by Cara Shaw
The sun rose and the stranger stirred. Balin remained where he was and observed as the fellow sat up and yawned. Again Balin was shocked. Without the head covering and in the early morning light Balin could see that the man’s skin was not at all like his and he was reminded of the witchetty grubs the women pulled out of tree hollows in the cooler seasons. Yes, that was the colour exactly, and his hair was the same as the ochre they all used to paint up for special ceremonies. Balin felt his bile rise. This creature was unnatural, perhaps he should kill him and take him back for the older members of the tribe to inspect. Maybe some of the wiser women would know what it was, they knew and saw things that men were never allowed to witness – they could have some explanation for this unnatural phenomenon. But Balin possessed an innate sense of justice that wouldn’t allow him to pursue such an action. This place was also rich with old spirits who were a part of the giving abundance of the bush, and he didn’t want to commit a violent act that would upset the spiritual harmony. Better to let him wander off on his own he thought, with his obvious lack of bush skills, he won’t live very long anyway. The man packed up and put his belongings into a large dilly bag that he flung over his shoulder, and then he marched off in a direction that was completely opposite to the nearest water source. Balin shook his head in disbelief, the man was obviously insane. He had seen madness before. When he was younger a member of his clan’s eyes had turned inward, and then he began stuffing dirt into his mouth. A short while later he died, limbs twisting and turning, and he choked to death, having forgotten how to breathe. They buried him properly as he was once a great warrior, and had folded him into a sitting position and built a mound around him. The best craftsmen of the tribe had cut into a nearby tree, creating a design that was especially for that warrior, so that the ancestor spirits could find him and carry him back to the Pleasant Lands.
The stranger walked further and further away, and when he was gone Balin left his spot to inspect the leavings. He was right, the fire had gone out quickly, and the ashes and coals were barely warm. He picked up each of the rocks that had been laid in a circle and tossed them into the bush. He stamped on the ashes and kicked at them until they were dispersed. Then he went over to an acacia tree and plucked off a healthy branch that was covered with yellow starbursts and swept the area, singing as he went, cleaning and refreshing it. He stopped when he came upon a small wet mound of leaf matter. He bent down and took a pinch and sniffed it, and then he tasted it. To his surprise it was nice – sweet, with a slightly bitter aftertaste. This was what the man had poured onto the ground from the smaller dilly bag he had held over the fire last night. He considered taking some back to the camp with him, then decided against it, reasoning that eventually it would dry up and blow away. When he was satisfied that the stranger’s marks had been obliterated, he headed back through the bush to be with his family, hungry for the breakfast that he knew would be waiting for him there.
Balin wandered back to his camp, enjoying the fresh dawn air, and saw that the moon still hung in the morning sky. Even the bird life was quiet, yet to wake and assist in organising the new order for the day. He had risen the night before because he couldn’t sleep, and had left the gunyah to walk off his restlessness and perhaps catch something to bring back for breakfast.
Weena, his wife would be waiting for him, and wonder where he had been and a warm feeling enveloped him when he thought of her. He decided he would keep the encounter with the interloper to himself, he had a feeling that what he had seen was not a spirit, rather a person from a tribe a long, long distance from his own and that the less attention drawn to the incident the better. He kept walking until he sighted the camp where each family’s gunyah had been placed in a semi-circle, with the backs facing outwards to form a windbreak and bring extra shelter to their preferred spot. His own gunyah was at the end and he could see Weena, sitting with her back towards him, smoke rising above her curly mop of grey hair. She heard him and turned around with a merry smile.
“What did you bring me?” she said teasingly, flashing her even white teeth at him.
“Weena! I have brought you only myself, the gamabal I caught slipped right out of my hands when I wasn’t looking!”
“Not even some yams to have with your breakfast?” she replied cheekily.
“Yams! What have you got there?”
Balin settled down beside her and saw a large diamond snake coiled over the coals of the fire, skin split with the heat and spitting fat. His stomach growled.
Weena looked over at him happily. “When I woke, I noticed that my husband had disappeared! And a big yaba had cuddled up to me in his place. Luckily, you left your nulla nulla behind, and I smacked him on the head!”
Balin laughed and they pulled the meat from the fire. Weena laid it in one of her coolamons and they picked delicately at the warm flesh from the curled spine. It was a good meal, and Balin felt grateful to have such an amenable wife. Weena wiped her mouth and took the remains to the midden the group kept near the camp, then returned with her coolamon to Balin, who was watching the small fire die down.
“You didn’t sleep last night, was it the wind that woke you?” she looked at him with concern.
He nodded in agreement, “It was more peaceful down by the river, so I slept there,” and he began to collect and check his hunting gear.
He thought of her kind face, how could he tell her the real reason for his disturbance? That he often woke in the night with a desperate yearning, one that could only be met by a real wife and a life-long companion. Weena was of course, his wife through tribal law, but Balin was still young and only a couple years on from his initiation at bora. Several months earlier the elders of the tribe had decided that he should be given Weena, the widow of Eunony, once the most powerful warrior in the tribe.
Eunony had been accomplished and fierce and as with most of his clan, he was tall with wide shoulders. He had long arms, and when he crafted up his spears, he had to make sure they were the right length for his throwing style. Unusually, his left leg was turned slightly inward, so he appeared to be a little pigeon-toed. Even that anomaly worked in his favour, the slightly turned-in foot steadying him even further and improving his accuracy when hunting. He was a solid peaceful man and quietly spoken. His reputation for fierceness was not derived from aggression, rather that he never backed down. He always stood his ground and if confronted, met any conflict with reasonable counsel first. Should his opponent persist and challenge him to a fight, he simply agreed, then quickly overcame his opponent, his natural strength and agility impossible to beat. He was the greatest hunter of his clan, and he always brought home the most meat. Be it walaru, buujaan or girrawaa, it was he who brought to camp the biggest animal or fish.
Unfortunately Eunony’s talents did not extend to women. Even the elders in his clan could not understand why he was so unsuccessful. As the law dictated he was given a wife shortly after his bora, with the expectation that he would make a camp that was great, with many children and young warriors to train. Within a matter of weeks his new wife Ninya, delicate and fragile, died quite suddenly from an unknown illness. She had begun to cough incessantly and quickly became very thin. She stopped gathering bushfoods and stayed inside the gunyah quietly sleeping. The older women came over to his camp and brought Ninya out to lie by their campfire in the women’s camp. They laid eucalyptus leaves on her chest and covered them with clean mud mixed with emu oil and left it to dry. Then they sat around her and sang songs, certain that an errant spirit had entered her somehow, determined to chase it away and restore their Ninya to good health. Ninya’s aunt kept looking over at Eunony as if it was his fault that her niece had been taken so ill. That he was the one who had tainted her with an unhappy and discontented spirit. He looked away guiltily, desperate and sad. He had barely got to know his new wife before she fell ill, and wondered if it was because of the one and only time he had lain with her, when she had tried to fight hi
m off. She had cried out in pain when he was on top of her, and wept bitterly afterwards.
He woke one morning to find his little wife cool and lifeless under the possum skins that he had arranged carefully around her the evening before, and when he placed his large palm on her cheek, knew at once that her spirit had flown away. He crept out, and entered the women’s camp, something that men very rarely did, to fetch the karandajina, the only female medicine person in the tribe. He stood outside her gunyah and called her name softly. She emerged, rubbing her eyes and looked at him with sympathy. She followed him back to he and Ninya’s camp and entered the small shelter. When she came out she shook her head and returned to her camp to begin preparations for the burial. Eunony retreated to the men’s camp and stayed there where he maintained tradition and avoided mentioning Ninya’s name. He also refrained from talking to or looking directly at her relatives until a suitable period of time passed.
Eunony found the whole incident disappointing and confusing, and lived in the men’s camp until the elders met once again to decide on an appropriate spouse their most gifted warrior. Then Wowhely, an older warrior, came to the men’s camp to announce the decision. Eunony was hesitant, thinking that he might be better off leaving the clan altogether and stealing a new wife from one of the other tribes that surrounded his country. None of the women in his own camp appealed to him, and the ones he would even consider were either too young or were already wives to the other warriors. So when Wowhely came to him he was puzzled, who could they have chosen? Wowhely sat down with him and they made a fire together and Eunony waited. The smell of eucalyptus curled into the air and the warrior relaxed. The spirits were always appeased by fire, eucalyptus smoke especially, as it was cleansing and replenishing to the soul and the environment.
After while Wowhely said, “Bilda.”
Eunony gulped in alarm. Bilda! Why? He stared at Wowhely in shock and made to shake his head, no. The old man held up his hand and told Eunony to listen to the reason for their decision. Wowhely and the other elders had examined all the kinship obligations within their clan very carefully, and deduced that Bilda, who had been married to Eunony’s elderly cousin before he died, was now his responsibility. The partnership was considered to be even more fortuitous in that there were no opposing totemic conditions or skin conflicts between the two. Eunony sat shaking his head from side to side in alarm, how could they do this to him?
Bilda had been given to his cousin when she was in early puberty, and as she matured had grown into the kind of woman that no one in their right mind would want. Besides being incredibly ugly, and the bearer of a low squat body and a fat bulbous face, she dominated and bullied everyone she came into contact with. She nagged and harangued his poor cousin until most of the tribe decided that he eventually died of pure exhaustion. After that she went to live at her sister and brother-in-law’s camp, where she made life hell for them all. Bilda always woke up first thing in the morning with a loud opinion or a simmering resentment, which she usually regaled to all and sundry for the entire day. Her brother-in-law was at his wit’s end and barely spent any time at all in his own camp. He already had one wife and many children and hunting food to provide for all them was his main priority. Bilda’s move into his family was a disaster – she ate more than her share, and was lazy when it came to gathering bush foods. Her only talent was building weirs in the adjacent creeks and capturing fish, which was a seasonal activity and not enough to contribute to the whole food supply for her sister’s family.
Wowhely got up and walked away and Eunony sighed heavily, there was nothing to decide – it had to be done. He walked over to Bilda’s camp where a hive of women and children were busily engaged in various activities. The children ran around playing stick games and yelling out, a couple of the women were scraping back possum skins, and Bilda stood in the middle of it all, bellowing as usual and making her opinion heard. He waited there for a while until his presence gained everyone’s attention, and gradually they fell silent – all staring at the tall and powerful warrior who stood before them.
“Bilda”.
The woman looked at him in surprise, and for once nothing came out of her mouth.
“Wowhely has told me that from now on you are to live with me. Gather your things, and I will build a gunyah for us.”
Bilda’s sister watched them both with mouth open while Bilda moved around the camp collecting her things. At Eunony’s sign she followed him to a spot that he indicated and he began to build a gunyah. He told her to make a fire and when he had finished the shelter, quickly left to spend the rest of the day hunting. Bilda settled in with great propriety and cast her sister superior glances. She was now the great warrior’s wife and the one with the highest status in the camp. She waited until he returned with a large nharrung and she flung it on the fire to let it cook deep in the embers. After a while she fished it out and broke off pieces of it for them to share. All the while Eunony could hear wild hoots and bellowing laughter coming from the men’s camp, and he grimly acknowledged that it was he and Bilda who were butt of many a smutty joke amongst the men who sat around their fire. Later when he and Bilda retired, he could hear them singing mean spirited gossip songs that told stories of misguided or enchanted love that had been spun by mischievous spirits, who sometimes hung around the camps just to make trouble. He sighed deeply and turned away from his new wife. Bilda was already snoring, and he squeezed his eyes shut to block her and his tormentors out.
The next few weeks were dire for Eunony. Living with Bilda proved to be even worse than he had ever imagined. She was a shrieking, dissatisfied beast of a woman who never let him out of her sight. When he was in it, she rained blow after blow of words upon him, nagging, complaining and berating. One great source of her discontent was that he refused to lie with her, and after a few weeks she began to belittle his manhood to all that were willing to listen. Eunony was a quiet, steady man, who spoke softly and barely raised his voice and humiliated, avoided her as much as possible. While she was living in his camp Bilda grew even fatter, as he was a fine hunter and rarely returned home without meat. Even that was not enough to appease her. He was grateful that one of the cooler seasons was approaching and that the warm season in Duradjuri country was coming to an end. In a few weeks’ time, his clan would move on from the camp they had made while temperatures were warm, as they had nearly depleted that particular area’s natural supply of game and bushfood.
At this seasonal time Bilda, for many years, had taken charge of populating two of the local creeks with guuya, an important skill that had been taught to her by her mother. As soon as they reached maturity she always made sure that the roe she squeezed from the gullets of the females was properly sown back into the little ponds that she had made, by layering heavy rocks one on top of the other to form nurseries for the newly hatched schools of fish. As each batch grew she moved a rock away from the wall to release the fish into the next weir to keep them safe as they grew. She would be preoccupied with doing this for some weeks and that meant she would be out of his hair for a short while at the least.
He didn’t know what to do. He knew he was the laughing stock of his whole tribe yet he took his responsibilities very seriously. While he was at bora, the importance of his role as a spirit in a living body had been deeply impressed on him, just as his scarification on his arms and chest told the story of his totem and committed him completely to country. Wowhely had been right, it was his duty to look after Bilda and he couldn’t reject her just because she drove him mad, that would be shirking his duty and his responsibility to the tribe. He decided that his only chance lay with Biamie, the one that was all and the creator of everything and everyone, and that the matter was best left in the hands of the supreme being.
One morning Bilda awoke early and left Eunony behind in the gunyah to sleep. She trudged heavily through the low scrub, not noticing the pretty dew that clung to the short silver-green blades. There was s
till some low-lying mist hanging about and the morning was chilly. Bilda shivered and drew her possum cloak closely around her thickset shoulders as she headed towards the creek. She was focussed on her thoughts rather than the country that lay around her and the soft haze that rose from the rapidly warming earth. Her resentment towards Eunony had intensified over the past few weeks as she was desperate for a child. No blue butterflies had landed on her shoulder, nor had any fluttered around their gunyah, and she knew that this was because Eunony did not want children with her, and was not appeasing the fertility spirits in the way a proper husband should. She grunted angrily, and dropped her cloak on the banks of the creek and stepped into the slow-moving water to check on each of the weirs that she had cleverly constructed over the years. She felt a push of pride as she looked over the sturdy round river stones that she had arranged. She noticed that the fish in the second weir out of the four terraced layers were ready to be moved down to the next catchment. Balin forgotten for the time being, she thrust her hands deeply into the water to grip the old stone and move it aside to let the fish through so that they could tumble with the downward splash of water into their next nursery. Bilda, instead of hoisting the big rock to the side as she had done a hundred times before, lifted it up into the air, probably from the sheer frustration and anger against Eunony. This action was to cost her dearly, for the weight of it caused her to topple and she fell, splashing into the creek and striking her head against a sharp protrusion. She was immediately concussed and drowned right there in her own fish nursery she had made so many years ago. A sulphur-crested cockatoo shrieked when he saw the dark figure go down, and then descended and swooped above her in long-reaching shallow circles, screeching loudly as he did so. A slight current picked up Bilda’s body and floated her downstream, her plumpness and cylindrical shape giving her buoyant passage as she drifted past the reeds and delicate waterlilies that flourished in the shallows. The cocky’s shrieks faded away, and he flew off to find something else to pique his interest.