Tracks of Destiny

Ion Idriess

Description

In 1932, Ion Idriess was one of those who set out from tiny port of Derby with the ending of the Wet season, moving through the rugger Kimberleys towards the developing goldfield of Tennant's Creek. This is the story of his wanderings in the 1930s and what he heard and saw along the way; at a time when wireless and air and motor transport were rapidly changing life in the North and North-west: but when the age of pioneers, of heroic journeys, terrifying loneliness, and violent death, had not yet passed away.
Back in print after 60 years.

Sujets

• Historical
• Lettres et linguistique
• Biography
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: ETT Imprint
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781922473943
• Langue: English

Extrait

Up on the pub veranda Womba Billy the teamster raised his bloodshot eyes to the sun and beat his chest and roared. The wet season was over, and for everyone in the tiny port of Derby—including Womba, who had spent the Wet getting drunk and thinking he was a scrub bull—life was beginning again. Black men and white men were preparing to wander far and wide through the rugged Kimberleys and the vast Northern Territory. Many of the white men were answering the call of gold, as news came of finds, particularly in the developing goldfield of Tennant’s Creek.
Ion Idriess was one of those who set out from Derby with the ending of the Wet. This is the story of his wanderings and what he heard and saw along the way, at a time when wireless and air and motor transport were rapidly changing life in the North and North-west, but when the age of the pioneers, of heroic journeys, terrifying loneliness, and violent death, had not yet passed away.
ION IDRIESS
ETT IMPRINT has the following books back in print in 2021:
Flynn of the Inland
The Desert Column
The Red Chief
Nemarluk
Horrie the Wog Dog
Prospecting for Gold
Drums of Mer
Madman's Island
The Yellow Joss
Forty Fathoms Deep
Lasseter's Last Ride
Sniping
Shoot to Kill
Guerrilla Tactics
Trapping the Jap
Lurking Death
The Scout
The Wild White Man of Badu
Gold Dust and Ashes
Headhunters of the Coral Sea
Gouger of the Bulletin
Ion Idriess: The Last Interview
Man Tracks
Men of the Jungle
Outlaws of the Leopolds
Over the Range
Tracks of Destiny
TRACKS OF DESTINY
From Derby to Tennant Creek
ION IDRIESS
ETT IMPRINT
Exile Bay
This 3rd edition published by ETT Imprint, Exile Bay 2021
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publishers:
ETT IMPRINT
PO Box R1906
Royal Exchange NSW 1225 Australia
First published by Angus & Robertson in 1961. Reprinted 1962
First electronic edition by ETT Imprint 2021
Copyright © Idriess Enterprises Pty Ltd, 2021
ISBN 9781922473936 (pbk)
ISBN 9781922473943 (ebk)
Cover: Bush mechanic sorting out a little problem in the Territory, 1935
Cover design by Tom Thompson
To Grace George
our own proof girl "Georgie”, who throughout the battling years has been so patient and understanding with so many impatient Australian authors, including me
Sam Irvine, pioneer driver of His Majesty's Overland Mail. His run was 600 miles up north into the Territory, 600 miles back.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I.
THE DROVER OF GOATS
II.
THE NEW LIFE
III.
COMING OF A NEW ERA
IV.
THE VALLEY
V.
WHERE THE WILD MEN ROAM
VI.
THE WOMAN-STEALER
VII.
WHILE DEATH CREEPS NEAR
VIII.
THE MASSACRE
IX.
WYNDHAM DAYS
X.
THE OLD DOC
XI.
OUT WHERE HE-MEN REFUSE TO DIE
XII.
WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE TO BE DEAD?
XIII.
THE PORT OF PLENTY-O’-TIME
XIV.
WHERE WOMEN CAN BE AS GOOD AS MEN
XV.
ABOARD THE BIRDUM FLYER
XVI.
PINE CREEK NIGHTS
XVII.
SORROWS OF THE OPIUM TRADERS
XVIII.
“SOOL THE WOLVES ONTO ’EM!”
XIX.
AS TIME PASSES
XX.
THE LADY ETHNOLOGIST
XXI.
WE COME TO THE TENNANT’S
XXII.
THAT ARMOUR-PLATED BAR
XXIII.
TO DONALD MACKAY
XXIV.
IRONSTONE AND SPINIFEX
XXV.
THE BLIND MINER
XXVI.
THE RISING SUN
XXVII.
THE GUNS
XXVIII.
GOLD!
XXIX.
WOODY AND THE PETER PAN
XXX.
A STUDY OF BALLISTICS
XXXI.
THE ALICE BRIDES OF YESTERYEAR
XXXII.
THE STONE AGE STEPS INTO THE MODERN
XXXIII.
THE BLACK PHANTOM
XXXIV.
THE PURSUIT
XXXV.
HE WHO WALKS IN THE NIGHT
XXXVI.
THE HEAT IS ON
XXXVII.
"FINISH!"

Michael Terry refuelling his truck for a 1928 expedition into the Northern Territory.
I
THE DROVER OF GOATS
Under a blazing Centralian sun, the red dust wavering under the little hooves as the goats mooched steadily along. Red dust on the lean face of the drover carefully shepherding his charges.
“I’ve got to,” he muttered, “out here where water is scarce as ice-creams in hell. No wonder I’m talking to myself. Nursing a mob of goats across this track to Hades and Gone. Who’d ’a’ thought it?”
Who indeed, in this year 1932-3, along that seldom-used track from Mount Isa south-west through North Queensland and down across the Territory to a forlorn spot on the Overland Telegraph Line called Tennant’s Creek? 1
“Name of some old explorer bloke most likely,” the goat-drover told himself. “Good luck to him, anyway, good luck to any bloke who finds a waterhole in a creek out here! And now here’s me—with a mob of goats!”
Later O’Brien would laugh at the memory. “I used to wonder if I was going crazy, then I knew I was. Eating spinifex grubs and talking to myself while droving a mob of goats across Australia. A cattleman won’t be seen droving a mob of sheep, but here was a goat droving a mob of goats!”
Since then I’ve wondered if O’Brien’s ghost has gazed down amazed at the modern town of Tennant’s Creek, perhaps puzzling over the whereabouts of that faint track, which is now a broad road leading out through the dust haze south-east from the Tennant’s, a road along which roar huge touring cars to and from that other wonder town of the wilderness, Mount Isa.
But the drover of the goats would never know it in this life. His was the ticklish job of getting those goats alive across those hundreds of miles of sunburnt space. And he wished to arrive alive with them.
Fezal Deene devoutly hoped he would. For Fezal Deene, the sombre-faced Afghan, must live also, but he must live by the Prophet. And in this most isolated spot of this infidel land the safe arrival of those goats meant that his own hand would now kill his own meat; no unclean hand would touch it.
O’Brien, an Ishmael himself, had taken this undignified droving job because a whisper had come floating across the sun-scorched wilderness, a bare rumour murmuring through the haze of distance, “Prospectors have struck gold somewhere near Tennant’s Creek in the Centre!” A following rumour then was that the enterprising Fezal Deene was actually transporting a battery there to crush stone for the gold-miners. So that wild rumour must be true. The job of droving the goats meant confirmation to O’Brien. Eagerly he accepted. Thus he would reach this new find if any, and actually be paid for the trip.
“I’d go hopping to hell along a road of criss-cross saws to reach a new goldfield,” he declared, “let alone drive a mob of goats across a desert!”
Which it wasn’t, actually. But it was a cruel, sparse land to those who did not know their way about. And thus he crossed it in hopes of finding gold. He would find lead, poor chap. Four ounces of it—in his belly. Such things happen. You never know.
While I would give away my chance of gold. Such things happen. You never know. I didn’t, of course.
While that shepherder of goats was drawing nearer the centre of Australia I was a thousand miles farther on, on the shores of the Indian Ocean at the little Derby port of the West Kimberley, eager to get a start on to return down over the Territory-Centralian track for home. But big blue clouds ominously piling up again warned, “Not yet! More rain coming!”
“Pull off the track for a while and come in with me on Tennant’s Creek, Jack,” suggested Jack Noble one day.
“Not on your life, Jack,” I replied. “I’m bound for the Big Smoke. And every post is a winning-post.”
“But there’s gold at Tennant’s Creek, Jack, and that’s dinkum! I’ve seen it. It’s only just found. It’s such a hard-to-get-at place that there’ll be no rush for quite a while. But in time there will be. I’m making straight back there after the Wet. There is gold there, Jack. How about it?”
“I’m for the gold of Pitt Street.” I laughed. “I’ve had the spinifex and the mulga and the witchety grubs—for the time being, anyway.”
And thus I threw away a fortune. For a thousand miles south-east amongst that same spinifex Jack was to find Noble’s Knob. Fortunes came out of it. Jack got his whack, quite a little pile, too. But good-hearted Jack could not hang on to fortune. Few of them did. Only a very few in any mining field ever do.
For untold ages past the fierce sun in that Central Australian wilderness had been beating down upon many a fortune encased within those harsh brown ironstone hills. Already I’d ridden through them, unaware of the wealth deep hidden on either side. Yet again I would drive through them, and miss out again—as did many another man.
But we don’t know these things.
Big, easy-going Jack Noble. Adventurous, taking things as they came unless he heard of a new gold strike. It needed but the merest whisper and Jack was packing his swag and away, across to the other side of the continent if need be. At such times Jack would keep going. Just keep going on and on. He would toil like a galley-slave, too, so long as he was looking for gold. Otherwise an easy-going mate, so his friends declared, maybe a bit too easy-going at times. With a big virtue—Jack never forgot a friend. Even now he’d left the early opportunities lying around those distant hills of gold to hurry all the way back to Derby, a thousand hazardous miles, a thousand to return, just to bring the news to three or four friends who had done him a good turn during difficult times. (I wasn’t one of these particular staunch old friends.) He had come all this way to try to convince them of the find and urge them to return with him and grasp the chance of fortune—a certainty, as it turned out.
But that problematical gold was a long way away. Here in Derby all hands were eagerly awaiting the end of the Wet so that we could begin travelling again, could begin the work of the Kimberleys, the sheep and the cattle work, the droving east and west, the cattle shipping on the west coast at Derby, the pearling fleets sailing out from Broome, the meatworks opening up to hectic life a