Chapter 29 - Killing Wamboobi
Wamboobi introduces himself to the other guests as my artistic director, a role he embellishes as the night stakes its claim. He has at least one couple convinced he plays the fiddle and does an Irish jig at the start of my segments. They are impressed, if a little bemused. I overhear another woman asking him if he’s ever worked with Nicole Kidman. He is modest in assent. There’s no doubting he’s in excellent form, but water always finds its own level.

We are at Faraway Bay, an up-market bush camp on the north Kimberley coast. Our hosts are a congenial couple who’ve seen it all before: the holiday desperados stuffing themselves with as much escape as they can harness, the raconteurs and charmers taking advantage of a captive audience, the drunks enraptured by the open bar. I’m only mildly concerned about the damage my old friend could wreak.

Earlier that day we visited an aboriginal art site to see the Bradshaw paintings, rock art so old even the aboriginals didn’t recognize it.

“They don’t know the stories behind this art,” our guide tells us. “So there’s no oral tradition.

Indeed up until about twenty years ago many indigenous people still rejected it as “rubbish painting” and the work of the birds, thought the red was bloodstains from their beaks. Yet others insist the bird is an integral part of the story and have therefore embraced the style, and would argue they always did. And there is further debate over whether Bradshaw art is Gwion Gwion art, or the latter merely a copy of the former.      

What isn’t in doubt in my mind is it’s different to any Australian rock art I’ve seen before, more sophisticated, with finer brushwork and often greatly stylized form; I saw one abstracted female figure with a metre-long body and pencil-thin arms, with huge hands extending well beyond her feet. I’ve seen European masters’ work in a similar vein.   

But it’s the decorations that truly set them apart.

“See the arm bands and bangles on her wrists, and braids and tassles in her hair,” our guide points out, referring to a well-preserved and very elegantly drawn figure. “That’s classic Bradshaw.”

Joseph Bradshaw was a pastoralist who came to the Kimberley to run cattle, only to find the country too rocky for that purpose. Instead he occupied himself documenting the rock art and talking to the aboriginal people about its origins. It was he who first recorded their reactions and it’s not hard to see why they dismissed the art as they did.

“Notice the ornamentation hanging off her skirt? Sometimes it looks like they’ve got animals in their headdresses. More African than Australian Aborigine.”

I can tell Wamboobi approves of this idea by the haughty look he’s wearing.  He still deludes himself that his British heritage gives him proprietorial rights in the old colonies, Africa included, and he probably imagines he had something to do with it.
He was fond of saying, “When we gave you Australia two hundred years ago it was a magnificent country; now look what you’ve done with it.” But a man in our group who speaks in a monotonous drone through the side of his mouth suggests we look north for inspiration, with a nod to the Papua New Guinean habit of carrying their pets in their hair.

“The paintings are upwards of about twelve thousand years old,” our guide continues,  “some say as old as fifty thousand. They don’t really know because the pigment has penetrated the sandstone and can’t be carbon dated.”

Wamboobi changes tack.

“These paintings were quite clearly done by the aliens,” he says with a wave to the heavens. “My people.”

It’s unlikely the gathered throng has a clue what he’s talking about but they laugh anyway and the droning stops. And the art does have an otherworldly feel about it and surely questions conventional wisdom about who our original inhabitants were. I make a vow to use the term ‘previous custodians’ rather than ‘original custodians’ in future, since it’s clear to me there were others came before.

The droner has something to say on the matter of art preservation but we can’t hear what it is.

“That man sounds like a didgeridoo,” Wamboobi observes.  

Back in camp that night the Bradshaws are discussed again, though mainly by The Human Didgeridoo as he’s now commonly known. But Wamboobi has moved on to more challenging projects. He’s discovered a sizeable cherubin in the fish tank and fancies it as hors d’oeuvre. Fortunately dinner is served before he can work out how to catch the thing.

Including staff there’s about twenty of us dining and it’s a pleasantly cordial affair. Wamboobi has found himself a Mauritian drinking partner, which should keep him from goading the Human Didgeridoo all night and might even save the cherubin. Once I finish my meal I leave him to it and hope for the best. He returns to our cabin late and proclaims the night was such a great success it will go down in the “anuses of history”, then promptly falls asleep.

The next morning I learn he was found in the garden with his arms around the Human Didgeridoo, “helping each other home,” he assures me. But since nothing seems amiss at breakfast I don’t ask for details and he doesn’t volunteer them. Sometimes it’s better that way.

Our outing for the day is to King George Gorge, a spectacular waterway carved into the sandstone by millions of years of wet season rains thundering over the escarpment. According to our host the falls featured in the movie Australia, though the water had to be added during post-production since they filmed it in the dry season.

That night is much like the previous one, only when Wamboobi staggers in he wants to talk literature. On my recommendation he has read The Road by Cormac McCarthy – a bleak and beautiful work by a master at the height of his powers, which explores among other weighty issues the courage needed to mercy kill a loved one – and now he wants to dissect the author’s intentions. It would be a challenging discussion with anyone at anytime, let alone a smashed Wamboobi at whatever hour of the morning it was. But he is lucid and funny and wild and I wonder what our neighbors think of all the laughing. When I finally drift back to sleep I have a smile on my face.

The next day is a rest day. Wamboobi is saving himself for a big night, he says, since it’s to be our last at Faraway Bay. Mercy, mercy, Mr Percy*.

After dinner and a bit of a jam with the guitars I bail. Wamboobi and his drinking partner – team Martian and Mauritian – look set for a serious session. And I can hear a constant droning coming from the other end of the table. I feel trouble brewing and I don’t want to be there when it’s cooked.

Many hours later I hear the two of them in the garden outside our window. They’re caught in a giggling tangle of ineptitude. One is helping the other up and they’re stuck halfway. I’m going to have to go out there or I’ll never get back to sleep.

“I am most definitely not drunk,” Wamboobi stresses as I pull him upright, “I am merely . . . enthusiastic.”

Mauritania helps me get Wamboobi to the door of our cabin then leaves me to it. I tell Wamboobi I’m putting him to bed but all he does is take one step inside and prop to show me he’s still making his own decisions. He no doubt imagines he’s frozen like a marble statue but he’s teetering more like a clown on a unicycle. I’ve seen him this way before. There’s no point trying to make him do anything so I leave him standing in the dark and go back to bed.  

After a time I hear a few halting footsteps and the sound of his body flopping back on his bed, followed by a long sigh. Excellent, I think, soon he will be either asleep or dead and peace will be mine once more.

Not a hope in hell.

“Tonight,” comes a voice in the darkness, “ . . . I killed the Human Didgeridoo.”

“Was that necessary?”

“Absolutely. He was trying to stop me . . . eating the cherubin.”

“Did you?”

“Delicious.”

“I’ll kill you if you have.”

“If you and I,” he says, speaking in weighted, if not altogether measured phrases, “are going on the journey . . . on The Road, so to speak . . . then we must learn to eat . . . everything. Besides, you haven’t got it in you.”

“To kill you?”

“Correct.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because you are . . .” long pause, I can almost hear the cognitive malfunction “. . . a numpty.”

“Could you kill me?”

“Without a moment’s hesitation . . . I could crush you like a beetle . . . without remorse . . . because I have been trained to kill . . . thirty seven ways . . . with a paper cup . . .”

Then he went to sleep. And it’s hard to say whether or not my hosts appreciated me bringing my ‘producer’ along, but I don’t think I’ve ever loved him more than I did at Faraway Bay.  Perhaps even enough to kill him.

*Tom Waits – Invitation to the Blues

© Monte Dwyer 2010

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