Chapter 7: Plotting the Future

The men awoke with the sun, made tea on the embers of the fire and set out to inspect exactly what they had bought into. They retraced their steps back down the creek to the first set of survey points and started out across the flats. The markers stretched through the bush to the top of the ridge and down into the base of the gully beyond. They ducked and weaved their way along the boundary, stopping now and then to uncatch their clothing from the spiky Banksia and Zamia bushes that made them itch and scratch at their skin.

Each farm consisted of a patchwork of Teatrees, paperbarks, Jarrah, Marri, Blackboys, Banksia and even a small copse of stringy Karri in the far gullies, while the soil itself spanned the spectrum from grey sand on the flats and rocky ironstone up on the ridge. Certainly, the sheer size and abundance of the trees suggested that the soil would prove fertile and ensure the success of their crops. The experienced farmers in the group were certain they could make something of it.

            They made their way along the floor of the back gullies, walking slightly up the gradient until the gully morphed into the neighbouring ridge. They continued downhill once more on the other side, marching across the back of the six lots before turning again and tracing their way back towards the creek. After crossing the drying creekbed they followed the markers round the other half of the allotments before returning to the camp for a late lunch where they declared that the land didn’t look too bad, and that the division of land was fair and equitable.

            We arranged ourselves in a circle and discussed over a cup of tea exactly how the land was to be allocated. The contracts the parents had signed specified that this wasn’t to happen until at least 25 acres had been cleared from each block, but in light of the beastly situation the Scheme had placed us in it was unanimously agreed that the land would be balloted off now, and everyone would pitch in to clear sufficient space on each block in turn.

Each block was assigned a number, and each number written on a piece of paper and placed into the broad hat of one of the Kelly’s. The patriarch of each family- in descending age order- drew a tab from the hat bearing the number of their slice of Paradise. Bill Munroe, at 40 years of age, was the first up, drawing number 4. Then Roger Craig (35) drew 1, the bachelor Matthew Elliot (34) number 5, Dad (28) number 2, and Robert Enfield (23) finally drew number 3 out of the hat. The Craig’s, Enfield’s and Elliot would be in a row along the Southern side of the creek, with the Munroe’s and us on the North. There were mock complaints and grumblings about the procedure and verdict, a keeping up of appearances, but they were accompanied by glints and wily grins.

            With this the inaugural meeting of the new Group Settlement community of Karabup was adjourned. The Foremen bid us farewell, promising to return within the week with the first batch of building materials. They rode off at a trot back to their respective families, homes and lives, leaving us alone for the first time amongst the silence of the bush. No sound save for the wind dancing across the leaves in the canopy could be heard. We were utterly alone in a foreign wilderness; completely isolated and cut off from the rest of the world. The silence and stillness were overwhelming. Each of us were hypnotised by our own thoughts and reveries as we set out in our familial directions to select our home sites amongst the scrub.

True to their word the Kelly’s returned with carts piled high with timber beams and slats. Whips cracked and bullocks groaned as they lumbered forward with their cargo. Those still up on the hill meandered down to welcome them in, intrigued- our first external interaction in seven days. In that time we had set with gusto into the task of clearing sites for our new homes a safe distance from the winter mudflats.

The men had managed to carve out of the bush clearings 30 square feet in size on each selection with crosscut saws and axes. As they directed their power into the tree trunks, the smaller of us were set the task of collecting the smaller broken and fallen arms of the knotted gums for firewood, loading them onto the loose and rattling old cart until we could no longer reach the top. We built a woodpile against the side of the hall, and started clearing the innumerable rocks that littered the ground into easily accessible piles to be dealt with once everything had settled down.

The men took care of the larger limbs and trunks, hauling them from the site of their execution, down the slopes and into windrows by the creek ready to be split and cut into fence-posts and stakes. Meanwhile the women prepared all our meals and drinks, helped us with our tasks, made sure the smallest of us didn’t get ourselves into trouble, and chased snakes and lizards away from the stock and larders.

            The men quickly found out that the local jarrah and marri were a far cry from the oak and birch they were used to back home. The knotted and gnarled wood was astonishingly hard, and heaving a great axe into it caused vibrations of refined energy to pulse through the handle, into the hands, up the arms and into the core, jangling the organs and stinging the bones of those who wielded the power. And to add to the insult, each terrible swing only ate an inch further into the trunk. It did not seem proportionate to the amount of effort expended. Hands were transformed into a collection of weeping blisters, the skin peeling from their palms, and the muscles of their arms, shoulders and chests throbbing from the exertion and jarring pain.

            However by the end of the week they could look back with pride at their efforts and the freshly cleared sites scattered around the valley. Upon their return, the Kelly’s were surprised by the progress we had made and admired the work ethic of this seemingly soft and rag-tag mob of Poms. They remarked that even rough-necked Aussies such as themselves would struggle to achieve this much over the same period of time.

The Kelly’s led their cart around to each property to drop off the required building materials, and by night fall we were all gathered around the bonfire watching the kangaroo stew steaming above the flames and the potatoes roasting in the coals. The air buzzed with the tired but excited energy of the people and the cloud of mosquitoes diving onto any unprotected patches of skin.

            We all awoke at first light and, after a breakfast of porridge and charred buttered toast, set out to the Craig’s property to erect the first Karabup house. Holes had already been dug at the four corners of the clearing in preparation for the erection of the outer pillars. A thick Jarrah log was positioned over each hole and four ropes were lashed around the top. With a man on each rope they hauled the log upright in an arc and slipped the base into the hole with a dull thud. It stood there at a jaunty angle pointing above the morning sun. They carefully manipulated the pole to stand perfectly erect and the soil was poured back in around the base with shovels and compacted with the flat ends of 6-foot crowbars until set like concrete. Within an hour all four soldiers stood sentry at the corners of the house warding off any bad luck or pessimism that may have been stalking through the scrub. The only thing possessing our hearts was a rampant and buoyant optimism; a feeling that we could, together, create something truly unique and amazing.

It was another month before the finishing touches could be laid onto the outer shell of the last house, and with it the physical manifestation of the community was complete. 5 identical, rudimentary, 4-walled houses with roofs of shimmering corrugated iron stood around the valley, secreted from each other by the scrub but for the wood-smoke winding upwards from the chimneys. A flat veranda covered each front porch from where anybody with some free time could gaze out into the scrub contemplate their lot in life. Inside, each was partitioned into 6 rooms sprouting off of a central hallway. They weren’t flashy, but they were functional. In another fortnight gutters were affixed to the edges of the roof and pipes fed into new rainwater tanks perched against each house, but until the rains started again we would have to rely on weekly raids to the reservoir a few valley’s over. Ours was a simple life, but one that we embraced with opened arms and the passion of the soul.

While the men were up on the hills clearing the land and fencing off the selections, the women took it upon themselves to move everything from the hall and temporary humpies into the relevant houses. Up until this point we had conducted everything as a community. Now had come the time to partition ourselves off from our neighbours.

            The Kelly brothers came and went on a regular basis. They owned a farm a few miles to the east and had young families of their own to look after, and had taken on the job of looking after us as a way of supplementing their incomes. Every time they came they brought with them extra supplies, correspondence, furnishings, building materials and treats for us little ones. They fast became our closest allies. We were their ‘Groupies’, and they could always be depended upon to lend a helping hand, whether prompted or not. I’m pretty sure a lot of us would have walked off the land a lot earlier if it weren’t for their help.

The Kelly’s showed the men how to strip the bark from the jarrah logs drying by the creek, and then how to divide the timber into 6-foot fence posts using sledgehammers and steel wedges to split the logs along their grain. As they were split the green posts were laid out to dry under the summer sun for a couple of weeks and prevent them from rotting and splintering once they were embedded in the ground.

While the Kelly’s, Dad, Bob Enfield and Matt Elliot put their backs into splitting the posts, the two elder patriarchs Bill Monroe and Roger Craig took their teenage boys Danny and Oscar and Josh out into the scrub to dig holes seven paces apart like perforations along the seam of the hill in which the fence-posts would stand. They dug for a fortnight, slowly tracing out the borders of each property until each was delineated from the next like a sheet of postage stamps.

As they lay the Jarrah posts out alongside the holes it quickly became apparent that they only had about half the number of posts that they needed. As a compromise they made the diplomatic decision to instead fence off about a third of each farm so that each family would have a safe enclosed area in which to keep the stock. Thicker, heavier posts were placed at the junction of fences where the holes had been dug in deeper. These would act as levers, preventing the fence from being torn from the ground as tension was added to the wire. Gates were also suspended from these strainer posts to allow the easy movement of stock between paddocks. The rest of the fences would have to wait until more trees had been felled in the process of clearing the land.

            With the sheep and cattle safely enclosed and the boundaries of each farm etched into the valley the men stood face to face with the daunting task of clearing the bush. When looked upon as a whole it appeared overwhelming. A thousand acres of sunburnt rocky ground covered completely with the spikes of blackboy, zamia and Banksia and shaded by a continuous canopy of Jarrah and Redgum with trunks were so fat that four men together couldn’t warp their arms around their base. Instead of charging straight in, they started with the low-lying scrub along the banks of the creek. The general opinion was that if they could just clear a little bit of arable land, then they could start growing crops and get a little bit of money trickling in. They would worry about the daunting hardwoods when the time came.

And so the men slashed away at the shrubs around the creek bed, their arms and legs getting scratched and lashed by the prickly and brittle bushes. Heavy chains were connected between teams of horses that were led in parallel across the plain to tear the Teatrees from the grey, sandy earth. After helping to remove the Teatrees, the horses were hitched to ploughs to churn up the soil and release the small flora. Only a handful of paperbarks and scrawny gums persisted, too strong to be merely ripped from the ground; symbols of the power of the native earth.

Not long into the clearing process it dawned on someone- I don’t know who- that it would be easier to clear the land if they burnt the forest first, thereby removing the smaller shrubs and plants that would otherwise get in their way. They stood around thinking, berating themselves, until someone started laughing at his naivety and they all joined in the chorus, disrupting a gaggle of Kookaburras in the trees behind. They could hardly burn out the bush now that they’d spent all that time and energy fencing it off- the fences would be destroyed. They spat, cursed and laughed at their folly, then turned back to their horses and axes, shrugging, and kept on tearing at the scrub.

Teatree skeletons were heaped into windrows next to the creek, and one still, late autumn afternoon they were set alight to glow orange against the sunset and release their sweet incense to the wind. Twigs and branches of the twisted shrubs crackled and flared as the flames licked at their skin. The snap and pop of bursting kindling continued its hypnotic rhythm throughout the evening and into the night. That evening the sun burnt crimson through the smoke, and the sky was alive with intense slathers of reds, oranges and purples. Everyone sat in wonder around the fires and smiled in wonder at the perfection of the night.

We all took the afternoon off from our regular duties to gather around the fires. As we watched the sun dip beneath the hanging heads of the trees the entire community converged on the plain to sit around toasting bread, making tea and roasting potatoes in the coals. We sang the songs of home into the night, our faces hot from the fire and our backs chilled by the plunging night. Mr Monroe brought his banjo down from his house and provided the backing track, before Mr Craig squeezed the strains of Northern songs from his bagpipes under the magnificent expanse of the Southern sky. For once the hills echoed with the voices of the living. We felt like we must be the last surviving inhabitants of the world.