One Place

by Cara Shaw

  At first Eunony did not notice that his wife was missing and when she did not return that evening assumed that she had made camp on the creek bank. He took the opportunity to spend the night at the men’s camp, where the older ones had decided to entertain the uninitiated men with songs and dances that were smutty and bawdy. Eunony was gently teased about his skill at escaping his controlling wife until the general merriment overtook them all, and he stumbled back to their gunyah, tired and happy. She still had not returned by morning, so he took himself hunting, and after a successful morning came back with a good haul, snake, possum, and an echidna which he planned to bake that evening deep in the embers of the camp fire. He looked forward to peeling back the charred spiny exterior and enjoying the delicious roasted meat within. He threw down his catch at the entrance of the shelter, and then peered inside. She was not there and he grew impatient. Although he was not fond of Bilda she was his wife, and had her duties to attend to.

  He called over one of the children who was running around with a stick and she approached the great warrior, wide-eyed with importance.

  “Go over to the woman’s camp” he told her, “tell Bilda to come to me now.”

  The child ran off and then returned just as quickly. “She is not there,” the child said. “ No one has seen her,” and she ran away.

  Puzzled, Eunony sat down for a while. He did not feel inclined to go to the creek to look for her, so he approached the women’s camp, halted at a respectful distance, and called out to one of Bilda’s relatives. “Jilah! Jilah!”

  Jilah came over to him curiously, and he explained to her that he could not find Bilda, and that she was to go down to the creek and bring her back as she was neglecting her duties. Jilah nodded and hurried off, wondering at the unusualness of the request and as soon as she saw the possum cloak abandoned at the side of the creek, she knew at once what had happened. She came running back, shouting at the top her voice, “Bilda! Bilda has been stolen!”

  The tribe gathered around her and Eunony as she explained what she had seen, and then a great silence fell over the group. In a situation like this, usually the warriors of the tribe would be outraged, and would at once begin to plan and assemble at a party of the strongest men to go and fetch the stolen woman back. Then they would wreak vicious revenge on the kidnappers, and the women would be howling and keening and over the loss of their kinswomen. In this case none of it occurred. People stood around scraping at the dirt with their feet, and looking upwards as if the sky spirits themselves would drop the missing Bilda back into their midst with no fuss, and no disturbance to their daily routines. They looked at Eunony furtively and waited for him to speak. Eunony knew that Bilda’s disappearance was no great loss to the tribe and even perhaps a stroke of good fortune for them all, as her unbearable and abrasive character had affected each and every member of the tribe.

  Finally, one of the little ones piped up, tears welling in her eyes, “Poor Aunty Bilda! Will you go and find her Uncle?”

  He sighed heavily and said, “Bilda is my wife, I will go and look for her.”

  The others drifted away, and he went to the gunyah to collect his weapons; his spear, womerah, boomerang and axe. He tucked them into the hair belt he wore strung around his waist, and as he strode away from the camp, spied an orange feather that had belonged to a budgerigar which he tucked into his hair. As he walked he began to hum and a feeling of wellbeing settled over him. He looked around at his country as he walked and it seemed to him that the air was alive with spirits, dancing, spinning, watching and waiting. He knew that some of these spirits were his own ancestors, there to remind him of his deep bond with the earth that had been with his family since the old times, when the sky spirits had first come to live on the earth and had taken the shape of men and women. He thought too, that soon it might be time to go into the low-lying hills and examine some of the ancient paintings that decorated the hidden rock walls. At the conclusion of certain cycles, he and some of the other older men went there to sit and sing and repair the work that had been done by generations of men before them. He was enjoying himself so much that he forgot that he as meant to be looking for Bilda. He headed south away from his camp and made his way over the land, checking every now again that his path was following that of the river.

  Although he could not see it there were signs everywhere that it wasn’t too far away. The foliage around the place was greener and a different variety to the inland species. Birds that preferred to be near running water resided in this part of the country, and there were certain bush flowers that only bloomed in areas where their roots could gain nourishment from the sweet, damp soil. He was approaching an outcrop of rocks when he saw a long grey scaly tail that lay, unmoving in the scrub and Eunony stopped immediately. He stood as still as stone for a minute or an hour, no one would ever know, watching intently. The tail, which belonged to a lizard was also still, and the game began. After a while the great hunter began a series of movements, designed to keep his form fluid in his environment and to give him complete advantage over the animal that he had set in his sight. Slowly he positioned his feet, and reached behind him for his hunting boomerang. Suddenly the lizard, huge and fat, shot out from the other side of the outcrop and simultaneously, Eunony threw his boomerang and the animal was killed instantly. He strolled over and hung the lizard around his neck and kept onward until he reached a waterhole – one that he knew was constantly fed by an underground tributary from the river a few miles away. He threw down the lizard and lay along the ground next to the water hole and drank deeply and for a long time as he had not had water since early that morning. When he had his fill, he made camp and threw the lizard onto the fire, looking forward very much to his lunch. He sat and waited while it sizzled and cooked, and when it was ready took it from the fire and ate nearly all of it. He burped with satisfaction and lay down to sleep and felt better than he had in months, glad to be rid of Bilda and content to be in his own company again.

  Meanwhile, Bilda’s lifeless body had floated a long way down the river and eventually came to rest amongst some reeds, her now bloated and blue-tinged corpse bumping gently against the long stalks. Some children from one of the southern tribes in the same country, down at the riverbank for their morning swim, found her, high smelling and grotesque and ran screaming to their parents, who came to the bank and drew her in with their spears and long sticks. They bundled her up as best they could in sheets of paper bark and vines and dragged her to a spot under a tree and buried her in the traditional manner, in sitting position. This was a laborious and time-consuming task, with people taking turns to dig using their hands and their coolamons. They complained bitterly all the while and when it was done, dusted their hands and left in annoyance. Later, only one of the older men returned to sing a short mortuary song and to make deep cuts in the tree, to signal that a deceased person sat in the ground beneath.

  During all of this, Bilda’s spirit never had the proper passage of time it required to leave the earth and return to be with the sky spirits. Once there, normally it would wait for the time when her essence would once again enter into one of her family members’ newly born earthly bodies. The old man from the other tribe had done his best to farewell her spirit, and even he knew that only a close relative was able to sing the correct songs that would help the dead woman find her way to the Pleasant Lands. This being so, Bilda was now a spirit harnessed within the living tree she was buried beneath. She had ceased to be the angry, bitter woman she once was, and became instead a living energy that never left the tree or the riverbed where her dead body had been found. From that day until forever more her clever way of farming fish remained in that place as well, and whenever any of the people went to that spot they knew they would always be lucky with their catch, for the aquatic fare in that place was always fertile and abundant.

  Eunony returned that day from his search for Bilda and took back his place in the men’s camp. No one ever
mentioned his wife again, nor his tribal obligation to marry and produce children. There was an unspoken agreement amongst the tribe that Eunony had been through enough, and that his skill and precision in providing food and protection more than made up for his contribution to the tribe. Occasionally when one of the younger girls eyed him longingly and made her intentions clear, he would ignore the overture. His experience with Ninya had left a deep scar on his confidence, and he would not risk another miserable marriage like the one he’d had with Bilda.

  Some years later there was a huge corroboree being held at the point where the three rivers met, and an opportunity for the northern, southern, eastern and western groups to come together to dance, sing and mingle. This event only happened every twelve seasons or so, and it was called up under the agreement of the eldest and most wise of each clan. Messages were sent back and forth between the tribes, and animals appeared in places where they should not have been, often communicating in their own way with certain members of each tribe. People reported symbols and messages in their dreams, and others began to see ancient spirits wandering around the campfires at night. These signs pointed to the time and place when all the tribes would meet up and stay together for a month or so. Hunting, fishing, playing sport, teaching each other dances, creating new ones and practising for the evening events.

  When the time came, the eastern tribe – Eunony’s own, packed their things and cleaned up their summer camp. They would not return to that place until the following year, as now the weather was growing cooler. After the coroboreee, the clan would set up their winter camp in the westerly low-lying hills of the hinterland, where they would have better protection from the weather. There they could harvest the yams and tubers that they had sown there the previous year. Game was better in this area too, as the animals, kangaroos, possums, plain turkeys and wombats retreated to the hills from the less forgiving open spaces. The people would go there and build their winter gunyahs and line them with the possum and kangaroo skins that they had left rolled up in a safe place and covered in rocks. The winter camp was also near a billabong, so there would be plenty of water, and no chilly breezes like the ones that would drift inland from a running river. Each attended to their duties around the camp, discarding old bones on the midden, scraping away at their tracks with fresh branches, taking down the gunyahs and flinging the debris into the bush. As they left, the karandajin sang to the ancestor spirits and the older men and women walked around with lighted brush sticks, setting fire to any tinder that was dry and ready to burn. When everything was alight and burning well, the tribe set off without a backward glance, knowing that the burn would refresh and regenerate the land, and abundant with bush fruits and new green shoots to attract game on their return.

  It was at the great Duradjuri corroboree that Eunony first met Weena, who had just completed her woman’s initiation. After his own tribe had arrived and settled in, he noticed the fetching Weena laughing with her friends and relatives in the women’s camp. Her hair was curly and her heart-shaped-face was merry as were her dark flashing eyes. Within a few days, the two were seeking each other out constantly, making sure that they were always in the others’ vicinity and before the celebrations were over, Eunony went to speak with her father, a member of the Kumaroi tribe. A few weeks’ later, Weena’s father delivered her to Eunony’s gunyah at the winter camp, and she stood quietly aside as her father laid down one of his good hunting spears and then built a fire. When it started to smoke, she too laid down her coolamon, her digging stick and grinding stone near the entrance of the gunyah, and after that her father left. Eunony gave her a big welcoming smile and left to hunt, while she went to gather bush foods for them to consume that day. She returned with some nice fat yams and bush tomatoes. From that point on Weena was Eunony’s wife, and remained so until the day he died.

  Chapter Six

  One day the initiated men sat in a circle at one of the secluded ceremonial spots, singing and drawing in the dirt. After a few hours, one of them approached Balin and told him they had decided to give him Weena. Balin could see the logic in the decision. He was fond of Weena, as was everyone in the tribe and she had been a widow for a very long time. Now that he had made bora, he must also meet the responsibilities that were placed upon him by the older ones. Eunony was his relative and had been dead for nearly ten cycles. Weena could not marry again during that time as there had been no one suitable. This was because Weena was originally from another tribe, she had even spoken a different dialect when she first arrived and when Eunony died she was too old to return to her own country. Also, she and Eunony had never had any children, so she had no close relatives to make camp with and lived exclusively at the women’s camp. No one knew that Eunony, fearful that the same fate would befall Weena that had taken Ninya, his first wife, had only lain with his second wife a few times throughout his whole marriage, and Weena an innocent, had not realised that anything was amiss. The Duradjuri people didn’t equate sexual intimacy with conception, and believed that if a woman saw a blue butterfly, or swam in one of the special fertility billabongs reserved for women only, then she would become pregnant.

  Balin took Weena with good cheer and soon realised what a kind and thoughtful person she was. She treated him with affection, and they even snuggled up together in the gunyah, back-to-back to keep each other warm at night. They provided for each other and Weena took on her role as an older married woman in the tribe with relish. Previously she had moved from gunyah to gunyah and lived on other people’s good will, and looked after the many children who populated the camp while their parents were hunting and gathering. Now as a married woman to a young virile warrior, she took her place in the women’s ceremonies and asserted her role as an older wise woman, to whom many would go to for advice or comfort. Balin even added to the scarification that marked her upper arms, originally put there by Eunony to acknowledge her as his wife. He arranged to have two more lines placed on her arms to indicate that she was a part of him and was under his protection. He sat by and watched while the initiated women made the cuts and rubbed ash into the wounds. They packed the cuts with wet clay and wrapped them with large healing leaves, and secured the poultice with twine woven from local flax. Later when the clay and the leaves fell off, the wounds would appear as raised purplish scars and Weena would wear them with great pride until the end of her life. All of this had happened some time ago and while Weena was happy and content Balin was beginning to suffer. He had desires that Weena simply could not meet because really, she was like an aunt to him.

  Lately things had become even worse and although occasionally he discreetly followed one of the more obliging women from the camp into the bushes, it was not what he wanted. He needed a mate and a lover and he desperately wanted children. There were around forty people in Balin’s clan which was made up of around five families. The elders were meticulous in choosing the correct people to marry so that close relatives could avoid marrying each other and breach tribal taboos. Even though these decisions were at times incongruous, like the match between Balin and Weena, the system was mostly based on one of responsibility and obligation to others and to the security of the tribe as a whole. There were plenty of love matches as well. Balin’s own parents were such an example. They still lived together in their own camp with his two younger sisters, who were already eyeing off some of the younger warriors. As much as he pondered and looked among his own tribe, he couldn’t find anyone he liked enough to marry. Now that he was Weena’s husband there was no urgency for him to find another wife.

  He thought it might be time for him to leave the camp for a while and take his turn in wandering to other countries, meeting other tribes and bringing back new stories – perhaps even find another wife. He was not the kind to go woman stealing, the Duradjuri had fallen prey to that hazard several times over the years from other marauding tribes who were desperate for build up their own clans. Duradjuri women had a reputation for being strong and smart, cleve
r and resourceful. They were bigger in build than most of the women in other clans and were known to give birth to powerful sons who grew to become mighty warriors and hunters. Balin was not a thief, and would never consider taking a woman away from her family without her or her tribe’s consent.

  However, Balin’s desires were strong and he longed for a proper wife and companion. One night after eating with Weena, he returned from a visit to the men’s camp and went to bed early and fell into a fast sleep. He dreamt he was travelling across his country and while he was walking came upon an egg. It was soft blue in colour and he picked it up and put it carefully in his dilly bag so not to break it. He kept on and found another egg, so he dropped that in his dilly bag as well. Then as he was nearing a waterhole he found one more egg larger than the previous ones and bright white. This one he carried in his hands, as he thought that if he added it to the others they might all break. He came to the waterhole and sat down to rest because it wasn’t good to travel in the midday heat. He scooped out a little recess for the eggs, placed them there and went down to the waterhole with his spear. Shortly afterwards he returned to his temporary camp with an eel and a yabi, and he quickly cooked them then lay down to sleep. He was awoken by chirping noises, and he opened his eyes to see that the eggs had hatched three ducklings, one white and two grey. In the dream he laughed, because the two grey ones were so funny, running around pecking at everything and tripping over their own webbed feet, while the white one sat quietly to the side. Balin awoke from this dream with a smile on his face and a feeling of joy. Weena was already outside at the front of the gunyah preparing their campfire for the day.