Not Just Black and White

by Lesley Williams

  Not long after our father returned from war, and several months after I was born, our parents separated. My aunt, uncle and grandparents immediately offered to raise me in Cherbourg, alongside Alex and their own children. Over the years they’d raised multiple generations of our family and offered countless more a place to stay, regardless of whether they were related to us or not. It didn’t matter that the house was already full; they’d always make room for another one. Family meant everything to Granny, perhaps because of her and Grandfather’s removal from their parents. It was always better to have all of our family together, squashed under one roof, than lost somewhere in the outside world.

  Because Naomi Malone was my mother’s sister, in our culture Alex and I also considered her a mother. And so it followed that her children became our brothers and sisters, and not merely cousins. The large size of the family meant there was a natural grouping of the children by age. Livingstone (or Gus as he was known) and Honor were the eldest children of the family. By the time I reached school age these two no longer lived at home; the government had already compelled them to go out to work – as labourer and domestic servant.

  I was the youngest in the second group, with Sandra the eldest, then Alex. Once Gus and Honor had left home, we did most of the chores around the house and were expected to help the adults to care for the younger ones. Claude, Donald and Grace made up the middle group, followed by Dawn, Jeanette and Frank. Between the youngest and oldest child was a 22-year age difference. Thankfully, the age gap meant that someone left home almost at the right time, when the younger ones became too big to sleep five in a double bed! Also added to the family were Michael and Lynelle, my city siblings who lived with my birth mother and their father, my stepfather.

  The size and make-up of my family didn’t confuse me. Rather, the difficulty I had was what to call my numerous parents, especially if my two mums were in the room together. This dilemma got easier as they aged and became grandparents. As a mark of respect for the position they held in the family, Naomi and Jack Malone – or Mum and Dad – were given the titles ‘Ma’ and ‘Pa’. Likewise, my birth mother (I don’t like using the word biological because it sounds so bloody technical and it has no warmth to it) was given the title of ‘Nana’. However, because my birth father died relatively young, before becoming an Elder or grandparent, I continue to refer to him as ‘my father’ and not ‘Pa’ or ‘Grandfather’.

  Whenever they could, my birth parents visited Alex and me in Cherbourg. But, as a child, I had trouble bonding with them. Although my father worked in the region as a seasonal labourer, the government restricted how often he and my mother could visit us. So I don’t remember seeing them more than a few times a year. Each time they’d visit it would take me a while to get over my shyness – I’d spend most of the time hiding behind Ma and Pa. By the time I got used to being in their company, it’d be time for them to go and the bond would be broken again, until the next time the government granted them permission to visit their children.

  Only a few times when I was young, the white officials allowed Granny to take us to Brisbane on the train to visit Nana (my birth mother). She lived in the working-class suburb of Zillmere with her new husband, a whitefulla named Lindsay Mace (my stepfather). He was later given the title Pa Mace. He drove a taxi in Brisbane and was always being pestered by blackfullas to give them a lift – of course when it came time to pay the fare nobody ever had any money. Occasionally, when he wasn’t working, he’d spend Saturday morning driving to Cherbourg so Nana could visit us. But because Pa Mace was white, he only had permission to spend the afternoon on the settlement and couldn’t stay overnight. To the government my stepfather’s race was an issue; to us it was irrelevant – he was family.

  Tammy

  At primary school in the rural town of Gympie, where I was the only Aboriginal student in my grade, some of my classmates couldn’t believe I had over a hundred cousins and countless aunties and uncles ‘And that’s just on my mother’s side!’ I would proudly announce. In turn, I couldn’t believe my non-Aboriginal friends only had a handful of cousins, in total.

  I define everyone in my extended family by their relationship to my mother, and through her to me, and each is to be treated accordingly. For instance, Mum’s cousins are addressed as ‘Aunty’ or ‘Uncle’, and anyone in my grandparents’ age group are regarded as my Elders. As a girl, I thought these large and expansive family webs were quite normal, as they are so common among Indigenous Australians. Later, I realised Anglo-Celtic concepts of kinship and family are different from ours. No wonder the Australian legal system has struggled to take account of such differences, particularly when recognising traditional adoption and inheritance practices among Indigenous families.

  Belonging to such a large family does have its benefits, though. It’s always been comforting to know that, if I travel almost anywhere in Queensland, I’ll most likely come across a relative of some description. It is irrelevant whether we have met before, because once the relationship and connection to each other has been identified, from that moment on, you are treated as one of the fold.

  The downside to this is that you always have to be on your best behaviour because, wherever you go, there will most likely be someone who knows you and could report back on your travelling misdemeanours. But for all of its minor disadvantages, belonging to a large family is a special blessing.

  Lesley

  As a youngster I didn’t see the poverty around me. Nor did our house in the Camp look overcrowded or feel cramped. Instead, for the first decade of my life, my memories are of nightly singalongs and storytelling with Pa and Ma in front of the wood stove in the kitchen. On the weekend and on holidays, Sandra, Alex and I would organise concerts with some of the other camp children who lived nearby. We’d spend hours rehearsing until it was almost too late to start the show. And if we were short on acts for the evening’s entertainment, Pa would perform magic tricks while Ma would sometimes use her own magic in the kitchen – turning measly rations into baked treats to share with everyone afterwards.

  I also have memories of Granny teaching us traditional Aboriginal string games and the special meanings of different native animals. Back then the old people relied on the signs revealed by animals for information – every animal and plant had significance to our people. Grandfather would have wild kookaburras land on his shoulder and eat out of his hand, while Granny had a particular fondness for willie wagtails, a tiny black-and-white bird with a fanned tail. If one was fluttering nearby it meant we’d be receiving news or a visitor soon – and more times than not, the little bird was right. It therefore didn’t take me long to stop questioning Granny’s wisdom and realise she knew a hell of a lot more than me.

  In most Australian households in the 1950s, it was assumed that men were the head of every family. But in a matriarchal culture like ours, if Grandfather or Pa were the ‘head’ then Granny and Ma were certainly the backbone – holding us all together and keeping our mob upright. Granny and Ma were the ones who called the shots when it came to organising the family. Somehow, night after night, they could turn bland, government-issue ingredients into hearty meals – stews, soups, scones or damper and, on the occasional weekend, sago and rice puddings. However, the meagre rations didn’t go far when dished out to our large family, and we often felt hungry. We used to love it whenever Ma’s brother, Uncle Livingstone, invited us to go into the bush with him and his children to collect the sweet gum from the wattle tree.

  To bring more joy into our lives, Pa and others from the settlement formed the Cherbourg Welfare Association, having, of course, first received permission from the superintendent to do so. As part of fundraising activities for the Association, old movies were shown in the hall. Seating had to be arranged according to race and gender. Upstairs near the projection room was a balcony where the white officials sat with their families; Aboriginal families sat downstairs, but were split up with males o
n one side and females on the other. This didn’t stop us from rearranging ourselves once the lights were switched off – so we could sit next to our sweethearts, but making sure we slid back to our side just before the movie finished.

  For days afterwards we’d act out our favourite scenes from the movie. One benefit of living in the camp was there were always plenty of kids around to play each of the characters or movie extras. Alex liked being Elizabeth Taylor and Sandra pretended she was Yvonne De Carlo. I liked acting out the parts played by either Debbie Reynolds or Audrey Hepburn – they were not as glamorous as ‘Liz’ but I liked their sense of style.

  One group of children we weren’t allowed to play with were the sons and daughters of the white officials. I felt they were the ones who missed out. With a couple of hundred kids in the Camp, we were never short of a playmate, whereas the white officials’ children had only a few dozen to choose from.

  Directly down the hill from our house, in the white officials’ area that was out of bounds to us, lived the Lotts family, with three school-aged boys. Their father was a plumber and we realised they must have belonged to a lower class in the white pecking order, because the boys didn’t play or mix much with the children whose parents held loftier jobs at Cherbourg. Sometimes, when we played cricket they’d stand on their side of Barambah Avenue, on the white officials’ boundary line, and watch us play on the other side of the road, in the blackfullas’ area. I wished they could’ve joined in with us. Not only because it was sad seeing them watch wistfully from the sidelines but because I had a ‘thing’ for one of the boys. Whenever it was my turn with the cricket bat – usually an old fence paling – I’d try to hit the ball hard to impress them.

  A downside of having two older sisters was that I had to compete with them for the attention of boys, and this was surely the case with the Lotts brothers. Sandra and Alex would go into the front bedroom at night to flash Granny’s torch on and off, sending secret messages to the boys. At first I was jealous but I got over it, realising it couldn’t be more than just harmless fun. These weren’t the only boundaries in the settlement we dared not cross.

  Chapter 4

  Lesley

  The way I viewed the world changed in 1958. I was eleven years old and my childhood, as I knew it, was to end abruptly.

  It was late February when I arrived home for lunch and saw dozens of camp people gathered in our yard. Grandfather was outside talking with some, while others were in the kitchen consoling Ma and Granny. I didn’t understand what was happening and why everyone was upset. With so many people talking and weeping it was hard to overhear what they were saying. Instead, I thought it was best to keep out of everyone’s way and return to school after having a quick bite.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say goodbye to Pa?’ Ma growled, annoyed that I appeared to be in a hurry to go and play with friends. ‘You know he won’t be here when you come home from school.’

  ‘Okay,’ I shrugged, just so I could get her off my case. There was a scolding tone to her voice and I knew better than to answer back; but I still didn’t know what the big deal was. Pa travelled away regularly to play sport as he was ‘Champ’ Malone – the champion boxer, cricketer and football player. He’d go away for a few days and of course I missed him but he always returned; it had been that way for years. So why was this trip any different?

  I found Pa sitting on a chair in the main area of the house with Sandra and Alex hugging him.

  ‘Come here,’ he signalled with tears in his eyes, but both of his arms were already taken by my sisters. I spotted a gap by Pa’s chest and squeezed in. Like the runt of a litter, I nuzzled in close to claim my piece of him. After a few moments I pulled away. The group hug was suffocating, and being physically close to Pa and my sisters made me feel their sadness. I didn’t want to be sad when I still didn’t understand why. I went outside to the tap and splashed my face with water so the boys didn’t think I was a sook for crying, and then hurried off to school trying to look as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

  ‘Lesley, what are you doing here?’ asked one of the teachers, shocked to see me playing. ‘Hasn’t anyone told you?’

  ‘Told me wha-wha-what?’

  ‘Your father has leprosy. He’s being sent away. Shouldn’t you be at home?’

  The words shook my body. They were the same words I now remembered Ma telling me only a few days earlier. The truth had finally sunk in: the health authorities were removing Pa to a lepers’ colony for Aboriginal people on Fantome Island, off the coast of north Queensland. There he’d remain indefinitely, until or if ever he recovered.

  I sprinted along the dirt road in the direction of home. Pa wasn’t in the front yard or on the veranda, nor was he behind the house. There was no sign of him or of the crowd that had gathered earlier.

  ‘Wh-wh-where is he?’ I yelled as I ran inside. His chair was empty. Pa was gone. The white officials had taken him before I could give him a decent hug and say a meaningful goodbye. How could I have not understood the seriousness of Pa being taken away from us? Was I so wrapped up in my own little childish world, playing hopscotch and fantasising about movie stars, to miss saying a proper goodbye to my own dad? Over half a century later the guilt has never left me.

  As winter approached more people in the Camp became infected with leprosy and the seasonal flu ravaged those of us who remained on the settlement. Our poor living conditions and overcrowded houses meant almost no one was spared, with the young and elderly hit hardest. Soon the Cherbourg Hospital became just as cramped as our homes, with its beds full of patients. The white officials distributed aspirin tablets to residents in the Camp, but that wasn’t enough to treat so many sick and dying people. Among them was our Grandfather. He became ill, grew increasingly frail and within a few weeks he died. He was in his eighties but had always been such a presence.

  Our family went into mourning for him, as did the rest of the Camp. In our culture grieving is a time for quiet. As a mark of respect no one is allowed to say Grandfather’s name or enter his room and touch his belongings until some time after the funeral. The settlement became eerily quiet. Even the dogs in the Camp seemed to stop their barking. The only sound that could be heard was the wailing of women from inside our house. Anyone who walked past and heard their cries lowered their heads in sorrow or didn’t look in our direction. For days, Elders came in small groups to comfort Granny. Each time they did, Sandra, Alex and I would take the younger ones outside to hush them and play only quiet games.

  With the shock of Pa leaving us, and then the grief of Grandfather’s death, it seemed to me that my family was falling apart. Uncertainty crept into our lives and I didn’t know how to react. Within just a few months our family had experienced so many emotions. Amid all of this, just six weeks after Pa was taken away from us, Ma gave birth to our youngest brother, Frank.

  As confusing as these times were for me, it was nothing compared to what poor Ma must have felt, as she worried about our family’s circumstances and the reality of raising nine children, including the newborn baby, by herself. Not long after Frank was born the pressure began to take its toll on her health. Months passed and then a year went by, with Ma still feeling unwell. It was clear she wasn’t just ‘run down’ or exhausted, as she was not much more than forty. Test results revealed she’d contracted tuberculosis. The officials took swift action, and over the next two years she was regularly admitted to a hospital that had been specially set up in an attempt to halt the disease. Despite this, the limited medical facilities on Cherbourg meant she didn’t receive the treatment she required, and her health continued to deteriorate. Eventually her condition became serious enough for the authorities to transfer her to Brisbane for treatment. There she remained for at least another year, separated from her children.

  We now had no father or mother at home and our beloved Grandfather had died. No more magic tricks and storytelling with Pa, no more p
uddings and roast dinners made by Ma, and no Grandfather to keep a watchful eye on us playing in the laneway. My brothers and sisters and I were now alone with only our elderly grandmother to care for us. With half a dozen kids under the age of eleven and three young teenage girls to keep a close eye on, Granny’s days were filled with the work of the household, while also attending to babies and toddlers. Yet still the white officials demanded she continue the job of washing – by hand – the bloodstained meat sheets from the butcher shop.

  When we weren’t at school, Sandra, Alex and I helped Granny to mother the rest of the family. We were still children ourselves, but we couldn’t play with dolls – actually just dressed-up drink bottles – when there were little ones at home who really needed looking after. Clothes had to be washed, meals cooked, cleaning done and children bathed and fed. By the end of the day we were too tired to sit around the fire and tell stories like we used to. Instead, I’d lie in bed at night, snuggling close to my sisters, sucking my thumb for comfort.

  Besides providing for our basic needs, Granny also had the added pressure of making sure the care we received was to the standards dictated by the white officials. Each morning before we left home for school, she’d give us a final once-over, checking to see if we were clean and our clothes meticulously ironed. Back then every school-aged child in the settlement had to assemble in the backyard of the Girls’ Dormitory to have our fingernails, arms, legs, face and hair inspected by the matron. If we weren’t clean we would’ve surely been split up and placed in the dormitories while Granny saw out her days in the old people’s home. But she was determined this wouldn’t happen to us. By being strict about our health and hygiene, there’d be no reason for the white officials to remove us from her care. She also checked our heads for munyus (head lice) at least monthly.