Benevolence

by Julie Janson

…

  The weeks turn to months and the women and children walk towards Katoomba. They gather lomandra seeds and yams but the rain has long gone and now they are hungry in the hot, dry summer. They are constantly alert for waibala men on horseback as they are known to kidnap Koori women and rape them. The land has less food, and cattle graze over yam fields and destroy what little food there was. Mary is growing thin and worn and has lost hope of seeing Boothuri again. She guesses that he is dead but still hopes that if she stays with his tribe, then one day they may be reunited.

  One day, as the women pass a remote hut, a farmer’s wife calls from a window. She has a beautiful smile. Mary is in rags but she smooths her wild hair and knocks on the door and the woman appears, kindness shining through her as she beckons to them. Mary wonders how she could live like this, all alone in this wild country. The woman puts fresh damper on china plates outside the hut. She spreads each piece with plum jam and it smells wonderful. Mary is afraid that it could be poisoned, but they are starving. They are out of control as they rush towards the food, screaming and scratching. A girl with wallaby teeth plaited in her hair is first to the pile and Mary uses all her strength to push her away. They might have ripped each other apart for a piece of scone. Hunger tears you up.

  CHAPTER NINE

  1822: A SOLDIER IN THE BUSH

  Governor Macquarie departs for England on the Surry. He is sent off with affection by waibala. He is sent off with relief by the families of Aboriginal people whom he has massacred.

  …

  A striking, gangly young woman with a beautiful broad face and deep brown eyes, Mary walks along a dirt track. Her tangled, curly black hair is tinged with gold highlights from the sun. Filthy rags now replace her clean smock. She has become accustomed to sleeping on the earth with a dog or two to keep her warm. Now she has new sisters, mothers, aunties, and grannies. Mary polishes her violin as if it is a precious child.

  The women walk all day and eventually come to a tranquil valley where they make their camp. They unload coolamons and digging sticks and make a fire. Mary pulls sheets of paperbark from a tree and builds a shelter gunyah. Others make low roofs of bark and lay down their cloaks for the children to sleep. This place is full of cycad palms and towering tree ferns. Small cascades of fresh water trickle and blue wrens and silvereyes skip in the low tea-tree bushes. Bandicoots and echidnas covered with prickles are scarce but one of the women catches a small goanna to roast.

  Mary walks for miles through bush looking for wirriga, goannas, burriga, bandicoot and buduru, potoroo by checking for small scratchy tracks. She eats some wild bambal orange and sucks the water from axe holes she cuts in the roots of a gum tree. She finds a fertile place near a rock overhang and is digging for midin, yams, when she hears the terrible sounds of marching, tramping boots and soldiers’ breath. Then gunshots and screams. She hides behind a tree. She is so starved she feels she can disappear. She holds her breath as the men pass by and when she comes out of hiding she is disoriented and cannot find the women, or their tracks. She is lost.

  In the afternoon, Mary stumbles upon a bush shack in a clearing and finds that it has a fireplace and a tea kettle. The coals are still hot and she makes herself at home and boils some water to pour on the tea she has discovered in a tin. Around the room are papers and even a telescope. So this shack must have some kind of person living there who studies nature. She is reaching for a tin cup just as the door opens. A young soldier stares at her in surprise. She is terrified because he is blocking the doorway, the only exit. He looks at her and momentarily seems not sure what to do. She charges at him but he puts out his hands in the way that a man would calm a wild horse. He makes a shushing noise and holds up a leather bag of coins. They clink as he smiles at Mary. She is terrified as he moves closer.

  ‘No! Get away! Don’t touch me!’ She says.

  ‘You speakee English, what wonders next, you pretty thing. Come on.’

  She makes no sound as he edges forward and puts his hand over her mouth. She struggles and he pushes her to the floor. This red-coated soldier is young with dark fluff for a beard and sweat on his skin. His bright green eyes flutter at her and she can’t breathe. He takes his hand away and mumbles something but she cannot understand. Then he opens his coat and presses her against the dirty white shirt front. He strokes her cheek and eyelashes and smiles. She is still and stiff as he unbuttons his pants’ placket and his pizzle, his windji, is sticking out like a pink beacon. He growls and Mary bites him on the cheek – a deep teeth-gnashing bite that shocks him and gives her time to slither out of his grasp. She swallows the blood and is out the door, sprinting. She doesn’t stop until the shack is long gone.

  She is exhausted but must continue to look for the women’s camp. All the rest of the day she searches and it is nightfall when she comes across the camp. The fires are still burning but there are no women or children. Just smoke, like a silent song, weaving into the sky. The coolamons have been tossed into a pile, the broken fishing mootin spears and digging sticks tossed into the bush. They have flown, are captured, or dead. She calls out but not with full voice because she is scared that any cry will bring the soldiers with their muskets. Perhaps they will come back one last time to make sure everyone is dead, or maybe the old granny will return to find her; yes, she will wait. Amongst the broken coolamons she finds the miraculous parcel of fur that hides her violin and bow. She takes it in her arms – it is warm and alive and a message to live.

  Mary lies down and pulls paperbark over herself. She hopes to be taken into the heavens with the sky people. She falls asleep but soon wakes up and peeps out of her cocoon. Some meat had been cooked on a fire near the edge of the clearing – it looks like a goanna tail but she is too afraid to move. In the growing dusk, she hears the cries of swooping swallows, the insect catchers, and falls asleep again.

  In the morning Mary crawls into the sunlight and darts to where she had seen the cold black meat, but it’s gone. Only a smudge of grease remains on the stones. It must have been taken by quoll cats. She sucks the grease off the stones, retrieves a waddy to use for hunting and gets clear of the camp. Mary drinks water from a spring surrounded by maidenhair ferns and, with her thirst slaked, she begins to muddle together a sort of plan. A plan to live, even though it seems everyone she knows is either dead or gone to the waibala.

  It comes to Mary that she must return to Parramatta and not wait for Boothuri. So she sets off on her long walk towards the east. At night she sleeps in terror. Between the rocks there are spirit beasts with red skins and helmets of horns. She sees devil-devils everywhere where goong spirits teem across the earth and she has no fire to ward them off, and she is determined to survive.

  …

  Finally Mary arrives in Parramatta and she speaks aloud to herself and promises not to be abused again. She remembers the weight of Mrs Shelley’s musket and its shiny barrel. She longs to buy or steal such a weapon. She can feel the fierce ancestors’ blood in her veins. This is what regaining her soul is about. She will murder or maim any man who tries to rape her or harm those she loves. She now knows how to prime a musket and how to hold it steady against her shoulder. Her fingers twitch at the possibility.

  As she walks through the streets she is surprised to see men of all types steal glances as she glides past. She is admired, despite the filthy rags and her worn-out appearance. She has a waddi and possum skins to trade tucked in her skirt and her wild hair flows around her face.

  In the town, Mary sees food in abundance. She has been sipping from creeks and eating any midin, yam or damun, wild fig she can forage and sipping nectar from waratahs and nibbling bracken tips. Here there are piles of potatoes on carts and overflowing sacks of green and yellow corn. She observes the ladies carrying lace parasols made in England who laugh as they tiptoe through the mud and rubbish and order their convict servants to purchase goods. It is market day and men carry sacks of flour and are paid for their labour by a fat man in a waistcoat. She looks at th
em receiving money and wonders how she can earn some coins to buy a meal. She plays the violin and one man tosses her a ha’penny.

  After a long morning, Mary stares at the cake stall but no-one is paying for her music. Some children throw rocks at her. She throws them back. She does not beg and her defiance radiates from her eyes.

  The new Governor of New South Wales, Major General Thomas Brisbane, is led to a gathering of natives on the edge of the town to satisfy his curiosity about the ‘Indians’. His aide-de-camp follows him with a ledger. A phrenologist doctor is there too, measuring the heads of any blackfellow he can find. He pays them with a coin, so they line up. The cold iron calliper is placed on foreheads and measurements are written down to deliver to Joseph Banks from the Royal Academy in London. The doctor is a celebrated grave robber who will receive native skulls from any contributor. It is said that Banks also owns Chief Pemulwuy’s skull and has preserved heads of countless others. This doctor is a flesh boiler. A bone weigher. He stinks of English sweat as he strokes Mary’s head. He wants to take it with him as a fine specimen but it is, inconveniently, still connected to her body. Mary’s head would be studied as an example of pure native blood who has learnt to read; she is an interesting specimen.

  Mary listens to him talk about the rebel natives who were run into a dead-end and shot. There were sixteen men, and they were hung on a hill. Some freed convicts cut off the heads and took them to Sydney where the government paid them thirty shillings and a gallon of rum each.

  ‘Why do you want our heads?’ she asks.

  ‘Young lady, I am a scientist. And my craniological specimen studies indicate that the intellectual abilities of natives are by no means despicable,’ he says.

  ‘That might be; the people who take our heads are wrong. And, if you take them, you might be despicable,’ Mary replies.

  When the phrenologist has finished pawing her head, he hands her a coin.

  Then she sees a ragged Aboriginal man crawling on the mud and she thinks that he must be hungry, as he waits for something to happen. His eyes dart to every food stall. He is searching for his life, his lost Country, his dignity. White people press handkerchiefs to their white noses and avert their gaze. To them, he is like a worm or a snake that has to be skipped over on the way to buy bread or perfume, or rum.

  Mary watches as he sits holding up a cup. His face is turned towards the mud. He has no strength to look up. She has a lump of damper that she shares with him. She takes her violin and reaches down to touch his shoulder. He shudders and she leans down and whispers:

  ‘Music.’

  She plays a jig and she is rewarded with a smile. After a few tunes she waves at him and walks away. The square is crowded with settlers and Mary hopes she will not meet Mrs Shelley, who would be shocked at her disreputable appearance. In the distance, she sees some Native School children walking in a line. In her hurry to escape being seen, she nearly knocks over a fragile old woman – it is Granny Wiring. They greet each other with joy.

  ‘Where you been?’ says Granny Wiring.

  ‘Molliming ngalbunga,’ says Mary.

  ‘You got molliming, husband, good girl?’ says Granny Wiring.

  ‘No, gone, he’s gone,’ says Mary.

  ‘I don’t want you marry waibala! You wantem your colour.’

  ‘I’ll not marry, no more,’ says Mary.

  Granny Wiring sighs and shakes her head.

  …

  It is a hot and dusty morning when a famous Wonnaruah warrior, Chief Myall from inland of Coal River walks down the cobbled street with his wives beside him. His eyes burn from behind the white ochre on his face. He strides with his possum cape flowing behind him and the red marks on his chest glisten in the sun. Strong muscular arms scarred with cicatrices hold ten fighting spears and a woomera. The talk flies around the town that he is going to attend the Annual Native Feast Day. The native grapevine is frantic: Does he intend to kill the Governor? Will he set fire to the houses?

  Servant girls gather at the gate to watch the great man pass. All manner of people fall in behind the warrior and it becomes a procession. This chief is not afraid of white men or their guns. He cracks his knuckles as his black eyes travel along the line of young women’s faces in vague recognition. He smiles at Mary and she blushes.

  After entering the main square, the chief sits under a tree with his wives near him. All around, the native feast is being prepared with bowls of bool and meat cooking on fire pits. Flags are flying and the music of a military band fills the air. Piles of government blankets are on the grass where a soldier waits to hand them out to deserving and tamed Aborigines whose names are on his list.

  The chief summons the crowd to listen to him; he holds up his hand and waits for quiet.

  ‘Soldiers kill lotta men. Wolbunga koori. Huntem down, finish up. In mountain, Gundungurra join up all mob: Darkinjung, Wonnaruah, Worimi, Awakabal, Biripai – all fighting. Lotta waibala people. Too many, I not take chest plate!’ says Chief Myall.

  The chief takes his large collection of spears and walks towards the military buildings and the courthouse, where some motley settlers have gathered. There is a festive air with a fire-eater and travelling players perform music and fire-eating.

  The settler families stare at the chief while ten troopers from the Forty-seventh Regiment led by Captain Woodrow, march towards him with muzzles loaded and muskets raised.

  Mary sees the chief’s two wives coming out of the shadows. They are worn out and wear torn possum cloaks and bend over with sorrow. One of them is carrying a large bundle of paperbark, tied with bush twine. Is it a gift?

  Captain Woodrow approaches on his piebald stallion in front of his platoon. Morning sunlight glints on his raised sabre. Mary hides her face in her cloak.

  It seems all the town is assembled to witness this meeting with Governor Brisbane, who has been summoned from his house; he hastily adjusts his wig. They meet on a road lined with bending gum trees. Hot winds blow hats from heads.

  Mary is behind the chief now and trots to keep up. He stops in front of Woodrow and glares at the soldier, waiting for him to dismount. Woodrow climbs down and stands, shorter than the warrior; his English boots are no help. There is silence except for the occasional child’s voice or a cacophony of cockatoos and crows. The Governor strolls towards the scene with his aide-de-camp and begins to sneeze into a white handkerchief. A Scottish piper begins the mournful wail of a bagpipe; it grates in Mary’s ears. But, at last, it has come, this long-awaited confrontation.

  ‘You wish to meet with me, Chief Myall? Well, I stand here at your request. As you see, I am quite naked of weapons,’ says the Governor.

  The Chief strikes his woomera against his leg and a terrible apprehension grips the crowd. Some crave the black man’s humiliation and long for a show of soldiers’ strength.

  ‘Shoot him, the blaggard!’ shouts a man in the crowd.

  Chief Myall does not blink. He holds his head high.

  ‘Nyai kummai, spears for Governor.’ The Chief places a pile of spears on the earth in front of him.

  ‘Are you surrendering?’ No-one speaks; only birds cry out. The governor coughs and wipes his face with lace.

  ‘Do you promise to stop your depredations against our settlers?’ the governor asks as he nudges the spears with his boot. The Chief just stares.

  One of the wives steps forward and solemnly places the paperbark package before the Governor’s feet. She unwraps a portion of the blanket and the governor leans over to peer inside. He sees the dead child. He reels back in shock.

  ‘Budjil budjil measles killem gurng kurung,’ says the wife.

  Mary squeezes through the crowd. She touches the child’s mother on the arm.

  ‘Don’t surrender, Chief. They’ll hang you, they are kulara angry,’ yells Mary.

  ‘Draw and quarter him,’ shouts a man.

  The Governor raises his hand.

  ‘All assembled here, let me assure you, there will not be any
punishment today. It is our Native Feast Day! He will not hang. You, Chief, must carry this message to your renegade brothers and sisters: We will hunt you down!’

  The Chief pushes the paperbark bundle towards the Governor, then wraps his possum cloak around himself tightly and walks slowly away through the crowd with his wives behind him. Many Koories follow him.

  The Governor shakes his head and gestures for the dead child to be removed by a soldier. He quickly reaches his hand to the brass gorget that hangs around Captain Woodrow’s neck on a chain.

  ‘Give me your gorget! Quickly, man!’ says the Governor. The captain pulls the brass breastplate from his neck and hands it over.

  ‘Chief, wait! My solemn duty is to represent the English Crown and to prevent treason,’ says the Governor. ‘Will you not accept a reward?’ The chief, however, does not stop or turn his head. He keeps walking away as the crowd parts to allow him through. The Governor is left with the gorget hanging limply from his hand.

  ‘He will beg for your recognition and your generous help when we hunt down the branch renegades from the Colo River,’ says Captain Woodrow. The troopers move the crowd to allow the governor to get into his carriage and, at that moment, Woodrow sees Mary. His eyes pierce hers and he nods with a grim smirk.

  Mary hears about two native girls, just past puberty, who were captured near Coal River by troopers and paraded in neck tethers through the village to an audience of people leering and laughing. They were auctioned off to a settler who wants them as maids for his wife. The soldiers who brought the girls demand that they keep them overnight. Next morning the captives are released near their new owner’s abode. They collapse by the gate all covered in gore. They had been tied to a tree and continuously ravaged throughout the night.

  Some stories are not so terrible. Mary hears how the Native School has been relocated to Richmond Road to the new Black Town, near the Aboriginal farming family’s land grant of Nurrugingy and Colebee with his sister Maria Locke.

  Mary and Granny Wiring walk along the Great Western Road to Prospect and on to the new Black Town, and arrive at the Native School mission house. Mary walks up to one of the six cottages on the Aboriginal family’s land grant, on the high bushy ground above Bell’s Creek. She sits alongside Granny Wiring with Maria Locke, who boils them an egg each on her little fire. Mary strolls among the cabbages and cabbage moths and watches the chickens and a few cows in the fenced paddock. She envies her old school friend’s fortune. The corn is ripe and she leans over the railing and breaks off a few cobs to chew. Wheat is struggling in the next row and even tobacco grows near where Mr Locke, the ex-convict husband of Maria, hoes the earth.