by Rod Moss
Whitegate is one of many fringe camps set in the margins of ‘Crown land’ around Alice Springs. These evolved in the early 1970s under the umbrella of the Aboriginal organisation Tangentyere, which had negotiated special purpose leases on the camps around the town. Despite their appearance of being Aboriginal through a generation of occupation, they are not actually owned by the occupants. The camps are decrepit and run down. They comprise mostly discrete language groups. The Warlpiri people, consistent with the direction of their remote homelands, camp on the north side. The Pitjantjatjara mostly camp south of Heavitree Gap. The Western Arrernte live along Larapinta Drive and Lovegrove Drive to the west. And the Eastern Arrernte camp along the east side. Few whitefellas, other than those employed to service them, ever visit. They are no-go places. And what business would you have there anyway?
Some of the camps had been more or less continually used before the 1880s when the idea of a town for whitefella settlement was gazetted. Older members of the Hayes family later showed me creek beds and gullies that their grandparents had camped in, when only improvised stick wurlies provided temporary shelter from the harsh weather. The estate that the town occupies is traditional Hayes’ country. The Johnsons’ and Neils’ traditional country abuts the Hayes’ country. Some members of these families have intermarried and consequently jointly inhabit Whitegate. In these conjugal arrangements, it is not usual for the wife to take on her husband’s surname, unless she chooses.
Whitegate looked like a site of ruin, with random scraps of iron and tin and old mattress frames flung together for shelter. The other town camps at least had modest government brick housing and were connected to town power, water and sewerage, and had garbage collection. Although a member of Tangentyere, Whitegate was not party to the lease arrangements and enjoyed few of its resources. Garbage was only occasionally collected by Tangentyere’s workers. Wood supplies to the elderly during winter were few and far between. The only water was stored in 44-gallon drums, replenished by the Tangentyere. It was used for drinking and cooking. Two kilometres south of camp, along a rugged dirt track, was a dam fed by sporadic run-off. Most people carried their washing to it on weekends. How clothes were cleaned in such brown water, I could not guess. When the dam dried, the clothes were stewed in old flour drums in camp and hung to dry over sheets of corrugated iron.
Tangentyere works to bridge what often seems an implacable chasm between modern economy and the values held by Arrernte culture. Prioritising kinship above public obligation continues. So too the value of placing gift sharing and conviviality above personal saving; so too the hesitancy to self-promote, or leave family and country ties and submit to regimented suburban life.
Visits to Whitegate left me with a sense of blighted hope, of a twilight zone. The feeling was very different from my only other experiences of Indigenous culture, such as that of Batchelor and my visit to the Strelley Community. The families at Strelley lived in similar housing to that at Whitegate, although there was a substantial building for the literature centre and administration office and proper houses for the whitefellas they employed – a cattle manager, school staff and the literature production staff. Several hundred people lived there and they knew that housing acceptable to whitefellas had to be provided to attract them to live and work there. First appearances of Strelley had concealed from me how intact the community there was and how it continued to thrive, and caused me to pause before judging blackfellas with poor whitefella equivalents. 4
The families at Whitegate seemed to be without the confident leadership and direction shown by the senior men at Strelley who had deliberately chosen the settlement an hour’s drive from Port Hedland and banned alcohol consumption. I heard from Dave how younger men might occasionally drift into town and go on drinking binges. The blackfellas referred to these blokes as ‘livin’ on green bag’; at the town rubbish dump they retrieved food scraps from garbage bags. But the attractions and perils of Port Hedland were nowhere near what they were at Whitegate.
Whitegate had its regular campers as well as many visitors. Relatives came and went. I found it difficult to sort out let alone understand the numerous and complicated connections, though certain family resemblances helped me place some people. I arrived on foot sometimes, but most often by car.
At night, camp life was close-up and emphatic. Faces were exaggerated by the meagre light of the fires. The stars above and the campfires below were Whitegate’s only illumination. Those who didn’t interact with me during the day would be all over me around the night fire, tongues and self-consciousness loosened by grog. The English spoken in camp conformed to Arrernte rhythms and phrasing, but even sober speakers could present me with a challenge.
Sometimes without me knowing, a drunk would swing into the back seat of my car and pass out. Before I could drive off, I would have to drag them out. Whenever I’d pull up to let Xavier or his brother Christopher out of the car, several people would lurch out of the darkness, pulling my hand through the window to shake and ask for a lift somewhere across town. There was no way I was letting drunks into the car. I couldn’t tolerate the fuzzy or unreasonable requests.
Not everyone was drunk. But many were. A day’s drinking could do a lot to exacerbate feelings. This could be humorous, of course, as with drinkers anywhere. And it could be pathetic and dangerous. I remember Jamesy Johnson flaring up with a star picket at his wife, Big Christine. She retaliated by removing her clothes and challenging him to hit her, naked and without a weapon, in front of his family. I winced at the passion in the couple’s glares and snarling.
‘She been got no shame,’ mocked the Johnson women.
No one stood to intervene. Perhaps they understood the theatricality – or protocol – of this risky and violent behaviour.
In an argument with her husband, Rosita Ryder broke away from his arms and jumped into my car as I was dropping off Xavier. Noelly Johnson slowed my car as he danced and wielded an axe in front of the headlights. His eyes glinted like the steel. He cursed his wife through the zipped window and thumped his fist against it. No use arguing with drunks. We drove to the refuge of her sister’s home in the suburbs, leaving him warbling in the dust. When I caught up with him the next day and confronted him about his rage, he was meek and contrite.
Even so, at Whitegate, I encountered the most amazing family communal warmth I’d ever experienced. Whenever I had not seen someone for a while, or indeed if I had been out of town for a few weeks, I would be embraced with astonishing generosity. It’s hard to describe this viscerality. I was taken in to bodies, passed around – in a word, accommodated. It was like, I conjectured, in the absence of substantial housing over the millennia, people operated with the same warmth we expect of shelter. I had never encountered this kind of physical affection as a natural, unaffected transaction. The cohesive energy in the camp was a given, greater than the stresses it endured. And it exercised a peculiar, addictive power over me.
ONE AFTERNOON PETRINA LEFT SOME meat under the fence for me to cook. I took it back to her and Xavier, interrupting yet another brawl under the oaks. Xavier and Petrina would alternate between Whitegate and their camp near my flat, most probably to defuse family tensions.
‘I’m not cooking this. You think I’m running a restaurant?’ I said, determinedly asserting my boundaries.
They didn’t contest the matter or seem put out. Petrina followed me back for water and told me that she was soon going to Adelaide hospital to get her finger fixed. From her appearance it seemed to me that there might have been other things that needed mending. There were strange, tumour-looking swellings on her neck and back. Xavier was too frightened to accompany her south, but he said he would sing her home. He told me he could communicate with her by crackling paper.
Often over the next fortnight I saw Xavier sitting listlessly alone on the ridge above their camp. He was missing her. He subsequently told me that he had cut off her finger whi
le she slept because she had refused to give him some grog dollars that he’d felt entitled to. But he was emphatic that she would get compensation for her mutilated digit. I found it difficult to reconcile the way he’d rationalised his violence as being of pecuniary advantage to them both. When I saw them strolling together in a carefree fashion into town the next week, I didn’t dwell on the implications of his violence.
At dawn and sunset each day, I caught sight of a couple as they dawdled in and out of town. They were fringe dwellers from Ilpeye Ilpeye camp and would walk along the track running parallel to the drain near my flat. First I’d hear the husband, Robert Ryder, yelling at his wife who invariably walked fifty metres behind him. He called her kwementyaye, the name given to all who – in keeping with Arrernte custom – shared their first name with a relative who had died. Xavier had mentioned me to him and he came to the fence one evening near dusk. He asked if he could have a cup of tea. He spoke about his family. His sister, Rosita Ryder, was living at Whitegate with her husband, Noelly Johnson. His young son, Ricky Ryder, was also living at Whitegate under the care of his ex-wife, Jennifer Johnson. He raved about Xavier and Petrina being legendary fighters and how he’d hit her in the belly when she was pregnant, causing her to lose the baby. This day, I asked him if I could accompany him home. As we walked along the dirt track to his camp, he talked about his cattle work and his injured spine from a horse fall. Not a single word passed his wife’s lips, nor was there any eye contact. When we got to his shed, he unlocked it and told her to go inside.
I scaled the steps to my bedroom window one late morning, having heard a woman yell from a gully nearby. It wasn’t the same shrill edge of violence I’d heard before during fights. This young woman came and went from the gully two or three times. I could hear a man’s voice coughing and muttering, but couldn’t identify it. He was completely hidden in the scrub. If she was so upset why was she returning? She must be angling for something, I thought. Half an hour later, Gregory Johnson, whom I saw regularly at Whitegate, sidled up to the fence for a drink of water, his scratched sunglasses askew.
‘You hear us two over there, Rod? We been doin’ jig-a-jig, bush way.’
‘Bush way, huh?’
He leaned closer in confidentiality.
‘Not like whitefella way, Rod. I been Port Augusta. It great place for woman. Mini-skirt white woman like blackfellas there too, Rod. One shag me silly for whole week. Stars tumblin’ down. Her on top at ninety miles an hour. Oh, I can take bumpy road. You know, like bush way. But speedy one too great. They take all their clothes off. Go lie on bed. Do everything.’
Having enlightened me with his manly affairs, he bade me farewell and trundled off towards Whitegate.
LATE MOST AFTERNOONS I PRACTISED TAI CHI in the park near my flat. During the following week, Johnny Stirling and his wife, Melita Johnson, walked by in the middle of my tai chi routine. They stopped and sat silently under the shade of the gums. Melita must have been quite intrigued. As soon as I’d finished, Johnny came over and remonstrated with me that I’d been showing off to his wife, and that he would fight me anytime. He had his fists up. I backed away, stammering out an explanation of tai chi as dancing a prayer. This placated him, although I wouldn’t say I convinced him. But we walked as a threesome away from the park, talking about his sister who was married to a whitefella, a local apiarist. And I was gratified the conversation had sweetened.
Six Aboriginal men came to my flat one morning not long after this. The only one I recognised was Xavier’s brother Ambrose. I nervously ushered them inside. Their curiosity outweighed their reserve as they brushed by me. They were wide-eyed at the most mundane stuff. Even the vertical blinds were unravelled. After small talk they broached the reason for their visit. They wanted a lift to Anthelke Ulpaye/Charles Creek camp. Xavier had apparently fled from there due to an arising conflict the previous day, leaving his ghetto blaster behind. They had teamed up in an effort to rescue Xavier’s property and decided that wheels were needed for a successful getaway.
‘Maybe we can take this painting of Xavier,’ jested Ambrose ‘Bronson’ Neil. ‘We fool that Charles Creek mob. Use it as shield. They be hit this Xavier!’
We crammed into my Subaru. The car slouched across the causeway towards the town’s most central and oldest camp. My tension mounted as we neared the gate.
‘Keep the car running,’ said Ambrose.
He glided along the cyclone fencing of ‘number one’ house, grabbed the radio from the verandah and swiftly ran back to the car with it stuffed beneath his denim jacket. We sped off. I was as gleeful as the others over the smooth retrieval. I dropped them at Whitegate where I was told that Xavier had caused quite a ruckus. Apparently, two carloads of Charles Creek men were after his hide.
One freezing winter night about a month later, I drove past the Eastside grocery with Dominic Gorey who lived at Whitegate. He asked me to stop. He was wearing only jeans and a shirt. He got out of the car, ambled over to the median strip and removed his shirt to give it to another man wearing only jeans. No words were exchanged. No explanation was given when I enquired after the other man’s name.
‘Aren’t you cold?’ I asked.
‘I’m angangkere [doctor]. I don’t shake,’ he said bluntly.
Did traditional doctors increase their healing powers by steeling their bodies in the cold? What obligation was he under to give the shirt? I could only guess.
Another night he left some smokes on the same median strip. As we drove away I saw someone move from the shadows of the store to collect them. On a subsequent occasion he implored me to make the 20-kilometre round trip to Amwengkerne, the Amoonguna settlement. He approached two old men sitting by a fire from behind and put a few tailor-made smokes on the ground. No one spoke or acknowledged the transaction. He ambled back to the car. Again, he gave no explanation. I was baffled.
LATE ONE AFTERNOON, XAVIER AND PETRINA waited for hours in the scrub next to my flat to meet my parents who were visiting from Melbourne. Xavier had gone, as he said, ‘lizard walking’ for them, but found only echidna, the quilled monotreme. He produced a portion of its partly cooked flesh from his armpit.
‘Keep it from flies,’ he said.
Its greyish appearance and means of marination alarmed my parents. Dad obligingly ate some and said that it tasted like bacon. ‘I’ll save mine for supper, dear,’ Mum said as she folded a tissue around it and popped it in her purse.
Later that week Mum was in the back of the car sitting next to an old man whom we had picked up from Whitegate. He was clutching several ‘number seven’ boomerangs. He had made these himself, beautiful mulga ones.
‘They’re lovely, dear,’ she began in her lilting voice. ‘What do you do with them?’
‘Fight ’em, sometimes. Sometimes sell ’em.’
‘You don’t still fight, dear, do you?’
‘Oh, yes.’ He stifled a yawn. ‘Number seven for man. Not kangaroo. Kill ’em dead, this one.’
I could feel the shift in weight behind me as Mum moved closer to the window. By the time he had got out, Mum had reduced their cultural differences to something that would come out in the wash.
‘Oh, Rodney, how can you stand the smell? Don’t these people ever wash?’
A MONTH AFTER MY PARENTS returned south, my older brother, Ian, visited. Xavier recognised him from my journal where he appeared in a photograph standing next to – and caressing – a massive Coca-Cola bottle in Luxembourg. Immediately Xavier dubbed him ‘Big Coke’, which he has remained to this day.
Ian wanted to join the family parties when they dug for witchetty grubs and go hunting with the men. We headed out to Whitegate as soon as he had unpacked. Xavier introduced Noelly, Jamesy, Christopher and Jude, and commandeered the front seat. He was keen to show Big Coke his country. He got me to slow down and pointed out the window.
‘Look,’ he ras
ped.
We followed his finger in the direction of distant Emily Gap. He got out and picked the bush banana that was dangling from a vine strung in a tree next to Ian’s window. How foolish we felt. Shortly, he drew attention to his hands.
‘They shakin’,’ he told Coke. ‘I be feel dreamin’ comin’ on.’
We drove on barely discernible tracks until we came to the banks of Emily Creek. Xavier knelt by Emily Soak, framed by a buried flour drum, cleaned the water’s scum with three outward strokes and blew firmly down on it. He muttered respectfully, ‘ kwatye anthaye’, ‘give me water’, over it and then imbibed. We followed suit.
The men at Whitegate had been impressed with Ian’s rum and Coke drinking regime. Ian was such a lark. A few drinks with supper and he was a one-man comedy act. He’d have me in stitches. That he actually had a doctorate in chemistry added to the image of him as a nutty professor.
Jude and young Peter Johnson came with us to the airport to bid Ian farewell. The sleek, armoured limousine and cavalcade passed us south of Heavitree Gap. Pope John Paul was on his way to say mass for the multitudes assembled at the showgrounds. The town’s black community had been primed for twelve months about this visit. The Pope wished to address the Indigenous peoples of Australia, and Alice Springs was the chosen spot. Father Phillip Hoy had been especially appointed to town for the Pope project. Local Catholic businessmen were urged to employ Aborigines. There were even a couple of masses held at Whitegate, one publicised in the national paper, the Australian.
Ian joked that the columns of people lining the highway were there to farewell him and gave a papal wave to all the bystanders. After dropping him at the airport, we went back around the showgrounds and caught the last of the Pope’s speech.