The Crow Eaters Read online

  The sun begins to set behind the ghostly mulga trees and that thin feeling in the air returns. We drive until we find a flat clearing next to the fence. There are dry, dead limbs on the ground and we make camp in minutes. There’s something satisfying about shovelling a hole for the fire, dragging over a few dead branches to light and unrolling the swag on the ground: no tent poles, inflatable mattresses, tarpaulin awnings or clutter.

  ‘What do you cook with?’ I ask. ‘Fire,’ he says, not looking up. Al smiles and then shows me a little hotplate with retractable legs he welded together. He shifts it over to the fire, wipes it down with a drizzle from his beer and places two steaks on the makeshift barbecue.

  The cold sets in and slowly the stars start to pop out in the sky. For months I have been looking forward to seeing the night sky up here again. Al lets the embers die down a little, though we’ll drag limbs over to keep the fire going all night. It’s a gradually unfolding story above us as it becomes darker and darker, and by the time the white sash of the Milky Way appears across the horizon, Al is zipped up in his swag and snoring – no doubt also because of his pre-bedtime ritual every time he’s on the fence – a large glass of his favourite green ginger wine as a nightcap.

  While the stars wink and twinkle, the darkness and stillness out here also highlights how many satellites there are above us. I see a constant stream of the blinking, rushing lights across the sky, grabbing GPS data, connecting phones and TV signals. There is an autonomy to the night here – I can’t tell if it’s a US military satellite tracking nuclear submarines, like the very first ones did in the 1960s, or if it’s part of the Russian GLONASS system. It doesn’t matter out here. It really does seem like a space highway above and I find it a strange thing to think about as I drift off to sleep – we’re in one of the most isolated places in Australia – we haven’t seen a person, road, piece of rubbish or heard a human noise all day, nor will we until tomorrow night, though the satellites are both comforting and alarming – reminding me that we’re never really alone even out here.

  We leave early the next morning as soon as the sun is up and we swill a cup of strong billy tea each. Al shovels red sand over the last of the fire and we chug along again at our stately pace on the fence. For the first hour we miraculously pick up a radio signal, and an ABC gardening show keeps us company. Normally I would find the prospect of another ten hours on the fence watching the metal squares for signs of interference from one horizon to the next excruciating, though my body has settled into the rhythm and I’m kind of looking forward to what we’ll discover today. We talk when we want, and there is a comfortable silence between us as we let it roll along. While I’m in my hypnotic state I notice the number of camel carcasses along the fence – I must have seen 50 since the day before. The long white bones are covered by remnants of tanned hide, and they look like broken couches laid out on the edge of the track, as if it’s council collection for unloved furniture.

  We continue ploughing along and I notice, silently, that the track is full of footprints: kangaroos, emus, dogs and a big, soft and round set of pads. Al has noticed it too, ‘Maybe it’s looking to mate,’ he says as he stops the ute abruptly. I look up to a stand of trees ahead and see a big bull camel lumbering over near the fence.

  Al calibrated his rifle yesterday afternoon against an old 44-gallon drum, so there’s no excuse today. He shoulders the rifle and walks with purpose up towards the camel. When he’s about 30 metres away he raises the gun and I hear the millisecond-delayed ‘POP’ as the camel flops out of view. Al disappears and I hear another ‘POP’ in the scrub – to make sure he dispatches the camel as humanely as possible, he tells me as he returns to the ute. Once upon a time I would have found this strange, considering the romantic image many people have of camels, though when you consider the damage that more than a million feral camels do in Central Australia, it’s an understandable part of Al’s job to maintain the integrity of the fence.

  A little further along, we see a green shipping container and a water tank. This is a survival station recently brought in by the SA Dog Fence Board.

  ‘One worker in the west had his container all decked out with carpet and furniture,’ Al says laughing, though he says it’s a reminder that he has to bring out some water, food and some blankets on a run soon so it can help in emergencies. ‘I might bring a barbecue as well,’ he says with a smile.

  The sun arches higher in the sky and after we turn the corner for the final 50 kilometre stretch we start talking of getting home to Al’s dugout and the roast chicken that’ll be waiting for us if all goes well. As if on cue, another a big bull camel wanders out across the track right in front of us. ‘Shit, there must be a lotta them round here; don’t normally come this far up,’ he says, stopping the ute and getting his gun. He walks slowly towards the big, dark brown male and it spooks, running off into the stand of mulgas behind a sand dune. Al runs to cut it off and 30 seconds later I hear the now familiar ‘POP’.

  The patrol continues into the afternoon: creek beds, red dirt, fence holes, wild horses, lost emus, a crumpled windmill and the unending line of the fence. Before I arrived here, I’d read a story about patrollers dreaming about the fence at night because it becomes so consuming. Even after two days looking at it, it’s something I can understand.

  We approach the old highway, now just a raised yellow limestone platform which extends as far as we can see in both directions. As evidence of the life that was once here, we see a rusted car tipped up on its roof near a tree. I wonder if it’s from an old car accident. ‘It’s a ’67 Holden!’ Al says, wishing he could tow it back to his place to restore it.

  Later, we reach the railway once again. I look both ways out of habit, though Al says he’s only seen the train six times in four years. The train track where the fence pauses is covered in short spikes and a sensor that lets off a loud ‘BEEP’ when anything steps on it. As we cross over I notice a dead and decomposing dog beside the track, its teeth still bared in a growl.

  We approach the Stuart Highway where the fence stops and a cattle grid prevents the dingoes from crossing. Al leaves four baits on the approach to the grid, just to be sure, and we turn onto the road. It feels strange to be driving at 100 once again after two days of crawling along. Al will stop in for a shower and a feed and he’ll be back out on the next section of the fence tomorrow morning.

  On our run into town I ask Al what the future will hold. ‘I can see myself retiring out here,’ he says. Considering that the previous patroller lasted 26 years, I can see how it becomes an obsession and an addiction to stay by the fence, checking and re-checking it for holes and imperfections. I ask if he’d consider taking up a different stretch of the fence, though he’s not sure.

  ‘In Queensland they do it very differently. They have crews who work in teams and they live in shacks on the fence. They’re also given a vehicle,’ he says. I sense that Al likes the isolation and the comfort he gets from having the fence to himself.

  We begin to see huge piles of dirt and rock on the sides of the road. There are still trucks and tippers out here and the mines outside of Coober Pedy stretch for kilometres before we catch a glimpse of town. My back aches and my legs need hours of stretching, though my time on the fence is done. For Al, it’s just one part of his weekly routine in what must be one of the most unusual jobs in Australia.

  Al invites me to come back on patrol with him anytime and it’s not an empty invitation. I now understand the pull of the fence, despite its history, and the concerns over finding an agricultural and ecological balance in the future.

  When I was a kid on my pop’s farm I’d routinely leave gates open while we’d be out checking cows and doing odd jobs. Whether I was daydreaming about girls or I just hadn’t latched them properly, I don’t remember. My pop would always scold me, though I was never too worried about the consequences. Now it makes me think of Al and the other patrollers out there like him, trundling along the 5400 kilometre length to keep the fence
intact.

  Early the next morning we say goodbye in the cold light of sunrise, as streaks of orange appear in the sky across town. Al is prepping for his cold camp on the moon plains outside of Coober Pedy to the east, where he’ll keep checking the fence towards the end of his run at Mount Eva. There is no firewood and no camels on that side Al tells me; though there are lots of dogs.

  CHAPTER 9

  A STEP BACK

  My next journey takes me from the hills I live on, northwards along the spine of the Mount Lofty Ranges.

  While the narrative here now might be one of drought, electricity costs, and small farming communities surviving in spite of all the challenges and isolation, it is the longer story of the north I am interested in following. The earth stretches from the green hills to the flat, thirsty farmland and then up to the foothills of the ochre cliffs of the Flinders Ranges. Along the way, the holes from mining, still deep in the earth tell one story of South Australia; the etchings on gorge walls and the scabs left on scarred trees in the Ikara-Flinders Ranges tell another, and the fossils, squirming, swaying, crawling life-forms half a billion years old, recount the earliest stories of all in South Australia.

  While the plains and valleys north of Adelaide are now known for the Clare Valley wineries and vineyards and the Riesling grapes grown here, it was once a copper hub, supporting Australia’s largest mining town.

  The valley town of Burra north of the Clare region became famous for its ‘red gold’, or copper, discovered in 1845 by two shepherds, William Streair and Thomas Pickett. These malleable reddish clumps in the earth were the first metals ever manipulated by humans. In South Australia in the mid 19th century, the enormous deposit on the Burra hills brought 5000 miners in, looking for their fortunes. The deposits were so extensive that there were numerous copper settlements throughout the area: Redruth, Aberdeen, Llwchwr and Hampton. As an interesting aside, the Burra Historical Society discovered that despite the ethnicity of these names, they weren’t segregated ghettos as it was earlier assumed, but names given to them by various stakeholders. Redruth was the name given by the local government to one town; Aberdeen was named by a Scottish Australian investment firm; Hampton was established by the postmaster Thomas William Powell; and, peculiarly, Llwchwr wasn’t established by the Welsh miners in the area at all.

  Burra was Australia’s largest inland town by 1851 and the ‘Monster Mine’ on the edge of town was largely responsible for preventing the bankruptcy of South Australia – as it produced an estimated 50 000 tonnes of copper between 1845 and 1877.

  While modern Burra doesn’t have anywhere near the same bustle that once made it South Australia’s most important town for three decades, it is beautiful and quiet now: ringed with big trees, green parks and the clear water of Burra Creek bubbling through the centre of the town.

  I travel through Burra with local guide Dave Willson, who grew up in the region and used to explore the hills around the Clare Valley on horseback long before it was an international wine region. In town we pass the scooped earth of a dry creek bed on the edge of a suburban street. During the height of the copper boom, many new arrivals had no choice but to dig into the side of the creek to build dugouts to live in. This area was mainly populated by the many Chinese arrivals to the valley. They were hawkers, herbalists, storekeepers and they also had market gardens throughout the town to grow vegetables for the population. The stone chimneys from the dugouts are still visible above the damp and dark living quarters. In 1884, a columnist for The Burra Record wrote of the esteem in which the Chinese were held here, also remarking that: ‘the foul subterranean grub that gnaws at the root of that fair tree of “Social Purity” of which he is the leading champion and cherisher, is to an almost incredible extent, the Chinaman’.

  Dave tells me that during the mining era, kids used to put wet hessian bags on the chimneys in the creek to smoke out the people inside as a prank. From all accounts there were horrid conditions for those who had to live in the underground hollows of Burra’s dry creek bed.

  In the afternoon I find the Redruth Gaol at the end of a street of towering gum trees full of galahs, and fat sheep in the surrounding paddocks. The gaol was built here in 1856 and it later operated as a girls’ reformatory until 1922. The location looks familiar, with its high stone walls surrounded by paddocks and white-trimmed windows still with the bars intact. It was a key location in Bruce Beresford’s film Breaker Morant about the Boer War.

  The local tourism office gives out keys to the heritage sites in and around Burra, so I use my key to enter the prison and the door creaks as I step into the yard. I’m alone and I feel like I’ve arrived straight into a Steve McQueen movie – there are shards of coloured glass lining the top of the walls, glinting in the sun. The yard is a big vacant square with a series of sturdy yellow doors at one end. I can just imagine the bedraggled prisoners smoking, or shuffling around or chatting about what they’ve got to look forward to once they’re out. There’s a tiny locked room in the middle of the yard – I’m not sure if it’s a loo or an isolation chamber, or both?

  Inside the buildings, the limed arches are cool and white. It is strangely peaceful walking along the corri-dors; the malice of this place seems long gone.

  During its time as a reformatory for girls, it was also said to be ‘escape proof ’. Possibly as a tongue-in-cheek reference to this, there is a printed account on the wall from The Burra Record with the first line stating: ‘Girls will be sent to Redruth Reformatory School where escape will be impossible’ before the article details the 26 different girls who escaped the reformatory between 1898 and 1916.

  The most fascinating part of the gaol is the lists of all the prisoners who were interned there, along with their crimes and sentences. The wall is full of names, and on first inspection I scan it and begin to move on, unable to focus on the details, until the men and women and their stories start to emerge from the lines on the wall. They reveal so much about the place, the era, the intolerance of difference, the racism and inherent ‘English’ values of South Australia at the time: William Islind was imprisoned in 1863 and again in 1866 for being a ‘lunatic’; Christopher Hall was given a one-to two-year sentence in 1880 for drunkenness; Robert Findlay in 1879 got three to four years for being a vagrant; Ah Ling received a seven- to eight-year sentence in 1882 for begging; Daniel Cunningham was punished with a three- to four-year term in 1874 for supplying liquor to an Aboriginal man; Mary Anne Baker got three to four years for keeping a disorderly house in 1874; George Graddock received 11 to 12 years for indecent exposure in 1879; James Hockey received three to four years in 1866 for smoking in a dangerous place, yet he only received a one-year extension on his sentence for a prison escape and animal cruelty; Joseph Pearce was imprisoned for deserting his family in 1880; and others for illegal horse riding and failure to register their dogs. I spend an hour walking along the walls of the prison reliving these out-landish stories of this once prosperous, and dangerous, as it seems from the narratives here, place.

  Back on the road, I continue towards the Flinders Ranges through the vacant rolling hills. On the way I stop on a back road to consider an arbitrary, invisible line which once defined much of Colonial South Australia’s pastoral future: Goyder’s Line. While the fact of South Australia being the driest state in the driest continent is well known, it seems somehow important to recognise the work of Surveyor General George Goyder here.

  In 1864–65, South Australia was enduring a horrendous drought and pastoralists wanted rent relief from Goyder. He set out ‘to lay down on a map, the line of demarcation between that portion of the country where the rainfall has extended, and that where the drought prevails’. From the Victorian border north of Pinnaroo, Goyder’s Line snakes its way across South Australia until the line ends near Ceduna in the west. After Goyder identified the line of reliable rainfall, South Australia’s drought broke and the 1870s were a prosperous time for farmers, so much so that many ignored the line and ventured further north.
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  The landscape around South Australia here is now dotted with haunting ruins demonstrating the consequences of moving north of the line and the folly of many farmers who tried to make a living on the small blocks allotted to them: old barns, crumbled houses and tiny graveyards are not uncommon on the sides of the road, including one famous ruin in a field outside Burra which adorned Midnight Oil’s 1987 Diesel and Dust album cover. Many of Goyder’s predictions still hold true more than 150 years later, though modern farming techniques have allowed some to push the limits of the demarcation.

  Despite standing on Goyder’s Line, billowing grey clouds build over Razorback and the bald peaks behind Mount Bryan. The road continues to twist across the red dirt; the wind whips across the fields as the storm builds. The old Mount Bryan East School is now basic accommodation for walkers on the Heysen Trail. The land where early farmers ignored Goyder’s Line and failed at their endeavours is now slowly being reclaimed by hard mallee scrub across the horizon.

  The fields below the line are all wheat and grain crops now. I watch an enormous harvester, with alienlike lights strung across the roof, and arms extended across the earth like some sort of mechanical lobster as it lumbers over the hills shaving the fields of their crops.

  I drive further north, and the storm hits. Sheets of rain turn the road into slush, and I pull in at the gate to an old cottage. I run for shelter and make it as far as the long-drop dunny. This is no ordinary long-drop, it is the former toilet of one of Australia’s most unheralded explorers and the childhood home of Sir Hubert Wilkins. He was born at Mount Bryan in 1888, one of 13 children, and he experienced the worst of South Australia’s arid conditions before leaving for England and the US to live a life full of the sort of adventure he couldn’t find in rural South Australia at the time.