The Cherry Picker's Daughter

by Aunty Kerry Reed-Gilbert

  Flames are dancing high as the heat penetrates my ageing body. I slip back into my memories as the two of us walk up the main street of Condobolin, Condo for short. Sitting in the centre of New South Wales, a hot dusty old town kissed by the bank of the Lachlan River. It’s 1960. I’m four, all dressed up in my town clothes, and I’m real proud because I’m with Mummy and she loves me and that’s the most important thing in the world.

  We’ve just walked up from down the bottom end of the main street over a little dirt road, through the gutters and onto the best place in the world: our little piece of paradise—the Island, that’s where we live. The gutters lead us up to the tar and cement of Bathurst Street and back again. A little dirt road called Baxter Street takes us through the gutters then home to the Island. The gutters—that’s what we call the dry riverbed that divides our home from the streets of Condo. It’s not really an island but everyone calls it that.

  ‘Where we going today, Mummy?’

  ‘Up the street.’

  ‘What we gonna do, Mummy?’ my child’s voice asks.

  ‘We gonna say hello to Scotty and maybe go somewhere special.’

  ‘Where Mummy, where’s special?’ I’m hoping we go to the Red Rose Café for a milkshake and an ice cream.

  Feeling real lucky today, the sun beams down on us both. It’s only Mummy and me because all the other kids are at school. People will see me holding her hand. Today I’m walking on clouds. I look like a fairy all dressed up pretty in pink. My dress swirls around when I spin and my black shoes are bright and shiny and my white socks are frilly. Today I have my town clothes on. What a magical day it is.

  Glancing up at Mummy, she is dressed up, too, a black handbag swings over her arm. There’s not a hair out of place and she looks so beautiful; she’s wearing her town clothes, too. We have clothes that we wear at different times: house clothes, town clothes and cherry-picking clothes (they’re our real old clothes). We have show clothes, too, for when the show comes to town in August but today, I got to dress up in the prettiest clothes ever.

  Happiness is my world; I want everyone to see us. Scotty at the post office comments on how pretty I look. I glow. He tells Mummy to have a good day as we walk out the door into the sun; the heat smacks you in the face like a hard pillow. I’m sweating already but nothing can bother me today. Today I’m the happiest girl in the whole wide world.

  People in town all say hello to us, both Blackfellas and Whitefellas, too. My Mummy is well-respected in the town. Even the policeman, the old sergeant, likes Mummy. He always calls her Mrs Hutchings, real respectful like. One time, Darryl was in real trouble and he came and told her about it first; I think he had to leave town ‘in a hurry’. Our families have been here for a long, long time, right from the very start. Back in the early days, all the Aboriginal families used to live on the Murie, four kilometres along the road going south. My Old Granny Murray and all the other Blackfellas lived there.

  After seeing Scotty at the post office, we go and say hello to the lady in Fossey’s and Mummy has a good talk to her while I look at all the dolls. Pulling me away from the toys, she says it’s time to go. Walking down the street, we head to the Red Rose Café; a chocolate milkshake is waiting just for me. If we would have went the other way, we would have ended at the fish-and-chip shop owned by Uncle Archie and Aunty Isabel; they’re Daddy’s family and too far to walk today. Soon it’s time to go and I hold her hand as we walk, happy to be going home to where I belong.

  Mummy is really my Aunty Joyce—my father Kevin’s sister and she is married to Daddy who is really my Uncle Ned. Us younger kids don’t know this. We only know that we are Mummy and Daddy’s. Daddy’s not around much since he works away on the railway a real lot—he’s a fettler. He comes visiting when he’s not working. He rides one of those funny trolley cars that go up and down. Daddy stands on one end and another man on the other and they pump away ‘up and down, up and they go’.

  Mummy looks after us kids and she gets work wherever she can, stick-picking, felling trees (she can swing an axe better than a man), cooking at the pub or cleaning houses. Mummy’s cleaning houses around this time when I’m four. I don’t go to school yet, so I go to work with her. The lady’s house she cleans is real big and lovely—made of red bricks and has real old stuff inside. It’s got all these things in it that I’ve never seen before and I might break something! Standing in a corner, there’s a china cabinet full of little ornaments. We have ornaments, too, but not like these. I’m not allowed to go inside by myself. The stuff is real pretty but I play outside in the sun with the family’s cat near the back step.

  Smoko time and Mummy gives me drinks and biscuits and I share them with the cat. She gobbles them up real fast, then she wants the rest of mine. I call her a guts. I also play with my marbles, making a little circle in the dirt. I carry them everywhere in my pocket, along with my hanky. I wish Kevin, my brother, was here so we could play together but he’s a year older than me and is at school. I play outside until Mummy tells me it’s time to go home. She tells me I’m a good girl, and then we start walking home. I’m happy, but after cleaning that big house, Mummy’s exhausted.

  We head back to the Island where we belong.

  2

  One big Mob

  Abig Mob we are; my family is pretty big. There’s a real lot of us and I know who they all are. Or I think I do.

  There’s lots of us kids. Eight all up and we are sort of divided into two lots of four. Three of us are Mummy and Daddy’s biological kids, and five of us aren’t. There’s Johnny, Meryl and Maureen and Darryl: they are the four big ones in my family. Johnny, Meryl and Maureen are Mummy’s and Daddy’s. Darryl isn’t Mummy’s biological son. He belongs to Aunty Flora and so he’s really our cousin like the others, but he’s regarded as a brother just like the other brothers.

  Then us four younger ones: Paddy, Lynnie, Kevin and me. I’m the baby. Lynnie and Paddy’s real father is Mummy’s older brother, Uncle Athol. Uncle Athol was a top boxer in the Riverina; he used to fight in the shows that travelled round. Lynnie and Paddy are real proud of him; we all are.

  When they were just babies, Uncle Athol died in a car accident in Shepparton. Before he died, he had always said that, if anything happened to him, that Mummy had to take his kids and keep them. That’s why Mummy took them on to raise up as her own, like Kevin and me.

  ‘What about me and Kevin?’ I ask, curious.

  Lynnie tells me that our real mother died and that our real father is Kevin, Mummy’s younger brother. I think it’s strange how Lynnie and Paddy’s real father died and me and Kevin’s real mother died, and we all end up belonging to Mummy. All my family are different colours—white, brown and black. We know we’re Aboriginal and we also know we’re not like other families. Lynnie tells me that’s why the Welfare comes and I know I don’t like the Welfare.

  Lynnie won’t tell me no more after that. She says not to tell anyone she told; she’ll get a hiding and we all hate that. If I tell, she’ll give me a hiding herself. Lynnie tells me more about the Welfare though.

  ‘He’s the white man in the big suit that comes here sometimes. The man who can take us away from Mummy if he wants to,’ she tells me. ‘He don’t need a reason. We’re Aboriginal so we always have to be good and give him no reason to take us away.’

  As I get older and I hear the threat of the Welfare over and over, fear grabs my heart each time anybody mentions his name. I ask Lynnie where me and Kevin’s father is but she won’t tell me. She tells me not to worry. She says to make sure I don’t mention my father in front of anyone, especially Mummy as she’ll get upset.

  I don’t ask any questions. Deep down in my heart, I don’t want to know. I’m dreading the answers. I know without it being spoken that some things about me and Kevin and Lynnie and Paddy make us different.

  Some people do bad things to us kids but we can’t say anything to Mummy. They said they’ll tell Joyce that we were bad so she wouldn’t want us any
more because we’re ‘naughty’; and they’ll let the Welfare know that we were ‘bad kids and he would take you away’. Tears are streaming down my face as my sister wraps her arms around me as I promise I’ll be a real good girl and won’t say a word so no one can take us from Mummy.

  I’m frightened about this talk of being different and the Welfare, but ultimately, I don’t care. I’ve got Mummy, a woman who loves us and who works real hard making sure we’ve got plenty to eat, clean clothes and a roof over our heads. She makes sure that we’re clean and tidy and safe. I don’t want no other mother or father. This Mummy and Daddy, my brothers and sisters, we all seem to fit together. I’m the baby of them all, I’m Dolly. My sister Maureen calls me that. She said, ‘when you were a baby, you had the biggest brown eyes and looked just like a baby doll’.

  We sometimes do things together as a family but, mainly, it’s us four younger ones and Mummy. Some of the bigger ones are grown up and don’t live with us anymore. On our Island, us younger ones play and laugh together and have a good time. We visit our relations on the Mission and in town. We don’t go to white people’s houses, only to our own family. The only white houses we ever go to are the ones Mummy cleans.

  Aunty Tilly, Aunty Dolly and Aunty Rosie, Uncle Paddy and Uncle Teddy, our Great Uncles and Aunties, they’re real special people and they can speak Aboriginal language. All them old ones, they’re all our Granny’s brothers and sisters. Granny’s name was Rachel Naden before she married our grandfather, John Gilbert, but Granny and Grandfather both died when Mummy was young so we are left now with Great Uncles and Aunties instead.

  We love it when our Old Uncles come to visit. We’re allowed to say hello and then we go outside to play so they can have a good yarn. The Old Uncles go rabbiting and they hang all the dead rabbits on the pushbike. I reckon one day there was a hundred hanging there. They sell them so they can earn a quid but they always give Mummy some to feed us kids.

  Uncle Paddy and Aunty Carol and all their kids, Little Lynnie, Rocky, Willie, Rachel and Johnny all come visit as well. They live in Condo, too. One day, my Aunty Flora came, that’s Mummy’s baby sister who is Darryl’s real mother. She came with all her other kids, another Lynnie, Aileen and Smokey (that’s his nickname). They had a funny-looking car that looked like a T-model Ford and we all got to have a ride in it. It was a beauty!

  My biggest sister, Meryl, comes home for a visit. She’s getting grown up now. She comes back from the Aboriginal Bible College in Singleton and she’s in love with Slugga. He’s nice. Slugga and his family live on the Mission across the riverbank from us. He brings his guitar and sings to her.

  In the afternoon, when the sun’s going down, Slugga always comes over and serenades her. They sit on the hard ground together and the wind starts blowing the dirt all around us. Meryl knows I love music and she calls me over. Leaning the guitar on his knee, he starts to sing ‘Roses are red, my love’.

  I beam, happy; he says I’m as pretty as my big sister. Meryl reckons good looks run in our family and Mummy’s real pretty, too. Happiness for me—I take after my big sister! It’s a beautiful day. The sun is smiling real bright, just like me.

  Sister Maureen loves a fella called Sam; she loves him so bad all she does is talk about him. She’s been in love with him since she was a little girl. When he comes, me and Lynnie look at each other, not saying a word. We don’t want to be there when he’s around so we head to the paddock saying, ‘We seen a spiny anteater and we gotta find it’. We don’t talk to each other about him; we don’t like him being near us but we can’t say a word to anyone. The threat of the Welfare!

  We get other visitors, too. Monty, he’s like Mummy’s big brother; he comes and cuts the big wood for her and she gives him a feed. We like Monty. Me and Lynnie play a game; when we see him coming, we run and hide and he’s gotta find us. Only our family and other Aboriginal people visit our house—never Whitefellas, except the Welfare.

  A big Mob we are and we got a lot of Paddys and Lynnies in our family. There’s Little Paddy, my brother, Uncle Paddy, Mummy’s brother, and our Old Great Uncle Paddy. And we got lotsa Lynnies, too. Big Lynnie, my sister, Little Lynnie, Uncle Paddy’s daughter, and Lynnie, Aunty Flora’s daughter, who is Darryl’s real sister. Lynnie, she’s bigger and older than Big Lynnie and Little Lynnie but she lives a long way away. Aunty Flora took them all to Western Australia to live, a long time ago.

  All us kids are different, too. Darryl, he’s the same age as Maureen but they got different birthdays, hers in June and his in April. Him and Maureen say they are twins. They are ten years older than me. Darryl calls Mummy ‘Aunty Joyce’ and he’s not like us other kids.

  ‘How come he don’t call Mummy, Mummy,’ I ask Lynnie.

  She tells me, ‘Darryl’s Aunty Flora’s boy but Mummy’s rearing him up’.

  She asks me if I remember Aunty Flora and her family visiting in a big old car. I tell her, yes. Mummy has a photo of her with the car and all us kids on it. Mummy and her photos—she’s real fussy about them and always makes sure we’re real careful when we look at them. She loves to take the photos out and tell you all about our family. Mummy says if we ever in trouble, we have to look to the Black side of our family, never the white side. That’s the Gilbert side, her father’s family.

  Our mob, it’s big and it’s wonderful and the best time is when we all come together and have barbecues down on the riverbank. It’s just round the bend from the Bunyip’s hole. On Boxing Day, we all gather down there every year and we celebrate all the family coming together. The Boxing Day barbecue is for the ones who couldn’t make it home on Christmas Day.

  I’m happy with my family; we really are the best. I love my sisters and brothers (even if they tease me) and I love Mummy and Daddy, too. When our cousins come to visit, there’s a lot of us and we play out on the road. We have lots of fun playing pick-up sticks, hide’n-go-seek and “Simon says”. We play for hours until it gets dark or it’s time to do our jobs.

  We do lots of other good things with our family, too. We go rabbiting or duck-hunting with Uncle Paddy, Mummy’s brother. I love duck-hunting. All us kids swim into the river to catch the ducks. We all dive in the water and try to sneak up on them. We try to catch as many as we can. Us kids have a race to see who can get the most.

  We go rabbiting, too, and we always have a good feed later but Uncle Paddy sells the best ones. He reckons, ‘You gotta earn a quid the best way you can and get a good feed to boot’.

  3

  My Island home

  The Island. It sounds special and it is. Our Island is our playground and our world. We share it with two other families. There’s only three houses and they’re all spread out. There’s a big old rambling house in the middle of the street, that’s where we live. Our house fits us all, even when the big ones are visiting. Plenty of room to move. Us kids and May’s kids (next door), we play games out the front on the road. May Smith and all her kids’ house is closer to the gutters and there’s another house way past us down the bottom the other way. When Maureen marries Sam, she lives in that house, too.

  No tar and cement here, not like what they have up in town. The dirt is smooth as silk but, when the sun is beating down it burns our feet and gets in between your toes. Screams of ‘Ooh, ooh, ooh’ spill out of our mouths on really hot days. One day, Mummy ran out the door thinking something was wrong; then she saw all us kids hopping on our tiptoes from the scalding ground as we tried to get to the shade of the tree. Busting out laughing, she said we looked funny tiptoeing; then we all started cackling, too. Feeling sorry for us with our burning feet, she brings us a drink as we sit under our favourite tree.

  It’s also Cocky’s favourite tree. A loud squark booms its way through the air. We look up and Cocky’s screaming, stirring up a storm, screaming out to Mummy. He’s a Major Mitchell; they’re a type of native cockatoo named after that old explorer that came here.

  The gutters separate us from the town. We call it the gutters but i
t’s really the riverbed that holds the river when it’s full. It’s dried out most of the time. It’s made up of dirt and rocks—a huge bus could park in there, I reckon. There are lots of gum trees and lots of native hop bushes that line the riverbank, guarding us from the town and from strangers.

  On the far side of the Island, the river flows all year long. That’s where we go swimming and where we cart our water from, too. All the water we need for drinking or cooking or anything, we bring it up from the river. Nearly every day, we have to carry our water up to the house. When Maureen lives in the house down that way, fingers are crossed that she’ll see us and come say hello.

  The Mission is down past there, too, on the other side of the river. The Lachlan River flows between us. The Mission is where a lot of our families now live, as well as in town and on Boona Road; we go and visit family at these places all the time. Between us and the Mission, we have a little footbridge that gets people from that side to ours. This way they don’t have to walk so far to town.

  When the river comes up and floods, we need a boat to get off the Island but we haven’t got a boat so that means we have to leave. When that happens, we have to go and live in a tent somewhere around town. One time, during a flood, we stayed on the Island as long as we could, avoiding school. Afterwards, Lynnie said the Welfare said to Mummy, ‘The kids gotta go to school’. The fear of the Welfare! When the river goes down, then we come home again. Living in the tent is good but we make sure that we have clean drinking water close by.

  The Island is the best place in the world to live. The river is our playground. We have a couple of swimming spots. Paddy, he’s the best swimmer, he can go under the water for the longest time. Mummy took us to the pictures one day and we saw Tarzan. Paddy can swim just like him, so when we’re swimming, we call him Tarzan. I’m sure he shows off just a little bit more when we call him that.