He broke off, for just a second, as if his thoughts were still in the past – still out at the old homestead. “I don’t know if you noticed, when you were at the ruins, that there’s a steel yard over the sandhill, and a couple of long wings on it. I built them a few years ago now, those wings, about the time that Deon had just got his helicopter licence, so that he would be able to yard the cattle by helicopter – but unfortunately, it was just a month later that he had his accident, that he died … and we haven’t done much since, at Annandale. The little things,” said David, then, into the silence. “The little things that happen, that don’t go according to plan.”
*
He walked us out, after a few more minutes, towards the airstrip, where the late, slant light was falling, picking out the runway. Dust-clouds had stained the horizon. Outside the hotel were parked long, sleek rows of four-wheel-drives, each one rigged out for the desert – and to my eyes in that moment they seemed like so many steeds of fate, carrying their passengers towards oblivion and death.
III. IN THE SHADOWS
Meeka
IT’S GETTING DARK ON THE STREETS of the little north Australian town where Meeka, wild and bright-eyed, lives. Together with her gang of friends and cousins, she’s roaming the sidewalks and the shopping centres, moving lightly, watching for a break: some food left out, some open door, some friendly grown-up, a relative, maybe, or a white tourist, who might hand over a few dollars: enough for a hamburger, or even – luxury of luxuries – a fried chicken meal.
Many in our well-regulated society yearn, from time to time, for the free, unsupervised life, a kind of Peter Pan existence: no parental guidance, no rules, no controls, no obligation to be home. But few realise that, across Northern Australia, hundreds of indigenous children are living out this dubious dream, existing hand-to-mouth in feral packs, drifting, staying here and there with distant family, while, for the most part, “growing themselves up”.
Meeka, just thirteen years old, sharp, charming, on the very brink of adolescence, is more fortunate than most of her kind. Her parents, after all, are both about. Her father, once a promising, athletic man, now confined to a wheelchair after a stroke, lives in town, while her mother, who spends most of the time in far-distant Katherine, makes a visit to the region every now and then.
Meeka has a choice of places to stay, though mostly in recent months she’s been opting for the semi-derelict “kiddies’ house” where a band of five or six children her age subsist, foraging, scavenging, begging, coaxing – and always dividing up, with absolute precision, anything they find.
“I might stay with my cousins,” says Meeka, her voice deep, and rough as gravel. “Camp there one night, or two; I go with my friends, I share; they give me and I give them.”
The code is strict: the weakest in the group eat first. Whoever scores a slice of bread and tinned tuna, or a chicken burger, brings it back, and it’s evenly sliced and divided up.
The children’s world is a half-glimpsed, shadowy one, which the white inhabitants of town vaguely guess at, but don’t know, while the Aboriginal population simply views this wild life as a natural prelude to their own bleak course through life.
“I’ll tell you a story about those kids I stay with in town,” says Meeka, and the picture begins to form. “Daytime I follow them on the streets, and night-time as well – and when the first sun touches the side of that hill, that’s when I walk back home” – wherever home, on that particular morning, may chance to be.
The first part of the day is for sleeping, mostly, and for that favourite pastime, watching the cartoons on TV. Sometimes there’s a spot of school, though technically Meeka’s enrolled at a town hundreds of kilometres away. There might be some swimming in the local pool or even at a wet-season waterhole.
From the academic point of view, Meeka may not be an all-star when it comes to writing and reading (though, thanks to card games, she’s very good at maths). Indeed, those she grew up with feel she’s becoming too wild, and tends to push her friends about and start fights. But there are things Meeka knows that lie beyond her age. She can read people perfectly; she spots the slightest move in the social landscape; she moves through her rough streets like a soldier in a combat zone. And then there’s her painting. Like many bush Aboriginal children, Meeka’s related to famous artists: she’s done a canvas or two herself, and could easily establish a career of sorts in this direction.
*
Her story is a familiar one across the Aboriginal north. The pattern is for dysfunctional parents in bush towns to leave their children to be cared for by the extended family. These carers, almost always, are old women. Some grannies have as many as a dozen children staying in their houses. Fathers are often absent, drunk or dead. The “kid money”, or family allowance, given by social security agencies for the upkeep of each child, is a vital resource in this impoverished world: it is not unusual for it to be claimed by mothers who drink it away, far from their families.
Under such circumstances, with family structures broken, it’s no surprise some children, those, like Meeka, with strong personalities, opt to go it alone – though she does say, wistfully, she’s looking for someone to “take her on” a while. Other semidetached children say point-blank they won’t go back to either parent “because of the grog”.
Hence the gangs forming in the streets. Sometimes the results of their presence are faintly comical. In one northern town recently the rooftop air-conditioner on the key fast-food outlet was dismantled by a swarming street gang, to the great surprise of the suddenly sweltering customers. Usually, though, the problems are more serious. Break-ins and burglaries, almost always food-related, are so common now in one Kimberley town that police have announced a zero-tolerance crackdown, aiming to return street kids to their “carers”.
So bleak is the outlook that a working group was set up by the Northern Territory government to address the crisis. It found that the problem of street kids has been developing over decades, and may take years to solve. Short-term measures to intervene to support families are being looked at.
In the long term, the bureaucrats in charge of piloting the indigenous north in its increasingly troubled social evolution will have to confront the great question: how did we get to this stage, with children wandering the streets at two or three in the morning engaged in crime or antisocial behaviour?
In Meeka’s case, at least, the answer is pretty clear. She is responding to a collapse of traditional authority structures by building her own, and slotting, as it suits her, in and out of a kind, supportive peer group. For all her grace and precocity, she is simply struggling to survive in a world where much of the adult population, both male and female, is likely to be addicted to alcohol or permanently stoned.
The upshot? Linguist Frances Kofod has spent years in the small-town environment of the north. She knows the street children well and she has a disquieting interpretation of present trends.
“It looks clear to me,” says Kofod, “that there’s a whole generation of kids growing up in these towns in a totally different head-space – another world, one that European culture knows nothing about and Aboriginal culture knows nothing about.”
Without moorings, without prospects, the street children face an alarming battle to remain on terms with even the remoter fringes of modern Australian life. For the moment, though, Meeka is resourceful and upbeat. The payment for her first art sale has come through, and she’s stockpiling it, for a purpose many other thirteen-year-old girls would understand.
“I already got that painting money,” she says proudly, pointing to her smart, bright turquoise halter top. “I’m keeping it and looking after it to buy all my new clothes.”
Borderline Justice
IT’S 22.30 AT SANDY BLIGHT JUNCTION and the tension’s rising. In the pitch black, plunged amid the silence of the Western Desert, the two patrol trucks of Kintore police station wait. Nothing moves on the bush road leading into their little community. No sound. Meteo
rs shoot with abrupt splendour through the sky. Then, on the horizon, a pinprick of light becomes a beam. Soon, the roar of a four-wheel-drive engine can be discerned.
Sergeant Steve Hall gives a knowing little smile. His intuition looks spot-on. Grog runners. Who else would be on this road so late on a Saturday night, driving the long haul west from Alice Springs, 500 kilometres and more into the alcohol-free homelands of the Pintupi people, where the border between the Northern Territory and Western Australia runs?
It’s already been a wrenching day for the four-person police team newly stationed out here in the shadow of Mount Leisler, the Lizard Dreaming, loveliest and least-known of all the desert’s landmarks. There’s been an emotional funeral at Kintore church, as well as a nasty case of domestic violence, grog-fuelled, of course, involving an assault with a wheel-brace. But for the patrol in the Dreamtime, this particular night is still very young.
“Righto,” calls Hall, waiting till the last moment. “Hit the lights!” The sirens wail. A white Toyota Hilux twin-cab emerges from the blackness and lurches to a stop. In the driver’s seat is Jimmy R., a well-connected man from Kiwirrkurra, the next-door Pintupi community 200 kilometres further down the track, well across the border in WA. Jimmy piles out with his passengers: a woman, a sleeping baby and a handful of teenagers, all wearing looks of extreme puzzlement. Until last month, when the new station at Kintore began operating, police hardly ever checked this stretch of desert highway.
Now, though, a law and order revolution is sweeping this vast, isolated stretch of desert. With Hall are a Territory policewoman, a local Aboriginal community police officer from Kintore and a West Australian sergeant. Together, they make up the first multi-jurisdictional police patrol in Australian history, with the right to work in tandem across state lines. It’s an innovation designed for episodes like this one.
Politely, meticulously, Hall and his colleagues sweep their torch-beams over the Hilux, its back seats, its loaded tray. They whisper, huddle. A radio check is run on the driver and his vehicle. He has no licence; the vehicle has borrowed NT plates screwed loosely over its real WA registration.
Sergeant Ben Doman, from the WA force, finds a video on the driver’s seat: pornography. He’s not impressed. And then, peering down into the engine cavity, he smiles. Paydirt! Doman’s spotted the grog, brilliantly concealed between front grille and radiator: two casks of tawny port, known locally by the charming name of “monkey blood”, and a large bottle of Jim Beam, the liquor of choice round here. With movements of almost balletic elegance, the arrest is made. There’s a flicker of resistance as the driver is deposited in the police truck cage.
Back, at speed, down the corrugated road to Kintore. It’s midnight now but things seem taut; teenagers skulk about outside the low-slung houses. Gospel music, sung by children’s voices, is still pouring from the church sound system: “Jesus is a winner man, a winner man, a winner man …” The police are barely back inside the station, within a fenced compound only a short way from Kintore’s crossroads, when a panicky phone call comes in: someone’s just been run over in the “sorry camp” on the community’s furthest fringe. “Ouch,” says Hall. “The last thing we need to get things started here is a fatality. Let’s get a truck down there, troops! I’ll call the clinic!”
Sorry camp is an institution little known to the wider world. In traditional Aboriginal Central Australia, when someone dies, the entire extended family of the deceased gathers: old men and women, young children, dogs. Grief and mourning are concentrated. For days, a vigil is held in an outdoor camp, close by the bereaved family’s house. People sleep on the ground, under blankets. All is jumbled; and accidents happen.
The police trucks arrive to an unearthly scene: dogs are howling, old women are keening and sobbing. A knot of people can be made out, hunched above a prone woman’s body. No sign of the car that ran her over, or the driver. Then, in swift sequence, several things happen: the Kintore Clinic ambulance appears, lights flashing; a little red hatchback pulls up with a worried-looking, long-haired figure at the wheel; and a group of senior Pintupi men draw near, brandishing their four-metre spears until the tips quiver. Hall sizes up the situation: “Get him in the cage,” he says, gesturing to the man in the hatchback. “And take him to the station – before they start poking him.” Back out through the sorry camp again, at speed.
News comes in from the clinic. The victim is a renal patient who is already on dialysis. A metal skullcap – the result of previous medical problems – almost certainly saved her life when the car grazed her head and ran over her side. She has multiple injuries but she’s stable; a helicopter will fly her out at first light.
The driver, a part-Aborigine from Alice Springs, is placed in custody. An interview with him is under way in one of the station’s spacious cells when, at 2.30 a.m., the inevitable delegation of senior men from the sorry camp comes knocking. There’s George T., a famous artist, flanked by several of his brothers. Beside them, white-haired, solemn in his fawn cowboy hat, is John W., one of the desert’s most potent ritual leaders. This is somewhat like receiving a late-night visit from the Dalai Lama – only a Dalai Lama strongly committed to immediate retributive justice. They want their man and they want him right away, for spearing. “Give him to us,” they say simply.
An extraordinary conference begins. A bridge between two laws, two cultures, shimmers into being. The police officers sit at the head of the long table in the station garden, the desert men on either side. In the hot, windy night air, light-maddened moths and green locusts flit about. Dingoes howl. Hall listens as his visitors speak; then, gravely, he makes a counter-offer. What if he sends the prisoner to the magistrate, then has him back in Kin-tore for a traditional meeting of the senior men by Tuesday? Would they accept such a compromise? Hall knows the woman is out of immediate danger; he calculates that tempers will have died down in a couple of days. He also knows that if he doesn’t strike a deal, there’s at least the chance of a riot.
The desert men agree to his proposal. A handshake. “Gentlemen,” says Hall, “I want to thank you for working with us. We’re beginning a new way here. Your law, and our law, together, cooperating. That’s why the police have come here, to Kintore. Together, we can show people another way: solving things together – respect for each other.”
The delegation departs and Hall hits the phones. He calls the watch commander in Alice Springs for advice. There’s a long, hushed talk. Then he rings his superintendent, Col Smith, wakes him and explains what’s happened. It couldn’t be more delicate. For by now the police have established that the accident took place on private property. It’s a civil affair. They have no jurisdiction. Yet if they release the driver, now they’ve held him, and he comes to any harm, they may be considered at fault: for the next twenty-four hours he’s still, by a technicality, in custody. Is Hall sure he’s making the right call? “I reckon so,” he answers.
Now he’s got a handover deal to broker. He summons back the senior men. They return in state, in the police truck. This time they are bare-chested, their ceremonial scars like tokens of resolve. A meeting takes place with the driver in his cell. The desert men want him to apologise, to beg forgiveness humbly before everyone. They will talk things through with their family and make sure he comes to no harm.
With great formality, the prisoner is then released into their care. They parade out, leading him, his hands grasped in theirs.
Hall and his team sit back, exhausted, and unbuckle their heavy belts. Outside, the dawn is just beginning to break.
*
Kintore isn’t a standard posting. There’s the patrol area, for one thing. The four police here are responsible for a tract of desert roughly the size of Victoria: a 400-kilometre round trip out across the snake-filled border country, between Lake Macdonald and Lake Mackay to Kiwirrkurra, is a routine day job. The neighbouring southern communities – Tjukurrla, Warakurna and Docker River – lie further afield, down sand-dune tracks and roads torn by sto
rm-season washaways. Two and a half hours east is Papunya, the nearest police station for back-up; north, traditional hunting tracks, no roads to speak of, and nothing much for several hundred kilometres until you get to Balgo Hills. This far into the desert, the police station plays multiple roles: motor vehicle pound and registry; counselling centre and sobering-up pen; intelligence post and informal bush hotel. The officers must be many things as well: at once mediators and members of the community; experts in the laws of two different jurisdictions; sports coaches and disco co-ordinators; open-hearted friends of the Pintupi, and clear-eyed anthropologists.
The four officers have trodden their own individual roads into the Dreamtime. Officer-in-charge Steve Hall, with his laid-back smile and sentimental nature, is a family man: he dotes on his wife and four young children; they are his refuge from the bleaknesses of the law and order life. For many years he was a police officer on the south coast of NSW. After caring for his dying father, he stood at a cusp: he came to the Territory, took up a posting at the large desert community of Yuendumu for three years, then transferred to an instructor’s position at the Police College in Darwin, where he heard about the plans to build a station at Kintore.
“Close friends asked me why the hell I wanted to take my family to such a place,” Hall says. “I came for the challenge, to open a station – the chance to do something unique. In this job, you have to change the way you think from the way you deal with people in the cities. You have to be ready, and open, to people’s way of thinking here. I like to believe I can look at a person, anyone, and tell a lot about them, read them as individuals, with their different thoughts and feelings.”
Another Country Page 11