by Sally Morgan
I hope that the katitjin I have shared with you will help you understand a little bit more about Nyungar culture, but I am sure the oral histories you are going to read will also give you some insight into the Nyungar world. So, in keeping with our Nyungar speaking oral history tradition in the South-West, which is still shared by Nyungar and yorkga today, here are three oral histories about our boodjar, moort and katitjin.
Kaya. [79]
Oral history by Dr Richard Walley
As you know, in our culture, regardless of where you go, you are part of a family tapestry and that’s your sort of visa, I suppose, on your passport to the different communities. I just came back from Jigalong and, for example, when I went onto the community they asked me two questions. Those two questions put me exactly where they found I fit within their tapestry. The first question was: ‘You related to the Walley family in Meekatharra?’ and I said yes.
They said, ‘Do you know Madeline Walley?’
I said, ‘She’s my sister,’ and they said, ‘Ah.’ So they knew where I fit then, because my sister married into some of the people from that area, relatives of that area, and a cousin of mine was up there living as well. So they knew exactly where I fit in.
I can go right back to, say, the Perth connection, or the connection from around this area goes right back to my great-great-grandmother, Fanny Balbuck, who was actually born on Heirisson Island. Her family used to go between Heirisson Island right up to Kings Park and then they would come south, right around to this area here, towards following the swamps more than anything else. It was really the swamp country. My mother was actually born in York; she’s a Balardong mob, then the Indich/Winmar clan. My mother is a Winmar and my father was actually born in New Norcia. His mother was an Evans that came right through from Yalgoo or the Yamatji run, up that way. His father was from down the south, the Pinjarra area; that’s where his father’s and grandmother’s country is, from there.
Len Collard: What’s old boy’s name?
His name was Steve Walley, my old grandfather, and we found that his father was what they called Whan (Juan), or John Walley, and he was actually one of the first ones who, in the early days, went to New Norcia. So his grandfather was one of the early ones they recorded, but before him, the other old fella just came straight out of the bush. They [New Norcia priests] just had him as Aboriginal from the south. The name Walley, itself, is a bit contentious. Some say that it’s got the connection to the Walley name that came out of England and places like that. The other names, which I found through research, came from Wallibunger and Walleyup—where all the Walleys was short for these names. They used to name people where they came from, so that’s the story that I am still researching at this particular moment. It is hard to find because so many things change and in the New Norcia archives, they put them into Spanish as well as English.
So Walley was the first part of a name and, as you know, in our country down there, there are lots of things starting out with the name Walley. This reinforces our connections to this part of the land, I suppose. I find that there are two things about a location or a place. One, that you’re a part of it and it’s like a family that you could recognise: the environment, the animals, the seasons and you could fit in quite well with it. The other one is that you are adopted to it, into it, like, that’s when people are born in another region/country and they come and marry into a family or settle close by. They like the lifestyle or they like the people or you find they stay for long periods of time. When they find that they stay for great periods of time, they become adapted to the land and adopt it. To the older people, well, I was lucky enough to be around them as a young fella; the Nannup family, the Ugle family, down that way, the Mippys and Kellys—I was very lucky to be a young boy, a young lad (I was about eleven or twelve years old), to be speaking to people like old Granny Doorong Abraham. His granddaughter married a cousin of mine, Jim Corbett, and he used to live just down in the back of the Reserve, where Jim lived in Pinjarra.
People just did not marry within their own little circle. Sometimes they’d go out of that circle and marry someone from another region. Well, the Ugles were a good example. When the Ugles married into some of the families in Pinjarra, a lot of other Ugles would come from the Narrogin and Williams area. They would come to Pinjarra for a while to catch up with their families and whilst they were there, they’d sometimes get hitched up with local people local girlfriends and boyfriends. That turned into a relationship, and you’d find that this created relationships in areas that might not have had connections before.
So what happens then, you got children of those couples who’ve got affiliations in both countries, so they can go between both quite easily. Thus, when I start off with my story, I can travel quite easily through Yamatji country ’cause that’s my grandmother’s area. I can travel right through the Perth area quite easily, because that is my great-grandmother’s area, and I can travel through the Moora area without any problems, which is quite prominent through the Indich connection. I can go through the Balardong country, through the York and Quairading area, which is my mother’s country. So what it does is, it opens up the whole landscape for you but, you still have an affiliation back to one part of the country. So, even though I have a connection all the way through, my affiliation is still back in Pinjarra, and this is what I’m talking about. You can’t explain it, even though I wasn’t born there. It’s my grandmother’s country and great grandmother’s and great-grandfather’s country [on the Walley side]. You go back all through those areas and you’ll find that it is something beyond. That there is a spiritual link that pulls you back. It’s not necessarily just me; it’s a lot of people who are looking for a place of belonging. Sometimes they find that place of belonging in very unusual places, or sometimes they find it exactly where they are looking for it.
Oral history by Janet Hayden (Aunty)
Len Collard: Janet, I want to talk about some of the family issues. You say you’re from Wilman and Balardong. Now what about the Swan River area? Because it’s my feeling that the Bennells are Swan River people, and they are out at York and a whole lot of other places. Can you tell us a little about what your understanding is of the relationship between the Nyungars at York, Brookton, the Swan River and places like Pinjarra?
Well, I will only tell you what my grandfather taught me. My grandfather was Norman (Dooram) Bennell. I grew up with this old man and before he died (he was ninety-two when he died), he lived with me, my husband and kids for the last twelve years of his life. All the stories that he told me are a little bit contrary to what a lot of people are saying today about the Swan River. He was born just out of York and, as a young man, he married a girl from York also. Her name was Kate Collard. The Collard and Bennell families are two of the oldest families who came to Brookton to live. The Bennell family was the first Nyungar family ever to live around the Brookton area and the Collard family moved there looking for work. Grandfather Collard was involved in brick making and he got a contract with a guy who made him a partner. Granny Kate Collard was one of the girls who grandfather liked, and a relationship started. The Bennells originally came from York, as far as I know or what I was taught. That came about because of a relationship between a white man and a tribal woman. The white man was John Monger and grandmother (I can’t recall her name). They had one son, whose name was John Monger-Bennell, and this is where my grandfather Dooram came from. His mother was Kandianne and she was a Serpentine woman. She came from the Serpentine area and her father was named Cleetland and her mother was named Annie.
That relationship was in the Serpentine region, where they used to go to from York, Beverley, Dale right back through the Wandering area and back through to the Swan River or Avon River. I have never, ever known people to say that the Bennell people originated from the Swan River area. That could only have come from the Monger side of it. It could not have come from of the Bennell side, because, as far as I know, all the Bennell family, all the girls, were
born around Brookton and the boys from around Beverley, Wandering. I could give you the names of every town that grandfather told me where the relationships were from or where these families came from. The Garletts and the Humes family originated from the first marriage, where Grandfather John Monger-Bennell married Minnie. They used to call her Fanny. She was the first sister and she died in childbirth. She had five children. After she died, Grandfather John Monger-Bennell took all his children back to give them to Cleetland and Annie, but they were too old to look after them. So he [Cleetland] gave his sixteen-year-old daughter, [Granny] Kandianne, to [Grandfather] John Monger and that is where we all come from, fifteen kids in the Bennell line.
They did a lot of travelling along the Swan River, from York to the Swan and around Beverley. They were cattle droving and they came down here to Fremantle and to get cattle from the Fremantle docks and take them back around the York area and the wheat lands for the farmers. This was the only link that I know of. Grandfather Jack Bennell, Grandfather John Monger Bennell, his oldest son from his first marriage, came down and met a young girl in Fremantle. Her name was Sarah Isaacs. Most of our Bennell families in the early days were drovers. They were bringing sheep, cattle and horses from the city. This was their link to the Swan River and that is the only link that I know of. My grandfather Dooram was quite able to speak very, very well, right up until his death. If we were Swan people, I think he would have told me that his only link to the Swan River was that they were droving cattle in those areas.
Len Collard: So from what you can figure out from the oral history that you’re aware of, it seems that Serpentine might have been the boundary of the family history that you are talking about. Keeping it in mind, how long do you think it would take to walk from Serpentine say up to the Swan River?
Probably about a week, for young men, maybe. It would take a couple of days but if it was a family say, dad and the kids or grandfather, dad, mum, grandmother and the kids, it might take about a week, because they would stop and rest then go on. Why I am saying this is because this is exactly what my mum used to do when we lived around the Wheatbelt area, when there was no horse and cart. We would tag along behind Dad and Mum. We would do about twenty miles in two days or so, sometimes it might take a week. If Mum weren’t feeling too good, it’d take longer. It might take a family about a week. If it was young people, it might take a couple of days, it all depended on the area.
An old man, John Seabrook, and old Robinson, I think they asked Grandfather John Monger if his boys could work. Granny Felix was the first one they asked, and Granny Dooram, so these young men worked for him. He gave them horses and they had to drive cattle. First of all York to Brookton, and then the Collard family came to Brookton and Grandfather Collard started working with the young blokes. They set up a partnership to do [build] houses and these old fellas were working really hard, opening up the land. They cleared the land and old Granny Bert Bennell, Grandfather’s old brother and Grandfather Jack, who had Granny Sarah Isaacs, they were the eldest and they worked really hard opening up a lot of the land around there. For the first twenty or thirty years, it was only the Bennells there. It was the Bennells working with the farmers, opening up the land.
The old farmers started to respect the old Nyungar people. I spoke to one old Nyungar when I ran for the local shire up there and I spoke to some of the old White blokes there, too, and they referred to my grandfather as the last king of the Nyungars in that area. They opened up all the land around here. It was opened up by the Bennells. When the Collards arrived here, Grandfather Collard’s daughter, Kate, married my Grandfather Dooram. Grandfather Collard asked Grandfather Dooram if he could marry Granny Katie [next generation]. He would give him a horse and a cart and that was his dowry. Her dowry was a spring cart and a beautiful big horse. He gave it to Grandfather Dooram to marry Granny Kate and she had two sons, Pop George Collard and Pop Tom Bennell.
But when Grandfather Jack married Granny Sarah Isaacs, she came back to Brookton. She came back to York and lived there for a certain time, then they came back to Beverley, Brookton, Pingelly and Wandering. That was their run, and the only time they ever came back down this way was when Granny Jack and them used to come back either through the Hotham or down through the Serpentine run. I was reading a story about one bloke who did a story on the Serpentine run right back down to Dale. The Nyungars were still doing that run which was very much a part of, that was the link up to Grandfather John Monger. One of the questions you would like to ask is, how did he get down there in the first place and marry Granny Minnie first, and then after she died, go and marry Granny Kandianne? Did he go around the Guildford area or did he go right down to Serpentine? Because that is the run they always spoke about. The Serpentine run was a major run.
Len Collard: And York and Brookton. It seems that there is a relationship to the Swan River.
Yes, there is, there would have to be, I think. You look at Granny Sarah Isaacs, she was born in Fremantle on a hill there, that is her birthplace, I often heard her talk about it as a little girl and I used to listen to the stories she told about Fremantle and the fear they had of the white man. As a little girl, she feared the white man. Her grandmother used to say, you have nothing to be afraid of, but she feared white men, because they had these guns and horses. Her whole family died out there, they never went away, they died around the Fremantle area. Her grandmother reared her up. If you look at the link Brookton had with a lot of the regions, and you look at where the Garletts went, they went around Merredin and that was the Bennells, Granny Yoorleen.
Len Collard: Granny Yoorleen’s name was one that Daisy Bates recorded. She is related to Joobitch and Yellagonga, from the Swan River people. From what I can see, these people feared them [white men] so they left. They wouldn’t stay and when you try and probe it, if anybody’s killing your family, are you going to hang around there?
Is there anything that you can think of that’s south side of the river in Perth that I might not have asked you about?
No, only this part, this is all Yagan’s. Everybody is fighting about Yagan being that south side of the river. This is all Yagan’s country here. We have always said that this is Yagan and Midgerigoo’s country. This is the foundation of Midgerigoo and Yagan’s family. They named that park after him over there. He was a rambling man, but he was the kind of warrior who went wherever the mood took him. He was friends with everybody, white men and black men, but this is his country, this is his tribal country right here.
Len Collard: Whose country is this?
I would say Yagan’s, and okay, you could say Bennell country too.
Oral history by Sealin Garlett (Uncle)
Nitcha boodjar koonyarn nitcha koorl buranginy boodjar Karluk maya koonyarn wah. Deman demangarmarn wiern kia moort koonyarn. Deman garmarm noonookurt, boodjar koonyarn karla koorliny. Koorlongka boorda gneenunyiny.
Those words say that this is my country where I belong.
My grandma comes from a very rich, cultural heritage. As a little boy being with my grandma, who very seldom spoke English, whenever she had the chance to have her grandchildren around her, she’d be feeding us or taking us for walks. She’d often be talking about the birds and speaking about it in her own tongue and allowing us children to sit down and listen to the different birds. You could pick out the different birds by the sounds they made. I remember, as a young boy, this was a very funny situation because, as a young fella, I found it hard to sit down quiet for a little while. When I look back on it, I can hear some of the birds today and identify the language she used to speak.
Len Collard: So when your Nanna Yoorleen was looking after you as a little boy, can you tell me a little bit about who her family was and what their relationship was with the Swan River?
Well, back then, I didn’t know, but after talking with my old Uncle Cliff Humphries (his mother was a step-sister to my Grandma Weenie Humphries) and I remember when old Uncle Cliff was eighty-seven years of age, he took me for a
ride on a horse and cart in Kings Park. Uncle Cliff was eighty-seven years old, so that would have been close to 1988 – 89 and he took me for a ride on the back of this horse and cart. We asked the driver to go around the Kings Park area and take his time. He showed me all the Nyungar camps. He showed me where my Grandma used to live, where they picked out a camp and where they used to stay. We would pull up and all walk around.
They showed me some of the birds and the trees, and the ashes and the blackboys, and medicine that was in the blackboys. They showed me the roots of the trees and the medicine bushes. I remember when we looked at that camp. He showed me where these people used to get water from. It was a great highlight for me, especially in my young adult years, to absorb all that information at that particular time. To know that I listened to the information he was telling me and that it was a part of me and something that belonged to me. Something that sort of says that this is your heritage and your Grandma is a part of your heritage and a part of Yoorleen’s, to keep and respect and to never let it die away. So, that was a privileged event. What they said about creation stories from that area of Kings Park, a creation story that my Grandma used to say was to be passed on to her children and her grannies, and it made sense to me as I moved around there. There are places where you find serenity; where you find a sense of belonging. I was able to allow the birds and the air and the feeling of the breeze of that place, and was a beautiful sense, that this is a part of our place, this is a part of our area, our culture.
Len Collard: So Grandfather, basically, was saying that Kings Park was a camping ground of his/our relations in the earlier days?
Yeah, Lenny, he used to say that (I am a nephew of Uncle Sealin), and that’s one of the things that you can say without having any sense of wanting to have people identifying your place here, is that this old gentleman (Deman Cliff Humphries, grandfather) here was able to give us first knowledge, you know? First-hand knowledge of where they camped, where they walked, and some of the places where they would have hunted. He knew of some of the strife that had taken place there, how they had been pushed out and moved along, [white people could not understand] the sacredness of Kings Park to Aboriginal people. It was a very prime piece of real estate at that particular time, and to have Aboriginal people hanging off the fringes, in a sense they sort of degraded the place in their [white people’s] sight and so after a while, they would take the children away.