Tales of the Tanami –

A Tale of the Tanami
The Dryblowers Reminiscences
Jack Hunter of the Kimberley
By ‘Bilby

OLD JACK HUNTER the ‘over-lander’, blowing off his run, glared with suspicion over the rim of his gold dish at the immaculately dressed young man, who, after carefully placing his bicycle against a stump, picked his way through, the heaps of tailings and holes of Fly Flat, towards old Jack’s shaker. Jack held an aversion for smart young men who wore high collars, flowered waistcoats, and champagne boots. They represented to him emissaries of the “The Sun” one of whose contributors, in some remote period, had stigmatised him as a ‘hairy hippopotamus’. Jack had never forgiven ‘The   Sun” for that insult, and, had, sworn never to buy the crimson rag again, which vow he had religiously observed, for, like certain “Sun hating Laborites”, he borrowed his neighbour’s instead, always with a delirious fear tingling his backbone that his name might again appear.

” Er ! Good-day You are Mr Hunter, I presume?” asked the visitor, as he carefully dusted his boots with a gum bough.  “Er! Ah! Yars, that’s me,” said Jack, the “mister”  almost removing his suspicion. After all, he thought, the young man’s face didn’t look hard enough for a ‘Sun’ reporter. Er! it’s rather warm today, and — er— how is the gold ?” questioned the visitor again, after a long silence.

“Purty scarce,” said Jack, as he wet his finger and picked out a fine colour and placed it in his bottle. Y’ see it’s a speck-er-nothin’ patch, ‘n mostly nothin’ and pulling, out his pipe he sat down in the shade of the shaker in full going order for a full list of anecdotes. I believe you have been at Tanami, Mr Hunter?” said the visitor, as he sat down on Jack’s shaker cover. “Well, y’er blanky well b’lieves wrong,” snorted Jack as he jumped, up and started feeding his shaker again, the mention of Tanami almost confirming his suspicion that the young man was in the literary line. Oh, I beg your pardon” said the latter, rising to go, “but Mr Mercer led me to believe that such was the case, and ” “Ah, hum! Mercer told ye, did he?” said Jack, as he sat down again, his fears quelled once more. ‘Leastways, I was there, an’ I wasn’t if ye understand.

That is t’ say, me an old Bob Buttton— you’ve heard of o’ Bob, maybe? ‘e’s a sort er pannikin squatter up Kimberley way now, as a few ead er cattle — well, me an Bob poked out a few holes down in them gullies where all the skite’s about now. Did we git any gold? Well, just a few ounces, maybe 40 or 50, but Lord, man, we never took no notice of that up there, fer the blinky thing was worked out as soon as yer got em. Are you goin up there?”

He looked hard at the visitor’s champagne boots as he asked the question.

“I going? Oh, decidedly not, but some of my friends are thinking of sending a party up there,” the interviewer hastened to reply. “Cause, if y’ are, ye’ll peg out a-fore ye git there,” continued Jack “but anyhow why don’t yer friends spend their money here, ‘sted of chucking it away up there ?” “Spend it here! Oh, there’s no incentive to do so the place is worked out,” said the visitor impatiently.

“Worked out, is it yelled Jack, as he shoved his great hairy lip in the young man’s face, to the latter’s alarm. “What about the ‘Rita Nita,’ up there?” pointing his pipe up the flat” or the Phoenix, what crushed six ounces a bit back, an— but ye want to know about Tanami, where the fossickers used t’ go for a picnic, from Hall’s Creek in the wet season —the new field, egh? oh Ya! he yelled derisively. “Well, young man, seein as ow ye’re bent on makin a fool of y’self an the public as well, I’ll tell ye about the country, an what ye’ll meet with when y goes up there.

I was up there in the late eighties, about ’89 ter ’90. I member the time well, cause Old Mother Dead-Finish wanted me ter marry ‘er then, I but she reneged on me fer a swash-bucklin policeman — I won’t mention any names, cause e’s a big gun now. Them was times, no butter, beer or spuds, or onions or any vegetables, an meat as scarce as gold is ‘ere. We used ter eat the kite-hawks an rats, we was that meat ungry, an things are near as bad now, for ‘Jimmy the Rat’ went through ere the other day, just down from there, an e was tellin’ me so.

An the heat, yer reckon t’day’s warm, it’s 91 in the shade, y’say. Why, man, we’d call it a cold day up there. Would ye b’lieve me, I’ve seen it average 124 in the shade fer a week at a stretch, an up as high as 128, an in the nights ye lay steamin in yer skeeter nets, without a stitch on, with the skeeters in millions surgin outside, an if ye’re away from the camp anywhere ye’re awake half the night, then when y’ git up in the mornin’ y’ can’t see the sun fer the harmy of flies lined up in regyments ready t charge inter yer eyes an mouth. Then when y’ feels peckish, an gets a feed of tin dog— if yer lucky t’ ‘ave it an preserved spuds inter yer, an’ just when it settles’ down, an yer pulls out yer pipe ter ‘ave a smoke the Barcoo i’ll get yer summick, en’ up it’ll come, yer breakfast or yer dinner or yer tea!

“An’ talk about torments, they little black ants i’ll git inta yer sugar an yer jam, an the big red beef ants i’llcarry away yer tined dog and yer spinifex rat, an’ yer bushy-tailed rat ‘ll eat ther bottom out or yer pack bags, or the leather in yer saddles, an when yer sit down ter ave a blow ye’ll pull a sentipede out or yer boot, or a scorpion i’ll stick his tail int yer finger, when y’r reaches fer ycr baccy, an ye have ‘ter look in yer blankets ev’ry night fer snakes, an’ then when ye want ter go in fer tucker an go ter git y’r horses, y find them miles away alf mad with the March flies suckin their blood, an the common flies eatin oles in ther face, an then whenever yer goes ter box up a damper or blow er dish of dirt, the sandflies i’ll give yor ell an then there’s the Barcoo Rot on yer arms, an the prickly eat that’ll send yer looney scratchin. An then there’s ‘sandy blight’ an’ bung eyes’, not ter mention scurvy an –

‘Good God, man, don’t tell me any more’.

If half what you say is correct, the country is not fit for man to live in,” said the visitor, horror-struck with the old chap’s recital. “Jest where yer wrong, young man. I’ve lived there an in places just as bad, an any young man with any guts in im should ave a look at those places, fer it makes im appreciate good tucker when e gits it, an it makes one man good ter another man when e’s down. But if yer friends send a party up there tell, em to come around again, I’ll give ye a map so’s to find it.

Anyhow, So you don’t think much of Tanami then? Jack’s answer was lost in the rattle of the shaker.

NOTE: The Tanami Desert is in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. It has a rocky terrain with small hills. The Tanami was the Northern Territory’s final frontier and was one of the most isolated areas on earth and was not fully explored by Australians of European descent until well into the twentieth century. It is traversed by the Tanami Track. The name Tanami is thought to be a corruption of the Warlpiri name for the area, “Chanamee”, meaning “never die”. This referred to certain rock holes in the desert which were said never to run dry.

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