1.             The Kalkadoons

Moonah Creek, Queensland

On a trip to Urandangie I called in to see Byron Nelson. He was mixed race. Back then we whites called them half-castes, but that was in the days before people invented political correctness. Byron was the illegitimate descendant of a brother of Hugh Nelson, Queensland Premier in the 1840s. He kept to himself.  He lived in two halves of a galvanised water tank on the banks of Moonah Creek. He ran cattle in poison gidgee country. Poison gidgee was also called stinking wattle (acacia cambagei). The pastoralists at Carandotta, the station that surrounded Byron’s small lot, could not run their cattle in this land. Byron did.  He also had paddocks of fodder thriving on the banks of the dry creek: an oasis of green in this dry land.

Byron kept to himself and his books. He read widely: his library would have graced the homes of aristocracy. A friend of mine, Marion Dent, had introduced us months earlier on one of Byron’s rare visits to Mount Isa. He had no ill feelings towards anyone. He kept to himself, kept his own counsel and spent his life tending his few cattle, his crops and his mind — by reading. His spoke of how the Kalkadoons were nomadic people. He had invited me to call in if ever I was in the area.

As we chatted, shadows danced in the flickering light from the Tilley lamp. HE told me about his mother. She was a survivor of a massacre of the Kalkadoons in the l890s at Battle Mountain. I looked at him in horror.

‘Massacre?’

‘They lived in small clans of about twenty adults. Their survival depended on water. Their search for and conservation of water became the main cause of conflict with the white settlers’, he explained. ‘As you can see around you in this rich land, food is plentiful.’

He raised his hand towards the surrounding mountains, bathed in the bright moonlight. True beauty must contain true bounty.

‘They would camp in one area until the food resources were almost (but never totally) depleted. Every few weeks they would move on.’

‘And how far did they travel?’

‘Their land was vast. It extended way past Cloncurry in the east. To the northwest it ran up to the Georgina River, across the border with the Territory and south past Boulia. They were a hill-bred tribe: fiercely independent — even aggressive. They had their nasty streaks. Most of the weaker tribes in the area, they had long since over ran. They had a knack for imposing themselves on weaker tribes that kept to the river banks and the easy areas.’

‘And the settlers?’ I asked.

‘You have lived here all your young life, my boy,’ he chuckled. ‘You know well how many gullies, gorges and ravines cover this wonderful land.  It provided them with defendable terrain.’

 ‘And the settlers?’ I asked again.

‘They fought them from 1874 to 1884.’

‘Which they lost?’ I asked.

He was quiet. He rose to pump the Tilley lamp. He walked to his library. He came back with a well-thumbed book. Published earlier that year on the history of the Kalkadoons, it was written by Robert Armstrong. He paused and stared at the moonlight bathing the Selwyn Ranges in a tranquil, pale light.

‘I fear that my people have lost a lot of their grandeur. It can and will and must return.’ 

He opened the book. It had images of fine, tall men: the Kalkadoons.

‘Very tall’, I observed.

‘Most towered over white men,’ he nodded. Most men wore beards — their hair long and waving. They would wind it into coils. Sometimes they would attach a ribbon or something colourful for full effect.’

‘And the whites?’

‘They saw the Kalkadoon as aggressive and independent. They made a formidable enemy.’

‘But…’

‘Despite their aggression, they could not last against the weapons of the white men. All they had was knives and axes, stone and metal, fighting poles, clubs, spears, boomerangs, woomeras and shields.’

‘And the famous last stand?’ I asked.

‘In 1884, the authorities sent a policeman called Frederic Urquhart to the area. His orders were to get the situation under control. He gathered his troops and lined up help from the settlers. They traveled to a rocky outcrop just north of the Isa. Over a thousand Kalkadoons, lined up on the mountain above them. They had the advantage of height. They charged down the hill but…carbines and spears? Which wins?’

‘Most were wiped out. My mum survived. They fled.’ He paused. ‘They now call the place Battle Mountain.’

He said nothing more. What could I say? I thought or my friend Robin.

‘Before you leave for Urandangie tomorrow, I’ll take you to the river bank on Moonah creek. There is a well. Twenty of my people were wiped out by the whites there. Their bodies are in that well.’

‘When?’

‘1907.’

 We went. We said nothing. The wind moaned through the ghost gums. I reflected on the name of the river: Moonah Creek. Like the mists that lift from the Selwyn Ranges in the early mornings, the Kalkadoons’ ashes have been blown away,

For ever.