by Cara Shaw
His father was mostly away from camp for work, so usually when he woke in the morning the first thing he would see was his mother, curled up and fast asleep on wool-bale sheets and under her blankets. Then he would rise, pull on his pants and shirt and go outside to light their fire so his mum could have her billy of tea. Their mob’s camp was in a sheltered grove amongst tall gum trees, and in the mornings kangaroos grazed around the huts, nosing their way through dew-covered grass. The animals leapt away as he sprinted down to the river or a flock of crows belted out of the treetops, startled by the running figure below. At the riverbank he stripped off and jumped into the water to dive under with his eyes open, and then rise above the surface with one great push, shaking his curly hair so that water drops flew everywhere. Then he would lie on the bank to dry off, thinking about the strange legend of this spot on the river, where an ancient woman’s spirit resided as guardian of the fish. Then he would dress and head back to their shack, where his mother sat outside stirring the billy.
Lily had already prepared the damper and set it in the coals to cook, and sometimes gave him sweet quandong or gooseberries to have as well. All around the camp people commenced their day, emerging from their shacks, the men gathering a little bit away to have their tea and early morning smoke. Dilly was always amongst these men, as he lived alone, and sought company first thing.
Robbie’s father, Walter Dalton was hardly ever around and under the pretext of visiting relatives to avoid scrutiny by the police, regularly travelled north to Queensland to cut cane, and brought a few shillings home with him in between seasons. Cane cutting was the only way he could earn real money, any work around his home town only offered food rations and tobacco, and actual payment was rare.
Even though Lily had a little money, it was not possible to go into the town to spend it, or to buy supplies. The blacks lived in a strange merry-go-round world of discrimination and invisibility. The whites only saw them when they were needed for something, otherwise they were ignored. Under no circumstances was an Aboriginal person in 1900’s allowed to be served in a shop, given payment, vote or attend hospitals seeking medical attention. The only people who had no problem doing business with Aboriginal people were the smattering of Chinese inhabitants who lived around the outskirts of most small towns.
They were the descendants of Chinese indentured labour from the Gold Rush era, and it was they who ran the market gardens, laundry services and tailors. They too stayed unseen in the place where they had lived for decades, yet their status was somehow elevated over the blacks, and they were free to conduct business with anyone – although socially they were given a very wide berth. The main Chinese family in Billington, Robbie’s hometown, were the Choo’s, and it was to them that everyone in the camp went when they needed anything at all. The Choo’s didn’t care, it didn’t matter what colour the hand was that passed over the money, it was all the same to them.
The place where Robbie’s people lived was about a mile out of town near the river. This group and another group closely related to the Duradjuri, the Yongaibon, had been thrown together years ago on a mission that was located over twenty miles away from Billington. This place had been run by the Lutheran’s, a German order completely devoted to converting the world’s savages to God. Both groups tolerated the arrangement for a while, accepting that it was safer for them to be there than be vulnerable to the harsh treatment from white settlers, and the legally empowered police who took it upon themselves to keep a close eye on the Indigenous. By the late 1870s, sick and tired of the pedantic ravings of the resident priest, the Duradjuri walked off the mission and settled outside Billington, near a traditional bora site that no white bothered to go near. The Yongaibon moved on too, and settled back in their country of origin further west. This was a great relief to everyone, as traditional law dictated that the two groups were not meant to cohabit, and living conditions on the mission had always been tense. Times had changed somewhat, and once the Duradjuri had set up their shacks and walked around offering work for food, no one took any notice of the settlement, which muddled along as best it could with the inhabitants sharing everything they had and looking out for each other. Their lives were very basic, and the people in the camp suffered in ways that the local whites would never understand.
They were fringe-dwellers, and even basic medical attention was non-existent. It was a twenty-minute walk into town to fetch the doctor, and even if he was willing to come out to the camp, it was usually to pronounce someone as deceased and to sign the death certificate. The church was reasonably generous, and buried the settlement members in a separate part of the graveyard, which relatives paid for by working around the cemetery.
The people built their shacks from bits and pieces they scavenged: timber, wire, sometimes sheets of tin, but they had to remain very careful about what they used so that they were not accused of stealing. Charges and incarceration were swift, and often one of the men would disappear for a year or two, then return to the camp looking oddly a little better from eating regular meals whilst in prison. Many of the women obtained work as cleaners, and a couple worked as cooks in the sheds at sheep-shearingtime, where on top of flour, old clothes and broken tools, a small cash bonus was given if a boss was feeling generous. There was a hidden catch behind this offhand generosity. White men were fascinated by Aboriginal women, and harassed them until the size of their bellies prevented them from returning to work. No matter how light their skin, all the children were claimed by their mothers as their own, and the men at the camp, shamed, said nothing and minded their own business.
The search for food and c1othing was an endless chore for them all, and anyone who was able to get work was given flour only. The relentless diet of damper was not enough for the people to maintain proper nutrition, and when there was enough money collected from around the whole camp, someone would volunteer to take a walk to the market garden to buy fresh fruit and vegetables. They were careful never to go alone, and always made the trip in pairs. Robbie had executed this round-trip dozens of times in his life with any number of his mates, or one of the older women, who he usually called Aunty to show his respect. Choo’s was on the other side of Billington, but they would circumnavigate the town, then walk another twenty minutes south to avoid walking down the main street and garnering unwanted attention from the whites.
Emery and Dorothea Choo, who owned the market garden, had inherited the property from Emery’s father. Local gossip maintained that Emery’s parents had arranged his marriage to Dorothea through their connections in Chinatown in Sydney, and the whole family had gone down to the city so that the young man could marry and fetch his bride back to Billington. The couple went on to have six children, and their family thrived – just like the market garden, which sat on rich fertile land and was fed generously by the river. On one particular day, Robbie and his Aunty May made the trip to the Choo’s together, and walked along the dirt track towards the shanty-like farm house that was vastly overshadowed by the massive gardens that lay behind it. Suddenly an upside-down figure dropped from a tree and laughed in Robbie’s face.
“Bet youse wasn’t expectin’ that Dalton!” cackled Bennie Choo, a boy about Robbie’s age as he ran past them both towards the chicken sheds. May, still recovering from shock looked down at Robbie’s beseeching face and laughed.
“Yeah, go on then,” and he ran off to follow Bennie while she made her way to the Choo’s front door to speak with Dorothea and begin her negotiations. The two women knew each other well, Dorothea sat in front of May when they went to church, although the people from the camp always sat at the back. She made a point of mingling with everyone after the service and ignored the fact that Emery never went. For the most part people were civil, despite what they considered to be her exotic appearance. They didn’t understand the almond shape of her eyes, the aristocratic turn of her nose or prettily defined lips. They only saw colour and difference.
As Doroth
ea was not born or bred in Billington, she understood that the Chinese were culturally deeply different to the whites. Sometimes she imagined the local white women using a pair of chopsticks to eat their lamb roast and she laughed to herself. The fact was, both she and Emery were very good gardeners, and everyone no matter who they were, came to them to buy their produce, which they always sold at a fair price – mindful to maintain their customers’ repeat business. She was deeply disturbed by what she observed to be the plight of the Aboriginal people in Billington, who didn’t even have the slight advantage that she and Emery had. She didn’t understand very much about their heritage, or even the reasons why they lived out of town in a camp. She saw that their circumstances were pitiful and believed they lived in desperate hardship. As simple as she and Emery’s life was, at the very least all of her six children were given a hot bath once a week in the big tin tub, and everyone owned a pair of shoes.
Although they were Chinese, the children still received their lessons at the local school. She and Emery had a rule though, as soon as each of them turned thirteen, they had to leave school and work the gardens; and when they were sixteen, they could do as they pleased. Jeremy, her oldest at eighteen, had stayed on with Emery in the gardens. Her next, Marion, had moved to Sydney and worked with a cousin who was an accountant. She couldn’t be prouder.
Dorothea thought that May was a decent and kind woman who did the best she could under the conditions she was forced to live. Her husband Clyde, a tall and quiet man, had worked as a fencer all his life, and had himself built the three-room shack where the family lived. Over the years May had borne eleven children, seven still alive. She was fifty now and the youngest a girl, was eight. Some of the children were liqht in colour, and no one ever mentioned that they could be related to the Crane family, the main landholder in the area, and for whom May had worked as a house keeper on and off since she was a teen. Clyde accepted all the children as own.
May was the one who came to the Choo’s the most often as she was considered to be the best negotiator in the camp, and she and Dorothea had developed an understanding over the years. As May approached the house Dorothea appeared on the shabby veranda and invited her in for a cup of tea. They sat at her enormous kitchen table and the deliberations began.
“Keeping well?”
“Not bad, love not bad. Clyde? The kids?”
“As good as we can be. And your mob?”
“Well I suppose you just got an eyeful of Bennie!”
May laughed, “Didn’t I! Scared the pants off me.”
The women chatted like this for a while, sitting together companionably and sipping tea. While they did so, May slipped her hand into her pocket and laid a pound down on the table. This amount was configured in coins, and collected from around the camp from each person who had been hoarding their money secretly for months. As they handed over their change they made sure that May knew what to bring back to them, and then waited in the hope that she could pull it off. Dorothea acknowledged the gesture politely with a discreet nod they got down to business.
“That’s a pound there May.”
May nodded, “I see it.”
“Well, I can do you carrots, onion and potatoes.
May drew in a deep breath, “That it? A pound’s a pound Dot!”
Dorothea gave her a shrewd look, “What else you got in mind?”
May looked her straight in the eye, “Four bags of flour, two dozen eggs, a basket of apples, a cabbage…”
“You’re on!” cried Dorothea.
“Wait! I’m not finished yet!”
“Well I don’t think I can stretch any further May, you’re not only one with mouths to feed,” countered Dorothea.
“Round it off with a tin of golden syrup, a packet of tea and a chicken and we’re done.”
Dorothea set her mouth in a straight line and said, “Alright, wait here.”
She hurried out to the chook shed and took the axe from the hook at the gate, and went into the pen to grab one of the ancient hens that had stopped laying weeks ago. She took it out to the yard and quickly took off its head. She came marching back into the kitchen with the hen slung over the crook of her arm and said, “Here she is May, and I’ll pack the rest.”
May nodded and went to find Robbie. Dorothea put everything into two baskets for May, and wrapped the chicken in calico so that its blood wouldn’t mark the groceries. She was always generous with May and had given her everything she had asked for, always making sure that all the goods were a little over. She chose the largest cabbage she could find, and put in an extra bag of apples with the ones May had ordered. She had added in another dozen eggs and half a bag of potatoes. She lined the bottom of the baskets with plenty of empty flour bags, knowing that May used every scrap of the material to make shirts and shorts and underwear for the children. It was understood that Dorothea would never do this for anyone else, and both women were too proud and strong to reveal to each other their own truth.
They were survivors within a kind of bigotry that ate away at their very souls. They were unable to name or speak it, or even really talk about it because that’s just the way things were. They understood that their state of non-equality was something that was way beyond both their control, and that their main priority was the safety and well-being of their children. Dorothea set the baskets down on the narrow veranda that fronted her simple house, knowing that May would also find the needle and thread she had tucked way into the bottom corner of one of the baskets, and that May upon finding it, would never say a word.
After much shouting out by May, Robbie and Bennie finally came running. They had been down at the river trying to catch yabis, and Robbie held up the one he had caught, which was still waving its pincers weakly around in the air. May looked at it, unimpressed. “Should of left that one in the river Robbie, even Old Porge won’t eat that.”
Bennie erupted into fits of laugher. Old Porge was the oldest, crankiest man at the camp, and he was always hungry and bleating for food. He would eat anything to keep his hunger at bay, and his appetite was legendary.
Robbie grinned at her, ‘We’ll see!” and he threw the scrawny yabi into one of the baskets. They were about to hoist them up and begin the long walk home with their heavy loads, when Dorothea tapped May on the arm.
“Wait,” she went inside and returned with a slim bolt of blue and white cotton gingham. Shyly she offered to May, “I forgot it was your birthday the other week, I’ve been saving it for you.”
May felt tears rise and she looked down. It hadn’t been her birthday of course, yet there was no other way Dorothea could give her anything valuable that May would misconstrue as charity.
She looked her in the eye, and smiled, “Thank you Dorothea, that’s very thoughtful,” and she tucked the narrow bolt into the very top of her basket.
“You are very welcome,” said Dorothea as she dusted off her hands. Then she bellowed out into the yard, “Bennie Choo get here now! You’ve got work to do!” and went back into the house, with Bennie following, kicking his feet and scowling.
May and Robbie set off, walking slowly because of the heavy baskets.
“I din’t know it was your birthday,” he chirped, feeling abundant with all the good food they were carrying back to camp.
“Well,” said May, “It’s always someone’s birthday somewhere isn’t it love,” and they walked onward.
They travelled at a slow pace, stopping now and again to rest, placing their baskets on the ground, May waving a small branch of gum leaves around her to cool off.
Robbie was chattering away good-naturedly beside her when she suddenly asked, “yamandu marang?”
Robbie stopped in his tracks and looked up at her wide-eyed, “What?”
“yamandu marang, do you know what that is?” May asked.
Robbie thought for a moment, “Is it, is it language?” he said te
ntatively.
“Yes” said May quietly. “That’s our language, wirradurrhay. It means, are you well. Can you say that?”
Robbie knitted his brows together, “yamandu marang, yamandu marang,” he repeated.
“Very good” said May pleased, “Now try this, dhaga ngindhu muganha guuya?”
“What is it, what is it?” cried Robbie jumping around excitedly.
May laughed, “It means, where do you find fish.”
“I know that one! In the bila!” he shouted.
“Shush!” said May, nervously looking around. “That’s right. You know that one, river. Let’s learn some more words.”
That day Robbie learnt lots of words from his tribe’s language, yindyamarra, magpie, dyrirridyirri, wili-wagtail, yulubirrngiin, rainbow. He loved the way the sounds rolled around in his mouth, and May taught him the proper way to pronounce each word; where to place his tongue, and how to swallow some of the vowels so that the sounds resonated more heavily at the top of the mouth. May was also careful to explain to him that when their people lived on the mission before he was born, they were all forbidden to speak wirradurrhay. The Lutheran priests told them that English was God’s language, and that was the only one to be spoken. The older ones complied, and the younger generation were severely punished if they were heard uttering it. Although the people stopped speaking wirradurrhay day-to-day, they managed to keep some phrases alive by repeating them in private. Despite the rule, the older ones never forgot the speech that they were born and raised with. May was born on the mission and her parents had spoken in the traditional way, and she like Robbie, was drawn to the words and sounds, and practised them religiously in secret. The wirradurrhay language made complete sense to her. She thought that most of the words sounded like the way things looked or behaved. girra, spoken in a soft breathy way that meant wind, or walang, where the consonants disappeared down the throat sharply at the end, was like the rain it described, hitting the ground hard. The word wandayali seemed to describe an echidna perfectly, and she often wondered why anyone bothered to call it anything else. She warned Robbie not to speak any language around the whites for fear of reprisal, or worse, removal from the camp for reverting to savage-like ways.