Dan and his companion crossed the channel to
Horn Island in a naval launch. As the little craft neared the
island’s jetty, it picked it’s way through some small private craft
lying at moorings close in to the island. The larger boats were
Thursday Island luggers. Some of the pearlers had been commandeered
and flew small naval pennants. Others, which had been manned by
Japanese now in interment camps, still had tattered impoundment
notices nailed to the masts and their hulls were encrusted with
barnacles.
As the launch was about to pull alongside the
jetty, Dan’s attention was drawn to a dirty little sail boat lying
in shallow water beside a clump of mangroves. Somehow the vessel
looked familiar. He took a closer look and saw it was preparing to
sail. There were two scruffy-looking men aboard. One stood in the
cockpit at the tiller, the other was on the bow raising the
anchor.
A puff of wind swung the old boat around
bringing her transom into view. Dan read the name beneath the filth
and crusted salt. It was the same sailing boat he had seen in
Beagle Gulf the day after he was shot down. It was the
Groot Eylandt
Lady.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
A shrill whistle signaled the start of
the afternoon tea break at the Rocklea factory. Faith left her
station in the inspection bay and went to the factory canteen. As
she stood in line waiting to draw tea from an urn, she took an
envelope from her pocket. It was a letter from Joe to her aunt and
uncle which had arrived at New Farm the day before. For what must
have been the twentieth time, she read the short note which had
obviously been censored by the Army. Amongst the pleasantries, all
it really said was that Joe was ‘somewhere in Australia’ and that
he was fit and well and hoped that somehow Faith had been able to
reach them in Brisbane
.
‘Got a love letter from your randy Yank, have
you, Faith?’ Trevor Lipp had joined the queue behind her. As he
spoke, his hand explored her inner thighs through her baggy
dungarees, just briefly enough not to be noticed by anyone else.
‘He’s been posted, has he? Are they actually sending Yank soldiers
and airmen against the Japs now? I thought it was the American Navy
that did all their fighting.’
Faith spun around, her face flushed with
anger. Whenever the supervisor came near her, he always had a lewd
remark and made some excuse to touch her. And over the weeks it had
only got worse. Faith had told herself that the next time Lipp
touched her, she’d slap his face and to hell with the consequences.
But she didn’t. She just walked away. One girl Lipp had harassed,
had been so angry that she’d kicked him in the crotch and reported
him to the manager. But Lipp had been outraged and said that the
reason for her outburst was that he had caught her fondling another
woman. He reminded the manager that women with their husbands away
at war sometimes got involved in unnatural relationships. The
manager had accepted that and the young woman, unable to quit her
job because of Manpower regulations, had been relegated to cleaning
and other menial duties on permanent night shift.
Faith put Joe’s letter away and, foregoing
afternoon tea returned to her stool in the inspection bay. As so
often during the long boring hours at the factory, her thoughts
turned to Dan. It had only been a few weeks since he’d gone to
north Queensland but she found herself looking forward to seeing
him more and more each day. Eventually the whistle signaled the end
of the day shift and minutes later the girls poured out of the
factory on their way home. As Faith neared the factory gates she
saw a jeep parked just outside. When she saw Dan sitting behind the
wheel and waving, she broke into a joyful run.
*
Dick and Mike Sharkey had arrived home from
work a few minutes before the jeep pulled up at the house. Everyone
in the family seemed just as glad as Faith to see Dan, and when he
said he intended taking Faith out to dinner, Helen wouldn’t hear a
word of it. ‘Restaurant food will do you no good, young man,’ she
scolded. Then she added happily, ‘I have a perfectly good leg of
lamb in the oven and with all the talk of meat being rationed soon,
we’d all better sit down and enjoy it while we can.’
Faith glanced at Dan and smiled
encouragingly.
‘Oh, I’d love to stay, Mrs Sharkey,’ Dan said
quickly, ‘as long as it’s no trouble.’
Later when the family were around the table
at dinner, the conversation inevitably turned to the war.
‘Faith told me you’ve been up north, Dan,’
Dick said. ‘Are the reports we get of the Jap air raids up there
accurate or is the government still playing them down?’
‘I haven’t seen the newspaper reports, Mr
Sharkey, so I wouldn’t know,’ Dan said diplomatically.’ All I know
is, there are plenty of raids happening in the Far North Queensland
and all across the Top End.’
Dick sighed and shook his head. ‘When do you
think we’ll be in a position to start hitting back? There seems to
be no end to the war materials coming in at the docks and there are
so many Allied servicemen around everywhere. Surely something has
to happen soon.’
‘Most of the airfields we’re building in the
north are designed to take heavy bombers as well as fighters,’ Dan
said. ‘Bombers mean offensive action. The Allied Air Forces are
being equipped with more planes every day, and there’s almost a
hundred thousand US troops in and around Brisbane and Rockhampton
alone. Together with the Australian forces, there must be hundreds
of thousands of men almost prepared for combat. I think General
MacArthur must be just about ready to take on the Japs. I heard
today he’s moving his headquarters up to Brisbane. I figure that’s
a sure sign things are about to hot up.’
‘I only hope I’m old enough to be in there
when we start to give the Japs a bit of their own medicine,’ Mike
interrupted enthusiastically. ‘I want to be among the diggers who
kick them back all the way to Tokyo.’
‘
They’ll call you up for the Militia soon
enough, son,’ Dick said somberly. ‘There’s no point in wishing it
to happen any sooner, so let’s not talk about it.’
‘I don’t want to be conscripted, Dad, you
know that,’ Mike persisted. ‘The Militia can’t fight overseas. I
want to volunteer for the Imperial Force.’
‘Don’t let’s start that all over again,’
Helen interjected. She stood up and began clearing the table. ‘And
lets stop all this talk of war. That’s all anyone seems to think
about these days.’
Dick quickly changed the subject. ‘How much
leave have you got, Dan?’
‘Just six days.’
‘Where are you staying?’
‘At my old hotel at Rocklea.’
‘Then you’re going back up to North
Queensland?’
‘Yes.’
‘For how long this time, Dan?’ Faith asked as
she got up to help her aunt clear the table.
‘
I don’t know,’ Dan replied. ‘The Army just
tells you where you’re going. They never say for how
long.’
‘Come along, Mike,’ Helen called out as she
carried a stack of dirty dishes from the dining room. You can help
me with these tonight, Faith and Dan will be wanting to spend a
little time together.’
*
Dan and Faith drove to the very same spot at
the summit of Mount Cootha where they had spent their first evening
together. Once again they stopped the Jeep and looked out over the
city in the moonlight. But it was mid-July now, and the limbs of
nearby tall gums were swaying under a chilly winter westerly. Dan
took off his leather airman’s jacket and put it around Faith’s
shoulders..
‘No you keep it,’ Faith protested. ‘It’s the
middle of winter and you’ll catch your death of cold.’
Dan laughed. ‘There’s no winter in
Queensland. To me, it’s always summer. Some days are not quite so
hot as others, that’s all.’
Faith smiled and drew the jacket tightly
around her. She turned in her seat to face Dan. ‘You were very good
tonight, you know.’
Dan looked puzzled. ‘In what way?’
‘Eating your roast lamb and pretending you
liked it. Everyone knows Americans won’t eat mutton. The newspapers
are always saying the rubbish bins are full of it at your Army
camps.’
‘That’s because most of the soldiers aren’t
from the south-west of the United States. Where I come from, folks
have been raising sheep for wool and fresh meat for hundreds of
years.’
‘I suppose the English took sheep to America
like they brought them to Australia,’ Faith said.
Dan shook his head. ‘No, it was the Spanish,
when most of the south-west became part of New Spain. After the
soldiers took the land, Spanish settlers came and brought the sheep
with them to New Mexico and Arizona .’
‘Are there sheep stations there.?’
‘No, not like the properties here in
Australia. Most of the sheep at home are on Indian
reservations.’
Like their last time on the mountain Faith
could see Dan was enjoying speaking of his homeland. ‘Are there
many tribes living in the south-west?’ she asked.
‘Several. There’s the Hopi, Apache, Pueblo,
Ute and the Navajo.’
‘Do they all live on reservations?’
‘Just about.’
‘There must be a lot of land set aside for
them.’
‘The Navajo reservation is the biggest,’ Dan
said. ‘It’s over fourteen million acres and covers parts of New
Mexico, Arizona, southern Utah and Colorado. I think it’s some of
the most beautiful country I’ve ever seen.’
‘What do the Navajo people do with all their
land?’
‘
Oh, they grow crops and raise sheep and
cattle commercially. But a lot of the land is poor land for farming
so every acre is needed. Fairly recently, minerals were discovered
on the reservation and the Tribal Council negotiated royalties for
the Navajo people with the exploration companies. And there’s
always been a market for traditional Navajo woolen goods and
jewellery in the United States, which brings in extra
income.’
‘So they are self-sufficient? They can lead
their own lives? The Navajo don’t rely on the government just to
survive?’
Faith saw Dan’s jaw tighten. He didn’t answer
her right away. When at last he did reply he said, ‘The Navajo have
always been self-sufficient whenever they have been allowed to live
their own lives. But white invaders have always tried to annihilate
or assimilate them into their alien cultures. First it was the
Spanish who came to kill and enslave them. Then the persecution
continued under the Mexicans. Then the Americans came and drove out
the Mexicans and burned the Navajo’s crops and killed their
livestock. The Navajo fought back but eventually they were forced
into submission by systematic starvation. Some fled and hid in
remote canyons, but most went cold and hungry to the Americans and
surrendered in their thousands, begging on their knees in the snow
for food. But the Americans would only agree to feed them if the
Navajo abandoned their traditional lands. They were forced to march
hundreds of miles southward to a bad land reservation at a place
called Basque Redondo.
‘The very old ones still talk of that walk,
of how so many men, women and children froze to death and how the
soldiers shot those who were sick and too weak to carry on. When
they reached Basque Redondo, the reservation lands were so bad
nothing would grow and the water of the Pecos River made them sick
and killed their sheep and horses. There were no trees so there was
no wood to build shelters. They lived in holes in the ground
covered with brush. They were never given enough food, so they
hunted for mice, rabbits, snakes and prairie dogs, anything they
could eat to stay alive. Then there was a smallpox epidemic and
over two thousand died. Everyone knew if they didn’t return to
Dinétah it would be the end of the Navajo.’
Faith noticed Dan’s voice had become
emotional. Suddenly he seemed resentful and bitter. ‘What is
Dinétah?’ she asked.
‘Dinétah is the first place that the Navajo
called home in the south-west. It means Navajoland in their
language. It was among the mesas, rivers and canyons of northern
New Mexico and southern Colorado. It was where the Navajo first
settled a thousand years ago after migrating from Western Canada,
from places now called, British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan.
The Navajo were called Athapaskans then, before the Spanish renamed
them. They followed migrating herds of animals further and further
southward until they found a land that could sustain them without
the need to be nomadic. They called that place Dinétah. Over the
centuries, the tribal lands of the Navajo expanded well beyond
Dinétah, into Arizona and Utah. Then the white man came and
everything changed.’ Dan turned away from Faith and looked out over
the city. After a few moments he said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to
bore you with all that Indian stuff, Faith.’
Faith noticed the intensity had gone from
Dan’s voice. She sensed he was trying to be more relaxed but saw
that his hands were clasped tightly around the steering wheel of
the jeep. She looked at his profile in the moonlight, at his
unusually high cheekbones, sharp angular features and strong lower
jaw. Suddenly she realized that her assumption that he was of
Spanish decent was wrong. ‘I’m not bored, Dan, I’m fascinated.’ She
reached out and laid her hand over his. ‘You must be very proud to
be a Navajo, Dan.’
Dan turned to her slowly. ‘I am, Faith. More
than I can ever say.’
Faith smiled. ‘Tell me more. You said the
Navajo reservation now covers a huge area in four states.’
‘The Americans eventually let the remaining
Navajo return to their tribal lands from Basque Redondo. It was on
condition they accepted the authority of the United States and
never waged war again. They never did. But their struggle for
survival continued. They were given a few sheep and horses and
gradually they recovered and their numbers steadily increased.
Since then the reservation has been expanded fourteen times. It’s
now the size of the entire state of West Virginia.’