The Mind of a Thief

by Patti Miller

  The Aborigines were considered better workers, Lee said said, especially after so many of the whites disappeared to the goldfields at Hill End. He pointed out that most of the properties were huge as squatters had seized land early on, so they needed, for instance, at least thirty men to harvest the wheat. I chipped in, feeling pleased I had something first-hand to offer, that my grandmother used to have to cook for thirty extra men at shearing time – that was as late as the 1940s.

  Lee said rural work was still available for both whites and Aborigines until after the Second World War when the ready availability of trucks, tractors, hay-balers, harvesters and electrical shearing stands meant one or two men could do the work of dozens. By the time I was born, all the farms were practically family operations, except at shearing time. There was very little extra farmhand work for whites or blacks.

  I mentioned farmers finding Aboriginal axes and grinding stones and spearheads in their paddocks. We had our two stone axes that Dad had found, but Tim had told me he knew of farmers with piles of them in their sheds.

  ‘That’s one of the problems.’ Lee was suddenly angry. ‘There’s no Keeping Place around here. Nowhere safe. Not just farmers taking it. A whole lot of stuff was given to the Land Council a few years back and now it’s all gone.’

  ‘What happened to it?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘It just needs some politician to take it up,’ I said encouragingly. ‘A country museum of Aboriginal culture. I saw a great one up at Kakadu . . .’

  Lee cut me short. ‘We’ve talked to everyone. No-one’s interested. Big business is all that counts to them. Look at Aboriginal artefacts being under the National Parks Act instead of the State Heritage Act. The National Parks Act says you must “knowingly” disturb an Aboriginal site. Doesn’t count as breakin’ the law if it’s not “knowingly”. Ha! What’s the bulldozer driver gonna say? The Act is useless.’

  He was properly angry by now, his tone scathing, way past being interested in my encouraging noises. ‘And anything collected before 1967 still belongs to whoever collected it. You might have some carved trees in your back shed and you can just say your grandfather gave them to you and grandfather is dead thirty years so who are you going to ask? It should be under the State Heritage Act where it could be properly protected but it’s never going to happen. Miners, big business.’

  His conversation swirled and veered like Joyce’s and with his intensity and wired energy it was difficult to keep up, let alone try to steer him onto my track, but it seemed like an opportune moment to ask about the bora ground.

  ‘There’s a few,’ he replied, suddenly cagey. ‘Five I know of.’

  ‘I mean the main one. The big one they used for all the initiations along the Macquarie River.’

  ‘I know where it was. Nothin’ there now. It’s a ploughed paddock.’

  He wasn’t giving anything away so I dived in and added a bit more. ‘My brother says it’s just up the other side of Nanima. A few kilometres or so.’

  ‘I could show you the documents that would tell you exactly where it was.’

  I wasn’t sure if that was an offer, or an ‘I could, but I won’t’, so I dived in a bit more. ‘I’ve got copies of all the drawings, all the carvings on the trees, you know, that, what was his name, Henderson, did originally in . . .’

  ‘Henderson, 1832. I’ve got all that. I’ve got his book.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you have, but you are saying you have a document that tells where it is?’

  ‘Yeah, when you read his journal . . .’

  ‘I’ve read it. He doesn’t tell where it is.’

  ‘Oh yes, he does! When you know the area like I do and he starts talking about five miles up this creek and down through there, you start knowin’ where he’s talkin’ about.’

  It was a strange conversation, me buzzing about like a mosquito and him swatting me away. When I listened back to the tape I could hear the pleading in my next question.

  ‘I know it’s a big ask, but would you have time to show me where it is? Take me there?’

  ‘Ah, no. You won’t get out there. It’s private property.’ He was looking directly at me, but wasn’t giving anything away.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Then there was silence.

  ‘Ah,’ I said in a semi-accepting tone.

  More silence.

  ‘So how can I get out there then?’

  ‘There’s nothin’ there.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. But I just want to stand there and feel it.’

  ‘You’d have to ask the property owner.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Not goin’ to give it to you, because I’m not goin’ to give you the location. It’s still very secret.’

  Silence again. Then Lee made an offering.

  ‘Partly it’s the property owner, his attitude is ‘it’s my land and no-one’s allowed on. Only about three or four property owners in this whole district with that attitude, and he’s one of them.’

  ‘My brother says he’s pretty sure where it is but he won’t tell me either. He’s been up on the hill across the river and looked down on it.’

  ‘I’ve been right on it. And you do get the feeling of it . . .’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I want. I’d love to go back in time. Just to see it. The way it was, I mean. I know as a woman I wouldn’t be allowed, but I’d still love to see it.’

  He leaned forward and shook his head. ‘Keeping quiet about where it is, it’s a necessary evil. Advertise it and idiots would go in and wreck things.’

  Well, it’s already wrecked, I thought, but I knew what he meant. Other sites would become vulnerable and there weren’t the means to protect them. There was no way he was going to allow me to tell the whole world where even one site was.

  We talked for another couple of hours, or rather Lee talked, heading down his own tracks, while I occasionally made an inconsequential remark. In all his stories, historical and contemporary, there was an element of setting the record straight. For him, the official line would never be swallowed, not without corroborating evidence.

  He showed me bits of pottery and bricks from the original penal commandant’s residence; he told me about McGregor finding gold in Wellington in 1839 long before the official Hargraves ‘discovery’ at Ophir; he related how, in 1830, the Wellington Aborigines had a major battle with the Molong tribe and killed fifty of them; he told me about the man known as ‘King Burrendong’, who was ‘six foot six and built like Arnold Schwarzenegger’, the leader of his people, who made the Wellington Wiradjuri feared by all the other Aborigines.

  Here it was again, this story of fierceness conflicting with the reports of how peaceful and relaxed they were. Lee explained that it was exactly because they had a warlike reputation that they could afford to be relaxed with the whites. ‘They felt superior to other Aborigines and equal to the whites. King Burrendong was respected by the whites, there was mutual respect.’

  That sounded right. You can afford to be cool when you know you’re on the top. I remembered Reverend Watson’s reports of young men over six feet tall, well built, oiled black skin, naked except for the possum skin belt, and realised how physically impressive they must have been to short, sun-reddened Englishmen.

  Not that their physiques did the Wiradjuri a lot of good in the long run. By the time I was born, they were not counted as citizens, needed passes to move from district to district, were not able to sit down in a pub and have a glass of beer – and they had become paler and shorter as well.

  Lee believed things weren’t as bad as all that. Not compared to other places. He acknowledged there was, and still is, racism – he only had to go into a shop downtown with his Aboriginal friends to see that – but generally, it was more peaceful than other p
laces. And these days in Wellington Aborigines were employed in lots of areas – the ambulance service, hospital, local council, supermarkets. I mentioned that when I had my first weekend job at Coles in the late sixties I worked with a couple of Aboriginal sisters, the Darneys.

  ‘Yep,’ he said, ‘there’s no race or gender when it comes to getting jobs – it’s who you know and there just isn’t enough jobs to go around. Unemployment is the main reason that younger and younger kids are turning to alcohol and heroin and even ice.’

  I remembered Bill Riley saying fifteen years ago that heroin had caused crime waves in Wellington. It had made me feel sick. In my twenties I had close friends who had become junkies: beautiful, clear-eyed Barbara ending up in jail; Bruce, handsome and well built, a kind of King Burrendong of our hippy gang, pasty and wrecked. Aboriginal teenagers, country kids at the beginning of their lives, being drawn into heroin because there was nothing else to do, no choices available to be made, seemed too horrible to consider. It had happened, beginning around the late seventies and, according to Lee, was still going on, with the even more insidious ice now added to the mix.

  At this point Lee launched into another angry critique of how and why the government was not doing what needed to be done. ‘People say we should just rid Wellington of dealers, we all know who they are, but in ten minutes there’d be another set of ’em. The government is never going to tackle the overall problem ’cos the economy needs crime. You think about it, for each criminal, maybe someone who has broken into a house and stolen a few things to support their habit, about sixty or so people are kept in work. You think about it – the glazier to fix the window, the carpenter or locksmith to fix the door, the shopkeepers to sell a new telly and computer, the cops and court people, solictors, builders of jails, warders. There’s a lot of jobs that would go out the window. Crime is the fourth largest provider of jobs in Australia after mining, tourism and . . . let me see . . . agriculture. That’s why nothin’ is ever goin’ to happen. The economy would collapse. It was a state government minister who told me that.’

  He added that last comment because he must have been able to see my ‘he’s off on a conspiracy theory’ look. It actually made sense to me, sounded true enough, but it wasn’t really what I wanted. Then, before I could say anything, he branched out into what he saw as the other main problem for the Wiradjuri. It took me a while to see, but I finally realised that what he was saying, while it sounded less horrifying, was more fundamental than the drug issue. It underlay drugs and the Native Title conflict and every other problem in the Aboriginal community.

  23

  Elders Usurped

  ‘The kids don’t respect the elders any more,’ Lee said.

  It sounded like the clichéd complaint: there’s no respect for the old folk these days. But before I could say anything he had launched passionately into his argument.

  ‘The reason Wiradjuri identity held together for the last 200 years was the elders. The young kids, the teenagers, they all respected the elders. Auntie and Uncle, that’s what they were called. All older people.’ He went on to explain Auntie and Uncle were titles of acknowledgment and respect. Guidance, correction, judgment, decision-making – these were the rights and duties of elders.

  ‘And it’s broken down. Or breaking down anyway. That’s the single thing that’s wrecking everything. The elders were the government.’

  It was the way all Aboriginal societies worked: respect for elders, obedience to their law. When and why had it changed in Wellington? If it had endured through the convict settlement violence and the missionaries’ attempts at indoctrination and the farmers’ appropriation of land, what had happened to finally break it down?

  ‘The Land Rights Act,’ said Lee flatly. ‘That was the beginning of it.’

  He referred to the clause that Gaynor had mentioned that gave the right to sit on a local Land Council to any Aborigine with residency. It gave everyone – Wiradjuri or non-Wiradjuri, local or blow-in, young or old – equal influence. It didn’t matter whether you were a local traditional elder or a young cluey city Koori with a paid job in an Aboriginal organisation, you still had the right to be on the council. It sounded good – equality and democracy – but democracy in practice is a numbers game requiring organisation and bargaining.

  ‘None of the elders knew about that sort of thing. Numbers, deals, huh!’ he scoffed. ‘They simply had their authority; they did not have to organise or make a deal with anyone to turn up at a meeting and vote their way. The young people, they knew how to do all that. Some of them weren’t even from the town or had been gone a long time, and gained control of the Land Council. And other Aboriginal organisations, even Joyce’s Health Centre.’

  ‘So you reckon it was the Land Councils that destroyed the elders’ authority?’

  ‘Land Councils – and the holy dollar,’ said Lee.

  There were paid jobs and corporations to organise things that the elders had done for nothing. Fairly soon, the elders didn’t have the authority over decisions they’d had before.

  ‘I reckon,’ he said, ‘the Land Councils were set up to chop the elders out of the way. Best way to get rid of something is to chop off its head and the elders were the head of Aboriginal society. Now it works the same way as white society – whoever can get to be the king of the castle.’

  ‘Personal power?’

  ‘Exactly. Same as everywhere. King of the castle.’

  It was a game we played as kids, pushing and shoving to get to the top, chanting, ‘I’m the king of the castle and you’re the dirty rascal.’ There was the pleasure of getting to the top for a few seconds and the helplessness of being pushed down and kept at the bottom. I realise now it’s the children’s game that most clearly and simply teaches the workings of our society. I wonder what that game would be for Aboriginal kids?

  In Aboriginal society elders had shared power. They had talked over issues together and continued talking until agreement was reached rather than one person imposing a decision on the others. As Henderson had said, the Wiradjuri men argued the case for war or peace ‘not as a rabble, but with the air of great speakers’. That was nearly 200 years ago in the Wellington Valley. Those speakers are gone and their descendants are not listened to anymore.

  It’s not that elders are finished with, certainly not in more traditional communities, but according to Lee and Joyce Williams and Jim Stanley, it’s on the way out. Part of me pragmatically believes it had to happen, that the younger Aboriginals could see which way the wind was blowing. Lee agreed. He made clear that he didn’t think the younger ones were bad or had any ill intent. The elders were too old to do the work now and why not have younger people who were educated in the white system paid to run things for their community. It made sense.

  ‘But,’ he said, ‘the elders should have been kept on committees and corporations out of respect. And there ought to be an Elders Corporation, above all the other corporations, and all the important decisions should be referred to them. It’s never going to happen now. Too many people after money and glory.’

  I suddenly felt the enormity of the loss. Joyce had tried to make it clear to me, saying Rose didn’t recognise her as an elder; and Jim Stanley had voiced it: For a young girl to come along and do this to the old people. But I realised at last that it was a great deal more than a loss of personal power and influence, it was the loss of a way of governing that had lasted for tens of thousands of years. It’s not to say the elders were always wise or good – although I’m certain their communal society would have resulted in less self-interest than the Western world’s individualistic one – but it did keep the show on the road for a long time. Not a person but a whole system has been usurped.

  24

  The Niece of Jimmy Governor

  Lee’s intense energy had left me buzzing. I went back to the retirement unit where my mother was waiting. She asked lot
s of eager questions, fascinated with what had been going on under her nose. Everyone might know everyone in a country town, but no-one knows all the stories, especially when there are two communities, each with their own tales.

  I rang Rose but there was no answer. I put the phone down, relieved. It had become more of a ritual I had to practise than anything else. Then Mum and I drove to the Lion of Waterloo, the oldest pub in Wellington, built in 1842 and now the only place to get a decent meal at night. In the nineteenth century it was the Cobb and Co stop, in what was the village of Montefiores, so our ancestors would have stepped off the coach here and certainly gone in for a drink. Apart from the courthouse, it was the largest building in Wellington at the time and the most popular. It was made of vertical wooden slabs like my childhood bedroom, the adze marks still visible, had a high wooden ceiling hung with a few historical artefacts and, along one wall, a huge fireplace. A plaque proudly stated that the last duel to be fought in Australia happened outside the front door in 1854. For reasons lost in time, pistols were drawn and fired but no-one was killed. It was peaceful now; the owners were lovingly restoring the rooms one by one and their customers were quietly sipping wine and beer by the fire.

  As we stood and talked in front of the crackling flames, I experienced a strong sense of reassurance. It felt tangible, like a cloak or shawl wrapped around my shoulders. William Yarnold, Ann Smith, Peter Müller, Patrick Reidy – convicts, gold-seeker and rebel – they must have all stood here by this fireplace, perhaps even at the same time. Somewhere out in the dark might have been Laureena’s Wiradjuri parents, keeping warm by their own fires. None of them could have had any knowledge of my future being, but I am inextricably made of them.

  Later on, back in the aluminium cabin, I stood on the veranda and stared down at the invisible river, glad of its presence. It’s not that water has figured much in my life – I grew up during a long drought without ocean, lake, streams and without even running water in the house – but I was reassured to know the river was there in the dark. It had flowed through this landscape for millennia. I listened to the swirl of the current and the plop of fish and the occasional truck roaring over the nearby bridge.