by Cara Shaw
Missionised, colonised, never granted civil rights or offered land treaties, the small group of people had no recourse while their dignity and self-respect was pillaged by the thoroughness of Imperial ignorance. Authority and bureaucracy pressed down on the First People, whose culture and appearance befuddled the Europeans, and to whom eventually they became invisible. As a voiceless people their only option was to assimilate or, if their skin was too dark, simply survive.
Murruma was once a Duradjuri camp where the people lived separately, basically, in humpies, lean-to’s and shacks. Fashioned together from scavenged material; the camp was supported by the rubbish and leftovers discarded by the whites, usually hammered out kerosene tins and corrugated iron panels. For anyone who was old enough to remember now, they were hard, mean years. And even after the 1967 Referendum, when Aboriginal people were finally given the right to vote, the new equality was met with huge disapproval from the incumbent social set – who happened to be white Australians. The silent underbelly of blood kinship was completely ignored. It was convenient not to remember that your half-brother or sister, your uncle, your second cousins were black and that they lived at Murruma. Half siblings stood divided by the colour bar in the same church; black and white cousins worked alongside each other on farms; family never acknowledged, never mentioned. The strange unsolvable links that simmered away within the community had grown from rapes, illicit love affairs and forbidden relationships. Ugly truths that would rip apart marriages and family holdings, all repressed by the underlying fear of claims for land and inheritance, not to mention the stain of Aboriginal or white blood.
There was an exception in the chaos of connection that ran through the community, and that was the Chapman family. The town’s most famed Aboriginal occupant, Robbie Dalton, had returned from the Great War a hero and a man of considerable strength and character. Robbie had fought side by side with a local boy, Evan Chapman, the son of the richest family in Billington and had saved his life when Evan’s hand was blown off during battle in France. Whilst in the trenches Robbie had only known him as Evan, and had no inkling that he was from Billington until they came across each other in the main street two years after the war had ended. They stood together, hooting and crying, an arm around each other’s shoulders, a sight that had never been see between a white and a black.
That was the day Evan walked with Robbie back to the Duradjuri camp, where he stayed overnight with his friend and ate and drank with the community around the campfire, while Robbie told them all stories of he and Evan during the war. After that Evan was down at the camp most days, helping out, bringing in supplies and swimming in the river with everyone else until eventually he fell in love with Jenny Clarke, and they moved into a small shack that he built with Robbie’s help. The news spread through the town like a bushfire and the family, outraged, sent Joseph, Evan’s older brother down to the camp.
He sat waiting on his horse looking around him in confusion. He had never been down to the black’s camp before, and was at a loss to understand what the hell Evan was doing here. A light wind had sprung up and gum leaves showered down around him, some landing on the brim of his hat. He took it off to tap them away when Evan stepped into his path and grabbed the bridle.
“Hello there Joe,” he smiled, happy to see him.
Joe looked down at his slender blonde-haired young brother and said, “Time for you to come home Ev. Mum and Dad have had enough.”
Evan gave him a wide smile, “Tell them I’m staying here Joey. I’ll come by later to pick up my things.” The sun glinted on the young man’s golden hair.
Joe grimaced. “Evan. You can’t live with a black mate. It’s not on.” The mare stamped its hoof and shook her head as if in agreement.
“I love Jenny,” Evan said, “That’s all there is to it.”
Evan squinted at him and put on his hat. “Come up and tell Dad yourself then. It’s not my business,” and he rode off, not looking back. Evan returned to the grove and walked into the shack where Jenny was pounding some damper on a small trestle table.
“What’d he want?” she asked without looking up. Evan went behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist.
“He wants me to go home,” he whispered in her ear.
“You goin?” Her hands were still.
Evan nuzzled her neck, “No. I am home.”
Jenny relaxed, “Good.”
He turned her around and she looked into his crystal blue eyes. “I’m going to get us a house Jenny. And a bit of land, we need security if we’re going to start a family.”
She rubbed her stomach thoughtfully, “That’s already started Ev.”
He hugged her, “I love you Jenny.”
“Me too,” she said with a smile.
He took his hat from the nail next to the door and walked the hour to Chapman Station. It was a huge holding surrounded by pens, sheds, stables and a farm garden. Bifurcated gums towered over it and the ground was dry and dusty. Dogs milled around and a couple lay in the shade panting, tongues lolling in the heat. They were working dogs, so they were allowed to stay idle when it was quiet. None had any names other than ‘boy’, and were unceremoniously put down when they outlived their usefulness.
It was the same on every farm where practicality always overrode sentiment. Evan knew his father would be in the office today, shearing was over and the sheep were out to paddock. Only the station manager and a couple of stockmen were kept on to keep things in order during low season. Evan walked past a vast lounge room, and a dining area and table that could seat up to twenty if necessary, into his father’s comfortable office. David Chapman sat on a swivel chair behind a brand-new Huon pine desk, and when he saw his son enter the room did his best to control his anger. David Chapman wasn’t a bad man, but his gentle good-looking son frustrated him no end. When the lad was growing up, the faraway look in his eyes and his interest in other things besides farm work and sheep had disturbed him. He was relieved when his son went to war, proud even, but the lad had returned damaged and now he acknowledged, not quite right.
He looked at his son’s stump and shook his head. “Evan. You can’t live down at the black’s camp.”
Evan looked steadily at his father, “Why not?”
Why not indeed thought David. “Because they are not the same as us boy. They are a different kind. There’s no life there for you, it’s time to come home.” He stood up and walked over to his son.
Evan dropped his head. “Can’t come home Dad, Jenny’s pregnant.”
David sighed. When his son first returned from overseas he stayed in his room for weeks while his arm healed. He refused to talk about the war, and it was as if his personality had been irrevocably altered by everything he had seen and experienced. David thought that Evan’s reaction to the war proved that he wasn’t cut out for conflict after all. Even as a lad always gave anything he had away, nursed sick animals on the farm and was resolutely diplomatic in an argument. David could accept these unusual traits, but the boy was also a Chapman, and his father had expectations for him and his future.
“She wouldn’t be the first black girl to have a white man’s baby son. They look after themselves. Come home and we’ll never speak of it again. You can go down to Sydney for a while, work with your uncle.”
Evan looked back at him in shock. “No Dad! We’re getting married! That’s what I’ve come to tell you.”
Not for the first time in his life David lost his temper with his whimsical son. “No Evan! It’s not on! You can’t marry a black – I don’t know if it’s even legal!”
As the tension rose, Meredith, Evan’s mother entered the office to see what the commotion was.
“Evan!” she exclaimed, and stepped forward as if to embrace him then stopped, and clasped her hands together instead.
David motioned to Evan “He wants to marry her.”
Meredith sank down i
nto one of the brocaded wing chairs and covered her eyes, “No.”
“I’m not changing my mind Mum.”
Meredith shook her head in despair.
“I need land Dad, and some money. I have to support us both, and the baby.”
David silently looked over at his wife who shook her head imperceptibly. They had already discussed this option, and had come to a decision should their son refuse to come home.
David lifted his chin and said, “I’m going to leave a hundred pounds at the post office for you to collect when you’re ready. But you never set foot in the family home again, do you understand me?”
Evan looked at his father with great pity, and walked past his mother who remained seated in her chair, weeping, out of the Chapman house and never returned. A few years later a visiting priest, who once he heard their story was moved by compassion for the unusual couple, and married the two quietly. When Evan signed their registration papers, he neglected to make note of Jenny’s Aboriginality, and as far as they were concerned their marriage was legal.
David’s basic observations about his son were not far off the mark. Evan had descended into a kind of numb shock the night he had lost his hand. He remembered clearly Robbie dragging him to the rock and tying a tourniquet around his arm while he lay there, unable to speak or move. He spent a wretched night in the freezing drizzle, ravaged with despair, hoping that he would be found. It wasn’t until the next afternoon that a medical orderly caught sight of him, unconscious with Robbie’s jacket draped over him.
“Oi,” he shouted out to his partner, and they laid him on a stretcher and carried him to an open truck.
Evan didn’t know what was worse, being in the midst of battle or the period of time he spent in the military hospital, lost in a tide of men who were ripped apart by horrifying injuries. Some so grotesque that he had to try to block the images from his mind. He thought about Robbie often and longed to see his friend again. When he arrived in Billington he immediately discovered that his ability to socialise normally had left him. Most nights he awoke from a nightmare sweating and shaking, always after the sound of shot that had precipitated the loss of his hand. He thought about ending his life many times, and riddled with mental anguish he felt isolated and alone. The day he saw Robbie Dalton in the street had changed his life. Just seeing Robbie and all the delight pouring from him was enough to bring Evan back to a better place. At last, someone who knew him inside and out, who accepted him wholly as he was. Evan, who had been fundamentally different to his peers anyway, had been unable to find solace in old friendships or any of the people he knew before he went to war. He was changed on the inside. Going to the blacks’ camp with Robbie seemed as natural to him as breathing and he recognised at once that it was the only place he felt truly free. Meeting Jenny was the best gift of all and he was never going to let that go.
Evan built a place on the land he bought with a portion of the hundred pounds, a simple clapboard home with a small garden, a lean-to for the laundry and an outside toilet. For Jenny it was luxury, for Evan it was the safest place he could think to be. Because of his arm he couldn’t work very much, although he could still ride, and was usually given a hire for musters or wool sorting by farmers who had a soft spot for the injured war veteran. He and Jenny got by. He started raising kelpies, and bred them into the best dogs in the region; often training them up for the owners before they went off to their new homes.
That’s how Murruma began. The Chapman’s house was the first, and over time more dwellings, put together by the original camp people from the grove sprang up, and the place became known as Murruma or flat place in Duradjuri language. Everyone knew that spot was unofficially reserved for the blacks. Ultimately Evan and Jenny’s marriage and the ensuing Chapman children threw a spanner into the social workings of the town. No one quite knew where to put them. When Evan showed up at the school with his light coloured blonde haired children and enrolled them, nothing was said about their Aboriginality. If Evan and Jenny decided to go to church, people kept quiet. The combination of the two disparate worlds worked only for the couple, and was a conundrum for everyone else. People were outspoken about the arrangement behind closed doors, but socially the Chapman’s had no status – which suited Evan anyway. He only had one friend besides Jenny, and that was Robbie; and where you found one the other wasn’t far away. Robbie was Evan’s mainstay, the light in the dark pit of misery into which he often fell. They were connected as only war veterans could be, the silent understanding between them clear for all to see.
The Chapman kids grew up with their Uncle Robbie coming around to the house and explaining their Aboriginal heritage to them. He taught them Duradjuri words and roped in Charlie Pace to initiate the boys. He asked Jenny’s aunt, Maggie Clarke to arrange the girls’ women’s business, and as a result all the children grew up to be proud of their culture.
“Never let it go,” Robbie advised them, “It’s who you are, right down to your bones,” unconsciously echoing old Dilly’s wise words.
Evan would stand by quietly by during these lectures, or slide out the back door to tend to his latest litter of pups. Political activism didn’t suit his character; he found it difficult to understand why all people weren’t considered to be the same anyway. It was Robbie who formed the local Aborigines for Progress Association, and lobbied the government for proper housing at Murruma; and Robbie who started petitions to get Murruma kids into local schools. He also travelled around to other towns to encourage the development of Right to Vote groups, and explained to Aboriginal people that they were entitled to have their say, that there was no reason to live in shame. Sometimes Robbie was challenged, usually by an angry white male who was offended by Robbie’s obvious self-esteem.
“I am an Aborigine,” Robbie would respond firmly, and stare his opponent down, just as he did all those years ago to the policeman at Central Railway Station in Sydney. A simple lesson he never forgot.
The Chapman children eschewed the colour bar in Billington. They were good looking, well-mannered athletic kids and they all did well in school. Katherine and Elizabeth studied nursing, Jonathan and Craig both became mechanics, and eventually they all married locally. The one thing that stayed resolutely the same was their home at Murruma; they stayed put, and didn’t consider leaving their place of birth. Taking their lead from their charismatic Uncle Robbie, they were outspoken and politically active. Their ways stood in sharp contrast to their gentle retiring father, who some thought was the quietest man they had ever met. Everyone agreed that Jenny Chapman, his wife, was like a ray of sunshine, as good-natured and even tempered as they came, in contrast, Evan remained an enigma to most.
It was the late 1950s when racial relations in Billington became really fractious. The global unrest that surrounded black and white politics had seeped into Billington, and when Aboriginal people began listening to and reading about Martin Luther King, the American black activist, opinions shifted. Black Australians drew on the commonality of experience the fierce prolocutor expressed so eloquently, and were moved to object to the discrimination that was embedded in the minds of the town they lived in. They also began to learn about the Native American Indians, and the similar toll colonisation taken on those First People in their country of origin. Many of the younger set who had access to more education grew bitter about land theft, and loudly pointed out that many Native American tribes had at least brokered some treaties with their invaders relating to land ownership.
None of this race agitation sat well with the broader white community. Aboriginal people were meant to be voiceless, invisible; naive children of the bush who were unable to make their own decisions. People generally were not interested in the class that was virtually unknown to them, and were genuinely puzzled by vehemence that erupted from the heretofore hidden people. Things came to a head when Charlie Perkins, a well-known young Aboriginal activist came through Billington and Cranston on the F
reedom Rider bus. The year was 1965 and he was making his way through northern New South Wales with other university students, black and white, who had formed a protest group to take discrimination polls in towns where black and whites lived in virtual apartheid. Film crews followed them everywhere, and cameras rolled as images of the dismal shanties Aboriginal people were forced to live in were beamed across the nation and the world. Decent people were appalled to see that the Indigenous existed in this poverty-stricken state, and the rest of the white population expressed opinions borne of ignorance – never having mixed with black people at all. Charlie Perkins kept going, and he and his group filled out questionnaires, asking everyone they met to define what they meant by discrimination, and what they knew about the Australian Aborigine’s civil rights. People watched television broadcasts as Charlie was barred from entering clubs and pubs; pictures were taken of the signs that read ‘No Aborigines’ hanging outside shops and cinemas. And then Charlie rounded up some local children and took them for a swim at the Billington Public Swimming Pool, where Aboriginal people were not allowed to enter.
He and the children walked up to the ticket booth and the young black man handed over his and the children’s entry fee. The booth operator could do nothing. The whole community was watching, and the entire event was being filmed as they walked to the pool. He reluctantly handed over the tokens and then stood back with his arms crossed nervously, waiting to see what would happen next. Charlie simply thanked him, herded the kids through the turnstile and then after throwing their towels on the ground, jumped into the pool screaming and laughing, while reporters and photographers rushed to the fence or paid their fee to enter and take photos. People standing around alternately cheered or booed according to their political beliefs while water splashed through the air and landed on those nearby.