To Ride the Wind (44 page)

But between missions of prisoner snatching patrols and lying out in no-man’s-land sniping unsuspecting German soldiers, he did write. By the time 1918 arrived Tom Duffy was yet to face the worst weeks of his life on the Western Front. He treasured the most beautiful words he had ever read in his life, in the fine copperplate handwriting of his beloved French farmer’s daughter. He would fight to stay alive and take home the diamond of his life – Juliet.

25

A
t Glen View the bite of the summer was going from the land. Soon the cold would come, bringing early morning dew onto the vegetable garden.

Giselle kneeled over the row of newly planted potatoes and pulled at the weeds. Beside her, the Chinese gardener worked diligently to keep his precious plants alive, watering them from a battered can. The heat was losing its potency as the day drew to a close and Giselle could hear the happy laughter of her son, who was playing with two little Aboriginal boys of his own age. The floppy straw hat she wore shaded her vision but she heard Angus call.

‘Mrs Macintosh, we appear to have visitors comin’.’

Giselle straightened her back and gazed across the plains.

A small plume of dust was spreading on a light breeze in the distance and, from the way it rose, it was obvious that whoever was coming was in a horse-drawn buggy. It was unusual for visitors to come to the station and Giselle kept the dust in sight until she could actually see the outline of the buggy with its driver and passenger.

‘Who do you think it is?’ she called to Angus, who from the verandah had a better view.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied, shading his eyes.

After some minutes Giselle could see that the driver was a man dressed in black and his passenger a woman in a long flowing dress. Even before she could clearly see their features, Giselle knew who they were. She ran to the gate, flung it open and ran up the dusty track towards the buggy.

‘Mama!’ she screamed, her floppy hat falling from her head.

The driver flicked the horse with his small whip, speeding it towards the station house and came to a stop beside Giselle. Karolina leaped from the buggy into her daughter’s embrace, holding tight as if planning to never let go. Both women sobbed with joy as Pastor Karl von Fellmann, the reins in his hands, looked down on the scene with a smile. Angus strode up to meet the visitors and, as Karl dismounted, took control of the horse. He held out his hand.

‘You must be the pastor,’ he said. ‘Welcome back to Glen View.’

‘And you must be Mr Angus MacDonald whom I have heard so much about from Giselle’s letters to her mother,’ Karl said, brushing away as much dust as he could from his coat. ‘I have finally returned home,’ he added.

When the joyous outpourings of welcome were over, Giselle led her mother by the hand towards the verandah from where young David had stared at the spectacle of his mother weeping and laughing at the same time. He shyly approached Karolina, leaving his companions to watch the meeting with curiosity. Karolina crouched down as the little boy accepted her embrace as she hugged him to her.

‘Oh, my little man, you have grown so much since I last held you,’ she said. ‘You are so strong and healthy.’

‘Ah, Mrs Schumann, Pastor, I see that you have arrived safe and well,’ Hector said, emerging from the house. ‘I pray that your journey here went well.’

‘You knew!’ Giselle said, turning on the station manager.

He grinned back at her. ‘I’m afraid so, lassie,’ he replied. ‘But I was sworn to keep it a secret until the pastor and your mother arrived. It’s good to have you back, Karl.’

The Lutheran minister thrust out his hand. ‘Is Wallarie still here?’ he asked.

‘Haven’t seen the old bugger in months,’ Hector replied, slapping Karl on the back. ‘But Mrs Macintosh reckons she saw him a few weeks back out in the bush.’

‘That is good,’ Karl replied. ‘I fear for my old friend’s health .’

‘Wallarie will outlive all of us,’ Hector said, turning to call for a housemaid to assist with the luggage from the buggy. ‘You have arrived just in time for a dinner prepared under the supervision of Mrs Macintosh, so I can promise that you will eat well.’

That night Karolina and Karl shared stories of the world beyond the vast horizons of Glen View.

‘Mr Duffy, the solicitor, was able to secure our release,’ Karolina said in a sombre tone. ‘He is a good man and has friends in the military who helped us put forward our case. Colonel Hughes, Patrick’s friend and yours, argued that we would not be a threat to their security if we were to promise to remain on Glen View. That was not difficult, as I have committed myself to assist Karl in his work with the Aboriginal people of his congregation.’

Giselle looked at her mother in surprise and then at Karl, whose expression gave away nothing. For a moment Giselle experienced a small shock at what she concluded had occurred between her mother and the Christian minister. Her mother was such a devout follower of her Jewish religion and yet it appeared she would be living with a Christian.

Karolina noticed the look on her daughter’s face. ‘Oh, dear, don’t make any assumptions,’ she said reassuringly. ‘Karl is a dear friend.’

‘Oh, mother, I was not thinking . . .’

‘Yes, you were,’ her mother gently chided. ‘But for now the most important thing is that we are all together again and a family once more. God has been kind to me.’

That night was one of the best in Giselle’s memory for a long time. She had lost her beloved husband, but her mother had returned to her in a land she was growing to love for its strange spirituality, one that only those who lived on the vast, semi-arid plains could understand. Here, she knew, her son would grow strong, and one day challenge for his rightful place in the leadership of the Macintosh dynasty.

After everyone had retired for the night Giselle gently woke her son and took him by the hand. Still drugged with sleep, David rubbed his eyes. She led him to the front yard and there, in the chill of the night, spoke softly to him.

‘This land will make you strong, my little man,’ she said, staring up into the night sky. In the distance a dingo howled to its mate and the curlews fell silent. ‘You have the spirit of your father and must make him proud as he watches over us from above. You are all that I love and will always love.’

David did not understand the words his mother spoke but was transfixed by a terrifying sight in the dark beyond the old bumbil tree. There was a man he had never seen before and he was watching David with great interest. David clung to his mother’s hand tightly. He wanted to tell her about the scary man watching them but she did not appear to see him. Then the strange black man suddenly smiled and David relaxed his grip. He felt safe, as if this man was talking to him.

Sensing her son’s agitation, Giselle looked down at him.

‘David?’ she queried.

The boy slowly pointed into the dark.

‘I don’t see anything,’ Giselle frowned, peering in the direction of her son’s outstretched hand. Then suddenly she gasped. ‘You see him!’ Her frown turned into a smile. ‘He is the good spirit of this land, although I know that only you can see him now,’ she added. ‘His name is Wallarie and he will always be here to look over those who come to his lands.’

David still did not understand his mother’s strange explanation but sensed her inner peace. It would be many years before this moment would come back to him in a dream.

EPILOGUE

Glen View

Lutheran Mission Station

1934

T
he tall, broad-shouldered young man stood respectfully waiting for the old Aboriginal to speak again. The sun was low on the horizon and the heat of the day disappearing. In a short time a soft, orange glow would herald the appearance of the stars in the moonless night.

Wallarie tapped his pipe against the hardwood club beside him and turned his head towards the orange ball hovering over the plains.

‘You still here?’ he asked, knowing full well that he had entranced this young man with his story. ‘The bumbil tree I sit under was young when I was young,’ he sighed. ‘It will still be here when you and I have become one with the sky above.’

Wallarie sensed that the young man was reluctant to leave him, and the woman who had stood behind the young man earlier in the afternoon was long gone from their presence.

‘You said it was 1918 when it all happened,’ the young man said. ‘That was the year the Great War ended. I was only three years old.’

Wallarie turned to the young man who had squatted with his back towards the west.

‘I have more tobacco to give to you if you tell me what happened that year to change everything.’

‘The ancestor spirits were angry and sent the death that took away many people,’ Wallarie said. ‘The Great War between the whitefellas you speak of ended for all except Tom Duffy. He went to a place of great cold to fight more whitefellas. He was a great warrior. But I am tired and the mother of your mother is in the house. You should go to her.’

The young man rose to his feet, frustrated that the story had come to an end for the day. Wallarie was little more than a charlatan, he scoffed to himself as he walked to the verandah. He was just an old man spinning stories as incredible as those he told about the young man’s own ancestors. Tales of his magic were little more than the imagination of poorly educated European stockmen and the nomadic Aboriginals who had taken up residence on the Glen View lands, working beside the European cattlemen for flour, sugar and tea.

The young man’s grandmother stepped from the house to inform him that dinner would be served shortly. ‘Oh, look at that!’ she gasped. ‘Is it not beautiful?’

The young man turned to see what had attracted her attention and caught sight of a great wedge-tailed eagle soaring skywards above the bumbil tree. He suddenly felt fearful. Wallarie was no longer sitting cross-legged under the tree. He had simply disappeared. But the young man reassured himself that this was nothing more than a coincidence.

As he returned to the house the eagle flapped its wide wings and flew towards the dying sun. The young man froze in his tracks. Had he imagined or actually heard the old Aboriginal’s voice?
‘You come back tomorrow. I will tell you what happened in your year of 1918.’

AUTHOR NOTES

F
rom the Sudan campaign of 1885 to the time of writing, the official death toll of Australians who have died for their country totals 102,814.

During World War One alone we lost 61,513 of the above figure, and that does not take into account those returning men who died some years later as a direct result of their wounds. That is why, even today, on 11 November each year, we pause to reflect on The Great War of 1914–19 and its impact on our young nation.

The terrible loss of life between those years must be seen in the context of our small population at the time; there were very few homes that did not mourn the loss of a beloved member who had volunteered to go overseas to fight for King and Empire. I have reflected this in the deaths of three central characters in this family saga.

I did not intend to write a military history of the battles Australians fought as this has been done in a very readable style by Les Carlyon in his magnificent
The Great War
(Pan Macmillan, Sydney, 2006). I would strongly recommend that it be read to gain an understanding of the historically significant role our forces played in changing the course of history in the early part of the 20th century.

Many years ago, while I was an infantry officer with the Army Reserve 1/19 Battalion of the Royal New South Wales Regiment, I had the fortune to dine with veterans of our unit from World War One in the officers’ mess. In discussions with a Lewis gunner and the battalion’s adjutant, I asked if the places they had fought at had a great meaning to them at the time they took part in the major battles. They replied that, during the fighting, their only concern was to stay alive in the tiny piece of battlefield they occupied, and that grand strategy had little interest to them. Many former veterans of any war would tell you the same thing – that their main concern at the time is that little piece of ground they occupy. For it is on that section of a battlefield that they either live or die. So this novel concerns a little piece of battlefield and excludes the tactics and planning of politicians and generals.

I remember a story that the old Lewis gunner told me that night at the dinner table. He had received shrapnel wounds to the lower part of his body at Mont St Quentin. As a result of his wounds a certain part of his anatomy was put in plaster and he was then granted medical leave in Paris. He turned to me with a sad expression, saying, ‘What bloody good was leave to me in Paris with that kind of wound?’ Sixty-five years later the story proved to be funny to the listener – but not at the time to a young, red-blooded Aussie digger in the fleshpot of France. I have mentioned Private Dan Frogan in passing and wanted to make a note that his grandson of the same name lives in the Clarence Valley and has become something of a sporting legend achieving legendary feats not unlike those accomplished by his grandfather.

Needless to say the story has not ended. In the next instalment of the saga I will take the reader to 1918. In that year it could go either way as to who would win the terrible war as the events of the Russian revolution released German troops from the Eastern Front to the Western Front. In that year too Aussie diggers fought their most important battles, turning the tide against Germany for the final victory. We will see that story through the experiences of Sergeant Tom Duffy, and we will see the family story continue through the eyes of those still left alive in their struggle for control of sacred land and a family fortune.

The year 1918 also saw a horrific pandemic come to the world. It caused more deaths in a matter of weeks than all the years of battlefield casualties combined. It was a year that changed the course of history in ways that we have lived with although not knowing the reasons why.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS