Sturt’s desert pea
Meaning: Have courage, take heart
Swainsona formosa | Inland Australia
Malukuru (Pit.) are famous for distinctive blood-red, leaf-like flowers, each with a bulbous black centre, similar to a kangaroo’s eye. A striking sight in the wild: a blazing sea of red. Bird-pollinated and thrives in arid areas, but very sensitive to any root disturbance, which makes it difficult to propagate.
In the pre-dawn light Alice and Pip wound through the bushes to the back gate. Pip wagged her tail, her nose bent to the ground, following scents. They headed up, over the sand dune, and down the other side to the fire trails, as Aiden had told her the tracks around Parksville were called. They’re breakers, he’d said. To stop the flames jumping if there’s ever a bushfire. Alice had nodded, trying to look interested, but her insides went cold. She’d taken a long slurp of beer to wash away memories of smoke and fire.
Talking with Aiden while Lulu cooked, Alice had been transfixed by their company and home: Lulu’s husky laugh, the sizzling tacos, the brightly painted pots of aloe vera and green chilli, shelves of books, framed prints of Frida Kahlo self-portraits. Alice was consumed by a sense of longing, though for what exactly she wasn’t sure. Going back to her mostly empty, bleach-scented house was sobering. She’d gone to bed yearning for coloured walls, glossy pots, and books to fill her empty shelves.
Alice and Pip walked through a huddle of desert oaks and reached the ring road. They crossed and slipped into the bush, joining the trail that zigzagged up the wall, disappearing over the top.
‘C’mon, Pip.’
The sky was starting to lighten. Her boots crunched loudly on the grit.
By the time the two of them reached the viewing platform, the neck of Alice’s T-shirt was ringed with sweat. Pip flopped onto her side, panting hard. Black flies buzzed around Alice’s face. She swatted at them as she took in her surroundings. On either side of the platform, ochre walls peeled up and away, a circular wave of rock gouged from the earth by violent impact. At the centre of the crater, in a perfect circle, was a wild garden of blooming desert peas, a mother’s heart, a rippling sea of red. There was a surprising covering of lime-green grass on the crater floor. Kututu Kaana was more staggering than Alice had imagined; it was every story she had ever read or heard or imagined about an oasis in the desert.
Have courage, take heart.
The force of her yearning for her mother, for her grandmother, and the women she’d left behind tore through her without warning or mercy. She gasped from the pain, biting hard down on her lip until she tasted blood.
Later, back at home, Alice showered and got herself ready for her first day in her new job. She took great care dressing in her green ranger uniform, studying the circular badges on the sleeves of her shirt in the mirror. She traced her fingertips over the desert peas in the centre of the Indigenous flag. How different from her Thornfield apron; she’d never felt the pride of wearing a uniform she’d earned on her own merit before.
She laced up her stiff new boots and gathered her backpack and hat. ‘Do not play with a snake, okay?’ Alice kissed Pip’s nose, locked her in the garage cage, and got into her truck. As she drove through Parksville she marvelled at the day. The sky was lapis lazuli, the morning light citrine.
When she parked her truck at headquarters Alice’s heart started to pound. She breathed steadily, trying to slow it down.
‘Wiru mulapa mutuka pinta-pinta,’ a soft voice spoke at her window.
‘Sorry?’ Alice shaded her eyes. A woman stood by her truck, wearing the same shirt as Alice. Her hair was wrapped in a black, red and yellow headscarf, under a full-brimmed Akubra. Around her neck hung strings of glossy, blood-red seeds. Her trousers were white, covered in green, yellow and blue watercolour budgerigars, such a random and joyful sight Alice couldn’t help but grin.
‘I’m Ruby.’ The woman held out her hand. Alice got out of her truck and took Ruby’s hand in hers. ‘I was just saying, I like your butterfly truck.’
‘Oh.’ Alice laughed nervously, glancing over at the butterfly stickers on her doors, thinking about everything they were hiding. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘I’m the Senior Ranger here, and I’m training you this morning. You’re out in the field with the other rangers this arv.’ Ruby walked off towards a park ute. ‘You can drive.’ She tossed the keys back to Alice.
‘Oh. Right.’ Alice hurried to catch up. She got into the ute and leant over to unlock the passenger door.
Ruby got in. ‘Head out onto the ring road.’
‘Sure.’
Ruby’s demeanour reminded Alice strongly of Twig. She tried to think of something to say but her words dried up, red dust on her tongue.
‘I’m a senior law woman,’ Ruby stated after a while. ‘I train new rangers like you. Teach you the stories that can be publicly told here. I’m also a poet and artist. I chair the Central Desert Women’s Council, and live between here and Darwin. My family –’
‘That must be such a huge contrast,’ Alice interrupted, leaping at any chance to contribute to the conversation. ‘Going between here and the city.’ She tried to pause, tried to take a breath. ‘So, you’re a poet? I love books. I love to read. I’ve always loved writing stories. But I haven’t done much of that since I was a teenager.’ To her horror, nerves were making Alice uncharacteristically talkative; she couldn’t shut herself up.
Ruby gave a polite nod but didn’t speak again. She turned her back. Alice bit her bottom lip. She shouldn’t have interrupted. Should she apologise? Should she try changing the subject? Was Ruby waiting for her to ask questions about Kililpitjara? What should she ask? Were there things she couldn’t ask?
Alice tried focusing on not changing the gears too roughly or going too fast. As they neared the main visitor car park, the radio crackled to life.
‘National parks nineteen, nineteen, this is seven-seven, over.’
Dylan’s timbre shot through her bloodstream into her bones. Alice gripped the steering wheel. Very casually, Ruby leaned forward and turned the radio off.
‘Pull up here,’ Ruby signalled to the car park. Self-doubt wormed through Alice’s mind. Was she that obvious? Did Ruby think she was more interested in Dylan than she was in doing a good job on her first day? Wasn’t that kind of true? Please stop, she begged herself.
Ruby opened her door and got out. Alice followed. At the beginning of the trail Alice stopped to read a group of information signs. Ruby came up beside her.
‘So tourists know the Heart Garden at the centre of the crater is sacred, and that you ask them not to pick any flowers, to make sure the site is protected?’ Alice asked.
Ruby nodded. ‘It’s in all the guide books, pamphlets and visitor information. We invite visitors to come and learn the stories of this place, but please, don’t pick our flowers.’
Alice remembered the conversation she’d heard the night before. ‘But they still do it?’
‘Uwa. They still do it,’ Ruby said as she wandered off, her hands behind her back.
They walked in silence. The red dirt trail followed the outer wall of the crater, passing fields of low-lying spinifex, emu bushes and buffel grass, through clusters of tall wattle trees and skinny desert oaks. After a while they came to a giant red boulder that sat like an open door at the entrance of a small cave. Ruby went around it, inside. Alice followed, panting from the heat.
‘You got kapi?’ Ruby looked at her in the dim light with an eyebrow raised.
Alice gawked blankly in response, her eyes adjusting. ‘Kapi. Water.’
Alice’s face fell as she realised she’d left her backpack with her water and hat in her truck at headquarters. She swore at herself under her breath, and shook her head.
‘You’re gunna want to carry that with you everywhere here in future.’ Ruby shook her head and turned away to look up at the ceiling of the cave. Alice rolled her eyes at her own stupidity. What sort of idiot went into the desert without water?
After a while, Alice’s thoughts quietened enough for her to realise Ruby was speaking in a whisper. Overhead, all around them, were ochre, white and red rock paintings. Alice listened as Ruby explained the symbols women had painted thousands of years ago, telling stories of desert peas, mothers, children and stars.
‘This land is where the women in my family have always brought their stories. To bear witness. To grieve. To honour what they have loved. It’s a sorry place. That’s why we don’t live here.’
Alice stepped closer to the paintings.
‘The trail into Kililpitjara follows the ceremonial path around Kututu Kaana, where malukuru grow from the star mother’s heart.’ Ruby’s voice was still low. ‘That’s why we ask people not to pick any of the flowers. Each one is a piece of her.’
Neither of them spoke. Ruby gave a closing nod, turned, and left. But Alice lingered, spellbound by the rock art, and overcome by gratitude for her chance meeting with Sarah in Agnes Bluff.
After she’d caught up to Ruby, Alice wondered what it was like for Ruby, constantly fighting to protect a place and its story, which had been central to her family’s culture for longer than anyone could know. Where did she find the strength to keep fighting? And who were the people that ignored her family’s stories of the place, and helped themselves to the desert peas, denying that they were tearing up pieces of the star mother’s heart? The signs were literally everywhere around them. No one could plead ignorance.
Ruby walked ahead, and Alice followed. Unsure of herself or her place, Alice left all of her questions unasked.
The walking track met the ring road at a site called Kututu Puli, where a sheltered bench and water tank offered a close view of the crater wall jutting dramatically from the earth: a cascade of red rocks and boulders covered in silver and mint-coloured lichen. For a moment, Alice was spellbound. But then she remembered the water tank and fell to it, drinking until she was full.
‘This is a thirsty place,’ Ruby nodded. ‘Where Ngunytju’s heart caught fire and burned as it hit the earth. That’s what the rocks are, pieces of her heart in flames. The lichen is where the smoke still rises from the embers, staining the crater wall.’
Alice couldn’t look at Ruby, fearing she’d see the tears in her eyes and decide once and for all she was hopeless.
‘Do you live in Parksville too?’ Alice had seized the first thing she thought of. Why didn’t she ask more about the crater story, which she was here to learn for her job? She cursed herself under her breath.
‘Uwa,’ Ruby nodded. ‘But only when I’m here for training. I come to teach you fellas about culture. Like I said, my family doesn’t live here. It’s a sorry place. Not a place to live.’ Ruby dusted her hands off. ‘You right to keep going?’
‘Yep,’ Alice replied, burning to ask why any of them were there if it wasn’t a place for living.
They walked the rest of the way around the crater in silence. A large tour group passed them in the opposite direction, heading back to the main car park. Alice eyed them suspiciously; had any of them picked desert peas? Swallows swooped overhead, singing. Sunshine fell in patches through a canopy of gum trees. Eventually the trail turned out of the shade and began to climb the crater wall, the same track Alice had found that morning with Pip. She shielded her face from the glare. It wasn’t even mid-morning but in direct sun the temperature felt like it must be close to forty degrees.
At the viewing platform, Ruby sat to catch her breath. Alice did the same, taking in the heart of desert peas.
‘Kungka, I’m going to tell you the whole story of this place,’ Ruby began.
‘Oh, yes,’ Alice leapt in. ‘I read. On the internet. About the mother’s heart that fell here, after her baby fell to Earth in another impact crater near to here.’ She couldn’t stop herself.
This time Ruby didn’t even look at her. She set her jaw, got up and left the platform, following the trail down into the crater.
Helpless, Alice watched her go, dumbfounded by her own stupidity. Shut the fuck up! she screamed to herself. She’d never wanted to impress anyone as much as she did Ruby. But her nervous chatter was ruining everything.
Alice put her head in her hands. She’d never gone for a job interview, or done an orientation, or undergone training like this before. She’d never been out of June’s protective gaze. This was her first real chance to make something of herself, on her own. And she was fucking it up royally.
Have courage. Take heart.
She sat up. Adjusted her uniform. Nodded to herself determinedly, and followed Ruby into Kututu Kaana.
The temperature inside the crater was stifling. Waves of heat rose from the earth. Flocks of green birds flew overhead.
‘Those tjulpu.’ Ruby laughed, waving at the birds. ‘Cheeky buggers.’
As they approached the flowers, Ruby gestured towards them, about to speak. This time, Alice kept quiet.
‘Minga come because of the story, but when they get here they’ve got closed ears. They want the story but they don’t hear it. They only hear it if they take a piece of it with them.’ Ruby’s voice was sad, but strong. ‘So many people coming, going off track, the threat is to the roots. These malukuru, these flowers, they’re strong. They grow here, and have for thousands of years. But their roots, you get down there and make their roots sick and the whole lot will die. True. We ask them not to, but people still go. Into the circle. To pick flowers. Take a piece of Ngunytju’s heart away with them. They’ll make the roots sick. Those roots get sick, we all get sick.’
Alice paused, waiting for a moment before she spoke. ‘Root rot,’ she said. ‘Sturt’s desert peas are vulnerable to root rot. If their roots are disturbed, they’re more likely to die from that than they are from drought.’
Ruby had a mix of surprise and appreciation on her face. ‘Eh?’ she said, giving Alice a playful nudge. ‘You’re a bit ninti pulka with our heart flowers, eh kungka?’ She smiled. ‘You’re a bit clever, eh?’
Alice exhaled, letting her shoulders fall from where they’d been hunched around her ears.
‘You’re all right, kungka.’ Ruby chuckled as she toed a stone with her boot. ‘You just need to close your mouth a bit and open your ears a bit more. Calm those thoughts in your head that are like cheeky tjulpu,’ she said, pointing to the budgerigars on her trousers, ‘so you can take the story of this place in.’
Alice nodded, unable to meet her eyes.
Ruby tugged on Alice’s sleeve. ‘Listen, when you wear our flag on your arms here,’ she pointed to the badges on Alice’s shirt, ‘you’ve got a responsibility to tell it true now, the story of this place, to all the minga that come from all over the world.’ A gust of hot wind blew around them, rustling into the circle of desert peas. ‘This is a sorry place. A sacred place, for love, sadness, rest and peace. This place holds the ceremonial stories of thousands of years of women. My ancestors, raising their babies and looking after this land, and the land looking after them. Malukuru, these flowers, they keep their stories alive. We need to work together to protect them. That’s your job now too,’ Ruby said, gesturing towards Alice. ‘Palya, Kungka Pinta-Pinta?’
Alice looked at her.
‘Okay, Butterfly Girl?’ Ruby translated, smiling.
What do you think you’d like to be when you grow up, Bun? Alice’s mother had her hands in a pot of fertiliser among the ferns in her garden. Her face was obscured by her gardening hat. Alice didn’t have to give it much thought. A butterfly, or a writer, she replied, smiling. Anything that kept her close to her mother’s garden, or between the pages of books.
‘Palya, Kungka Pinta-Pinta?’ Ruby asked again.
‘Palya,’ Alice replied.
Ruby gave a satisfied nod and turned, her hands behind her back as she began to walk the trail around the flowers and out of the crater. Alice took a last lingering look at the desert peas before she turned and walked away.
After sandwiches and juice from the visitor centre cafe for lunch, Ruby pulled Alice aside. She had a strange look on her face. ‘Before you go out in the field this arv, there’s something I want to show you.’
Alice followed Ruby up a flight of stairs to an attic-like storage space in the roof of the visitor centre. It was cramped, hot and stuffy, full of shelves holding large plastic boxes. Ruby went to a shelf and took down a box. She lifted the lid and gestured for Alice to look inside. It was stuffed with letters, some printed, others handwritten. Inside every single one was a pressed, dried desert pea.
‘Sorry flowers,’ Ruby said. ‘From people who pick them as souvenirs, take them home to wherever they come from, then start to believe their bad luck in life is a curse for ignoring our culture.’ She gestured to the shelves behind her, filled with similar boxes.
Alice leant over the open box.
‘Go ahead,’ Ruby said.
Riffling through, Alice reeled at the volume of dried flowers people had picked and returned. Envelopes bearing postage stamps from all over the world contained letters begging forgiveness, begging to be free of ‘the curse’. A handwritten one caught her eye. As Alice opened it, a dried and shrivelled desert pea fell into her palm. She read, aloud.
‘“My husband got sick as soon as we left Kililpitjara. When we got home to Italy, we found out he has cancer. A few days later our son was in a bus accident. And then our house flooded. Please accept our deepest apologies for not respecting your beautiful country on our visit. Please free us from any more tragedy. We are so deeply sorry for picking the flowers from the crater and taking what wasn’t ours to take.”’ Alice rocked back on her heels, incredulous. ‘They’re all the same thing? Asking for forgiveness and freedom from “the curse”?’
Ruby nodded. ‘“The curse”, a myth that’s travelled around the world for as long as minga have been coming here.’
‘But it’s … not real?’ Alice asked slowly.
‘No!’ Ruby snorted. ‘It’s not real. It’s just a trick guilt plays on guilty people’s minds.’
Alice’s thoughts drifted to June’s slurred confession the night she left Thornfield. ‘We can’t hide when we’ve done wrong,’ Alice said, ‘even if we try to bury it in the deepest parts of ourselves.’ Aware that Ruby was watching her closely, Alice put the letter back in the box and brushed her hands together. ‘Do you ever write back? Tell them “the curse” is something people have made up and isn’t anything to do with your culture?’
‘Ha!’ Ruby said drily. ‘I’ve got better things to do than run around after minga and do the work for them, teaching what they should have opened their eyes and ears to and learned when it was right in front of them.’
Alice nodded, letting Ruby’s words sink in. ‘I just can’t believe there’s so many,’ she said, going through the envelopes once more.
‘This is why we’re so worried about malukuru becoming endangered. Worse, there’s even more stories in the roof at headquarters. We’ve started having meetings to figure out what to do with them. There’s a couple of university fellas interested in cataloguing all the stories. But they’ll have to be quick. We’re running out of storage.’
A childhood conversation with her mother came to mind. A fire can be like a spell of sorts to transform one thing into another.
‘Maybe you could burn them,’ Alice blurted.
Ruby studied her face appreciatively. ‘Maybe,’ she said.
By the time Alice got home that night she could barely keep her eyes open. She stumbled through her front door, flicked on the air conditioning, and stood under the cold shower watching as the water turned red.
She’d worked with Lulu after lunch. Ruby showed you the sorry flowers? she’d said when they were out in the field together, after Alice described her morning. Alice nodded. Man, you must have done something right, chica. Ruby doesn’t show anyone those flowers unless they’re in her good books.
Standing under the shower, replaying Lulu’s words, Alice flushed with pleasure. She’d done something right.
Later Alice shared with Pip a veggie burger she’d brought home from the cafe, and flopped into bed before the sun set. The warm air carried the rich scent of baked earth and the sweet end of her first day.
Her dreams were filled with visions of June. Every time her grandmother opened her mouth to speak to Alice, a torrent of brown and withered dried flowers gushed out.
Ruby stood on her patio in the setting sun, watching rainbows catch in the spray while she watered her pot plants. The mineral-rich smell of the damp red dirt took her straight to the memory of her mother and aunties, like a song. The sky gathered a palette of pink clay, ochre and grey stone. Ruby’s trio of dogs raced each other along her back fence, their ears flattened in joy. The mellowest part of the day always made them the silliest.
Once she’d hung up the hose she took her axe into the yard and cut down some wanari branches. Wanari was the best for cooking fires; it burned the hottest. She piled the wood in the pit, sucking the blood from her finger when she got a splinter. After she raked together dry desert-oak needles, skinny twigs and sticks, she stuffed them into the gaps between the branches. A few matches later, her fire was roaring.
Ruby sat on a log with her pen and notebook, and relaxed her shoulders. Once she was settled, she closed her eyes. The weight of her missing family settled around her. Ever since she was a child, when she was taken from her mother, the one constant in her life was the present absence of her family. It was a visible kind of invisibility; all Ruby could ever see were those not there with her.
While her dinner cooked on a skillet over the fire and the sky started to darken, Ruby uncapped her pen and opened her notebook.
She watched the flames. She waited.
The stars swirled, the dogs dozed, and the warm desert breeze blew. She waited.
The new poem came down from the stars, looking for her as most of her poems did. It tumbled over the sand dunes and fluttered across her mother’s country, bringing earth, smoke, love and sorrow.
there are always seeds that thread us
and carried on the wind set us apart
does the wind come from the origins
or the mother or the father
will my origins be blown away
or remain in distance if I leave
will the wind stand breathless
shall I remain to die broken from home
Ruby put her pen down and rubbed her hands. They were shaking, as they always did when her ancestors gave her a poem. After a moment, she picked it up again and wrote Seeds at the top of the page.
She seasoned and turned her malu steak, and slathered more garlic butter on her fried potatoes. Sat back and watched the flames dance. Smoke plumes curled into the sky.
As Ruby served up her dinner her mind wandered back to showing Alice the shelves of sorry flowers. Ruby had seen more people come and go through Kililpitjara than she’d written poems in her notebooks. She could pick those who were lost and aimless from those who were true and searching as easily as she pulled ticks from her dogs. When she’d first noticed Sarah moving Alice in, all shaky and pale-faced, Ruby hadn’t given her a second thought. But after their morning together, Ruby changed her mind. She saw something in Alice Hart, the kind of grit one survivor recognises in another. Ruby didn’t know what Alice was looking for, but it burned in her brightly enough to leave fire in her eyes.
