It was hot-weather time and a lot of people were camping at one waterhole. The hole was deep, and the water was a long way down. When people were digging it out, they cut out steps in the steep, sandy sides for people to climb up and down.
The two boys, Kana and his nephew Karli, went to the waterhole together to have a drink. Kana’s mothers and father were sitting in the shade of a tree, some way off. His brother Yinti had gone off hunting early and hadn’t come back yet.
When the boys had been gone for a long time, Kana’s father said to his younger wife, ‘Where are those two boys?’
‘I don’t know where they’ve got to,’ said Parta. ‘I’ll go and look for them. I’ll get us some water at the same time.’
Parta picked up her empty coolamon and walked down towards the waterhole. She could see no sign of the boys and thought they must have wandered off to chase lizards. As she went down the sandhill, she kept an eye out for the boys’ tracks. When she got close to the waterhole, she saw that one side had caved in, covering up the water in the bottom and leaving a big gap in the sandy wall. She saw the boys’ footprints at the top of the waterhole, where they had been standing before they went down for water, but no footprints coming out.
‘The sand’s fallen in on them!’ Parta said to herself.
Quickly, she climbed down into the waterhole. As she did so, she saw movement under the sand. She felt around, grabbed hold of someone’s arm and pulled one of the boys free. It was Karli, coughing and gasping for air. His face was grey with sand. Parta started digging with her coolamon, till she felt another movement: Kana. She seized him with both hands and gave him a great heave, lifting him up beside her. His eyes and mouth were full of sand, and he sat spitting it out.
Parta helped both boys climb out of the waterhole. When she was sure they were all right, she told them to sit down in the shade of a nearby wattle tree and wait while she went back into the waterhole to dig the dirt out again. Using her coolamon, she scooped up the pile of sand that had fallen in and threw it out of the hole until she reached the shallow water in the bottom. She filled up her coolamon with water, then called out to the boys to help her. Kana, who was fast recovering, came to the top of the waterhole and looked in.
‘Help me bring up this water,’ Parta told him. Kana climbed part of the way down into the waterhole, fearful of slipping in again and landing on top of his mother. She raised the heavy coolamon as high as she could and passed it to Kana, who lifted it higher again and placed it on the sand at the top of the waterhole. Then he stepped out and Parta climbed up behind him.
When the three of them had had a rest, they all got up and went to join the other people in the shade near the top of the sandhill.
‘These fellows nearly got buried alive!’ Parta told the people waiting there.
When Kana’s father heard what had happened, he growled at the boys. ‘Don’t play around inside a waterhole,’ he told them. ‘It’s dangerous!’
DIGGING FOR WATER
Desert waterholes are like wells and some are much deeper than others, especially when the water level has dropped during the dry season. To reach water in the deeper ones, as people dug down in the sand they cut footholds into the sides of the wells. If the upper part of a well was dry, the sand was likely to be soft and, if someone put weight on the side, it could cave in. For this reason, and to keep the water clean, children were discouraged from playing in the waterhole.
The fight
One night in the cold weather, all the kids had gone to sleep on the sand behind their windbreak. Small fires were burning close by, to keep them warm. The sky was clear and filled with stars, but a chilly wind was blowing.
Suddenly, the children woke up to hear the grown-ups shouting. Kaj was there with his two wives, and the argument was between his young wife, Miwa, and Yinti and Lilil’s mother, Mala.
Sitting up, Mana saw Mala hit Miwa, and then Parta, Yinti’s second mother, stood up for Miwa. They were all milling around in the dark, with just the firelight shining on their skin. The kids had no idea what they were fighting about.
All the children got up from their warm patches of sand and ran over to the women.
‘Stop! Stop!’ they begged them. Mana and Tili got in between the women to prevent them from hitting one another again.
Mala went on shouting. She blamed her son-in-law, Kaj, for taking Miwa as a second wife, and neglecting his first wife, Lilil.
‘You are putting my daughter to one side!’ she said.
‘Wali, wali, wali!’ all the kids sang out. ‘Alright, alright, alright, that’s enough! We want to go back to sleep now, it’s cold!’ They all stood there, shivering.
At last the women stopped fighting and everyone settled down.
FIGHTING
When tempers flared, it was not unusual for people to hit one another and there were ‘rules’ about how people fought. If a man felt wronged, he might threaten another man with his boomerang and spears. If the wrong was serious, the offender was expected to take his punishment without resisting. Women who were fighting might use their hunting or digging stick to take turns to hit one another on the head. Relations would eventually intervene to stop a serious fight.
A sad story
On one occasion, Mana’s family was camping at Nimpi, a jila. Mana had gone hunting with her sister, while their mother and father were away hunting somewhere else. All the smaller children were playing on the flat ground near the camp.
Yinti, Kana and two other boys took Mana’s little brother, Parri, her blind mother’s last son, into the sandhills to get some gum from a nyalyka tree. The boys broke off pieces of hard gum to chew and gave some to the little fellow. He put it in his mouth and tried to swallow it. The gum got stuck in his throat and he started choking, but the children had no water to give him to wash it down. His mother was sitting in the shade and couldn’t see what was happening.
The boys got frightened and took the little boy back to his mother, coughing and choking. Yinti said to her, ‘Sister, your little boy ate some gum.’
When the boy’s mother realised that her son was choking, she started to cry. She gave him water and some milk from her breast, but he couldn’t swallow properly. Some time in the afternoon, he died. The four bigger boys were frightened and they all ran away.
When Mana’s mother and then her father came back to camp, they found everyone crying and learnt that the little boy was dead. Mana’s father cried for his little son and hit himself on the forehead with the sharp edge of a boomerang, till blood was running down his face. All the other kids, the sisters and brothers of that little boy, were wailing too.
Mana’s older sister Pali and Yinti’s mother, Mala, carried the boy’s body away from the camp and buried him in the sand.
Mana was sad for a long time. She had loved that little boy. He was unusual to look at, light-skinned like his father.
Mana’s blind mother wouldn’t be comforted. She sat down in the shade, crying, and refused to move. Mana’s father and mother and other people brought back goanna meat and nuts for her and looked after her, but she didn’t want to eat.
When it was time to move on, the blind woman refused to go with her family. ‘No, leave me here,’ she told them. Her husband wouldn’t hear of it, so the other adults took turns carrying her to the next waterhole, Wirrikarijarti. She kept crying over the loss of her last child.
The family moved on to the main jila at Tapu. On the way, they left the blind woman behind. They settled her under a shady tree with some food and a coolamon of water, and went on without her.
At the time, Mana didn’t know why they had left her blind mother behind.
All Mana’s father would say was, ‘We can’t take her with us any more. We’ll have to leave her here.’ He cried and hit himself on the forehead with a boomerang, and Pali hit herself on the top of the head with a rock till blood ran down her face. Mana was crying too. They all had to walk away and leave her blind mother.
No o
ne wanted to talk about it then, but later Mana learnt that her blind mother had asked to be left behind. Without her last remaining child, she had nothing left to live for.
‘Take me and leave me,’ she had said again and again. When he could see that she wasn’t going to change her mind, her husband had finally agreed to do as she asked. He took her to a shady tree not far from the waterhole and everyone walked away in tears, leaving her to die alone.
Dying in the desert
People who grew up in the desert claim that most people were healthy. There were no epidemics of influenza and other such diseases. However, blindness was not uncommon, perhaps caused mainly by trachoma.
When a desert person died, everyone would cry aloud. Close relations would hit themselves on the head — men with boomerangs and women with rocks — to show their grief. They would then go on a meat fast, refusing to eat red meat. Other people would bring them permissible meat such as goannas. The blind woman refused to eat anything, not because she was following the custom of fasting, but because she had no will to live.
Old and infirm people who could no longer keep travelling with the family group would sometimes ask to be left behind. ‘Take me and leave me,’ they would say, and relations, recognising that the end was approaching, would lead the old person away from the waterhole and leave them with just a coolamon of water and some food, knowing that, once the water ran out, the old person would die. Mana’s blind mother became so depressed after losing the last of her children that she could no longer make the effort to stay alive and, like an old person, asked to be left behind.
Bitten by a dog
Mana once had a big, black dog, which had the same name she did: Mana. He was a bad-tempered dog and people thought he was dangerous and kept away from him. Because he was said to be vicious, no one called him by his name. Mana was fond of him because he was a good hunter, as poor Blacknose had been, often bringing game for her to cook, but she was always a little wary of him.
One afternoon, when Mana was down in the waterhole, filling up a coolamon, the black dog got into the waterhole too. He jumped in and started snarling at Mana, as if he was going to bite her. She was frightened but just stood still, not moving, and waited to see what would happen. The dog didn’t bite her; he just finished drinking and jumped out of the waterhole.
The black dog did bite Mana another time. It was when he had caught a minijarti — a lizard like a blue-tongue, but paler in colour — and Mana was trying to pull it away from him so that she could cook it. The dog bit her on the upper arm, then grabbed his lizard and ran away.
Afterwards, when Mana’s uncle Yinti heard what had happened, he wanted to spear the dog, but Mana said, ‘No, leave him alone; don’t hurt this dog — he’s mine. He’s a good hunter, you know, he brings meat.’ Yinti listened to her and the dog stayed with Mana.
DOGS
People were attached to their dogs and didn’t like to see them hurt or killed. Mana valued her black dog because he was such a good hunter, even though he was unpredictable and once bit her.
A trick
One time in the cool season, when the weather had turned cold and rainy, Mana went to Wirtukawarnti with her sister Pali, who was now a young woman, and their granny, Jaja.
On this day, Jaja and her two granddaughters went off hunting together, taking their dogs with them. One of Jaja’s dogs was sick, and she was carrying him.
After they had walked for a good while, Jaja wanted to rest. She put her dog under a tree and they all sat down. When it was time to move, Mana got up to go, but Jaja wanted her to stay there with the dog, while she went hunting with Pali.
‘You stay here, girl,’ Jaja told Mana. ‘Keep the dog with you, he’s sick. We’ll catch some game and come back later.’
‘No, I’m not looking after your dog,’ Mana told her Jaja. ‘You stay with him. He’s your dog — I’ve got two dogs already. I want to go hunting.’
But Jaja insisted, so with bad grace Mana stayed at the dinner camp with Jaja’s sick dog while the others went off to get meat for dinner, taking Mana’s dogs with them. Sulkily, Mana watched them go.
The day was damp and cold; there was not much wind, but the sky was covered with grey cloud and winter rain was coming up.
They needed a fire.
Mana left the ailing dog by the tree and went off some way to gather firewood. She found some wood from a dead yarun tree, the sort that burns for a long time and makes good coals. Instead of dragging wood all the way back to the dinner camp, Mana decided to make a fire right there.
She collected some dead, light grass from the base of a tree, where it wasn’t too damp, and broke off some small pieces of dry bark, leaves and twigs from the underside of a dead tree trunk. Using her jarra to set fire to the tinder grass and bark, Mana added more wood, twig by tiny twig. She blew on the flame until she had a good little fire going. She added more wood to build it up, then laid a big log on it. She sat there for a while, enjoying the heat.
Even though the weather was cold, Mana didn’t stay by the fire for long, but went back to the dinner camp to wait with the dog for the others to come back.
When Jaja and Pali came back to the dinner camp with the animals they’d caught, it was late in the afternoon, close to dusk. Mana asked them, ‘How are you going to cook that meat with no fire?’
‘Didn’t you make a fire?’ asked Pali, crossly. ‘What did you do with the firestick? Don’t tell me you let it go out? You know you should always keep the jarra burning! How are we going to make a fire? It’s too damp to start one with kungkala.’
‘Rain’s coming up,’ said Jaja. ‘I’m going to cover myself with sand and go to sleep here.’
‘No, it’s too cold,’ said Mana. ‘Let’s go back to the jila.’ Darkness was falling, it had started to rain and none of them really wanted to stay there overnight, with no food and no fire. There would be other people at the waterhole, and they were sure to have a fire going.
‘Oh, why didn’t you keep that jarra alight?’ Pali asked, angrily. ‘I’m tired from hunting and now we’ve got to walk for half the night.’
They all started walking, with Mana in front, and she led the others towards the place where she’d made the fire. In the darkness, Jaja and Pali didn’t see any smoke, but as they got close, they suddenly caught sight of red coals glowing on the sand.
‘What’s this?’ asked Jaja, as she realised Mana had been teasing them. ‘Ah, you did make a fire for us!’ The old woman was happy to be able to stop and rest.
Mana started laughing, but Pali didn’t think it was funny at all.
‘You shouldn’t tell lies,’ she scolded. ‘I’ll hit you!’ She raised her kana but didn’t hit Mana; in truth, she was glad that Mana had made a fire after all.
They cooked the animals they’d caught: a possum, a yellow goanna and a black goanna. They ate some of the meat and stowed the rest in a tree for the following day. Then they scooped out their sleeping hollows in the sand and lay down close to the fire. Mana woke up once or twice in the night when she heard her grandmother stoking the fire with more wood.
Early next morning, the trio set off for Wirtukawarnti to join the rest of the family. They gave some of the meat to Yinti’s father. Kaj was there with his wife, Miwa. Yinti had gone to another waterhole with his mother and younger brother Kana.
After they’d shared the meat around, Mana said to Miwa, ‘Let’s go to Jarriri, you, me and the two dogs.’ They left the kids behind with Miwa’s husband Kaj.
Mana and Miwa walked all the way to Jarriri rockhole with the two dogs. They didn’t stop to sleep but just kept walking through the night till they got there. Jarriri was the conception site for Mana’s little brother — the place where his parents had dreamed they were going to have a baby, before they knew his mother was carrying him.
The two women went looking for food and found a lot of tartaku and kumpupaja. Then they followed the tracks of a cat; the two dogs chased it and caught it.
; The others didn’t come looking for them; they left the women to themselves. The pair of them brought back some game as well as some of the kumpupaja they’d found at Jarriri.
When they got back to camp, Mana gave her mother some tartaku and kumpupaja, then they cooked the cat. Mana’s mother had been in mourning, fasting from meat since the death of her blind ‘sister’, but it was time to come out of the fast, so Mana gave her some of the cat meat by rubbing it on her lips, and then her mother had to eat it. Mana was proud to be the one who gave her mother meat to break her fast.
Mana knew she should never let her jarra go out. She wasn’t yet strong enough to make fire from scratch, using sticks. Her mother could make fire by sawing a piece of wood with another piece, or by twirling one stick on another until they were smouldering hot, but it was hard work. Everyone preferred to carry a jarra. They always made their jarra from long-burning wood, and lit one end from the campfire before they went hunting. The flame would go out, but the wood stayed smouldering. When they wanted to light another fire, they just had to blow on it to bring up the flame again.
Only once did Mana experience losing fire. She and her sister were staying at Pinturr with their granny during the hot weather. They caught game and gathered desert nuts, but their firestick went out and they couldn’t cook their food. Pali tried to make a fire with two sticks she broke from a kungkala tree, but she couldn’t manage it. Jaja was getting old then, and she couldn’t do it any more either, so they had to go somewhere else to find fire.
They picked up their raw meat and nuts and carried it all with them. Next morning they arrived at Ngapajarra — Two Waterholes. Mana’s brother and some older people were there already; they made a fire for the hungry old woman and her granddaughters, so that at last they could cook their food.
FIRE
Although the desert is hot for most of the year, during a few months in the dry season temperatures can drop very low, especially at night, and strong winds make the cold worse. Very occasionally, ‘winter rain’ falls for a few days in the dry season, and then the cold lasts all day.
The Girl from the Great Sandy Desert Page 4