Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence

by Pilkington, Doris

  “No, lots of girls have tried to run away back to their homes but that black tracker has always caught them and brought them here again to be flogged and locked up in the ‘boob’,” replied Martha.

  The “boob” was a place of detention once described as a small, detached concrete room with a sandy floor, with only a gleam of light and little ventilation coming through a narrow, barred opening in the north wall. Every inmate of the settlement dreaded being incarcerated in this place. Some children were forced to spend up to fourteen days in that horrible place.

  Polly and Martha led the girls past the boys’ dormitory, the sewing room and the front of the “Big House”, down the gravelled road, through the pine plantation along the kindergarten fence to the hospital.

  “That road goes down to the camps where the married couples live,” said Martha, “and this one,” pointing to the one on which they stood, “takes us back to the compound.”

  “And where does this one go?” asked Rosie, facing east and nodding in that direction.

  “That’s the road to Mogumber, the only one in and out of the settlement,” Martha told her. “And there’s a fence right around this place.”

  They returned to the dormitory to rest and talk. One thing on which they could all agree was that this place was certainly different from what they envisaged.

  When the sons and daughters of the landed gentry and businessmen and professionals such as doctors, lawyers and politicians, were sent away to boarding schools to be educated they were likely to be given pleasant rooms that would be theirs for the duration of their schooling.

  Instead of a residential school, the Aboriginal children were placed in an overcrowded dormitory. The inmates, not students, slept on cyclone beds with government-issue blankets. There were no sheets or pillow slips except on special occasions when there was an inspection by prominent officials. Then they were removed as soon as the visitors left the settlement and stored away until the next visit. On the windows there were no colourful curtains, just wire screens and iron bars. It looked more like a concentration camp than a residential school for Aboriginal children.

  Back at the dormitory the girls were trying to snuggle down in their cold, uninviting beds. Molly, Daisy and Gracie began to talk normally amongst themselves, not whispering but speaking in their own relaxed manner.

  “You girls can’t talk blackfulla language here, you know,” came the warning from the other side of the dorm. “You gotta forget it and talk English all the time.”

  The girls were dumbfounded, they couldn’t say anything but stare at the speaker.

  “That’s true,” said Martha in support. “I had to do the same. They tell everybody that when they come here and go to school for the first time.”

  Molly couldn’t believe what they had just heard. “We can’t talk our old wangka,” she whispered. “That’s awful.”

  “We all know it’s awful,” Martha told them. “But we got over that,” she added calmly.

  Molly lay staring at the ceiling, pondering their fate and the kind of lifestyle they could expect at this strange place and she didn’t like it one bit. After a while she and the rest of the girls dozed off to sleep.

  Some time later they were awakened abruptly by a loud voice telling them that the bell had gone.

  “Come on, get up, tea time everybody,” the voice told them.

  Throughout the dormitory, sleeping forms began to rise from their narrow beds. Once again Martha took charge and led the four newcomers to the dining hall for a meal of watery stew, almost the repeat of what they had for dinner, except they also had bread and treacle. When no one was looking, Molly put all the unwanted crusts in her calico bag, and nudged her young sisters sitting either side of her to do the same.

  “For later,” whispered Molly.

  “Well, everybody finished now?” asked Martha politely.

  “Yes,” said the girls softly.

  “We’d better hurry, it’s going to rain again.” They stood briefly on the verandah to watch the thunder clouds rumbling in the west. There was a flash of lightning, followed by another.

  “Quick, run,” urged Martha. “It’s going to pour down soon.”

  They reached the dormitory just in time, many of the other boys and girls were running quickly to beat the rain. It began to fall lightly at first then as darkness approached, the wind blew strong and cold. All the inmates returned to their dormitories, the younger ones lay quietly in their beds listening to the older ones sharing with each other stories, anecdotes and hopes for the future.

  After roll call and lights out, Molly listened to the slide of the bolt and the rattle of the padlock, then silence. It was at that moment this free-spirited girl knew that she and her sisters must escape from this place.

  8

  The Escape

  The conditions were so degrading and inhumane in the early years of the settlement that a staff member from that period later pronounced that anyone living there, children or staff, were doomed. Perhaps a huge sign warning of the perils that lay within should have been erected at the entrance gate. However, that sign would have had no effect on the boys and girls who were abducted with government approval from their traditional homelands—because they were illiterate. But Molly, Daisy and Gracie were going to be taught to read and write, this was to be their first day at school.

  It was still dark, wet and cold on that morning in August 1931 when the girls were awakened at 5.30. The little ones protested loudly and strongly at being forced to rise at that ungodly hour to leave their warm beds. Molly got up reluctantly and walked out onto the verandah, peeped through the lattice and smiled secretly to herself. Gracie and Daisy joined her but they didn’t care for the grey, dismal day and said so in no uncertain terms.

  The girls waited for Martha and the others to join them, then they made their way through the slushy mud near the stone wall of the staff quarters to the dining room. After a breakfast of weevily porridge, bread and tea, they returned to the dormitory to wait for the school bell.

  Molly had decided the night before that she and her two sisters were not staying here. She had no desire to live in this strange place amongst people she didn’t know. Anyway, she was too big to go to school, they had no right to bring her here. She was a durn-durn, a young girl who had reached puberty, she thought, touching her small budding breasts. These government people didn’t know that she had been allocated a husband. But the man Burungu had passed her over for another Millungga sister and they had a four-year-old son. So, reasoned Molly, if she was old enough to be a co-wife she should be working on a station somewhere. Mr Johnson, manager of Ethel Creek Station, thought so too when he sent a telegram requesting permission to employ her and Gracie. The application was refused.

  It was too early for school, so most of the smaller girls slipped back into bed. Molly, Gracie and Daisy did the same thing but they squashed into the one bed with two girls at the head and Molly at the end.

  Molly finished combing her light brown hair and lay watching the movements of the others around her. At the other end of the bed Daisy and Gracie were whispering quietly to each other. Daisy, aged nine, had the same coloured hair and texture as her eldest sister, while Gracie had straight, black hair that hung down to her shoulders. It was very apparent that the three girls had inherited features from their white fathers. The only obvious Aboriginal characteristics were their dark brown eyes and their ability to control their facial expressions, so that when they reached maturity they would develop the look of a quiet, dignified Aboriginal woman from the Pilbara region.

  The other girls were now getting ready for school, and the three watched quietly amidst all the activity. Bossing and bullying was everywhere around them and there were cries and squeals of, “Don’t, you’re hurting my head,” as the tangled knots were combed out with tiny, fragile combs.

  “Oh, Mummy, Daddy, Mummy, Daddy, my head,” yelled a young girl, who stamped her feet and tried to pull away from her torturer, a
n older, well-built girl who seemed to have adopted the girl as her baby sister. They performed this ritual together every morning before school.

  “Come on, you girls,” ordered Martha Jones as she passed by their bed. “The school bell’s gone. Don’t be late on your first day.”

  “Alright, we’re coming as soon as we empty the toilet bucket,” answered Molly softly.

  “I’ll wait for you then,” said Martha.

  “No, don’t wait we’ll follow you, we know where the school is.”

  “Alright then, we’ll go along. Come on, Rosie,” she said as she rushed out of the door into the cold, drizzily morning.

  As soon as the other girls left the dormitory, Molly beckoned her two sisters to come closer to her, then she whispered urgently, “We’re not going to school, so grab your bags. We’re not staying here.” Daisy and Gracie were stunned and stood staring at her.

  “What did you say?” asked Gracie.

  “I said, we’re not staying here at the settlement, because we’re going home to Jigalong.”

  Gracie and Daisy weren’t sure whether they were hearing correctly or not.

  “Move quickly,” Molly ordered her sisters. She wanted to be miles away before their absence was discovered. Time was of the essence.

  Her two young sisters faced each other, both looking very scared and confused. Daisy turned to Molly and said nervously, “We’re frightened, Dgudu. How are we going to find our way back home to Jigalong? It’s a long way from home.”

  Molly leaned against the wall and said confidently, “I know it’s a long way to go but it’s easy. We’ll find the rabbit-proof fence and follow that all the way home.”

  “We gunna walk all the way?” asked Daisy.

  “Yeah,” replied Molly, getting really impatient now. “So don’t waste time.”

  The task of finding the rabbit-proof fence seemed like a simple solution for a teenager whose father was an inspector who travelled up and down the fences, and whose grandfather had worked with him. Thomas Craig told her often enough that the fence stretched from coast to coast, south to north across the country. It was just a matter of locating a stretch of it then following it to Jigalong. The two youngsters trusted their big sister because she was not only the eldest but she had always been the bossy one who made all the decisions at home. So they did the normal thing and said, “Alright, Dgudu, we’ll run away with you.”

  They snatched up their meagre possessions and put them into calico bags and pulled the long drawstrings and slung them around their necks. Each one put on two dresses, two pairs of calico bloomers and a coat.

  Gracie and Daisy were about to leave when Molly told them to, “Wait. Take those coats off. Leave them here.”

  “Why?” asked Gracie.

  “Because they’re too heavy to carry.”

  The three sisters checked to make sure they hadn’t missed anything then, when they were absolutely satisfied, Molly grabbed the galvanised bucket and ordered Gracie to get hold of the other side and walk quickly trying not to spill the contents as they made their way to the lavatories. Daisy waited under the large pine tree near the stables. She reached up and broke a small twig that was hanging down low and was examining it closely when the other two joined her.

  “Look, Dgudu, like grass indi?” asked Daisy, passing the twig to Molly to feel.

  “Youay,” she said, as she gave it to Gracie who crushed the green pine needles into her small hands and sniffed them. She liked the smell and was about to give her opinion when Molly reminded them that they didn’t have time to stand around examining pine needles.

  “Come on, run, you two,” she said sharply as she started to run towards the river.

  Many young people had stood under the same big pine tree and waited while someone went into the stable or the garage to distract Maitland, the caretaker and stableman. Then they would give the signal that the coast was clear and everyone would dash into the grainary and fill their empty fruit tins with wheat from one of the opened bags at the back of the shed. Some of it was roasted on flat tins over the hot coals, the rest was saved to fill initials that had been dug into the sloping embankment of firm yellow sand along the cliffs. These were left until the first rain came, then all the inmates would rush down to inspect the cliffs. This grass graffiti revealed the new summer romances between the older boys and girls. But these three girls from the East Pilbara had no intention of participating, they had a more important task ahead of them.

  On they went, dashing down the sandy slope of the cliffs, dodging the small shrubs on the way and following the narrow path to the flooded river. They slowed down only when they reached the bottom. Molly paused briefly, glancing at the pumping shed on their right where they had been the day before. Turning towards it she said to Gracie and Daisy, “This way.” She ran for about 25 metres, crashing into the thick paperbark trees and the branches of the river gums that blocked their path.

  Molly strode on as best as she could along the muddy banks, pausing only to urge her young sisters to hurry up and try to keep up with her. She kept up that pace until she saw what she thought to be a likely spot to cross the swift flowing river.

  The three girls watched the swirling currents and the white and brown frothy foam that clung to the trunks of the young river gums and clumps of tea-trees. They didn’t know that this became one of the most popular spots during the hot summer days. This was the local swimming pool that would be filled with naked or semi-naked brown bodies, laughing, splashing, swimming and diving into the cool brown water during the long summer afternoons. Every now and then, the swimmers would sit on the coarse river sand and yank ugly, brown, slimey leeches off their bodies and impale them on sticks and turn them inside out and plunge them into the hot burning mud. The next day the swimmers would pull the sticks out of the sand and gloat at the shrivelled dry skins that once were horrible little creatures, ready to suck all the blood from their bodies—or so the young people were led to believe.

  “The river is too deep and fast here, let’s try up further,” Molly said, leading the way through the thick young suckers and washed-up logs. They continued along the bank making slow progress through the obstacles that nature had left in their path. At last they came to a section in the river that seemed narrow enough to cross.

  “We’ll try here,” said Molly as she bent down to pick up a long stick. She slid down the bank into the river and began measuring its depth just as she had seen Edna Green do the previous afternoon, while Daisy and Gracie watched patiently on the bank.

  “Nah, too deep,” Molly said in disgust. “Not here.”

  “Gulu, Dgudu,” cried the youngsters as they ran to follow her through the wet foliage.

  The three girls walked along the muddy banks for another 25 metres when they came to a clearing, devoid of any shrubs or young suckers, where the floods had receded.

  In a couple of weeks’ time, this place would become a muddy skating rink where the girls of the settlement would spend hours having fun skating up and down the slippery mud. The idea was to skate by placing one foot in front of the other and maintain your balance for a couple of metres at least. The boys had their own skating area further up in a more secluded place amongst the thick tea-tree shrub. Peeping toms never existed in those days, each group respected each other’s privacy. Nearby, a huge fire would be lit and kept stoked. When everyone had finished skating in the slippery mud they would dive into the icy cold river to wash off the mud, then dry themselves by the roaring fire, dress, and return to the compound.

  Molly decided to follow the paths made by the cattle. Another attempt was made to cross the river but once again proved unsuccessful. She walked on angrily, pushing the thick growth of eucalyptus suckers roughly aside, at the same time urging Daisy and Gracie to walk faster. But they decided that it was much safer at a distance and they followed her muddy footprints in silence without any questions, trusting her leadership totally.

  They were still fighting their way thro
ugh the tea-trees for almost an hour when they heard Molly call out to them somewhere down the track. “Yardini! Bukala! Bukala!”

  Daisy and Gracie ran as fast as they could along the muddy path until they reached her. Molly was standing near a large river gum. As they stood gasping for wind she said, “We gunna cross here.”

  As three pairs of eager eyes examined it closely, they knew that they had found the perfect place to cross the flooded river. A tree leaned over the water creating a natural bridge for them to cross safely to the other side.

  The girls scraped mud from their feet then climbed onto the trunk and walked cautiously to the end then swung down off the limb onto the slippery, muddy bank on the other side. They sloshed through the wet, chocolate-coloured banks for at least another two hours, then decided to rest amongst the thick reeds behind the tall river gums.

  A few minutes later, Molly stood up and told her young sisters to get up. “We go kyalie now all the way.” They obeyed without any protests. Ducking under the hanging branches of the paperbark trees they hurried as best they could, stomping on the reeds and bull rushes that covered the banks of the fast flowing river. The only sounds that could be heard were the startled birds fluttering above as they left their nests in fright, and the slish, slosh of the girls’ feet as they trampled over the bull rushes.

  Now the question is, how does anyone keep travelling in a northerly direction on a dismal, grey day without a map or compass? It would be difficult for an adult without the most thorough knowledge of bushcraft not to become disoriented and lost in a strange part of the country where the landscape is filled with thick undergrowth and without the sun to guide the way. Well, Molly, this fourteen-year-old girl, had no fear because the wilderness was her kin. It always provided shelter, food and sustenance. She had learned and developed bushcraft skills and survival techniques from an expert, her step-father, a former nomad from the desert. She memorised the direction in which they had travelled: it was north by car from Perth to Mogumber siding, then west to the settlement. Also, she had caught a glimpse of the sun when it appeared from behind the rain clouds at various intervals during their tour of the place on their first day. That enabled her to determine that she was moving in the right direction.