‘GOGGLE EYES’ SAW HIS CHANCE
TRADITIONAL Aborigines were a common sight right up until the 1950s on Koolatah Station in the Cape York Peninsula.
In those days Koolatah occupied 6000 square kilometres of land on the northern side of the Mitchell River over on the western side of the Peninsula.
It was and still is a wild and beautiful place, crisscrossed as it is with rivers like the Alice and the Palmer.
There are large areas of swamp and pandanus where herds of wild cattle and horses find sanctuary.
With this much water, it was a land of milk and honey for the freshwater tribes that lived here, hunting the waterways and forest country for food. Wallaby, pig, duck, barramundi, catfish and large freshwater prawns meant that living was good.
In one such camp in the 1930s lived an Aborigine known by the name of Goggle Eyes. Goggle Eyes had allegedly committed some sort of crime and so in order to bring him to justice, troopers were dispatched from Normanton, 300 kilometres to the south.
Three troopers with a tracker, pack horses carrying their swags and provisions and a spare saddle horse that would be allocated to Goggle Eyes for his ride back to the Normanton police station.
They reached the camp after eight days riding across the trackless countryside. Goggle Eyes who was in his 20s was in the camp at the time, making greenhide hobble straps for the station owner. He was blissfully unaware he was a wanted man.
The troopers rode into the camp and up to where he sat in the shade of a cabbage palm. They pointed their carbines at him and made their arrest. It later transpired that a woman Goggle Eyes was pursuing as a love interest had also caught the attention of another young man in another camp on the station.
This competitor of Goggle Eyes, in order to give himself a leg-up in the love stakes, had told the station boss that Goggle Eyes had speared a heifer and roasted it over on a fire down on the Alice River.
Acting on this information, the boss contacted the police.
It was of course untrue, but Goggle Eyes had no way of defending himself and the police were not interested in taking the extra days to try and find the spot on the Alice where the heifer had been cooked.
Goggle Eyes sat silently on his horse as they rode away from the camp and his family on the Yanco Lagoon.
He knew that no matter what happened he would never find his way back and that he would be most likely be sent to a place called Palm Island.
It was a prison island off Townsville for troublemakers like Goggle Eyes.
Palm Island was a place all northern Aborigines had heard about.
It was where people from all the tribes were thrown together as though they were one tribe, work
While the troopers were craning their necks looking for crocodiles, Goggle Eyes threw himself sideways from his horse and swam underwater, using his handcuffed hands as a paddle to pull himself forward.
ing from morning-time night-time dark.
The only way to escape was to steal a boat or a canoe and get to the mainland, but what then?
And if they were caught, the punishment didn’t bear thinking about.
Goggle Eyes mulled this over as they rode through the bush.
No one spoke. The tracker rode out in the front, showing the troopers the way home.
Later in the afternoon they came to the northern bank of the Mitchell River. Crossing the river involved a 50m swim on horseback in deep water before dry sand on the southern side could be reached.
The river was shaded with palms and big river gums. The nervous troopers dismounted and studied the water. Even though it was fresh, it was still the home of large crocodiles and whaler sharks.
They had a smoke and then remounted, riding single file into the river, one trooper in the lead behind the tracker and two bringing up the rear. Their captive was in the middle.
Goggle Eyes knew that if he was ever going to have a chance of esdark to cape, this was it. He looked around for an opportunity and saw his chance. While the troopers were craning their necks looking for crocodiles, Goggle Eyes threw himself sideways from his horse and swam underwater, using his handcuffed hands as a paddle to pull himself forward.
The troopers panicked, turned their swimming horses around, which took some doing, and headed back to the northern bank.
They fired their single shot Martini action .310 rifles into the water as the confused horses swam back to the bank.
“He’s hiding in the grass,” they shouted. They walked side-by-side along the bank, hoping to flush the fugitive from cover, firing into the grass. Still no Goggle Eyes.
The search went on.
The sun began to sink out over the water. The troopers spoke, both agreeing he had drowned or been taken by a predator under the water.
The tracker, looking downstream towards a hollow log, said nothing.
They remounted and crossed the river, riding off into the gathering dusk, leading the spare horse, its saddle empty. Goggle Eyes watched them ride away. He had watched them search the bank and heard the rifle shots and heard them curse his name.
He thanked his ancestors’ spirits that they had not tied him to his horse. It was a big mistake and one that would cost them promotion when they arrived in Normanton.
The troopers, for their part hoped he was dead. They would tell their boss Goggle Eyes had gone to the big Bora Ground in the sky.
God help them and their careers if he ever ‘rose from the dead’ and turned up in Normanton.
Goggle Eyes watched them disappear from view among the low trees. He didn’t trust them.
What if they doubled back and waited in hiding until daylight to see if he showed himself?
He lay there well up the hollow log he and his friends had played in when they were children. He dozed, dreaming of his camp on the Yanco Lagoon. His family would be thinking of him, wondering if they would ever see him again.
In the pitch black before sunrise he inched downwards, moving silently towards the water.
This was his river. He had played in it. Speared fish in it and dived for mussels hidden in the sandy bottom.
When the troopers had decided to swim their horses at that spot, his heart had leapt. He knew the big, hollow river gum that rested on the bottom four metres below the surface. Its butt, a solid mass of wood and torn roots, still anchored the tree to the bank.
When he made the jump from his horse he knew he would have to claw his way through the water handcuffed for 15 metres before reaching the end of the log on the bottom of the river. The current was with him. He would then have to squeeze into the opening and work his way upwards until he was above the water level and under a hole in the log where he could breathe fresh air. He’d done it when playing as a child. He could do it again.
He inched his way upwards, wriggling his hips, using the fingertips of his handcuffed hands like talons to grip the smooth timber inside the log.
Finally, with a final heave, he reached the egg-sized hole that had been blasted in the tree when it had been struck by the lightning bolt that had sent it hurtling into the river. He breathed in the beautiful air, looking out at the troopers as they thrashed around on the bank, shooting bullets into the grass along the water’s edge.
Before first light he slipped downwards into the river and swam underwater into the weed at the river’s edge. Making no sound he pulled himself upwards into the long grass on the bank.
He slid on his belly into the trees, not turning around until he was one hundred metres away into the undergrowth. Only then did he turn around.
He saw the red tip of a cigarette burning on the opposite bank. “Aha,” he thought. “The migaloos had doubled back, just as I thought”.
Goggle Eyes stayed low, heading in the direction of Yanco Lagoon. He was never recaptured.
(The story of Goggle Eyes is based on a true story as told by the Hughes family who took up ownership of Koolatah in 1912).