The Body

 1  The Lombadina Track

My new bride and I squashed alongside our Aboriginal driver Malachi on the Landrover’s bench seat, the gear stick between Margaret’s legs. Our worldly belongings, covered in a thickening layer of red dirt, bounced on the ute’s tray. A long pindan-red dirt track stretched out before me.  Eucalypt saplings crowded the track like swaying green fans along a Tour de France ascent.

The temperature nudged towards 40 degrees; our skins clammy with humidity. Air conditioning meant opening a window and inviting forty degree humid air to burn our faces. The bare aluminum floor had no insulation and was close to melting the rubber soles on my desert boots. This was a paid adventure. My pulse raced and the sense of anticipation was exhilarating. Youthful exuberance, a young bride, a sense of the unknown.  Welcome to Lombadina Mission.

I’d first laid eyes on Margaret Cannon two years earlier at an Aboriginal education conference just prior to returning to Halls Creek to teach in 1965. My five-year diary recorded my first impressions of the Perenjori farm girl ‘looks like a good tough sort’.

Less than a month later I kissed her warm, sweet lips while we swam in the muddy, red waters of a storm-swollen Halls Creek. Margaret’s new white, one-piece bathers were never white again. One swim meant a permanent Halls Creek rusty red stain.

Marg and I married twenty months later on 28 August 1967. Our decision to apply for a remote teaching post was simple. We were keen to save enough money to put a deposit on our own home. 

At Lombadina Mission our initial accommodation was the disused stockman’s quarters. The toilet was a 44 gallon drum sunk over a deep bore-hole in the front yard. When I lifted the loo-lid a swarm of mozzies buzzed away under the fierce Kimberley sun. When I sat over the bore hole I listened for the ‘PLOP’ as my poo hit the water. Using my physics formula of S=UT+1/2AT squared I calculated the drop was almost 70 feet. Better not drop anything but poo down there.

Six weeks into the 1968 school year a telegram arrived at the mission via the Royal Flying Doctor radio. Father Butcher, the German Pallottine priest scrawled the message on a piece of lined paper. Everyone in the Kimberley listened to the RFD radio so everyone new that our vehicle had arrived at the Broome jetty as cargo on a state ship.

Marg took charge of the tiny two-teacher school for the afternoon and I hitched a ride on the tray of the mission truck for the five hour bone-jerking trip back to Broome. Three Aboriginal seniors sat in the cab and I climbed onto the open tray with six Bardi Aboriginal men. They smoked and laughed and jabbered in language. They were probably telling jokes about the young  ‘gudea’ (white fella) in the shorts and white socks hanging on for grim death.

The rhythmical bouncing and swaying on the bush track, the unintelligible chatter in language and the sunlight sparkling through the canopy of trees lulled me into a trance-like dreamland.  Suddenly there was a shout from one of the guys near me. They leapt up in violent animation, louder shouting, bodies flying around me. The truck braked sharply and swerved left, tyres gouging into the red clay. All six blacks jumped off the truck in frenzied sprints. With lightning speed and ballet grace they picked up wooden clubs, crashed through the bush, darting left and right, jumping over logs and branches. It was like a crash scene shot in slow-motion.

Within a second or two, I ran after them. I had no idea what I was running to or from. I just ran because they all ran. I had no idea what they were doing. I just followed the pack. This was group dynamics at its best.

I burst from the bush to a rocky creek and saw Aloysius Sampi swinging what I thought was a small crocodile by the tail around his head. CRACK! He smashed the 'croc’s' head onto a solid branch; blood instantly spurted from its twisted mouth.  It was no small croc; it was one very large bungarra. Almost five feet long this athletic reptile had met his match and was destined to be dinner.

Our journey recommenced, this time with the bungarra lying unconscious near my feet. I started to doze off again as the red dirt road temporarily smoothed out. A loud ‘WHUMP’ and I was wide awake; one of the Aboriginal men clubbed the bungarra over the head to render him unconscious again but not kill him. Every time the poor old bungarra started to regain consciousness one of the Bardis, lounging laconically on the back of the truck would lift the bush club and knock the poor bugger out again. This was refrigeration -  Kimberley style. The Bardis smoked, told stories and laughed the rest of the way into Broome.

I slept with a priest that night. Well, not quite. In fact I slept at the presbytery with several Pallottine priests and brothers. I wandered down into the main street of Broome and went to the Sun outdoor theatre. The 30 degree air was still and sticky; sweat clogged the hairs on my forearms. Half way through the film there was a violent flash of lightning followed by a huge thunderclap. The Broome town lights went out and the heavens opened for a torrential downpour. I never got to see the end of the picture but I guess the goodies won. Nobody seemed to mind. This was a regular occurrence.

The following morning I got a lift to the Broome jetty to collect our battleship grey Landrover ute.  Three months earlier Marg and had I bid for the ex PMG (Post Master General) ute at a Government auction in Perth and bought it for $600. Living as remotely as Lombadina the Landrover meant transport and independence.

I stayed the Saturday night as a guest of the Native Welfare Officer, Jean-Pierre Cardineaux. I thought having a ‘Frog’ as a Native Welfare Officer was a bit of a hoot. Jean-Pierre was a slim, dapper, quietly-spoken Frenchman. He was a nice enough guy; hospitable and generous.

The tropical downpour continued unabated.  I could no longer hear the ceiling fan because of the rain on the iron roof. The rain became a torrent; the torrent became a waterfall. Just before first light the rain eased off and the dark grey skies lightened. Through the window I noticed the road had all but disappeared. What had been a road was now a river and the swirling water had cut under the bitumen and had been washed away. What had been a 12 foot wide bitumen road was now just 2-3 feet in width, the rest having been washed away.

2  The Body

Just before lunch I had a telephone call from the parish priest.

‘Dale, can you do us a favour?'

'Yes, of course’, without asking what the nature of the favour.

But I had been their guest two nights before and owed the clergy a favour.

‘There’s a body in the morgue. Could you pick it up and take it to Beagle Bay Mission on your way to Lombadina’

‘With all the rain on the track its best if you travel with a few other trucks’

That made sense, especially as I was really the new kid on the block.

What the priest didn’t tell me was the story behind the body. A strong, young Aboriginal stockman about 21 had mysteriously died in a stock camp a few miles out from Beagle Bay Mission. He was buried in a bush grave. The coroner, on reviewing his age and physical condition demanded an autopsy. The body was dug up, transported to Broome and an autopsy performed. He was then frozen awaiting the outcome of the autopsy.

Unfortunately, the medico who performed the autopsy hadn’t read the rule book and had deposited all the specimens in just one container. The coroner ordered that a second autopsy be carried out. The body was thawed, new specimens taken and the body restitched and refrozen. The new specimens met the Coroner’s requirements for evaluation.

Now it was my job to transport the Aboriginal stockman’s body back to his home country at Beagle Bay. I collected the bush coffin from a local boat builder. It was a neat wooden coffin, expertly made but without the fancy polished finishes and silver handles of city coffins.  My Landrover chugged contentedly to the unimpressive, dusty-red mortuary near the Broome hospital. Unafraid, but full of anticipation, I knocked on the door and met the sole mortuary attendant, a tall slim Anglo-Indian. I thought he would have fitted in well to Broome’s melting pot of races, religions and cultures. Broome was probably a couple of decades ahead of the rest of Australia in terms of multi-culturalism. Whites, Aboriginals, Japanese, Chinese and Afghans had cross bred in the town for years, producing some delightful blends of cross-fertilization.

I had never seen a dead human before.  The black corpse before me was completely naked and lying on his back. He was about twenty to twenty-two years of age and would have topped at least six feet in the old money. His legs were long with the muscles of a runner. I imagined he could have been a competitive runner. However, he was more likely to have hunted dugong and turtle with a spear. The eyes were closed. He was at peace.

What shocked me was the coarse, rough stitching from below his naval to the middle of his powerful chest. The stitching with looped rough chord was the legacy of two Broome autopsies. I’d seen far neater stitching on wheat bags on my uncle’s farms at Benjaberring. Whoever was responsible really didn’t care. I never asked who was responsible.  

'He’s too big for the coffin' I said.

'No, he’s not' replied the Anglo-Indian mortuary attendant.  'Jim came and measured him first.' Jim was the local boat builder.

The attendant and I carried the rough Kimberley coffin from the back of my grey landrover ute into the mortuary.  I took the dead man’s head and we gingerly lifted the cold, stiff, naked, black body and lowered it into the coffin.  He was 6” too long.

'There, see, he’s too big' I said.

We tried bending his legs to no avail. He was frozen solid. I straddled the corpse and clasped my hands behind his neck and attempted to bend his neck forward. Nothing would flex even half an inch. We stared at the body and pondered the problem.

A Broome police vehicle pulled up outside the mortuary and a couple of uniformed policemen entered the morgue. A senior officer asked me to sign papers to release the body.  I signed the papers and told the police about the size problem. I explained that the Aboriginal stockman was too big for the coffin.  The senior officer headed for a large bow saw hanging on the wall and beckoned me to take it.

'Here!  Saw his legs off.'

'What?'

'Saw his fuckin’ legs off.  Nobody will know.'

I suddenly became scared.

'No, I’m not sawing his legs off.'

'Bloody city pansy teacher!  Saw his fuckin’ legs off.  Just fuckin’ do it!'

The policeman thrust the bow saw into my stomach.

I fixed my gaze on this big cop ‘You saw his legs off but I’m not doing it’.

I was stunned and scared. But I simply refused. I stood there defiantly until the police left. I was really nervous, but I knew what I had to do. The policemen grumpily stormed out and drove away.

I was still shaking. I looked at the Anglo-Indian attendant

‘I’m taking the coffin back to Jim. Give me a hand would you’

I found Jim propping up the bar in the Roebuck Bay Pub. It was said that you could get a fight quicker than a feed at the ‘Rowie’. Judging by some of the patrons I could easily see why. Some of these guys made shearers and farmers look like Catholic choir boys. One lanky inebriate wore cowboy boots and a sweat-stained cowboy hat. In his mid-twenties I could smell his body odour from ten paces. There was half-congealed blood dripping from his right ear from where he had opened a king brown using his ear as the bottle opener.

I found my boat builder and smiled. The sort of restrained smile that I thought I could get away with in the Roebuck.

 

‘Jim, the coffin’s too short. You need to make it bigger’ I said

‘Come and have a beer’

‘’No thanks. Just come and fix the coffin’

‘Come and have a beer’ Jim insisted.

‘Nope. I don’t want a beer. Just come and fix this coffin’

Jim didn’t look all that happy me refusing to have a beer with him.

‘If you don’t have a beer with me I’m not moving. You can fix your own bloody coffin’. Jim turned his back on me. The jackeroo with the bottle-opener ear glanced my way.

I was between a rock and a short coffin.

‘Ok, Right. Just one beer’ I relented.

Despite the fact that Jim had sunk about a dozen beers before I met up with him he managed to saw, hammer, chisel and screw without slicing off any of his fingers. His was a work of pure drunken artistry. The coffin was now six inches longer. I was confident the body would now fit where it belonged.

I drove the lengthened coffin back to the mortuary. The irony was that the coffin no longer needed to be lengthened. In the time it had taken me to get the coffin lengthened the body had thawed, yet again, and was pliable, soft and bendable. He would have fitted into a coffin six inches shorter with ease.

We placed the body in the coffin, nailed the lid on and carried it to the back of my Landrover and slid it into the back. It was now time to join the convoy and head north to Beagle Bay. I packed boxes of groceries around the coffin to stop it sliding around.

3   Burial at Beagle Bay

Our convoy stopped at the first major creek crossing. The twelve inches of rain in the preceding 12 hours had turned the sandy creek into a river of liquid red mud. On my own I would never have attempted the crossing. An Aboriginal bush mechanic removed the fan belt and told me to drive straight through the water. He emphasized not to steer left or right. ‘Just go straight’.

I locked in low ration 4WD, second gear and the hand throttle and the old grey landrover surged and bucked as we created a bonnet-deep, bow wave  through the creek. I didn’t have time to think that the coffin or groceries might get washed away. On the other side my Aboriginal mechanic replaced the fan belt. I could see he had done this hundreds of time before.

Just on dusk I drove slowly into the sleepy little settlement at Beagle Bay Mission. Shady, sprawling white-barked gum trees were interspersed with mission buildings. The convent, presbytery, school, store and the Beagle Bay church with its famous pearl shell altar.  The other convoy vehicles had gone somewhere else. I sat alone in the Landrover for a few minutes wondering what to do. 

Cautiously an Aboriginal couple approached my Landrover. Out of curiosity they looked in the back of my Landrover and saw the coffin. They didn’t need to ask me what that meant or whose body was in the coffin. They knew. They started calling out and yelling loudly to everyone on the mission. Two people turned into six, turned into sixty. They mobbed around the Landrover in frenzy. The yelling continued. Women were crying and screaming. Other women started bashing their own heads with stones making them bleed. More than a hundred Aboriginal people pressed around my Landrover.

The Mission priest arrived, assessed the situation and told someone to ring the church bell. More people clambered closer to my vehicle striving to glimpse the coffin. I stood on the outside of the crowd as my vehicle was rocked side to side. The priest left briefly and returned in a white surplice ready to conduct a burial service. The crowd was frenetic. Women were wailing and bleeding, still smashing their heads with rocks. Small Aboriginal kids poked their faces between the bodies and legs to be part of the scene.

The priest took control. He told people to step back and asked three or four young guys to slide the coffin from the back of my Landrover. I stood at the side like an invisible spectator. As the young men slid the coffin from my ute I saw the bottom of the coffin come away from the sides and sag down with the weight of the body. The further the coffin was pulled out the more the bottom dropped out of the coffin. I caught glimpses of the naked body as the bottom of the coffin sank further from the coffin. It seemed that a combination of water, corrugated roads and the boat builder’s workmanship were to blame.

The priest immediately called a halt to proceedings. He told a few men to fetch sturdy bits of wood to place at right angles under the coffin base to prevent any potential disasters. Three wooden struts were placed at right angles beneath the coffin. The collapsing coffin was now carefully removed from my ute without further mishap.

With the church bells ringing, the priest led the funeral procession of family and friends to the small mission cemetery just a few hundred yards away. A long line of wailing, bloodied women, sober men and beguiled Aboriginal kids joined the funeral procession. I tailed on at the very end.   A hundred thoughts flashed through my mind. But the thought that was foremost was absolute relief in that I had been steadfast and not allowed the dead man’s legs to be sawn off. If that had happened and the crowd had have discovered I doubt I would be writing this today.

Just after 8.30pm I arrived home at Lombadina Mission and unloaded the groceries. Filipino, Martin Sibosado switched off the generator at 9pm as was the custom. Martin was rarely out by more than one minute. The lights stopped, the fans stopped and quiet prevailed in the remote little mission.  Margaret and I lit the Tilley light and I told her the story over a cup of English Breakfast Tea.

Post Script

The results of the two autopsies were inconclusive. Here was a strapping 21 year old married stockman. There was no identifiable cause of death. There were some rumours that it may have been one of the last cases of bone pointing in the Kimberley. Had the young stockman upset some of the tribal leaders and been subjected to traditional lore and ‘bone-pointing’? Bone-pointing was a powerful and lethal form of sentence and execution under tribal lore. Mainly psychological but part physical it was a tried and tested means of ensuring abidance of tribal lore.

The young man’s widow was one of the beneficiaries of her husband’s untimely death. She became eligible for a State widow’s pension which was five or six times more than local payments for Mission workers. To the best of my knowledge she never remarried and enjoyed life as a relatively wealthy widow.


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