Between Here and the Sky- Chapter 5: Group Settlement

The inevitable unforeseen problems started with the breaking of an axle barely an hour out of Mount Barker, near the top of the ascent out of town where a few generations later vineyards and wineries would dominate the landscape. A couple of the men rode back to town to procure another axle, while those left behind unloaded the cart and removed the splintered remnants. The sun rose towards its zenith, bringing the hot wind from the desert to sweep up the dust from the road.

We huddled beneath redgum trees on the roadside out of the sun and wind and passed around flagons of water propped inside cardboard boxes insulated with newspaper. We rolled our sleeves and cuffs up above our elbows and knees in a vain attempt at cooling off. Some men even removed their shirts and lay on the wagons sunning their pasty white chests. Our local guides warned us against this practise, but their advice fell on deaf ears.

During the day the skin of our arms, legs, chests, backs, faces and necks developed a soft pink hue that by nightfall had deepened to crimson. Suddenly our folly and arrogance was realised and the thick long sleeves, pants, boots and slouch hats of the locals no longer seemed like such a strange decision. They smiled and cracked wise, taunting and slapping unaware red backs with calloused palms. Finally one took pity on us and unwrapped the severed green frond of an aloe vera plant and offered it around the circle. The sap cooled our skin for a moment, but nothing of any consequence could be done to alleviate it- even rinsing the days dust off in the cool water of a waterhole only offered temporary relief.

            By the morning our pain was audible. The mere sensation of blankets against red and blistered skin caused the sucking of air through gritted teeth. Rolling out of bed excised yelps from our throats, while putting on sensible full-length clothing brought even the most stoic of men to the brink of sobs. Bloody fissures had formed on our lips and our hot skin gained the wrinkled texture of soft leather. Mr Monroe even suffered the indignity of a red and blistered scalp. He took to swaddling his raw crown with dampened rags, and drizzling water over the bandages every hour. All in all it was an elaborate form of torture.

            We nursed our burns and licked our sore egos as the days drifted slowly by. Much of the excitement of the previous few days had dissipated and we sat quietly watching the progress of the monotonous forest with dull eyes. Hill merged into hill, all covered with the same mix of Redgum, Banksia and blackboy. At first these tall trees weeping their characteristic red sap captivated us, but after hours and days of the same landscape and the constant scourge of blood-sucking ticks we soon grew bored and cantankerous at the tedium. It wasn’t until the afternoon of the 7^th day that the Redgums receded. The trees grew sparser, and the undergrowth denser until we were completely closed in by tea-tree scrub pressing in to watch us pass. Deep wheel ruts criss-crossed the road in testament to the treacherously swampy nature of the region in winter. As the sun drifted towards the west, mosquitoes rained down on us whenever the breeze dropped from the stagnant pools littering the roots of the scratchy shrubs.

We spent the night with a community of farmers next to Lake Muir. They had settled here a few of years earlier as a pilot group to the Group Settlement Scheme. As we ate the lovely stews of rabbit and kangaroo they had prepared us for dinner, our parents discussed the hardships of the country, questioning and gleaning information, handy hints and recipes from those with the experience. Every now and then after we had been put to bed we would be woken by the exclamations and astonished laughs of our parents as they talked well into the night, taking on the enormity of what they now faced until the fire turned into coals flickering against the blue of a moonlit night.

We woke again at dawn to eat toast and bacon cooked by our hosts over the reawakened coals. We said our goodbyes, climbed back aboard the carts and set off with frantic waves back at our disappearing new friends. Within an hour the vegetation began to soar again, even higher than before. Jarrah trees threw themselves towards the sun. Their skin looked like it had been coated with mud as they burst through the ground, and had now dried into a rippling grey crust. Their canopies formed a vaulted archway high above, predicting our advance. These rich, pink hardwoods sheltered us from the worst of the sun, maintaining a pleasant temperature within their shade.

Our guides regaled us with new stories of the bush- the perfect grain of the wood a perfect building material, but at the expense of hundreds of axe heads and handles- their density making them slow to cut, and the blades quick to blunten. However while the locals trembled at the knowledge of life with these trees, to us they were a source of beauty. We marvelled at their breadth and towering heights, each greater even than the mightiest oak back home.

Finally, after days on end marching up and down forested hills we arrived at the end of the road. Our caravan drove down the main street of town, past the grizzled, tanned and bitter faces of the locals. Their shoulders were broad and square, too much weight sat around their necks and chests and with each lumbering step they looked like even the slightest nudge would be enough to tip them off kilter and topple them sideways into the dust. We couldn’t help but watch and giggle to ourselves at the sight of these strange, unbalanced, savage men.

We pulled up around the back of the Manjimup Hotel at the far end of the street. It was one of a dozen such hotels in town, but as the first established (before even a general store, if local lore were to be believed) it earned the right to co-opt the name of the town as its own. In fact, many locals argued that it worked the other way around- that the town earned the right to name itself after the pub.

We left the carts and wagons- still loaded- tied lazily to the railings as the weary horses were led to the stables where they would be tended back to vitality. Their job done, the guides joined the local men at the bar for a raucous night of beer, swearing, singing and brawling before returning to their homes the next morning bleary eyed and weak stomached.

The rest of us dragged ourselves upstairs to our rooms to wash the week’s dust from our bodies and peel vast swathes of deadened skin from our slowly healing wounds, before reconvening in the dining room to eat our dinners in silence. Barely a word was uttered through the fog of exhaustion. Heads nodded and lungs sighed. I fell asleep in my chair; my parents having to carry my limp bones up to bed, before turning in for the night themselves, welcoming a proper bed instead of the thin mats they had to contend with throughout the migration. I was not the only one to sleep heavily past dawn, immune to the boisterous sounds emanating from downstairs.

When we descended the stairs for breakfast the next morning we were informed that we would be setting out on the last leg of our journey in an hour or so. My parents smiled and hugged each other and a general buzz whipped through the dining room. It was to be a ten-mile trek along a trail only recently cut through the virgin forest. Manjimup was already established as a pivotal timber-milling town, its occupants having already cleared vast swathes of the forest, leaving behind pastureland in an ever-expanding circle from the town.

It was the state governments plan, through its puppet Midland Railway Company, to populate the area and establish the region as the state’s breadbasket, to provide the state’s growing population with meat, milk, vegetables, fruits and grains. They advertised extensively throughout England for young men and families such as my own willing to transplant their lives and bring their Anglo culture with them to form the nucleus of these new regional communities.

Families who signed up to the Scheme were allocated to Group Settlements, each under the guidance of a Foreman. Twelve families were assigned to each newly surveyed cluster of land, thus creating new little slices of the Motherland. Each man or family would receive a 160-acre parcel of land, the stipulation being that each had to clear at least 25 acres of forest from their block in order to be given the rights to buy the land using low interest loans provided by the government. As an added incentive, each migrant would receive a small herd of sheep and cows, tools and machinery to clear the land, seed to start crops and brand new houses in which to live. And if all went to plan each family would quickly settle into their new life and start producing goods for sale back to the state and thereby pay back their loan.

After hastily throwing down breakfast we climbed aboard our carts for the last time and, under the guidance of our new Foremen- the local Kelly brothers, set out for Paradise. At first we passed quickly through the gentle roll of farmland as workers in the fields tilled the soil, then past loggers wielding mighty cross-saws and axes, and even past a small mill as we neared the edge of the cleared land. The giant circular saw screeched terribly as it passed through the heart of a ten-foot jarrah trunk.

The road slowly narrowed and the forest encroached ever closer until we were travelling along the floor of an improbable chasm formed by the variegated trunks souring above. The Karri stood fat and bold alongside the track inspiring awe in those who passed. Patches of white, grey, yellow and pink pastels showed beneath the long tendrils of silvery skin peeling off via forces unseen. Our necks craned upwards in reverence, tracing the parallel lines of their unfeasibly straight trunks tapering infinitesimally in their ascent, only to burst outwards in a paused explosion of verdant foliage between here and the sky. We fell silent, speaking only in whispers for fear of other, invisible, ears hearing.

The air hung rich and musty as axles squeaked, bullwhips cracked, cattle complained and distant axes thudded rhythmically into the heart of the trees. Even the broad and burly local Foremen quietened to listen to the conversations of the wind tussling the canopy and the crisp crack of twigs snapped by startled kangaroos as they bounded away in a panic.

The be-creeked gullies grew ever cooler, darker and damper. No wind could penetrate the lid of the canopy, rendering the gullies ripe with decades of stale composting air. Mosses and ferns grew from the rotting logs littering the floor and decomposition was accelerated by the clinging dampness. Armies of insects flitted amongst the detritus scavenging whatever they could find. Our skin prickled with electricity as we breathed in decades of life and death, each humbled by the likelihood that we amongst the very first people to have ever trodden this earth. This place somehow felt familiar, yet simultaneously foreign and mystical. We felt separated from the rest of humanity yet somehow soothed, alone in creation. There was something profoundly spiritual about this place that penetrated your bones and soul.

The men began to whisper amongst themselves, getting excited by what possibly lay in store. “Look at the size of these trees!” “If they can grow that big, just imagine how good the soil is!” “It must be better than anything back home.” “Were going to be rolling in it!” They relaxed and started to have some fun, figuring that life would be a doddle from here on in.

Our new Foremen, younger and more vivacious than the grizzled men that had led us to Manjimup, took us young ones under their wings. They showed us how to rub the fuzzy leaves from the shrubs lining our path between our hands and, with a few drops of water, create a frothing pile of bubbles. Delighted, we proceeded to strip entire branches of their leaves, lathering them furiously between our palms and creating ridiculous quantities of froth and foam, which we pressed to our faces as bubbly white beards and moustaches in imitation of our elders.

The adults too got involved, and Dad in particular spent a lot of his time walking alongside our cart idly making froth and decorating the horses’ manes with Mohawks of fine white bubbles. The men had this curious man pegged as a simpleton, a little touched perhaps. They whispered and joked amongst themselves, and even took wagers on how long he would last once we reached our new home and the real work began. Dad’s hands, which in England had been the hardened and cracked brown leather hands of a farmer and labourer, had become soft and pink through the sedentary weeks spent cooped up in the hull of the ship. And all this constant lathering couldn’t be helping his cause. Still, while the guides mocked him behind his back, we knew that our father was a lot stronger than he looked. In our eyes he was a man of action, a hero. Nothing could ever hold him back. We had no doubt that he would thrive in this our Paradise.

Our carts, in single file, continued down, down, down the steep track into deep rippling valley. The sun was obscured by the trees so we had no reference for how far or how long we had been descending. Our necks grew tired from the constant craning upwards, and vertigo from watching countless identical trunks pass by into infinity.

Eventually we reached the banks of the warbling river that had carved the valley out of the landscape over millennia. The still water was stained into a yellow-brown tea by the tannins leached from the branches and leaves of the overhanging shrubs hanging precariously from the muddy banks.

Dad bent down and took a small handful of the cold water and sipped, and proclaimed it to be perfectly pure, defying its murky colour. He grabbed a long stick and, clinging to the branch of a ‘soap-bush’, leant out over the waters to test its depth. The waters swallowed the entire stick at the same time the willowy limb cracked. Dad lost his balance and plunged headlong into the frigid pool to the rapturous howls of delight of those on the shore. He came up spluttering and flailing for the riverbank until he quickly regained his composure and planted his feet into the sludgy mud lining the bottom of the river. He wiped the water from his face and looked wide-eyed and stunned at the gaggle pointing and laughing at him.

The men united in helping drag Dad up the slippery clay of the riverbank and slapped him heartily on the back as Ma rummaged through our belongings in search of a change of clothes. He sheepishly took the proffered towel, clothes and boots and trudged away into the bush to change, his feet squelching with every step. The rest of us continued our laughter until he re-emerged from the undergrowth; pride wounded, but spirit intact.

Composure regained, we followed the bumpy track upstream until we stumbled across a set of stony rapids. The water cascaded over the glistening rocks from the top pool to the bottom. As it churned and bounced down the rapids the saponin leached from the undergrowth swelled into mounds of foam that swirled with the currents and eddies around the lower pool, forming abstract patterns and swirls on the surface of the deep, dark water.

We diverted up a side creek and, if we could have surveyed the landscape from between the trees, out onto a wallowing plain. The hills retreated on either side, leaving in their wake a broad and marshy flat littered with prickly shrubs and Paperbarks. The air smelt of minty tea. The hill slopes stood in submission a safe distance away from the water, creating the illusion that we were placed at the very centre of a giant’s saucer. The ghostly giants that had guided our path dispersed to the slopes of the hills, surrendering like shy and meek children in the face of something new. We were perched in an enclave hidden away from the rest of the world. This was our oasis, our prison, our Paradise.

A clearing opened up in front of us and a lone building, nothing more than four walls, a roof and a rainwater tank, emerged from the afternoon shadows, tentatively making its presence known. About 3 acres of bush had been hacked away around it. A couple dozen cattle and sheep were milling around within a crudely fenced enclosure. Little wooden pickets with coloured ribbon tied around the ends dotted the clearing and off into the bush in all directions, demarcating the borders of each selection, each parcel of land. They stretched away from the creek and up the slopes of the enclosing hills. The creek itself bisected the valley in half, creating two rows of farms staring at one another across the brook.

Once the initial awe and reverence of the tranquillity wore off, the realisation of the enormity of the task started to sink in. Disgruntled rumblings arose amongst the group and broke as a wave through every head. This was not the scene that had been promised. Our families hadn’t uprooted our lives, transported us to the nether regions of the globe and isolated ourselves from all that we knew just to be plonked in the middle of a wild and untamed wilderness. The posters and pamphlets and salesmen of the Scheme had assured us that we would arrive to the splendour of ready-made farms; that we could walk straight onto them and continue our farming traditions with an absolute minimum of fuss. We had all walked blindly into a trap and the shock that hit us bubbled over into rage.

The Foremen, being the visible and tangible incarnation of the Scheme, were the natural targets for our collective anger, however it seemed that they too had walked unknowingly into the trap. They had just been given instruction to guide us to the settlement, having already been here to erect the shed and deliver the stock. They didn’t know what the authorities had promised, and all that had not been delivered. They had no way of knowing the intricacies of the contracts drafted by the company and signed by the participants. They were equally as naïve, and equally incensed at being at the coalface and the focus of the blame. All they could do was offer their own personal assistance, and a voice to lobby the company on behalf of the people.

It was clear from their reactions that they were indeed as innocent as us, so there was no point in continuing to protest. What good would it do to ostracise those that were in the best position to help our present situation? The flames of our frustrations were quieted into coals smouldering beneath the surface where they could burn in preparedness for an encounter with those that were to blame.

Everybody, even us kids, pitched in to help unload the wagons and deliver the myriad crates of furniture, crockery, kerosene lamps, clothes, and water inside. The shed was nothing more than a large open room, with a kitchen tacked onto the end as if it were an oversight. A long-drop toilet was stationed a safe distance away uphill. With no other candidate, it was unanimously decreed that the building would serve as the town hall; the epicentre and visible soul of our community- Group Settlement #79 (Karabup).

By the time the sun had dipped into the canopies of the trees lining the crest of the hill beyond the river, the lives of each family had been unloaded into the hall. The horses had been tethered and fed, and a small amount of hay was distributed amongst the sheep and cows. Dead wood had been collected from the fringes of the clearing and made into a pile alongside the first flickering flames of a campfire, its orange glow rebounding off the encircling scrub. We shared our first meal as a town. We ate, played and laughed together into the night, suspending the uneasiness over the false promises and establishing the tight bonds of community that comes through shared experience.