Open Writing

Buckley was buggered. For three days now he had struggled through the forest to keep ahead of the foul-mouthed Weaver and his snarling dogs. He knew they intended to rip him apart.

Being transported to Van Diemen’s land for fifteen years for killing a neighbour’s dog, which had savaged his three year old son, had shattered Buckley’s desire for life. Then to be allotted as a labourer to a violent brute like Weaver convinced him he had nothing to lose by escaping. Seeing this tyrannical landowner set his savage dogs onto a group of aboriginals quietly passing the farm boundary was the trigger that forced him to invoke his plan.

Without the heavy working boots, which Weaver took from him each night, and dressed in the prison garb the Governor insisted on, he absconded from the farm before dawn. The barking of the dogs alerted Weaver to a problem. He dressed, unleashed the dogs and set off after the fugitive.

Buckley thrashed through the wondrous forest he had admired so much from Weaver’s farm. Now those tall trees, which had been so beckoning, seemed more like the bars of a giant cage, keeping him imprisoned. He tripped and stumbled over rotting logs, cutting his tender feet and setting lizards and insects on a wild scamper. Broken boughs caught and ripped his prison shirt.

Now as rain speared down and the ground became boggy under his tortured feet, for the first time, he could no longer hear Weaver or his murderous pack. With his heart pounding against his ribs and beating a rhythmic drumming in his ears, Buckley pushed on to put more space between himself and the malevolent Weaver and his dogs.

After the rain stopped Buckley felt more able to keep going. The trees began to thin out and he came upon a river. The clear water allowed him to see right to the bottom, covered with white rocks worn smooth by centuries of running water. More white rocks above the water level seem to form a small island in the middle of the river.

On the horizon a range of blue mountains ringed the valley. A light blue sky, dabbled with puffs of white cloud, formed a canopy over the whole serene scene.

Then Buckley froze. The pain of his body, so lumpy and pimpled from mosquito bites, was overcome by a new fear. He could see a group of natives who had come to play in the clear mountain stream. Another group were lighting a campfire. Soft white smoke curled towards the hilltops. He’d had a frightening thought. What if these aboriginals were part of the group that Weaver had set his dogs onto as they sauntered quietly past the farm boundary? Would they recognise him as the one running behind Weaver, yelling at him to stop the atrocity?

How would they understand? If they thought he was encouraging or even assisting Weaver they were not going to welcome him into their camp.

He slid to the ground alongside a wild copse bush, glad that they had not seen him. Buckley was unable to know that the aboriginals had known of his presence for a long time. He knew nothing of the habits of Australian birds, but the wild cry of a yellow-crested cockatoo had alerted the natives hours ago.

Seeing nothing, hearing nothing, their sudden appearance around Buckley, scared the hell out of him. One, who appeared to be the leader, placed the point of a spear against Buckley chest. They all began to chant, in a way, which left him sick with fear. Then the leader sprung into the air and drove his spear right through Buckley’s body and into the soft forest floor.

Buckley’s last gurgled words were choked off in his throat by a rush of blood.

‘I just came to say “Sorry.” ‘