During the weeks it took for Richard Runche KC to dry out, Jessica and Mary had come to think of the books as containing the secret knowledge they needed to return the little black woman’s children to her. It was the books which would bring them justice, they decided, with the barrister being the key to unlocking their enormous power.
Jessica seats the still-fragile Richard Runche under the big river gum not far from Billy Simple’s gravestone and where she’d built a small bush table and two crude benches. With the water’s edge close by it is a cool and comfortable place even on a hot day. Then, with Richard Runche KC seated, she and Mary tell him the story of Mary’s stolen children.
‘We want Mary’s kids back, Mr Runche. They can’t just take them like that. Just come in and put them in a truck and drive off, it ain’t right!’
He is silent for a few moments. ‘I’m afraid they can, my dear. That is, they can with Aboriginal children.’ ‘But why? They’re people same as us, and the government can’t just walk in and steal our white babies.’ ‘Well, perhaps not, unless it can be proved they are being abused or neglected.’
‘My children’s not neglected!’ Mary protests. ‘They got good clothes, plenty tucker and they don’t have snot runnin’ out their noses.’
The little lawyer looks down, examining his fingernails. ‘I wish it were as easy as that, my dear. Diligence as a parent is not the criterion — any police constable or child welfare officer can decide whether they’re neglected.’
Mary’s voice is suddenly bitter. ‘Just ‘cause we’s blackfellas, eh?’
Richard Runche KC nods, then says, ‘I’m afraid so, Mary. There’s a lot of high-blown rhetoric about the rights of the Aboriginal people, but when it comes down to it, as the Yankees say, it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.’ He brings his fist up to his lips and clears his throat. ‘There isn’t much in the law that looks after your interests when it comes either to property or personal rights.’
Mary turns and points in the direction of the bookshelves. ‘You mean them books ain’t gunna get me back me kids? Yiz not gunna find out how to get me kids back outa them books?’ she repeats, then looks at Jessica and says, ‘Shit, Jessie and me, we nearly broke our backs bringing them back.’
‘Oh, they’ll be useful all right, nothing like a precedent or two to confuse a judge or a police magistrate,’ Richard Runche KC says reassuringly. ‘Though I’m quite well versed in this part of the law,’ he explains. ‘When I first arrived in this country in 1890 there was quite a to-do in the papers about a wild race of half-castes .growing up in New South Wales. It was then that the Aborigines’ Protection Board introduced the notion that the children should be “de-socialised” as Aborigines and “re-socialised” as whites — “assimilation” was what it was being termed at the time. The idea of separating children from their parents was so abhorrent to me that I took some interest in the whole affair. It was not so different from the disenfranchising of the American Red Indians, and I confess I thought it might be an area of the law where I might profitably practise.’ He looked up and shrugged. ‘Well, it wasn’t and then things changed for me,’ he said, not explaining any further, though both women knew he meant his drinking. ‘We must obtain a copy of the Aborigines’ Protection Act. We’ll need to know it backwards if we are to proceed.’
‘Where would we get one o’ them?’ Jessica asks. ‘Is it a book?’
‘Why, the nearest courthouse will have it, I should think, or a police station. It will be a government pamphlet, a guide to the law for police magistrates and the like,’ Runche said.
‘I’ll ride into Yanco termorra and get one,’ Jessica promptly responds.
‘It may not be quite as easy as that, my dear. You’ll not be thanked for asking for it and it might well be withheld.’ ‘Why?’ Jessica asks.
‘Well, it’s a tricky business at the moment. You see, the Aborigines live on well over a hundred reserves in New South Wales, all of which have been officially set aside for them by past governments. You could say the government has “deeded” them this land, though this viewpoint has always struck me as odd — after all, it was theirs in the first place.’
‘Do yer mean like Warangesda, Grong Grong and Sandy Hill?’ Mary asks.
‘Well, yes, and a great many government stations and missions and reserves like them.’
‘Well, why they chasin’ the blackfella out them places?’ Mary asks. ‘If it ours, why can’t we stay? We ain’t done nuthin’ wrong!’
‘Ah, well there’s the rub. It’s good land and now the government wants it back.’ ‘What for?’ Jessica asks.
‘Returned soldiers. They want to give the land to the returning troops, divide it into farm settlements.’ ‘But that’s not fair!’ Jessica protests.
‘No, my dear, it isn’t, it isn’t even strictly legal,’ he says, then glances up at Mary. ‘And that, Mary, is where your children come in.’
Both women look at him, puzzled. ‘How come, Mr Runche?’ Mary asks at last.
Richard Runche KC smiles gently. ‘I mean no offence by this question, Mary, but how many of your children are unadulterated?’
Mary shrugs. ‘They all adulteried, sir. Me old man, the one I was married to, he buggered off after the first two kids. The two that’s already grow’d up. I ain’t never married again.’
Richard Runche chuckles despite himself. ‘No, no, that’s not what I mean, my dear. Serves me right, silly word. Let me begin again. How many are full-bloods?’
‘You mean no whitefella somewhere in ‘em?’
‘Yes.’
Mary shrugs. ‘All me girls got whitefella somewhere in ‘em.’
‘How many full-blood Aboriginal children are there in your camp, Mary?’
‘Not many that I knows of.’ Mary taps her finger lightly to her chest. ‘Me neither, I’m black enough, but me grandad were an Irishman.’ She tries to think. ‘Some of the old people, the elders maybe, but most of the full-bloods in the Wiradjuri people they long dead, not many left in these parts, I reckon.’ She glances at Jessica and smiles. ‘Jessie says me kids, they every colour of the rainbow.’
‘Well that’s precisely it, it’s the genetics you see, my dear.’
‘What’s genetics, please?’ Jessica asks.
‘What you look like, the colour of your skin, eyes, hair — it’s all in your blood, your genes.’
‘Oh, you mean like Mary’s black and I’m white?’
‘With brown eyes and blue eyes, yes, that’s the general idea.’
‘And when you mixes them two up you gets me kids,’ Mary says.
‘Exactly, my dear. Now the government of the day happens to think genetics will solve the problem of your people. it seems that, unlike other black races — for instance the negroes in Africa — the Aboriginal people do not “throw back”.’ He is aware the words mean nothing to either of them. ‘What this means is that the colour can be bred out of them quite quickly, and a dark child will not crop up at some future time into a family of white children. If the Aboriginal people can be made to persist with white partners, then their offspring will eventually become white. I am told two or three generations is all it takes.’
Mary turns to Jessica. ‘Like Polly.’ She looks at the barrister. ‘Polly, she the colour of yellawood honey.’
Jessica frowns, looking at Richard Runche. ‘I don’t understand. What’s this genetics got to do with taking Mary’s kids?’
‘Well the idea is to take part-Aboriginal children from their mothers — Mary’s yellowwood-honey child is a perfect example. She’ll be able to assimilate and her children will be even lighter skinned.’ He pauses before continuing. ‘By the way, eight out of every ten children removed are female. They’re taken from their families and made wards of the State.’
‘That explains what they done!’ Mary cries suddenly.
‘They neve
r took no boys from the camp. Just me four kids.’ Mary looks at him and explains. ‘All me kids, they girls.’
‘Well, there you have it, my dear. The usual procedure is to place the girls into institutions if foster homes cannot be found. The idea is that they will be taught and reared as if they were white children. At age fourteen, they are required to leave the institution and are placed as servants in white homes, where, alas, it is not unusual for them to become pregnant.’
Mary gives a bitter little smile, no more than a twist to her full mouth. ‘To a whitefella. The boss or his son, most likely, it happens all the time — but they don’t want their son to marry her, no way, mate. Don’t marry the nigger, no bloody chance o’ that happenin’!’
‘Well now, whether that’s the official idea, I can’t say,’ he ventures, a little disturbed by Mary’s outburst. ‘But it is certainly the government’s intention that they mix in the white community with, I dare say, every chance that they will find a white male in or out of wedlock. Hence, I suspect, the preponderance of females removed from their families.’
‘And soon there’s no black women left in the tribe!’ Mary exclaims. She turns to Jessica. ‘The gubberment wants to make me kids white and miserable.’ Tears begin to run down her dark cheeks and she sniffs, swallowing hard. She tries to wipe her tears away using the ball of her thumb, smudging them all over her pretty face.
Jessica brings her arms about her. ‘Mary, we’re gunna get your kids back.’ She looks up fiercely at him.
‘Mr Runche is gunna get them back, ain’t ya, Mr Runche?’
He clears his throat. ‘Well, my dears, it could be awkward, most awkward. What is being attempted by the government amounts to killing the Aborigines off, and the powers that be don’t take kindly to being reminded of this.’
‘What, all the blacks?’ Jessica now asks. She’s still holding her arms about Mary, who is sobbing and again attempting to brush away her tears, comforted by her friend’s attention and love.
‘Well, you could be excused for thinking that they’re trying to eliminate a race of people,’ Richard Runche says. ‘The idea is to push all the children born of mixed race — the half-castes, the quadroons and octoroons off the reserves, marginalise them as well as remove their children from their families so they cannot grow up to be Aborigines. The half-castes will be kicked out and the full-bloods will then be pushed onto marginal land, the general consensus being that they are dying out anyway. A nudge is as good as a push, if you know what I mean?’
He leans back and spreads his hands wide. ‘In this way the existing native people’s reserves can be resumed for soldier settlements. So you see, my dears, with the mixed-blood adults pushed to the edges of the towns to live in beaten tin, plank and sacking humpies, generally under the most extreme living conditions, and with few or no opportunities for employment, they become totally dependent on government rations.’
Mary nods her head in agreement. ‘That’s us fair dinkum, we can’t get no jobs and it’s rations what keeps us alive.’
Richard Runche KC brings up his hands in a gesture of futility. ‘When a people lose their self-esteem, their pride, when they come to depend on government handouts, they are apt to become drunks and layabouts.’ He gives a little self-deprecating laugh. ‘Not that drunkenness is a peculiar condition of the Aboriginal people. But, as happened with my own health, soon enough these people become prone to tuberculosis and bronchial infections or, for that matter, any epidemic which may be about. Moreover, as soon as they have children the government pounces, announcing that the children are neglected or in danger of moral corruption, etcetera, and so they remove them.’
‘That what the policeman said. He said I weren’t able to take care of me kids ‘cause I was Aboriginal,’ Mary says.
‘The idea that the Aboriginal people are irresponsible and can’t take care of their children is, of course, now a self-fulfilling prophecy. The black people are reduced to extreme poverty and the cycle of turning black into white has begun. The children are brought up to white man’s ways. Their languages and traditions are not passed on and eventually die out.’
Sensing that his listeners may not fully understand the line of his argument, he pauses to give an example. ‘We white people are who we are as a result of thousands of years of language and tradition, which make us behave in unique and intimate ways between ourselves. When we destroy a language we effectively undermine the culture it belongs to. Language is the very soul of a culture. A people’s collective imagination, their myths and stories, their place on earth, their continuity, that thing which gives them a soul and makes them different and wonderful, comes from their language. Make no mistake, my dears, what this government is doing to the Aboriginal people is a policy which clearly amounts to an attempt at wiping them out. It is a deliberate and planned attempt to destroy a race.’
Mary looks up. ‘Me grandma told me they tried it before, I mean gettin’ rid o’ us. She said it didn’t work too good, but still lots of blackfellas died. In her time the white folk give the blacks poison in their flour and also they poison the drinkin’ water and shot blacks down like we was dingoes. She tol’ me the whitefella, they called it “goin’ duck shootin’’’. That’s what she said, “duck shootin’’’. There was men who put notches on their guns, “duck notches” she says they called them—blackfella don’t duck so they becomes a notch on a gun!’ Jessica looks at the barrister, whose face is pale and drawn, and she can see that he too is upset. ‘Don’t Mary’s people have any rights?’ she asks sadly.
‘When it comes to removing children from their mothers, very few, my dear. Mind you, there was a time when black people could resort to the courts for justice.
But in 1915 the Aborigines’ Protection Board complained to the parliament that the courts were obstructing the work of the Board.’ He brings his hand to his brow. ‘Let me see if I can remember the honourable gentleman’s words. I recall memorising them at the time because they were a measure of the arrogance and disregard for the love and care of a parent for a child that can only be described as breathtakingly callous.’ He looks up, remembering. ‘Oh yes, what he said went somewhat like this: “ ... it is very difficult to prove neglect; if the Aboriginal child happens to be decently clad or apparently looked after, it is very difficult to show that the half-caste or Aboriginal child is actually in a neglected condition, and therefore it is impossible to succeed in the court.” Those were the words of the minister at the time — I’m sure I have it almost exactly,’ he says, pleased with himself.
Mary claps her hands excitedly. ‘Me kids are the same as what you just said — they’s dressed good and is healthy and I loves them. Like that bloke, that minister, say, them on the Abo Board, they can’t prove nothin’. The court gunna give me back me kids!’
Jessica looks across at Richard Runche hopefully, but the barrister shakes his head sadly. ‘Perfidy, my dear—there is no greater example than a government determined to have its own way. In the same year — that is, 1915 — the government passed the Aborigines’ Protection Amendment Act which gave the Board total power to separate children from their families without having to establish in court that they may be neglected.’ He lifts his finger to emphasise his point. ‘Now anyone — the manager of an Aboriginal station, any employee of the Board, or a policeman of. ordinary rank — need only write m the committal notice, as the reason to take control of a child, the simple words, “For being Aboriginal”. The parent has no further say in the matter, and the Board henceforth has absolute power and discretion over the child or children. In effect, they become the prisoners or even the slaves of the State, of the government.’
‘Does that mean Mary can’t do nothing about her kids?’ Jessica cries in alarm.
‘No, not quite. The government must be seen to have a conscience, my dear. Mary can still appeal to the court as a parent, but she must actually sue the Board for the return
of her children. She can’t stop them being taken and she must sue for their return, where she might or might not win.’
‘Has any Aborigine done it and won?’ Jessica now asks.
‘Not to my knowledge, my dear. It is a most difficult situation.’
Jessica gives a bitter laugh. ‘Joe would say she’s on a hiding to nothing.’
‘Precisely, my dear. Difficult, if not impossible, that is, for an Aborigine, who is not given the same rights as an Australian citizen, to mount a court case. If Mary was a white woman she might be entitled to free legal representation, but as an Aborigine she would be hard put to find a lawyer who would even take the case.’
Richard Runche spreads his hands apologetically. ‘It’s an expensive business and well beyond the means of virtually any Aboriginal parent. It is true to say that the Amendment Act simply allows the Board to steal children away from their parents. It is essentially an act of deliberate and, one is forced to conclude, purposely legislated cruelty.’
Jessica barely hears this final part of his explanation. Her mind is already preoccupied with the business of getting Mary’s children back. ‘How much?’ she asks him.
Richard Runche looks puzzled. ‘How much? Oh, you mean to take the case to court?’ He rubs his chin. ‘Well, we can expect the Aborigines’ Protection Board to vigorously oppose it with the full backing of the government.’ He sighs, thinking for a moment. ‘My dear, it could go on for some time, months, even a year. But then, of course, if we could find a lawyer who’d do it for nothing and with me acting as his brief — his barrister -’ he smiles at Mary, ‘we could considerably reduce the outgoing expenditure.’
‘I have some money, my turkey money! Nearly a hundred pounds,’ Jessica exclaims, then she brings her hands to her lips. ‘And a lawyer, I know a lawyer, Mr Moishe Goldberg!’
Jessica Page 47