by Sally Morgan
I was born in the bush in the South-West of Western Australia in 1926. My name is Beryl Dixon, nee Keen, and I am the oldest of twelve children born to Emily Keen, nee Farmer, and Lennard George Keen. Both my parents were Nyungar, which makes me Nyungar, as it does my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Our bloodline links to country are through the Minang and Goreng peoples of the Great Southern region. I like to think of myself as being born in the bush, and though I am not a true bush baby, I was not born in a hospital. This is because my mum was boodjarri with me when she was on the job, living with and keeping camp for my dad and uncles when they were contracted to clear land for several farmers out of Broomehill. The story of my birth is a funny one, and because of that my Aunty Ednah, Dad’s sister, has retold it many times over the years. Her skill of sharing a yarn, as we Nyungars call it, was so good she had everyone in stitches of laughter over what happened.
My mum was nervous about my coming birth because I was her first baby. Also, things could go wrong in childbirth and with medical assistance a long way away, it was a worrying time. On the day of my birth, my dad and my uncles were in the bush cutting down trees and my mum was at the camp with Dad’s younger sister, Aunty Ednah. They had a whistle to blow to bring the men in for their smoko, lunch and dinner at the end of the day. The whistle was also for emergencies, or in case mum went into labour. The men had just finished lunch and were well into their job again when they heard the whistle. At first they ignored it, after all they had just been at the camp and everything was fine. But the noise of that whistle kept on and on, bouncing off the gum trees that surrounded them and making a hell of a racket. Then it finally hit Dad that it might be the baby. Forgetting to bring the horse and cart, he ran full pelt back to camp, only to find that Aunty Ednah had practically winded herself from blowing the whistle so hard to get their attention. Gasping for breath, she quickly explained that Mum was ready to have the baby and needed help.
‘I’ll get the horse and cart!’ he told them ‘Be ready to hop on board as soon as I pull in!’
Katanning hospital was around fifteen miles away, so it was going to be quite a long ride.
Well, Mum and Aunty Ednah heard him coming, all right! Dad flogged that horse and cart so hard he couldn’t stop in time and galloped straight past them. They just stood there in shock, watching the tail end of Dad and the horse and cart go flying past. They didn’t know what was happening, and they didn’t think Dad knew either. He disappeared into the bush again and though they couldn’t see him, they could hear the horse neighing and Dad cussing and fumbling around.
‘It’s all right!’ they heard him yell ‘Just get ready, I’m coming around again!’ By then panic had gripped them all. Mum and Aunty Ednah didn’t know what to expect, with Dad in the frame of mind he was in. Aunty Ednah went into hysterics laughing and Mum went into labour and started crying.
Eventually, they were headed off at a quick trot for Katanning, but it soon became obvious that I was determined to come into the world there and then, so they detoured to old Grannie Finn’s farmhouse, where I was born on the kitchen table. Later that day, we were taken to Katanning hospital in Grannie Finn’s car. I was fine, but mum needed some medical attention from Dr Loftus. Personally, I don’t think being bounced around in the back of the cart by Dad had helped her any! So my life began with a funny story, which was just as well, because it would be humour that would keep me going through some of the hard times in the future.
On a more serious note, though, even though as Nyungar people we have learned to laugh at just about anything, there is always a sad side to our lives. One of the things that saddens me is what has happened to our country. Nyungar people cleared a lot of land for the farmers back then. Unfortunately, the oppressive laws of the day made it impossible for us to live as ordinary people might. It also made it impossible for us to look after the land the way our old people would have done in the times before the white people came. Our lives were hard. We had no opportunity and little access to a proper education or regular jobs with decent pay. The farmers employed us because they couldn’t get anyone else to do the work cheaper. They also took advantage of our situation, because they knew that we needed the work to survive. It was the only way we could put food on the table for our families. There were no handouts to talk of in those days, only the rations the Native Welfare Department gave to Nyungars, but this didn’t amount to enough to survive on. Our families were forced to scratch out a living in whatever way they could and because of that we also learnt to stick together like glue.
Most of the work was seasonal, so in the lean times families stayed close at hand because if one was out of work, others wouldn’t be, so this was a way of providing for each other. Everyone shared what they had, it might not have been much but it was shared nonetheless. Looking back now at some of the jobs our people did, especially labouring to clear the land for farmers in the South-West, I think sadly of some of the consequences. Felling all those trees has degraded the land and caused the water to become salty. Also, there are fewer places for the birds and animals to live. This could have all been avoided if, when white people first came to Nyungar country, they had listened to the wisdom of our Elders. That’s the reality of it. The truth is the truth, you can’t change it, but we have to learn from the mistakes of the past and try to put things right as best we can. To do that, though, we all have to work together in a different way.
The other thing that saddens me is that a lot of our people died in those days: babies, young children and young adults, as well as many of our oldies. I nearly died from diphtheria when I was nine years old, and I was between six and eight years old when I lost my little brother, Lennard George Keen, who was named after my dad. He was under twelve months old when he passed away with gastroenteritis, which was a real killer for a lot of Nyungar kids then. There was not much that could be done if it got a hold of you. I think one of the reasons so many of our people died was the dramatic change in our lifestyles. We went from being a healthy people to unhealthy. We never had enough of our traditional foods in our diet. Our people weren’t allowed to hunt and gather anymore because the ownership of the land was taken away from us. You had to get permission to hunt kangaroo and possum, gather berries, carrots, potatoes, roots and seeds. These were the foods that had kept us healthy, but we didn’t have access to them anymore. Some farmers were tolerant of Nyungars who worked their land for them and let them hunt for food, but others were not. You got into big trouble if you got caught on someone’s land hunting without permission. Nyungars were caught between two worlds and we suffered for it in many ways. To provide for our families we were forced to do jobs that destroyed the very same country that had once sustained our old people. That’s the truth of it.
Like most Nyungar families, in order to survive my parents had to follow the work. And as much of their work was on farms, they often had to camp out in the bush in difficult conditions. Though they did their very best to make things comfortable, it was still hard if you had a big mob of kids with you. I am the eldest of twelve children, so you can imagine how hard it was for them. This meant that for some of my childhood I lived with my Grandma Farmer, who was a stoic, no-nonsense person. She was also a very loving woman and blessed with a little house in the town of Katanning. She protected us from being removed from our family, like many Nyungar children were at that time, because she was always one jump ahead of the authorities. When she was only eight years old, the Native Welfare Department had placed Grandma Farmer with a white family so she could be trained as a domestic servant. This didn’t mean she was adopted: that didn’t happen in those days. Even if a child’s father was white, Nyungar children were seldom claimed by their white relations. Instead, she was trained to be a housekeeper, so that while she was doing all the hard work, the lady of the house could be just that. A lady. Grandma Farmer was well thought of and this gave us a bit of extra protection. She often worked with Dr Pope delivering babies, and four of her so
ns even fought in the First World War, with two of them losing their lives and being buried in France. Grandma Farmer was pretty good at working out how things stood, so she kept an eagle eye on us kids.
As a family, we would go bush most Sundays. Grandma Farmer would take a sugar bag with everything we needed for the day like flour, baking powder, tea, sugar, salt and water. She also had two old tins, one to make the damper in and the other to wash up in. She’d bring a few medicines along too, just in case. Gran would collect the right-size leaves from the flood gums, heat them up and then use them to rub on bites and stings. The leaves were hot and they’d burn a little, but they certainly took the sting away, even a bee sting. I know, because I was treated many times with this medicine. Grandma Farmer had a lot of bush remedies.
We also went to visit the cemetery regularly to clean up the graves of family members and to let them know that they weren’t forgotten. There were strict rules we kids had to follow: no running wild, talk in a soft voice, and show the utmost respect to the graves and where we were. After our visit, the Elders would take us up into the bush behind the cemetery, where we’d make a camp fire and have a feed. The Elders would oversee our jobs because of the scorpions, snakes and spiders that could be in the wood we were collecting. We’d also gather rocks to put around the fire so it didn’t get away from us and cause unwanted damage. When everything was ready, we’d drag some logs over and place them around the fire so we all had somewhere to sit and enjoy our bush tucker picnic. We’d have foods like cumuuk, quondongs and bardi grubs and a karrdar, which is a goanna, to throw on the coals. Grandma Farmer and her eldest son, Uncle Harry, showed us where to get the food. The women in the group used to take us girls to find cumuuk, which didn’t need to be cooked. They grew on a bushy vine about two feet high. The fruit was ripe when it changed from an inch-long hard green berry to a soft mauve colour with sticky plum flesh. You could eat every part of this bush berry, it was very sweet and we kids loved it, so of course we ate as we gathered. There were so many in those days that there were still plenty to take back to camp and share with the rest of the family.
Quondong trees were everywhere then, too. They grew to around six foot high and had a thin bark layered close to the trunk. The branches were few, but they had quite a bit of foliage on them. You couldn’t miss them because in season they were loaded with bush peaches, which were bright red when ripe. The women used to make quondong jam when the fruit was in season, so we had jam all year round, and it tasted wonderful on damper. The seeds didn’t go to waste either; they were about the size of a large marble and the women used to make necklaces out of them. Some women still make necklaces today out of them. We kids also liked the manna and jam tree gums. When you cook it up in a little pot with sugar and water it makes a great toffee. We got bardi grubs from the smaller jam gum trees that had protruding lumps on their trunks. We’d chop the lump off with a small tomahawk in a way that didn’t damage the tree. There was usually only one grub in a lump, but it would be big and fat, about two inches long, and they were juicy and delicious. Sometimes we ate them raw, other times we cooked them on the coals. They had a sweet woody taste.
Now and then, when Dad was in town from working in the bush, he came with us and he always bought his .22 rifle along. Dad and Uncle Harry would go off together and bring a rabbit or a karrdar, which was usually killed with a dowick, to add to our picnic. They would be prepared by the women and cooked on the coals. Karrdar meat is white and looks and tastes similar to fish. We’d always have damper, too, so it was a really mooditj feed.
Like our behaviour at the cemetery, there were rules we had to follow in the bush, too. We weren’t allowed to wander too far from the camp on our own. Snakebite was a big thing in those days, because there was no antivenom to speak of. We were taught that if you left the snakes alone, then they would leave you alone, and this seemed to work pretty well for us.
The Elders also warned us of other things: there are creatures in the bush, and if they get their hands on you, you might never return to your family. The Elders told us about the baalups, who were little hairy men with red eyes. ‘Don’t wave red-tipped glowing sticks around the campfire,’ they warned us, ‘because you will attract the attention of the baalups. They will get curious and come into the camp, especially when everyone is asleep. Then one of you kids could go missing. Also, if you are in the bush and hear someone calling your name, if you don’t know that voice, then be wary of walking towards it. You might not come back.’ Then there was the jaanark, a night spirit devil bird. ‘Don’t whistle at night,’ they instructed us. ‘If you whistle at night, you might attract the jaanark bird, who will bring danger and bad luck to everyone.’ And, of course, there was also the W weerlo, a bird that is also called a curlew. ‘Don’t talk too loudly at night,’ the Elders used to tell us, ‘especially if you hear that weerlo. If you hear them, don’t talk loud, because if you attract their attention with your voices then they will screech over our camp all night. And you know the weerlo is a messenger of doom and danger.’ All this kind of knowledge was important cultural learning for us because it helped us to know how to behave in the bush so we kept ourselves safe and didn’t endanger anyone else either.
When we were in the bush, the spirit world was very close to us, especially at night. I would like to share a story involving my Uncle Alf, whom we kids called Uncle Tommy, and his brothers, Uncles Ken and Lou Farmer, the two sons of my Grandma Farmer who had survived the First World War and come home. Uncle Tommy was camping on the job, cutting fence posts out of jam trees in dense bush between Broomehill and Kojonup. He needed to move camp, so Uncle Ken and Uncle Lou decided to go out and help him shift. I was allowed to go along too, and so was a smaller cousin of mine. The trip out to Uncle Tommy’s camp was great, but not that eventful, though this changed once we got there With everything packed to the hilt on the back of the truck, the truck got bogged in the sand and no matter what they did, the uncles couldn’t budge it an inch. In those days, there were no real roads to talk of, except for the few main roads that the Main Roads Board laid down between towns. The rest were just sandy tracks, so if you drove off the main roads, then things could get pretty tricky.
Anyway, by the time night fell, they still hadn’t got the truck clear. So the uncles built a big fire and very firmly told me and my little cousin to sit still by the fire, be very quiet and not move. It was pitch black and, besides the fire, there were only the stars for light, plus the truck’s headlights. So there we were, sitting and looking at each other and wondering how long it would take our uncles to free the truck. The night was very still and an eerie feeling descended on us. I remember having a sense that something was about to happen, only I didn’t know what. My little cousin felt it, too, and he got so anxious he started to shake and cry.
All of a sudden, this bloodcurdling scream erupted from the bush. It sounded like a woman in terrible pain, like she was getting belted or something, but there was no other camp near us: no people, no farms, no other light from anyones camp fire, nothing within cooee of us. We were alone, surrounded by dense bush. My little cousin started to cry really loudly in fear and I felt like crying too. I could see that though the uncles were acting brave, they were just as nervous. The screaming didn’t stop; it went on and on like it was never going to end. I have never seen my uncles move so fast in all their lives! They got that truck out of that bog as quick as you could say Jack Flash and had us speeding down the track in seconds. We were thirty miles from Katanning, but before we knew it, we were home. It was like we flew!
A couple of days later, when my dad and Uncle Tommy were having a bit of a yarn, my uncle told Dad what had happened that night. I know I shouldn’t have been listening to the Elders talk, this was a rule of Grandma Farmer’s, but I did anyhow and I was shocked to hear them burst out laughing about that night. I didn’t understand how they could laugh when it had been so terribly frightening. But as I grew older, I began to have some experiences like this
myself. This led me to appreciate the role Nyungar humour played in our lives. Dad and Uncle Tommy hadn’t focused on the frightening spiritual experience so much, but on the humorous human element: three grown men had busted themselves to get that truck out of that bog and away from that area as fast as they could. Spiritual things like this happened then and still happen today; these are the things we know about and experience, but we don’t talk too much about them because they are just a part of our country and our culture. My Elders understood it back then and I understand it now. These things are experienced by all Aboriginal people, right across the country, and we acknowledge and respect them.
Another place we used to go a lot, especially when it was hot, was Police Pools. This was where the police troopers used to water their horses in the early days, and it had always been an important source of fresh water for Nyungar people. I remember that everything was so alive in the bush then. The sounds of the birds and the smells of the eucalyptus and sheoak trees were magnified to the point that they were intoxicating. And the frogs—there were many of them, but there was one in particular that the Elders told us not to go near or touch because it was special. This was a very strict rule and they expected us to take notice of it. The frog they were talking about was green and had its own special croak. When we heard it we were happy because Grandma had told us that it was the protector of that pool and it watched over us when we were splashing around in the water. We began to understand then that frogs were very important because the waterways needed them and they played a major role in keeping everything as it should be.
One of our other favourite places was Lake Ewelamaartup, which is a freshwater lake east of Katanning, surrounded by sheoak and eucalyptus trees. There was also a broom bush that the old people used to make brooms out of, to sweep their bush camps and also to sell to white people to make a little money. The lake was a favourite watering hole for all the animals and the birdlife there was very rich. We loved swimming and having picnics there because there was so much to see. The oldies usually rode in the horse and buggy when we went to Lake Ewelamaartup and we kids liked to run alongside the buggy, jumping on it every now and again for a ride as we made our way to the lake. We walked for miles and miles in those days and thought nothing of it. It’s probably one of the reasons we were so healthy and fit. The lake was always a special place to us as a family and I think this was also because of its cultural significance. Nyungars used to gather there, and I am talking about many, many, many years before I was even thought of, let alone born. It’s a big freshwater area with lots of bush food, so they would have had corroborees and other large gatherings there. Nyungars keep doing the same things and going to the same places year in and year out, especially if they live in their own country. So when we went to Lake Ewelamaartup we were following in the footsteps of the Nyungars who’d been before us. We were even doing similar things, like sharing food, yarning and enjoying our family’s company. Where there are fresh water and food to do social things with family, then these places are culturally important. My old people knew just where to go and what each place could provide. They would have been taught this by their old people, because this kind of knowledge was passed down from generation to generation. So, as it had done for the people who had gone before me, Lake Ewelamaartup played a major part in my growing up, and after I came to live in Perth memories of it often floated fondly through my thoughts over the passing years.