by Julie Janson
‘Dey finish up.’
‘What? You mean right here? Near where we’re standing?’ she said.
‘The womens scared, start runnin. Mummy runnin wid me, little fella, I run wid her, cryin, she carry coolamon wid baby.’
‘Oh God! No.’
White cockatoos flew squawking in a great arc overhead. David kept drawing in the dust with his boot.
‘Dey shot all dem Lanniwah men, shot ’em like dey nothing. Like dogs! Daddy he bin shot in head, bang, like that. Den dey run down the womens and hittem wid a stick, not want to wastem bullet, hit ’em all babies wid sticks killem. Smashem head likem watermelon. Throwem on rock. Hittem on head, kick ’em, run horse yarraman over dem. Mummy run real fast to dem hills, pick me up, savem me. Lotta womens run dere, dey stay up dere long time; just get tucker at night-time. Wunungah burn ’em up Lanniwah bodies … all up wid dat wood dey chop. Yeeai, all burnem. Dey just clearin’ for cattle. All Arnhem Land like dat.’ Old Pelican’s head sank to his chest while tears dribbled across his skin. Jane’s tears flowed as well; she felt droplets wet her knees. It was a shock – was it possible? She gulped down the terrible sadness.
‘You see the red sand?’ David pointed to the store.
‘Where everyone lines up for stores?’ said Jane.
‘Dat one, red from blood, yeeai. Me little fella, I run away, hide in dem cliffs. We real frightened’, Old Pelican said as he gazed at the ground.
Jane stared and sobbed quietly. David nodded and touched the old man’s shoulder, but the old elder had become calm; he was casual.
‘Ok, I go now, grandson. Bringem up big barra tomorrow?’
David nodded at Jane; it was over. The old man walked back to his bed-frame and lay down.
Jane watched him go. It was time remembered, as it was then and now. Old Lucy walked up to them.
‘Me, Old Pelican sister.’
She leant on a stick, and Jane realised in that moment that this was a powerful woman – these were remarkable human beings. She had been waiting to meet them her whole life. Several small grandchildren followed, holding onto the edge of the old woman’s dress. Edie had told Jane that Lucy was not actually old, maybe only fifty, but she had a degenerative disease that was slowly killing her, shrivelling her skin and muscle; it was like leprosy.
Old Lucy sat on a rug on the ground. Her dogs lay down near her. She pulled Jane to sit beside her and smiled. She was reading her mind, nodded, and spoke in a soft hesitant voice: ‘You come to me, granddaughter now, yeeai. Dis place, my great grand mummy country; dis sit down place made long time.’
Two black cockatoos flew overhead. They cried out. Old Lucy listened.
‘We hear dat bird for warning. We got rations dem old days. Walkem to old police station near river. Wunungah come with camels, horses – yarraman. Police mans take prisoners and walkem to Katherine town. Neck chain, like dis.’
She put her gnarled hands around her neck in a choking motion. Jane felt like she was drowning, but she had to listen, be a witness. The old woman smoothed a piece of mulga wood; she shifted on the ground; there was a Cycad palm close by with splitting red seeds covered in slow ants. Old Lucy lifted a handful of sand and it trickled through her dark fingers to make a cone. She leant her head against her thin arm, a deep sigh. Jane edged closer and put her hand on Lucy’s shoulder, the bones were fragile. The old woman shuddered, tears collected in her eyes. Jane leant towards her face, sniffed the grey hair; it smelt of daisies. Jane thought she would never understand this burden of grief, that her life in comparison had been a breeze and full of joy. Old Lucy looked up and her eyes met Jane’s in a deep stare of recognition: it was like she could see all of Jane’s inner thoughts, her past lives. There was a burst of white cockatoos overhead, a hundred flashed by squawking loudly. Time disappeared.
‘Why did they do that?’ said Jane.
‘Daddy killem bullock, spear ’im – we hungry.’ Lucy pulled her head back and pointed with her lips.
‘Which way?’ said Jane.
They stared into the distance, looking for a willy willy containing spirits. Old Lucy’s hand pinched Jane’s in a tight compression.
‘Afghan sometime pickem up, takem to Alice Springs, walk with big mob camel.’
Surviving was a miracle. The Harrison history was becoming clearer to Jane as Old Lucy pointed to the hill and smoked her pipe.
‘You see that one big hill, dat one big one, lotta cave?’ she said.
Jane looked to where the old lady pointed with her lips.
‘I seeum’, said Jane. The language was getting easier.
‘Dey first smellem smoke, big long snake of smoke over dat hill, but smellem man meat cookin. Oh, big trouble comin for sure. Mummy take brother, little Pelican, up dere after mens shootem Daddy. Cuttem up women’s heads, lookem like smashed skull, he tellem me, brother tellem story. Aunty head all bin broken, cuttem open like red meat, little teeth white lyin alla bout in dat flesh, likem fruit you know? Me little baby, cry cry alla time. Left in coolamon in bush, alla time cry cry, but mens not see dat coolamon, not till later. Throw em coolamon in dirt like nothin, like we nothin’, Lucy said.
Jane held her hand and looked at the crumpled skin and bluish veins that trembled.
‘One whitefella takem me to camp. Mummy find em, but later, when she not scared nomore’, said Old Lucy.
A silence, while Jane thought of what to say. How did Lucy survive? A baby! What could Jane possibly say in that moment? What could sound as if she comprehended the massacre? Old Lucy drew with a story stick in the dust; it was a kind of map, a memory, a dream. Jane felt sweat running down her back, she lifted the shirt away from her melting skin. Old Lucy took Jane’s face in her hands and brought it close enough to breath the same breath. It was slow time, an eternity of breath. The old woman drew a shape of a rifle in the dirt and rubbed it out. Jane stared and then reached out to embrace her, she squeezed the old shuddering body next to her heart. They both laughed in relief. The old woman pointed with her chin towards the hills, where the red rocks stood. That place, where she had been nearly killed by men on horseback, where the men rode the women down and hit them with stirrups, then dismounted and beat them to death with sticks and rocks. And murdered the children the same way with utter disregard as though they were hunting dingo or kangaroo. As though the Lanniwah were rubbish.
‘Killem kid with stick. Not wantem wastem bullet’.
‘I’m glad you lived; you not get shot’, said Jane as she wiped her face of tears.
‘Womens run away fast. Stay in cave but cruel hungry, wantem water, fightem over insect, want eatem.’
‘They wanted to feed their kids?’ said Jane.
“Yeah, gotta eat. Lotta day like dat, hidem then little bit come down, lookem for water. Wunungah leavem now.’
‘Did the women learn to work for the cattlemen?’
‘Yeeai. Mummy come back down and learnem to work for Wunungah, washem clothes, she keep baby alive, me and Pelican. All live now.’
She held Jane’s hand and touched the skin with a stroking motion; she turned the hand upwards and looked at the dark skin lines in Jane’s palm. She turned the hand back and ran her nail against the brown moons of Jane’s fingers. David’s head was low but he looked up at the exposed hand; he saw the colour. Old Lucy nodded at David. She spoke to him in language, then back to Jane.
‘You not Wunungah? True, eh? You little bit yellafella?’
Jane nodded. ‘Little bit yellafella, that’s right, thankyou. My great granny like you.’
‘Yeeai. You tellem everyone, remember long time olden time’, said Lucy.
Jane nodded and felt a trembling awareness of being in the presence of a survivor, an ancient woman who had seen the white men ‘clearing for cattle’. The problem was, how to deal with this terrible information – how could anyone go on after an attempt at genocide? Jane thought that the people had suffered terrible cruelty. It was the remains of that time, that history: a failure to �
�manure the ground with them’. It had been a sinister tainted ground, with creeks alive with arsenic, pools of dead parrots and human bones. Did the white settlers’ hatred come from a feeling of disgust that Aboriginal people hadn’t given up, hadn’t conveniently died out? Where was the retribution? The guilt by white people? There was none, and no God to care, just deep ugly anger against a people who had been almost destroyed. What the hell do you do? Jane felt the weight of responsibility of this knowledge that no outsider seemed to want. It was a huge honour to be told about these events, an honour, even, to hold the old woman’s withered hand.
Jane wanted to know how those Lanniwah warriors had been tricked. Why hadn’t they suspected the white men in ghost skins? Did they think they were long lost souls of grandfathers who had come back? Hadn’t the chains given them some hint of what was coming? Chains and shackles – yes, she had seen them proudly displayed in the Katherine Museum, not easy to mistake for jewellery. And what about Old Pelican’s assertion that their fathers thought they would get tobacco? Was the craving for the white man’s drug so strong that the men had thrown away their fear? They had chopped their own funeral pyre – a mountain of wood, enough to burn a tribe. How many? Too many. What, sixty? A hundred? Who knew? Who cared? The Lanniwah, of course. There was mourning for every massacred person. The crying came from a handful of terrified women and children crouching in a cave of ancient paintings – Makassan ships, drawings of the Bainji. Chinese hats and pointy-toed shoes in yellow ochre, x-ray animals, their organs enlarged. And what of the white men? What had they thought about clearing the land, as they had done all over Australia? Men who had travelled from England, that green and pleasant land.
She now understood the truth about this place, the terrible, painful truth. In this actual place, maybe a hundred people had been shot down and burnt. The metal ring in the tree told the whole story. David couldn’t look at her and she stood alone in the face of this white and black history. The year 1928 when it happened was the year Jane’s mother was born: it was only yesterday, less than fifty years ago. Why hadn’t anyone told her? Why didn’t the world know about this? Were these people supposed to keep this event a secret? They were living on the actual spot where terrible murders had taken place; the soil was full of human fragments, skin and hair.
It was a miasma oozing from the grey earth. You couldn’t see it or breathe it but it would never go away – a pool, like blood coming from below, the pitiful dead risen from the ground, burnt skeletons dancing on graves, like a devil-devil dance, criss-crossing red footprints across the escarpment, searching for their loved ones, the spirits searching for home, all the time crying. No wonder the winds howled! How could anyone stand it? How could they go on living?
At last, it was twilight, and cool. Jane sat by the billabong with some children; she made a fire, while David swam with the boys. She watched them dive-bomb each other in the water; she wanted to know what they knew. Did they realise that their parents had been subjugated and beaten, hounded into camps, forced to work, children taken away and locked in repressive orphanages or Christian school dormitories? It was just like her great granny, indentured out to white people as a servant. The other stations around Harrison had few Aboriginal people on them. The cattlemen had forced them to move away …
David climbed out of the water in his wet jeans. Jane called him over.
‘Why do the other stations near here have hardly any Lanniwah?’ she asked.
‘They run off by Wunungah in sixties. I live with father; he did stock work, but told to leave and not come back. So we askem where we goin to go? No tucker, nothing, just his spear and his matches, we walk alla round for weeks until we come here, walk maybe three hundred mile.’
They boiled the billy and David told the story with long quiet gaps.
‘Old Pelican, must be maybe fifty now, he run away with his mother after that killing time. Little brother he bin run down by horse, Wunungah hit im with butt of gun. Pelican’s mother she run, savem other two children, baby in a coolamon and Pelican run beside her. But she fallem and drop that coolamon, she run to a big cave, special place. She watch that coolamon in grass, real scared. Hearem gunshots, boom, boom, and screaming from Lanniwah women. Dey, you know, rapem them women, then shoot ’em. Next morning, that coolamon and baby all gone.’
David spoke in a steady stream, not looking at the listener, tracing a stick in the dust to draw a map of the scene. Then he was silent for a long time. Jane leant towards David, her shoulder leaning on his. She felt his cool hunched body.
‘Lotta womens live in cave for long time too scared to come down. Eat just wild banana, sugarbag.’
Jane had read that ‘dispersal’ was when the black police came from Queensland wearing cast-off uniforms and paid half white men’s pay. Dispersal meant killing blackfellas, or driving them off their land so the pastoralists could bring in their cattle. There would have been billabongs full of blood.
It was time to cook dinner. David and Jane wandered past children as they played a string game with elastic stretched between trees. They jumped and flipped leaving late afternoon shadows. She smelt the warm sweat from his armpits. A man like this was surely unknowable, from ancient lineage: he would give no simple message, no easy communication, each non-verbal sign a mystery. She watched him moving away without a word, stared at the back of his head; his hand rubbed his hair, he could feel her watching. He stopped and stood with his head down, seemed to be waiting for her to call him back, waiting for her to smile and beckon him back to her. She thought of counterculture freedom, hippy eroticism – Let the Sunshine In.
It was cooler and jabirus flew overhead. David walked up towards his shack leaving Jane marooned on a paddock of bones. She called out to him, ‘So who are all these Lanniwah?’ David looked over his shoulder.
‘Dey come from survivors. Lot of old people, they hate Wunungah, white man.’
‘Yeah. I see’.
Jane felt sick: she walked upon a blood-soaked country. It had a profound effect – no wonder the women found it hard to accept her. Why would they? As far as they were concerned, she was a Wunungah and part of the generation descended from white murderers. All white Australians would carry that responsibility. Jane struggled to find where she stood. Was she guilty too? One of her great grandfathers had been an English ex-convict landowner. Was he guilty, or at least complicit?
The Lanniwah left to go back to camp. Aaron sat in Jane’s lap as the sun set … She could see a sea eagle pecking at the heart of a half-submerged grey dove in the billabong. Its soft down drifted on the top of the water. The poor bird tried to flutter away but the eagle had it gripped it with talons and with a hooked beak was eating its prey alive. Jane couldn’t watch.
CHAPTER 7
Plane Trip
In the Wet, it rained and rained at Harrison Station: the road was a roaring river, no longer dirt, just rushing water … Aaron clung to Jane’s back as she waded to school in waist-deep water. She remembered learning to swim in the muddy Hawkesbury River: oyster cuts and rubber tyres and fear of the deep. She had walked the two miles home in bare feet on hot tar; she had sucked black liquorice Choo Choo bars until her tongue turned black. Her father’s skin went black as he trowelled concrete in rich people’s gardens.
A letter, two weeks old, arrived for Jane. The Education Department inspector wanted to meet her in town. She was in a panic. What did it mean? Was this the end? Had they heard about her being a single mother and she’d be sacked for immorality? Edie had been spying on Jane for weeks. At Harrison Station, Jane watched Hubert drop the big canvas mailbag on her step.
‘There’s also a letter from the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, wonder what they want?’ said Hubert.
‘That’d be my business’ said Jane.
Edie opened all Jane’s letters and they looked pawed over. Hubert stopped on the step and chewed his false teeth.
‘You had better watch who you stir up in town – the National First Austra
lia Party blokes have had enough of people from down south mixing it up with the blacks.’ Jane nodded; she could see herself run off the property or a man arriving to scare her off.
‘Look, Hubert, I respect your opinion, and you mean well, but you are not the police so why don’t you and the moral majority mind your own business?’
He looked surprised at her ability to talk back. He sneered and said in a low whisper,
‘In town, you know what they call ya?’
‘No Hubert, I don’t.’
‘Slut. Nigger lover.’
She stopped and considered. ‘Well, they would, wouldn’t they? But you, Hubert, are a gentleman.’
‘Righto. Look, I don’t think that. I respect you women out here’, he said.
‘Your husband not comin’?’ said Edie.
‘No, not coming. Maybe he’s dead. Is that okay with you?’
The next day, Jane looked for Hubert, but was told he was off somewhere near the shed, fixing his tractor. She walked down to a rise where the flood had filled a gully with cool water; there were sounds of girls frolicking. She saw Lizzy, Shirley and Mayda swimming in the pool with a blue plastic float. They were climbing on top of it. Their dresses were stuck wetly to their bodies. Jane approached unseen and then she heard a male voice. Hubert burst out of the water from under the girls; he laughed and pushed over the float. He grabbed Shirley around her waist and he flung her into the air, her dress flew up, she squealed.
‘No, don’t throwem me, Boss!’
He duck-dived and his bare backside shone white in the swirling grey water. Jane stood still, unsure of what she was watching. She felt confused. He was a kindly man after all – or what was it? Mayda saw her standing there in the tree shadows, their eyes met for an instant. Mayda put her hand over her mouth and dived into the water.
‘Hey Hubert, Boss, I need to talk to you, where are you?’
Jane heard the girls whispering and him telling them to hush.
‘Coming, teacher’, he called back. She saw him quickly pull on his jeans over his naked body and hop over the thorn bushes towards her.