Tracks (7 page)

The vet gave the camels a thorough check-up. He told me Zeleika had a broken rib, then, when he saw the look on my face, hastily reassured me that it had knitted and would only cause trouble if she fell again. Her infections could be cleared up easily with antibiotic powder. I then led out the great wobbling mass of Kate, and showed the vet her brisket, which by now was dripping huge amounts of pus. This brisket, or pedestal, is a cartilaginous growth on the chest just behind the front legs. Similar pads on the front and hind legs are the pressure points on which the animal sits. It is covered by a hard skin, like the bark of a tree. I had been treating the wound in it with hosings, disinfectant, antibiotic powder and Stockholm tar. The vet inspected it, paused, thrust his hand in deeper, and whistled. I didn’t like the sound of that whistle.

‘It looks bad,’ he said. ‘The infection is spreading through the flesh in pockets. There could be some glass in there. Still, I’ll dose her up with terramycin and see how she responds.’

He then took out an enormous syringe with a needle on it the size of a drinking straw, handed it to me and made me stand two feet away from Kate’s neck and throw the needle at her like a dart. I didn’t throw hard enough. Kate’s roars went an octave higher. I stood back again, aimed and threw with all my might. It sunk in up to the hilt, and I was surprised it didn’t stick out the other side, like the bolts on Frankenstein’s monster. I then attached the syringe and injected ten cc’s of the viscous stuff, leaving a large egg-shaped lump.

‘Well done,’ said the vet. ‘Now, do that every three days, twice more, and then give me a call. OK?’

I gulped and managed to whimper, ‘OK’ through the trembling of my chin. My hatred of needles was about to be cured for ever.

Whatever dreams I’d had about winning Kate’s confidence now flew out the window. Every day I dressed the wound at least twice or gave her shots, causing her pain and reinforcing her hatred of my species. Her protective radius grew to twenty feet for me and stayed at ten for anyone else. There was no improvement. When next the vet came, we decided to lay the old girl out with nembutal, and cut and drain the wound. Had I not been so worried over the animal (no one knew the correct dose for a camel, so we had to guess), I would have been able to laugh at the way in which Katie reacted to the drug. She went down slowly, her lips all flaccid and foolish, her eyes glazed over as she stared, fascinated, at small blades of grass and ants and things, dribble running out of her great slack jaws — she was stoned out of her mind.

The operation was anything but funny. Although there were no glass fragments that we could see, the infection had gone much deeper than the vet had thought, which necessitated some radical cutting he had hoped to avoid. However, when the job was done and another course of injections prescribed I felt confident that everything would be all right. Kate did not improve. I spent the next several months of my life dedicated to her well-being — spending money on her like water, and using huge doses of every antibiotic, herbal remedy, and Afghani cure in the book. I tried every treatment every vet in town suggested. Kate never responded.

During this time, I also had to begin training Zeleika for riding and carrying pack. This was not easy — I had no money to buy equipment, no saddle to put on her back so that I wouldn’t fall off every time she bucked, and I had lost most of my nerve at Sallay’s. So I rode her bareback, quietly, up and down the soft sand of the creek, not asking her to do too much — just trying to win her confidence and keep her quiet and protect my own skin. She was in such poor condition that I constantly had to balance the need for training against not allowing her to worry herself back into a skeleton. Camels always lose weight during training. Instead of eating, they spend all day thinking about what you are going to do to them. Zeleika also had a lovely gentle nature which I did not want to spoil. I could walk up to her anywhere in the wild, whether she was hobbled or not, and catch her, even though I could feel her muscles tighten into hard lumps with tension and fear. Her only dangerous fault was her willingness to kick. Now, a camel can kick you in any direction, within a radius of six feet. They can strike with their front legs, and kick forward, sideways or backwards with the back. One of those kicks could snap you in half like a dry twig. Teaching her to accept hobbles and sidelines was not an easy business. In fact, it was ulcer-inducing if not death-producing and required infinite patience and bravery, neither of which I was particularly blessed with but I had no choice. To quieten her I had to tie her to a tree on the halter and encourage her to eat rich and expensive hand-feed, while I groomed her all over, picked up her legs, played loud music on a tape recorder and got her used to having things around her feet and on her back, all the time talking talking talking. When she did let fly with one of those terrible legs, it was out with the whip. She soon learnt that this kicking got her nowhere and that it was easier to be nice, even if that niceness didn’t come from the heart.

One day, I had tied her to her tree outside Basso’s and taken Kate up to Kurt’s for a hosing out. When I came back, Zeleika was missing and so was the tree, a young gum sapling about fifteen feet high and one foot thick at the base. It had been completely uprooted. Zelly did not like being away from Kate.

This particular quirk is the most difficult to overcome when training. Camels hate leaving their mates and will use any ruse, any dirty trick, any amount of foul play to get home. It is easy enough to take them somewhere in a group, but getting an animal off on its own is a trial and a battle of wits. This is understandable as they are a herd animal, and equate company with safety. It is very threatening for a camel to be out on his own, especially with a maniac on his back.

Because camels’ necks are so strong, the nose-line is essential for a riding animal. It is almost impossible to control them with just a halter, unless you have superhuman strength. They cannot take a bit like a horse as they are cud-chewers. The only alternative is a jaw-line, which I sometimes used in training before the peg wound healed, but which cut into their soft bottom lip. So the nose-peg method is best. They are usually given only one of these, which sticks out the side of either nostril. To it is attached a piece of string, strong enough to cause pain when it is jerked, but not so strong that it will not snap long before the peg is pulled through the flesh. This string is attached to the outside of the peg, then split under the jaw and used simply as reins. Once the peg wound has healed, this method causes no more discomfort than a bit does to a horse.

I had learnt how to nose-peg an animal from both Kurt and Sallay — each had different methods. Sallay skewered the flesh straight through from the inside with a sharpened mulga stick, then inserted the wooden peg into the hole and dressed it with kerosene and oil. Kurt’s method was more sophisticated if not better. He would mark the spot on the nose with a marker pen, punch a small hole in the flesh with a leather punch, widen that hole with a butcher’s skewer driven through from the inside up to the hilt, and follow this with the insertion of the peg, which, by the way, looks more than anything else like a small wooden penis. He would then dress it carefully every day, for anything up to two months, with dilute antiseptic and antibiotic powder. I had performed this brutal operation on one of Kurt’s young bulls but I hated it. It made me feel sick. However, Zelly’s nose was now so infected, despite the constant cleaning, that I thought perhaps there were wood splinters inside it preventing it from healing. So, to our mutual horror, I tied her down, cut the peg with bolt cutters and inspected the wound thoroughly. I discovered that the peg had indeed splintered along the shaft, and was opening the wound as it turned. I had to make another peg and insert it through that tortured flesh. How animals ever forgive us for what we do to them, I will never understand.

Sallay came out to visit me one day to see how I was doing. I took him down to Zelly and he looked her over, commenting on how well she looked and how quiet she was. He then stood back for a minute, rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and shot me a sideways glance.

‘You know what I think, girl?’

‘What do you think, Sallay?’

He rubbed those expert hands over her belly again. ‘I think you’ve got yourself a pregnant camel.’

‘What? Pregnant?’ I yelled. ‘But that’s fantastic. No wait, that’s not fantastic. What if she has it on the trip?’

Sallay laughed and patted me on the shoulder. ‘Believe me, having a baby camel on your trip would be the least of your worries. When it’s born, you just tie it up in a sack, hoist it on its mother’s back, and within a few days it will trot along behind with the best of them. In fact, it would be a good thing for you, because you can tie the baby up at night and be sure that the mother won’t go too far. Could solve one of your main problems, eh? Well, I hope she is, for your sake. Should be a nice little calf too, if that wild black bull I saw her running with was the father.’

By now I knew I had to make a decision about Kate. She had blood poisoning which had carried the infection to her knee, she had lost half her weight, and her roars now were the protests of a fragile and pitiful old lady. I was attending to her three or four times a day, putting a hose in one side of that knee and watching an arc of pink muck coming out of a hole in the other side. I procrastinated over destroying her for two reasons — I just could not believe a simple cut could kill a camel, and, with Kate gone there would be no hope of starting the trip and I would be very nearly back at square one. I eventually decided that I must put the old girl out of her misery. I felt terribly guilty. She had really been too old to go through the rigours of vets and saddles and the separation from her mate on Alcoota. I believe she actually pined away — lost her will to live. I had often thought of sending her back but now it was too late. However, I was determined not to get soppy about it. It was something that had to be done, and I was even practical enough to sharpen up my knives so that I could take her beautiful coat and tan it. I had never used the gun and was more terrified of botching the whole thing than of actually killing her — I had successfully steeled myself to that. Jenny, who was spending more and more time with me at Basso’s, and who was becoming an indispensable friend, offered to be with me that day. ‘It’s all right really, Jen. I’ve got it under control, but if you want to come out that’s fine.’

She came. I was in a cold sweat of trepidation. The day had an unreal washed-out feeling as we walked together over the hills. It wasn’t until we got to Kate that I realized how hard I had been holding Jenny’s hand. I sat Kate down in a washaway, pointed the rifle at her head, wondering if divine retribution would have the bullet ricochet back at my own, and pulled the trigger. I remember the noise of her hitting the dust with a thud but I must have shut my eyes. I was not expecting the momentary wave of hysteria that swept over me then. Jen practically shouldered me home, made me tea, and then had to leave for work. I was badly shaken. I had never done anything like that before. Never destroyed something that had a personality. I felt like a murderer. The idea of stripping Kate’s hide was unthinkable. It was all I could do not to go back to the carcass and stare, wondering at what I had done. So that was that. No Katie, no trip. Fate again. And all that time and all that money and all that energy, devotion and care, for nothing. Eighteen months had passed down the plug-hole, for nothing.

M
Y DEPRESSION OVER THE
shooting of Kate was compounded by my escalating terror of Kurt. He seemed so out of control, so close to the edge, that I believed he had the capacity to kill, if not me and Gladdy, then at least my animals. So I had to play his game. Had to let him believe I was no threat — not worth bothering about. He thought Gladdy and I were plotting something, but he didn’t ever say as much; his mind turning over like a mill, machinating ways and means of thwarting whatever plans we were concocting.

This debilitating fear, this recognition of the full potential of Kurt’s hatred of me, and the knowledge that Kurt could and would hurt me very badly if I displeased him enough, was the catalyst which transformed my vague misery and sense of defeat into an overwhelming reality. The Kurts of this world would always win — there was no standing up to them — no protection from them. With this realization came a collapse. Everything I had been doing or thinking was meaningless, trivial, in the face of the existence of Kurt.

The fear was like a fungus that slowly grew over me and defeated me in the weeks that followed. I went down down down to that state that I had long since forgotten existed. I would stare for hours out of my kitchen window, unable to act. I would pick up objects, stare at them, turn them over in my hand, then put them down and wander back to the window. I slept too much, I ate too much. Tiredness overwhelmed me. I waited for the sound of a car, a voice — anything. And I tried to shake myself, slap myself, but the energy and strength that I had so taken for granted had leaked out through my fear.

Yet the strange thing was I snapped out of this melancholy the moment a friend arrived. I tried to tell them about it, but the language to describe such a thing belonged to that feeling, so I joked about it instead. Yet I desperately wanted them to understand. They were evidence that reason and sanity still existed and I clung to them as if I were drowning.

Kurt went away on holiday and Gladdy decided to leave while the going was good. I was happy for her; she looked better already. But I knew how much I was going to miss her, and I was frightened of being left on my own with her husband. One night I was up staying with her, as often happened these days when Kurt was away, and Katie’s ghost was still inhabiting my room at Basso’s. We had both gone to bed hours before but I could not sleep. I was again overcome by a sense of failure. Not just of the trip but a kind of personal failure — the absolute impossibility of ever winning against brute force and domination. I was worrying it over and over, trying to seek a solution, impossible in that state of mind because of its very nature. And then I thought: of course, the perfect way out — suicide. Now, this was not the ordinary chest-beating, why-are-we-born-to-suffer-and-die syndrome, this was something new. It was rational, unemotional. And I wonder now if that’s how people usually come to it. Coldly. It was so simple really. I would walk way out bush, sit myself down somewhere, and calmly put a bullet in my brain. No mess, no fuss. Just nice clean simple exit. Because no life was better than half-life. I was planning it out, the best place, the best time, when suddenly Gladdy sat bolt upright in the bed opposite me and said, ‘Rob, are you all right? Do you want a cup of coffee?’ It was the equivalent of a bucket of iced water thrown over someone in hysteria, waking me to the horror of what I was thinking, the enormity of it. I had never been to that point before, and don’t think I shall ever have to again. I worked something out that night in my shaky way.