Cast of Characters

John

Caleb

Mary

Bill: their father

UNDER THE FOREST

PROLOGUE

(SETTING; A WINDSWEPT HILL, SOUND OF COWS,

MAGPIES. WE HEAR YOUNGER JOHN’S VOICE CALLING

ACROSS THE BARE HILLS)

JOHN:

Caleb! Caleb! (THE VOICE FADES) Ca-lebbb!!

JOHN:(VO)

This is a story about our land…

MARY: (VO)

…this is a story about the forest…

JOHN:(VO)

…how we cleared the land…

MARY: (VO)

…this is a story about how to forget…

JOHN:(VO)

…and about my brother Caleb…

MARY: (VO)

…my brother Caleb…

JOHN:(VO)

…who gave his bones to our land…

MARY: (VO)

…who the soil will never find…

1. PANIC

JOHN:(VO)

We went there…no, we came here…in 1879. We came

here. My father, my brother, Caleb and me. We left

the women in Melbourne – too dangerous for them. We

walked from Lang Lang, along McDonald’s Track, rested

at Poowong and turned South the way a hawk turns in

the air. We went deep, deep into the forest. Too deep

for some.

SOUND: THE SUCK OF MUD, COMPLAINTS AND BREATHING OF THE

PACK HORSE. FLOODING RAIN POURING OFF THE TREES

BILL:

Caleb. Get behind the fucken horse – hit the damn thing.

JOHN:(VO)

Caleb, get behind the fucken horse – hit the damn thing.

SOUND: CALEB CRYING

(CONTINUED)

CONTINUED: 2.

BILL:

Caleb!

JOHN:(VO)

Caleb…

SOUND: THEY STRUGGLE TO GET THE HORSE FREE

BILL:

What’s wrong with your brother?

JOHN:(VO)

’Caleb,’I said, ’be quiet. Don’t make it worse.’

 

2. DARKNESS

(NIGHT IN THE FOREST)

SOUND: THE CALLING OF MANY FROGS, MOSTLY DROWNED OUT BY

THE RAIN.

SOUND: CALEB SOBBING

JOHN:

Caleb…please

JOHN:(VO)

They say in Tasmania, the blacks forgot how to make

fire – instead they passed firesticks between groups

and tribes. In the dark, in the rain, we had no

tribe and we had no firestick.

SOUND: MATCHES BEING STRUCK AND DYING

BILL:

Fuck! Fuck!

JOHN:(VO)

I don’t know about the Gippsland blacks. They were

already gone from here. They weren’t even shadows.

BILL:

Fuck!

JOHN:(VO)

’God willing,’ my father said, ’we’ll soon have a

roof over our heads and a good pasture.’ ’We will

open up,’ my father said, ’the land, the sky, the

earth. We will return the land to God above.’

SOUND: CALEB SOBBING

BILL:

Caleb! Shut your-

(CONTINUED)

CONTINUED: 3.

JOHN:(VO)

Mouth? Eyes? Heart? I don’t remember. The rain poured

out of the darkness, night after night. In the day,

we sometimes met men coming the other way, tired,

haunted men, so that we became quietly convinced we

were heading for the front line of a battle.

3. THE SOUND OF THE AXE

SOUND: SUDDENLY, ALL IS SILENT

SOUND: BILL RUNNING THROUGH MUD TOWARDS US, BREATHING HARD

JOHN:(VO)

Then we stopped.In the morning, our father vanished

into the scrub and returned at midday in great

excitement. ’We’re here,’ he said. ’Here!’ Where else

would we be if not here? ’No,’ he shouted, ’you don’t

understand. Here! I found the survey

marks. Here! We are here!’ We were here. Here, but

not here.

SOUND: A STORM BUILDS.

JOHN:(VO)

’Nowhere’, my brother said. Nowhere

CALEB:

(DISTORTED)

Nowhere. Nowhere.

SOUND: THE THUD OF AN AXE ECHOES THROUGH THE FOREST. IN

THE DISTANCE, MORE AXES

VOICE:

(DISTANT)

Here she goes!

SOUND: THE SLOW CREAK AND FALL OF A BIG TREE, THEN A LOUD

CRASH AS IT HITS THE UNDERSTOREY AND A THUD AS IT HITS THE

GROUND

SOUND: CALEB SCREAMS

BILL:

Caleb!

SOUND: BILL BEGINS CHOPPING AT SMALL SAPLINGS TO CLEAR THE

GROUND

JOHN:(VO)

When does ’there’ become ’here’?

SOUND: A BIG SAW CUTTING TIMBER.

(CONTINUED)

CONTINUED: 4.

JOHN:(VO)

We built a bark house and hid from the rain. We

flattened a small clearing and opened ourselves to

God. I’ve forgotten this…but in the forest you lose

the sense of God’s omniscience. You just become this

creature scurrying beneath the canopy, like a

cockroach under a leaf.

SOUND: CALEB RUNNING THROUGH THE FOREST, CRASHING,

FALLING, BREATHING IN PURE PANIC.

4. HOME

(INTERIOR. A FEW MONTHS LATER. THEY’VE BUILD A

ROUGH HUT.)

SOUND: FIRE GOING IN THE HEARTH. NIGHT SOUNDS OUTSIDE

JOHN:(VO)

My father lit his pipe from the fire and I always

fell asleep to the book of Genesis, but my brother

just stared into the fire. ’Nowhere’ he mumbled.

Why? Why?

CALEB:

(DISTORTED)

Nowhere.

SOUND: A CHAIR SLIDING

JOHN:(VO)

Where are you going?

CALEB:

(DISTORTED

Nowhere…

JOHN:(VO)

Where did you go? Where did you go?

5. Interlude

(SEVERAL VOICES CALLING)

SOUND: VOICES RESONATE THROUGH THE FOREST

VOICES:

Caleb! Caleb!

6. Act Two: Mary

(ON THE VERANDAH)

SOUND: A BUTTER CHURN, A COW MOOING IN THE BACKGROUND, A

SOUND STILL RESONANT AMONGST THE TALL TREES

(CONTINUED)

CONTINUED: 5.

MARY: (VO)

My brother Caleb walked into the forest. We walk

through, we walk around, we cut tracks, we avoid and

flatten. My brother walked into the

forest. Into. Into. I see him going. I see him

walking out of the house and walking into the night.

But don’t tell no-one, because they’ll say I wasn’t

there – and I wasn’t, but I still remember it. I

still saw him go – somehow. They sent word – about

Caleb – and then my father fetched us – me and my mum

and my two sisters. He led us into the darkness. I

like it there, in the darkness – with my brother

Caleb.

SOUND: CHURNING STOPS

MARY: (VO)

’Take out all the buttermilk, or the butter will go

rancid. Mary!’ I heard you, mother.

SOUND: POURING, THEN THE CHURNING STARTS AGAIN

MARY: (VO)

They ringbarked most of the trees before we arrived –

the men did. We lived our early years there among the

dead and dying trees. Sometimes you’d hear one fall

and my Mum would cross herself because it had fallen

out of harm’s way. But mostly you’d hear the axes

going. That was one of the sounds. And there was

the birds, lots of birds. And the lyrebirds. And the

piano…

SOUND: A PIANO, FAR IN THE DISTANCE

MARY: (VO)

I always heard it. Who had a piano?

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS ON THE VERANDAH

MARY: (VO)

’Father, who had a piano?’ ’Nobody!’ he shouted. ’You

can’t get a piano down the track!’ Somewhere there

was a piano – somewhere in the forest. And somewhere

there was my brother Caleb – somewhere in the forest.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS MOVING AWAY

MARY: (VO)

Where are you going, Father? ’Nowhere,

daughter’. Where are you going. Brother? ’Nowhere,

Sister’ – the other side of nowhere. They each

searched within their own despair. Despair is never

shared.

6.

7. Night with Caleb

SOUND: LIGHT SNORING

SOUND: NIGHT SOUNDS, FROGS, THE BARK OF A KOALA IN THE

MIDDLE DISTANCE

MARY:

(GASPS)

Who’s there?

MARY: (VO)

I did see him, a shadow framed in the timbers of the

doorway.

CALEB:

Mary…

MARY:

Caleb, don’t go.

SOUND: MARY BREATHING HARD AND CRASH OF FOLIAGE AS SHE

FOLLOWS CALEB THROUGH THE BUSH

MARY: (VO)

They say I sleepwalked until I was fifteen, but they

really knew I was chasing Caleb down. He was always

just ahead of me.

MARY:

Caleb!

MARY: (VO)

He always turned to look at me from the same

spot. Then he’d sink into the grove of tree ferns

down by the creek and he’d be gone.

MARY:

Caleb! Caleb!

BILL:

(DISTANT)

Mary. Mary, for chrissake, wake up.

MARY:

(SOBS UNCONTROLLABLY)

I saw…I saw…

BILL:

We’re putting a lock on you door! We’re sick of

this!

MARY: (VO)

We’re sick of this. Sick.

7.

8. Magpies

(MORNING)

SOUND: WE HEAR A MAGPIE CALLING

MARY: (VO)

Was that the first magpie – the first true morning? I

don’t think anyone noticed their arrival. With their

first song they manage to convince us they’d always

been there. Soon the lyrebirds picked up the sound,

just as they picked up other sounds that signaled

their demise; the axe and the saw. They sang at

their own funeral.

SOUND: MOVEMENT THROUGH SCRUB.

MARY: (VO)

Every morning, my brother and father continued to

search for Caleb, though they would deny that this is

what they were doing. I always only followed John. He

searched the dark gullies and the wet south side of

the hill. He never crossed the creek east to the

neighbours, nor the invisible line south to the other

neighbours. It was as though even the worst of

conclusions respected the surveyor’s line.

MARY:

God help us.

MARY: (VO)

He always crossed the spot where Caleb stopped to

look at me. I always thought he would sense something

and stop. Then he did.

SOUND: MOVEMENT STOPS.

MARY:

John, what is it?

MARY:(VO)

He reached down and picked up something, in the very

spot.

JOHN:

You seen this?

MARY:

What is it, John.

JOHN:

It’s just rubbish.

MARY: (VO)

It was a stone axe. It was in the very spot where

Caleb always stopped. I’m sure it was the very

spot.

(CONTINUED)

CONTINUED: 8.

JOHN:

Just rubbish from before, when the blacks came

through.

MARY: (VO)

He put the axe down very carefully, reverently. And

the next day I followed him, he came the same way and

stopped again to look at the axe.

SOUND: A LYREBIRD STARTS UP

MARY:(VO)

They say that lyrebirds will imitate a sound they

have only heard once. And they pass the sound to

their children and their children’s children. One

day I’ll listen to every sound they make and know

everything about this place. Maybe one of them has

Caleb on the tip of his tongue-

7. THE CREEK

(A PICNIC DOWN THE CREEK)

SOUND: A BUBBLING CREEK. HAPPY CHILDREN, LAUGHTER

MARY: (VO)

On Sundays we would put on our best suits and frocks

and we would picnic amongst the ferns and mosses down

at the creek. The happy children look for nymphs and

water sprights, but I look for Caleb’s face in the

water. Sometimes his face hovers, sometimes it flows

downstream. The water bends his face into ever more

painful expressions, or sometimes a vicious smile.

SOUND: THE THUD OF AN AXE IN THE DISTANCE

MARY: (VO)

That’s right – the new people further down the creek.

’What sort of people work on a Sunday?’ my Mother

would say. She crosses herself as though to ward off

a curse.

8. The big clear

(SHE IS LISTENING FROM THE VERANDAH)

SOUND: MIDDLE DISTANCE, WE HEAR VOICES AND A LOT OF AXES

MARY: (VO)

The quickest way to clear the wooded slopes – cut

blazes in all the trees to weaken them, and then

choose a monster at the top of the hill to bring down

the lot.

SOUND: SHIFTING STEPS ON THE VERANDAH, SOUND OF A WHISKEY

BOTTLE, COUGHING

(CONTINUED)

CONTINUED: 9.

MARY: (VO)

But how could my father have been there with me and

not leading the cut himself. Was he already drinking

then. ’Listen now…’ he kept saying, ’listen now…’

SOUND: THE CREAK OF A HUGE TREE GOING. THEN IT CRASHES

AND TUMBLES AND SETS UP A HUGE CACOPHONY AS OTHER TREES

GO.

MARY: (VO)

Then what?

SOUND: SILENCE

MARY: (VO)

I watched my father’s face. As the trees fell he

grew more and more pale and he began to shiver with

fever. Then we set it alight and watched it burn

SOUND: A FIRE BUILDS AND DRAWS CLOSE, THEN STOPS ABRUPTLY

MARY: (VO)

No! No, it was years before we had a dry enough

summer.

SOUND: HEAVY RAIN, THEN STOPS ABRUPTLY

MARY: (VO)

First we had the rain.

MARY: (VO)

No, first we had the soil. Bare soil, rich and

dark. My father held it up to the clear, blue sky.

He tossed it up towards Heaven. ’I offer you this

soil, O God, to bless that it be full of life.’

BILL:

This is my fucking land! I sacrificed-’

MARY: (VO)

’-my first-born son for you.’ I hated my father from

that point. I thought I was just angry, but when I

calmed down the hatred stayed

SOUND: HEAVY RAIN, BUILDING TILL IT IS VERY LOUD

MARY: (VO)

The soil washed down the hills into the gullies and

then the creek. The creek ran with blood red

soil. God hated my father too – for his blasphemy

and his pride. And punished him with plagues of

bracken and wattle, and stink bugs and fleas. All

around us lay the bodies of fallen trees. We got on

with life as though the dead could be ignored. When

it was all done and when it was a burned, I never

felt Caleb’s presence again. I still look for him in

the empty land – living or dead, I still look for

him.

10.

9. interlude

(THE BURN)

SOUND: A FIRE BUILDS AND DRAWS CLOSE AND BECOMES LOUD AND

DISTORTED

VOICES:

(MORE DISTORTED THAN BEFORE)

Caleb. Caleb.

Act Three: After The Burn

10. JOHN

(THE EMPTY LAND)

SOUND: WIND ACROSS A BARE HILL

SOUND: MAGPIES SINGING IN THE MIDDLE DISTANCE, COWS

CALLING TO BE MILKED

JOHN:(VO)

The land is marginal – at best. The rains pick their

time and place – I suppose they always did.

SOUND: VERY HEAVY RAIN OUTDOORS

SOUND: SOMEONE SLIPPING IN THE MUD

BILL:

Ah Christ! John! John!

SOUND: RAIN AND MUD SUDDENLY STOP

JOHN:(VO)

No.

(LONG PAUSE)

The new pasture couldn’t hold the soil in the heavy

rain. What was I supposed to do? The creek boiled an

angry muddy red. Sometimes one or more of our cattle

washed up somewhere downstream. Sometimes we buried

stock from upstream. We mostly got by anyway,

especially if it rained at the right time. But the

land began to sag under the open sky. So did my

father, until he was brown and small like a dried out

walnut. In the forest he had been tall and upright,

but the open sky weighted him down. In the rain he

seemed to melt and give in to gravity.

11. MARY

(MELBOURNE CIRCA 1920S)

SOUND: A BUSY STREETSCAPE, TRAMS, SOME CARS, PEDESTRIANS.

THE SOUND SHOULD MIRROR THE BUSINESS AND COMPLEXITY OF THE

FOREST SOUNDS

(CONTINUED)

CONTINUED: 11.

MARY: (VO)

I don’t believe there are any ghosts in the city. The

nature of city life is Forgetting. Everything calls

to you in the here and now. This is misinterpreted

as a great failing, but it is the nature of things.

Erasure, amnesia, failing, fading.

PAPER-SELLER:

’erald! ’eeerald! Lady?

MARY:

No thank you.

MARY: (VO)

The birds in the forest…

SOUND: FOREST BIRDS

MARY: (VO)

… forget. Every song, every call erases everything

that came before. Their genius – the genius of all

nature is that it even forgets itself. That is how

it extracts energy from the moment. Even the

lyrebird – it doesn’t remember – it only performs. I

asked the lyrebird where my brother Caleb was. It

didn’t know. I asked the forest, but it didn’t know

– it has no memory only accretion and resonance.

12. JOHN

(THE EMPTY LAND)

JOHN:(VO)

My father and I found the bones a few weeks after the

burn. We had both searched, without telling one

another, maybe without even knowing we were doing

it. For weeks we searched and just when we began to

breathe again…

SOUND: SHARP INTAKE OF AIR.

BILL:

So what?

SOUND: SHARP INTAKE OF AIR.

BILL:

So what?!

JOHN:(VO)

’Just some black’ he said, from long, long ago.

BILL:

Maybe ten years ago, maybe a hundred. Who

knows? Who cares?

(CONTINUED)

CONTINUED: 12.

JOHN:(VO)

We silently buried the bones, and the only prayer we

muttered was a solemn vow to tell no-one.

BILL:

No-one. You hear me? Ever?

JOHN:(VO)

No-one.

CALEB:

Nowhere.

JOHN:(VO)

And now…

SOUND: HEAVY RAIN

JOHN:(VO)

And then, when the rains came, my father and I sat on

the veranda and watched our soil wash down into the

creek. And we both asked the same silent question –

did we bury those bones deep enough?

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