by Julie Janson
They eat dampers and roast turtle, goanna, possum meat, baked emu eggs, freshwater fish and, best of all, a stew of emu rich with yellow fat. They celebrate the sky goddess, Birrahgnooloo, who is the emu spirit and the goddess of fertility. They will make a ceremonial dance for her, a corroboree.
At last she asks about her father, ‘Biana, Berringingy?’
The people tell her he is well and that he has gone further north with his clan. Here it is almost as if Mary’s thoughts can be read – her fear and discomfort, and her world of waibala somehow polluting her. Some women ignore her and talk behind her back. She notices that the Gundungurra headman, old King Louis, is watching her with licking lips that pucker below the bone in his nose.
Mary sleeps a way off from the others with Boothuri, but the ground is hard on her back. She tosses and turns and wonders what will happen to her. She wonders whether she has forgotten her people’s ways. Dark figures move against the black night sky and weapons are placed outside gunyahs.
In the morning, some women take Mary by her hands and lead her to a possum cloak where they pat the place for her to sit.
‘Ngulluwa, sit down,’ they say.
The women paint her face with yellow ochre, her hair is plaited with white cockatoo feathers and a necklace of tiny grey and silvery shells threaded onto a human hair string is hung around her neck. Small animal teeth are scattered amongst echidna quills that are on threaded necklaces around the women’s necks. The women are happy to see her painted up for the renewal of earth ceremony. The waratahs are blooming and the women teach her some steps with the accompanying beating of possum skins stretched over their knees. Mary is told that the waratah is a sacred flower for these women. The Dreaming story tells of two mobs fighting by the river with much blood spilt filling waterholes, and the sky spirit wept and the waratah appeared from the earth to heal the land.
The women dance in a small group echoing each other’s light steps. They stretch stringybark thread between their hands and they sing the old songs. They sing tales of the Dreaming and how Garangatch the giant eel chases the quoll cat across the mountains and lives in deep pools. The dancing by a fire goes on late into the night.
In the camp, piles of kangaroo bones lie near the fire and some camp dogs chew on them and snap at each other. Mary’s flour is used to cook dampers in the ashes and she eats one with cooked goanna, its skin curling in green and white patterns; then she tastes turtle and possum.
That night, Mary takes her bundle to the fire and magically produces her precious violin. She plays to the tribe and they laugh and tap their hands on their thighs in time to the music. It is miraculous to hear such sound from a wooden object. The women gather around Mary to touch the instrument.
Two men appear in the clearing. One is a majestic Wonnaruah warrior from the north and has a commanding presence. The other man, thin and staggering, carries many spears and has a wound on his shoulder. The old women surround the wounded man and help him by applying red gum sap to his wounds and binding them with spider web and paperbark.
Mary watches with eyes lowered. These men are curious about her. She cannot look at them as some are in taboo relationships but she is yet to work out who is who. Only some skin brothers and sons can be spoken to. She will make many mistakes and be laughed at. Her kinship teaching was so long ago. They seem to want to dissect her and explore all her belongings and body. She is shy and covers herself in a cloak. Some men seem to regard her as a potential wife. She is frightened.
The night crickets chirp as she holds tightly onto her violin and her remaining waibala clothes. Mary tells herself that she will be safe but a louder voice screams that these men will change everything. These warriors will decide what happens to Boothuri and he has no say; by law he must show his allegiance to them first for they are warriors and messengers from the frontier wars.
Her senses are alert and she cannot sleep because she can feel her husband slipping away, abandoning her. Boothuri will be forced to leave her to go out on raiding parties with the men, even though he means to return to her. She holds tight onto his shoulder and he murmurs in his sleep.
Before dawn, Boothuri takes his spears and joins a party of men hunting kangaroos with their dogs. Mary follows behind with some of the old women. The group arrives at sunrise in a clearing where a large group of animals feed on grass. They make camp and wait for the hunters’ return.
Wombats lumber past and hide in burrows. Baby joeys poke noses from their mother’s pouches and an old man kangaroo scratches his chest as he leans back grandly on his huge thick tail, his ears erect and twitching. A smaller group of rock wallabies are close to Mary, grazing.
Birds call in the soft golden light and Mary is enthralled by the cooing of topknot pigeon and the shrill whistle of a whipbird.
Meanwhile, the men slink through undergrowth and motion to each other. They are covered in roo shit and earth to disguise their human smell. The old man kangaroo sniffs and stands tall and alert. He scratches his chest again, his head on one side listening for danger. Mary follows some distance behind the hunters and watches from behind a tree as some of the tribe’s dogs run off, sniffing their prey. Yelping and growling, the dogs catch one young male kangaroo and bring it down. Mary looks away. Kangaroo is her totem; she cannot eat it or kill it.
Quietly, the hunters creep along the ridge. Men close in on some fighting kangaroos and woomeras whir as they let fly a flurry of spears. Mary watches as a kangaroo is dragged back to the camp for cooking. The women open the animal with a silcrete knife and they rip out the entrails to feed the dogs. They have built a deep pit of fire and filled it with hot stones to place inside the gutted animal. The animal is placed on coals. The men strip sinews from the legs to use for twine and hafting spearheads. Boothuri singes fur off the tail and offers some bloody flesh to the oldest men, who blow to cool it and chew the delicious meat and spit out pieces of fur. When the feast is cooked, the old ones are given the best pieces of meat, then the hunters and last of all the young women and children. Mary is given a half-eaten kangaroo bone but shakes her head.
Later that day, the hunters speak of fighting the waibala. They plan to join Gundungurra in attacks on waibala near Picton or head west to join their one-time enemy, the Wiradjuri. These people have made raids on their camps to steal women for countless years, but now they must join forces.
The headman, Wargun, has a deep hatchet-scarred brow and he looks at Mary. She shrinks from his intense gaze, her heart pounding. The thought for running back home to the school is intense. This terrible talk of battle is hard to follow and her lack of language makes it a struggle to understand.
‘Werowi, girl, nguyangun, give me,’ says Wargun. Boothuri shakes his head and will not answer. He hangs his head so the old man will see his respect, while Mary stands next to him. She lowers her head and hunches her shoulders and grimaces as though she is deformed. She is still and silently begs her lover to choose her and not his tribal obligations, but she knows he will always leave her if asked.
‘Nyindi, molliming beal, nyindi mittigar, naiya, gumirri,’ says the old man. Boothuri hears him saying that he cannot marry Mary because his skin is wrong. Wargun wants Boothuri to give Mary to him. He wants her gumurri, her vagina. Boothuri refuses to give her up and a heavy atmosphere descends around the young lovers. Boothuri leads her away, his head low. Perhaps he cannot win.
Mary can taste the misery of being forced to sleep with the old man and she can smell his sweat and power. She knows he can use Karadji, Cleverman, magic to call her if he wishes. She would be one of his five wives, the youngest and the most desired, but distrusted by her sister wives. The old man smiles at her and a lightning bolt travels from her head and into her guts and vagina. He is powerful. Mary knows enough to understand that she could be beaten if she doesn’t obey. That night, she can’t sleep and presses her shivering body against Boothuri.
That night Mary dreams of Boothuri speared in the neck with his skin torn off a
nd a dozen spears in his chest – they are hook spears that cannot be removed. Blood is weeping from his wounds. The colour is seeping from his face leaving only his skull. She dreams of dead humans walking with animals’ spirits as they rise in the air. And she dreams of her vagina stolen and taken by the old magician; she wakes with a jolt, hot and sweaty. They both hear old men discussing the marriage on into the night. To their relief they hear that the men will accept this marriage. So many tribal rules are being disregarded in these killing times. Mary can continue to sleep with Boothuri for now.
At daybreak, the old leaders Wargun and Old King Louis agree to let Boothuri keep Mary as a wife providing she can offer information about waibala doings. Boothuri hands over his precious woomera and best spears as payment to satisfy the old man.
…
In the morning, Mary hears the men speak about the frontier war and the warrior bands who are attacking outlying farms. She hears of Aboriginal families hung from trees to rot in the wind and bodies strung up alongside the stretched corpses of wedge-tailed eagles and dingos all in a row, like so much vermin. She still shudders as they describe the death of troopers, and Boothuri sounds as cruel as the senior men. She has known soldiers who are not devils.
The men discuss the thousands of newcomers arriving in ships in Sydney Town and how they crash through the bush smashing the fragile undergrowth, cutting down the oldest, tallest and most sacred trees – even carved burial trees. Log-splitting men follow the axe men and the sound is deafening, night and day. Fiery pits burn all night with wasted bark. Her peoples’ footpaths have become bullock tracks with deep greasy mud churned by huge wagons full of logs. The tiny fruits and flowers are being crushed. Nothing is left of the forest’s ceremonial sites. Their stories cannot be told if the places and sites of the ancestors are gone. The waterholes are ruined by cattle and the goona-filled water cannot be drunk.
But then a man with hard eyes speaks. He is Old Jack and is much feared by all women because he has taken many of them by force. It is a shameful secret. He is known to rape and kill waibala and Aboriginal women from distant clans, but he has gone unpunished in these confusing killing times. He tells them that the tribesmen are preparing to destroy corn crops and drive the waibala from the country and that a man had been speared in a nearby farm and that he was half-eaten by wild pigs.
They hold a discussion of war strategy and plan to raid isolated farms for goods. It is a matter of survival to take the waibala’s corn where once daisy yams had flourished. Mary sits quietly with the old woman, close enough to hear their talk.
She has a terrible foreboding.
Boothuri offers information about the town and she grows nervous as plans are made. She pictures Mrs Shelley with the children and knows she will be asked to reveal details of the white men and the troopers. Someone with her knowledge of English is valuable property, and she can see Old Jack watching her. He has a stone hatchet and a coiled rope for scaling trees in his waistband. The rope is like her father’s and this makes her sad.
Mary is given a stone by a granny and told to care for it. It is held in a tiny woven bag. The old woman smiles and seems to see everything that Mary has been or ever will be. It is unnerving – she feels like her insides are on the outside.
The old woman takes out the stone and twirls it in her hands. Her eyes close, and she conjures a vision for Mary. Flashes of power, out of a mist is a cliff, a site, a special place alive with a spirit and someone swimming under water. An eye is staring at her from the clear fresh stream. Unblinking. It is giant eel, burra, and it is piercing her forehead with its power, as if it will rush straight through her.
Old Jack comes towards Mary as she crouches next to the granny. Her breath is pumping and her mouth is as dry as dry wind. He is old but still tall and muscular and is covered in battle scars. He is terrifying. He holds a shield with a tribal design and holds a hard wooden club. His cheek has a fresh sword slash across it. How many men has he killed? How has he been able to lead all the Darug and Gundungurra warriors and not be shot? The tribes have become mixed up, what with the destruction of their tribal boundaries. He is laughing at her and she pushes away her fear as she stands up. She clenches her fist with her head bowed and thinks, ‘If you touch me I will kill you with my bare hands.’ She hopes to be protected by the old women as she stares at the man’s gnarled toenails. He demands that she tell them about troopers and guns. She shakes her head.
Mary tells him she is a schoolgirl with no knowledge of these things. Her eyes do not look up. She prays they will not ask Boothuri about Mrs Shelley’s school. She would rather die than let these men know about the school. Boothuri is quiet and looks away when he is questioned. Mary watches his hand as it quivers by his side with the slightest signal to her to be careful and very quiet.
In the early hours of the morning a band of warriors, laden with spears, leaves the camp. They are painted with ochres and their fierce faces are lit by fire. Boothuri does not go with them. He watches, stiff with anxiety. If he left, Mary knows he would not come back.
After a few days, Mary wants to move on to a place away from her fears. The sound of bellbirds and kookaburras echoes across the mountain but she is restless and unhappy gathering geebung fruit, grinding seeds or making bool. Mary wants to walk back to the town of Parramatta, or to a camp near the school. The thought of a return to live near waibala town tests her confused loyalties. She thinks she can be in two worlds and not have to choose.
‘Naiya yan, I want to go back to town,’ says Mary. She pleads with Boothuri to go back to Parramatta and, in doing so, feels that she has failed a test.
Each day comes and goes and they sleep on Boothuri’s cloak by a fire. At any moment she fears he will be forced to give her up. However, there is comfort in sleeping under the stars.
One morning, Old Jack arrives back from a raid accompanied by an ochred warrior, Dutburra, who is feared by the clans. He has a waibala musket with him. She wonders how he found this weapon. Did he kill the owner? Did he steal from a store or farm, or did he steal it from the school? Was Mrs Shelley lying dead in her own blood? He smells of murder and is full of mysterious power. Women weep when they see Dutburra, for he is an executioner for white and black.
‘Nyindi, come!’ says the warrior.
The warrior is caked in red earth and his elegant hair is coiled like a turban, smelling of sweet goanna oil and eucalyptus. He shakes the gun at Mary. The gun is black and heavy as he holds it against her throat. Boothuri shouts to protect her but an older man stops him. He needs to obey or be speared. Mary is not important to them. Two old women intervene. They argue with the man and shake their waddies at him. He shouts back and pulls Mary aside. He wants her to teach him how to use the musket.
He wants to fire this weapon but she claims to have no knowledge. What she does knows is that without flint and shot he will not be able to fire it. The warrior throws her to the ground and walks away, but then he is back, in a rage. He shouts that all the tribes are in terrible danger, for a waibala posse is sure to come after them. They must not stay in this place – the Bells Falls Gorge massacre, near Sofala, is still fresh in their minds. People were shot down over the falls and women raped. Dutburra stares at Mary and she is terrified.
Old Jack has cuts all over his body, raised welts from battle. He is a dark storm of anger and Mary will be partly to blame if she cannot fire the musket. Boothuri tells her that the old men will punish her, so she crawls into a gunyah to escape their eyes. No-one helps her. She knows nothing about finding the flint and powder to make it shoot. She can work in a kitchen, read a book or play a violin, but not this. Boothuri seems ashamed and she sees him collapsed, his head in his hands. Then he stands in front of the old men with his head bowed. He is trying to save Mary’s life and she suddenly understands what she must do.
Mary knows her father would want her to stand proud and be resilient, so in an instant, she changes. She’s not afraid to face them. She takes the musket an
d shows them what to do, and explains as best she can about the missing powder. The men nod. Mary carefully hands back the musket. They will need to carry out another raid.
The following day, Mary wakes up and finds that Boothuri has gone with Old Jack, the Darug, Gundungurra and Wonnaruah men, and the executioner. Every man who can travel has left on the war party. They have gone to collect other men deep in the mountains near Katoomba. She realises that she may never see Boothuri again.
…
As the months pass, the men do not return. The women grow anxious. Mary plays her violin in the dusk to find serenity and remember her life at the school. Her drive for freedom has vanished. She now only has a need to survive.
The women in the tribe cannot gather enough food to eat. There is little small game nearby and the women gather yams and wattle seed. But it is not enough and they must move on. The white hunters have massacred all the local kangaroos and there is no hunter to search further away.
The women take up coolamons and hoist the small children on their shoulders and walk the tracks to other camps. Some waibala along the way give them food, setting out flour in bags outside huts for the women. The women are careful; they have heard rumours about poisonous green-seed flour. Even clean water is hard to find because the waibala cattle have dirtied it. Their horses have dropped goona but the women know that if they float charcoal from the fire in the water, when the coals sink, the water will be clean to drink.
The rain comes for days on end and the women cry out to Birrahgnooloo, the sky spirit, to stop the deluge. They are travelling in Blue Mountains country and cross many icy-cold creeks where they stop to refill bangalow dillybags with water. One creek floods in the rain and kangaroos swim across the swollen torrent. Mary squats to refill her water dillybag and sees a struggling waibala’s dog trying to swim against the flood; she reaches out and helps it up the bank. It shivers with a begging look and runs off.