Two Sisters

by Ngarta Jinny Brent

  When the hot season came, we gathered seeds from acacia trees. We also collected flying termites that we found in antbed. People used to go looking for them in the early morning with a heavy stick, and smash the antbed to get them. They used a coolamon to separate some of the termites from the dirt and covered the rest with sand to pick up later. When they came back they uncovered them, separated them and then took them back to their camp. They put the termites out in the sun to dry and left them there until they were crisp. Only then were they ready to eat, after the sun had done its work. Everybody ate them — they were delicious.

  We used to eat a desert nut called ngarlka. The nuts dropped to the ground when they were ripe. The whole year round we could gather them from under the trees, in the hot season and the cold season. We could eat them any time. The new nuts hang there on the trees unripe until the hot season comes.

  For food we used to hunt and kill feral cat, bandicoot, dingo, fox, two kinds of hare-wallaby, sand goanna, different kinds of snake, rough-tailed goanna, blue-tongue lizard and echidna.

  We travelled like that year after year, from one waterhole to the next, drinking at jila and drinking at jumu, at rockholes and at claypans, hunting animals and gathering the fruit and seeds of the land.

  A good rainy season made the grasses grow well and gave us many kinds of seed and plenty of nectar from the flowers. In a poor wet season, very little grass grew and there wasn’t much seed for us to gather. In a good year with a lot of rain we were able to store away the seed to eat later on.

  To store the seed we would strip some bark from a paperbark tree to wrap the seed in a parcel, or we’d gather some strong grass and use that to make a container like a nest for holding the seed. We wrapped the seed tightly in packages, and tied them up. Then we cut four forked sticks from a tree, put rails across, and built a frame on top of them. We arranged parcels of food wrapped up in grass or bark on the frame. Then we built a small hut over the top of it to prevent the food from getting dry. We left it there so that we could come and get it later when we needed it and the trees no longer had seeds.

  Sometimes we stored seeds, particularly acacia seeds, in a hole in the ground. We used to line the hole with grass, put in a layer of seeds and cover it with bark and then sand. Later, when there was no food left in the bush for us to gather, we came back to get it. We pulled the seeds out of the hole. To get rid of the strong wattle seed smell, we washed them. We cooked them in the fire and then ground them with water till they became a paste, and we ate it like that.

  When people went hunting for animals in the hot season, they made sandals for themselves from the bark of the yakapiri bush. And that is what they called the sandals, yakapiri. These protected their feet from the burning hot sand. They speared foxes, feral cats, hare wallabies and sand goannas. The hare wallaby has disappeared from the desert now.

  Sometimes in the hot season, we’d set off to a waterhole a long way off. We’d set off late in the afternoon, when the day was a little cooler, carrying water in our coolamons. As we walked, we drank the water until there was none left. When it was time to camp for the night, the adults found a claypan that had recently held water. They dug up some of the damp clay and threw it around on the ground to make a cool place for us to sleep. We set off again early in the morning while it was still cool, and went on to the jila.

  I’ll tell you some more about when I was a child. I was taught to use a coolamon for separating seed from the sand and bits of grass. My grandmother took my hands and held them under the coolamon. ‘This is the way you separate the seed,’ she said, as she showed me how to shake it. She taught me not to jerk the coolamon around, because then the seed wouldn’t separate properly. I didn’t really master that separating action till a long time later, when I was bigger. By then I could do a good job of separating the seed from the debris.

  I learned to cook meat in the same way. I used to kill small animals and bring them home uncooked. My grandmother and I lit the fire, then she said, ‘Bring me a yirnti and we’ll cook the meat. You must leave the meat in the coals until it’s well cooked. You can’t eat it if it’s only half done. You can only eat it if it’s cooked properly.’

  I also learned to cook ngarlka nuts by moving them around in the fire. When we had raked them about in the coals for a certain length of time, they’d be just right to eat.

  Sometimes a mother dog brought back lizards and regurgitated them whole for her puppies. We snatched them from the pups and rolled them in the sand to clean off the slime. Then we cooked them on the fire and ate them.

  My grandmother used to tell me about the people with the pink skin, called kartiya. I was curious and kept asking her about them. I imagined kartiya were like trees or dogs or something.

  ‘What are kartiya like? Do they look like blood? Or are they like ashes? Tell me.’

  She’d answer, ‘No, they are like people. They have two eyes, a mouth and a nose. And two hands.’

  ‘Do they have hair?’

  ‘Yes, of course they have hair.’

  I had often seen blood. When I killed a small lizard, some of its blood dripped onto my hand or onto the wooden shovel. ‘Are kartiya the colour of this blood from the lizard?’ I’d ask.

  ‘Yes, just like that.’

  I was really curious about these kartiya.

  Later, when I was older, my grandmother told my sister and me to take some seed bread to the man they had arranged to be our husband. He in return sent meat to my mother. He couldn’t bring it himself, because it wasn’t permissible for him to deal directly with his mother-in-law.

  The marriages were arranged like this: the grandmother of a small girl (on her father’s side) chooses the man who will be the little girl’s ‘son-in-law’. The grandmother says to the man she chooses, ‘This little girl is your mother-in-law. Now you have to keep bringing her meat until she grows up.’ Then they give the girl a husband. When she has a baby — a boy or a girl — she promises that child to the son-in-law already chosen for her by her grandmother. If her first child is a boy, she will give him to her son-in-law first, and afterwards, when she has a girl, she will give her to him to be his wife. The boy will stay with his ‘husband’, who looks after him for some of the time until he grows up. When the boy is ready to go through law the ‘husband’ has to tie the hairstring belt around him.

  When I was old enough, my young sister and I were sent to our husband, whose name was Pijaji, to live with him. My sister was still only a girl.

  Some time later our husband said to us, ‘We’ll go north to the cattle stations — my father and two mothers, my two grandmothers, my mother-in-law, both of you, my wives, and my sisters as well. When I travelled up there before, I saw there was plenty of food and beef belonging to the white people. I want to take all of you with me because if I leave anyone behind, strangers may come and kill you after I’ve gone.’

  Pijaji knew about two murderers, that is why he said that. The men, from further south, had already speared a man and his mother belonging to Pijaji’s family group.

  My grandmother and Pijaji’s grandmother and the two women he called mother said to him, ‘Leave us here, we’ll stay in our own country. You can’t take us. Leave us here in the land where we belong. You can’t take us to that station. It’s too far for us to walk.’ The grandmothers were getting really old, needing a walking stick to help them along. My little sister didn’t want to go away and leave them. She wanted to stay behind with her mother and grandmother and her little brother.

  When the winds of the cold season had finished, we got ourselves ready and set off northwards for the station country. My husband Pijaji and I took with us Pijaji’s father and mother and his young sister, Pali.

  Travelling north, we went through Yarntayi, a wide stretch of flat country with few trees or sandhills, and kept heading north. We stopped and camped the night. Early in the morning we set off for the jumu Larrilarri. We didn’t find any water there; it was too deep under the ground, so w
e kept going till we reached another jumu called Pirljiwurtu. We drew some water from there to carry in our coolamons, and drank it while we walked. The sun was low in the sky before we reached another waterhole, so we camped the night on a sandhill.

  When we rose in the morning we saw that we were close to the hill called Jarrngajarti. We hadn’t seen it the night before because it was dark when we stopped to sleep. We walked towards that hill and found some water in a rockhole. We saw cattle there, drinking from the pool. I had seen cattle once before: they had come all the way across to Kurrjalpartu waterhole in the desert. They must have escaped from the Canning Stock Route and travelled all that way west. Pijaji had speared one of them, and we had eaten the meat. Here at Jarrngajarti we drank from the rockhole and continued walking north past another rockhole called Jinpirimpiri.

  By now we were coming close to a cattle station bore. We learnt later that it was called Timber Creek. It was night time, and Pijaji told us all to stay some way off, hiding in the scrub south of the bore camp. He went on ahead to talk to the man and his two wives who lived there, looking after the bore. They recognised Pijaji from his first visit to the station. The younger woman said, ‘Hey, look who’s here!’

  The other one called out to him, ‘Come over here! Come and tell us the news.’

  Then Pijaji said to the man, ‘I’ve brought someone to see you: it’s my father, your son.’

  ‘You’ll have to bring him here,’ said the woman. Then they gave Pijaji some damper and meat to eat.

  ‘Yes,’ Pijaji said, ‘I’ll bring him over later.’

  The next night Pijaji took me and his mother and father and sister over to see those people. We had to go at night, because we were frightened the kartiya would see us. We all cried together.

  Then Pijaji said to one of the women, ‘Here are my father and mother. This is my wife.’

  The woman asked him, ‘Tell me, which family does your wife come from?’

  ‘You know your sister, Nakayi, who left the desert and went north to Gogo Station a long time ago? Well this is her granddaughter.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Then I call her granddaughter too.’

  We stayed with them at the bore for a good while, maybe a month. Then one day Pijaji said to the old man, ‘We’ll be going now. We want to go further north to that other bore, Jukurirri. I want to find my uncle.’

  ‘Of course. Go and look for him,’ he said. So off we went.

  We arrived at Jukurirri bore. My husband Pijaji told us, ‘Stay here in the shade. Father, I’ll go and find your brother-in-law.’ Pijaji found the man, who was also his uncle, and said to him, ‘I’ve brought your brother-in-law to see you.’

  ‘Good. I want to see him straight away!’

  Then Pijaji brought his father Maruwanti over and said, ‘Hereís your brother-in-law to see you.’ He sat him down facing the south. They cried together because it was so long since they had seen one another. Then the man gave us some meat and damper to eat and we camped there the night. The next day my husband said to his uncle, ‘I’ll leave my father here with you until I get back.’

  After we’d gone, the uncle, who lived at Jukurirri, said to his brother-in-law Maruwanti, ‘Come with me. I’ve got something to show you.’ They went up to the water tank on top of a rise. His brother-in-law looked over the wall of the tank and saw all the water lying there. He staggered backwards, shocked. He picked up a piece of antbed and called out to the water, ‘It’s me! I’ve come here!’ Then he threw the antbed into the water, as he would have done in the desert when he was approaching a jila, to let the kalpurtu know he was coming. He didn’t realise what the tank was. His stomach lurched in fear, because he’d never seen water like this, south in the desert. He was speaking to the kalpurtu he believed was in the tank. That kalpurtu lives in a jila and is in charge of the water. If a stranger comes and it can’t recognise him, then a fierce wind comes up which might take the stranger’s spirit and put it into the water for the kalpurtu to swallow. The brother-in-law who lived at that bore said, ‘That’s not a jila, it’s just water they bring up with a pump from underneath the ground. Right, now we’ll go back to the camp.’

  Meanwhile, my husband and I walked north to another bore called Purlkartujarti where some station workers were building a water tank. It was late when we arrived and we slept the night there. In the morning one of the head workers, a half-caste fellow named Barney Lawford, saw Pijaji. He said to the working men there, ‘I want that boy. I want him to come and work for me.’ So they picked us up. We climbed onto the truck and they took us off north somewhere to start work. This was the first time I had even seen a truck and as we drove along I looked at the trees, which seemed to be racing past. I was frightened and crouched in the back of the truck with my head down. I’d never experienced anything like this before.

  They took us north to a billabong called Warrpipakarti where men were cutting trees to make fence posts. I was given the job of helping Junyju, Pajimanís wife, with the cooking. I just watched her mixing and kneading the flour to make damper, because I didn’t know how to do it.

  After a while they took us back south to Jukurirri in the truck. From there we picked up Pijaji’s mother and father and took them to Timber Creek outstation. That was the first bore we had stopped at, where we ate food when we came out of the desert. While we were staying there this time, my aunty, Japirirri’s mother, and Pijaji’s mother passed away. They died on the same day, one in the morning and the other at night. We were filled with grief and cried for them. The two widowers didn’t cover themselves with mud and sit down to mourn, as people do today in the Fitzroy Crossing area. That was not our custom. When we were living around the waterholes in the desert, widows and widowers didn’t put mud on their bodies.

  One time at Timber Creek, one of the workers brought in some grog from the town for Christmas celebrations. The men drank it until they lost their senses. They drank the lot. As we watched them we became quite scared, because we had never seen anything like it before. We were frightened they might kill us in their drunken state.

  Some time later we took the two widowed men and the two children, Pali and Japirirri, north to Cherrabun Station. When we arrived, the people there who worked on the station all stared at us, wondering who we were. We only recognised one person there, a woman who came from my country, whom I call ‘mother’. When we had all identified ourselves we cried together, because we were related to one another and were meeting for the first time. We stayed there, becoming part of a very big group of station workers.

  The people there sang the corroboree Julurru to welcome us. First, in the middle of the afternoon they took us with our blankets, walked us a long way west, and had us camp by the river. Next morning they took us out to the flat where they held the corroborree. They pulled hats down over our heads so that we couldn’t see, and we had to keep our heads down and look at the ground, with our hands on our stomachs, because this ceremony was new to us. Then the station people all came along, singing. After a while they said, ‘Look up!’ Then we were allowed to look up and see the dancing. As part of the dance, they burnt each other on the back with firesticks. The dancing and singing went on all night; we didn’t sleep. In the morning they gave clothes and food to one another. This was also part of the ceremony.

  It was at Cherrabun Station that I saw a kartiya for the first time. He was the station manager, Mr Scrivener. I thought, ‘So that’s what a kartiya looks like!’ I stared at his red skin, so different from black people’s skin. He was the boss and he gave us rations in return for our work.

  We worked for the manager at that station for about two years and became quite skilled at station work. I used to milk the goats, filling the bucket. Before that, I didn’t know anything about milking goats. One day the manager said to one of the old women, ‘Get this woman to work with you, milking the goats.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said and came and got me. ‘Help me with the goats,’ she said.

  I thought, ‘This
animal looks like a dog.’

  The old woman said, ‘Be careful to hold its back leg, or it might kick you.’ When we had milked the goats, we took the buckets of milk inside and beat up the cream to make butter for people to spread on damper or bread.

  I also learned about making soap from bullock fat. We mixed up the melted fat with soda in buckets. Then we poured it into a wide shallow dish, covered it with hessian and left it to set overnight. In the morning it had hardened into soap. We cut it up into pieces and gave it to the workers for washing their clothes.

  Another kind of work we did was to carry the boxes of groceries from the truck into the station store. The truck brought food and other things from town regularly.

  The manager used to drive us out to where the cattle were grazing. He’d shoot a beast with his rifle and we women would cut up the meat and throw the pieces onto the back of the truck. He would then drive us to the meat house and we would rub salt onto the pieces to preserve it so that it could be eaten later.

  There is one more thing we did. We women would paint the empty fuel drums laid out on the airstrip with white paint so that the pilots in the planes would see where to land. Those are the things I learned to do when I came to the station from the desert in the south.

  At Cherrabun Station we lost many members of our family from sickness. We had never had such sickness in the desert. My father-in-law died there, and it was there that my husband nearly died, but because he received his dying father’s spirit he recovered and went on living. My father-in-law gave his life to my husband. I was well, I didn’t get sick, so I looked after the three children who had lost their parents: Pali, Japirirri and a young boy, Nyija.