My Place

by Sally Morgan

  ‘I wish I’d known them,’ Mum sighed.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘You seem a bit depressed.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘What about.’

  ‘Dunno.’ That wasn’t true. I did know and Mum knew it. It was just that I needed a few minutes to collect my thoughts so I could explain without breaking down. Finally, I said, ‘It’s Lilla, I feel very close to her in the spirit. I feel deprived.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Deprived of being able to help her. We could have helped her with those old people. I feel all churned up that she did all that on her own. She never had children, we could have been her children. I mean, when you put together what everyone’s said, she was obviously working hard all day and then going out to camp and looking after the old ones, feeding them …’ My voice trailed off. Mum never said anything.

  I tossed and turned that night. The feelings I had about Lilla ran very deep, like someone had scored my soul with a knife. Too deep to cry. Finally, I turned to my old standby, ‘Where is she now?’ I asked. ‘Where are Lilla and Annie and Rosie and Old Fanny? Where are the women in my family, are they all right? I wish I’d been able to help.’ Suddenly, it was as if a window in heaven had been opened and I saw a group of Aboriginal women standing together. They were all looking at me. I knew instinctively it was them. Three adults and a child. Why, that’s Rosie, I thought. And then the tears came. As I cried, a voice gently said, ‘Stop worrying, they’re with me now.’ Within minutes, I was asleep.

  The following morning, I awoke refreshed and eager to tackle the Reserve. The deep pain inside of me was slowly fading. It would be a long time before it was completely gone. I never told Mum what I’d seen. I couldn’t.

  I was, therefore, rather surprised when she took me aside and said quietly, ‘What happened to you last night?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Last night, something important happened to you. You were asleep, or at least I thought you were, then suddenly, I saw you standing with a group of Aboriginal women. I think there were three of them and a child. I knew you were trying to tell me something, something important, but I didn’t know what.’

  ‘Oh Mum,’ I sobbed, ‘it was them!’ Her face crumpled. She knew who I meant.

  ‘They’re all right, Mum, they’re happy.’ she just nodding her head. Then she covered her face with her hands and walked silently away.

  By lunchtime, we’d pulled ourselves together sufficiently to be able to tackle the Reserve. We’d asked an Aboriginal woman called Gladys Lee if she would come and interpret for us. Jack had recommended her, as she worked with the old people through the recently established Pipunya centre. She was very happy to do so.

  Armed with our old photos, we went from house to house on the Reserve, asking about Lilla. We drew a blank every time. I couldn’t understand it.

  Finally, we reached the last house. We stepped up onto the small verandah and Gladys showed the photos to two old ladies and then asked about Lilla. No, they didn’t know her. Suddenly, I twigged from Gladys speaking that these two ladies were Topsy and Old Nancy. I asked Gladys to show them the photos again.

  Topsy took a closer look. Suddenly, she smiled, pointed to a figure in the photos and said, ‘Topsy Denmark.’ Old Nancy took more of an interest then. After a few minutes, she pointed to the middle figure and said, ‘Dr Gillespie.’

  ‘That’s right!’ I said excitedly to Gladys. I pointed to the photo containing Nanna as a young girl and got them to look at it carefully. Suddenly, there was rapid talking in Balgoo. I couldn’t understand a word, but I knew there was excitement in the air. Topsy and Nancy were now very anxious about the whole thing.

  Finally, Gladys turned to me with tears in her eyes and said, ‘If I had have known Daisy’s sister was Wonguynon, there would have been no problem.’

  ‘Who’s Wonguynon?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s Lilla’s Aboriginal name. We only know her by Wonguynon. I loved her, she looked after me when I was very small. I used to run away to her and she’d give me lollies and look after me until my parents came. She was related to my father. I am your relation, too.’

  Topsy and Nancy began to cry. Soon, we were all hugging. Gladys and I had tears in our eyes, but we managed not to break down. Topsy and Nancy pored over all the photos I had, chuckling and laughing and shaking their heads. They explained, through Gladys, that they had been on Corunna when Nan had been taken. They’d all cried then, because they were all very close.

  ‘They lived as one family unit in those days,’ Gladys explained. ‘They lived as a family group with Daisy and Lily and Annie. This makes them very close to you. They are your family. Daisy was sister to them. They call her sister, they loved her as a sister.’

  By this time we were all just managing to hold ourselves together. I tried not to look at Gladys as she explained things, because I was trying to keep a tight lid on my emotions. It wasn’t that I would have minded crying, it was just that I knew if I began, I wouldn’t be able to stop. It was the only way to cope.

  Later, we retraced our steps back down through the Reserve, stopping at each house in turn and asking about Wonguynon. It was totally different now, open arms, and open hearts. By the time we reached the other end of the Reserve, we’d been hugged and patted and cried over, and told not to forget and to come back.

  An old full-blood lady whispered to me, ‘You don’t know what it means, no one comes back. You don’t know what it means that you, with light skin, want to own us.’

  We had lumps in our throats the size of tomatoes. I wanted desperately to tell her how much it meant to us that they would own us. My mouth wouldn’t open. I just hugged her and tried not to sob.

  We were all so grateful to Gladys for the kind way she helped us through. Without her, we wouldn’t have been able to understand a word. Our lives had been enriched in the past few days. We wondered if we could contain any more.

  The following day, we decided to go to Corunna Downs station. Doris offered to come with us, as she knew the manager out there. Also, she was worried we might take the wrong track and get lost.

  The track to Corunna was very rough. Apparently, it was the worst it had been for years. After an hour of violently jerking up and down, we rounded a bend and Doris said quickly, ‘There’s the homestead.’

  When we reached the main house, Trevor, the manager, welcomed us with a nice hot cup of tea and some biscuits. We explained why we were there and he happily showed us over the house. To our surprise and delight, it was the same one Nan and Arthur had known in their day. We saw where the old kitchen had been, the date palm Nan had talked about, and, further over in one of the back sheds, the tank machine in which Albert had lost his fingers. I suppose these would be items of no interest to most people, but to us, they were terribly important. It was concrete evidence that what Arthur had told us and what Nan had mentioned were all true.

  There were no Aboriginal people on Corunna now. It seemed sad, somehow. Mum and I sat down on part of the old fence and looked across to the distant horizon. We were both trying to imagine what it would have been like for the people in the old days. Soft, blue hills completely surrounded the station. They seemed to us mystical and magical. We easily imagined Nan, Arthur, Rosie, Lily and Albert, sitting exactly as we were now, looking off into the horizon at the end of the day. Dreaming, thinking.

  ‘This is a beautiful place,’ Mum sighed. I nodded in agreement. ‘Why did she tell me it was an ugly place? She didn’t want me to come. She just doesn’t want to be Aboriginal.’ We both sat in silence.

  We stayed on Corunna until late in the afternoon, then reluctantly drove back to Marble Bar. We wanted to stay longer, but our time was so limited and we now had many other leads to follow.

  We all felt very emotional when we left from Doris’ house. She looked sad. She’d rung Aunty Elsie and told her we were coming to see her before we returned to Perth. Doris had also sugges
ted that we see Tommy Stream in Nullagine and Dolly and Billy in Yandeearra.

  Just as we were leaving, Doris said, ‘You know, I’ve got a stone from the old days. It’s a bit hollow in the middle, they used it for grinding seeds out in the bush. You think Daisy might like that? She’d know what it was for, it might mean something to her.’

  ‘I’d love it myself,’ replied Mum.

  ‘Me too,’ I chipped in.

  Doris laughed. ‘Take it, then. It’s from a time we don’t see around here any more. You show it to Daisy, it’s fitting she should have it.’

  With a mighty heave, Paul picked it up and deposited it in the back of the van. It was very heavy.

  ‘Are you sure it’ll be all right there, Paul?’ Mum asked anxiously.

  ‘It’s a rock, Mum,’ Paul grinned. ‘There’s not much you can do to damage a rock.’

  Just to be sure, Mum wrapped an old kitchen towel around it to cushion it from any bumps in the road. She wanted to preserve it just the way it was. It was a precious thing.

  We kissed everyone goodbye and headed off towards Nullagine. Mum and I were both a bit teary. Nothing was said, but I knew she felt like I did. Like we’d suddenly come home and now we were leaving again. But we had a sense of place now.

  Tommy Stream was a lovely old man. After we introduced ourselves, we explained who we were and why we had come. He told us that he was Nanna’s cousin and had been on Corunna Downs when she had been taken away.

  ‘I remember,’ he said softly, ‘I was younger than her, so when she left, I was only a little fella, but all the people cried when she left. They knew she wasn’t coming back. My kids would be related to you,’ he told Mum, ‘they’d be like your cousins.’

  Mum asked again about Maltese Sam. It was a ghost from the past she wanted very definitely settled.

  ‘That’s not right,’ replied Tommy after she suggested that Maltese might be Nan’s father. ‘I knew Maltese, he wasn’t her father. I don’t know who her father was, but it wasn’t him.’

  We talked a little more about the old days, and when it began to grow dark, we decided to head back to the Nullagine caravan park. The children were tired and hungry. We thanked Tommy for talking to us. Like Doris, he suggested that we visit Billy and Dolly Swan at Yandeearra, we decided we would head that way the following morning.

  Yandeearra was a long drive away, so we set out as early as we could. We telephoned ahead to let the people know we were coming and also to ask permission to come. We didn’t want to intrude. Peter Coppin, the manager, was pleased for us to visit and welcomed us all on our arrival.

  Before we had met anyone else, an older lady came striding towards us.

  ‘Who are you people?’ she asked.

  Mum explained who we were. The older lady suddenly broke into a big smile and hugged Mum.

  ‘You’re my relations,’ she cried. ‘Lily was my aunty, dear old thing. I knew you were my people. When I saw your car, I just knew. Something told me I was going to see some of my old people today. No one said anything to me, I just knew in my heart.’ We were amazed. Dolly then pointed to Amber and Blaze and said, ‘You see those kids, they got the Corunna stamp on them. Even if you hadn’t told me, I could tell just by looking at those kids that you lot belong to that old mob on Corunna.’

  Dolly introduced us to Billy and we sat and talked about the early days and who was related to who. He was very pleased that we’d been to see Tommy Stream as well as the Marble Bar people. He explained that others had come through, trying to find out who they belonged to.

  ‘We try to work it out,’ he told us kindly, ‘we tell them best we can, but some of them we just can’t place. And that makes us feel bad, because we think they could belong to us, but we don’t know how. Now, I know exactly who you are so there’s no trouble there, I can tell you straight. You belong to a lot of the people here. My children would be your relations. Tommy, he’s close, and others, too, then there’s some that you’re related to but not close, if you get what I mean. You still related to them, though …’

  We stayed the night at Yandeearra. The following morning, Billy and Dolly said, ‘We couldn’t sleep. We tossed and turned all night, trying to work out which group you belong to. Tell us about where you from again.’

  We went through all that we knew again, very slowly. Then Peter Coppin came over and joined in the discussion. They worked out that Dolly was aunty to Mum, so the groups could be worked out from there.

  ‘There are four groups,’ explained Peter, ‘Panaka, Burungu, Carriema and Malinga. Now, these groups extend right through. I can go down as far as Wiluna and know who I am related to just by saying what group I’m from. We hear that further up north, they got eight groups. We don’t know how they work it out, four is bad enough.’ We all laughed.

  Then Billy said, ‘I think we got it now. You,’ he said as he pointed to me, ‘must be Burungu, your mother is Panaka, and Paul, we would make him Malinga. Now, this is very important, you don’t want to go forgetting this, because we’ve been trying to work it out ever since you arrived.’

  Dolly and Peter agreed that those groups were the ones we belonged to.

  ‘You got it straight?’ Billy asked.

  ‘I think so,’ I laughed, as I repeated the names.

  ‘Good!’ he said, ‘because some of the ones that come up here get it all muddled up. We want you to have it straight, because it’s very important. We don’t want you to go getting tangled up in the wrong group.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad we got that sorted out,’ added Peter, ‘now you can come here whenever you like. We know who you belong to now. If you ever come and I’m not here and they tell you to go away, you hold your ground. You just tell them your group and who you’re related to. You got a right to be here same as the others.’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Billy strongly. ‘You got your place now. We’ve worked it out. You come as often as you please. There’s always a spot here for you all.’

  We all felt very moved and honoured that we’d been given our groups. There was no worry about us forgetting, we kept repeating them over and over. It was one more precious thing that added to our sense of belonging.

  We were all sad when we left Yandeearra the following day. We’d been very impressed with Yandeearra and the way Peter managed the community. It was a lovely place.

  Our next stop was Aunty Elsie’s place in Hedland. She had a lovely home overlooking the ocean.

  I don’t think she could take in who we were at first. She had had little contact with Arthur and Nan, though Albert had talked about them a lot, she told us. As we talked, things began to fall into place. We were surprised at the likeness of some of Aunty Elsie’s grandchildren to our own family. We explained how we thought everyone we were related to must be dead and how we couldn’t believe she was really Uncle Albert’s wife. Aunty told us that she’d been many years younger than Albert when they’d married. There were four children, Brian, William, Claude and Margaret. Aunty was, in fact, roughly the same age as Mum, so they had a lot in common. We showed her photos of the family and laughed once again about all the tricks Uncle Albert played on everyone. Aunty also told us how Uncle Albert had owned his own truck and what a hard worker he’d been. It was a trait that seemed to run in the family.

  By the time we finally left, we’d gotten to know her really well. Aunty gave us a big fish for our tea. We promised we would come to Hedland again and asked her to visit Perth so she could meet the rest of the family. We felt very full inside when we left. It was like all the little pieces of a huge jigsaw were finally fitting together.

  The following day, it was time to head back to Perth, but there was one last stop to make. Billy and Dolly had told us to call in and visit Billy Moses at Twelve-mile, just out of Hedland. We were all exhausted by this stage, but we didn’t want to miss out on anything, so we gathered together the last remnants of our energy and drove out to Twelve-mile.

  When we arrived, we were told that Billy
and Alma had gone shopping and no one knew when they’d be back, but we could wait near his house if we wanted to. Only five minutes had passed, when a taxi pulled in, bearing Billy and Alma.

  They eyed us curiously, obviously wondering who we were and why we were waiting near their house. I felt embarrassed, what if Billy didn’t know us after all! I decided to take the bull by the horns. I walked forward and held out my hand.

  After introducing myself, I explained slowly who we were and why we had come. His listened seriously, trying to take in everything I said. Suddenly, his face lit up with a heart-warming smile and he said, ‘You my relations! Yes, you’ve come to the right place. You my people. I am your Nanna’s cousin.’ There were tears in his eyes. I held his hand warmly. Alma smiled and said, ‘You must be his relations.’

  We walked back to his house and sat down for a chat. Billy said, ‘I can’t believe it. Some of my people coming all the way from Perth just to visit me. You always come here. You can come and live here, I’m the boss. This is your place too, remember that.’ We began to talk about the old times and Billy explained how he, too, was taken away at a young age.

  ‘I was very lucky,’ he told us, ‘I came back. I made it my business to come back and find out who I belonged to. It was funny, you know, when I first came back, no one round here would talk to me. You see, they weren’t sure who I was. They were trying to work it out. I’d walk down the street and they’d just stare at me. Then one day, an old fella came into town, he saw me and recognised me. He spoke up for me and said, “That fella belong to us, I know who he is. I know his mother.” After that, I never had any trouble. They all talk to me now. I belong here. It’s good to be with my people. I’m glad you’ve come back.’

  We were glad, too. And overwhelmed at the thought that we nearly hadn’t come. How deprived we would have been if we had been willing to let things stay as they were. We would have survived, but not as whole people. We would never have known our place.