Taj and the Great Camel Trek Read online

  ‘We came across some natives camped in a valley and wanted to ask them where water was, but the people were so frightened they ran off, making loud cries. We followed the valley northwards for six miles but couldn’t find the water supply.’

  Jess Young cut in: ‘It was there that those natives who had been so shy came howling after us making a dreadful racket. They had war paint on, and brandished spears, so they meant mischief. They even fired the grass on either side of us. I was sure they were going to kill us.’ He glared at Tommy but Tommy grinned as though he’d never heard of a spear before.

  Mr Tietkens took up the story. ‘We managed to get away without having an encounter although we fired two shots. We even tried again to talk to the natives but to no avail.’

  The officers hadn’t sighted the Musgrave Ranges and since they could see no sign of water they had returned by a different route.

  ‘Perhaps you could have found water if given more time,’ Mr Giles said.

  There was a silence. Was Mr Giles saying they hadn’t tried hard enough? Mr Tietkens chose not to take offence. ‘I am sure the area is watered by native wells,’ he said in an even tone.

  We were all quiet after Mr Giles had told our story as well. If people lived in the area there must be water. But where?

  What if there was no water left at the dam we had found, if it had evaporated? At least we would have enough with us to reach there, but what then? I found myself praying like Alec, in my head, without taking my prayer mat out.

  We left Ooldabinna on the twenty-fourth day of August. Wild Gazelle, the pack cow we had taken west, and Malik were listless after the long trek with little water. ‘Watch them for fatigue,’ Padar said. ‘If they can’t keep up we will have to stop the string to put them at the end.’

  The string was now divided into three. Behind Padar on Roshni were the three bulls – Malik, Rajah and Asif – loaded with water casks of thirty gallons. They crashed and smashed through the undergrowth and made a pathway for the others. After the first six camels there was a break and one of the party rode ahead of the next six. The steersman with the compass rode and guided the whole string but if the scrub was too thick the steersman walked. Mr Giles had taught three of the men to steer with the compass: Mr Teitkens, Jess Young and Alec. They took an hour each.

  ‘Steering is difficult,’ Alec said when he had finished his turn and rode at the back with me for a rest. It was easier there for we had an open path to ride in. ‘In the front the scrub is so thick and so high you can’t see a man on a camel. It’s agony, Taj.’ Alec rubbed his legs where the undergrowth had whipped them.

  Mustara’s legs were as shiny as Jess Young’s boots were in Port Augusta. It’s good that camels’ skin is so thick, for horses’ legs would have bled in that scrub. I couldn’t help thinking of the extremes in exploring: if it wasn’t desert it was dense scrub, and neither had water.

  On the way we picked up the water casks that Padar had left. That was when Padar and I noticed Khushi was growing bigger. Padar examined her middle. ‘Will she calve soon, Padar?’

  He nodded. We spoke comforting words to her, for calving on the march in the desert was not the same as calving at Beltana where a calf can take its time to stand on its feet.

  We made camp in the scrub further on. There was no water, but there were clouds. ‘Inshallah, God willing, rain tonight,’ Padar said.

  ‘I damn well hope so,’ Jess Young said, overhearing. ‘This heat is oppressive.’ I stared at him – oppressive? It wasn’t even summer.

  Mr Giles tried to make light of the lack of water with an announcement. ‘Tonight it’s Mr Tietkens’ birthday. He is thirty-one years old.’

  Peter made a birthday cake but it tasted like damper to me. Perhaps it wasn’t as soggy as usual. Jess Young brought his concertina to the campfire and I fetched my tabla while Peter brought a bottle of the brandy and poured some into the men’s tin mugs. Padar shook his head and Peter passed him by.

  First we sang ‘Happy Birthday’. It was the same song they sang for Mr Giles six weeks ago and I joined in. This seemed to be the order for birthdays: a special song, a damper cake and presents, though the men apologised for not having any real gifts to give. Then they sang other songs, one called ‘Foggy Foggy Dew’ and a Cornish one for Peter called ‘Tavern in the Town’.

  When Jess Young was tired of playing he asked Mr Tietkens for a speech. ‘Tell us about yourself, old chap.’

  Mr Tietkens seemed shy of the attention, but he cleared his throat. This must be a custom that has to be borne. I wondered what I would say if I was asked. ‘My father died when I was young so I went to the Blue Coat School in London, as Mr Giles did some years before.’ Jess Young pretended to yawn which Mr Tietkens ignored. ‘When I was fifteen, my mother decided I should go to Australia to find my fortune.’

  ‘I say, that’s a bit rough. On your own?’ Jess Young was interested now.

  Mr Tietkens hesitated and Mr Giles took up the tale. ‘He came with an actor, a Mr Woods, who took all his money.’

  ‘More than once,’ Mr Tietkens added.

  ‘Then William ended up on the goldfields doing odd jobs.’

  Mr Tietkens chuckled. ‘Once I was pushing a baby in a carriage for a bookseller. One day my lunch was wrapped in two pages of Byron’s “Hebrew Melodies”. I begged for the rest and learnt them by heart. I lost that job with the bookseller by tipping the baby into a puddle.’ Everyone laughed. ‘Not on purpose, you understand.’ Jess Young pretended to disagree and there was laughter again. ‘Then I became a greengrocer’s boy.’

  What a difficult beginning, I thought, and look at Mr Tietkens now, second-in-command on an expedition. It was as if Mr Giles read my thoughts. ‘I found William selling tickets for the St Kilda railway station and I persuaded him to come up the Darling with me. That was ten years ago.’

  ‘I remember the first night of camping out – the voices of the night, the curlew, the shriek of the night hawk.’ Mr Tietkens fell quiet and I remembered my first night on the Camel Road to Port Augusta. Was it four months ago? It felt like forever.

  ‘And two years ago on William’s birthday we had duck for dinner and named a creek after him,’ Mr Giles said, ‘Tietken’s Birthday Creek.’

  ‘That was a wonderful place except for the natives attacking us.’

  I couldn’t help myself. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘We fired,’ Mr Giles said, ‘but no one was killed.’

  Jess Young’s hand reached to touch his gun. Mr Giles had not set a regular watch at night. Only at waterholes did the men stay awake in turns.

  Padar and I were very tired in the morning for during the night Khushi calved. It was a difficult birth. She stood and knelt and stood again even when the calf’s legs were poking out. She groaned too. Usually the cows lie on their side and make little noise when calving. Unfortunately Khushi strained herself in her hip and in the morning she couldn’t rise from the ground. It was raining as well and the other men were catching water in the tarpaulins.

  ‘I hope it’s also raining at this dam we’re heading for,’ I heard Jess Young say.

  Mr Giles ignored Jess Young. ‘We’ll stay here today.’ It was not only due to the rain but to Khushi. He was as worried about her as Padar and I were. I milked her while she lay down and we gave her water, but she was in great pain. Padar stood watching her, his hands behind his back.

  ‘The calf will not be surviving if Khushi cannot look after it,’ he murmured.

  ‘I hope it can stand,’ I said, but it didn’t even try. Perhaps it was because of the long birth. I watched Khushi struggle for she knew what she should do, but each time she tried to rise to reach her calf she sank back with a groan. It wasn’t like this when Mustara was born. He only took a few hours to learn to run.

  I think it was because it was Khushi, one of my favourites, and Mustara’s mother, that I
lost my control. I pushed Padar’s chest and shouted at him: ‘Don’t just stand there. Do something!’

  Padar stumbled backwards but he kept calm. ‘Beta, we cannot help her here.’

  My voice took on a parody of Mr Giles’. ‘No, we can’t help. We can’t stay here, we have to march.’ It was Mr Giles who would decide Khushi’s fate, not us. My voice broke and Padar said nothing even though I had been disrespectful.

  Alec and Tommy walked slowly over. Tommy’s smile was not as wide, a sorry smile. Alec put his arm across my shoulders. ‘If we were in Beltana we might have saved the calf,’ I said.

  Alec didn’t say anything at all. I saw Padar pull out his knife and I turned the other way.

  Khushi couldn’t travel because of her hip. She would have died slowly of hunger with the crows to peck out her eyes. So in mercy Mr Giles shot her. He felt it was his responsibility. Even though Mr Tietkens was with him, he strode up and down first and wiped his face. ‘We have forty miles before we reach the dam and the water we have won’t last long,’ I heard him say. ‘We cannot take the risk to wait until the camel can walk.’

  Right then I wished I wasn’t on the expedition. How I had wanted to come. How exciting, I’d thought, to cross a desert with Padar. But at Beltana we could have nursed Khushi back to health.

  I had said goodbye to Khushi and wiped my tears on her fur. She was always happy like her name; she was such a sweet cow. Even then she tried to kiss me.

  When it was done we moved on. Mr Tietkens rode Malik and Malik’s load was shared between Rajah and Asif. No one spoke. The camels were the difference between our surviving or not. To have to kill one made everyone serious, not just Padar and I who had lost a friend.

  I patted Mustara and he grunted. Now we were both motherless.

  Alec became quite excited on the first day of a month. ‘It’s the first day of September today.’ He punched me playfully on the arm as we loaded. I had never given the days much attention before, but on an expedition they were all we ever thought about: days and temperatures, trees and rocks. And water. Actually Padar had told me something special about this day and I shared it with Alec.

  ‘Padar has seen the new moon. Today is the beginning of the month of Ramazan.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s the ninth month of our year. Ramazan is the month when we fast. Padar says the gates of paradise are opened during Ramazan and our sins are sure to be forgiven.’

  Alec stared at me. ‘But September is the ninth month.’

  ‘Padar says it isn’t always in September, it’s reckoned by the moon.’ I explained some more. ‘It’s good to purify the body and soul once a year.’

  ‘Like spring cleaning a house?’ Alec asked.

  ‘Perhaps.’ I knew it would be difficult keeping the Ramazan fast in the desert, but Allah is merciful to travellers, and if we needed to drink or eat we could.

  ‘When do you fast? At lunch?’ Alec chuckled. ‘If so, it won’t be any different will it?’

  ‘We fast from sunrise to sundown and we can eat in the evening. We are not supposed to drink or smoke.’ Padar always found that one difficult.

  Alec was considering me. ‘We do something like that in Lent before Easter.’ I smiled, for Emmeline had told me Christians eat boiled eggs at Easter. ‘It will be hard to go without water in this desert.’ I was thoughtful. I didn’t know Christians also fasted. Perhaps God would be merciful to them as well. And perhaps he would allow water to be in the dam we found.

  We finally arrived at Boundary Dam. It was a Friday, the third day of September. The dam had six feet of water in it because of the rain. So Jess Young’s wish came true: it had rained there as well. To me it was an answer to prayer.

  The camels could smell it and the riding ones ran down first and the others bellowed until we could pull their loads off. Mustara drank so long that I thought he would burst. The plants of vetch and desert pea were even more green and inviting for the camels than when we were there before.

  ‘It is an oasis,’ Padar said. He was watching the camels carefully but he was smiling.

  We pitched our tents and Jess Young approached Mr Giles. ‘There are some natives over that rise.’ Mr Giles and Mr Tietkens went to check but no one else spotted them. Perhaps this was their place and I wondered what they thought about us staying there without asking permission.

  The dam was on a piece of clay ground where rainwater from the sandhills ran into it. ‘Look at this,’ Mr Giles said, ‘some people have made an attempt at storing the water. But it’s in the wrong place to catch much.’ Then Mr Giles saw me watching him. ‘Taj, you and Tommy go around the dam and check for tracks.’

  Tommy grinned at me as we set off. He was always happy to do what Mr Giles asked. ‘You play game?’

  I nodded at him. I supposed it was a tracking game he learnt as a child. He showed me a small stick and threw it to the ground. ‘Find him.’ It wasn’t easy, but I managed it.

  We saw red sandhills to the south of the dam, and trees with black bark. All around the dry white lake was a green and open space, but we didn’t find any tracks and we returned to report.

  Mr Giles must have known there was a hard road ahead for he said we would stay at the dam for a week. I was glad, for Salmah’s calf, Youldeh, found the marching difficult. Rani was also about to calve and I hoped she would fare better than Khushi.

  It was 96 degrees in the afternoons but the nights were cold as usual. ‘This is the hardest country I have seen on an exploring trip,’ Padar said to me. We had been in dense scrub since the ninth of June. Since Tommy and I had found no tracks of animals, Peter had to cook salted dried beef for dinner.

  Tommy played another game before we ate. He twisted grass over and over into a ball shape and tied longer grass around it to hold it firm. When Alec saw it he found a flat piece of wood and we three played cricket until Peter called us over to the fire to eat. The flies there were the worst we had seen. It was difficult to put food in our mouths without a handful of flies getting in as well. I wished I could eat under water.

  Afterwards, Alec and I talked about whether we would continue west. ‘Mr Giles is not the sort of man to retreat once he has determined to do something,’ Alec said. Mr Giles had sworn to get to Perth or die in the attempt. Many explorers had died and so did the men and animals with them. ‘It’s unfortunate that unless you discover something spectacular like an inland sea or lush pasture land you are not recognised as a great explorer unless you die.’ Alec sounded unusually mournful. ‘Mr Burke received a state funeral though he made some unwise decisions. He wouldn’t have died if he had you and Tommy with him.’

  Alec’s mood passed. But I kept thinking about those explorers who died. We had found no water on the way to the dam and we had travelled 160 miles. There wasn’t any when Mr Giles, Alec and I searched to the west either. What if there was no more water further west and we died too?

  It was almost a week since we had first camped at Boundary Dam. Although Peter made damper at midday as well as at night, Padar and I didn’t eat any during the day. Padar even managed not to smoke until after the evening meal. It’s best not to tell people when you are trying to fast unless everyone is doing it too, for Jess Young kept asking Padar during the day if he’d like a smoke.

  I had repaired Khushi’s saddle that Malik now wore. Some of the baggage camels had ulcers on their backs but we didn’t have any coal tar or kerosene to relieve them. I hoped the fresh air and a week without carrying loads would help. I used the horse hair we had picked up near Wynbring to make the saddles softer on the camels. There had even been time to carve a camel from a piece of wood. The knife Padar had given me was sharp enough to make tiny patterns in the wood. It made me smile to think what Emmeline would say when I gave it to her.

  Padar sat beside me to see and nodded his approval. ‘Very good, beta.’ I wanted to ask if he�
�d made a gift for my mother and why that song about Molly Malone affected us, but I didn’t want to change the peaceful look on his face.

  We were sitting around the campfire. The others had finished eating and I caught Tommy peering closely at the ground. I sat on my haunches near him. ‘What are you doing?’

  He pointed to the sand. ‘See them tracks?’

  I saw a trail in the dust. It looked like one of Emmeline’s plaits. ‘Ants? You’re tracking ants?’

  He grinned at me. ‘Good tracker. Uncle Jimmy show me.’

  I couldn’t believe it. They were two inches long, but I could hardly see the trail when they went off the sand. How I wished I could do that.

  Mr Giles walked over to the fire and sat on a log. He had the air of someone about to say something important. Usually he could barely conceal his energy, and I was sure a quiet week at camp didn’t sit well with him. He cleared his throat. The men stopped writing or sketching.

  ‘It may be that there is little water west except for native dams and wells.’ He looked at us all with his searching eyes. ‘The last water is 160 miles behind us. I aim to make for Mount Churchman, 650 miles on. We can carry water in the casks, water-beds and bags.’

  He hesitated before he gave his next speech, then seemed to choose his words carefully. ‘This is a desperate thing to do yet I am determined to push westwards, but it may be a matter of life or death. If any of you wish to return to Fowler’s Bay or descend to Eucla Station I will provide you with rations and camels to do so.’

  Would Padar or I have a choice? Wouldn’t Mr Giles need us to look after the camels? What if one of them should get sick? Imagine if we weren’t there when Mustara ate the poisonous plant. I suddenly realised what I wanted. Padar shook his head slightly at me. He was relaxed and I knew what he would say.

  Mr Giles stared at every one of us in turn. When he was determined upon a course of action his eyes took on the appearance of shining knives. And there was no escaping them. The way he spoke made me want to follow him to the end of the earth, fighting my way through a thousand giant serpents let alone across a waterless desert to Perth. Mr Tietkens and Jess Young both said they wanted to help conquer this possibly worst desert on earth and that they would live or die with Mr Giles to do it.