The Girl from the Great Sandy Desert

by Jukuna Mona Chuguna

  Fire was important in the desert, for cooking food and, in the cold weather, for keeping warm. People also set fire to dense spinifex to clear the land for hunting. Desert people could make fire by friction, using two pieces of a certain type of wood or kungkala. This was hard work, requiring some strength, and people avoided having to do it every time they needed to light a fire by carrying a jarra, or firestick, which they used like a taper.

  In wet weather, people often covered their fire with bark and sand while they went hunting, and uncovered the embers when they came back.

  FOOD AND FASTING

  Desert people ate a variety of food. Goannas, a type of large lizard, were common and not hard to catch in their burrows. There were mammals such as possums, and even cats, which had been introduced from Europe but had already colonised the desert. People also gathered various types of small fruit, such as kumpupaja, tartaku (bloodwood galls), and nuts from the Turtujarti tree.

  In this story, Mana’s mother is still fasting from red meat since her co-wife, or ‘sister’ died. To bring a mourner’s fast to an end, after sometimes many months, another member of the family would rub a piece of cooked meat on that person’s lips, and then he or she would be able to eat red meat again.

  Mana the hunter

  Another time, when Kaj and his other wife had gone to camp near Paparta waterhole, Miwa went hunting. She left Mana to look after her two boys, Riji and Karli. Mana had two dogs there as well, Kiji, who had a lot of puppies, and Kiji’s mate, Malji.

  ‘You stay here and look after the two little boys,’ Miwa told Mana.

  Mana stayed behind with the boys because she had to, but she really wanted to go hunting. After a while, she said to the two boys:

  ‘You two stay here in the shade with the puppies. I’ll go and catch some lizards for us to eat.’

  ‘No, don’t leave us!’ Karli wailed. ‘Someone might come along and kill us!’

  ‘A bad spirit might get us!’ said Riji.

  ‘No, you’ll be all right,’ said Mana. ‘I won’t go far and I’ll bring back something good for a snack.’

  Mana went off on her own, not too far from camp, and killed some small lizards. She noticed the fresh track of a cat and wanted to follow it, but she couldn’t leave the boys behind so she just took the lizards back to camp. She used her firestick to make a fire and cooked the lizards.

  ‘You want some meat?’ she asked the boys. Then she shared it out. The three of them ate the lizards, giving the skin and bones to the puppies to chew on.

  Not long afterwards, Miwa came back with two goannas and a coolamon full of wattle seeds.

  ‘Good,’ thought Mana. ‘She can look after her boys now.’

  ‘I’m going hunting now,’ she told Miwa. ‘I saw the tracks of a cat and I’m going to see if I can catch it. The tracks are from this morning; it would be a pity to leave it.’

  ‘Yes, you go and catch it,’ said Miwa, as she started building up the fire again to cook her game.

  Mana left Miwa with the boys and took her two dogs, leaving the puppies behind. She and the dogs started following the cat. It was well ahead of them and Mana walked for a long way, while the dogs ran around sniffing.

  After a while, they came to a place where the cat had been lying down resting.

  ‘It can’t be far now,’ thought Mana. Sure enough, a bit further on the dogs picked up a fresh scent, and Mana could see from the tracks that the cat had started to run. The dogs raced on ahead, while Mana followed at a fast pace. Suddenly, she heard a scuffle, the cat snarling and fighting.

  Soon, there was a commotion and she knew that the dogs had caught the cat. Before she had reached them, the dogs came back to her, Kiji carrying the dead cat in her jaws. Her ears were bloody from the cat’s claws.

  Mana carried the cat to the nearest tree and sat down, the dogs panting beside her. By now it was quite late in the afternoon. After a short rest, she gutted the cat. Then she stood up, draped the cat over her shoulders and set off walking back to camp.

  It was just getting dark when Karli saw Mana coming along through the gloom.

  ‘Mummy!’ he said to Miwa. ‘My sister’s coming back with a cat!’

  He ran along the sandhill to meet her and took the cat from her, then carried it back to camp, running ahead.

  ‘So you got the cat; that’s good,’ Miwa said when Mana sat down.

  Miwa had cooked her goanna, and she shared the last of it with Mana. The boys went to get more wood to build up the fire again. Miwa singed the cat’s fur in the flames, then waited for the fire to burn down. She put the cat in the hot coals and covered it up with sand.

  Everyone was tired now, so they left the cat to cook overnight and lay down and went to sleep.

  In the morning, Mana pulled the cat out of the ashes, dusted it off and shared it out for everyone to eat. When they’d finished, they decided to head east to Tapu, the main jila in Mana’s country. On the way, they noticed smoke rising from the south.

  ‘Look, my husband’s at Walypa,’ said Miwa. ‘They must be on their way back from Paparta.’

  Miwa lit a fire in the spinifex to show the rest of the family where they were.

  They went on to Tapu and waited there, and the others arrived later in the day. Kaj was carrying a dingo he’d speared, so they cooked that and everyone had a good feed.

  The family all stayed at Tapu for a while, and Mana’s puppies got bigger.

  By now, Mana had become a good hunter. She could get cats and goannas and snakes on her own. She often went hunting with Miwa and they’d be away all day, never coming back emptyhanded. Mana knew she was a better hunter than Miwa.

  HUNTING

  Children who were just learning to hunt could catch small lizards and cook them. However, Mana had moved on to catching goannas and cats. Cats are hard to catch. Their tracks are easy to find and follow, but a cat can run for a long time, keeping ahead of the hunter. For this reason, dogs are a great help; they can pick up a scent and run faster than the cat. They either run it to ground and kill it, or chase it up a tree and keep it there till the hunter comes along with his or her hunting stick.

  COOKING

  Most game is cooked in the same way: the scales of reptiles or the fur of mammals are singed off first in the flames of the fire, and when the fire has settled down the hunter rakes some glowing coals into a shallow scrape in the sand, lays the animal on top, spreads more coals over the animal and then covers the whole lot with earth or sand to keep the heat in while the meat cooks.

  Mana loses her father

  Mana’s father was a big man, strong and solidly built. He was a good-natured husband and father, and never hit his wife or any of his children.

  One day, during the hot weather, the whole family set off to move to a new waterhole, Kayalajarti. On the journey, Mana’s father started to feel weak and had to stop and rest. They had drunk all their water, so Mana’s mother told Tili and her younger brother to stay with their father while she went ahead to Kayalajarti with Pali and Mana, to fetch water in the coolamon.

  It was still a long way to the jila and Mana’s mother was worried about her husband, so they walked as fast as they could in the heat. When they reached the waterhole, they had to dig out the sand that had fallen in since the last time someone had been there to drink.

  They filled up their coolamon with water, had a long drink themselves, and started back to find Mana’s father. They took turns carrying the water.

  When they got close, they heard Tili and her brother crying.

  As soon as their mother saw her children’s faces, she knew that she had lost her husband. While his wife and older daughters had been away, fetching water, the children’s father had died.

  Mana’s mother put down her coolamon and started crying aloud. Pali and Mana were crying too. Then their mother picked up a rock and struck herself on the head with it, until blood was pouring down her face. Pali took the rock away from her mother to stop her from hurting hers
elf.

  There was no one to bury the dead man, so they had to leave his body there on the sand. They all went away, crying.

  DEATH AND BURIAL

  Like life itself, death took place in the sandhills and when someone fell seriously ill, there was often little to be done. It is possible that Mana’s father was suffering from dehydration and heat stroke, and the family had no water to give him to drink or to cool him down.

  Only people in a certain relationship to someone who had died would bury that person. A spouse or offspring was too closely related and would be too sad.

  Mana nearly dies of thirst

  Once, Mana nearly died. She and her family and Yinti’s family were camping at Kumpujarti, and in the morning Mana told Yinti’s mother and father, whom she called Grandmother and Grandfather, that she was going hunting, and set off with her dogs, Kiji and Malji. She carried her long digging stick but no water; she didn’t want to carry a heavy coolamon, so instead, she had a long drink of water before she set off.

  Mana walked for a long way. There were not many fresh tracks on the sandhills but soon she came to a blue-tongue’s burrow in the sand, with tracks going into it and none coming out. Mana knelt down and dug out the burrow with her hands. She pulled out two desert blue-tongue lizards, one after the other, and killed them. Then she tucked them through her hair-belt, one on each side, and kept walking. The lizards were for her grandparents, who were still fasting from red meat, following the death of Mana’s father. After another good while, she noticed the fresh tracks of a wallaby. She started to follow them, at the same time calling her dogs.

  ‘Yii, yii, yii, yii!’ she said, urging them on.

  Kiji and Malji quickly picked up the scent of the animal and went racing after it. Mana followed, walking fast. She soon lost sight of her dogs, but she could see what was happening by watching their tracks. The wallaby was running now and the dogs were right behind.

  Then Mana heard the dogs yelping and snarling.

  ‘Ah, they’ve got it!’ Mana said to herself and broke into a run. She saw a scuffle in the spinifex some way ahead. By the time she’d caught up with the dogs they had nearly done for the wallaby. Mana pulled the animal away, threw it on the ground and killed it with a few quick blows of her digging stick. By now, Mana was hot and tired, so she carried the wallaby to the nearest tree and sat down in the shade. She felt the wallaby’s soft, furry belly; it was nice and fat. She would gut the animal later. Kiji and Malji flopped down beside her, panting hard.

  Mana lay down in the shade and dozed off. After a while, she woke up, feeling thick-headed; she needed a drink. She sat there a little longer, then got up and started heading back towards camp. Kiji and Malji followed.

  The journey seemed much longer going home than it had coming out in the morning. Mana was tired now, and she was carrying a whole wallaby, which seemed to become heavier as she went on. Every once in a while, she stopped to rest with the dogs under a tree. They were all really thirsty.

  At long last, Mana was in sight of the family camp at Kumpujarti. She staggered over the last sandhill towards the water. Kiji and Malji ran ahead, jumped into the waterhole and drank thirstily. Mana came along behind and dropped the wallaby under a tree. Just as she reached the waterhole, her legs gave way. She managed to crawl up to the water, where she leaned her head over and drank. She tried to get up then, but her body collapsed, and she rolled onto her back, unconscious.

  It was Law time, and a young boy was sitting in a special Law camp, some distance away from the main camp. He suddenly got a feeling that something was wrong. Because he was going through Law, he wasn’t allowed to speak, but he took up his hunting stick and beat it against the ground to attract attention. An old man went to him. He understood from hand signs what the boy was trying to tell him, and hurried up to the camp at Kumpujarti, where he found Mana’s grandfather.

  ‘Where’s that girl?’ the old man asked. ‘Something might be wrong.’

  ‘She went hunting this morning,’ said her grandfather, ‘but she should have come back by now.’

  ‘I’ll go and look for her,’ said Mana’s grandmother, and hurried down to the waterhole. As she drew near, she could see Mana lying motionless on the ground. Jaja started to cry. When she came close, she knelt down and put her hand on Mana’s head. It was hot and clammy. She could see that Mana was still breathing, so she picked her up and carried the unconscious girl on her back to the camp and laid her down in the shade. Taking mouthfuls of water, Jaja pursed her lips and sprayed it over Mana’s body. Gradually, Mana began to cool down and soon she opened her eyes. Jaja gave her water to sip. When she was feeling a bit stronger, Mana sat up and drank more water, little by little.

  ‘I thought I was going to die,’ she said later.

  Jaja went back for the wallaby and brought it up to camp. She opened its belly with a stone knife and pulled out the guts, throwing them to the dogs. Then she dug a pit near the cooking fire and laid the wallaby in the coals to cook. She put in the two blue-tongue lizards as well. That night, all the people and their dogs had a good feed.

  INTUITION

  In this story we are reminded of the scarcity of water in the desert as well as the intense heat. We learn of a young lad who is going through his initiation. Obliged to stay in one place and not allowed to speak, he is perhaps more sensitive to what goes on around him, and his intuition tells him that Mana is in distress.

  Pakart

  Mana’s dog Kiji was a tame female dingo and a good hunter. Mana and her family used to take her hunting for cats and sandhill goannas. Kiji and her mate, Malji, had several litters of puppies.

  One sad day, when they were out hunting, Kiji, who had not long ago given birth to puppies, was bitten by a venomous snake. Mana and her sister followed her tracks and found her dead.

  Without their mother to feed them, the puppies started to die, but Mana wanted to save one of them. She chose a fluffy little male puppy to keep, but it needed milk.

  Kaj and his two wives, Lilil and Miwa, had recently come back from the station to visit their relations. Miwa was still feeding Karli and had milk in her breasts, so she fed the puppy as well as her little boy. Karli and his older brother Riji grew up with that puppy and called him ‘brother’, because he had shared their mother’s milk. That meant he was Mana’s ‘brother’ too.

  When they came back from the station, Kaj and his wives and all the kids were wearing clothes, and they brought presents for their relations. One of the things they brought was some soda soap. People on the stations made their own soap from bullock fat and soda.

  Kaj showed everyone the soap as a novelty and gave some to Mana’s granny, but she didn’t use it. She just put it to one side, and buried it in the sand under a tree. The desert people had no use for soap. They just used water for drinking, and cleaned themselves with sand.

  One day, when that little woolly puppy was getting bigger and playing around, he found the soap and dug it up. The bullock fat must have smelt good to him, so he ate it. The soap made him sick; he was frothing at the mouth and jumping around. Then he started staggering and fell down, as if he was going to die.

  ‘What’s wrong with my brother?’ said Mana. ‘Look, he’s been eating that soap; maybe it’s poison!’

  Jaja picked up the puppy and gave him water to drink, then massaged his stomach to make him vomit. After he had brought up all the soap, the puppy began to get better.

  When a baby is just learning to walk, it staggers and falls down on the sand, then tries again and keeps falling down. A baby that reaches that stage is called ‘pakartparta’. After the puppy had eaten the soap he was staggering around like that and falling down, so people called him Pakart — Staggers.

  Pakart grew up to be a big dog, like a wild dingo, and really fierce. Once, he stole a piece of meat from Mana’s hand. She tried to get it back from him and he bit her, right in the soft part of her arm. Blood was pouring and Mana went to show her parents, who were over near the wa
terhole, and they tied up her arm with strips of bark. All the same, she did get her meat back.

  Much later, when Kaj and his family were leaving the desert again, they took Pakart with them to Cherrabun Station. At Timber Creek, where some of their relations were looking after the bore, Pakart ate poisoned bait, which had been put out for wild dingoes. He ran around in agony, then fell down, dead.

  Mana didn’t know what had happened to Pakart until much later, when her turn came to leave the desert and stay at Timber Creek.

  Mana gets married

  Times were changing for desert people. More and more of them were drifting to the sheep and cattle stations to the north. Pali left with her promised husband and never came back. Fewer and fewer people were still living in the sandhills.

  One year, when Kaj returned to Cherrabun with his growing family, Yinti went too. He came back a year later with stories of such a different world that Mana and Tili were entranced.

  Mana was growing up. Her body had become that of a young woman, and it was time for her to be given to her husband. Both she and her young sister, Tili, had been promised to the same man, whose name was Kurru. His main waterhole was Japingka, the same as Yinti’s, and the girls already knew him.

  One day in the cold-weather time, when Kurru was camping nearby, Jaja told Mana to take some seed bread to Kurru. He accepted the gift and in return he gave some meat to Mana to take back to her parents, his mother- and father-in-law. After that, Mana went to live in her husband’s camp. Tili came with her, to get to know the man she too was expected to marry one day.