anger.
McLeod caught up to the rest about sundown.
“We need to keep moving through the night,” he told them. “It's easier than walking in the sun. Besides, if we lay down here, we'll wake up with spears through us.”
The men moved on through the night and the day. They found a seep that barely slaked the thirst that was building again. McLeod found some green leafy plants that they chewed, though they had little nutritional value. Fear of the blacks kept them from searching as diligently as they should. Once, while crossing a low rise in the land, they spotted black warriors in the distance and they hurried their pace.
For days they moved onward, retracing their steps back to the settlements. The days were blinding heat and dust. In the night McLeod heard strange animal cries that the others were deaf to.
Lack of adequate food was pulling them down, nearly as much as thirst. They reached a barren stretch where no water could be found. In the midst of burning rocks and sand Parker lay down and did not rise again. But by his body McLeod saw the prints of some animal he could not recognize, yet he knew what it was.
The others kept going, Yar Ali Khan found a seep and they were able to drink a little. But too little for Gessner. McLeod saw his eyes were sunken in, the face skull-like. He knew he looked the same. Yar Ali Khan and McLeod moved on, leaving the German scientist behind to explore the greatest mystery.
“It's just us, mate,” McLeod said through broken and cracked lips. “Let's rest a bit then push on through the dark.”
The Afghan nodded. “What is written is written. All is in the hands of Allah. In Paradise the believer finds cool water and beautiful women. I shall be there soon, inshallah.”
Whether or not Yar Ali went to Paradise McLeod could not say with any certainty, but the Afghan left his body in the Outback.
Later that day McLeod found himself stumbling over the sand and rocks, too exhausted to rise after falling down. McLeod lay on the burning ground, lost in his reverie. It would be easy to just lay there forever, like Leary, the Major, Charleton, Parker, Gessner, and Yar Ali. It was far, far easier not to rise. He would never go back to Sydney, never claim his run in the back blocks, never be a squatter. Then he heard the beast panting. It had tracked him this far, savoring his slow death. With agonizing effort McLeod rose and began to crawl forward.
He found his hat and put it back on his head. He saw a set of rocks ahead had some spinifex growing nearby. That promised that moisture might accumulate there. That was his goal. Racked with the pain of thirst and hunger he crawled forward.
Eyes fixed entirely on the rocks and spinifex, he neared his goal. Suddenly a shadow loomed across his path. Hands, black hands reached for him. McLeod braced for the spear that would stab him or the nulla-nulla that would smash his skull. Instead he felt food being pressed into his mouth.
He was being carried over the sand, then all was blackness. He awoke later when water trickled over his lips and tongue. A group of natives was clustered around. A woman was giving him water, he was neither stabbed nor clubbed.
The natives nursed him for a week. McLeod learned a bit of their tongue, which had some similarity to the dialects of the people along the Murray River. They said nothing when McLeod woke shouting in the night. He was unclear as to why they saved him in the desert, though perhaps they thought him to be a spirit of the Dead, returned from the Dreamtime.
One night an elder pointed at the stars. “There is the great snake. He lives in the sky and he lives in the water.”
“And what of the bunyip in the water?” McLeod asked.
The elder said nothing for a while. “Sometimes the serpent brings blessings, sometimes curses.” Then he said no more.
The next day McLeod declared his intention of finding white people. The blacks nodded sympathetically and gave him directions. Though the itinerary was vague, they made it clear that white men lived relatively nearby. McLeod realized he had been on a remote part of a sheep station and completely unaware of it.
Striding off to find his people again, McLeod thought to himself, Sorry mates, it didn't work out. No Inland Sea, maybe it's a bunyip sea. We went looking for the bunyip and it found us. Maybe we should have looked for that serpent in the sky. God help us all, but such is life.
END
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