The Crow Eaters Read online

  The current pushes us through another garden of reeds, so close it’s like being in an underwater tunnel. Above and below, the only difference is the lens of the clear water. Jake motions for me to come towards him on the shallow lip of the third pond. There is a clump of reeds swaying in the water as shafts of light show us the openings in the small caves 9 metres below. Jake points to a plant close to us and the tiny lines of bubbles escaping from its long leaves to the surface – it is so clear here we can see photosynthesis in action. The current tries to pull us further down – towards the entrance to Eight Mile Creek which eventually leads out to the ocean, though we kick towards the pontoon and jump out, freezing despite the sunshine.

  Later in the day I meet local wetland conservation ecologist Steve Clarke. He is passionate about his backyard and restoring some of its former uniqueness, Ninety-six per cent of the wetlands have been drained here,’ he says. The whole area was once 50 per cent wetland and it wasn’t unusual to get around by boat rather than car. One of the things about the mysteries below the surface in the south-east that Steve loves is that people are discovering new branches underground all the time. ‘A farmer will be riding along in a paddock and his tractor will disappear in a big hole and they’ll discover something new,’ he says. Steve and his team have worked to raise the level of the water table in the region by half a metre since 2006, which, when you consider the importance to local flora and fauna, the region’s drinking water and sustainable agriculture, is no small thing.

  To further discover the importance of what lies beneath, I take the road north, past the pine plantations and the Coonawarra vineyards to Naracoorte, and some of the most important fossil caves in Australia.

  Dr Liz Reed holds up the jaw of a bilby in front of me. It is tiny, yet I can still see the teeth in their sockets on this brown bone fossil that may be up to 30 000 years old. Liz places the jaw back in a Tupperware container on her desk that is full of random femurs, claws, skulls and spines and continues showing me her workplace. Liz is a palaeontologist at Naracoorte Caves, a World Heritage Area and Australian mammal fossil site. ‘What we’re doing is paleo conservation. We look at patterns of change and the only way you can get a long enough record is to use fossils,’ Liz says as she places small dust brushes on the desk, ready for a group of visiting school children to use, as they sort through the fossils like pieces of Lego.

  The first cave she shows me is Blanche Cave, which is only a two-minute walk from her office. The cave here is big and long, with patches of collapsed ceiling letting in shafts of the morning sun. It was discovered in 1845 after which locals would use it for a party and picnic spot, until the discovery of the thousands of Pleistocene deposits further concealed within. ‘We’re dealing with extinct megafauna half a million years old and these caves act like a biological survey. It gives us the tools to look to the future,’ she says, bubbling with facts and stats and clearly thrilled to have someone to chat to about what she does – I imagine the fossil business would get lonely at times.

  The reason the Naracoorte Caves are so prized by ecologists and palaeontologists like Liz is because of the unique set of circumstances here which has preserved the evidence of early life in Australia. There are no river systems close by, so the fossils have remained dry; and the way many of the caves formed, through ceiling cave-ins and plugs of limestone on the surface breaking away, means that many of the animals here were running along through the Australian bush up to 500 000 years ago, either hunting or being hunted, when they accidentally fell into the cave with no way to get back out.

  One of the other contributors to the fossils in the caves here sits, blinking, above our heads. It is a Boo-book owl hidden in a crevice of the cave’s ceiling. The owls feed on rodents, lizards, crickets and small birds and after eating their prey whole, they regurgitate it in pellet form. ‘Its droppings, which contain bones, are priceless and this has been going on for half a million years,’ Liz says as she walks me towards her major dig site. Before us in a roped-off section is her latest dig, where she has been sifting through layers of dirt, rock, bone and guano for months to understand ‘time slices of what’s been happening here for the last 60 000 years’.

  The information in her dig can reveal what has occurred over this enormous span – from fires, to droughts and different species’ extinctions. There are 135 species of invertebrates just in this hole and 20 species of megafauna in the cave. It’s not all shovels, brushes and being knee deep in dirt as I imagine: Liz says they also use 3D laser mapping to chart how all the caves fit together – and they’ve discovered that many of them extend all the way underneath some of the local vineyards. They can also test for pollen to see what was happening in the environment at the time the animals fell in, and they can date the last time some of the red sand here saw sunlight to give an accurate era reading.

  Next we drive the 2 kilometres through the bush to the Victoria Fossil Cave. This is a concealed cave, meaning that the door down into the depths of the 5000 metre-long cave is the only way in. It is hot and humid inside and, as uncomfortable as this is, it has created one of the most unusual fossil environments in Australia.

  In 1969, deep in the red earth and limestone recesses of the cave, palaeontologists Rod Wells and Grant Gartrell squeezed through a tiny gap to access the cave. They discovered a bed of fossils stretching back more than 60 metres, untouched for more than 200 000 years, including 5 metre snakes and short-faced, leaf-eating kangaroos.

  It looks like something from Jurassic Park. In the natural amphitheatre there is a bed of fossils that they’re slowly categorising and understanding, and the reconstructed skeletons of two of the megafossils stand on a platform, casting gnarly shadows on the rock above. I look up and see shells still embedded in the walls and ceiling, a reminder that 900 000 years ago this was an inland sea. Contemplating the timeline here is too abstract – that’s why the slices in Liz’s dig, and the stalactites act kind of like tree rings to tell the story and give a narrative to what has occurred here. There are ribs, small jaws and what I think are femurs poking up from the red earth in front of us – it looks like some sort of abandoned apocalypse site, though I only have to listen to the tone of Liz’s voice to understand how significant this place is. ‘Right from the start this was an active museum,’ she says of the work here. ‘Tourists could come down into the caves from the early ’70s and watch the scientists work and dig here. It’s the ultimate jigsaw puzzle,’ Liz says with a laugh about the place she has virtually lived in for 20 years. She has another school group coming through to watch her in the active museum, so I head towards the oddly named Stick-Tomato Cave to understand what this must have been like in the early days of discovery.

  I have a head torch, kneepads and a pair of overalls. The cave is fenced and signed at the entry, though really it is only a tiny hole plummeting more than 20 metres down to the slick and dark passages of the cave. I take a right turn into a passageway and notice that even in a place as ecologically important (and difficult to reach) as this, there is graffiti. ‘Martin Granage 1912 – 1st of January, Eden Hope’ reads the scribble on the cave wall. It seems that Martin might have had a New Years Eve party here more than 100 years ago and left his mark on the cave the next morning. For 90 minutes I crawl, squirm and slither along the cool surface of the cave, deeper and deeper until I reach a small alcove and the end of the passage. I have the light of my torch for company and the slow drip of water through the limestone to fill the chamber. It’s peaceful here, though there’s also a strange sense of life within the cave – of the owls and bats on the ceiling, the stories of the bones further below me and the people, like Liz, buzzing to reveal what the future might continue to tell us about the Naracoorte Caves.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE CAMEL MEN OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

  On a dusty corner just before the Oodnadatta Track begins to unfurl across the centre of Australia there is an unassuming mud-walled building on the edge of Marree, a town with a population of
150. Grey nomads pull up outside the general store across the road in their 4WDs and caravans to stock up on beer coolers and meat pies and they seem to barely notice the humble thatch-roofed structure. Behind them, young families clamber over the platform of the old Ghan railway, paying no attention to the building. The only identifying mark next to the dirt walls and old wooden beams is a small notice stuck on a stick in the ground, which looks like it is stencilled on in pen. It proclaims that this spot is ‘Dedicated to the memory of the pioneering Muslim cameleers and families of Hergott Springs (Marree)’. It is also the remains of the first mosque in Australia.

  Winter has swept across South Australia, soaking the south in rain and opening the north up to the animals that feed on the sprouting grasses and the travellers who traverse the dirt roads across the belly of the country. I drive north with a friend, Sam, in the early morning. We are hoping to discover more about the Muslim story of South Australia and the Afghan camel men who brought their faith here in the 1860s.

  We leave in the dark and arrive at the first knuckles of the Flinders Ranges at daybreak. Mobs of emus bob across the plains, big red kangaroos thump along the fence lines and terracotta coloured sheep, stained from the dust of the north, all pass under the shadow of the treeless mountains above us.

  There are crumbling huts on the side of the road from 19th century settlers and small cemeteries dotted along the hills recording the tales of their failures. For hundreds of kilometres there is nothing but scrub, emus and enormous coolibah trees in the dry creek beds that dissect the road. We are headed further north still; it is 685 kilometres from Adelaide to Marree, the town which was at the centre of the arrival of Islam in Australia and the camel men who travelled here in the 1860s from Afghanistan, India and Pakistan and opened up the centre of Australia for railways, pastureland, farming and trade as no-one could before them.

  As a marker of the enduring influence of these men, on the second weekend of July, Marree hosts the Camel Cup, a day of camel races and a reunion. I was told that it is held to remember the influence of the cameleers and the impact of their culture on outback Australia. As we barrel north over cattle grids and past the bleached skeletons of forgotten livestock, I wonder if it is still the case?

  After nearly 500 kilometres behind the wheel, we stop at Parachilna. It is little more than a public toilet, a few demountable buildings and an old pub, though the car park is full. The Prairie Hotel dates back to 1876 and while once upon a time stockmen and explorers would have stopped below its tin awning to replenish their supplies, now it is full of travellers tucking into camel pies, kangaroo schnitzels and emu paté. The hotel is famous for its use of native and feral animals from the region on its plates and, along with the carnivorous options, they also source native quandongs (which taste a bit like a peach), acacia seeds, native limes and mountain pepper berries for their menu.

  Inside, a red-faced man on the other table slaps the bench, laughing at his son who is trying to inhale a sausage roll in one go; he sends the jelly in his pie wobbling across the plate as he guffaws. Another barrelchested man in a clean flannelette shirt thumps my chair unknowingly on his way past to his caravan friends, while outside I notice a group of silver-haired travellers plotting their advance into the desert using oversized maps and iPads. Despite the talk of overpopulations of kangaroos and emus and of there being more camels in this part of Australia than Saudi Arabia, it is the grey nomad I find the most common introduced species here.

  University studies in Australia have found that the relatively new emergence of grey nomads can be seen as the ‘Ulyssean’ pursuit of voyage and discovery in the third age of life. As Onyx and Leonard write, ‘People choose, create, and at times revise their life stories’ and this is what grey nomads are doing as they hitch up caravans, sometimes worth in excess of $130 000, and travel across the dry centre of Australia in groups. They escape the clutches of boredom, arthritis and grandparent duties back home in the suburbs. Rather than retiring, clogging up lawn bowls greens and being active babysitters for their grandchildren and accepting the gradual decline, they are becoming adventurous, independent and giving vigour to a period of life which has traditionally been one of deterioration. Statistics from Onyx and Leonard state that there are upwards of 200 000 greynomad journeys in Australia each year.

  There is a difference between the monocultural grey nomad, with caravan, 4WD, Akubra and bumper stickers proclaiming: ‘I can go from zero to horny in 2.5 beers’ and ‘Grey nomads on the loose’ as if it is some sort of reverse schoolies expedition, and the North American ‘Snow Bird’ which is a similarly aged retiree from the US who migrates from one resort town to the next depending on the season without ‘roughing’ it in the same way as the Australian chapter does. Just as with schoolies, they seem to travel in packs, setting up camp facing inwards away from the people’s communities they are in, though still with a fervent desire to see ‘the real Australia’, whatever that means.

  Our stop for the night is not too far along the Outback Highway further north. Out here people use old fridges as mailboxes and when we see the white Kelvinator with a sticker saying ‘Magic poo ride’ and a chain across its front, we turn into Beltana Station, a 460 000 acre (186 000 hectares) property that stretches across the north of South Australia and is three times larger than Singapore.

  Beltana began in 1860 when two South Australian pastoralists, Thomas Elder and Samuel Stuckey, decided to import camels to Australia to help them open up the country. Elder, who had arrived from Scotland in 1853, was interested in sheep breeding, cattle ranging and horse rearing in this unexplored region, and on a trip home to Scotland in 1857 he stopped in the Middle East where he saw the endurance and suitability of working camels in Egypt and Syria, in terrain not unlike the wild north of South Australia. With Stuckey he set the wheels in motion for the first import of camels and in 1865 a ship arrived from Karachi carrying 124 camels and 31 Muslim camel men from Kabul, Karachi and neighbouring districts to create cameleer depots in the north of South Australia. Between 1865 and 1920, around 2000 cameleers and 20 000 camels arrived from British India and Afghanistan. They were brought in to carry supplies from Port Augusta to the north, across the arid country that men with horses couldn’t endure. On their return journeys they would then load their camel trains with wheat or wool to be taken to the port for export. Many of the Muslim cameleers of South Australia were based in or around Beltana for more than 50 years before they were eventually rendered obsolete by the railway they were instrumental in creating.

  Despite the strangeness of these beasts and their handlers, who wore white turbans and loose-fitting clothes, these were not the first camels in Australia.

  They hated Harry. It was little wonder. He tore through their flour bags. He tried to eat one of the expedition goats and he bit the tent master’s head, leaving ‘two wounds of great length above his temples and another severe gash on his cheek’. Despite his faults, Harry the camel would also carry 350 pounds (160 kilograms) of gear and supplies through the sterile, waterless country. Harry was the first camel used in inland Australian expeditions, though he is better known for being the first (and possibly only) camel to shoot his owner.

  John Ainsworth Horrocks was a tall and impatient landowner who arrived in the early days of South Australian settlement. Not content with farming the land north of Adelaide, he set out to explore the desert with a party of six, including painter Samuel Thomas Gill, Harry the camel, Aboriginal goatherd Jimmy Moorhouse, two carts, six horses and 12 goats. In 1846, they crossed the Flinders Ranges through Horrocks Pass, 30 kilometres east of Port Augusta. While on the lookout for suitable land for a northern depot, Horrocks detailed in a letter to his secretary what happened with Harry. Horrocks matter-of-factly explained how, while he was trying to load his gun on the banks of Lake Dutton in order to ‘discharge his piece at a rare bird’ to add to his collection, Harry shot him. While Horrocks was loading the gun, Harry swung around and his pack caught the lock of the
gun, pushing the muzzle up into Horrocks’ face, ‘the contents of which first took off the middle fingers of my right hand between the second and third joints, and entered my left cheek by my lower jaw, knocking out a row of teeth from my upper jaw’. In a report to the South Australian Gazette, it was speculated that Horrocks would live, though his hand would need amputating. They underestimated Harry, and Horrocks died of his injuries only three weeks later.

  Sam and I drive along the dirt track to Beltana; a bitter wind kicks up dirt across the plain and we don’t have to wait long to find evidence of the cameleer presence here. On the edge of a dry creek bed near a hill outside the station is a circular stone well. It is called ‘Afghan’s Well’ and was supposedly built by the cameleers on arrival. Their first camp was down here by the creek on the cold, rocky ground. Despite their efforts in Australia during the building of the Great Northern Railway and the opening up of pastureland, the Afghan cameleers were only ever employed on three-year contracts, which needed constant renewal. They weren’t allowed to bring family members out and they were only ever referred to as ‘Indian men: British subjects’. As Sam and I pick our way along the creek bed in the soft winter sun I think back to a poster I’d seen in Adelaide earlier that week, it is a profile of a turbaned man with the statement ‘Aussie!’ below it. Adelaide artist Peter Drew created this provoc-ative image of cameleer Monga Khan to force people to think about what a ‘real’ Australian is, considering the sacrifice these men, who were never Australian, made. Bearing in mind the fact that they were shunned when they were here and either sent back home or forced into lives of poverty or onto the peripheries of society, I’m not sure that it’s a fully accurate portrayal.