The Silent Country

by Di Morrissey

  ‘He’s more than that. Your story’d be far and away a better one if you spent a wee bit of time with the lad. He’s a wise one. But a quiet one. Now tell me about yourself.’

  Charlotte was insistent. She probed Veronica about her marital status, asked if she liked children, whether she had travelled and expressed astonishment that she had not been to Scotland. With this sort of interrogation, Veronica was grateful when she saw Jamie ploughing towards her even though everyone wanted a word with him as he passed.

  ‘Excuse me, Auntie, I’m stealing Veronica, we’re about to eat.’

  ‘You win,’ said Veronica as he steered her away. ‘Is Charlotte that probing with everyone?’

  ‘Afraid so. Very upfront is Auntie. My father is so much the opposite. It’s like pulling teeth to get information of a personal nature from him.’

  ‘Charlotte must frighten off your lady friends,’ said Veronica.

  ‘I don’t plan to introduce any lady friends, should they come along,’ he countered. ‘Now we’ll eat, which is a lengthy process, but I promise after lunch, you and my mum will have time together. Just the two of you.’

  ‘I’m having fun, so whatever suits everyone,’ said Veronica. She really was enjoying herself.

  Billy took Veronica’s hand and led her to the table. ‘Sit here, near me. Dad told me to look after you,’ he whispered.

  Jamie’s older sister Margaret sat on one side, and beside Margaret sat her daughter Anastasia, a pretty young teenager. On her other side was Billy and next to him Alistair, then Travis, one of Jamie’s younger cousins. The conversation was lively.

  ‘We don’t all live in Darwin. We’re just here for Mum and Dad’s wedding anniversary,’ said Margaret.

  ‘But there’s always someone visiting us,’ said Billy.

  ‘That’s because this is a fun place. Much more than Melbourne,’ said Anastasia. ‘A lot of exciting things to do here.’

  ‘Then how come you didn’t go in the cage of death?’ said Travis and everyone laughed.

  ‘I’m with you, Anastasia,’ said Veronica. ‘I refused to get in the cage with the crocs.’

  ‘My dad said he was going to show you crocodiles in the wild if you go to Arnhem Land,’ Billy said to Veronica.

  ‘Really? I’m not sure I’m really thrilled about that,’ she said.

  Billy was serious. ‘My dad will look after you. Sometimes he’s a ranger but sometimes he’s a hunter. You’ll be safe with him.’

  ‘I didn’t think crocs could be hunted, though I know they’re multiplying out of hand,’ said Veronica.

  ‘Parts of the country are still traditional lands so we could hunt because of mother,’ said Margaret calmly. ‘But there are no crocs at Brolga Springs. Any crocs Jamie hunts are nuisances which are captured and sent to croc farms.’

  Veronica stared at the sophisticated Melbourne woman and her attractive daughter. ‘You’re such an interesting lot. It’s easy to forget that you have a connection with two cultures. Your family is so cosmopolitan, your life in Melbourne sounds so interesting. If you don’t mind my asking, how involved are you with your mother’s culture?’

  ‘It’s been a slow process,’ said Margaret.

  ‘And we’re all still learning,’ added Anastasia. ‘Billy knows more than us, ’cause he’s up here. That’s why we like coming. Once a year Nana and Jamie take us back to our country.’

  ‘It means a lot to Mum because she lost her connection with her birthplace and all her family as a kid, even though in many ways it was an advantage. She’d never have got the education she did, or met Dad and travelled, or done what she has if she’d been left in a mission or on an outstation,’ said Margaret. ‘But now, being able to piece the story together, find some kin and know where she’s come from, where she belongs, means a lot to her.’

  The young people listening, nodded. Alistair leaned across the table.

  ‘Veronica, my wife’s one of thousands who were dispossessed. She recognises the advantages as well as the disadvantages. That’s why she works so hard to help those who didn’t have her opportunities.’

  ‘You must be very proud of her,’ said Veronica.

  ‘We all are,’ said Alistair, glancing down the table to where Doris sat at the head with Jamie on her right. ‘She’s a teacher by profession but, unlike me, she’s a born teacher of life as well. What she is passing on to this family, these children, everyone she meets, is of inestimable value. A great gift. But it’s hard won.’

  ‘Don’t underestimate yourself, Dad,’ said Margaret. ‘You’re pretty special too.’

  Veronica could only silently agree. Here was a man with a string of academic achievements and degrees, who, as she’d learned from Charlotte, came from a well-to-do Scottish family with a privileged upbringing but had been happily married for forty years to a part Aboriginal woman whose childhood couldn’t have been more different from his.

  Alistair gave Veronica a charming smile and lifted his glass of red wine. ‘I do not regret a moment of the past forty years. Life with our beloved Doris has never been dull.’

  Veronica returned the toast and glanced down the table and caught Jamie’s eye. As if knowing what had transpired between her and his father, he too, lifted his glass of wine in a small salute.

  As the courses of food kept appearing on the table, everyone taking turns serving, Billy tapped Veronica on the shoulder.

  ‘’Scuse me, Veronica. Dad says would you mind changing places so you can talk to some of the others.’ He helped pull out her chair, confiding, ‘They all want to talk to you.’

  ‘That’s because I work in television,’ whispered Veronica and Billy looked shocked.

  ‘No, it’s not. We don’t watch much TV and we can’t get many stations here anyway. No, they like you.’

  ‘Oh. Well, thank you,’ said Veronica, feeling chastened.

  The meal was finally over. They’d all lingered over coffee and fruit and suddenly everyone was clearing the table and a babble of laughter drifted from the kitchen as many hands helped with the clearing up. Jamie led Veronica through the house to Doris’s study, where she was sitting at her desk with a cup of coffee.

  ‘Make yourself comfortable. Do you want anything, more coffee, a drink?’

  ‘I couldn’t eat another thing, thank you. I feel guilty – I’m being waited on hand and foot and I haven’t lifted a finger.’

  ‘You’re our guest. And besides, all my children like to catch up on news over the dishes. We don’t all come together too often, so you’ve caught us on a hectic weekend.’

  ‘Happy anniversary. I hope I haven’t intruded on the family gathering.’

  ‘Heavens, not at all. But we frequently have intruders, as you put it. With such a large family who all get on, we feel it quite acceptable to foist any number of strange friends and associates in to it,’ said Doris cheerfully.

  ‘Everyone does seem very close,’ said Veronica.

  ‘Family means a lot to me,’ said Doris softly. ‘Having lost mine for most of my life.’

  ‘So you have traced some of your relatives from Brolga Springs?’ asked Veronica.

  ‘I did, eventually. And I still have an auntie out there who knew my mother and told me what happened.’

  ‘Where’s your auntie?’ asked Veronica.

  ‘She’s in Katherine. There are people there she knows and it’s still close to her country. I take her out to the old place when I go there. She might be a stooped, old, uneducated black lady, but she draws great strength and energy from being on her land. As I do. And she holds knowledge, so it’s right that it be passed on. I try to teach Jamie the little knowledge I have.’

  ‘And his sisters?’

  ‘They respect their heritage but they’ve grown up in a white world. It makes me sad sometimes that they have no lore, no country to call their own. I have no claim to my country either. I was born under a tree on Brolga Springs to a young girl, fathered by a white man who never saw me. There was another
white man who cared for me when I was a kid. I used to wish he was my father. He worked on the station a few months each year. He used to take me out mustering, let me work with the horses. That’s when I met that group of white people.’

  ‘You were with Len Buchanan,’ said Veronica.

  Doris nodded. ‘I’d never seen so many white people all at once, and they seemed so different from the people who came to the station. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the lady with the curly red hair and she smiled so nicely at me and took an interest. I can’t describe how I felt about her. I suppose it was like how you’d feel if a character in a fairytale suddenly appeared.’

  Veronica opened her handbag and pulled out one of the photos she’d printed out at the archives. ‘Is this her?’

  Doris took one look at the picture and nodded emphatically. ‘Oh, yes it is. How did you get this? This is how I’ve always remembered her.’ She lay down the picture and pulled open a drawer, took out a small silver bracelet and laid it on the desk. ‘She gave me this. I wore it for years.’

  Veronica picked it up and examined the filigree work on the chain and the small star charm that hung from it.

  Doris sighed. ‘Whenever I looked at the stars, I thought of her, imagining that she was up there watching over me. It helped me through some lonely times. I didn’t even know her name.’

  ‘It’s Marta. And we think she’s still alive. Somewhere in America we believe.’

  For once Doris was at a loss for words. Then she smiled. ‘Well, well.’

  She seemed quite affected, so Veronica asked Doris to tell her what happened to her after Mr Johns died.

  ‘The missus, as I knew her, struggled on. But for a white woman alone out there, it was tough. I suspect she was taken advantage of with some cattle deals so one day she took me aside and told me I had to go. My mother and grandmother raised me and I wanted to stay with them but the missus said I’d be taken without her there to protect me, because I was light skinned.’

  ‘Had the welfare men been out to Brolga Springs?’ asked Veronica.

  ‘Yes. I remember the kerfuffle when a black car and truck came and everyone was shouting and running and my grandmother rushed up to the house and she and Mrs Johns rubbed soot from the kitchen fire all over me and made me hide in the pantry. Mrs Johns told the white men to go down to the camp and made me be quiet till they’d gone.’

  Doris shook her head. ‘I was very lucky. Anyway, eventually Mrs Johns made me dress up nicely and pack a little port with my things in it – my writing and spelling books and my clothes. She tied some money in a handkerchief and pinned it inside my dress in case I needed it. And she drove me to the mission. She had a long talk with the mother superior. I was so scared and upset.’

  ‘But you were sent away from the mission?’

  ‘After a couple of weeks, yes. Mrs Johns had organised it. The nuns took away my money but I had hidden my precious things, so when I was told I was being sent away to school I took them without the nuns knowing and I jumped in that mail truck – I didn’t know where it was going. Mrs Johns had arranged everything.’

  ‘What were your precious things? The bracelet?’

  ‘Yes. And a photograph and a Bible. When I got to the mission I found Mrs Johns had slipped them in my bag.’ Doris smiled. ‘I kept those too. Through thick and thin.’ She reached into the drawer again and slid a small leather Bible towards Veronica and a photograph. Veronica opened the Bible and saw in the flyleaf written in a copperplate hand – ‘Annabel Johns’.

  ‘And this photo?’ Veronica studied the round-faced woman with her hair neatly coiled on top of her head. ‘Is it the missus?’

  ‘It is. I thought you’d like to see it.’

  ‘It’s so intriguing to suddenly put faces to the names,’ said Veronica.

  ‘And to know the names. May I get a copy of this picture of . . . Marta?’ asked Doris.

  ‘Of course. If we find her I’ll let you know straight away. I’m sure she’ll remember you.’

  Doris didn’t answer but sat fingering the paper print of the picture of Marta and the framed picture of Annabel Johns.

  ‘So you did well at school?’ prompted Veronica.

  Doris straightened up. ‘Yes, I did. I was sent to boarding school in Melbourne and Mrs Johns came to visit regularly and my reports were sent to her. She always introduced me as her protégé.’

  ‘You never went back to Brolga Springs?’

  ‘Not for a long, long time. By then I was eighteen and Mrs Johns was in poor health. She asked me to travel with her on a sentimental journey and she paid for me to fly to Darwin – my first time on a plane. Len Buchanan drove us down to Brolga Springs. I had no idea how she found him.’

  ‘Was he pleased to see you?’

  ‘Yes. He seemed happy enough. He was married and breeding and training horses, so we talked about horses. It was very upsetting for the missus to see the changes to the station, not all good. All the Aboriginal people had left so I had no way of finding my family.’

  ‘But you did, eventually?’

  ‘Not for many years until there was an understanding of what terrible wrongs had been wrought on Aboriginal families, which was one of the reasons I became active in trying to help fund and set up groups to help reunite families. Initially it was a needle in a haystack situation but as the awareness of what we now call the stolen generations grew, more efficient linkup programs were established. Everyone wants to know where they came from, who their parents were and what their origins are. Black, white or brindle. It’s why family is so important to us now.’

  Veronica was silent, thinking of her own family. She’d never tried, never wanted to know about distant relatives. While her immediate family was a small unit, Veronica had to admit there were not the closeknit ties in her family as there were in Jamie’s. She’d watched the interaction between his relations, the behaviour of the children who were now playing in the pool as their chores were done. No-one wanted to watch TV or a DVD – Margaret had told her such things were regarded as special treats, not used as babysitters.

  ‘Doris, just being with your family today has made me realise I don’t appreciate my own family enough.’ Veronica didn’t want to say she thought her own sister’s kids were spoilt and would not grow up with the same ethos as Doris’s family.

  Doris reached out and held her hand. ‘I hear that a lot. When you’ve lost family, you realise how precious it is. For when there is trouble and sadness, family will always stand up for you. Now, what else can I tell you that might help you with your show?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I’m a bit on overload,’ confessed Veronica. ‘Obviously the scenario I’d love would be to see you and Marta reunited, but, whether that’s possible . . . Who knows?’

  ‘Step by step, Veronica. Things will unfold. I get the sense there’s more to this story than you realise. Or perhaps you do?’ She smiled.

  ‘Yes, I feel that too. I suspect that there are stories within stories. You. Jamie. Brolga Springs and whatever it was that drew those people to follow Topov out into the wilderness to a dream of a magic land . . .’ Veronica sighed. ‘I’m a bit confused. The journalist in me is being subsumed by other emotions and that’s not very professional.’

  ‘Surely being professional is following your instincts, is it not?’ said Doris. ‘Against all the expected and obvious leads you know there is some other little track to follow.’

  ‘That’s how I’ve generally operated,’ admitted Veronica. ‘My cameraman reminded me to not let my emotions get in the way of a good story.’

  ‘Be truthful, be honest in your dealings with people, trust and take risks and you’ll be all right. I have sense you have a high degree of integrity. Jamie is cautious, but he knows far more than he realises, so don’t push him. Work with him.’

  ‘Jamie seems the one in your family most connected to his Aboriginal heritage,’ commented Veronica.

  ‘That’s because he’s on the ground – literally,’ sa
id Doris candidly. ‘He’s in the landscape. To understand the essence of what all this is about . . . that film mob that followed the big fat bearded man into the wilderness, the connection country has to the heart of Aboriginal and white people like Mrs Johns and any number of men and women, white and black, who have lived and worked in the outback, you have to get a feeling for the land itself. For Aboriginal people it has deep spiritual meaning. To the grey nomads, people who, in their later years, sell the family home and get in caravans and four-wheel drives and spend time travelling around the “real” Australia, they get a sense of what this ancient continent and its first people are all about. You can only do that by being there.’

  Veronica was nodding in agreement. ‘Yes, I’ve seen a lot of Australia, but I realise that the outback is quite special.’

  ‘Then spend time with someone who loves his country, in every sense and you might get closer to the core of what you’re chasing,’ advised Doris.

  ‘I wish I could have filmed all of this,’ sighed Veronica. ‘You put things in perspective.’

  Doris had a twinkle in her eye as she straightened up and put the bracelet, photo and Bible back in her desk drawer. ‘My dear, I’m a professional too. I didn’t get people to listen to me or sway a meeting without a little bit of a performance here and there. We can do this again. You might have different questions next time. Good luck and I’m sure we’ll be seeing you again. The door to this house is always open.’

  Jamie offered to drive Veronica back to her hotel, but she insisted on calling a taxi. Billy waited out the front of the house and when he saw the car arrive, he rushed in and told her it was there.

  ‘When are you coming to visit again?’ Billy asked, as he and Jamie walked her to the taxi.

  ‘Soon, I hope. It’s been lovely meeting you all,’ said Veronica and she meant it.

  ‘Come and see our house next time. We live over there,’ said Billy pointing diagonally across the road. ‘I’ve got a pet joey and a wompo you can feed.’