the tree
Learning small amounts of English from the bullockies from Adelaide was the only thing that seemed to distract the congregation from the anxiety that soon shivered over the port. After the joy and exhilaration of arrival, there was suddenly little else to do but talk of the terrible soil at Neu Klemzig, debt, and all the things that would need to be bought on credit. It was with visible horror that people learned the exorbitant price of provisions in the colony. Sixpence for ten potatoes. Cucumber seed more than a shilling. Traugott Geschke came back from an exploratory trip into Adelaide white-faced. A pair of bullocks cost more than forty pounds. So, when the captain summoned everyone together and told them he had secured temporary work for them at the port, the news was received with relief. Surely there was no harm in working while they waited? Surely Flügel could not begrudge them the money and occupation? The captain had arranged for unmarried daughters and sons to ferry water from the new spring on the Adelaide road, saving the bullockies the trouble of drawing water from the Torrens, and for married women to work as laundresses. Men would labour in the nearby district and town.
The next day I watched Christiana, Matthias and Hans rig up sledges from she-oak trees and set off inland on the dray track. They returned by midday, dragging heavy casks of water through the sand, promptly sold it all, and set off again so that Magdalena, Emile, Beate, Eleonore and my mother would have water for laundry. I would have followed them – I was interested to see something more of the place than the blasted port – had Thea not been told to remain by her mother. Anna Maria had volunteered to cook for the working families and had insisted Thea stay back to help her, but I could see, in the way she kept her eyes on the women laundering, that she did not trust Magdalena. Having Thea there was the only way to ensure their belongings might never be left unattended.
Strange waiting days, on the cusp of a new life and unable to seize it. A month of dirty handkerchiefs. Four shillings each time my mama scrubbed the English sweat from a shirt, until the skin of her knuckles split when she closed them over the money. Hans and Matthias came with their buckets of water and left again like the tide, endlessly, three times a day or more, until their feet grew as hard as boot soles, and my brother’s arms twitched in sleep with remembered weight. A month of splinters from driving posts, ship-soft muscles hardening with hauling and splitting and sawing and lifting. Hans’s cat shed the last of her kitten belly and coiled with lean muscle. A month of sun on Thea’s face until her cheeks patterned with freckles that I studied until I could have found them in the dark.
And then, a piece of paper held aloft by the captain, a broad smile on his face. Moved by the plight of his passengers, he had negotiated a contract on their behalf. Promises in exchange for debt and industry and interest. Captain Olsen had secured one hundred and fifty acres of land to be rented by those who had come out on the Kristi: those from Kay, as well as families from Tschicherzig, Klemzig and Züllichau. They would rent the land as a group; it would be divided into fair and equal portions for each family. The captain had also arranged credit and allowances for a church and school. The debt would be shouldered by them as a collective, a community responsible for each other. Those already settled at Neu Klemzig could choose to remain there or join the new congregation.
German tongues laboured over the names of English landowners, English prices, English measurements, against cries of: ‘God will reward you, Captain!’ Dutton. MacFarlane. Finnis. ‘You are the Lord’s messenger!’ Poultry. Cattle. Pigs. Surely Flügel would see that this was God’s providence? Seven pound sterling an acre. ‘Let us prosper under Him. M?ge Gott Sie segnen!’
The sound of this country is one long sustained note that does not end. It is a humming that holds all the other music of this place in harmony. Every other sound is threaded upon it.
It was at the port that I began to curate new litanies. Between the bullock drivers that rumbled in from Adelaide, the sailors, the merchants, the English come in search of labourers, I found words given to the music I heard against the constant run of the wind amongst the rushes and sand dunes.
She-oak for the tree with long, scaled needles, whistling the wind in a way that made my skin lift.
Magpie lark for the two-shriek calling peep in changing hours.
Salt paperbark for the crooked trees groaning wooded, cupped fruit.
Mangrove, wattle, saltbush.
In the months that came afterwards I learned new words as the congregation did, as they crossed the dusty, ticking plains of Adelaide. I placed them next to one another upon the deeper vibration of this country.