Flight of the Eagle Read online

  Peter Watt has spent time as a soldier, articled clerk, prawn trawler deckhand, builder's labourer, pipe layer, real estate salesman, private investigator, police sergeant, and adviser to the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary. He has lived and worked with Aborigines, Islanders, Vietnamese and Papua New Guineans.

  Good friends, fine food, fishing and the vast open spaces of outback Queensland are his main interests in life.

  Peter Watt can be contacted at www.peterwatt.com

  Also by Peter Watt

  Cry of the Curlew

  Shadow of the Osprey

  Flight of the Eagle

  To Chase the Storm

  Papua

  Eden

  The Silent Frontier

  The Stone Dragon

  The Frozen Circle

  To Touch the Clouds

  To Ride the Wind

  Although inspired by real events, this novel is a work of fiction. All central characters are creations of the author's imagination and in no way reflect on any persons living or dead. Racist language in the text does not reflect the author's own views, but is intended to reflect the attitudes and expressions of a particular time in Australian history.

  First published 2001 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  This Pan edition published 2002 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  1 Market Street, Sydney

  Reprinted 2003 (twice), 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011

  Copyright © Peter Watt 2001

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Australia

  cataloguing-in-publication data:

  Watt, Peter, 1949-.

  Flight of the eagle.

  ISBN 978 0 330 36364 8 (pbk.).

  1. Frontier and pioneer life – Queensland – Fiction.

  2. Australia – History – 1851–1891 – Fiction. I. Title.

  A823.3

  Map of Queensland by Mike Gorman

  The photograph of Flinders Street, Townsville, c. 1888 (neg no. 24410) is printed with kind permission of John Oxley Library, Brisbane

  Typeset in Bembo by Post Pre-press Group

  Printed in Australia by McPherson's Printing Group

  Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  These electronic editions published in 2011 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

  Copyright © Peter Watt 2011

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  This ebook may not include illustrations and/or photographs that may have been in the print edition.

  Flight of the Eagle

  Peter Watt

  Adobe eReader format 978-1-74262-921-6

  EPub format 978-1-74262-922-3

  Online format 978-1-74262-920-9

  Macmillan Digital Australia

  www.macmillandigital.com.au

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com.au to read more about all our books and to buy both print and ebooks online. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events.

  For my mother, Elinor Therese. With all my love.

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  The Storm Rising 1884

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Thunder and Lightning 1885

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Forty-three

  Forty-four

  Forty-five

  Forty-six

  Forty-seven

  The Storm 1886

  Forty-eight

  Forty-nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-one

  Fifty-two

  Fifty-three

  Fifty-four

  Fifty-five

  Fifty-six

  Fifty-seven

  Fifty-eight

  Fifty-nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-one

  Sixty-two

  Sixty-three

  Sixty-four

  Sixty-five

  Sixty-six

  Sixty-seven

  Sixty-eight

  Sixty-nine

  Seventy

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A very special thank you to my wonderful mother and equally wonderful aunts, Joan Payne and Marjorie Leigh. Without their initial support this project would never have existed.

  In the world of publishing special thanks go to James Fraser at Pan Macmillan.

  As always my thanks go to Cate Paterson whose editing adds gloss to the story, although sadly a bit of ‘bloke stuff’ gets scrapped in the process. Besides the author, I think the only person who truly experiences the doubts of whether a novel is ready to release is the publisher. I must cause Cate a few sleepless nights. And thank you to Elspeth Menzies who also pored over the manuscript.

  For Jane Novak, my publicist – who must also lose a bit of sleep when my books are released.

  For my agent Tony Williams, and all who work for him, their friendships are valued as much as their professional services.

  A special thank you to Brian Cook whose initial appraisal of the manuscript for Cry of the Curlew was the catalyst for publication. You are not forgotten and your professional services for manuscript appraisal are highly recommended to would-be authors.

  As always my love goes to Naomi Howard-Smith who puts up with the insecurities of a writer and manages to bring stability to what was my dysfunctional life.

  Finally, my special thanks go to the greatest writer of his genre, Wilbur Smith, for showing the way.

  Uloola, behold him! The thunder that breaks

  On the tops of the rocks with the rain,

  And the wind which drives up with the salt of the lakes,

  Have made him a hunter again:

  A hunter and fisher again.

  ‘The Last of His Tribe’, Henry Kendall

&
nbsp; PROLOGUE

  Colony of Queensland

  It was a land as hostile as any the white man knew.

  Vast spaces of lonely scrub and sand where the world's deadliest snake sheltered in the cracks of the clay pans during the blistering heat of the day and hunted the marsupial creatures by night. A land where a solitary Aboriginal hunter roamed in a tenuous existence with nature.

  But Wallarie did not feel alone in this land. For he walked with the spirits of his people and the fact that he lived proved their existence. His life was indelibly marked by the waiting for the storm that would come to the world of men and change the unborn years ahead.

  The warrior was now in his middle years and his long beard was shot with grey. His body was scarred and his eyes were fading with the progress of time. But despite his years he was still a warrior to be feared by the tribesmen he met in his long wanderings across the length and breadth of the Colony of Queensland. Nor was his reputation as a killer of white men forgotten on the frontier by the European settlers.

  For Wallarie was now shrouded in the mythology of the frontier. He was now remembered as a spirit man who would come to snatch away little children – should they be naughty, nannies chided.

  But this night he would sit cross-legged before his campfire and chant the songs of his people. The spirits of the land would listen as his fire crackled softly in the night and the ageing warrior would fall into a deep sleep. The spirits would come to him on the hush of the night wind to tell him things of the future as he slept by his fire. They would tell him of strange events unfolding: that the ancestor spirits had been disturbed from their long sleep and a vengeful storm was rising from the earth to lash the world of die white man. They told him that he must travel north to the lands of the fierce Kalkadoon warriors where he would meet once again with the blood of his past. He did not know what this meant but knew he must listen to the voices.

  Wallarie – the last of his tribe – continued to dream his visions as the dingo howled mournfully in the desert night and the deadly taipan rose from the cracks of the clay pans to slither in search of prey.

  When the sun came to the brigalow plains of central Queensland Wallarie left the cooling shelter of the ancient cave to trek once more north to the lands of the Kalkadoon tribesmen.

  THE

  STORM RISING

  1884

  ONE

  A young man of the Queensland Native Mounted Police squatted in the red dust of the plains. He was examining the faint outline of footprints as his colleagues sat uneasily astride their big mounts. His opinion was critical to the lives of the eight mounted troopers who had patrolled deep into the country of the greatly feared Kalkadoon warriors.

  The police patrol had come a long way from their barracks near the frontier town of Cloncurry. To their front rose the craggy, dry hills of the Godkin Range whilst behind them the sparse bush and prickly trees of the termite nest dotted red plains. Only the buzzing of the pestilent flies and the swish of horses' tails disturbed the silence of the ever-present dry heat of the semi-arid lands of northern Australia.

  Trooper Peter Duffy was a man living between two worlds. Half-Irish half-Aboriginal, he was the son of the bushranger Tom Duffy and Mondo, a woman of the Nerambura clan. He was in his early twenties and had inherited his father's well-formed physique and his mother's skin tone. He had the dark good looks that attracted coy glances from European women in the frontier towns while at the same time malevolent stares from their men. Despite his excellent grades at school and being raised in a European culture, he was forever reminded that he was a half-caste nigger by the whites around him.

  When he had joined the Native Mounted Police in Townsville with his best friend Gordon James he was automatically designated as the tracker for the patrol whereas Gordon was able to acquire a commission as an officer. Gordon was, after all, the son of the famed Sergeant Henry James who had many years earlier helped disperse the tribes of the Fitzroy region.

  That a contingent of the Native Mounted Police had killed his mother and father sixteen years earlier in Burkesland had initially troubled Peter. But loyalty to a best friend had overcome something that was a distant and very dim memory in the present reality of his youthful desire for adventure.

  Peter gazed up at the distant line of ridges and had no doubt that the tracks led to the sanctuary of the hills. He did not like the situation. Every instinct told him the shimmering heat haze dancing on the craggy rocks of the ancient hills held death; it was in the very air itself. The silence was ominous – as if the spirits of the rocks had fallen silent to listen to the sounds of horses snorting and saddle metal jangling. Death was a buzzing sound in the young police trooper's ears.

  ‘Well, Trooper Duffy, what do you see?’ Sub Inspector Potter queried irritably from atop his mount. The long patrol in the saddle had played havoc with his haemorrhoids and the so far fruitless hunt for the elusive warriors made him sour around his men.

  ‘Nothing good, Mahmy,’ Peter replied thoughtfully, adding, ‘I think the Kalkadoons want us to go in after them.’

  ‘Rot!’ the sub inspector snorted. ‘Darkies don't have the white man's ability to plan a military strategy. I think you are being over cautious.’

  Peter turned his face away so that the police officer could not see his expression of contempt for him. If only Gordon James, his boyhood friend, was commanding the patrol and not this pompous idiot. ‘I think we should not go in, Mahmy,’ Peter reiterated quietly. ‘I think they are waiting for us.’

  Peter knew full well that the police officer did not like him for what he was – a half-caste, the progeny of an abominable sin in the Lord's eyes.

  The inspector had vigorously objected to his posting to his troop. No, he wanted a full-blooded tracker … not some half-caste darkie! But the half-caste had friends in the Mounted Police who insisted he be given the job as the patrol's tracker. They were now stuck with each other.

  The European troopers cast nervous glances at their commander. They respected the young tracker who they jokingly said was ‘almost a white man’. So when Peter advised not to go into the narrow, scrub covered gullies of the hills they listened. Like Peter Duffy, they had little respect for their arrogant commander who had until recently served with the British army in India.

  The Aboriginal troopers of the patrol knew Peter was right and nervously fidgeted with their Snider carbines as they gazed at the slopes and hill tops searching for the dreaded Kalkadoon warriors. This was not going to be a good dispersal!

  Inspector Potter swiped at the clouds of flies vying for the sweat on his face. He had already decided to ignore his tracker. The pesky Kalkadoons were badly in need of being taught a lesson and had speared their last white man. The troopers would go in.

  If the Kalkadoons were waiting for them they were in for an unpleasant surprise up against the guns of the patrol. Their heavy wooden shields would not stop a Snider round from Queen Victoria's dispensers of justice in Queensland.

  ‘Advance!’

  Inspector Potter's order was delivered with a lazy disdain for the all that smacked of commonsense.

  Peter swung into the saddle and slid the police carbine from its scabbard. He rested the butt against his thigh. The hills seemed to scream a deadly silence. As loud as a scream from a dying man, he thought.

  They rode in silence.

  There was no nervous banter as they followed the tracks that Peter's keen eyesight could discern in the dry earth and the numerous footprints led them into a narrow gully bordered by rock strewn slopes.

  Rocks big enough to conceal a man, Peter thought with mounting apprehension for what he could visualise unfolding. Rocks and scrub to conceal crouching men who had been trained as warriors from birth. Behind him the patrol followed reluctantly – except for Sub Inspector Potter, smug in his ignorance.

  The sunburnt and sweating police officer shook his head. The bloody half-caste nigger was as gutless as he had suspected, he thought. No backbone wh
en it came to dealing with primitive blacks armed with little more than sticks and stones. The matter of the man's timid behaviour was noted and would be duly reported upon return to the barracks at Cloncurry. In the mean …

  He never did finish his monologue of censuring thoughts as he became vaguely aware of a strange swishing sound in the hot, still air of the narrow gully. A searing pain sliced through his groin and his mount suddenly reared in terrified agony as the barbed spears thudded into its flank. At the same time the seemingly deserted slopes of the hills were rent with die blood-curdling war cries from hundreds of Kalkadoon throats.

  With a desperate yank on the reins, Potter vainly attempted to keep his mount on its feet, but the mortally wounded horse went down with a bone splitting crash, pinning him to the ground.

  The men who showered the police patrol with rocks and the long hardwood spears were well over six feet tall and the plumage of emu and eaglehawk feathers piled on their heads gave them terrifying added height. Their faces were marked with bands of white feathers attached with their own blood and feathers also adorned their arms and legs. To the ambushed police troopers their surreal appearance seemed no less than an image of the demons of hell coming to claim their lives.

  Potter clutched frantically at the spear in his groin. But the barbs of the spear were so designed that the spear could neither be pushed nor pulled once it had lodged. The Kalkadoon warriors whom he had sneered at only minutes before had lured him into the narrow gorge where they held the tactical high ground. The police patrol was trapped in a narrow dead-end gully without any chance to manoeuvre.

  A spear-wielding warrior loomed above Potter who had lost his revolver. ‘Die you white bastard!’ the grizzled warrior spat and Potter was mildly surprised to hear his killer speak English as he clawed frantically at a spear impaled in his chest. Potter's eyes rolled in despair as he stared up at his killer. He had lost his patrol and now he was losing his life.

  The warrior savagely yanked the spear from the dying inspector's chest while the last surviving troopers desperately attempted to disentangle themselves from their thrashing mounts and seek escape. But everywhere their terrified eyes fell they saw only waves of plumage-adorned bodies charging down the slopes from behind their rock and scrub cover.