Journey to Horseshoe Bend - ten years on

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the first performance of Journey to Horseshoe Bend. I republish this article from that time. Another article on the involvement of the Ntaria community and other black and white Territorians is on my website under Singing Chorales: Aranda Way

Broadening experiences in Central Australia

How well has classical music represented Central Australia over the years? John Antill obviously read Spencer and Gillen’s classic text, The Arunta before writing his ballet Corroboree, the young Peter Sculthorpe portrayed a ‘sunburnt country’ in his various tone poems. There’s one long note in Barry Conyngham’s opera Edward John Eyre which says heaps to me about horizon.

The musical work that Andrew Schultz and I have written for Symphony Australia and the Sydney Symphony is based on T.G.H. Strehlow’s 1969 novel Journey to Horseshoe Bend,  which tells of Strehlow’s mortally-ill father’s last journey down the dry bed of the Finke River, Central Australia in search of medical help in 1922. Pastor Strehlow examined his faith, as his son Theo (the young T.G.H. Strehlow) travelled behind his parents’ buggy, learning about the country from Aboriginal guides, pastoralists, cameleers and a host of other characters they met along the way.

Cover of the CD of Journey to Horseshoe Bend, released 2004. Photo of Horseshoe Bend: Paul Carter

 To create our musical version of Journey to Horseshoe Bend, the novel’s 220 pages may have been edited, but in developing this work over a four-year period we have had a broadening experience, not out of keeping with the ‘coming of age’ of young Theo in the book.

In the introduction to his monumental Songs of Central Australia, T.G.H. Strehlow acknowledged the old Aranda men who provided him with the words of the chants he had transcribed. Their birthdates stretched back as far as 1842, before McDouall Stuart’s epic crossing of this continent. Uniquely for an anthropological writer in the 1950s, and one occasionally remembered for the controversy over his handling of sensitive Aboriginal material, Strehlow credited his informants. It’s a nice point to bear in mind as I reflect on the broad community of support which has buttressed our creation of this work; of a large history against which we pitch our piece.

We present Journey to Horseshoe Bend as a cantata, that form of unstaged mini-opera which the Lutheran J.S. Bach used to reflect the scriptural message in Sunday services at St.Thomas Church Leipzig where he served in the 1720s. Why? Early in the novel Pastor Strehlow is brought from his house at Hermannsburg Mission (now called Ntaria) for the last time. As he is lifted into the buggy the mission people gather round and sing Kaarrerrai worlamparinyai, Pastor Strehlow’s translation of Wachet auf, the great Lutheran hymn set by Bach and used by him in Cantata 140. But by presenting the work as a cantata we pay homage to the Lutheran background of people out at Ntaria – a Lutheranism held in tandem with traditional belief – as well as our own Europeanness. We employ an effective medium for a story which in many respects is as deep and as anguished as a Passion. Our version of Journey to Horseshoe Bend is cast in eight scenes, broken up into arias, duets, choruses. Andrew’s orchestral layout reflects the 275–kilometre river valley through which the party travels. Winds and brass on either side of a central pool of strings and other instruments, resemble a river gorge, but you could also regard the layout as similar to the chancel of a church. Andrew even borrowed a refrain from the Ntaria Lutheran service – the words Kaartai, nurnanha wurlathanai (Lord, hear our prayer) - to frame Pastor Carl’s death.

I make use of a narrator, as well as another actor, to tell the story, and this is outside the cantata tradition. But our purpose is to create a bond with a broader audience beyond the normal concert-going public, the sort of people to whom and for whom the story of Journey to Horseshoe Bend is meant to speak. I make use also of the three languages of the region as well as the dialectical differences between Western Arrarnta, Southern Arrernte, and Eastern Arrernte (and even the orthographical differences between the different dialects of Arrernte; the differences are unsettled - until the 20th century, Arrernte was an oral language). Travelling through the Brittania Sandhills one of those nights in 1922, young Theo was rebuked by his guide Njitiaka for using the Western Arrarnta word for moon in Southern Arrernte country. In an exchange which echoed this episode in the novel, Alice Springs resident Doug Abbott, chided me for casting his great-grandfather’s dialogue in the Eastern Arrernte I had reconstructed from a dictionary: ‘That old bloke would turn in his grave [if you had him talking in anything other than Southern Arrernte.],’ he said. Casting a story of Central Australia in cantata form, replete with narration and Aranda interjections (to use the Strehlows’ spelling), acknowledges the hybrid forms that are a mark of post-contact Aranda life. Aranda people out at Ntaria practise Two Ways, a blend of Aranda and European traditions

T.G.H. Strehlow began Journey to Horseshoe Bend in May 1966 while recovering from peritonitis. It was published at a time of crisis in his life. Strehlow’s novel has been described as an attempt to posit himself as central in Aranda life, particularly at a time when a rising generation of Aboriginal activists rebelled against a white man who spoke of their ceremonial life for them. The book tells stories of the Altjira, translated imperfectly for the past century as ‘the Dreamtime’, while recounting stories of Pastor Carl Strehlow’s struggles with God. We get a sense of the eternal mythology underpinning the landscape but also details of the pastoral history of the region; the sequence of ownership of Henbury Station, for example; or how Gus Elliott, owner of Horseshoe Bend hotel, where Pastor Strehlow died, first attempted to run cattle at Glen Helen but moved into an area where he would not face so much resistance from the original inhabitants. Working on this piece, helicoptering over its terrain, Andrew and I are possibly the first composer and librettist in Australian musical history to be asked to avoid disturbing a cattle muster while doing our research.

T.G.H. Strehlow does not favour one strand – black or white – as more relevant than the other in his book. My libretto juxtaposes and perhaps prioritises elements for the sake of dramatic vividness, and space. But ours is still a story of reconciliation. Andrew sets Strehlow’s translation of the Song of Mborawatna to a chorale fugue at the end. The point is not ‘neither-nor’, nor ‘yes, but’ but ‘both-and’. We’re embracing the life of the country, like Strehlow, in all its historical and mythical currents, cross-currents and substrata.

Journey to Horseshoe Bend, the novel, is out of print and hard to find these days. When I began work on this project it was as if T.G.H. Strehlow had disappeared from the face of literary Australia. I often went into second-hand bookshops looking for the title, only to find myself spelling ‘Strehlow’. Once upon a time governments turned to only three white men for ‘technical advice’ when making ‘aboriginal policy’: A.P. Elkin, W.E.H. Stanner and T.G.H. Strehlow. It was as if, in spite of the incredible controversy in 1978, when Strehlow’s photographs of secret ceremonies turned up in the German photo-magazine Stern, Strehlow had ‘disappeared from the map.’ Of course he was not forgotten in Central Australia. People remember not only that ‘he shouldn’t have sold those pictures’ but still confirm family relationships that Strehlow recorded on genealogies drawn up with devotion and a Teutonic thoroughness.

Andrew and I are responsible for the artistic decisions involved in making a musical version of this novel: telling the story in 1^st person, rather than Strehlow’s more impersonal 3^rd person; having Njitiaka actually speak in Aranda. Andrew decided the orchestral layout, musical language, orchestration, and musical weighting for each section. We’ve no doubt cut out someone’s favourite bit. But in making this version of Journey to Horseshoe Bend we have consulted widely, drawing upon the family lore and reminiscence of people still living in the Centre. Much of T.G.H. Strehlow’s material – manuscripts, objects given to him by the old men - is now housed in the Strehlow Research Centre, Alice Springs. I would have rung the Centre’s Brett Galt-Smith and Shane Hersey several times a week over the past four years. Andrew, the Sydney Symphony’s Alexandra Cameron and I have all been out to Hermannsburg; Symphony Australia has made sure we could fly and drive the length of the journey to Carl Strehlow’s grave. We gained a greater sense of the reality of the story by meeting descendants of characters in the novel, and seeing the pride for example with which Kunmanara Breaden, current chairman of the Central Lands Council, told of his grandfather Johnson showing Theo over Idracowra station on the fifth day of the journey. In the cantata, this is represented by Theo singing Andrew’s evocative ditty of what he sees: harnesses, bridles, hobble straps, while his father heaves through a text wrought with the question of suffering as described in Job. We didn’t have the time and ‘space’ however to show Theo embarrassing the agnostic station people by saying grace out loud on the Sunday, but Mrs Murphy at Idracowra showed us the still–extant blockhouse where he said it.

This work was not conceived by a lonely isolate starving in a garret. Part of my confidence in this work lies in the level of consultation and immersion in Territorian experience we have undergone with the assistance of a large number of people, and which echoes, however faintly, the original encounters of the Strehlows’ trip. If we’re to pay homage to all the people who helped in the creation of this work, we end up with a web of relationships that is not as complex as the genealogies prepared by T.G.H. Strehlow and still consulted by Aboriginal families 25 years after his death. But which has contributed to a work which we think speaks profoundly to an audience wider than the usual cognoscenti.

Gordon Kalton Williams © 2003

This article first appeared in The Australian Financial Review, May 2003

Other blogs of mine on Central Australia are:

Life-changing statements, 16 December 2012
Ah, Nathanael, 29 November 2012
Victory over death and despair in a bygone age (thoughts on John Strehlow's The Tale of Frieda Keysser), 5 Nov 2012
Virginia in the Desert, 10 Sep 2012
Drowned Man in a Dry Creekbed - Happy New Year 1993, 6 August 2012
Opera in a land of Song, 29 July 2012
Considering the aboriginal land of Altjira, 20 May 2012

'Ah Nathanael' - another note on The Tale of Frieda Keysser

I have already noted (Victory over death and despair in a bygone age, 5 November 2012) that John Strehlow's epic, The Tale of Frieda Keysser ranges from 16th century Germany to present-day Australia and covers a wide swathe of Central Australian history. I am most affected, though, by its juxtaposition of the 'epic' with the 'personal'. Much of the book seems like John's personal exploration. And there are aspects of the story that touch me too. Another of my favourite passages reads:

"Not long after Carl's trip to Palm Valley with Gillen, he took Frieda there. Nathanael drove them.

Livistona mariae palms (also known as Red Cabbage Palms), Palm Valley, NT, Photo: C Goodwin 2004

Nathanael - Naemi's son - was a most charming man and even (I suspect) something of a lady-killer. He was at that stage about 23 and had been among the first boys to be baptised on 20 May 1887 by Kempe, who estimated his age then as about 14. Like many young aboriginal men he was dashing, well-spoken, carried himself well, was always well-mannered, witty, pleasant to get on with - and gallant with the ladies. Carl and Frieda were both very taken with him - and despite some ups and downs in their relationship, remained so for the rest of their lives. 'Ah Nathanael,' Frieda wrote to my father in the 1950s when sent a photograph of him in old age, 'and he was so young when I first set eyes on him. Now he looks so old'."

I really love that second-last sentence, finding it possibly the most moving sentence in the whole book. The paragraph itself sums up the book's epic sweep perfectly. It reaches back across the 1880s to the 1950s to me now (I'll say how in a minute), but consider also the backgrounds of the dramatis personae packed into this brief paragraph:

Carl - Pastor Carl Strehlow: missionary at Hermannsburg in Western Aranda country from 1894-1922, he also managed the mission as a working cattle station; author of Die Aranda-und-Loritja Staemme (five volumes); co-author of the Dieri New Testament;
Frieda - wife of Carl Strehlow, but effectively mistress of the Hermannsburg mission community. She married Carl and moved to remote Central Australia from Germany, having only met him once. Through her diligence and observation infant mortality was reversed at Hermannsburg just as everyone else in Australia assumed that aboriginal people were dying out; 
Gillen - telegraph master and Justice of the Peace at Alice Springs, he issued the warrant for the arrest of Mounted Constable Willshire on a charge of murdering aborigines; he was Baldwin Spencer's collaborator (supplier of the raw information) on their seminal books of Australian anthropology, The Native Tribes of Central Australia and The Northern Tribes of Central Australia. He and Spencer's focus was on the Eastern and Central Aranda. The trip to Palm Valley was an infrequent foray into Western Aranda country.
Kempe - Hermann Kempe was one of the three founding missionaries of Hermannsburg (1877). He played a key role in ending police persecution of the aboriginal population and reconciling traditional clan enmities. He supplied plants to Baron von Mueller (founder of Melbourne's Botanic Gardens), who named several plants after him. He also wrote the first Aranda grammar and prepared a wordlist which Gillen used in his researches. Descendants of Kempe find themselves respected at Hermannsburg to this day.
Naemi -Nathanael's mother; widowed young, she became the partner of Eraminta who was shot by Mounted Constable Willshire. She was also Willshire's lover, and John suspects sexual jealousy among Willshire's motives for shooting Eraminta. She was brought down to Port Augusta for Willshire's murder trial but not called to give evidence on the grounds that she couldn't speak English. (I lived in Willshire Street, Alice Springs in 1981!) 
Palm Valley - a narrow valley in the Krichauff Range 123 km southwest of Alice Springs. It is noted for its population of Livistona mariae (Red Cabbage Palms), unique survivors of central Australia’s tropical past.

You see, this paragraph is packed with significance. Then you have John's personal touch - not T.G.H. Strehlow, the great transcriber of Aranda myths, but 'my father'.

And 'Nathanael'? And this is where Frieda's recognition really grabbed me. Because I had a recognition moment too. In 2007 I was driving from Alice Springs with a couple of Aranda friends out to Ipolera, west of Hermannsburg. We were going to do the big circuit, leave Ipolera, go past Gosse's Bluff (Tnorula)

Gosse's Bluff, the meteorite crater, from Tyler Pass

over Tyler Pass and back to Alice via Glen Helen Gorge (Mangama). As we approached Ntaria (Hermannsburg) on the way out, B. pointed out to me the Ellery floodplain. "Over there," he said, "is a place called 'Mirrulantharrakala' [as I transcribed it]." It meant "where the woomeras were exchanged". "All this", he said, "was Rauriwaka's country."

Rauriwaka! I had read about him in T.G.H. Strehlow's books. He was the Honey Ant Chief of Ljaba, who provided T.G.H. Strehlow "with no fewer than 33 myths and traditions, and 569 song verses'" (Songs of Central Australia, page xxxvi). I had experienced a moment of recognition with my previous reading.

But recently I read the above passage in John's book. I knew also that Rauriwaka had been one of the assistants on T.G.H.'s translation of the New Testament into Aranda. His Christian name? Nathanael. 

If you liked this blog, others of mine on Central Australia are:

Victory over death and despair in a bygone age (thoughts on John Strehlow's The Tale of Frieda Keysser), 5 Nov 2012
Considering the aboriginal land of Altjira, 20 May 2012
Opera in a land of Song, 29 July 2012
Drowned Man in a Dry Creekbed - Happy New Year 1993, 6 August 2012
Virginia in the Desert, 10 Sep 2012