The Devil's Eye (24 page)

‘Why did he run away just now?’

Euro translated. ‘Everyone runs away from the Police.’

Roth stepped forward and explained through Euro why the men-of-the-Queen were distributing the gifts.

He showed Katarra the tomahawks and knives, and said the flour was to be distributed amongst the people here.

Roth held up a red shirt and Katarra stared at it.

‘This will make you attractive to women,’ said Euro, in the Koko-warra language.

Katarra laughed and said, ‘They give presents and expect nothing in return?’

‘It’s a gift for what you have already done,’ said Euro. ‘Burying the dead.’

‘But what else did they expect us to do with all the dead men?’

Roth and Kenny walked along the beach and looked up occasionally at the sand ridge where they had almost, unbelievably, drowned. Katarra and Euro followed.

Kenny asked without much hope if the local people had found the bodies of two troopers.

Euro spoke to Katarra, who shook his head.

‘A white woman?’ asked Kenny.

Katarra shook his head and said he was very sorry.

They stopped before one grave.

‘
The only truly dead
,’ quoted Roth, ‘
are those who have been forgotten
.’

They were silent for some time. The only sound was the small waves washing up onto the sand behind them. There were no birds calling, no insects.

Roth produced his silver flask and held it above his head.

‘To the Queen and her Majesty’s Queensland Government. Hip-hip,’ and he took a swig, ‘hooray.’ He offered it around, but no one accepted. ‘Right then. Let’s be off.’

‘Who is this man?’ Katarra asked Euro as he accompanied the party back to the dinghy.

‘Oh. He’s the Protector of Aboriginals.’

‘Who are the Aboriginals?’

Euro looked out to sea. ‘I’m not sure. I think they’ve all gone to the mission stations.’

‘Time to go, Constable,’ said Roth. ‘It must be breakfast time,’ and he grabbed the hand of Katarra and shook it, then stepped into the dinghy.

Kenny helped Euro and Frank push the dinghy down the sand and into the water.

The dazzling, innocent sea was an unbearable blue, and one white cloud sat above the horizon just below the risen sun. The water beneath the dinghy was alive as they set off, their backs to the shore.

If he was his own man, Kenny believed, he would have somehow kept sailing north that clear morning, never to return.

Brisbane meteorologist Clement Wragge named the Bathurst Bay hurricane ‘Mahina’ on 5 March 1899. Unaware at the time of the death toll, he wrote:

Now, ‘Mahina’ is a girl’s name, culled from fair Tahiti with its coral strand, waving palm-groves and mountain peaks, the loveliest of all the lovely islands in the wide Pacific, and mothers will agree that no infant daughter can bear a softer or prettier name.

Mahina turned out to be Australia’s deadliest storm and the worst civilian maritime disaster. It killed more than three hundred people. A memorial erected at Bathurst Bay in 1899 lists the twelve white men who died and notes that ‘over 300 coloured men drowned’. Included on the following pages is a list I have compiled from death certificates and maritime records of most of the names and nationalities of those three hundred men.