Even the Land Cries!

Time, seems always in the “long ago,” in this vast and beautiful land; a land pregnant with a story that now can be told----

I breathe in the fresh, cool air. A breeze gusts through Jam-wood stands and spreads their pungent aroma all around. Away across front paddocks, the Orleans track, wends its way into and beyond eroded gullies; that stretch sprawling fingers, outward and on to the Western horizon. The old homestead still stands---a lasting testament to those who fashioned it and sheltered in those unmoving walls. The brave, old house has withstood extremes of relentless elements; the unforgiving heat, from scorching desert Northerlies; the drenching frontal rains and storms of the western flowing---“Roaring Forties.”
But, even more-so, shredding rains and raging, icy winds of the south; whose gales are spawned across frozen Antarctic wastelands and ultimately “spew” themselves through vast expanses of the wild Southern Ocean. The homestead consists of limestone blocks, each a full two feet thick, one staid upon the other. The blocks were hand-hewn from coastal cliffs at Stormy Cove, some twenty miles to the South. Doors, door frames, window frames and roof struts, were all hand hewn from Jarrah timbers, brought in by dray from north-west of Orleans town. The Jarrah beams yet hold the roof securely to the blocked walls, and all shows little attrition from the many years passed by.
There on the homesteads veranda, I stand, surveying the scene before me and I try to shake off the uncanny feeling, that I could well have been breathing that same fresh, cool air, from way back then; so little has changed. Time and again, I have wandered through this dear dwelling place and pondered but that these walls could talk and share their secrets. But walls will never talk---And, for that reason, this story would have remained untold, but for this well-travelled Journal, that I hold in my hands. Within these worn covers, are carefully maintained notations and ponderings of my Great-Great-Grandfather, Police Sergeant Patrick Owain Dillon.
His writings hale from his policing days, in untamed West Australian regions, between the gold- rich Kundip, east of Perth; down past Woorooloo and further south; to the whaling port of Orleans, south east of Perth; then spreading out and up into vast eastern desert Station properties and even beyond. I have spent long hours searching through Government files; recounting Government procedure and protocols, regarding care of Aboriginal tribes in the early years of expanding colonization. There have been searches for information from the Orleans and Kundip constabularies, on known Aboriginal tribes and their lands, in the vast region. I have listened to “yarns” in countless pubs’ across the region.
Folk tales have been noted regarding this time in history and Constabulary information alike has all been incorporated with the journaling of my Great-Great Grandfather and all comes together, as a memorable historical event in Western Australia. Some might choose to disown the story told; as it unfolds from its innocent inception, to its insidious end. 0ne hundred fifty years and truth has surfaced, to become known by people who care, and can feel the agonies of the characters presented. These players, from two Nations of “displaced peoples,” thrown together, and struggling to exist, amidst treachery and anarchy.
As the story unfolds, those of you who have a heart to hear and feel, will within your own humanness hear---even the land cries!