Nemarluk

Nemarluk was an Aboriginal chief of the Cahn-mah, a tribe in the wild Northern Territory of Australia. He was a fearsome warrior, and leader, much respected by his men and the neighboring tribes. Nemarluk led a band of warriors called the Redband, or Chul-a-mar.

There are some spoilers below, but really this is just a summary of Nemarluk's story - there is much more detail and explanation to be found in Idriess's excellent book.

In this book Idriess tells the story of Nemarluk's last three years, from an Aboriginal perspective as an indigenous freedom fighter, as opposed to the colonial view of him being a murderer. Nemarluk dies in 1940, in the captivity of Fanny Bay Jail, Darwin.

Nemarluk incited his men and other nearby tribes to resist the invasion of their lands by the white colonialists and the Japanese who came to fish. Nemarluk and his men attacked and killed a Japanese boat crew who had landed to take on water, while Tiger, a similar leader of a nearby band of warriors killed two gold prospectors.

For two years the white police with their native trackers hunted Nemarluk, but always he slipped through their grasp, either receiving warnings of their approach, or using stealth and speed to escape. The police however were able to capture, one or two at at time, his warriors and those of Tiger. Eventually, mainly through the work of Aboriginal tracked Bul-Bul they find Nemarluk unprepared and take him on the long trek to Fanny Bay Jail.

After an initial depression at captivity lifts (coinciding with his isolation ending, and his reuniting with his warriors in jail), Nemarluk makes a successful escape. His plan involved his whole band escaping, but the others were thwarted by the jailers.

Nemarluk again took to the wilds, but was ruthlessly hunted. It was not until the police realised they would never get close to him with their slow movements - pack horses and trudging through the complex land (areas of swamp and mangrove near the coast, waterless desert terrain inland, stony mountains in places) and they empowered the trackers to work on their own to hunt Nemarluk, that they succeeded.

The book ends when Nemarluk is returned to Fanny Bay Jail, when it simply states that he died - of a broken heart. There are different stories about his death, the most likely being he contracted pneumonia and with the deep depression he felt being separated from his freedom, did not recover. Given he had been on the run, mostly alone, for a tree year period he was physically exhausted, which makes this quite viable.

As usual, Idriess has researched and interviewed (he states in the book that he knew Nemarluk personally) and written a narrative around the facts, so much that it almost reads as a novel. It is obvious Idriess has a connection with the Aboriginals he so often writes about. He covers much of Nemarluk's story from the point of view of the police in his very good Man Tracks.

There is now a town in NT called Nemarluk, which I discovered when looking on googlemaps at the area in which this story takes place, essentially between the Fitzmaurice and Daly rivers, southwest of Darwin.

5 stars