Free Man of Two Tribes by Arthur W. Upfield

flowers, and when all the earth was vivid green with buckbush.
    This annual shrub will grow to the size of a water ball, and when dead is a sphere of filigree straw. The wind snaps it from the parent stalk and rolls it onward. Millions of these balls, driven by the wind, will roll over the ground like hurdling horses, will pile against fences until the barrier is such that the following balls ‘run’ up and over.
    At the end of this fertile year, the north wind had driven the buckbush from the desert uplands down to the Plain, andthe saltbush had opposed it until it had gathered into a rope many feet high and many feet thick, when the entire rope of miles in length had rolled on and on. Then, when the wild wind had dropped, the ropes of straw became stationary, and the rain had come to sodden and rot them.
    Old Lonergan had named one of his camps The Brisbane Line, the term being a sarcastic reference to an imagined plan of defence when the Japanese were doing their stuff. It was the fourth camp north of Bumblefoot Hole, and on the southern edge of a straw barrier which Bony estimated as being twelve feet high. As far as he could see to east and west, there was no break save that at the camp, which had been made by the old trapper with the smashing blade of a shovel. And there it would remain until another mighty wind moved it on again.
    Beyond this wall of straw the going was again dangerous, being littered with rock chips; areas of rock roofing beneath which were caverns and passages. Bony saw holes, some having a diameter of a few inches, others of several feet. Many holes were easily seen, others were masked by saltbush, but Millie knew the track and never once faltered or evinced fear. All day they had travelled over this dangerous country, and Bony hoped to camp at what Lonergan called The Belfry. The horizon, still distant, was now broken by what seemed to be ridges of red rock, but were the summits of sand dunes.
    There was certainly nothing between him and those sand dunes indicative of a church, and when the sun was sinking under the Plain his attention was drawn to a swirling column of dark ‘smoke’ issuing from the ground as though from volcanic action.
    The camels had no fear of this place: Millie hastened her pace to reach it. The ‘smoke’ endlessly whirled upward to be flattened as though by a cold wedge when less than a hundred feet above ground, and Bony could detect the units comprising a great host of bats. They came up from a small replica of Bumblefoot Hole, and so entranced by them was hethat he was almost thrown out of the saddle when Millie ‘flomped’ to her knees, yawned, and told him to get on with the job of making camp.
    There, but a few feet beyond her head, was the site of Lonergan’s camp fires.
    The bank of the hole nearest the camp shelved slightly to the cliff-face, and from this face the bats continued to issue, in number not to be estimated. Obviously they inhabited an underground cavern, which Bony had no intention of exploring. He found Lonergan’s water hole and, having watered the camels, he lit a fire and watched the emergence of the bat army.
    Night was chasing Day beyond land’s end, and the bat cloud banished the glory of the evening sky as Bony shovelled earth over his fire, laid out his bedding, and drew the unpitched tent over himself and the dog, who liked bats even less than he. There would be no bread baking this night, and when Millie and Curley came close for their usual crusts, to find the cupboard bare, they put themselves down beside the tent covering and sulkily went to sleep.
    Their bells roused Bony at dawning. Then the sky was clear and the stars were bright, but with the daylight came the bats from all quarters, to hover again like a rain cloud which formed a living water-spout gradually descending into the cavern. Before the sun rose there wasn’t a bat above ground.
    The days passed and the camps were left behind: