In 1909 on a remote cattle station in the vast outback expanse of Western Australia, a young black Aboriginal servant girl in her mid-teens, was accused and convicted of stealing jewelry from the station managers’ wife.
A young inexperienced attorney was assigned to go to Yorks Bluff to try the case. In those days, few older men of the bar, with knowledge and compassion of the human psyche, would commit themselves to travel too far out of their jurisdiction, least of all to such a faraway place. ‘Leave it to the young uns’ they would say! Yorks Bluff, the nearest town to the station homestead, was some150 Kms away.
After hearing the case, the young attorney, who was judge and jury, said in his closing statement…. ‘No other person could have taken the jewelry’! Even though none of it was ever found amongst the girls’ possessions. The hearing lasted less than six hours and he found the young Aboriginal girl indisputably guilty. With that conclusion he banged his gavel on the bench and declared the case closed.
He sentenced the young Aboriginal girl to death by hanging, which was to take place the following day, the very day after he announced the guilty verdict and the sentence. He could then close the file on the case and move on.
The humble little shack where she lived near the homestead, and everywhere near the shack, where she might have hidden the jewelry, was thoroughly searched by every stockman on the station. There was a handsome reward offered to whoever found it.
Nothing was ever found !
Australia, being what it was in the early years of the 20th century, before WW1, the incident became widely known, but almost exclusively amongst indigenous people, the Aboriginals. They communicated to each other throughout the country by their ‘trued and tried’ method; ‘The bush telegraph’
Australians were amazed that most native people were familiar with the story, especially those living in major urban centers, yet few white people knew of the incident.
It was some time before it began to filter into those communities where the more progressive of colonial society lived, those who recognized indigenous people with higher esteem.
When the news did break out, over a year later, there was significant public outrage.
White Australians, at the time, mostly of European decent, took little interest in Indigenous culture. They looked upon black Aboriginals as ignorant, uncivilized and incompetent.
It was some time before a general awareness of the suppression and blatant discrimination native people had to suffer, despite their indigenous origins to the continent. Black people then where widely mistrusted, grossly misunderstood and invariably blamed for much of the petty crime. Punishment handed out to them was usually severe
Steve Cole, a young reporter from the Sydney Global Times was given the assignment to investigate the case, because of the controversy it caused. The more progressive white urbanites wanted to know what really happened, to know why the punishment had been so severe.
The only evidence presented to the Judge during the trial at Yorks Bluff, was that an open box containing Jewelry was kept on the centerpiece of a dressing table, one of several pieces of furniture in the wife’s bedroom.
Besides the wife, the servant girl was the only person to have access to the bedroom. The station manager had long since moved into a separate room from his estranged wife and for some time had no reason or desire to enter her bedroom.
The girl dusted and cleaned the furniture every day, often twice a day if the wind was blowing!!
The homestead was located on a dry dusty hilltop overlooking the vast expanse of the outback, unprotected from the hot, dry, dust laden wind that blew frequently. Dust was a constant problem for it would settle on everything throughout the house.
The wife, who had given evidence at the trial, told the judge that the girl was well aware of the jewelry box and it’s contents, in fact, she said, whenever she went for an occasional walk around the homestead, she knew the girl would go into the bedroom to look at herself in the mirror, wearing various pieces of her jewelry.
There was no one to testify against this statement because she was the only one to give evidence. The girl was the only person who cleaned the home, who had access to the whole house. All the cooking was done by an older indigenous man who never strayed further into the house than the kitchen, and he, on principle, would never talk about the girl, least of all if he knew she had done something wrong.
The wife’s statement was merely an assumption, but the judge gave it credibility. He did not consider the girl may have had no appreciation of the value of jewelry, that it had no significance in her indigenous culture. To him it was a foregone conclusion that every piece of missing jewelry could have only been taken by the girl.
To the surprise of the station manager and his wife, the young reporter was given complete access to the homestead by the cattle station owners, who, as it happened, also owned the Sydney Global Times.
In Australia, large cattle stations to this day are owned by big corporations.
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He was given a room in the house with independent access for an indefinite period. He was obligated to discover the mystery of the missing jewelry because few believed the girl could have taken it, especially since none of it was ever found.
When he began the assignment, he spent some time looking through the bedroom from where the jewelry was stolen. The characteristics of all the furniture, as well as the jewelry box and where it was kept in front of the fixed mirror on the center piece of the dressing table.
He noticed a rectangular mirror was hinged on each side of the fixed mirror. These could be positioned to any independent angle, so that someone sitting on a stool facing the mirror, could adjust each side to get various images of themselves. It was typical of a dressing table many women used for putting on make up.
He also noticed the dressing table was located on the opposite wall, directly across from a big window that commanded a spectacular view of the vast open range. In fact, he had a clear reflected image of the view sitting in front of the mirror and could also see reflections of views to the outer sides of the window when he adjusted the side mirrors.
When he thought about the trajectory of the sun, he was quite sure that during its setting, later in the afternoon, it would be seen in the exposure of the window and therefore as a reflected image in the mirror.
He was quite intrigued by this simple phenomenon and decided to go back to the dressing table later in the afternoon, to watch the setting sun through the mirror, but by this time his interest had wondered away from the original objective. It really had no connection to the missing jewelry………or did it??
His curiosity of mirror reflections was becoming so obsessive, that during the setting sun he began to wonder what the reflection would look like from the exterior of the house, looking through the window into the bedroom, whether it would be any different from what he saw sitting directly in front of the mirror.
He discovered It was quite different, in fact quite blinding from a distance because the reflection was more concentrated close up. But he also noticed something else!!
Looking through the closed window from outside, he found reflections through the mirror were quite suppressed due to a fine layer of dust that covered the window surface. However, on a quiet calm windless day, the girl – the wife told him, always opened the window to allow fresh air to circulate.
When he opened the window himself, the reflection was again quite different, but there was something else he noticed too, not as obvious with the window closed. A much smaller but very intense reflection from something below the mirror. He soon realized it was a reflection of the remains of the jewelry in the jewelry box, and further observations revealed that there were multiple reflections depending on how the side mirrors were oriented.
Having such a curious mind, he spent some time looking at the reflections, his mind completely divorced of anything that might help him with revelations to do with the missing jewelry.
The young reporter had a passion for nature and the outdoors, especially Australian wildlife. It was one of the reasons they chose him to do an investigative report. He was always given these kinds of assignments because he did them so well with great descriptive and accurate intrigue, which, to the benefit of the newspaper, attracted readership. Although it had been more than a year, the outrage in the country was still strongly evident. The story, if it could be conclusively told, would be a worthwhile venture for the newspaper.
After he had been at the homestead several days, each day casting his mind around the events that led to the girl’s conviction. The little shack where she lived near the homestead had long since been taken apart. Both the manager and his wife had also searched for the jewelry in every potential hiding place near the shack where the girl lived. Nothing was ever found.
One day when he was wondering around the homestead, he happened to walk past the bedroom window. He noticed several birds hopping around on the ground, rummaging in the soil for insects. He also noticed that two of the birds were Black Crows.
Steve knew a lot about crows, their habits and intelligence and their curiosity, and as he settled down in the heat of the day, in the sparse shade of a small bush, he sat and watched them, fascinated by their actions amongst the other birds.
Suddenly one of the Crows flew up onto the ledge outside the bedroom window. This immediately got his attention, especially when the Crow began to look through the window into the bedroom. It then occurred to him that if that window had been open, the Crow might have been attracted to something inside.
Later that day when the hot sun in the clear blue sky was an hour from disappearing over the horizon he went into the bedroom to make sure that what was left of the jewelry in the box in front of the mirror, was in full exposure of the window, because now, with his knowledge of Crows, he began to wonder whether they might have something to do with the missing jewelry.
He walked over to the window and fully opened it, then went outside and returned to his original spot behind the bush. It was from here where he had first seen the birds, and where he also had a clear view of the window, including the dressing table mirror.
As the sun settled in the western sky, it reached a point where its light began to reflect from the mirror.
It was then that he saw both crows fly over to the window ledge. One of them cautiously disappeared through the window into the bedroom and moments later he saw it return, but this time it had an object in its beak. It was a string of jewelry………… He was awestruck! He could not believe his eyes!
It became clear to him then that the Crows and not the servant girl were responsible for the jewelry theft. Clearly in his mind she had been wrongly accused, convicted, and sentenced to pay with her life.
Two stockmen on the station eventually found the Crows nest, where it was assumed, they would find the missing jewelry. Not an easy task in the vicinity of the homestead because there were not many suitable trees in which a Crow would typically build a nest. However, there was a small colony of Eucalyptus trees about two kms from the homestead. The trees were close together and each about 20m high, located in a slight depression or small valley where there was also a water trough for the livestock, always kept full and overflowing by a windmill driven pump from an artesian well.
No one had ever noticed crows roosting in the trees before. It would not have been of interest to the stockmen unless they were looking for something quite specific. After the reporter discussed his discovery with them, they all became more vigilant and discovered Crows indeed were nesting in those trees.
It became an impossible task to discover where they were taking the jewelry. The stockman Jed who climbed the tree and found the nest, was a tall, slim, dark tanned man, part Aboriginal and deeply in tune with the land that he grew up on. He had always lived on a farm with his mom and dad. His dad, an Aboriginal man, born to the land was a stockman too – on another station. His Mom was Russian.
When Jed climbed the tree and found the nest, expecting to find all the jewelry. There was nothing there!!
He smiled at the empty nest and said to himself —– good on ya Crows. Ya gonna keep them bastards guessing for a long time yet, and that’s gonna be good for our people because it will keep the story alive in the newspapers and make them whities realize how bad they treat us.
Although the reporter was highly commended for the investigative report, he never found the jewelry, never found where the Crows had hidden them, although he knew without a shadow of a doubt that they had hidden them somewhere, but smart enough never to reveal where! He was glad about that.
The crows kept the secret right to their demise. It was because they were aware of the plight of Australian Aboriginals, perpetuated by these newcomers to their homeland, the white colonialists. The Crows after all, always had respect for the Abo’s whose traditions always included them in their folk lore.
After the story was published in the Sydney Global Times and circulated throughout the country, the reaction was controversial. The owners decided to replace the station manager. A good thing as far as the stockmen were concerned, especially Jed who detested the wife for the way she treated that young servant girl. It was she who was partly responsible for the girl’s untimely death.
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One day in January 1913, early on a hot clear morning the wind began to blow and gather unusual strength. Picking up dry dust off the land, it blasted everything in its way around the homestead. The windows on the side of the house rattled behind the outer board covers that were installed every year before the high wind season. It was just as well all living things around the homestead were under protective cover except the cattle out on the lands. How they would survive these unusually high winds was unknown.
Suddenly one of the corrugated iron panels on the leeward side of the roof began to bang uncontrollably. Several came loose as the wind blew over the ridge tearing out nails holding them down to the rafters. Eventually one panel was completely torn off and swept away by the strong wind, exposing the open shallow attic. Fortunately, the house had been solidly built and besides several loose rattling sheets of corrugated iron, no damage was done to the exposed area.
The wind continued that day for several hours before it began to abate. By 4 o’clock in the afternoon it had blown itself out and there was complete calm around the homestead, hardly a sound from anywhere. Even the birds had not arisen from their hiding places.
The new station manager, who by this time had been there for 3 years, was well liked by all the stockmen. He got on particularly well with Jed who he trusted implicitly and taught him to be a skilled handyman. It was Jed who repaired the roof. Who found the missing roof panel some distance from the house and determined that it was undamaged and could be reused, nailed back onto the rafters. During his survey of the roof, before he nailed the corrugated iron sheet back into place, he climbed into the open shallow attic, more out of curiosity to look at how it was constructed, but also to double check for any collateral damage. Jed was a tall man and had to belly crawl around the attic with an oil lantern, checking all the joists and connections, to make sure they were still intact after the wind.
It was in one of the four corners that he noticed an unusual object tucked in behind a joist, below one of the corrugated panels. A pile of dry wooden sticks covering several objects that he could barely see and not immediately identify. He crawled closer to the pile and reached out to feel what was underneath, apprehensive too, because it might have been a snake’s nest. To his amazement he could feel it was pieces of jewelry, spread out underneath the pile of sticks. Because the height above the nest was barely enough for his hand and arm to fit in, he could not lift his head high enough to see much more. He reached out and by feel alone, managed to take all of what he could reach underneath the sticks. Lying on his back he looked at the jewelry, immediately concluding that this was what had caused so much controversy and grief on the station and the unnecessary end of a young life.
He was elated by the discovery in the beginning, but as he lay there, he soon began to have mixed thoughts. He thought about the girl and the price she had to pay. The former station managers wife whose lies convinced the young judge of her guilt. The reporter who revealed the truth of what really happened, who discovered it was the Crows that had taken the jewelry, the wily, cunning Crows.
Now, as he lay on his back thinking about it all, what should he do? Nobody would have been any the wiser had he kept the jewels all to himself, but he knew it was not the right thing to do, besides what would he do with them. He had no idea of their worth if he tried to sell them, he then might be accused of theft. Who knows what punishment he would received for that, after all he was of mixed blood, so the court system, such that it was, would have shown him no mercy. Finally, he went to the station manager because of their close and trusted relationship. He knew that the manager, his boss and trusted friend would make the right decision.
Between the two of them they decided a third person should be told of the discovery. The reporter Steve from the Sydney Global Times. The jewelry was placed in an ordinary wooden box and for the time being, kept in a locked storage room on the station. In two or three weeks the manager and Jed would make the long journey to Sydney to meet with Steve, and there, the three of them would discuss and decide on the destiny of the missing jewelry.
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In 1919, both Jed and the reporter, Steve, had survived the war in Europe. The two had been demobilized and repatriated back home to Australia. Jed couldn’t wait to see the old folks at the farm near Yorks Bluff, then get back to the cattle station to work the land again. He was now in his mid-twenties and a trained qualified pilot.
The war in Europe was good to him but he was smart too, and being a good handyman, a great talker and fluent in Russian, taught to him by his mother, made him that much more valuable to the Australian war effort.
He often wondered about his Abo dad and Russian Mom and how they got together in the first place. She only spoke English with a broken tongue and a big smile, but everyone liked her and liked to listen to her, talking in Abo English. His Dad was quite fluent too………, in Russian. When Jed was a kid, his Mom seldom talked to him in anything but Russian.
They were good folk; his Mom & Dad, kind as can be and so good to each other, even though they didn’t often talk to each other in front of him, she as white as a sheet and he as black as a piece coal. They were a fixture to each other, but they say opposites attract.
She came to Australia as a 10-year-old with her Dad back in 1882. He had been a farmer in the Crimea with a small holding in the foothills of the Crimean Mountains near the city of Simferopol, not too far from the coastal city of Sevastopol on the Black Sea.
He grew cabbages on his little plot of land for the local market. It was a struggle for him and his young family, his wife and two young girls. Jeds Mother was only 9 at the time and worked every day helping her dad maintain the cabbage crop, keeping the birds away, especially the Crows. The only schooling, she had was what her Mother had taught her. With the ongoing skirmishes between Ukraine & Russia, one day their little house was blown to bits by a poorly aimed cannon shot that destroyed his little house and everything inside it, including his wife and second daughter.
Devastated by the loss, her father gathered up what little he had, and now, with his only daughter, made his way to Sevastopol. There he got a job on a small Black Sea schooner that traded legitimate and illegitimate goods between Crimea and Constantinople at the entrance to the Black Sea. His daughter by then, even at that tender early age, was a smart handy little girl who worked in the Galley washing dishes and helping the cook. With her young outgoing personality and sense of humor, she soon befriended everyone on the ship.
After two trips on the schooner, he managed to pay off in Constantinople with enough money to get to Greece. From there someone told him he could find a work-a-way passage to America and start a new life. However, getting to Greece was a challenge because of Greek Turkish hostilities, Greece having only recently won its independence from the Ottoman Empire. For some reason, the two cultures did not like each other. Never had for many years. If it were not for his little girl who was so charming to everyone, Greek and Turk alike, he would have never done it. She could even make them laugh at one another. Jeds’ Mom was an amazing young girl at that early age. Her outgoing personality and charm had not changed much since then, even into middle aged womanhood.
As it happened a Turkish cabbage farmer that they met in the market in Constantinople, who he traded secrets with on getting the best out of a cabbage crop, smuggled them both across the border to a Greek Orthodox priest in Feral, a small town not far from the border. It was the priest that told them about this new place called Australia.
He now had a choice. Go to Australia or America and it really depended on finding a ship that would take him and his daughter as work-aways. At least he had doubled his chances of finding a ship.
The two of them went to Piraeus, a major Greek sea port on the Aegean Sea, not far from Athens. For two days they walked the docks, boarding umpteen ships that were destined to sail to either of those two continents. It would be the first one they could find. What money they did have was spent on overnight shelter. The sooner they got a job, the sooner they could eat as well.
He was not much of a talker. She, on the other hand, was! Although her outgoing personality impressed most Captains of the ships they went aboard, none of them saw how a ten-year-old girl could fit into the ships crew. She would only be a burden, even though they all succumbed to her charm when she talked.
It was a small three masted Barque from Norway called the Stove that they went aboard at the end of the second day. The ship was bound for Australia with a cargo of Greek Olives. The Captain Jorgen Olsen saw them as they stepped aboard uninvited. She, despite her size, leading her father up the gangway. He was a short pot-bellied little man, the captain! He had a perpetual grin, big red cheeks, a twinkle in his eye and a half-burnt cigarette butt dangling out the side of his mouth. He wore his captain’s cap that had seen better days, but it distinguished him as the boss of that little Barque!
She at that age was non the wiser but her father could tell the captain was a drinker and not too sober at the time. He muttered the introduction and established his skill with the captain, but then she took over the negotiation to mitigate any doubt he might have had from her father’s first words. She charmed the little man with all sincerity and amazed him with what she knew and what a benefit they would be to the ships crew and its needs. It didn’t take her long to persuade him. He was a soft man at heart but a good judge of character and a bladdy good captain and sailor. His crew were a testimony to that as they found out after being on the ship for just a few hours.
They landed in Freemantle, Western Australia after a long and arduous voyage from Greece. First across the Mediterranean Sea, through the Straits of Gibraltar, then against the high seas of the southeast trades below the Equator. Finally, around the Cape of Good Hope, into the 40degree latitudes of the prevailing westerlies. The tall ships never sailed well to weather so voyaging south into the Southern Ocean took a long time.
His job on the ship was the carpenter’s mate and she, worked in the galley. Like the previous ship, it didn’t take long before she had won the hearts of everyone. With her strong work ethic, and an amazing store of knowledge, she virtually ran the galley. On the voyage to Australia, one would have thought she ran the ship. Even the captain melted in her presence, and she had most of the crew at her disposal.
Australia during that era, in the mid-19th century, was not a hard place to find work out on the vast open plains. Her father had no desire to work in the city and even though she was still young, she too wanted the freedom and open air of the country.
She grew up on that farm, a few miles from Yorks Bluff and never moved away, always wanted to be close to her dad to help him out. She did until the day he died.
She had a lot of friends at that young formative age. People that came out to the farm from everywhere, but most were much older than her. The farm was never short of regular visitors. The only friend of her own age was a young Abo boy who used to come to the farm with his dad to deliver stuff on a skid pulled by a couple of Camels. The two were destined to become close friends, because whenever he was there, and that was quite often, they were always together. They liked the same things, or at least she liked the bush and took an interest in everything about it. The trees and plants, the animals, and the Abo folk law. She was like a sponge and paid attention to everything. He was too to a lesser degree. Eventually they became inseparable, their only compromise was language but that made no difference because they constantly exchanged knowledge, including teaching each other their respective languages. By the time she was 20 Jed was born.
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Back on the station Jed soon got into the rhythm of farm life following four years of war. The same manager was there. He was so glad to see Jed again and to have someone to chew the fat with over a few grogs.
When he first got back, the jewelry was one of the first topics they talked about. Five years ago, just weeks before war was declared, after they went to Sydney to meet with Steve from the Global Times, the three of them agreed that the Jewelry should go into safe keeping, locked away somewhere in a bank vault. It was valued at a significant sum of money by a prominent jewelry appraiser in Sydney.
During the war in Europe Jed and Steve became close friends. They flew in the same squadron of fighter biplanes; on the Western Front supporting allied troops who were fighting in appalling conditions in the trenches while getting bombed by enemy aircraft. It was their mission to avert the bombing raids. They were both good pilots and Jed especially, who was devasting to the enemy on the turret mounted machine gun next to him in the cockpit.
In the little off time they had between flight missions, talk was often about continuing their flying careers back home. They reckoned on starting an air mail service to sheep and cattle stations around Australia. There were not many aircraft in the country in those days and they figured they might have the money to doit, to buy at least one plane and maybe even two, if the value of that one diamond was worth what the appraiser in Sydney said it was. Just as well they decided to put the jewels in safe keeping in a downtown bank shortly before they were called up to go to war.
A question that lurked in Steve’s mind for a long time and often bought up during their talks was the origins of the jewelry? Where had the wife acquired such valuable pieces? He wondered if she had ever been aware of the value. Perhaps she had, but knew it was acquired by devious means, stolen perhaps, or maybe the proceeds of a blackmail. Probably why she never expressed any outward emotion when it began to disappear.
Steve, having known the woman and her spouse, the manager, during his research at the homestead five years ago, didn’t think much of her character, knowing how she lied in her statement to the young judge, mitigating any compassion that might have lingered in his mind before he decided on the girl’s fate.
During their frequent discussions, between the sudden sound of sirens, scrambles to get to their biplanes, then into the air to fight off attacking enemy aircraft……. those dramatic war time events. Talking about home and the saga of missing jewels and wily cunning crows, was medicine to their stress filled lives.
Another topic they often talked about, that only Jed could elaborate on was the crows hiding place in the home-stead attic. This was the unfinished story! Long after Steve had completed his conclusive report for the newspaper.
When Jed first found the jewelry, he was so surprised, he never thought to delve any deeper, to what more might be revealed of the Crows nest. He never thought there might be more to find beyond what he could reach the first time. If only he had removed more roof panels, it would have exposed the complete story and brought closure to the mystery. His focus at the time was to repair the roof as quickly as he could.
They talked about getting back into the attic. To look closer at what must have been the Crows nest!! This would mean removing one or more corrugated panels from the roof.
Jed had been back from the war several months before he had the opportunity to look at the roof once again. On this occasion there had been several days of extreme heat and no cooling wind. A good opportunity to lift the panel and look at that corner where he had originally found the nest. He unfastened the short roof panel above the joist and slid the panel up the roof to expose the attic. There in front of him, spread out over a wider area than he could reach and feel with his outstretched arm, during the discovery five years ago, was the complete and elaborate Crows Nest.
The unexpected and most astonishing surprise was, to the far side of the nest, beyond his reach the first time. Two perfectly intact, untouched dryed out skeletons of two Australian Black Crows, between them one remaining string of two large, faceted diamonds separated by a large deep green lustrous Emerald.
MAD _________________________