Published: 25 Mar 2024

Five winters or there about had passed since Axel’s regretful time with Sergeant Miller; one since Jock’s accident. Now a man and without his mentor, Axel found dealing with the road worker’s overseers and the military to be more than difficult. Although the need for cheap fresh meat for the road gangs was ever paramount, his youthful appearance and bartering skills for supplies came to little more than acquiring powder and shot, sometime a change of clothing, as the terrain was so rugged it made short work of European style clothing. When away from settlement and the eyes of religious zealots, Axel often hunted naked to extend the life of his single set of modified convict slops, believing if it was good enough for the blacks to go naked, why not he.

When Axel did hunt naked and happened to encounter any of the blacks in the area he became the bane of their humour, to them his alabaster white skin and red head and crotch were above amazement as far as believing he had been sent by their dreaming. There were occasions when a native would approach Axel and demand an answer about a deceased family member and if the dead had forgiven for some long past mischief. Although he would usually get the gist of the conversation he always feigned to be dumb.

As for Jock’s demise, the two had been hunting a rock wallaby along the western escarpment of the Blue Mountains close by where the Bathurst road made it way past the Three Sisters monument, when the land beneath Jock’s feet gave way and he fell for more than two thousand feet to the valley below. Jock’s fall was silent, he didn’t shout, or utter against the terror that was to be. Axel had seen the closeness of Jock to the edge, also his friend’s obvious lack of concentration and drew a sharp breathe to give caution but Jock was gone before a sound could be uttered. All he could do was stand and watch what appeared to be a never ending tragic descent.

For some time Axel stood in shock deciding what he should do next. He knew he must somehow find a way to reach Jock’s mangled body, as he couldn’t leave his friend to be scavenged by wild animals.

‘What now?’ he thinks. His hands trembling, he takes a deep breath while attempting to normalise his thoughts.

All he can think about is how he will survive without Jock.

Quickly he cast away his own dilemma to concentrate on the tragedy at hand.

‘I must find a way down.’

‘I can’t leave Jock laying there for the wild animals.’

Although Axel could clearly see Jock’s body, the steepness and rugged terrain made it difficult to reach him but after some effort he found a pathway, a native songline that chanced to lead down a short distance further to the south.

On reaching the bottom and Jock, Axel puzzles on what he should do.

‘I should bury him.’

He looks about but the land is rocky and he has nothing to dig a grave for his friend.

Axel finds a stick and commences to scratch at the earth.

A few inches down and he strikes solid rock.

He tries a second scratching but again he quickly reaches bedrock.

‘What now?’

‘I know, I’ll cover him with rocks,’ he thinks and manages Jock’s body into the scratching of earth then goes about gathers stones of size. They are heavy but he must honour his friend with burial.

Some of the rocks were so large he had to roll them to the grave.

Eventually the cairn is high enough that no part of Jock can be seen beneath.

‘That will have to do,’ he thinks.

Axel looks about and finds Jock’s hat caught on a tree branch.

‘I’ll keep it to remember Jock.’

‘No, I can’t do that.’

Instead of keeping the hat he places it to the top of the cairn and weights it down with a stone.

Axel stands away in silence.

His head is bowed, his eyes closed but Axel says no prayer.

The women in the their convict barracks had been a godless lot and he had long since closed his ears to the ranting of the Reverend Marsden, so he quietly and meaningfully uttered the only words that mattered, ‘farewell my friend, I will miss you.’

Finding the gun undamaged, its fall broken by tree branches, he collected Jock’s shot bag and powder flask then climbs back to the thick forest above.

On returning to the top of the escarpment Axel rested from his effort while collecting his thoughts towards his future. He knew he would survive. He found his own way before Jock and since becoming the hunter’s companion learned much about the forest. Besides he could hunt, Jock had taught him well and he had a good eye. He could manage trade with the military, even if they always played down the value of what was offered. There were times when Jock would stand aside, allowing Axel to barter with the overseers but because of his earlier isolation he found difficulty and his style somewhat ineffective but in time experience would develop.

Gathering his bearings and preparing to move on, Axel has the sensation he is not alone, he quickly scans the darkening forest but sees nothing. It is that time of days when shadows deepen and the imagination intensifies creating shadows within shadows. The natives had a narrative for the hour when the day turned into night allowing devils and spirits to wander at will. Some of the spirits were good, some no so friendly and if you were caught in pensive mind they could enter into your essence and send you mad. Axel smiles without belief in such spirits, as there were times when in a tight situation he had used the native’s fear against them.

Axel gives a loud coo-ee, a native call often used to discover the location of friends, or hunting groups.

‘That was silly,’ he thinks.

‘That would let anyone about know my position.’

Even with such admittance he gives a second even louder coo-ee bringing movement from within the forest; it is black on black but movement all the same as a native steps from behind a grouping of trees, his dark youthful skin glistening velvet with perspiration. The native is carrying a hunting spear in one hand and what appears to be a large lizard in the other. He has a cord about his midriff holding smaller lizards collected during the day’s hunting. He is a young man and by his markings not yet fully initiated. The black youth is naked and smiling without any obvious display of aggression, more in fact he appears bemused.

The young native places down his kill before approaching Axel. He is soon joined by two others who show more caution than the first as they step from the security of the forest. Both are younger and appear less daring.

The black lad speaks in language, while his associates yabber amongst themselves. They are pointing at Axel and laughing.

Although Axel doesn’t comprehend the young native’s dialect he answers with words he had learned from the mob about Sydney Town.

Neither understands the other.

The first lad shouts something at Axel while impatiently stomping a foot into the dust.

The dust rises and resettles.

Again Axel attempts language. Either the young man doesn’t understand or wishes not to understand.

The black lad approaches closer then repeats his question; he touches his own naked privates with the slight of a hand, being more to support a question than what could be considered sexual.

Axel remains silent.

Again the young native speaks and points towards Axel’s trousers, his word sound similar to what Axel knew to be woman.

Axel repeats what he though in language was man but the black lad remains confused. Axel again repeats what he believes translates as man, while remembering a storey he had heard about the first meeting between Governor Arthur Phillip and a group of Eora men, who were fishing within the inner harbour of Port Jackson, during the first few months of settlement.

Because Governor Phillip’s men were clean shaven and their sexual provenance covered, the natives thought they were women, so the Governor had a young fellow drop his trousers to prove his sex.

Axel didn’t wish to do likewise, as it may give some adverse meaning. Also in the past the natives about Sydney Town had difficulty defining Axel’s sexual provenance because of his slender frame and long red hair but since those times he had lost the slightness of body and could not be mistaken as feminine by physique alone.

Man – Axel repeats in language but the black lad remains confused. The lad steps forward and takes hold of what hung loosely behind the crotch of Axel’s slops.

With shock the black lad jumps away, he shouts a word which was obviously that for man in the Kedumba language to which the hunting party belonged. His friends repeat the word.

They all laugh and point towards Axel.

Axel releases a nervous chortle as it is the first time he had been touched in that way since his short friendship with Edward Buckley.

The native joins him in humour.

For an instant they are as one but the bond is soon broken as the black lad is once again displaying a confused and serious disposition.

Axel remembers well his time with Edward Buckley, also the kindness he had been shown and those few nights they were together before Buckley departed with his friend Hamish to find their own selection somewhere beyond the mountains.

Now before Axel was a grinning black lad and over his shock in realising Axel wasn’t as he thought female yet he remains curious. Approaching closer he touches the redness of Axel’s hair then quickly pulls away as if he may be burned by its fiery brilliance.

He is not burned so he again touches and laughs loudly while speaking to the others in language. They in turn approach and nervously touch the redness of Axel’s hair.

There is much conversation firstly the tone is with wonder and disbelief followed by raised voices in argument, the two appear threatening but the older lad settles them and demands they move away. Satisfied he has control he collects his hunting spear and returns to stand before Axel while the two continue with their arguing.

‘Are they debating my downfall,’ Axel is thinking.

He looks about for an escape, there isn’t any and his gun is not primed. He stands motionless expecting a strike at any moment and can fell his pulse pounding in his ears but holds his ground. He knows the worse he can do is try to run for cover. All he can think is to keep smiling and reman submissive.

The black lad becomes threatening, he raises his hunting spear and points it at Axel. The spear is touching his chest and Axel can feel the power behind the shaft. A slight forward motion dimples his shirt but doesn’t break the skin beneath. The spear is then lowered as the black youth takes something from the twine cord that held the small dead creatures to his midriff and with a quick decisive motion cuts a chunk away from Axel’s hair.

It becomes obvious to Axel he is the hunter’s prize and enough to take a trophy and not his life. With the cutting the hunting party return to the forest while loudly chatting about the encounter. For some time Axel remained silent although shaken, appraising what had occurred and from it he began to understand a little more of the black man’s ways.

It appeared that what usually had Tommy No-One in trouble had now saved Axel South and trembling from his experience he stood silently expecting the blacks would revaluate their decision and return for his life. Axel waited for some time before he dared advance, he thought if he ran, like the kangaroo, he may be considered as game and possible the hunting party were close by waiting for him to make such a move. It is now dark and the new moon is rising, so with caution he returns to the forest towards the east and that part of the mountains he best knew.

Axel’s experience with the native hunting party became imbedded in memory and used as a yardstick towards the ways of the blacks and a reminder to always tune his senses to surroundings, while blaming his lack of judgement during the incident with the natives, was brought about from grief after burying his friend and mentor.

Slowly Axel’s awareness evolved to such an extent he could decipher the slightest sound the forest had to offer. A fluttering of birds could be a warning, if a twig’s snap in the night he would know if it was animal or man but more than that he could feel a presence long before it came to sight and many times he found security moments before he chanced upon a native hunting party, or a group on their way to pay havoc on some unprepared farmer.

Without his friend and mentor, Axel quickly realised he needed to reassess his lifestyle. With Jock they were nomadic, simply setting up camp under an old sail acquired from the docks while they followed the game. For a time Axel attempted to continue the supplying of fresh game and kangaroo skins to the military but they gave little, often taking what he had, sending him away with nothing in payment.

Axel would survive, as even before he met Jock he had learned much from the blacks, where to find native honey and dig for daisy-yam called Murnong. He knew the seasons for wild berries, what plants were safe to eat and how to avoid contact with both blacks and white settlers. He became so efficient at concealment the blacks often referred to him as a spirit that moved from their world to that of their ancestors, even as far as some suggesting he could talk to spirits on their behalf.

Now with Jock gone Axel lost interest in the nomadic life, finding a spot far enough from his own kind not to be bothered by accusation, also distant from the native songlines not to be discovered by any of their war parties as they played havoc on the settlements. His choice of abode was a rocky outcrop most of the way up a hill, giving advantage over the forest, with the Parramatta River a silver ribbon a short distance to the north and the new road along its southern bank.

Sometimes from his advantage Axel would spy native hunting parties as they past on their way from the coast to the mountains. On one occasion the rebel Pemulwuy chanced by but either didn’t notice his camp, or had more pressing business to attend to on the Hawkesbury far to the north. Within an hour of Pemulwuy’s passing Axel heard the sound of distant gun fire from the direction of Rose Hill and soon after the same natives returned in haste.

Pemulwuy was a big man with deep set eyes and a proud brow. He was revered by his mob, considered to be the bravest of them all, believing he was impervious to the white man’s gun but with such a cavalier attitude it was obvious sooner or later he would be the target of a military marksman. It was believed his immortal attitude may have come about from being fired upon on a number of occasions that ending in near misses and a misconstruction by the black man that once the weapon had been discharged, the target would either fall dead or wounded. It was said during raids on farms Pemulwuy would place himself in a precarious situation, shouting his immortality as he laughed and danced in abandon of preservation while his followers set fire to huts and cornfields.

The land about the foothills had been quiet for some time and as Axel had not seen native activity he believed the natives had been subdued or had moved further away from the ever expanding colonial front, as almost fifty thousand Britons had arrived since the first eleven ships sailed into Port Jackson less than forty years previously. True most of that number were convicts or now emancipists holding tickets of leave, although ship by ship free settlers were arriving to acquire land not only in his foothills but across the mountains where good sheep country was discovered at a place they called Bathurst. Also with Hamilton Hume and William Hovell finding well watered pastures to the south along the Murrumbidgee and Lachlan Rivers it would not be long before settlers followed in their footsteps.

With a lull in warlike activity, Axel had time to ponder on his future; also his past, giving thought to his once friend Edward Buckley whose image was clear in the mind’s eye whenever powering his sexual need. There were other less pleasing memories, such as those when he was house boy to Sergeant Miller, who although having taken a convict woman for his pleasure had abused him at will. Axel’s bed at the Miller’s house was of straw within a lean-to beside the house, being no larger than that what would hold your hunting hound. At will, while giving the excuse he needed to check the house’s security, Miller would leave his bed and woman to take what pleasure he may with the lad.

Miller had been a strong brutish man who no matter what time or day stunk of rum and lack of basic hygiene. His encounters with Tommy No-One were rough and determined, without the slightest pity or consideration for the lad’s emotional or physical wellbeing. What Miller didn’t know, nor wish to know, although Axel South would not tolerate such brutality; Tommy No-One would have accepted Miller’s advances if given with affection. There were others as well who Miller allowed access and they came to Tommy’s lean-to where with rough intent they satisfied their desire.

With a full moon, a quiet forest and after a hearty meal of damper bread made from flour he purchased by bartering a number of kangaroo skins to a Vinegar Hill farmer, Axel contemplated his future. He would like to do as Edward Buckley had and cross into the wide interior where he could be free from his past. He though of the many carts that travelled westward along the Bathurst road and how eager were the travellers with their hopes and aspirations, their children singing and playing pat-a-cake, baker’s man, or the hand-string game cat in the cradle to pass away the long day’s journey, while their mother, the settler’s woman suffered the heat as the strong antipodeans sun turned her soft English complexion into wrinkled brown leather.

Often he wondered if Axel South could be that man, that husband, that father of children. Tommy No-One could not but in his new metamorphosis, could he marry and expire towards a family. He thought not as there was more of Edward Buckley in him to ever love a woman in that way, so like the sun, like the moon the trees he must accept what nature had designed for him and possibly like his friend Edward had, he may also find comfort sometime in the future.

High above were the stars of the Milky Way and as once explained to Tommy No-One were from god’s milking maid who spilled her pail but there was no god in Axel’s world and there had been even less in the world of Tommy No-One. If there is a god why would he treat his children so cruelly, let infants die from painful inflictions and parents suffer? If there is a god he must hate his own creation, or have a spiteful nature like what he had installed in Sergeant Miller and the others, or in those who shot the blacks for sport and gave them poisoned flour. Marsden’s god must have other attributes such as revenge, jealousy, narcissism and spite, none of which, if god existed had been installed in Tommy No-One, or transpired within the developing nature of Axel South.

Axel preferred the native’s stories when instead of the Big Dipper, The Twins the Crab and of course Pegasus and others, they saw Emus and native animals in the heavens, while even the dark parts of the night’s sky had names and meaning. It was Tommy No-One who had learned about the black man’s sky from a young native boy, their friendship cut short when the lad and his family were taken by smallpox.

During the time of his black friend’s demise and all along the Parramatta River to the northern beaches natives lay dead or dying, their humpies empty their fishing canoes beached. The blame for spreading the disease was suggested to have come from the Frenchman La Perouse who had landed at Botany Bay as the first fleet sailed into Port Jackson. Such a belief came from the fact since the first of the English arrived there had never been a single case of smallpox in the colony.

By the Frenchman’s understanding he would find a thriving British settlement where he could resupply his ships; instead he was met by angry natives, stirred to revenge by the arrival of the British. La Perouse shot a number of natives before sailing away into the deep Pacific never to be heard from again. Before departing he did manage to bury one of his crew. It may be asked, did them sailor die from smallpox.

Axel remembers nights when kneeled towards his bunk, his hands steepled for prayer, eyes closed tight, with the Reverend Samuel Marsden giving him words to save his wretched soul. Tommy had repeated the reverend’s words but they never reached his head or the heart, only rolling from the tongue to satisfy the piety of the Reverend. When Marsden departed for New Zealand he had left Tommy a prayer book and as he had also given the lad rudimentary reading lessons he expected Tommy to be proficient on his return. No sooner had the Reverend departed then Tommy sold the prayer book for a dump-coin giving him fifteen pence.

Reverend Marsden was not only a pious man but often cruel and was most apt at dispensing punishment. It had been reported he arrived in New Zealand, with a whip in one hand and a bible in the other. On his return from his first New Zealand tour of converting the Maori with his brimstone and fire, Marsden become a land owner and bought a brig to service his developing Pacific Island Missions. He soon discovered Tommy gone and by most accounts was running wild in the forests. It was Marsden who tracked the lad, then arranged his position as houseboy for Sergeant Miller. The placement may have been done in good faith but was for Tommy away from brimstone into abusive neglect.

Axel had been hunting a wallaby close by where his friend Scottish Jock had fallen to his demise and as he lifted his gun towards the wallaby, the animal in silence falls to the ground. The animal had also been the quarry of a native hunting party coming from the opposite direction. As both he and the hunting party were concentrating on a kill, each failed to realise the others presence. Axel quickly went to ground behind a thicket of bushes while holding his breath. There were three young natives and by their initiation Kedumba people, who owned the legend of the Three Sisters sandstone piles.

As the natives gathered around their kill one stood away and appeared to be concentrating on the patch of scrub where Axel was hiding. Axel sinks even lower to the ground when the young man takes a step in his direction, then a second step before pausing. He is sniffing at the air. Around his neck in a cord made from indigenous flax and at the cord’s length is something red. It is the lock of hair taken from Axel’s head during that previous encounter after burying his Scottish friend.

During their initial encounter the young native was more interest in Axel’s sex and hair colouring to take his life but much had changed since then, many of his tribe were part of the push to evict the invader back to his tall canoes and many of his people had died in those native wars. If Axel was discovered would the black lad remain inquisitive with his hair, or take revenge. It was a question Axel had no wish to ask or find the answer to, so he remained in hiding as the hunter wearing his red trophy shouldered the dead wallaby and with his compatriots departed in the opposite direction.

During Axel’s return to his camp he discovered it had been raided and his few belonging had been scattered about. At first he believed it to be the work of the blacks but such damage was not of their habit. This was the work of his people, most probably escaped convicts who lacked respect for either their own or the natives.

It was time for Axel to make a decision, he could either return closer to civilization, or like his once friend Edward Buckley, he could cross over the mountains to the vast interior. Searching about he found his supply of powder and shot remained hidden in a watertight container and was thankful but what little supplies he possessed was gone, even his single blanket but not his replacement set of clothing.

‘Obviously the bugger isn’t my size,’ he thinks as he gathers together the scattering while places order back into his camp.

‘What now?’

‘Tomorrow’s problem.’

‘There is always tomorrow.’

Having learned tracking from the blacks and well skilled, Axel’s eyes are all about. He finds tracks leading into his camp then departing to the west, he smiles, ‘you go in that direction and you will be dead within a day,’ he assumes as the tracks were leading directly towards the camp of the Bedigal people.

Gary’s stories are about life for gay men in Australia’s past and present. Your emails to him are the only payment he receives. Email Gary to let him know you are reading: Conder 333 at Hotmail dot Com

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