The Styx. Patricia Holland

Epilogue

       Author’s notes

       Acknowledgements

       About the author

      for Sophie

      The villainy you teach me,

      I will execute, …

      but I will better the instruction.

      William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, III.i.65–66

      Shadows of the Wuku

      If you stay still long enough, and listen, you will hear the shadows. You can hear the stormbirds call them. They call them “Wuku Wuku”. They keep me safe. The stormbirds and these shadows keep me safe.

      The stormbirds watch over me all day, and in the evening they call “Wuku Wuku”. I hear their call and I breathe in the night; I breathe in the shadows of the night.

      The shadows stay all night to watch over me. In the morning, the stormbirds greet us both. “Wuku Wuku,” they call to me. “Wuku Wuku,” they tell the shadows. I breathe in the day; I breathe in the wild air.

      Prologue

      January 16, 2016

      The shadows in The Wall have voices that never go away. When no one’s there, they don’t lie dormant, but travel, seeking out safe passage with any Wuku, young, old, sick or well, near and far. For the first 50,000 years, the songlines bounced happily in and around the maze of basalt walls. But for the last hundred or so, they have echoed the world, searching, searching, rarely finding a place to rest; and as far as I know, these days, they pretty much have to settle for me.

      To help them rest back home, I mind-travel my way behind the main homestead and follow the track around to where the trees start to meet overhead. I love this part where the air turns cool and leopard trees puff breezes at each other. Around a few bends, the trees turn into paperbarks, tempting you to follow them downhill to the creek. But if you take the track north, through the gate and skirt Styx Lake, Burdekin plums promise sweet treats and lure you up a pretty sandstone rise and straight into the clutches of our endemic can’t-go-back-bush. These days, this clump is mostly hacked away from the path, so you can travel freely. But it heralds the start of basalt land and the lava tubes that 190 millennia ago collapsed to form God’s own country for the Wuku, and Hell on earth for everyone else.

      You are the only one I can trust with this. I’m so full of a weird mixture of self-doubt imbued with an arrogance in the belief that so few have the capacity to understand, appreciate really. But I know if there’s something there to be understood, something to be found out, you will help me find it, and you will judge me kindly; not condemn, at least.

      So many memories implore me to start with them. There’s the memory of first light every day touching the mint green walls. The memory of travelling through time with my mother, learning about The Wall, learning about the shadows and my wallabies, my very own bridled nailtail wallabies. I remember the feeling of water, so much water, deliciously touching me all over, selflessly.

      Then there’s the memory of his sweat, the smell of his sweat—sweet rancid cow manure caught in synthetic trousers. And of the dust, lingering a long time after he drives down to the road, and warning long before his return. And the chorus of floorboards from the kitchen promising a lot, but always veering to another agenda. And fear, always fear. The latter isn’t an isolated memory, more a general permeation, flavouring everything, for me; distorting perhaps, shaping definitely.

      Memoirs are really stepping stones of our lives. They pinpoint our journey down to a few isolated events, occasions, reflections. But I’ve never felt that any few of these or even a million can tell it properly. There are always too many people involved: too many tangents, too many perspectives. All the pivotal points in our lives involve others—in some cases involving their pivotal points too; in others, some mundane decision about some random thing equates to a pivotal point for us.

      After she left The Styx, after my mother Rose left home, in the earliest of early days before I could type, I saved her life through my thoughts, remembering as much as I could of her every day, of our life together. But that wasn’t enough. Just in case I forgot something, I dreamt my memories too, and I swallowed my dreams. Then I was sure I’d done all I could to save her.

      Since then, I’ve spent years, more than a decade now, mulling over what to use, what to say, what not to say, how much damage the truth will cause, how much I really care, or why I should. It’s become a mire of shifting uncertainty. I’m determined to publish this memoir, but in terms of facing the world with it, you are the only one I feel I can trust. You know what you’ll be dealing with. I feel you are the only one who would be prepared to let my truth speak—but I will understand if you’d rather not.

      Thank you again for your flowers. I think of you often,

      Love, Sophie

      Part I: Disempowered — 1990s

      … when did he regard

      The stamp of nobleness in any person

      Out of himself?

      William Shakespeare, Henry VIII, III.ii.11–13

      Chapter 1

      Rememory 1

      He said my mother was a drunk, addicted to amphetamines, and suffering from bipolar II. He said she had gone back to her community to drink herself to death in peace. He said she had forgotten me, and was most probably already dead. He said she preferred men to me; that she changed them like she was the official Aboriginal taste tester. He was pretty sozzled at the time, but the venom he spat was sober hatred.

      His rejection of my mother seeped into a rejection of me too. My soul withered. Life held no laughter for me. It was lonely and stark. There wasn’t even a routine to take energy from. I existed, waiting for someone to notice I stank. Waiting for someone to notice I was hungry, thirsty, hot, cold, mosquito bitten, wasp stung.

      We live on a cattle station, Styx River Cattle Station, fronting a heap of beaches and beside the Great Basalt Wall. The Styx River runs around behind our homestead and, from my favourite verandah, I can watch it roll in and out every day, twice usually. It is never apologetic in its appearance.

      The name of our cattle property meant something once, said some­thing to everyone around here. Now I suppose it still does say something—whatever the tourist brochures tell it to. In my mind, I usually just call it The Styx.

      It’s pretty quiet out here a lot of the time; and since my mother left, there’s not a lot of joy. But there is always plenty of laughter to be heard around the place when outsiders are involved. “Going outback,” they say—must be some conceptualistic coastal outback, hey. For a taste of life on a cattle station, they think—well, they mostly all definitely make it to the cattle yards. My father sheds limitless laughter in greeting tourists. You’d probably like him. Most people do. Most people appreciate the social ease he generously, freely, gives. I often recognise the relief people feel at social gatherings, in the easy and safe social harbour he offers. He is often kind, thoughtful, to them. A few short moments of time can add a great deal to a person’s perception. Hail fellow well met, that’s my father. Back then in the early days, they lapped it all up and he glowed in their light. When guests—paying guests—came to stay on the property, some evenings he would introduce the bar hangers-on to revolting parlour games, such as swinging potatoes in a stocking, simulating baggy balls, playing verandah bowls.

      I’m just picking one random night now, in about 1993 when I was sixish, sevenish. The moon shone an almond sliver onto my face. They had forgotten to close the curtains again and the window