To the families of the two sisters
CONTENTS
Ngarta’s story — a desert tragedy
Jukuna’s story — my life in the desert
Wangki Ngajukura Jiljingajangka
The Walmajarri diaspora
The world of the two sisters
Working with Ngarta
Working with Jukuna
Walmajarri pronunciation guide
Glossary
About the authors
No one knows how many people were living in the Great Sandy Desert before European settlement of Australia. The desert people belonged to several distinct language groups and for most of the year they were widely dispersed over the vast country. In the late dry season, which was the main ceremony time, people gathered in large numbers at major waterholes.
When early European settlement was taking place on the fringes of the continent, the desert people were untouched. Only when the cattle and sheep stations were established to the north of their country did rumours of change reach them. The people who lived along the rivers and in the ranges bore the brunt of the European push, because their lands provided just the sort of pasture the settlers needed for their stock.
Jukuna and Ngarta are two sisters who belong to the Walmajarri/Juwaliny language group. Walmajarri country stretches almost as far as the Fitzroy River to the north, but the family of these two sisters came from much further south, from the Great Sandy Desert proper, so that when the first Walmajarri people, the northern groups, were going to work on cattle stations, the southern groups were unaffected. However, even the bands most distant from one another were linked by marriage and consanguinity, and information about upheavals caused by the settlers of the cattle and sheep stations filtered back along the attenuated communication lines to reach even the remotest parts of the desert.
Much later, the people from further south in the Great Sandy Desert were gradually drawn into the vacuum created to their north.
The First World War came and went, and left no impression in the sandhills. Two decades later, the Second World War had faint reverberations. News reached the desert that the white people were fighting an enemy from overseas, and formations of aircraft appeared in the sky. These were probably on training exercises from air bases such as the one at Noonkanbah in the Kimberley. No one in the desert had heard of Adolf Hitler.
None of the desert people knew about the Royal Visit of the young Queen Elizabeth in 1953, or would have had any idea of what it was all about. The Melbourne Olympics three years later caused not a ripple in the lives of Ngarta, Jukuna and their family. Robert Menzies, of whom they knew nothing, was Prime Minister when Jukuna and later Ngarta emerged from the Great Sandy Desert. It would be much later before they first heard the word ‘Australia’ and learned that they were not only Walmajarri, but also Australians.
PAT LOWE
PROLOGUE
When all but the last handful of Walmajarri people had left the desert, two Manyjilyjarra brothers came into their country from the east. These men were from a family of outlaws, men who lived apart from other people and defied the law, who preyed on their fellows, killing without reason, abducting women and discarding them. Other men feared them, and for a long time they got away with their crimes.
Originally there were four brothers. Tirinja was the eldest. The others were Yungangi, Nyuljurra and Yawa. The first three brothers travelled together and were responsible for the deaths of a number of people. Eventually Nyuljurra was killed in a vengeance fight somewhere near Balgo.
Tirinja and Yungangi then travelled together for a time, until they were pursued by the relatives of a man they had killed. These men caught up with Yungangi and killed him. His elder brother Tirinja escaped by climbing a hill where no one could reach him, and later got away and went to find his youngest brother, Yawa. Some people say that Yawa was a good man, different from the other three, but under Tirinja’s influence he took part in the same violent and murderous activities.
Tirinja had a son and a daughter in his group. Once, when he was displeased with the boy, Tirinja and his brother lifted him by his hands and feet and held him spread-eagled over the fire, face down, to punish him. The burn scars marked his forehead and chest for the rest of his life.
Every now and then, news of yet another killing reached the scattered bands. No one had the power to control the killers or bring them to punishment. They moved, uninvited, into country that was not their own, and eventually they went into Walmajarri country.
One old Walmajarri man and his two wives were staying at a waterhole. They were related to the people of Japingka, in whose country they were living, and they kept in touch with these relatives, meeting them from time to time at one waterhole or another. A family from Japingka was camping some way to the north, and every morning when they looked towards the south they would see the smoke from fires lit by this trio and know that all was well with them.
One day, no smoke appeared above the horizon, and the people wondered what was wrong. Perhaps the old man and his wives had moved to another place. Even so, in a single day they could not possibly have travelled so far that their fires would not be visible. The following day, again there was no early morning smoke. The people were puzzled and uneasy.
A little boy named Kurnti was playing in the sandhills not far from his mother’s camp when he saw something that struck terror into his young heart. A woman was approaching across the flat, and though there was something about her that seemed familiar, that was not possible, for she was all white. Worse, she was making a terrible wailing sound. The boy turned and ran down screaming to his mother’s camp.
‘There’s a Mamu! There’s a Mamu coming up!’ he yelled, breathless. ‘It’s all white!’ A Mamu was a spirit much feared by the people of the sandhills.
The boy’s mother climbed the sandhill to have a look for herself, and at once recognised the old man’s elder wife, and saw that she had covered her face and body with clay mud from the waterhole, which had dried to a whitish colour on her skin. This told Kurnti’s mother that the woman was in mourning. She was travelling on her own — it was clear that something dreadful had happened to her husband and his other wife.
When the woman reached the camp, she wailed in anguish and struck herself on the head until someone restrained her. Then she told the family what had taken place. A few days before, Tirinja had appeared suddenly at the camp, brandishing his weapons. Before the family had time to collect itself, he had driven a spear into her husband’s side. The stranger had then seized hold of the man’s young wife, and forced her to go away with him. The older woman was left behind with her wounded husband.
The old man was not dead, but the spear had gone right through his body, and he lay on the sand helpless and in great pain. In vain his wife tried to pull out the spear, but it was firmly lodged and she had not enough strength to shift it. Her efforts did nothing but increase the old man’s distress. She could only stay and suffer with her husband until he died. Shocked and grieving, the woman struck herself on the head with a rock until her own blood ran. Then she took mud from the waterhole and smeared it over her face and body in the custom of a woman newly widowed, and set off alone to the north, in search of her kinsfolk.
When Kurnti’s people heard this news, they cried and grieved with the old woman. Then they decided it was time to leave that part of the country. With the murderers so close, they could no longer feel secure.
This was a time of great change amongst the peoples of the desert. Most of their number had already left the sandhills. Some had chosen to migrate north or west to join relatives on the cattle and sheep stations that had become established in the more generously watered country of their neighbours. Others had been rounded up by white p
eople and brought into the settlements. By the time the two strangers from the east started their marauding in Walmajarri country, only a few scattered groups of people remained. Desert society had so disintegrated that its normal laws and sanctions could no longer be enforced, and these men were able to intrude with impunity into other people’s country and to prey on the few remaining unprotected inhabitants.
Kurnti’s people had for a long time talked about moving away from their homelands and following everyone else to the stations. They must have known that in the end they would have no choice. Already they occupied country left vacant by people who had gone before them. Until this tragedy happened, they had held back from making the final move, postponing a change they had not sought and that they feared might be forever. Now, they could delay no longer.
The group started to head north towards the stations, putting distance between themselves and the murderers. On the way they met other small bands of relatives, among them Ngarta’s family. They told these others the news of the murder and abduction, and advised them to follow. Some took heed, but others still held back. Even amongst Kurnti’s group not everyone went ahead at once. Kurnti’s brother-in-law and sisters, who already knew station life, went first, and Kurnti went with them. But his two mothers and some of the other older people, their fears abated somewhat now that the killers had been left far behind, decided to wait until the advance party returned for them.
Over the next few years, more members of Ngarta’s family went north. Her uncle Kurnti came back and then left again, taking his mothers with him. Then her sister Jukuna left with her young husband. Ngarta stayed behind with a small group of women and children, waiting for the others to come back and pick them up. They waited for a long time.
A DESERT TRAGEDY
Ngarta was born during the hottest time of year, before the rain, near a waterhole called Walypa, a word that means wind. Walypa is close to Wayampajarti, one of the major waterholes in that part of Walmajarri country. Her mother first knew she was pregnant one day when she had been gathering a big pile of grass seed, called puturu. Puturu therefore became Ngarta’s conception totem.
Ngarta’s earliest memories were of constant travel from waterhole to waterhole. Her parents walked, but she couldn’t keep up for long. ‘My mother or father used to carry me. Or my eldest sister, when my mother was carrying a coolamon of water on her head. My mother and father were quiet people; they didn’t have arguments. It was my father who gave me my name.’
Ngarta’s father had a younger wife as well as Ngarta’s own mother, and she called both of the women ngamaji — mother. The younger wife was blind. Ngarta’s own mother had two daughters older than Ngarta. The eldest got married when Ngarta was very young, and left the desert with her husband to live on Cherrabun Station, where he worked. The second daughter was Jukuna. While Ngarta was still quite small, her first brother was born. Her second mother gave birth to the last child in the family not long afterwards, another little boy.
The main waterhole for Ngarta’s family was Tapu. The people might spend most of the year travelling through their country, camping by one or other of the many waterholes, but Tapu was the place they always came back to. Usually they came back in the hot, dry weather, and camped there until the rains started, for Tapu was a jila — ‘living water’ — water that never dries up. Even at the driest time of year, even in years when no rain fell, Tapu always held water.
When no one had visited Tapu for many months, the waterhole filled up with silt and became overgrown with grass and young shrubs. It looked the way any desert waterhole looks before people clean it out. But when all the silt and sand and debris had been dug out, Tapu could not be mistaken for anywhere else. The walls of the jila are of rock, almost perfectly round, and they go straight down, forming a natural well. The base of the well is smooth rock, but with two holes in it, like eyes. It is from these eyes that water seeps to fill the freshly dug jila.
Wayampajarti, the other major jila in Ngarta’s country, was a double waterhole further to the south, a place with important songs and ceremonies which people still perform.
Ngarta loved her eldest sister, but she did not always get on with her second sister, Jukuna. She thought Jukuna was jealous of her, and the two girls often used to fight. Ngarta, the younger, always came off worse, and she used to run for comfort to her grandmother.
From the time Ngarta was a baby, her grandmother took care of her. Jukuna, only a few years older, stayed with their mother. Even when Ngarta got older she often went hunting and gathering with the old woman. She was closer to her grandmother than to anyone else, and liked having her to herself.
Ngarta remembered a time when the whole family was moving to a different waterhole, and she was walking along with her grandmother. On the journey the family broke up into ones and twos, so that they could hunt on the way and collect various sorts of food. They all travelled at their own pace. Ngarta and her grandmother went a different way from the others, and came quite close to Japingka.
‘I don’t want to go to that new place with everyone else,’ Ngarta told her grandmother. ‘Let us two go to Japingka!’
Japingka was a waterhole, a jila, bigger than Tapu. Ngarta’s young uncles, Kurnti and Nyija, belonged to that place. It was their family’s main waterhole, just as Tapu was the main one for Ngarta’s family. The two families were closely related, and they often visited one another’s country. If, in the hottest weather, Ngarta’s parents did not stay at Tapu, they were likely to be found at Japingka. It was an important place for making rain, where big law meetings and ceremonies were held. When the word went out, hundreds of people would gather at Japingka to put boys through law and to settle disputes and inflict punishments.
This was not ceremony time, however, so grandmother and granddaughter went off by themselves to camp at the jila.
When a lot of people were gathered at Japingka for a big meeting, the men used to dig out a wide, deep hole for water, so there would be plenty for everyone to drink. But this time no one else was there, so the woman and the girl just dug a small well for the two of them. They stayed there on their own for two nights, then moved to another waterhole before catching up again with Ngarta’s mother and father.
It was not unusual for people to break away from the main group for a time. They might follow tracks for a long distance out of their way, or take a detour to gather a particular food and then head for whichever waterhole happened to be closest at day’s end. They kept in touch with the others and let them know where they were by lighting big grass fires. Seeing the smoke, the people in the main party would say, ‘Oh, that’s where they’ve got to. They’ll catch up with us tomorrow,’ and no one would worry.
This time spent travelling alone with her grandmother was a time Ngarta never forgot. The two of them hunted animals and gathered food as they went. At night they made a fire and slept beside it close to one another.
When Ngarta was still quite small, her youngest brother, the son of her blind mother, died. He was just a little toddler. At the time no one knew quite what had happened. He had been playing in the sandhills with his uncles, Kurnti and Nyija, who were some years older than he was, when he came back to camp crying and distressed. He wouldn’t eat, and he seemed to be having difficulty breathing. His mother, being blind, couldn’t see what was wrong. Kurnti said later that he and his brother were eating marnta — gum from the turtujarti tree — and gave some to their little nephew. Perhaps it had got lodged in his throat and was choking him.
The little boy cried all night, and his mother was unable to comfort or help him. Early the next morning he stopped crying; he was dead.
The dead child’s mother was distraught. She picked up a rock and struck herself again and again on the head, until blood was pouring down her face. Ngarta, too young to understand fully what had happened, had gone off early with her friend and cousin Kayinta to climb a tree. The two girls didn’t see the stricken woman injuring herself. Only Kayinta’s
mother was with her at the time, and she was sick, too weak to intervene. So no one was there who could prevent the bereaved mother from hurting herself.
Later that day, when everyone was together, the family started to move away from that sad place and on to the next waterhole. But on the way Ngarta’s blind mother became weak and ill. She couldn’t stop grieving for the little boy who had died. When the travellers stopped to rest she sat down apart from the others and refused to eat. When it was time to go on, she wouldn’t get up. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to come with you. I can’t go on. Leave me here. Just leave me and go.’
This was the sort of thing old people might say when they knew the time had come for them to die. Weary of life, unable to keep up and unwilling to burden the younger people, they would tell the others to leave them behind. Eventually their relatives would lead them somewhere away from the waterhole and leave them there alone with a coolamon of water, knowing they would not see them again.
But Ngarta’s second mother was still young. Her husband was shocked when she talked about staying behind, and he wouldn’t hear of it.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I can’t leave you. If you are too weak to walk, I’ll carry you.’ He handed his spears to his older wife and lifted the blind one onto his back. He carried her like that all the way to the next camping place.
But his younger wife did not get over her grief for her son. No one could console her. She would not eat and she hardly spoke. She sat alone under a tree, her sightless eyes staring straight ahead. This time, when the family was preparing to move on again, she refused to go. ‘She told her husband, “You must leave me here now.” Her husband wanted to carry her, but she said no. She wanted him to leave her. So they took her and left her under a tree. My own mother put water for her, and they left her.’
The next day, when everyone was getting ready to set off again, Ngarta noticed that her second mother was missing. Her own mother was very quiet and looked as if she had been crying. It was clear that something was wrong.
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