Heartsick for Country

by Sally Morgan

  In 2005, I made a trip with other family members back to country, to a Nyungar celebration reunion in Katanning. This meant a lot to me and my sisters and cousins, because we’d all grown up in this town. There was a part in the reunion programme where I was asked to speak, as one of the Elders, to a large gathering of Nyungar people who were also from Katanning and surrounding districts, which made me realise a lot of Nyungar people still called Katanning home. While I was speaking, someone asked me where I’d lived in town as a young child, and that was easy to answer because all I had to do was turn around and point at the house we’d lived in as a family. The reunion was held at the Katanning Aboriginal Community Centre, and our house was just across the road. It’s amazing it’s still standing, really.

  The reunion organisers also asked me to go along on a tour of various places where Nyungar people often used to gather in my early years, places of significance to our people. We set off in a small bus with quite a few younger family members. Everyone was excited to be going on this trip, because one of my cousins and I, Elders in our family, were going to take them down memory lane, sharing aspects of our childhood in Katanning and Broomehill, as well as taking in Police Pools, Etticup, Broomehill Cemetery and Lake Ewelamaartup.

  Our drive from Broomehill to Lake Ewelamaartup was just wonderful because we were travelling along the childhood tracks we had once travelled with our Elders so many years ago. It began to rain as we were driving, but it wasn’t so heavy that it distorted our view of the lake. When we arrived, we could see it very clearly and it was so beautiful. As we disembarked from the bus, an amazing thing happened. The rain stopped, the sun started to shine and there was no wind at all. A stillness descended over us. We all noticed it, but didn’t say anything to each other, instead we were all just quiet, looking at the lake. Then, on the bank at the edge of the lake, a vivid rainbow began to form right where we were. It was small at first and hovered at the lake’s edge for a while. It was so close that it seemed as if any one of us could have reached out and touched it. After lingering there for about ten minutes or so, it started to move, shimmering across the lake and growing in size. On and on it went until it was on the other side of the lake, where my dad, Mum and we kids had lived all those years ago when Dad was first working on the railways at Nyabing. It was a glorious thing to see and we were all shocked because that type of thing rarely happens in the city. Then my cousin turned to me and asked, ‘What do you reckon about that Beryl?’ (Image 6.2)

  Image 6.2: Beryl with her sisters Shirley, Marie and Kathy—Back to Katanning Nyungar Reunion 2005 Courtesy Beryl Dixon

  ‘What do I reckon?’ I replied, ‘I reckon that rainbow is here to show us the significance of the spiritual side of our Nyungar culture. It’s a sign from our dead ancestors, who spent time here with us when we were kids. I think they are very happy that we have all come back home to country.’ (Image 6.3)

  Image 6.3: Lake Ewelamaartup—a rainbow appears at the start of a visit which is seen as a spiritual sign by family members, 2005 Courtesy Eric Hayward

  As I said before, I hadn’t exactly been born out in the bush, in country, so this doesn’t make me a bush baby in the proper sense, but I certainly wasn’t born in a white man’s hospital either, so perhaps this puts me somewhere in the middle of it all. And that is how my life has been really, because I have worked hard to do well and I have done my best to help my family do well too. At the same time, I have kept all my cultural connections with my large extended family and my country, and when I think of all my old people who have passed away now, this makes me happy. I have decided that when it’s my time to go, I want to be laid to rest not too far from where my mum, dad and siblings are buried. It’s not in my country exactly, but it’s still in Nyungar country. Up on the hill, in the jarrah walk that is surrounded with eucalypts, kangaroo paws and spider and donkey orchids. I wish for the people who meant a lot to me, as well as the things in the natural world that gave me many wonderful memories, to be near me. It would make me very happy to think that these people and those things are close to me, even when I have departed this life.

  GREG LEHMAN

  is a Palawa man descended from the Trawulwuy people of north-east Tasmania. He has worked in Aboriginal education and heritage management for over twenty years. Greg is manager of Aboriginal education for the Tasmanian Department of Education. His essays and poems have been published widely. (Image 7.1)

  Image 7.1

  A Snake and a Seal

  The rolling waters of Bass’s Strait swirl and boil.

  Hardly an island,

  a few stark boulders are just enough

  to part the current’s run and churn its blue embrace.

  If not for their foaming wake, these rocks would be missed

  by all but the best of a schooner’s watch.

  But one tired eye knows them well.

  The rounded shape would bring to a sailor’s mind

  the bursting breasts of a nursing wife

  that he has left behind.

  In a heavy sea, they slip from view behind marching crests

  and rise again.

  None too rare in these waters,

  a rogue wave will break clear over the top.

  The hard granite rock, stained orange and black,

  is scoured smooth by driven brine.

  Deep in the islet’s bosom where the wind cannot reach,

  lies a quiet shelter.

  And in it,

  motionless,

  a silent form.

  Crouched with her back to the cold stone,

  wrapped tightly in a cloak of wallaby skin

  to hold the damp at bay,

  a young woman waits.

  There is a snake moving along the river this morning. He is a big one. White. Slow. Very cold. I can feel the chill of him. As he makes his way, it is the banks of the river that guide him—mostly. Maybe he is impatient to get to where he is going, or perhaps it is because he is just afraid of nothing. But he will sometimes move straight ahead, past factories and bridges. At a bend in the river he will climb straight up and over any hill that gets in the way. If the river widens into a bay, this snake swims straight across. He is very determined—like an old man who has seen everything there is to see—he has no inclination to stop and wonder about what he doesn’t know. And there is so much to understand on the banks of Nipaluna these days.

  I have watched him. Ever since I came to this cold country in the south of the island. I see him every winter, moving down the valley toward the sea. Do you wonder what he does when he gets to the coast? Once, maybe ten years ago, I found out. I was watching the news on television. After the stories had finished about war and money, they moved on to the weather. Snow had been falling in the mountains and was finished for now. The wind had swung to the north and everything was peaceful. The satellite photo showed no cloud, so the river’s mouth was clear to see. Can you believe it? The snake was there on the screen!

  The people who have lived along the river in recent times know him too. They call him ‘the Bridgewater jerry’ and wake to see him in the morning—already among them—because he comes in the early hours. ‘Oh, there’s the jerry. It’s big today. You’ll need a coat for sure!’ I also used to think of him like they did. The jerry. A fog. Something to keep out of if you could. Cold, damp and chilling to the bone. But when I saw it on my TV, I held my breath. As it was gliding out of the mouth of the river and across Storm Bay like a giant rope slung over the waters, I knew there was more to this ‘fog’ than just mist and science. (Image 7.2)

  Image 7.2: The Jerry Snake Courtesy Greg Lehman

  Here on Trowuna, the island that is now called Tasmania, we have some problems. Not that long ago, the British arrived to bring grief to my Ancestors. This wasn’t simply due to their being European: the French had been here before them and their visit had gone well. We met and ate with them, showed them our dances and taught them many things. They were quick to learn and showed us a
thing or to as well. Some of it fascinated the young ones (flutes, and axes) and some was not worth the bother (mirrors, beads and coins). Before them, the Dutch had come. They had been nervous and sailed by without meeting us. Maori had come long before this and left their flax behind. There had been others, too, but those are different stories.

  These problems began when the British decided to stay. Killing began. Not just of cartela, the seal, but us Palawa mob too. That’s the simple truth. Lots of killing. All this happened because of one thing: the sons of England did not know tunapri manta. This is our knowing that comes from the old stories, handed down for a thousand generations. It gives us our Law and a way to know the world that works for everyone. But the sealers and soldiers would not learn! If it is true what the Old Man Woreddy said, that they were num—the ghosts of our own ancestors—then this is hard to understand. Because num are part of tunapri manta. Something was not right. Something had changed. The story of their arrival, of numlaggar, could be a long one with much crying and sadness. But there is something more important to tell. To understand my story about the White Snake, you need to know how my people are today. And that is more than a simple matter of recounting history.

  Her face is soft with youth,

  her russet skin laced with scars.

  One of her deep-set eyes is large and dark.

  The cornea tinged with blue.

  The iris and pupil merge as one.

  Her other eye is gone.

  An emptiness gnaws at her heart,

  as cold as her rocky home.

  She has not heard her own name spoken for months.

  Instead, it is snarled by the wind.

  With a scorn that cuts her deep

  tunapri manta is broken.

  Whether it is to the living or the dead

  that the wind gives voice, there is no telling.

  But always, amidst the din,

  her own name is screamed,

  ‘bunga!’

  A mother pleads as her child is dragged

  across the sand to a longboat full with stinking num.

  They dip their oars and pull away.

  Beyond the breakers.

  On rowra’s evil toil.

  Existence for us today is confusing. We live in two worlds—or many more if you consider tunapri manta. But the world of the num is very different from our Palawa worlds. We survive in this because all of us can count num among our ancestors. Think of it! We come from the people of the land, made from tarner the kangaroo by the creation spirits, dromedeener and moinee. And there, two lifetimes ago, comes a num grandfather for each of us. So, we are descended from ghosts of our own dead! Even after two hundred years, none of our Elders has created a story from this that gives us peace.

  Or perhaps this is not quite right. We do sing songs of our survival in the face of a long hard struggle. Songs to bring the children home to have our land returned. But all of these are tinged with pain and have a demon as the boss. Numlagger, ‘the white man comes’. Not only were we chased from our country and family, but perhaps worse than this, we left the world of tunapri manta. I often wonder what all the spirits of the land have been doing since the time we last sang their songs and performed their ceremonies—since we forgot their names. They were kept in our minds by the stories and dances of the Old People like Woreddy and my own tribal grandmother, W oretemoeteyenner. Do they just disappear when the Old Ones die? Do they fade away like a fiction? It certainly seems that way; they are hardly mentioned anymore. And for most of the people who live here today, they have never existed at all. Or so they think. (Image 7.3)

  Image 7.3: Seal Shooting in Bass’s Straits, 1881 Courtesy State Library of Victoria

  Maybe those spirits are just hidden today—obscured by the language we speak. Words like ‘mountain’, ‘tree’ and ‘wind’ are no invitation for them to show us their presence. My own people have been too clever at learning the language of science. We now live in a num world where a rock is just a rock and the wind is just the wind. We no longer speak about how Kunanyi breathes out rain to fill the streams that run down her slopes. We do not hear the words that are carried in the screeching cry of moingana as he flies down from Kunanyi to warn us of coming storms. Worst of all, we hardly pause to heed the voices of our own Ancestors as they sing to us in the wind that blows through the trees—the trees we once knew as countrymen.

  It is not that long since we were surrounded by all of this. We didn’t have to think about what we had lost, or yearn for understanding of things past. T unapri was everywhere; in everything we did. The law was our life. Not just Palawa, but all things in the world followed this. The birds gave us notice of what was to come. The bush would call us when it was time to burn. The rain would punish our lazy ways. And always, the great ancestor spirits would watch us as they lay sleeping—their bodies forming the ridges, peaks and valleys of the country all around.

  A seal barks from a ledge below:

  ‘Cartela.’

  The num will come back soon, to take the skins away.

  They will leave her bleeding. And colder still.

  If only her sisters were with her.

  They will know the num by now.

  Spirit children will grow inside them too.

  They could tell her how to back home.

  ‘Tyerlore’ she spits. Island Wife.

  Married to stone and sea.

  A wooden club, a steel knife

  and a pile of stinking skins.

  There is an island near the mouth of Nipaluna, called Lupaylana. This name tells of the place before rowra, the powerful devil spirit who lives in the deep, raised up the waters to cut off the land and make an island of it. It is a place close to a big lagoon that in good years is full of eggs and fat ducks. The story of this place is also of a young girl who was being chased by a group of men. They were from a tribe that had no rightful business with her. She ran away fast, because she knew she must. For them to catch her would be for her to carry the blame of their crime. This is tunapri. She knew it was right because without the law, she might weaken and slow her flight. To be caught by them would maybe lead to war, because the men of her tribe would not rest until they had caused the deaths of these men. And that would be only the beginning. In this way, each Palawa carried responsibilities; for themselves and for tunapri manta. The men of her tribe too would have consequences to face—but that was their business and her tribe would see to this or perish.

  So the girl ran until she reached the beach. The waves here pound and churn with all the power of an ocean that stretches without end. She had dived here for shellfish and lobster many times, and the familiar water called her to safety. Blind to the chaos of pounding surf, she dove into the cold, exploding waters and began to swim. Slipping under the breakers, she soon cleared the waves and looked back to where she expected to see her tormentors standing on the beach waving their spears and shaking their heads in fury. What she saw shocked her. Like so many children, too young to have heard of rowra—who dragged men who invaded his domain to certain death—they too had entered the water.

  Bunga stretches her slender arms and legs.

  She arches her supple back and rubs her leathery feet.

  The day begins.

  A penguin track of hard packed sand

  leads through sharp tussocks to a humble rise.