Bloodlines

The Pier Hotel and Landseer Building, Milang

In Milang -- a haphazard town drowsing on a lake shore with its feet in the past and an uncertain future ahead -- I met an American who was in South Australia's Lakes District to track down her Scottish ancestors.

One Saturday night in the Pier Hotel I heard the unmistakable accent and turned to see a woman of forty or fifty: tall, strong bodied, with chestnut hair silvering at the temples. She was elbowing for space at a bar dominated by boaties and fishermen. Being already there, I turned sideways to make space and beckoned her in.

“You're American,” I observed.

“Damn, what gave me away?” She forced a chuckle -- she'd heard the line a thousand times. “Also Canadian, Scots and just a little bit Australian.”

“On holiday down here?”

“Looking for family who came over a long time ago.” She offered her hand. “Jo Campbell.”

I shook the hand. “Chris Daley.” I waited till she'd received a Gordon's with Cascade tonic, then led her to the stools under the high-mounted TV. Cricket was streaming from India, where Australia was being walloped in the third test.

“You got family around here?” I wondered after a long swallow of Coopers.

“Somewhere,” she sighed, “but I can't find them.” She hunted through her bag and produced a crisp new copy of an ancient photo of two young men, sepia and soft by the standards of modern photography. I frowned over it as she told me a little.

In 1889 two brothers sat on the side of a hay wagon in the hills near Loch Lomond and looked into the camera lens. Within the year one of them would go to Canada, the other to Australia. The new Canadian, Donald Campbell, found his way to Alberta, married an English girl and sired a tribe. His boy Jamie got work in Oregon in 1912, married an American and stayed to have two daughters and a son. Jo Campbell was born in 1964 and cherished memories of 'Gramps,' a tall man in his nineties who loved to spin stories of lumberjacking in BC as a youth, and in Oregon as a man.

The other brother, Gordon, landed in South Australia at Christmas, 1889. In letters home he said he put his cash into a small property and modest herd. With the Great War raging over Europe, the local Campbells ran beef cattle along the marshy coast between Milang and Clayton; and sometime in the 1920s they seemed to vanish into the ether.

Cattle country on the shore of Lake Alexandrina.

Floods of biblical proportions frequently overwhelm this area. More than likely, Gordon Campbell was ruined in a natural disaster and wound up working on another property not far from the land he had owned.

“You've looked at the parish records?” I asked.

She took a sip of G&T and nodded. “He married a girl called Maggie. No family name was recorded.” Her brow creased. “Is that weird, or did the locals often forget the bride's maiden name in those days?”

“Not as a rule,” I mused. “She might have been indigenous. Maggie probably wouldn't have been her birth name, and it's possible the parson omitted the full name because he couldn't even guess how to spell it.”

“Indigenous?” Jo's eyes widened.

For a split second I wondered if she might take umbrage. You stumble over racism in the least expected places, but these days it's so rare, one tends to speak unguardedly. I needn't have worried.

Blue-green eyes sparkled. “I hadn't thought of that. Gives me another line of inquiry -- and I know just who to talk to.” She finished the drink and hopped off the stool. “You staying in town?”

“At the motel.” I gestured along past the shops and the historic railway exhibit. “I'm doing routine water sampling, so I'll be here a few days.”

Milang Station, end of an extinct line and now a standing exhibit. In winter or early spring it's green.

“I'll catch up with you,” she promised.

And she did. On Tuesday I heard my name called in strident tones as I stepped out of the general store with a tall coffee. “Hey, you came up with something,” I hazarded -- an easy guess, going by the big smiles.

“I talked to a retired priest, old as God, lives halfway to Strathalbyn. Father Pat remembers local Campbells in the '30s and '40s. He says they moved across the lakes before I was born. They live in some place called Raukkan. D'you know it? How d'you get there from here?”

I knew it quite well: a quiet little place on the far shore of Lake Alexandrina, in the Narrung region. “It's quite a drive,” I told her, “but the roads are good and it's pretty country.”

“No bus?” she asked hopefully.

“No bus. What's wrong with your car?”

“On the fritz. I did the rent-a-wreck thing, and I'm regretting it -- don't think I want to to take off for the wilderness in that thing.”

“Not quite the wilderness,” I chuckled, “but...” I glanced at my watch. “What the hell? Grab your bags and kick in twenty for petrol, and we're outta here.”

We were on the road minutes later. She was installed in rooms behind the Landseer building, and ran back for her bag and camera. My Land Cruiser was beat up but utterly reliable, and I pointed it at Langhorne, Wellington and, far off, Narrung, without a qualm.

The Narrung road -- in November, almost summer. Far side of Lake Alexandrina.

Good weather, chicken salad rolls and a lot of Johnny Cash passed the time. It's beautiful country: gentle hills, vast skies, and the further out you get, the better I like it. Peace and quiet settle over the land, giving a tenuous impression of how it might have been before Europeans intruded.

Narrung car ferry.

We waited for the Narrung ferry and then, just after noon, I stopped a few meters short of the town boundary. The stone gateway is marked Raukkan on one side, Nguldi Arndu on the other. 

It's an indigenous town: laid back, quiet, isolated, single storey building line, houses sprawled wide because there's elbow room aplenty -- fronting onto the vast blue expanse of the lake.

Jo read the roadside infoboards, shaded her eyes with one hand and wondered, 

 “How would I find a guy called Uncle Ben Campbell?”

Gateway to the town of Raukkan.

“Try the post office,” I suggested. “They'll definitely know where he lives. They won't hand out his address, but they can send a message. If he wants to meet, he'll be here.”

She peered back at the infoboard. “Post office...”

“Straight ahead on your right, past the clinic.” I pointed. “Look, I'll stay in the car. This is a family affair. You're the Campbells, I'm just the transportation.”

I watched her walk on into town and listened to quiet so profound, a warbling magpie seemed unpardonably loud. You don't hear such quiet in any city. I find it as humbling as it's pacifying … for a moment one realizes how infinitesimal humans are, lost in infinities of space we can't even visualize, much less comprehend.

Six assorted kids chased a soccer ball down the street; a crow called from the roof of the sandstone hall with the smart new galvanized roof; a flight of pelicans went gliding between Lakes Albert and Alexandrina, right over my head, white against the blue.

In fifteen minutes Jo jogged back up the road with a cautious smile and the wind in the copper-and-silver hair. “I'm invited to the drop-in centre for tea. Wanna be my 'plus one'?”

“For tea? Sure.” I was parched.

The drop-in centre is right by the old post office, facing the park. The kids were playing footy there now -- Aussie rules with a soccer ball, and a great time being had by all. Kids don't change, the world over; it's adults who write the rules, then break them every chance they get and make trouble. Jo and I settled in a corner of the centre, which was almost deserted at this hour. The chance to get out of the sun was welcome, and no cuppa tastes better than the one you didn't make yourself.

We waited half an hour for Ben Campell, and I held my breath, hoping for Jo's sake. She'd told me a little of her own story, and I knew she was the last of her clan from North America. The name disappeared when the daughters scattered across the globe with their husbands; after the world wars, only her father, another Jamie, remained to perpetuate the name. He passed away, leaving Jo the only surviving Campbell -- the last of her line who identified as Campbell. She'd lost touch with the distant cousins in Ontario, New Zealand, Illinois. One erstwhile Campbell daughter was said to be back in Scotland, but with the name gone and the bloodline diluted, they were difficult to find and seemed reluctant to correspond.

So here were the last actual Campbells descended from the intrepid Gordon and Donald. One was a six-foot, sturdy American; the other stepped in out of the sun, and I crossed my fingers. Ben Campbell was close to full-blood Ngarrindjeri. I stepped back, not wanting to be in the way. Someone at the post office had sent a coherent message, and Raukkan's surviving Campbell was as curious as the one from Portland, Oregon.

He was over eighty, but straight-backed, thin and wiry, with snowy hair and beard -- in bluejeans, sweatshirt, sneakers, the uniform of every generation. Ben studied Jo from under a white bush of brows. Dark eyes took her apart, limb from limb, and put her back together. I guess he recognized a fellow Campbell, because he brought out his wallet and produced an ancient photograph.

“Oh, my,” Jo whispered, and dug though her bag.

The two photos sat side by side on the table between the empty cups. Hers was a recent copy, faithfully reproducing every crease and scratch. His was old, fragile, printed on card, the original sepia, no hint of gloss. The same photo.

They pulled up chairs, sent for more tea and talked. They'd talk for hours, but I stayed just long enough to learn that Gordon married the local girl and fought with the family back home over it. He never had the chance to mention Maggie was Ngarrindjeri -- which could have been an issue a century ago -- because he'd originally promised to wait for his childhood sweetheart to arrive out here … both families back home were too furious to acknowledge another letter. A fire reduced his property to scorched earth in 1916, so he worked on a station between Clayton and Finiss until '24, and retired to Poltaloch, across the lake. His boy, Donald, married a full-blood Ngarrindjeri lass and had one surviving son to carry on the family name.

Benjamin was still alive and well, and living in Raukkan.

Jo and Ben had so much to talk about. They'd both forgotten me,so I wrote my name and number on a postcard and left it with the girl at the counter. If I was needed, they'd call.

With a smile I stepped back into the sun, hands in pockets, contemplating the drive back to Milang in the growing afternoon shadows.

oOoooOoooOo

This is fiction, though it's set in real places and the story is so perfectly possible, I'd actually be surprised if something similar hasn't happened. Maybe a Canadian tracking down Irish ancestors. 

Dave and I went right around Lake Alexandrina on my 2015 "birthday trip" -- that is, an overnight getaway, where we'll stay at the Milang Lakes motel on Saturday night, and be able to go further the next day, before turning for home. 

Here we are parked beside the infoboard described above -- the town gate is just out of frame to the right...

And here's the left-side poster you see in the little shelter there -- a kind of tourist guide to the Narrung and Corrong regions. (The image is uploaded at full size and is perfectly readable.) 

It's a gorgeous part of the world, one of my favorites. If you're interested, there's more about Milang, the Lakes District and so forth, on my old travel blog, Meander to the Max. I'm remembering four or five posts featuring Milang, so -- browse around, you'll find them.

(Dang, I need to do some work on the travel blog. There's about another 50 posts I need to make, without delay. More. Must set aside an hour or two here and there, and see what I can do.)