Photographs of Keatings Lagoon Conservation Park, near Cooktown, North Queensland , sent to this blog by much travelled correspondent Abra , brought back memories of author Xavier Herbert's account of a man called Keating , who let off steam each morning .
By Peter Simon
In l927, Herbert , a pharmacist and writer , set our for the North from Sydney, telling friends , including Japanese nobleman ,Isamitsu Kitakoji , Reader in Oriental Studies at Sydney University , who gave him a silk shirt to wear on the epic journey, he intended to walk back to his home in Western Australia and write a book about Black Velvet, the crude term for Aboriginal women as sex objects .
The idea for a such a book had been inspired by the impact in Australia of the play White Cargo,by Leon Gordon , about the taboo subject of miscegenation. Several films were subsequently made about the play ,one by MGM ,starring Hedy Lamarr and Walter Pigeon, told how white rubber planters in Malaya were said to be driven mad with desire for a native girl, Tondelayo.
Herbert made his way by various means . From Townsville , he travelled by train to Cairns , which had recently experienced a cyclone .Then it was on to Mareeba ,which he described as a wild west town . Short of money, he obtained work at a nearby railway sleeper cutters camp run by Dick Keating ,who had an antiquated sawmill ( By sheer coincidence , Abra included the following photograph of logs at Keatings Lagoon Conservation Park ).
With great gusto, Herbert decribed how Keating, suffering from a bad hernia , went through a daily ritual of ranting and raving because the sawmill engine was slow to start. He frantically cranked the engine each morning and at times would get down on his hands and knees and scream : "Lord, come down and bugger me !!!"There was a variation :" Lord, come down and bugger me black !!!!"
Keating's wife said she thought Herbert was an absconding bank clerk . Following a row with the ranting Keating, Herbert continued his journey north , into the Northern Territory ,meeting colourful people and experiencing situations which influenced his writing of the l938 Australian Sesquicentenary Award winning novel, Capricornia .
