The Mind of a Thief

by Patti Miller

  Wellington’s white history officially started when John Oxley was asked by Governor Lachlan Macquarie to explore the land west of Bathurst in 1817. This was only twenty-nine years after the first white settlement in Australia and no-one had any clue about the extent, let alone the geography, of the country they were in. Oxley’s job was to find out whether the Lachlan and Macquarie rivers flowed into a huge inland sea as people generally supposed they must.

  I’ve always liked the inland sea idea. It’s so optimistic – a gigantic circle of scalloped beaches and palm trees in the middle of Australia with Uluru as a fantasy island in the middle. Sun glinting on waves, giant waterslides down the Rock, children splashing at the water’s edge or building sandcastles, lovers walking hand in hand along the sand, teenagers eating fish and chips wrapped up in newspaper. There would be thousands of kilometres of resorts, shopping centres, high-rise apartments – casinos too, probably.

  But all Oxley found at the end of the Macquarie was a swamp full of waterbirds. There were sacred kingfishers, ibis, egrets, cormorants, spoonbills and herons, as well as cockatiels, snipe, sandpipers and godwits, some of which, it has since been discovered, migrate from as far away as Siberia, China and Japan. This was all very well, but no substitute for an inland sea.

  Along the way, however, at the junction of the Macquarie and Bell rivers – the present location of Wellington – Oxley found, on 19 August 1817, ‘a second Vale of Tempe’, the first being a valley in Thessaly in ancient Greece, celebrated for its ‘beauty, cool shade and warbling birds’. He must have arrived in a good season because he went on to say, ‘Imagination cannot fancy anything more beautifully picturesque than the scene which burst upon us.’ He described the noble and magnificent reaches of the river full of fish and mussels, swans and ducks, the grassy flats replete with emus and kangaroos, the beautiful hills and open valleys of greatest possible fertility spreading in every direction.

  According to his compass and calculations, the location was latitude 32.32.45 south and longitude 148.51.30 east. That must have been the first time anyone used a compass in my home town.

  Oxley said it was clear that the Aborigines they met along the way had already heard about them and knew they had useful implements such as axes and knives, but there is no mention of seeing any Aborigines in the Wellington Valley during the few days they stayed there. The fact is, not only were the Wiradjuri already there, but also white stockmen. Oxley’s diaries note evidence of herds of cattle at the river’s edge and a campsite, but there’s no official record of Europeans being there. History – indeed, time itself in European minds – began in Wellington the day John Oxley arrived and, although he didn’t know it, the clank of chains and swish of the lash were soon to be added to the ‘warble of birds’ in the vale of Tempe. Wiradjuri country was about to become a large outdoor jail.

  The new governor, Thomas Brisbane, liked the idea of ‘the better sort of convict’ being sent to country penal settlements rather than being kept in Sydney. He declared it would give them protection from shame, but it turns out that many of the ‘better sort’ of convict were political dissidents, likely to cause unrest, so it’s not unreasonable to suspect he had other motives for sending the troublesome as far away as possible – and out of sight.

  The site chosen was a few kilometres from the junction of the Bell and Macquarie rivers, within the traditional camping ground of the local Wiradjuri. The man to set it up was young Lieutenant Percy Simpson, who arrived in Wellington in February 1823 with a group of thirty soldiers, fifty ‘special’ convicts, and some cows and sheep and wheat. And, heaven help her, his young wife, Hester McNeill.

  Knowing how hot Wellington is in February, often above thirty-five degrees Celsius, and how many clothes women wore at that time – long dresses, stays, petticoats, pantaloons – it must have been near unbearable for Hester under the canvas tent. With all those felons about, I don’t imagine she was able to go about bare-armed or bare-legged, let alone lie outside and ponder the vast velvet-black sky aglow with stars as we had on summer nights. In the mornings, hot by 9 o’clock, she would have bathed in a tin dish and put on her pantaloons and petticoats and thought about the Wiradjuri women with their magnificent oiled black skins swimming and splashing in the river. In the evenings she would have gratefully taken off most of the layers and lain sweating on the bed next to Lieutenant Percy.

  And then when their first winter arrived, it rained for two solid months. It does get properly cold in Wellington; I remember bitter frosts and pendants of ice under the outside taps each winter. I hated getting up for school in the chilly bedroom because there was no heating and no hot shower and, as well, the dash across the frosty grass to the broken fibro toilet. We did have a wood fire in the kitchen, which my father lit first thing in the morning, and we stood around it warming hands and feet. But all the other rooms, especially the bathroom with its tin dish of water, were as cold as the huts in 1823. Still, for Hester and the rest, the cold and wet would have been more familiar and therefore not as trying as the flattening heat.

  Early May, though, should have been crisp and sunny. At that time of year there is a clarity to the air, a coolness in the mornings. These are days when it is good to be alive. I remember even my solid quiet father’s spirits would lift to exclamation. He loved May days, and even better, ‘May days in June’ as he called them. He would sit on a kerosene tin just outside the back door, his knees apart and his hands clasped between them, his felt hat tilted back, lifting his face to the sun, receiving benediction.

  Perhaps someone in those early days, a soldier, or even a convict, might have looked around and thought, maybe this is not so bad after all. A row of public buildings was erected up from the river: a commandant’s house, a brick office, a military barracks, a weatherboard jail house, fourteen bark huts, a storehouse that also housed a courtroom, flour mill and engineers’ department, and a house for a Wesleyan missionary. It looked like things were happening. At its height, the penal colony had 250 people and was supplying enough wheat for its own needs with a surplus.

  But neither the soldiers nor the convicts wanted to be stuck out there in the middle of the unending bush, surrounded by possibly murderous Natives. There were none of the pleasures of Sydney town, no pubs and no women except Native women and Hester. The convicts ‘lost’ flocks of sheep and cattle, wouldn’t work, tried to spoil crops – wheat, tobacco, potatoes, onions – pilfered food, burnt wheat stacks, waylaid supply carts; and the soldiers plotted against Simpson, circulating rumours about his mental health. Many of the convicts deserted, probably in the direction of the lost cattle and sheep, perhaps with Wiradjuri women.

  Simpson was instructed to have friendly relations with the Natives, who were to be given rewards of tomahawks, wheat and fish hooks if they caught straying cattle or runaway convicts. It seems a bizarre introduction to a ‘work for pay’ economy and to European morality. I don’t know whether the Wiradjuri did act as bounty hunters or not, although some diarists noted the ‘Natives’ distress’ at the convicts being whipped, so perhaps they were not inclined to hand over runaways. I wondered what the Wiradjuri thought of these men who tied up their own tribesmen and flogged them until their backs ran with blood.

  The penal settlement is just a paddock now on the eastern side of town, empty except for two signs, one saying Site of First Convict Settlement, 1823–1831 and the other Maynggu Ganai Site, Wiradjuri for ‘People’s Land’. I’ve driven past it many times, not really taking much notice. An archaeological survey has identified the foundations of military barracks and mud huts, a dump of bricks on the Government House site and a few horseshoes and chains. That’s all.

  It was nearly autumn by now, but still hot. I sat in the Mitchell Library at a large desk covered with books and request notes and looked around at other researchers. Each was surrounded with similar paraphernalia, the luggage for a journey into the past. A few had left their o
utspread notes and books on their desks and stood at the open drawers of the old-fashioned index where cards had been painstakingly written in ink. They were mostly young university students, researching for history degrees, I imagined, and a few people like me on an obscure personal mission. Perhaps they too felt an uncertainty in their souls; perhaps it was a national malady. At the same time I had to acknowledge that I’d felt less amorphous in the months since the dream instruction than I had for several years. There was something in uncovering the story of Wiradjuri and Wellington that had almost immediately begun to soothe the gnawing uncertainty. It felt like a balm, quieting the restlessness, but it also felt as if there were nothing else I should be doing. It’s a rare enough sensation for me, so rare that the only other times I have felt it have been when I gave birth to each of my sons and took care of them. It’s the feeling of doing something that is not necessarily pleasurable or joyful, though it can be intensely so, but is unarguably necessary. Finding food for your family or jumping out of the way of a falling tree, such actions do not need to be considered or argued and there is an exquisite simple relief in action that is outside argument. I didn’t know how the story of my one-horse town fell into that company, but it had, slipping in soundlessly like a loose page accidentally falling into the right place.

  10

  Who Will Talk to Me?

  Rose still hadn’t responded to my pleading letter. I didn’t really think she would. I couldn’t do anything more without seeming to harass her. Looking for more clues, I rifled through a box on the bottom shelf of my bookcase. The box contained notes and cards and photographs from workshops I had done with people in country towns writing their own lives. I found a snapshot of the Wellington Aboriginal Health Centre group. There was Joyce, small and neat and dainty. I turned it over and could not believe my luck. I had written her phone number on the back.

  ‘Yes, I remember you,’ Joyce said when I rang. ‘Still got your book ’ere somewhere. Haven’t seen it for a while.’

  ‘Haven’t you? Have you written any of your story?’

  ‘Nah. Too busy. I’m teachin’ Aboriginal culture to the high school kids. And I’m looking after four grandkids most of the time.’

  ‘That’s not a bad effort.’

  ‘Well, I am eighty-four.’

  Her voice was dry and ironic like my mother’s, but stronger and more direct. Her accent was flat, a bit scratchy to my ears. She sounded like someone who was used to speaking her mind.

  ‘You’re just about the same age as my mother. I don’t think she would be up to chasing grandkids.’ I could hear my own accents flattening out. ‘She’s at Maranartha.’

  ‘Oh yeah? She like it?’

  ‘Yes, they are very good to her there. But Joyce, why I rang, I was wondering if you might have time to talk to me about the Native Title claim. Gaynor said you knew about it.’

  There, I had jumped in and there was no going back. If she knocked me back, there was nowhere else to go.

  ‘Listen,’ said Joyce, ‘Rose’s committee left out Traditional Families and listed people who weren’t even Aboriginal. John Riley, my grandfather, was on the list, he was white.’ Her tone was disgusted. ‘And John Ah See, he was on it – his great grandmother on his father’s side was Chinese. And on his mother’s side, her grandmother, Annie Rare, she was a Maori. So we’ve put in our own claim, the fourteen Traditional Families they left out. We’ve got a solicitor and we’re goin’ to sort it.’ She had barely taken breath.

  I was taken aback. I didn’t know what she was talking about. I didn’t know any of the people she mentioned, although it sounded like Joyce thought Rose’s mob were not legitimate Wiradjuri. It also sounded as if another Native Title claim had been made. I’d thought the whole thing was finished with the land grant to Rose’s committee.

  ‘Can I come and see you, Joyce? I’d like to talk to you some more about this. I still come up to Wellington every month to see my mother.’ Then I added weakly, ‘I’ve meant to come and see you but I thought you would have forgotten me.’

  ‘Not that old,’ she said.

  ‘No, I didn’t mean it like that. I guess I was a bit shy.’

  ‘No, don’t be shy. Come and see me. I live in Swift Street, coupla streets over from where your mum used to live.’

  ‘Yes, I know – Swift Street. Can I make a time to meet you?’

  I didn’t notice until later that although, as far as I knew, Joyce had never met my mother, she knew where she lived.

  ‘Nah, give me a ring when you’re up here next. I’m gunna be away for a few weeks. Then I’ll be around. Any time during the week except the mornin’s. I’ll be teachin’ in the mornin’s.’

  I put the phone down feeling unreasonably exhilarated. I looked back at the photograph of Joyce, standing with the others. She was grinning cheekily. Yes, she would talk to me.

  11

  The Mind of a Thief

  Each morning on the way to the Mitchell Library I walked down the steep steps to Wooloomooloo Bay, past the grey Navy ships at dock and the wharf where my ancestors, convict and free, had clambered down the gangway onto Australian soil for the first time. I liked that I lived so near, a minute’s walk, from where they had first landed. Then I climbed up the steps on the other side, past the Art Gallery and through the Domain to the sandstone steps and columns of the library entrance. There was the mosaic map of Terra Australis on the floor and the lovely white marble staircase sweeping up to the exhibition rooms, and directly in front of me, the high doors leading into the library proper; all of it reassuring that whatever was kept in this solid, elegant vault must be important. It protected knowledge and history, but also, I realised, power.

  The Wiradjuri didn’t keep written records in the early nineteenth century so I was never going to find their version of what had happened in the Wellington Valley. How did they fill in their days, apart from finding enough food? What did they think about, talk about? What did they feel when the white invaders walked onto their land?

  I had to return to the white explorers and note-takers. Oxley remarked that when he met them, the Wiradjuri already knew that light-skinned people from the sea had come to ‘sit’, as they called it, on Dharug and Eora land on the other side of the mountains. The missionaries who arrived soon after, as well as one John Henderson, an English traveller, all moonlighted as amateur ethnologists in the Wellington Valley in the 1820s. It seems to have been the fashionable hobby for educated Englishmen of the time. They recorded the appearance, personalities and practices of the Wiradjuri from their nineteenth-century English gentlemen’s perspective. It’s impossible to know how much to rely on them.

  In one record, Tindale’s Catalogue, I came across more than fifty English spellings of Wiradjuri:

  Iradyuri, Wiradhuri, Wiraduri, Wiradjeri, Wirra’ jerre’, Wiradhari, Wirra-dhari, Wirradhurri, Wirra-dthoor-ree, Wirraidyuri, Wirraddury, Wiraijuri, Wirraijuri, Wi-iratheri, Wirrathuri, Wiradthuri, Wiradthery, Wirathere, Wiratheri, Wiragere, Wuradjeri, Wira-durei, Wira-shurri, Wirradgerry, Weradgerie, Woradgery, Waradgeri, Wiratu-rai, Wiradurei, Wirrajerry, Weorgery, Woradjera, Woorad-gery, Woorajuri, Woradjerg, Weerarthery [said to be Ka-milaroi name], Wirotheree, Wiratheri, Wooratheri, Wooratherie, Wiiradurei, Wirra-dthooree, Warradjerrie, Waradgery, Wayradgee, Wirrajeree, Wirradjery, Wir-ra’ jer-ree, Wirrai-yarrai, Wirrach-arree, Wiradjwri, Warrai Durhai, Wirraidyuri.

  I wanted to see what the Wiradjuri looked like, what they did, how they occupied themselves, but if there were so many ways for the note-takers to hear and spell just one word, their observations of daily life must have been equally open to interpretation. But the note-takers’ records were all I could find.

  According to the number of mussel shells and axes found, Wiradjuri camped around fires near the Bell River and along the Macquarie on the other side of present day Nanima for tens of thousands of years. Europeans brought
smallpox, which swept through, killing many, but they still lived a traditional life when the missionaries arrived. In a clan group of about eighty, they fished for yellow bellies, cod, catfish, turtles and yabbies, and collected mussels and hunted duck, emu and kangaroos and dug up fat grubs and roots that tasted like chestnuts and roasted them in their fires to make a feast. They gathered quandong fruit and wattle gum and caught wild bees, attaching a piece of feather-down to their sticky feet then following them back to their hives to eat their sweet honeycomb.

  I suddenly realised I had lived on this land for all my childhood and adolescence and had not eaten a single item of food that originally came from its soil or animals or rivers. My father grew wheat in lovely green rows that he harvested and drove down to the silo at the railhead where it was freighted to Sydney and sold to Australian flour mills and Chinese traders. He raised cattle and sheep too, which were trucked to the saleyards in Dubbo, the nearest large town. Once a week he killed a sheep, slitting its throat quickly and hanging it up under a gum tree overnight before carving it into cuts the next morning for his family to eat. I learned about Aboriginal children eating kangaroos and goannas in Social Studies lessons in our little one-roomed schoolhouse, but didn’t think of such animals as food that ordinary people could eat. Now there is kangaroo steak in Woolworths in Kings Cross for the international backpackers, but it is still an oddity among the displays of beef and lamb.

  The Wiradjuri received many visitors from other areas, clusters of young men or families, often daily, but it’s impossible to tell if this was usual before the note-takers came, or whether the visitors were coming out of curiosity about the new pale-skinned arrivals. One day, as noted by one of the missionaries, the group of visitors was much larger – about thirty young men walked out of the bush at once. They were well built and tall, many of them over six feet.