The Lake Frome Monster. Arthur W. Upfield
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Bony novels by Arthur W. Upfield:
1 The Barrakee Mystery / The Lure of the Bush
2 The Sands of Windee
3 Wings Above the Diamantina
4 Mr Jelly’s Business/ Murder Down Under
5 Winds of Evil
6 The Bone is Pointed
7 The Mystery of Swordfish Reef
8 Bushranger of the Skies / No Footprints in the Bush
9 Death of a Swagman
10 The Devil’s Steps
11 An Author Bites the Dust
12 The Mountains Have a Secret
13 The Widows of Broome
14 The Bachelors of Broken Hill
15 The New Shoe
16 Venom House
17 Murder Must Wait
18 Death of a Lake
19 Cake in the Hat Box / Sinister Stones
20 The Battling Prophet
21 Man of Two Tribes
22 Bony Buys a Woman / The Bushman Who Came Back
23 Bony and the Mouse / Journey to the Hangman
24 Bony and the Black Virgin / The Torn Branch
25 Bony and the Kelly Gang / Valley of Smugglers
26 Bony and the White Savage
27 The Will of the Tribe
28 Madman’s Bend /The Body at Madman's Bend
29 The Lake Frome Monster
This corrected edition published by ETT Imprint, Exile Bay 2020.
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publishers.
ETT IMPRINT & www.arthurupfield.com
PO Box R1906,
Royal Exchange
NSW 1225 Australia
First published 1966.
First electronic edition published by ETT Imprint 2013.
Copyright William Upfield 2013, 2020
ISBN 978-1-922384-27-0 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-922384-28-7 (ebk)
Digital distribution by Ebook Alchemy
Chapter One
Death of a Traveller
The wildfowl in the trees round the lake rose in a flurry of alarm with the shot. There was a confused beating in the sky, and hundreds of wings wove a changing pattern in the early dawn. It was still too dark to see the kangaroos that bounded off into the bush and soon the silence of the vast emptiness that is Central Australia descended again east of Lake Frome.
A lone curlew gave its mournful cry but the man who was lying face down on the sand near the bore stream didn’t hear it. He was dead. Beside him a billy-can drained its last drops of water into the sand and some hundreds of yards away an early-morning camp fire flickered and slowly died away without ever boiling the water which was its purpose. In fact, it was not until two days later that human feet again approached the clump of mulga trees which was his camp site.
The overseer of Quinambie Station was a practical man. When the owner of that station, Commander Joyce, sent for him on the morning of 12 June to tell him that their recent guest, Eric Maidstone, had failed to arrive at Lake Frome Station and was in fact two days overdue, he had suggested that Maidstone was probably still camped at one of the two bores which he would have to pass on his way to Lake Frome. Maidstone had come to Quinambie Station late in the afternoon of 7 June and had introduced himself to Joyce as a schoolteacher on vacation. Joyce had looked curiously at his heavily loaded motor-bike, but Maidstone had explained that during vacations he combined travelling holidays with the production of articles for travel magazines. He did his own photography. He had recently been commissioned, he said, to do an article on the bore country of Central Australia and he was particularly anxious to get shots of animals watering at these bores at night. Joyce had had no hesitation in asking him to stay the night at Quinambie and when he said he wished to visit Lake Frome homestead and to photograph any bores in the vicinity as well as Lake Frome itself, the overseer had been pressed into service to tell him the route and to tell him something about the country through which he would pass.
In fact, the section of country through which Maidstone had to pass had some features which made it quite unique, not only in Australia but possibly in the world. Quinambie Station was on the eastern side of the dog-proof Fence which followed the South Australian border from Queensland to the Murray River—a distance of about 375 miles. Between the homestead and this Fence was one artesian bore known locally as Bore Nine and almost immediately on the other side of the Fence lay its counterpart, Bore Ten. Some 50 miles farther west was Lake Frome homestead, and beyond it lay Lake Frome itself, some 15 miles away. Quinambie itself had an area of almost 100 square miles. Lake Frome homestead contained about 60 square miles, but distance in that area was not all.
The aborigines in the area told stories of a killer camel that had become a legend. Camels in general are cross-grained, bad-tempered animals, but this particular nomad had acquired for itself a reputation of being so incensed by the sight of any of the human race that it would attack without provocation. It was also said to be one of the largest camels that had ever been seen in Central Australia and, although the natives described it as “mad fella camel”, those on the western side of the Fence took care not to be caught away from their camps after sundown. While station workers on the eastern side of the Fence were inclined to pooh-pooh the stories of the animal, one of their number, half in jest, had christened it “The Lake Frome Monster”. Dwellers on the homesteads bordering the territory over which it roamed had stories to tell of the roaring and bellowing that they had heard on their lonely cattle camps, where sounds carry for miles in the silence of the night.
After leaving Joyce, the first thing the Quinambie overseer had done was to collect two natives from the Quinambie Camp and take them with him to follow the tracks of Maidstone’s motor-bike. The tracks were easy to follow to the first bore, and the natives pointed out that the motor-bike had stopped there and that Maidstone had lit a fire to make himself a cup of tea. Presumably the schoolteacher had stopped to take photographs. Beyond this bore the track grew very faint, but they followed it without much trouble to the nearest gate in the dog-proof Fence and followed it through that Fence towards the second bore. Shortly after leaving the gate, the track of the motorbike disappeared in a churned-up mass of sand made by cattle tracks, but on approaching the bore they had seen the bike at the edge of a mulga stand. Near the bike was a camp-fire site and Maidstone’s camera was hanging from the branch of a tree near the motor-bike. Between the motor-bike and the lake into which the bore ran lay Maidstone’s body. The body was lying face downwards with the legs half buried in the sand blown against it by the westerly wind, which was growing stronger hour by hour. The older of the two aborigines turned to the overseer and said:
“That fella camel knock white fella down and stamp on him.”
The overseer snorted at this and told his trackers to turn the body over. Sand was adhering to the wind-jacket Maidstone was wearing. The large dark stain where blood had seeped from the bullet-hole left no doubt as to how Maidstone had died.
“Camels don’t carry guns,” said the overseer tersely,