The Billabong Incident
Allen Hancock
Copyright 2010 Allen Hancock
Cover design by A Hancock
Photograph by A Hancock
Billabong: A waterhole. Or more to the point, a small lake formed by a change in the course of a river. Sometimes referred to as an oxbow lake.
Charlotte was dead, her eyes bulging as if staring up from the depths of the waterhole, her soft hair waving gently in the slow moving current. The mutilated corpse lay trapped under a tree root, its natural buoyancy trying to float it towards the surface. Refraction made Charlotte appear to be just below the surface, her outstretched hand inviting Inspector Hoadley to reach in and pull her out of there. But she knew the corpse was down deep.
The red dust of the Australian outback formed a thin film on the toes of Inspector Margaret Hoadley’s boots as she sweated in the sparse shade of a Coolibah tree. She removed her hat from her short-cropped blonde hair, the hot westerly breeze cooling her sweat-soaked head. A sandstone cliff rose above the waterhole, its rocky face making strange shapes in the evening glow. Strange shapes of light and shade that brought to mind images of the beginning of time.
Charlotte would have to wait. Removing her body would be difficult and require time and equipment. It would not make her any less dead, and leaving her would not change a thing. She was better off in the chilly depths of the waterhole rather than waiting in the outback heat anyway.
Aged somewhere between forty-nine and retirement, Inspector Hoadley had been a police officer for more years than not. She’d joined in that time when women were a rarity in the police force, even a novelty. But she wasn’t a feminist trying to fit into a man’s world as a number of others seemed to be; she just liked being a cop.
In appearance Inspector Hoadley could have been anybody. When the case required it she could be as cold and ruthless as any male detective. At other times she was more like somebody’s mother than a Homicide detective. She’d long ago come to the conclusion that murderers were rarely monsters. Usually they were ordinary people. The next door neighbour. The spouse. The lover. Given the right circumstances anybody was capable of murder. Ordinary people, extraordinary crimes.
But this was a survival camp. Eight average Americans. Eight editors sent to Australia to bond on a corporate team-building exercise. They had to adapt to their surroundings to survive. But now Charlotte was dead. She was an editor of mysteries no less.
Susanna was tending a pan on the fire when the inspector walked back into the camp. The rest of the group sat nearby, staring into the glimmering coals of the fire, not wanting to make eye contact with anybody. “What happened?” Inspector Hoadley asked.
Eventually Susanna spoke. “She just jumped in. She was sitting there sunbathing one minute, then she just stood and jumped in.”
“That’s right,” the rest said in unison, each more comfortable now that the inspector's attention was on somebody else. Better Susanna than them.
Inspector Hoadley moved closer to the fire. “What are you cooking, Susanna?”
“Fried Green Tomatoes, Inspector,” Susanna said. “It’s an old recipe from the South. Have you ever tried it?”
“No,” said Inspector Hoadley. “But I’ve seen the movie.”
“You should read the book. It’s much better. The secret is all in the sauce.”
Inspector Hoadley looked at their surroundings. “This reminds me of when I was younger,” she said. “The waterhole, the gorge, dinner cooking over an open fire. It makes me think of when my people came here.”
“Are you part native, Inspector?” Susanna asked.
“Native? No,” said Inspector Hoadley. “My father grew marijuana back in the 70’s. He used to take us with him tend his crop. In the evenings we’d sit around a campfire reciting ‘Banjo’ Patterson. He was one of the greatest of our bush poets.”
“Poets!” Jessica hissed. Jessica was an editor of nonfiction and felt that all truth was better than make believe. Imagination and fabrication had no role to play in her narrow world of fact. If an idea could not be proven then it didn’t exist. She had no time for writers of fiction, and poets were even worse.
“Once a jolly swagman,” Inspector Hoadley began to sing despite being unsure of where it was leading her.
“So what exactly is a swagman?” Jessica wanted to know.
“A hobo,” said Inspector Hoadley. “A homeless person. A bum if you like.
“So why was he jolly then?” Laura asked. She was an incurable romantic, her own life revolving around love and romance. Even lust. As a Romance editor she knew how to help people profit from their passion. Hers was a profession of words containing sexual innuendo and double meaning and something had raised a question in her mind. “I couldn’t imagine a bum ever being described as jolly. Is jolly a euphemism for gay do you think?”
“The word jolly,” Inspector Hoadley explained, “in its use in Australia during the late 1800’s when the original poem on which this song is based was written, is really a polite way of swearing. A bit like you Americans would use the word dang instead of damn. Freaking instead of, well the other F word. I hit my thumb with the jolly hammer. Where are my jolly car keys? There’s a jolly swagman camped by the billabong. That sort of thing”
“So,” said Jessica still matter-of-fact. “What you’re really saying here is that once there was a freaking bum.”
George looked confused. “Camped by a billabong?” he asked. To him everything in life was a mystery to be solved. He viewed everything with suspicion. There was always something more to a situation than first met the eye. His favourite question as a Mystery editor was ‘whodunnit?’ but this time he simply asked, “Well, what’s a billabong then?”
“It’s a waterhole, George,” the inspector explained. “Or more to the point, it’s a small lake formed by a change in the course of a river. In America you’d call it an oxbow lake.”
“So, once a freaking bum camped by an oxbow lake,” said Susanna mimicking Jessica. Her own specialty was fiction and her interests covered the whole spectrum of that genre. She liked nothing better than to find a good story capable of keeping her up late until well past her bedtime. “Walter van Tilburg’s 1949 novel, The Oxbow Incident, is a classic American story of the old west. Not to be confused of course with Clement Hardin’s more recent 1967 release, The Oxbow Deed. Now I understand.”
“Um, yes. I’m sure you do, Susanna,” Inspector Hoadley said. “Under the shade of a coolibah tree,” she continued.
Paul’s role was as a Science Fiction editor. He’d grown up reading it in order to escape reality but now it consumed him. It WAS reality. “What’s a coolibah?” he asked.
“A coolibah,” the inspector explained, “is a type of eucalypt that grows by the water. Like the willow of the Northern Hemisphere, the coolibah needs to be close to water to survive. It's not happy unless it has its feet wet."
Kathryn was the Innovations editor. Original works on innovative themes. She preferred books to engage the spirit and speak to the soul. “This is confusing me,” she said. “We know he’s a homeless person but that’s all. Even the homeless are entitled to individuality, an identity of their own. Nobody is merely a homeless person. Each of them is somebody. Doesn’t this person even have a name?”
Inspector Hoadley opened her mouth for an appropriate reply but she thought better of it. “His name was Andy,” she said instead. “Andy sang. Andy watched. Andy waited while his billy boiled. And before anybody else asks, a billy is a tin can with a handle. It’s used for boiling water. Who’ll come a waltzing Matilda with me?”
?
??I knew there would be a romantic angle to this,” said Laura. “So what’s dancing got to do with it and who the hell is Matilda?”
“Matilda is simply a representational identity,” Inspector Hoadley said. “The swagmen used it to describe their swags or bedrolls. When swagmen refer to waltzing Matilda what they really mean is the act of carrying all of their worldly goods in a bedroll slung over the shoulder.”
“Oh,” said Laura disappointed.
“Down came a jumbuck to drink at the billabong. A jumbuck’s a sheep,” the inspector called out before Paul had the chance to open his mouth. “Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee. And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tucker bag, who’ll come a waltzing Matilda with me?”
“So really what you’re talking about here is a simple case of rustling,” said the businesslike Zach. As a Business editor he dealt with all matters to do with business and management. Dishonesty was the bane of business and the theft of stock was the cause of many difficulties for primary producers. “You know what they do with rustlers in Texas?”
“This swagman sounds a lot like a redneck,” said Kathryn. “If it moves, kill it. If it’s dead, eat it.”
“And dead is not an absolute necessity,” added Susanna.
“Down came the squatter mounted on his thoroughbred.
“I know what a Squatter is,” said Jessica. “They’re large landholders, ranchers. The fact that this one rode a pedigree horse is a good indication that he must have been fairly well off.”
“Down came the troopers one, two, three.”
Zach was intrigued. “This particular squatter must have had some influence to have three mounted policemen to accompany him simply to chase sheep. It doesn’t make any business sense at all. In the Wild West I suppose it would have been a posse.”
“Where’s that jolly jumbuck you’ve got in your tucker bag?”
“Whoa,” said George. “This mystery is starting to stink of a setup here. A rich rancher comes charging down out of nowhere with a posse. He already knows exactly what happened and where the sheep is stashed. There’s much more to this than meets the eye. A definite case of entrapment if you ask me. The evidence would never stand up in court.”
“The case would never get to a court,” said Inspector Hoadley. She continued singing. “Up jumped the swagman and jumped into the billabong. You’ll never catch me alive, said he.”
“Now that plot doesn’t make any sense at all,” said Susanna. “I could imagine this man jumping up and making a run for it, or even denying everything. But killing himself over a sheep? No, even fiction must at least be logical.”
“And even Science Fiction must have a grounding in reality,” said Paul. “I think these people took the law into their own hands.”
“Yes,” said Jessica. “The truth is probably that this was a vigilante killing. They most likely strung him from a tree and then cooked up some fiction for the coroner.”
Silence surrounded the camp. Everybody was looking at Jessica.
“Exactly,” said Inspector Hoadley, a glimmer of a smile on her face. “Nobody buys the suicide story for one minute. Now would somebody like to tell me what really happened to Charlotte?” She shivered while in the distance the wind howled as it blew a mournful tune through the trees around the waterhole. “And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong. Who’ll come a waltzing Matilda with me?”
…
Charlotte’s body lay submerged in the water looking more like a piece of garbage carelessly dumped and abandoned as Inspector Hoadley pulled on the rope to drag her to the surface. Large gray insect-like creatures about five inches long crawled over her, ripping pieces of flesh with their sharp claws.
“Yabbies,” Inspector Hoadley explained. “They’re sort of a freshwater lobster.”
“So that’s what a yabby looks like,” said George.
“Yes,” said Inspector Hoadley. “I’d say that Charlotte saw them, leaned too far over the water then fell into the billabong and drowned. Very sad.”
“What’s going to happen now, Inspector?” Susanna asked.
“Right now, Susanna,” the inspector said, “you’re going to go and build a fire. Put some water on to boil while I reset Charlotte.”
~~~~
If you enjoyed The Billabong Incident and would like to read more, try:-
Short Stories
- The Battlefield
- 3:14 am
- The Big Cheese
Novels
- The Chance of a Storm
- Song of the River
Records Management
- Gordon Ramsay and Alphabet (Expletive Deleted) Soup – The Future of Recordkeeping is Simple
- Recordkeeping for Knuckleheads
Allen Hancock was born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1952. He joined the Australian Regular Army in 1970 and spent the next 21 years moving around most areas of Australia. He left the Army in 1992 and has been working as a professional records manager since then. Allen has more than 40 years association with the records industry working with Federal and State Government agencies as well as in higher education and private enterprise.