‘We alighted from our vehicle in the dusty square. Not a soul in sight except that kid pulling on the lock. Then, then there erupted from between two houses a group of men beating the ground with sticks and yelling, “Snake, snake!” I stared at them nervously, then with a slight grin of derision as I saw the serpent they were after slithering towards us. I could recognise a harmless grass snake when I saw one. I stood there as they approached. Then one of them quickly stooped, grabbed the snake by its tail and flung it at me. I caught what I considered a harmless serpent and held it up. They came forward warily. I looked down at my catch, then gave a start. My God, it was a deadly brown snake. I flung it from me with a gasp of horror. The men watched it disappear under a house—then turned to us.
‘Jackamara was amongst his mob and went from man to man explaining my mission. It seemed that handling the snake had been a test of some sort and one which I had passed. We, or rather I, was allowed to camp on the porch of the deserted church for the night. Jackamara got the camp set up while I sat on the camp chair. Individual men approached to sound me out. I hummed and hawed in my usual fashion as I blathered my way through the usual requests; I stated strongly that I was in the running for Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, and agreed to carefully consider each and every problem when I was elected and entered the Ministry. I even made a show of taking notes.
‘Finally, and as the sun disappeared beneath the dust and the darkness flickered with the flames of our fire, I left my chair and sat on the porch steps to watch Jackamara preparing supper. A huge billy of tea hung above the flames. By the time it was bubbling, men had appeared from the darkness and settled about the fire. Soft voices murmured and tired with, with keeping up the pretence of wishing to help these people who were as alien to me as I was, I am sure, to them, I fell into a doze ... I came out of it and into a story being narrated by Jackamara.
‘A remarkable story, quite remarkable. It stays in my mind, stays in my mind as much as she stays there. No, she has little to do with this, has little bearing ... Is that tape-recorder running? Remarkable things, tape-recorders. You could say that they tap the stream of consciousness; but, sir, remember, keep it clearly in mind that I retain the right to vet all material and, and nothing must allude to my identity. Remember the laws of libel. You see I still have enemies. Yes, even now when I am at a low level in my, in my career, and that is why I ... Well, why should I record my, my downfall, when you are only interested in that black policeman? ... But, remember, once, then, I could have become the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and have had him at my beck and call. Alas, it was never to be.
‘Jacky, as I called him, was still a simple detective then. Perhaps not so simple as you depict in your case histories; but in those days few appeared ready to acknowledge his uniqueness. It is still hard for me to believe that you have not made up most of those so-called cases, though, no, in hindsight ... Well, now he has a reputation second to none in the history of the Queensland Police Force. He well deserves that honorary doctorate, and perhaps in one of your future volumes you will detail what must have been a very impressive ceremony ... Sorry, sorry, I know that I digress. I am forever digressing. My life is one long digression; but, sir, over the years things have not gone right with me. The story? Yes, the story. It seems but last night. There sits Jacky at the fireside. How mysteriously his dark face and the dark faces of his mob glow in the flickering flames as he begins to relate an anecdote which I then took as rank superstition.
‘He declared that it had happened when he was a young kid and that his Uncle Willy could vouch for every word. He looked across the fire at a stolid bloke whose eyes reflected red and mysterious from the flames. This man, I knew must be Uncle Willy, and he nodded his shaggy head in verification. As Jackamara flicked his glance towards me, I too found myself nodding, then he went on addressing his words to me, his gaze flickering at times to Uncle Willy at salient points ... And the story? Well, it is as good a beginning as any for this tape. It seems that once as Uncle Willy and his maternal grandfather, I forget his name if I ever knew it, were walking through the bush in the early evening, a min min light came floating towards them. The old man ignored it and kept on walking, but the uncle, he slowed down a bit. He hung back as the old man strode on. In fact, Uncle Willy, it seems, was not one to put his best foot forward and hung back so far that he was at a safe distance when the light flared into a beautiful woman with long flowing hair. He watched from a distance as she spoke to the old man. He saw him go off with her towards a low hill which was a pile of boulders and rock slabs. “It’s what you fellows call The Devil’s Marbles,” Jackamara informed me, and I recalled that he had pointed the hill out to me when we passed it on the way in.
‘Uncle Willy didn’t have to be told that it was what the local Aborigines call a Gyinggi woman, I see you nod at this, and that she had sung, you know what that is, the old man and forced him to follow her to her home in the rocks. In fact, the hill, which the Inspector offered to stop at on the morrow, had a bad reputation and was taboo to the local blacks. They said it was the haunt of spirits, of spirits called Kwinkan. Except they are not spirits, for that Gyinggi woman when she enchanted men drained the very flesh from their bones until they became stick-like beings. Uncle Willy didn’t want this to happen to the old man, so he rushed off back to the mission for help. Half-a-dozen men reluctantly came back with him, urged on by an old bloke who believed that he had the necessary, I suppose you might call it, medicine to force a passage through to the Gyinggi woman and her prey. By the time they reached the foot of the hill, it was almost pitch black. They saw a light glowing half way up the slope and carefully they climbed to it. Hard work it was, for it was no joke making your way across those piled-up rocks in the dark. Finally, they reached a huge tree emerging from the slabs of rock. It had pushed aside the slabs and the light came from underneath one of the tilted slabs. The old fellow mumbled a chant of some sort and came creeping towards the light waving a bunch of feathers, which, it seemed, dislodged any spirit which might be lurking in the branches of the tree ready to spring down on them. They reached that slab and peered beneath. The old man lay there stretched out seemingly asleep. No one else was in the place, then the strange glow began fading. They dragged the old man out. They shook him to bring him to his senses. He came to snarling and snapping like some wild animal. They had to hold him down. One of them who worked for the medical clinic at the mission, thrust a stick between his teeth and then tied his hands and feet. Well, they carried him back to the mission and kept him locked up in a room. Then one time they go to that room, and you know what? Well, that old grandfather had dug his way out through the floor. A concrete floor mind you. It was the last they saw of him. He had returned to that Gyinggi woman and was lost to the men. That was the end of him as a man. Well, at least this is what Jacky told me that night. He went on further and said that such a man taken or lured by those women is sucked dry. He becomes a Kwinkan, thin and elongated, living in the rocks and crevasses, afraid to face the light of day and other men. He loses his nerve, just as I’ve lost my nerve. It can happen to the best and worst of us, mate, the best and worst of us. You better believe it!
‘Well, stories are stories and Jacky had a fund of them, and most of them just as meaningless, that’s what I thought then, smiling before wondering why he had directed that particular story at me, a soon-to-be-elected member of Parliament, a minister too, and thus on his last visit to this godforsaken mission, for let me assure you that it was that. It was a place made for superstition and I remember clearly that I darted a glance at the stern face of the detective while I asked within: “How come an officer of the Queensland Police Force could believe such rubbish?” ... but then the answer was real easy; he was an Abo, no offence meant, and that settled the matter for me.
‘Well, the tape-recorder is still running and, I’ve made a start. Why there? No matter, I’ll just keep on. You’ll have to listen if you want to hear about the time, or the times that Jacky, well to give him his due, Detective Inspector Dr Watson Holmes Jackamara figured in my life. You’re the one who gets inside the minds of real people, so you have to listen and get inside mine. Now, don’t worry, don’t worry, Jackamara is the hero of this tape, and I’ll get to him, but well, well, what about my life? You have to pass through some of it to get to him, so you better, better listen, take me along with the good Doctor and then cut and shape it; but, but, I have a veto on the material, on my life as it were. It is my life, I want to keep it mine ...
‘Life,