The Law Provides – book review

The lot of the ordinary mortal is cast in mundane places. The excitement of travel, the romance of adventure, and the glamour of strange people and customs are not for most of us. But, chained to our daily tasks as we are, it is still possible, in our hours of leisure, through the agency of the written word, to march far in assorted company. Our field is limitless and the uniqueness in the world of books is worth exploring. You are invited to explore it with me.

“Iron in the Fire” introduced a new Australian author, E. Morrow, already known to readers of the red page of  “The Western Mail” with the pseudonym of  “E28”. He is a member of the Police Force now stationed at Bruce Rock, but it is of his earliest experience in the force that he writes of in “The Law Provides”. The book is dedicated to the splendid men of North-Western Mounted Police and in appreciation of the finer qualities they are called upon to display in every circumstance of their lives. The dedication is made the more compelling by the recital of experiences of the author when attached to the body he so much admires.

Edgar Morrow  AKA – E28

Those who have read of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have been stirred by their pertinacity, initiative and management of difficult situations. Here at our very door are men doing similar work with equal efficiency. This “The Law Provides” amply shows. Mr Morrow tells a tale convincingly and vividly when vividness is demanded, but, in the main, he proffers a plain recital of events, which of themselves, contain all the colour needed.

In a foreword, the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir James Mitchell, aptly epitomised the book as follows. “Life in the North is vividly depicted by Mr. Morrow, the difficulties of settlers, and especially of pioneering, are tellingly revealed; incidentally, the reader may glean something of the opportunities awaiting men of resource and courage who are willing to brave hardship and privation, when needs must, to reap the rewards of enterprise. “Not only on land but within territorial waters, the North contains wealth, offering scope for the profitable employment of capital and labour —wealth that too long has been dormant, wealth that the ever-expanding demands of civilisation will soon require “to be exploited to its utmost.”

A Man of Understanding

Mr. Morrow was stationed at Broome, then on the Tableland and later at Peak Hill. He had experience under direction, but most of his service in the North-west and the Murchison was under circumstances when he was left to his own resources and when the results of his decisions were only reckoned by results. He appears to have handled the natives with sympathy and understanding and his writings indicate that he is not satisfied that the white man’s law is at all equitable when it is applied to the black man’s actions.

With a good deal of sympathy he tells the story of Moses, the black tracker attached to him at Peak Hill. Under white man’s law, Moses had been exiled from his people because he had defended his gin and their dying son. The bravest of his tribe he had been branded a criminal because he had resisted a white man who had taken charge of the only well of water the parched tribe could find. In the resistance, the white man had been killed. “The white man’s laws found him guilty of killing and he must be punished. It did not matter that it was done in defence of his woman and son and of the existence of his tribe. He had been sent ‘down South’ to prison and later been allowed his ‘freedom’ in an alien country.”

A Raw Trooper.

Mr. Morrow became a policeman because the even routine of a farmer’s life destroyed his desire for peaceful quietness. Service with the Australian Imperial Forces had left him restless. He “wanted noise and movement ” He joined the police force and was appointed to Broome. He got plenty of movement on his long and often adventurous patrols, but his desire for noise has not yet been fulfilled.

Arriving in Broome just after the racial riots in 1920 he assisted in the cleaning-up process. Then he had to make a tour of adjacent native camps to kill off some of the dogs that bred in scores. These dog-killing expeditions were always distasteful to him. A patrol 60 miles to the south of Broome to make inquiries into circumstances attending the finding of portions of a burnt human body nearly cut short his police career. A stranger in the district and unused to the extra-ordinary extent to which the tide made in a few hours, he was caught in a mangrove swamp and but for the timely appearance of a small dinghy from a lugger, he must have drowned for strangely enough, Mr Morrow could not swim. On that patrol, he nearly died from thirst, but when his report was presented it contained no mention of hardships and difficulties but merely what was done, when and where.

Long Patrols.

In Constable Morrow’s day, the Table-land station was 100 miles southeast of Roebourne, a lonely outpost which might be there still. There he took his wife and together they made the patrols because once she stayed at home the loneliness and fear so overcame her that it was decided that she should never again remain behind at the shack. On these patrols strange people were encountered, white as well as black. Hermits and prospectors and just those living aimlessly as they eked out an existence, living on the country and doing just sufficient to keep them in tobacco, sugar, tea and flour.

One such man lived in half a tank. In his diet, he included cockatoos, parrots, crows and hawks. He said he found eagle hawk,s very tough! Once when tucker ran out completely he scooped out tadpoles from a pool, boiled and curried them. They “were not bad, provided you’re really properly hungry. Snakes and goannas are a delicacy in hard times and not to be wasted in good times.” This individual had also eaten white ants—roasted on the blade of a shovel and eaten hot, but even he baulked at a dingo!

Once when a particularly dry spell threatened death from thirst he and a native dug in a claypan and unearthed dozens of hibernating frogs. Holding them over a quart pot the native opened them up with a sharp knife. The water the frogs had stored up the thirsty duo drank.
In complete contradistinction was another man—a Boundary-rider whose pride was the tidiness of his camp. He was always sprucely dressed, and shaven and his shirts were always ironed. There was a place for everything and everything had to be in its place. Outside the hut all the empty jam tins were stacked in one heap, empty fruit tins in another, and sauce bottles in another.

Pooh-Bah of Peak Hill.

Constable Morrow was then sent to Bunbury. He writes:— “I was compelled to work in Bunbury for nearly 12 months. I hated it and Mary liked it no better. After a life of comparative freedom, working to the ticking of a clock became an appalling prospect. I felt I was becoming an automaton because all my movements were ordered for me. I detested the cramped confines of the streets as much as I detested the noise. The silence, at which I had shuddered so often, became something precious. The North country was calling me. It had deadened the memories of hardship, fear and suffering. It held out to me only its joys of freedom, its open spaces, its generous men and splendid women. In some subtle manner, it emphasised the friendliness of all its people. It was drawing me back.”

The Law Provides by E Morrow

And back he and his wife and son (born on the Tableland) went, to Peak Hill. His district, of which Peak Hill was the headquarters, extended nearly 300 miles north and south and 600 miles east and west. Besides controlling that district he was:

Protector of Aborigines.
Clerk of Courts.
Mining Registrar.
Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths.
Registrar of Old Age Pensions.
Agent for the Curator of Intestate Estates.
Agent for the Government Actuary. Stock Inspector.
Inspector of Licensed Premises.
Agent for the Government Savings Bank.

But these were as nothing for “once again he could see the sky without looking upward.” What did it matter if he was called upon to advise a woman what she was to do with two extra loaves of bread sent 70 miles from Meekatharra, or an old prospector who sought assistance in the removal of a batch of kittens that had made their home under the floor of his camp? These were part of the job and it was a job that was con-genial.

He Got His Man.

While the author makes no claim that the mounted men of our police force always get their man he quotes a number of instances in which long and arduous patrols have been undertaken for that sole purpose. In some such patrols, he was concerned. His thoughts after one particularly demanding solo effort were:

“Unpleasant thoughts of the one hundred and twenty miles’ ride back irritated me as I jogged wearily along the road to the station. One hundred and twenty miles in two days through the un-tracked bush and over stony hills was an experience I had no wish to repeat. But it had to be done. I couldn’t go back without my man.

“Romance! Blistered lips and saddle sores! Raging thirst and sunburnt skin! A tired horse and soddy damper! The sweat of myself and the sweat of my horse! Shot at by a corroboree maddened native. All my tobacco was gone. No food! No blankets! No sleep! Utter weariness in scorching heat and nothing to cool my throat or hide! A trooper’s life and romance! Bah! . . .”

But he got his man.

Nine years he spent at Peak Hill. Counted by work-done they were hard years, looked on in retrospect they were happy years and to come away from friends whose friendship had been cemented in hardship, was extremely hard. There was the usual farewell party. The usual farewell speeches were made, publicly and privately, but what lingered longest in the memory of the departing policeman was a newspaper containing some boiled sweets that were thrust into his hands “for the children” by an old prospector—a true widow’s mite.

“THE LAW PROVIDES,” & “IRON IN THE FIRE  by E. Morrow
are available from ‘Hesperian Press”

He died while still a serving member of the Police Force when killed in a traffic accident. He is buried in the Karrakatta Cemetery in Perth with his wife Mary.