Tracks (2 page)

The minute I saw Sallay Mahomet it was apparent to me that he knew exactly what he was doing. He exuded the bandylegged, rope-handling confidence of a man long accustomed to dealing with animals. He was fixing some odd-looking saddles near a dusty yard filled with these strange beasts.

‘Yes, what can I do for you?’

‘Good morning, Mr Mahomet,’ I said confidently. ‘My name’s Robyn Davidson and um, I’ve been planning this trip you see, into the central desert and I wanted to get three wild camels and train them for it, and I was wondering if you might be able to help me.’

‘Hrrrmppph.’

Sallay glared at me from under bushy white eyebrows.

‘And I suppose you think you’ll make it too?’

I looked at the ground, shuffled my feet and mumbled something defensive.

‘What do you know about camels then?’

‘Ah well, nothing really, I mean these are the first ones I’ve seen as a matter of fact, but ah …’

‘Hrrmmph. And what do you know about deserts?’

It was painfully obvious from my silence that I knew very little about anything.

Sallay said he was sorry, he didn’t think he could help me, and turned about his business. My cockiness faded. This was going to be harder than I thought, but then it was only the first day.

Next we drove to the tourist place south of town. I met the owner and his wife, a friendly woman who offered me cakes and tea. They looked at one another in silence when I told them of my plan. ‘Well, come out here any time you like,’ said the man jovially, ‘and get to know the animals a bit.’ He could barely control the smirk on the other side of his face. My intuition in any case told me to stay away. I didn’t like him and I was sure the feeling was mutual. Besides, when I saw how his animals roared and fought, I figured he was probably not the right person to learn from.

The last of the three, the Posel place, was three miles north, and was owned, according to some of the people in the bar, by a maniac.

My geologist friend dropped me off at the pub, and from there I walked north up the Charles River bed. It was a delightful walk, under cool and shady trees. The silence was often broken by packs of camp dogs who raced out with their hackles up to tell me and Diggity to get out of their territory, only to have bottles, cans and curses flung at them by their Aboriginal owners, who none the less smiled and nodded at us.

I arrived at the door of a perfect white cottage set among trees and lawns. It was an Austrian chalet in miniature, beautiful, but crazy out there among red boulders and dust devils. The yards were all hand-hewn timber and twisted ropes — the work of a master-craftsman. The stables had arches and geraniums. Not a thing was out of place. Gladdy Posel met me at the door — a bird-like woman, middle-aged, with a face that spoke of hardship and worry and unbending will. But there was a suspiciousness in it also. However, she was the first person so far who had not greeted my idea with patronizing disbelief. Or perhaps she just hid it better. Kurt, her husband, was not there so I arranged to come and see him the next day.

‘What do you think of the town so far?’ she asked.

‘I think it stinks,’ I replied and instantly regretted it. The last thing I wanted to do was to set her against me.

She smiled for the first time. ‘Well, you might get on all right then. Just remember, they’re mostly mad around here and you have to watch out for yourself.’

‘What about the blacks?’ I asked.

The suspiciousness returned. ‘There’s nothing damn well wrong with the blacks except what the whites do to them.’

It was my turn to smile. Gladdy, it appeared, was a rebel.

The next day, Kurt came out to greet me with as much enthusiasm as his Germanic nature would allow. He was dressed in an immaculate white outfit, with an equally crisp white turban. But for his ice-blue eyes, he looked like a bearded, wiry Moor. Standing near him was like being close to a fallen power line — all dangerous, crackling energy. He was dark brown, stringy, with hands calloused and outsized from work and he was certainly the most extraordinary individual I had ever laid eyes on. I had barely got out my name before he had led me to the verandah and begun to tell me exactly how life was to be for the next eight months, grinning, gap-toothed, all the while.

‘Now, you vill come to verk for me here for eight months und zen you vill buy vone of my camelts, und I vill teach you to train zem and you vill get two vild vones und dat vill be dat. I haf just de animal for you. He hass only vone eye but, ha, dat does not matter — he is stronk and reliable enough for you, ya.’

‘Yes, but …’ I stammered.

‘Yes, but vott?’ he shouted incredulously.

‘How much will he cost?’

‘Ah, ya, how much vill he cost. Ya. Let me see. I give him to you for a thousand dollars. A bargain.’

A blind camel for a thousand bucks, I thought to myself. I could buy a bloody elephant for that.

‘That’s very nice of you but you see, Kurt, I have no money.’

His grin disappeared like greasy water down a plug-hole.

‘But I can work at the pub of course, so …’

‘Ya. Dat’s right,’ he said. ‘Ya, you vill vork at de pub and you vill stay here as my apprentice for food and rent beginning tonight and ve vill see vot you are made off, and so it is all settled. You are a very lucky girl dat I do dis for you.’

I half understood, through my dazed incredulity, that I was being shanghaied. He led me to my quarters in the stable and went inside to fetch my new camel-handler’s outfit. I climbed into the great swaddling white drapes and perched the ridiculous turban over my pale hair and eyes. I looked like a schizophrenic baker. I laughed helplessly at the mirror.

‘Vot’s da matter, you too good for it or sometink?’

‘No, no,’ I assured him. ‘I just never saw myself as an Afghan, that’s all.’

He led me out to the camels for my first lesson.

‘Now, you must start from de bottom and verk up,’ he said, handing me a dustpan and broom.

Camels shit like rabbits. Neat round little pebbles in copious amounts. Some of it was sitting in the direction of Kurt’s pointed finger. It was only then that I realized that on the whole five acres I had not seen a scrap of the stuff, not a particle, and considering Kurt had eight beasts, it was, to say the least, surprising. Hoping to impress my new boss with my diligence, I bent down and carefully scraped every bit into the pan and stood up waiting for inspection.

Something seemed to be wrong with Kurt. His eyebrows were working up and down his face like lifts. His skin was turning red under the brown. He exploded then like a volcano, blasting me with his spit like hot lava.

‘VOTT ISSS DATTTT?’

Confused, I glanced down but could see nothing. I got on my knees but could still see nothing. Kurt threw himself on his knees beside me and there hidden under a blade of clipped couch grass was the most minuscule ancient morsel of camel shit you could imagine. ‘Clean it up!’ he screamed. ‘You tink dis iss a bloody holiday or sometink?’ I couldn’t believe this was happening to me; shaking, I picked up the microscopic flake. It had almost turned to dust over the years. But Kurt was appeased and we continued the rounds of the ranch.

I might have thought twice about staying there after this outburst, but it became apparent very quickly that my demon friend was a wizard with camels. I will now, once and for all, destroy some myths concerning these animals. They are the most intelligent creatures I know except for dogs and I would give them an IQ rating roughly equivalent to eight-year-old children. They are affectionate, cheeky, playful, witty, yes witty, self-possessed, patient, hard-working and endlessly interesting and charming. They are also very difficult to train, being of an essentially undomestic turn of mind as well as extremely bright and perceptive. This is why they have such a bad reputation. If handled badly, they can be quite dangerous and definitely recalcitrant. Kurt’s were neither. They were like great curious puppies. Nor do they smell, except when they regurgitate slimy green cud all over you in a fit of pique or fear. I would also say that they are highly sensitive animals, easily frightened by bad handlers, and easily ruined. They are haughty, ethnocentric, clearly believing that they are god’s chosen race. But they are also cowards and their aristocratic demeanour hides delicate hearts. I was hooked.

Kurt proceeded to outline my duties. Shit seemed to be the major problem. I was to follow the animals around all day and pick up the offending stuff. He then told me how he had once had the bright idea of shoving the inflatable rubber inner bladders of footballs up their anuses, but that during the day they had passed them out with a groan. I looked sideways at Kurt. He wasn’t joking.

I was also to catch the animals at four in the morning, unhobble them (they were hobbled by straps and a foot of chain around their front legs to prevent them going too far, too fast) and lead them home in a long line, nose to tail, ready for saddling. Two or three would be used for the day’s work, leading tourists around the oval for a dollar a go, while the rest would be kept in the yards. I was to tie the selected three to their feed bins, groom them with a broom, ask them to ‘whoosh’ (an Afghan word meaning, presumably, sit), then saddle them with the gaudy mock-Arabian saddles of Kurt’s design. This was to be the best part of my existence for the next eight months. Kurt threw me right into the thick of things which did not give me time to be frightened of the animals. Most of the rest of the day was spent keeping his sterile domain scrupulously clean, tidy and free of weeds. Not a blade of grass dared grow out of place.

That night, the boy who had been good enough to drive me around town came out to see how I was doing. I informed Kurt that I had a visitor, then took him back to the stables. We sat chatting, watching the iridescent blue and orange glow of late evening. I was exhausted after the day’s routine. Kurt had kept me trotting at a brisk scurry from feed shed to camel to yard and back again. I had weeded a garden, trimmed a mile of couch-infested curbing with a pair of scissors, had led countless objectionable tourists around the oval on camel-back and had cleaned, mopped, scraped and lifted until I thought I would collapse. The pace had not slackened for a minute and all the while Kurt had been scrutinizing me and my work, alternately muttering that I might turn out all right and screaming abuse at me, in front of bewildered and embarrassed tourists. While I was working I was too preoccupied to think whether I would be able to stand such treatment for eight months, but as I talked to my young friend all the anger that I felt towards the man was bubbling away deep down inside. Arrogant prick, I thought. Miserable, tight, obsessional, whingeing little creep. I hated myself for my infernal cowardice in dealing with people. It is such a female syndrome, so much the weakness of animals who have always been prey. I had not been aggressive enough or stood up to him enough. And now this impotent, internal, angry stuttering. Suddenly, Kurt appeared around the corner — an apparition in white taking giant strides. I could feel his fury before he reached us and stood up to face him. He pointed a shaking finger at my friend and hissed through clenched teeth:

‘You, you get out of here. I don’t know who de hell you are. No vone iss allowed here after dark. You’ve probably been sent here by Fullarton to spy out my camel saddle designs.’

Then he glared at me. ‘I heared from my own sources dat you’ve already been over dere. If you verk for me you don’t go near da place —
EVER
. Do you understand?’

And then I burst. Hell had no fury by comparison. My friend had disappeared, eyes bulging, into the dark and I lashed out at Kurt, calling him every name under the sun and screaming that he had a snowflake’s chance in hell of getting me to do his dirty work again. I’d die first. I stormed into the room in a passionate rage, slammed his precious barn-door, the one that had to be handled like glass, and packed my meagre possessions.

Kurt was stupefied. He had sized me up wrongly, and pushed a sucker too far. The dollar signs faded from his eyes. But he was too proud to apologize and the next morning, early, I moved into the pub.

T
HE PUB HAD FOUR DIVISIONS
. The Saloon Bar, where I worked, catered for many of the regulars — truckies, station hands, some of them part-Aboriginal, and the occasional black ringer (station hand) who had just been paid a two-hundred-dollar cheque to be cashed at the pub, of which little would be left by the next morning. However, blacks, despite the easy pickings, were tacitly frowned upon here and didn’t often come in. The Lounge Bar catered for tourists and some of the regulars of a slightly higher social standing although there was general flow between the two areas. The Pool Room allowed blacks in but grudgingly, and the Inner Bar, a cosy, tastelessly decorated room, was where the police, lawyers and upper-class whites drank. Here blacks were forbidden. This was not legal or stated but it was enforced none the less under the guise of, ‘Patrons are requested to wear neat attire etc.’ It was known by the hard cases in the saloon as the Poofters’ Bar. At least this pub didn’t have a dog window, as most of the others in the Northern Territory had. These were small windows around the back where booze was sold to the blacks.

I lived in a draughty cement pigeon-hole out the back, furnished with an aluminium bed covered by a stained shocking pink chenille bedspread. I wrote cheery letters home, telling everyone how I was practising animal training on giant cockroaches, how I bullwhipped them into submission but was afraid they might one day turn against me, which was why I had refrained from putting my head in their mouths. But the jokes hid a growing depression. Getting camels or even information was turning out to be infinitely harder than I had thought. By that time, word of my scheme had spread and it brought much derisive laughter from the patrons, and enough useless and incorrect information to stock a library of the absurd. Suddenly everyone, it seemed, knew all there was to know about camels.

One does not have to delve too deeply to discover why some of the world’s angriest feminists breathed crisp blue Australian air during their formative years, before packing their kangaroo-skin bags and scurrying over to London or New York or any place where the antipodean machismo would fade gently from their battle-scarred consciousnesses like some grisly nightmare at dawn. Anyone who has worked in a men-only bar in Alice Springs will know what I mean.