The Whitest Flower

by Brendan Graham

  They continued to make good ground, following the Onkaparinga River, keeping the Chain of Ponds and Kangaroo Creek to their right, until they reached the German village of Hahndorf. They were now, Lavelle informed her, about halfway to Goolwa and the southern coast.

  He decided they would stop at Hahndorf for a while. They could rest themselves and the horses, and replenish their food supply out of some money Lavelle had. Ellen was glad of the break: Annie was becoming increasingly fretful and restless, and she herself was saddle-sore. Lavelle was getting stronger, but still needed Ellen to apply fresh liniment to his wounds at regular intervals.

  After Hahndorf, they continued southwards, taking more frequent breaks now that they were further away from Crockford’s. The Mount Lofty Ranges, to their left, provided a regular point of reference for them, until, close to Dingabledinga, the gently rolling hills before them unfolded away into vast flat plains stretching down to the waterlands of the Lower Murray Basin.

  On and on they rode until they saw the great expanse of Lake Alexandrina, named for the young princess who had since become Queen Victoria and Encounter Bay. Beyond was Encounter Bay and the Southern Ocean on which Ellen had sailed into Australia.

  ‘Another day without mishap should see us in Goolwa. Then, when we cross the Coorong, we’ll be well on our way!’ Lavelle said enthusiastically.

  Ellen, too, was happy with their progress, feeling that Lavelle had done well by them.

  However, she was anything but happy about Annie. The child was not sleeping well and had become uncharacteristically crotchety. Ellen had hoped that, sooner rather than later, Annie would settle into the travelling. Otherwise, they would make very slow progress indeed.

  That night, Ellen lay down beside her and cronauned to her the old lullabies – the suantraithe – all the while caressing Annie’s forehead as she sang. This seemed to settle her. After a while of looking wide-eyed at Ellen and then reaching up tiny white fingers into her mother’s mouth as if trying to catch the notes, Annie fell into a sound sleep. Ellen watched her for a while, thinking that perhaps she ought to put her own tiredness aside, and give more time to Annie.

  The following day Ellen was reckoning that they mustn’t be too far from Goolwa, when she became aware of two, not unconnected, sensations. The first was a sense of some energy or force being present. She couldn’t explain it, but she recognized it. She had been aware of it once before – the night of All Souls – when she had witnessed the presence of the Banshee. A glance at Lavelle was enough to tell her that he was not experiencing it. The force came from without, but something within her was receptive to it. She opened herself to it, not trying to resist.

  The second sensation was that they were being watched by unseen eyes; eyes in the she-oaks and eucalyptus trees; eyes in the acacia shrubs; eyes in the banks of the creeks.

  She didn’t need to be told that this was a sacred place – a place out of the old, like the mist-shrouded Reek. But as she was later to learn, this was not the place of a Christian saint. Goolwa – the Elbow – had a history beginning long before that of the ‘Island of Saints and Scholars’ which she had left. Goolwa was long before Christianity.

  ‘Kringkri!’

  ‘Kringkri!’

  The shouts ripped through Ellen’s consciousness.

  ‘Kringkri! Kringkri!’

  At once, Ellen and Lavelle were surrounded by a band of excited Aborigines yelling and pointing at them. In their hands were boomerangs and hunting spears.

  ‘Just stay calm – they mean no harm,’ said Lavelle. Then, holding his outstretched palms towards the Aborigines, he said, ‘Yant, yant el our ou’ – Peace, peace with you.

  The Aborigines quietened, but still nervous, moved in closer. They took a particular interest in Ellen, shuffling around her, staring at her face, fingering the long tresses of her hair, all the time whispering in awe: ‘Kringkri! Kringkri!’ – The Dead! The Dead!

  Lavelle told her, ‘They think we’re back from the dead. They’ve probably never seen a white woman before, let alone one with a head of red hair like yours – they’ll probably keep you!’

  Ellen was about to react to this when she saw that Lavelle was laughing.

  Now the Aborigines gathered around Annie, who awoke and looked back at them, her eyes following them as they moved about her.

  ‘Tyinyeri! Tyinyeri!’ they said, excitedly, pointing at the child, and again looking at Ellen with a mixture of awe and respect. Then it was Lavelle’s turn. They tugged at his clothes, fingered his unbearded chin, and tugged at his sandy-coloured hair. Ellen noticed Lavelle’s discomfiture with this inspection, and, when he looked over at her, it was her turn to laugh as she said, ‘I think you’re the one they want to keep!’

  The Aborigines, picking up the intent of Ellen’s jibe, also began to laugh at Lavelle, calling something out to him.

  ‘Mimini! Mimini!’ they pointed.

  ‘Korni! Korni!’ others laughed.

  ‘Mimini! Mimini!’ the first, bigger group, chorused back, much to Lavelle’s chagrin.

  Ellen was not to know the meaning of these words until later. Nor, indeed, did Lavelle fully understand them. If he had, he might not have gone so willingly with these people of the Lower Murray River.

  When they reached the outskirts of the Ngarrindjeri encampment they were met by a group of the women. Like their menfolk, the women took a great interest in Ellen, but also, in Annie. Ellen felt comfortable about letting the women, who were very excited and friendly towards them, touch, and even lift Annie from her arms.

  However, it was when the women inspected Lavelle, who had dismounted, that the fun began.

  Ellen again heard the words ‘mimini’ and ‘korni’ being bandied about among the women. It seemed to her that they were in dispute about something that had to do with Lavelle.

  All was soon to be revealed. The bare-breasted Aboriginal women were clearly fascinated by the colour of Lavelle’s hair and his clean-shaven face. It puzzled them that he looked so different from their own heavily bearded men. Now they came closer, dancing against him all the while, still laughing, till he found himself ensnared in a circle of almost naked black bodies. Then one of the women, who they later learned was called Kalinga, held up her hand and the dancing and laughter stopped.

  Kalinga now looked into Lavelle’s face and posed the question: ‘Minimi?’

  There was a titter of laughter from the others.

  Not receiving an answer to her first question, she now asked: ‘Korni?’

  This was followed by more laughter. Ellen had guessed what it was the women were at. Kalinga was asking if he were ‘mimini’ – a girl, or ‘korni’ – a man. With no answer forthcoming from Lavelle, the women set about finding out for themselves.

  At a nod from Kalinga, a few of the stouter women grabbed his arms and pinioned them behind him. Then the others caught his legs and hoisted him off the ground. As the full realization of what the women were about to do hit him, Lavelle bucked and twisted, but to no avail. First, they undid his boots and removed them, then unbelted his trousers and removed those. All that then remained were his long johns – within which lay the answer to their question. Lavelle struggled to get his hands round to the front of his body, but the Ngarrindjeri women were not, at this stage, going to be denied; they held him fast.

  Then it was too late. With a great tug, Kalinga and another woman whipped off the long johns, revealing the manhood of a mortified Lavelle.

  Kalinga first looked, then pointed to the proof, finally shouting it out, ‘menane! menane!’ At this, a great crackle of noise and laughter went up from the rest of the women. ‘Korni! Korni! Korni!’ settling it, once and for all, that Lavelle was indeed a man.

  Lavelle’s misadventures at the hands of the Ngarrindjeri women did not, however, end there. He had to suffer the further indignity of being carried, trouserless, into the village, while each of the women satisfied herself, by individual inspection, as to the legitimacy of his
credentials – his menane. Eventually, he was set down in the midst of all and his clothing returned. He dressed himself to much good-natured bantering.

  Ellen, for her part, couldn’t but help feel a pang of pity for him. He had taken it in good part, she thought, even if he had been embarrassed by the women’s actions.

  He approached her, still flushed, and she tried to keep the smile from her face. Then she could hold it in no longer. For a moment Lavelle was taken aback, but, her laughter being contagious, he too began to see the humour of it all and joined in with her.

  ‘All right! All right! – I was fair game this time, Ellen Rua,’ he conceded.

  ‘You enjoyed it, Lavelle – all that attention from those women,’ she said, trying to embarrass him further.

  The Ngarrindjeri studied them both – the kringkri with no hair on his chin, but his menane intact, and her, the kringkri mimini with the thuwi of fire on her head. And the tyinyeri – the girl-child, in her arms. The men and women encircled Ellen, touching her white skin, and handling her hair – thuwi, as they called it. Around her they spoke to one another in hushed tones, prolin … kene – red … fire. Ellen found herself amused by all the attention, and surprisingly unflustered by it, given that before this she had only seen one Aborigine. Now she was surrounded by dozens of them.

  Kalinga approached, pointing to herself and saying, ‘Kalinga’. Then, pointing at Ellen, she asked: ‘Yare mai ru?’

  ‘My name is Ellen. This is Annie.’

  ‘You – Annieanikke?’ Kalinga pointed at Ellen in surprise.

  ‘Yes,’ Ellen replied, rightly assuming that Kalinga asked if she was Annie’s mother.

  ‘Thuwi? Thuwi?’ Kalinga said, pointing at Annie’s dark hair and Ellen’s red mane, not understanding how she could be the child’s mother. Ellen noticed that all the Aborigines were of a similar hair colouring.

  ‘Alinta,’ Kalinga said, pointing at Ellen. ‘Alinta.’

  ‘Alinta,’ they all said. The woman of fire.

  A tall man approached her. Ellen was struck by how noble and graceful he seemed – as indeed did many of these people.

  The others fell silent as Rupulle, leader of the Tendi, the council of elders spoke: ‘You Alinta, Fire Ancestor, come among Ngarrindjeri again,’ he said in broken English. ‘You have come as a kringkri, but you have come. This napelle – Alinta husband?’ he asked, pointing his spear at Lavelle.

  ‘Oh, no!’ said Ellen. ‘My husband is dead. He is my friend, he helps me.’

  ‘Ngarrindjeri peoples are your friend, Alinta, Annieanikke,’ Rupulle said. ‘This place here, where Murrundi flows to great ocean, this your place, Alinta – many long time of the Dreaming. This your Ruwi,’ he said, pointing to both land and water on every side.

  Ellen realized that, despite her white features, these people took her to be a reincarnation of one of their gods or Ancestors. Somehow, in their eyes, she was one of the Aboriginal spirit people – like the spirit people of her own Celtic race, the Tuatha Dé Danann, those shape-changers and dream-chasers who could go between worlds.

  That she could cope with. Given her own experience with the Banshee, the idea was not alien to her. But did this mean the Ngarrindjeri would expect her to stay here? She decided to say nothing; to take things as they came for the moment and accept the hospitality of these people.

  Later, that evening, the Ngarrindjeri held a feast in honour of their visitors. Even in Crockford’s, had Ellen never seen such an array of food.

  There was the pinyali, which she understood to be emu – run down by the Ngarrindjeri hunters, driven into their waiting nets – and cuts of wangami, the kangaroo, neither of which she liked. These were roasted on hot slabs of stone in holes dug out of the ground, over which grass was laid. Hot stones and coals were also placed inside the animal to ensure it was cooked throughout.

  Then there was every kind of mami netted from the Coorong’s waters: the pondi, the large Murray cod, and thukeri and callop. These were placed into the oven hole wrapped in wet grass and surrounded by earth. The fish were then steamed by pouring water down three or four hollow reeds pushed through the earth to the oven below. Ellen found the steamed fish to be delicious, as she did the kuti – cockles – and other shellfish.

  Then, but not for Ellen, there was pellati, an edible grub found in the banksia trees. And after this came muntharri, made from the berry-like wild Coorong apples, dried and crushed into a cake. And roots and fruits – kongi and kuntyaring – whose kernels would later be mashed into an oily paste to be applied for head or back aches. For drink, there was the opaque nectar of kurku, taken from small insects which lived in the branches of the mulga tree.

  Ellen was amazed at how advanced the Ngarrindjeri were, how they made use of all that was about them – huts built of bent tree branches, covered with nets and reeds woven in basketry style. One hut, she noted, was made of giant curved bones. ‘Whale bones,’ Lavelle told her. These were nothing like the black heathen savages depicted by Coombes.

  Rupulle sat with them, and another who seemed to command great respect: Wiwirremalde – the kulduke, the tribe’s medicine man.

  The women, she noticed, were not in any sense subservient to the men. There were no servants in this society. Instead, a dignified courtesy was observed all round. In fact, some of the older women seemed to be accorded a special respect. Like the sean-daoine, she thought, remembering how it was at home with the old ones who handed on wisdom and learning and custom. This Coorong of South Australia was not so very different to her valley in Maamtrasna. Only here the people had food – and plenty of it.

  They talked – the Ngarrindjeri and Alinta, the Fire Ancestor. They came to touch her again, the women, and the young men, initiates painted in red ochre, flush from their new-found manhood. Rupulle and Wiwirremalde touched the face, the hair of this kringkri ghost-woman many times, as if making sure she would not fade away again before their eyes. Be sung back into the rocks and lakes – into the Dreaming. Or, like Ngurunderi – the great Creator-Ancestor, law-maker, land-shaper – descend to the depths of the sea before rising to the Milky Way to eternally light their passage.

  The Máistir and Ngurunderi, she thought – both ancestral seers, shapers of things.

  She told them her own story of the far-away land beyond the great ocean, of the people, other kringkri who came to take that land, pushing back the native peoples. She told them about the Great Hunger, and the people being again driven off the land. Spoke to them of her own ancestors, the Celts, the magical Tuatha Dé Danann, the Máistir.

  Finally, she told them of her three children abandoned in the far-away land that she had to get back to.

  In turn, the Ngarrindjeri spoke of the whitefellas who had come, taking first their land and then their women, repaying them only with the whitefella sicknesses – venereal disease and smallpox – unknown to them before the coming of the Europeans.

  Rupulle spoke: ‘Once Ngarrindjeri nation strong. Many tribes, many lakalinyerar all along Coorong and Murrundi. Now we are few. Even children gone, taken by kringkri holy men to mission schools, teachem whitefella ways and whitefella God. It’s all broken now. All broken,’ he said despondently.

  ‘It’s proselytizing all over again – just like back in Achill,’ Lavelle said to Ellen.

  She felt a sadness in her heart for Rupulle, leader of a disappearing race – a race many thousands of years older than her own.

  ‘You must hold on,’ she said. ‘You must not let go of the old ways, your customs and traditions. You must get your children back, teach them yourselves, as you always have.’

  ‘It is the law of the kringkri Queen,’ he replied. ‘She send holy men and soldiers together to take our children. And we have no guns, only plongge and yande.’ He picked up the lump-ended fighting club and the long, barbed throwing-spear. To kill the wangami – yes, good! To fight Peramangk tribe – yes! To fight whitefella – no good!’

  Rupulle shook his head and continued. ‘When chi
ldren return, they question raukkan – the ancient way, the way Ancestors teach us. Whitefella world come to Ngarrindjeri world. We cannot stop it … must let our children go … must learn whitefella talk, kringkri ways. Only way now for Ngarrindjeri people to live on. Too much bad thing already done, too much bad thing …’

  As she listened, Ellen thought how familiar the story sounded. She’d not had to ‘take the soup’ or send her children to a proselytizing mission school – at least she’d some choice about that. But she, herself, had taught them English. And she had known that once she’d gone down that road with them, she’d never get them back to the old language, the old ways – the sean-nósanna … the raukkan.

  Wiwirremalde spoke to her, his dark eyes shining: ‘Now, Alinta, Annieanikke, you will see the story of Ngurunderi – long time ago Dreaming Ancestor.’

  Ellen watched as the actors gathered for the ringbalin. Red-ochred, feather-plumed, white-splashed, they first danced the ceremonial palti to bird sound and dingo howl. Shuffling dust devils they were – hunter and hunted – hopping, swimming, flying on the ground. The men made a clacking noise with their spears and woomera – the spear-throwing holder – their boomerangs clapping in rhythm. The women beat their digging sticks, on the stretched possum-skin drum. This plangkumballin rumbled underneath all the other sounds rolling into the night across the wetlands and gibber plains of the Murray Basin. The didgeridoo, not common to the Coorong, droned its circular bush rhythms in the hands of a visitor from a northern lakalinyeri.

  As the story of Ngurunderi unfolded, Ellen and Lavelle watched, entranced, swept along by the dance.

  The Dreaming Ancestor’s two wives had stolen away from him. He pursued them down along the Murray in a canoe made from the bark of the river red gum. Pondi, the giant cod, went before him, widening Murrundi with its tail. With Ngurunderi’s permission, his brother-in-law Nepele speared Pondi and together they divided the cod into every different species of fish now known, both freshwater and sea water. Then Ngurunderi, by the smell of the cooking of thukeri – the bony bream, a fish forbidden to women – found his wives, but they escaped him again, heading southwards along the Coorong to Kangaroo Island. There, in a voice of thunder, Ngurunderi called up the mountainous waters of the sea to drown his treacherous wives, whose bodies became the Pages Islands.