Outback Heroines

by Sue Williams

  But with the problems that alcohol created, Sister T realised she needed more expertise in Indigenous counselling to make a difference. So in 1994, she went to Canada to train in alcohol and drug programs alongside international experts. ‘Their indigenous people had similar issues, but with different names,’ she says. ‘There they had what were called “residential schools” for their children so they were never allowed to see their parents, the same as our stolen generation. They also had similar huge rates of intergenerational trauma, although they had treaties, land and finances they had control over.’

  By the time Sister T returned to the Kimberley, a culture of smoking marijuana and sniffing petrol and aerosols had taken hold in Warmun, along with the existing alcohol abuse, and the elders asked her to move back to the community. She was happy to, and set up a safe house for women and children. Working with the community, she found petrol sniffing was also stamped out very quickly. ‘We realised it was being brought in by kids from other places and they were living in one house without any adult control, so we went through that group of kids and they were all sent back to their communities,’ she says. ‘That stopped it. Then it started again once, but I showed our kids the consequences of sniffing petrol, the terrible brain damage, the damage on the nervous system, and once I did a demonstration, about what to do if you find a child unconscious from sniffing. The kids were so horrified they stopped!’

  The safe house operated on a weekend voluntary basis and Sister T brought in some Aboriginal mental health workers to help train Gija elders to be team leaders in the two-week drug and alcohol residential programs she ran regularly. ‘We always worked together, in that Two-Way method we’d found had been so successful,’ says Sister T. ‘We’d do a program, then an Aboriginal psychologist would run therapeutic work in the bush to heal and enhance people’s spirits.’

  Betty Carrington, another local, says the sister was always incredibly sensitive to their needs. ‘She learnt from the old people and we all worked together supporting each other,’ she says. ‘We took her to our country, so she became an honorary bush woman!’

  Looking on, her colleague Sister Clare also saw much to admire. ‘The main quality about Theresa that I like is her acceptance and constancy with the most neglected or most uncomfortable-to-be-with people in Warmun,’ she says. ‘She is genuine in her relations with the Warmun community and totally devoted to helping and engaging people in their own development. Their needs come first. Theresa is prepared to stay with the messy side of Warmun life. She’s an extraordinary woman who has laboured long and hard for the Warmun people she loves.’

  Other services were also introduced to help the community, like one to take people to shop in town and another for aged care. Sister T also worked with agencies like the Department of Education and social welfare, as a link between them and the community, to make sure people received their entitlements. In addition, she became honorary custodian of the local graveyard so they could bury their dead locally rather than in Wyndham, and often acted an interpreter in court matters and legal dealings. Negotiations also started with the Argyle Diamond Mine, which had leases on certain sacred Gija sites.

  The town’s art centre was set up in 1985, with international interest in the works of artists like Rover Thomas, Queenie McKenzie, George Mung Mung and Paddy Jaminji. Rover and Queenie were hailed as the pioneers of the art revolution in both Warmun and the Indigenous art movement in general, with their works hanging in galleries across the country, at the National Gallery in Canberra and as far afield as New York and Paris. Singer-songwriter Paul Kelly even wrote ‘The Ballad of Queenie and Rover’ about their story.

  ‘I think their art is very important,’ says Sister T. ‘That’s one way they tell their stories. But there are many layers to their art. To outsiders, it may mean only one story, but to others who know the culture and language, there’s a lot more going on underneath. People saw that.’

  Others were also recognising Sister T’s devotion to her work. In 2001, she was given the Western Australian Centenary Medal for her services to Warmun and, in 2008, she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to the community. In 2010, she was also invited to Rome to attend the canonisation of Mary MacKillop – the only Australian to be recognised by the Roman Catholic Church as a saint – by Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican.

  All in all, everything was going pretty well until that fateful day in March 2011 when the flood came.

  When people were finally allowed back into Warmun, three months after the floods led to the town being declared an uninhabitable disaster zone, they were horrified by the destruction. Their homes had gone, classrooms at the school had been washed away, most of their possessions were lost and three-quarters of the art at the art centre had been destroyed or damaged. But Sister T arrived back with the other locals and, from a relocatable cabin dropped onto the site as her new home, started helping everyone rebuild their lives.

  Even though, in her sixties, she should, by rights, be slowing down and enjoying her retirement, she now seems to have exactly the same kind of energy levels as when she first came to Warmun. She’s a hearty and enthusiastic woman, with a keen sense of fun, and having a clear purpose appears to keep her strong as well as motivated. ‘There’s plenty to do here,’ she declares, as she strides across town to show off the new building work.

  Along the way, she halts abruptly in the middle of a veritable wasteland of dust and dirt overgrown with clumps of spinifex, at the base of a massive silver bloodwood tree. ‘Look at this!’ she says. ‘This is where we had our first lessons, under this tree. And this used to be the busy centre of Warmun with houses all around us.’ She shields her eyes against the sun and looks around. Now there’s nothing there; all those homes were washed away in the flood. ‘We can’t build here again, as it’s too low-lying,’ she says. ‘So we’d like to see a plaque here, and develop this into a park, a memorial park, where we can have barbecues and sit around in the evening and talk.

  ‘The flood has had a big impact on our lives, five of our six elders have died since it happened, so while we want to remember it, we also want to move on and make the community even better than it was.’

  Since the flood, some of the existing problems have grown worse, too. While staying in Kununurra, many of the displaced Warmun population had nothing to do, so started drinking and brought the problem back with them. Some also felt disheartened seeing everything in ruins after struggling so hard to build their community in the first place.

  But on the plus side, the Government has promised a major reconstruction of the area, with new houses, a new school and a new health centre. Some of the new houses were even judged to be better than some of the original homes, and many of the men were employed in the building work, and learnt new skills as they did so. And the news that Shirley Purdie’s painting Stations of the Cross had been successfully restored heartened many.

  ‘They are such a beautiful group of people here,’ says Sister T, pushing her untidy mop of white hair back out of her eyes. ‘They struggle with all the Aboriginal issues but there’s always someone here trying to make a difference for their own people. It’s been tough, it certainly has, but things are improving now.’

  Another sister lives in a relocatable cabin next door, and a retired sister comes up two days a week from her base in Halls Creek to work in the school. ‘Theresa’s always been hyperactive but she’s been able to hold herself back to allow the community to take the steps it needed to,’ says Tom Stephens. ‘She lost so much in that flood, but she’s carried on regardless. She’s a bloody legend!’

  For the meantime, Sister T, who was also awarded a Pride of Australia medal in late 2011 as one of Western Australia’s unsung heroes, is more than happy to stay in Warmun, which is now her home.

  ‘Of course, I still believe in what I am as a sister, my calling as a sister of St Joseph, my spirituality as a Josephite and as a Catholic person,’ she says thoughtfully. ‘But the f
amilies here taught me things and helped me to understand. The whole experience has really enhanced my spirituality, and given me a different outlook on spirituality.’

  She stops and grins. ‘I’m very grateful for the journey. It’s probably a lot different to other people’s, but I feel very privileged for the chance to have taken this one, here, with these people.’

  Sister Theresa Morellini with great friend Bessie Daylight (back, right) and (front, left to right) Patrick Mung, Betty Currington and Bessie’s son Patrick Gallagher. (Photo by Jimmy Thomson)

  One of the Warmun region’s mighty boab trees. (Photo courtesy of Tourism Western Australia)

  16

  LONG WAY HOME

  Lurlene Ebborn, Gympie, Queensland

  There’s something about railways carving their way through the Australian Outback that Lurlene Ebborn has always loved.

  As the daughter of a 1930s railway worker in remote Central West Queensland, she’d grown up alongside the tracks, and the sounds from a rail camp had saved her one night when she was wandering lost and alone in the dark, and had no idea of the way home. And then, after years of travelling with her husband around the rugged backblocks of the region, shooting kangaroos, carting freight and constructing kilometre after kilometre of fencing over mountain ranges, across endless plains and through muddy waterholes, she finally scored a job working with the railway.

  It was certainly nothing glamorous. It was her and husband Edward’s job to pack boulders with explosives and blow them into smaller rocks that then had to be trucked back towards the tracks for the reconstruction of the small line heading from the town of Cloncurry, 770 kilometres west of Townsville, south to the old mining settlement of Duchess, 100 kilometres away. The route would allow for the transport of passengers, sheep, copper and freight.

  ‘After the blow, I would bring in the loader and he would fill the bucket,’ says Lurlene. ‘I would tip it into the truck, then drive the truck to the area where the stone had to be tipped. Somehow, I always ended up with the worst vehicle. It went well on the flat country, but when we got into hilly country around Mitakooki, it was a different story. I would put it into the lowest gear and leave the door open.’

  That was in case the truck didn’t make it, and Lurlene was forced to dive for her life out of the cab and into the rugged spinifex country to avoid hurtling back down the hill, helpless to do anything. But while it moaned and groaned and complained and hissed, it didn’t cut out. Edward, seeing her return to the rough bush camp they’d set up close to Slatey Creek Gorge with their three young children, breathed a sigh of relief. At this point, Lurlene hadn’t learnt how to reverse so he knew if there were trouble, it could be serious. She’d already had to spend six weeks in hospital when, eight months pregnant with their third son, she’d been melting pitch on the fire to mend the iron roof of their truck, and it flamed up and spilled over her ankle. She hadn’t complained at all at the time but when she dropped in to see a nurse the next day after cutting nearly the whole way through the top of her finger while out fence post-cutting, they’d insisted she stay in for skin grafts on her foot.

  ‘Old Bill, the manager at the local station, reckoned I was a real “Briton” to be coming out working in that country with little ones,’ says Lurlene, happily. ‘It was terrible country, sure enough. The flies were awful; we had to get into the vehicle and wind up the windows to eat our meals. One day, a gilgai [a waterhole opening up in the clay soil from the heat and the rain] our truck drove up to was about 600 yards wide and over 12 foot deep in the centre.’ They had to wait three days for the water to go down, and then winch the 5-tonne Ford through by attaching parts from another old vehicle and tying wire rope around it, made by twisting wires together. Their tracks were over half a metre deep and were there for many years afterwards.

  ‘But it was a good life. We enjoyed being out there in the Outback. I suppose, looking back, it was hard, but you didn’t think that at the time. You just buckled down and got on with it.’

  Born in 1935 in Blackall on the Barcoo River, 960 kilometres north-west of Brisbane, Lurlene was Muriel and Cornelius Kelly’s first child. Cornelius worked on the railways and his daughter grew up a real daddy’s girl, developing an enduring fascination with trains. Every morning Cornelius would go off on the pump car or kalamazoo – a four-wheeled rail trolley – and she’d try to run after him and scramble aboard herself. In the end, her mum had to resort to taking her shoes off her feet and hiding them to stop her.

  She was always a lively, strong-willed kid, difficult to control, and Muriel found her patience often sorely tested. One time Lurlene refused to climb the stairs of their modest home for bed, and her mum tipped out a bag of crabs onto the ground. ‘I raced up those stairs in double-quick time that day!’ says Lurlene.

  The family never had much money, but back then, when most families were doing it tough in the Outback, it never seemed to matter. Blackall was at that time the centre of the sheep industry, and Lurlene grew up on stories of legendary figures like local world-champion shearer Jackie Howe, who blade-shore 321 sheep in seven hours and 40 minutes in 1892. She also heard tales of life ‘beyond the black stump’, since the town was home to the original ‘stump’ – a black stone placed by a surveyor in 1887. From an early age, she actually lived beyond the black stump, too, in the tiny railway township of Yaraka at the end of the branch line, 150 kilometres west.

  She didn’t mind the isolation. Like all kids, she made her own fun, chasing birds and catching tadpoles and sorting them into tins according to how many legs they’d developed or if they had a tail. When her sister, Faye, came along a year and a half later, the pair turned the big packing case that had contained the family piano into a playhouse.

  When Lurlene was four, her dad, who couldn’t join the war effort because his health had been weakened by a bout of meningitis he’d suffered as a young man, was transferred to Kalarka, on the North Coast railway line, 130 kilometres south of Mackay, and then to Carmila, on the same line, 30 kilometres further north. The cane-growing tropics, with their wild summer storms, were a huge change from the dusty, wide-open plains out west, but Lurlene adapted quickly. Together with a band of the local children, she’d fearlessly follow the swollen creek, one of the older boys carrying her across the deepest parts, and then walk down the cane rail line across the timber bridges, dodging the trains when they came. She got into trouble with her mum for that, too.

  It was a friendly kind of place. Whenever someone spotted a snake, the cry would go up and everyone would race over with hot water and shovels, and then stand around chatting. She would get a lift to school by doubling up on the bike of the local policeman’s daughter, and on Friday, tuckshop day, she’d buy a pie for a penny and an ice-cream would set her back ha’penny.

  In 1940, her dad was moved again to another railway siding, returning to the Outback at the tiny settlement of Quamby, 45 kilometres north of the sheep town of Cloncurry. ‘It was a very different type of country again,’ says Lurlene. ‘It was low red hills and black soil plains. But the dingoes ended up making the sheep unprofitable so they were gradually replaced by cattle.’ The one-teacher local school had only 12 pupils, all children of the railway workers, a few mining families and disparate drovers. Trains brought in all the town’s supplies and the mail, as well as sheep, cattle and wool.

  At home, kitchen and bedroom cupboards were made out of old packing cases, there was a primitive fridge constructed of tin and chicken wire filled with wet charcoal, and the sink was a small galvanised-iron wash tub, while any whites to be washed were boiled in a 20-litre kerosene tin. In the backyard, they kept goats for milk and meat, and grew vegetables. The family bought a car, a Ford Model A Tourer, and Cornelius cut off the back and added on a wooden body with seats on each side. It used to take 20 minutes to travel 7 miles. At the end of every month, the family would drive into Cloncurry to settle their accounts and go to the cinema, visiting the Chinese market gardens on the way to pick up anyt
hing they couldn’t grow themselves. The station mistress also ran the post office and Lurlene’s mum always suspected her of opening the packages that arrived. One week, a parcel containing new dresses for Lurlene and Faye was late, but the next week it appeared tied with butcher’s string instead of the usual shop wrapping. ‘We then realised it was no coincidence the station mistress’s daughters had worn the same outfits we’d ordered for a party the week before,’ says Lurlene. ‘But Mum smocked the waistline to make them look different.’

  Drinking for the adults in town was, of course, a popular pastime. Friday nights were dance nights, with Lurlene’s mum playing the piano at the local hotel, but more often than not they turned into fight nights too, between the Australian and American troops stationed in the area. One evening, an Australian had his throat cut, but lived to tell the tale. The next week, Lurlene’s dad was in a punch-up with the town’s sole teacher, and a couple of weeks later, a mass brawl broke out between the forces. An American nurse grabbed Lurlene and her sister and then her mum, still sitting at the piano, and led them all to safety. ‘It really could get dangerous in there,’ says Lurlene. ‘Who needed the Germans or the Japanese? We had enough little battles of our own at the dances.’

  Nine years after Lurlene’s birth, a second sister, Deirdre, came along, and their dad finally left the railways for Cloncurry to do building work on nearby properties. After finishing Year 7, Lurlene was packed off to boarding school in Townsville and her parents went back to the railway, this time running the refreshment rooms at the train station. On school holidays, Lurlene would love nothing better than coming back to lend a hand, relishing the excitement of a busy station. When she finally finished school, she found a job working as a clerk typist for the roads department and, at 20, she accepted a proposal from a local boy, which was to start a whole new life for her – and one she’d never expected in her wildest dreams.