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by Larissa Behrendt

  “Must be cool being a lawyer. I’ve never met a Murri lawyer before. My brother could have used you a couple of weeks ago.”

  “I do mostly land claims and heritage protection. I like it but it’s not as glamorous as it might seem from the television. It’s lots of reading and years of training.”

  “I never liked school. I was going to do a hairdressing course. I rang the TAFE but they never got back to me. I would like a job taking food around at the hospital, then I could see all the old folks and chat. Now Tamara is in preschool I should think about getting a job again.”

  “You have a daughter?”

  “Tamara is my third.” Sensing my astonishment, Danielle adds defensively, “I am twenty-five, you know.”

  “You’re the same age as me,” I reply, hoping my surprise won’t be construed as rudeness.

  “How many kids do you have?” she asks me.

  “I don’t have any.”

  “Oh. Oh, well.” Danielle pauses before adding consolingly, “Diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks.” It isn’t often that I feel as inadequate as her sympathy makes me feel at this moment.

  The car turns off the highway on to a gravel road that gives way to dust. A cloud of black dirt follows the car as it trundles along past paddocks of ubiquitous fur-ball sheep.

  The outskirts of Dungalear are marked with a wooden sign, painted with thick black letters to read: ’Dungalear Station. Owned by the Baldwins since 1905.’

  Danielle opens the gate and waits for the car to pass through before pushing the large metal gate closed. As she steps into the car again she mutters, “Owned since 1905. My great-grandfather was the king of the tribe that lived here.”

  “The king?” I ask with surprise.

  “Yeah. We have the plate to prove it. Well, my brother Jason has it.”

  The king plates, I remembered my father telling me, were given to Aboriginal men the British colonists had chosen to be the leaders of their tribes; there were no ’kings’ in traditional societies. So, the naming of ’kings’ was a way in which colonists tried to alter Aboriginal practice to suit their own concepts of hierarchy, and I am about to say as much when I notice how proud Danielle’s eyes are. I also notice that Dad, Uncle Henry and Granny have all declined to contradict her. I keep quiet as Danielle continues to talk.

  “Not that I would like to be back in the Dreamtime. It might have been different if the white people hadn’t come. But they did and there’s no changing that. Besides, I like it the way it is: basketball, television, CDs. I think it would have been a lot harder back in the old times.”

  When we arrive at the farmhouse, Dad and Uncle Henry approach the white wooden-framed, tin-roofed structure. Their knock is unanswered so they circle the house for signs of life. The shades are all drawn and there isn’t a car anywhere in sight.

  “Well, what do you want to do?” asks my father.

  “Let’s go on anyway. We can leave a note.”

  “Technically, that’s trespassing.”

  “Technically, I don’t give a stuff. Let’s not start with accusations of trespassing or the Baldwins will be in trouble,” Uncle Henry grins. My father grins back. They return to the car with confident strides and determined, rebellious spirits.

  “OK Granny,” sings Dad, “which way?”

  Granny stares out across the adjoining field directing the car onward.

  “Keep going,” she mumbles, her hand sweeping in a forward gesture, as though she is chasing away a fly.

  Granny’s directions form a trail through the scrub. She signals the way over dry waterholes and through thorny bushes, the low tree branches scratching at Dad’s new car. He starts to become agitated.

  “Are you sure this is the way?” he snaps.

  “Keep going,” Granny commands, unmoved, gesturing onward.

  “I’m sure there must be a better way than this.”

  “Keep going.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “Keep going.”

  My father silently fumes as a branch snaps his ear-phone aerial. It hangs limply across the back window.

  “She always goes the long way,” says Uncle Henry, sensing my father’s rising fury. “She avoids Temperance Creek.” Granny shoots Uncle Henry a sharp look as he utters the place name, then resumes her vigil at the window. “That’s where that massacre was,” he continues. “Rounded them up like cattle, old and young, and shot them. About four hundred. And then they named it Temperance Creek.”

  Granny speaks in her stony whisper as the branches continue to thwack the car. “There were only two young ones left, a boy and a girl. The boy they took to Milroy in 1881, and I think the girl was there too.”

  Dad nods gravely, the aerial long forgotten. I feel the chill crawl up my spine and I move in my seat to shake it off.

  The party in the car is silent until Granny speaks again. “Here. Stop here.”

  Dad stops the car and we open the doors. The breeze drifts through the vehicle. I get out and walk around as Danielle prepares to move Granny from the car to a blanket in the paddock.

  As I walk around the field I notice, beneath the tall blades of grass, the scars of the old camp, rust-eaten metal, old tins and broken glass. Everything seems still and silent, even the insects.

  “Over here,” my father motions to me. I walk to the spot where he is standing and look at the ground where he points.

  “This is where your grandmother lived before ...” Dad’s voice trails off as thoughts flood his mind.

  I stare at the soil, trying to find some sign in the dark blue and emerald-green pieces of glass and the piles of sticks, wanting something that will have meaning, but the ground stands mute. The warm wind sweeps across the knee-length grass, across my legs, like the breath of contented, sleeping children.

  Through the years

  3

  1918

  I LIKE THE MORNING BEST of all. The fire is burning. The world seems new. Even the earth and the sky have slept.

  Garibooli awoke to the prophetic laughter of the kukughagha, who always announced the dawn. Already there was movement in the camp. She lay in the lean-to, warm under the bundar* skins. She watched the lithe figure of her mother poking at the coals in an attempt to excite the flames, her father and the other men gathering in preparation for a visit to a nearby settlement. In the distance she could hear her aunt’s hacking cough. As the camp bustled with its early morning business, Garibooli thought of the festive atmosphere of the night before. There were visitors who had crept on to the property, unbeknownst to the gubbas who controlled what happened on the land.

  “The white man acts as though he is the only one on the land and as if it is his ancestors who inhabit the landscape,” her baina would mutter, his eyes deep and thoughtful, focused on something distant. Although her parents had wandered freely all over the land when they were children, the family now lived permanently in a small section of Dungalear, confined to an enclosed space. In return, they were given the terror of God, schooling in a tin-roofed hut, clothing they now felt immodest without, and a new language which gave them new names. Garibooli had been given the name Elizabeth by the Reverend’s wife, who wrote the new names into a book — making them official in dark blue ink letters.

  * bundar = Kangaroo

  gubbas = white people

  baina = father

  When Garibooli would ask why they weren’t allowed to speak their language, her mother ran out of answers. All Garibooli knew was that it had to be that way because the gubbas said so. The hard thwack of a large wooden ruler across her knuckles, administered by the school mistress whose face knotted with rage at the sound of words that were not the ones that white people would use, reinforced Garibooli’s understanding of the way the world worked. The Reverend’s wife had tried to explain to her that she was named after an English Queen. But she loved the feel of her real name as it rolled off her tongue, preferring the way that her lips made a ripple, like on the r
iver, to pronounce the third syllable: Ga-ri-boo-li. ’Elizabeth’ sounded scratchy and high-pitched, like a bird squawk. She would whisper her real name to herself, over and over again, faster and faster. Garibooli. Garibooli. Garibooli.

  Her brother had been given the name Sonny. Garibooli thought of the word ’sunny’ from the first time she heard it so began to call him the name ’Euroke’, which was the name for the sun in the language they were forbidden to use. He, in return, called her ’Booli’, because he knew she liked her real name best.

  Yesterday morning the camp had been bustling with soft excitement over the arrival of old Kooradgie*. The men hovered expectantly and the women had been especially diligent in preparing the food. Larger bundar had been killed. There were fewer now with the farmers and the fences. Her father and the other men were gone several days to bring them back.

  * Kooradgie = a wise elder with a gift for healing

  Kooradgie hobbled with a stick and had an eye missing, the lid in a permanent wink. Garibooli had known him all of her life, almost twelve years, and she now looked forward to the sporadic visits from the hunched-over, strangely shaped man. His skin was marked with deep spots and he might have scared her had he not been so kind. In the afternoon, he had sung to the children and told a story about the biggibilla* man:

  * biggibilla = echidna

  Long ago, food was scarce and the people were hungry. Even when people had shared what they had managed to catch and find, they were still hungry. Everyone was getting thinner and thinner, except one old man. So one night, after they had shared some small fish that had been all the food that they could find, the other men followed the old man back to his camp. From the bushes, they watched him as he leant over his fire. They could see, just as they smelt the sweet smell of cooking meat in the air, that the old man was eating a big piece of bundar, from one he had killed but kept to himself. The men were angry and beat the old man who had broken the law with his selfishness. As he hobbled off, his legs broken, the men threw spears at him. The old man crawled over the land and his spears turned to spikes, his back legs faced inwards because of the broken bones. You can see them in the footprints of the biggibilla who is forever a reminder of the selfishness of the old man.

  Now, when Garibooli saw the spikey beast she would remember the story and the lesson of sharing.

  Earlier in the evening, she had joined her mother in the women’s circle, listening to the talk of food. It was ration day tomorrow. The women were complaining about the salted meat that was part of the food provisions. It made the stomach grumble and painfully ache. Although the men would work with sweat-drenching effort on Dungalear and the nearby farms, selling wild game or chopping wood, there was very little money and the women would always worry that there was not enough food. The older women wistfully remembered the days when food was plentiful, but that was before the farmers changed the balance of the land forever, leaving the earth incapable of providing the essentials for life.

  The talk had turned from the subject of food to hushed whisperings about a more serious and, Garibooli understood from the tone of the voices, a more sinister subject. Tom Kerrigan, the gubba who ran the ration store, had touched one of Garibooli’s cousins, Karrwi.

  “He’s not getting those filthy white hands on my daughter. No. He’ll not put a finger on Booli.” The evil in the man’s touch was conveyed to the young girl by the seething anger in her mother’s voice, the set determination in her eyes.

  Later in the evening, the women had joined the men in a large circle. Some of the younger children were playing on the outside, behind the adults, but still close enough to see the fire. Garibooli didn’t join their games. She liked to listen to the stories the older people would share.

  That night, Garibooli had watched the sky, where she had seen the twinkling that formed the Mea-Mei*, until she’d shut her eyes and pretended to be asleep, her head resting on her mother’s lap. She could smell the smoke and feel the heat of the fire while her mother stroked her hair.

  * Mea-Mei = the Southern Cross

  The talk had moved to the war. There were men among their family who had left to fight, taking valuable manpower away from their camp. For years, the movements of the troops dominated the conversation. It was all going to be over by the first Christmas, they had all said when it began. Now, it was three years on. But this war, on shores far away, seemed less real than the wars in the stories of Kooradgie. The Eualeyai and Kamillaroi men who fought in the faraway land had fought by choice, not for survival as their fathers and grandfathers had. Kooradgie had been remembering his ancestors and spoke of the mysterious disease, dunnerh-dunnerh*, caused by the evil magic of the wundat who lived on the other side of the great mountains. The disease had caused the marks on his face, but he was one of the lucky ones because many had died.

  * dutmerh- dunnerh = smallpox

  wunda = ghost (a reference to white people)

  The voices hushed as Kooradgie retold a tale. He cleared his throat and his voice began to hum in the lilting sound of his own language, his eyes never moving from the flickering flames.

  It was back in the days when the wunda were scarcer. The ones that were here were the lowest and the meanest of the lot — cattle thieves, convicts and ex-convicts. In those days, we were run down like animals. We lived in constant fear, sometimes only moving at night. Many of the Aboriginal women were captured and abused by the wunda. And you know the punishment for doing that to one of our women. Our law is very strict on that. But they had no respect, the wunda, and when they came they began to run the women down and insult them.

  One gubba, a boundary rider, had taken a young bub, not even initiated. He held her captive in his hut. Our men crept to the man’s hut in the dark, surrounding it. They started to throw stones on the tin roof. Gubba comes out to see what the noise is. Pssst. Pssst. Pssst. The spears hit him. He laid dead.

  When the white fella found out what had happened they were mad. They came in a mob, on horses, and rounded everyone up. Even the old ones, the little ones and the women. And they were shot. You could see the slug marks in the skulls years later.

  Garibooli’s thoughts of the evening before were interrupted by her brother, Euroke, who had burst into the lean-to and jumped playfully on her.

  “Guess where I’m going,” he taunted.

  “The gilli*?”

  “No.”

  “Where?”

  “Over to the fishing grounds. I’m going to catch you a big goodoo.”

  “You better make sure it’s dead. Otherwise it’ll eat you with one big bite.”

  Euroke squealed with pleasure as Garibooli tickled him and made a face like a big fish about to eat him up. Euroke was her only sibling. She had felt an adoring, proud love for him ever since he was a little brown bundle with flapping arms and legs, like a naradarnt, she had thought. Now he was growing and was included more and more with the older men in the lead-up to his Bora. The male ceremonies were forbidden to her, as hers were to the men. She had been warned by the older women of the harshness of the penalties for breaching the rules.

  * gilli = the moon

  naradam = bat

  Bora = initiation ceremony

  Not all the rules had remained. Booli should have been married after her own ceremony. There was a Kamillaroi man picked out for her, but he had been sent away to a prison for spearing cattle and eating it, interrupting the traditional practices. Whether another husband should be found, or she should await his return, was uncertain. The Reverend and his wife had preached against it as they were against all Aboriginal laws no matter how sacred and central they were. Even the Bora had to be done secretly for fear of the wrath of the missionaries.

  Garibooli doted on Euroke. She would follow behind him when he went to fish or set traps, letting him lead the way before her watchful eye. She loved the quick way his hands moved when he carved and the slow movements when he painted.

  From the tree I can see across the land.

&
nbsp; I look at the world from my tree. A sky goddess.

  I always come back to this place. My place. Home.

  Warm winds swept over the knee-length grass, like the breath of sleeping children. From her perch in the tree Garibooli could see the camp in the distance, the fire’s lazy smoke drifting up in to the air until it mixed invisibly with the sky. Noon heat hung with the stillness of the day, as though the whole world were too hot to move. The other children had gone to the river. Garibooli liked to be by herself. She would watch as the silhouettes of the people in her family slipped between trees. She knew all the trees in the area she lived in. She nestled into boughs, straddled branches and climbed up high with graceful agility, ripping the hems and sleeves of her scratchy calico dresses. Or she would sit, still and quiet, in the tree and watch the world around her, then climb down, limb over limb, her brown fingers gripping tan bark.

  The sun was melting into her. It was almost in the middle of the sky. Garibooli was thirsty and decided to return to the camp. “Kollo ngai ngin*,” she chanted as she ran, as though it was a song. “Kollo ngai ngin.”

  * Kollo ngai ngin = I want a drink of water

  My favourite thing to do is run through the grass. It softly whips my legs. I can feel the strength in my limbs as I move. I can run fast on my skinny legs. I could surprise you. I am like the wind. My name means whirlwind — Garibooli. Say it. Garibooli. Say it fast. Garibooli. Say it over and over and over again …

  Garibooli returned to an empty camp. Her mother would not be back until the sun was almost set as she had gone with the other women, even the oldest ones, to get the provisions from the ration store. The women would quietly line up, single file, clothes neat, eyes lowered: Yes, sir. No, sir. Thank you, sir. Since Karrwi’s budding breasts had been twisted by Tom Kerrigan’s large hands, Garibooli’s mother, Guadgee (now Thelma Boney), would not let Garibooli join the procession to get the rations. This meant that Guadgee would have to carry the heavy load all on her own, but she was stubbornly determined that her daughter would stay behind.