by Rod Moss
The ceremonial scene was lifted from one of the photographs in the Spencer and Gillen book. It documented the Arrernte at the end of the nineteenth century. I guessed the location to be the creek at Atherreyurre, a kilometre north of the Telegraph Station. The fact that the Arrernte held their ceremonies close to the Telegraph Station settlement up until Gillen’s time had been my motive in restaging members of the Whitegate community at that specific location. Apart from its popularity as a wedding venue, this being the only sort of ceremony held at the Telegraph Station nowadays, files of tourists daily loop between the historic buildings, the waterhole and their buses. 6
While in Perth, before making the painting, I studied Spencer and Gillen’s photographic collection. I had previously been deterred by the paternalistic tone of the text. Nevertheless, Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen’s glass plate negatives provided virtually state-of-the-art technological documentation of Arrernte ceremonial life. Closer study of the sequences suggested to me that two cameras had been used in tandem, with the anthropologists orchestrating the choreography to fit the lenses. I figured that the more experienced Spencer probably handled the camera close to the action, while Gillen took the more inclusive, panoramic shots.
Jude was waiting in the garden at lunchtime the next day. He repeated that History Rolling should not be shown in Alice Springs. He asked if Elaine could leave the room and, when she had gone, he softly sang ceremonial songs.
I never got to show the work anywhere apart from Greenhills gallery in Adelaide. It was stolen en route to Abrams gallery in Melbourne. That gallery had shown interest in exhibiting my work and asked me to send a few pieces, so they could decide about its suitability for their venue. I rolled five paintings, including History Rolling, into a tube and sent them by road freight, using a national transport company. Guy Abrams rang at the end of the week to ask why I had sent him an empty tube. I was horrified. As the sense of my loss hit me, the acids swirled in the pit of my stomach. Friends consoled me by suggesting the theft was, in one sense, also a form of flattery. Yes. I could concede that, but I was determined to remake the work at a future date.
LIZZIE WAS LOOKING STRONGER after another stint in hospital. In the first week of February, Elaine and I took her and Dominic for a picnic to the Valley of the Eagles, 60 kilometres east of town, a site of euro kangaroo Dreaming. Dominic drew my attention to the low acacia scrub dotting the crest of the Eastern Ranges, which he described as hair on a man’s arm. A long, low hill stretching between the highway and Emily Gap was the alkngiltye or orange-yellow tar-vine caterpillar.
‘Arranye’s mother, old Magdaline Johnson, she been got that grub’s story,’ added Dominic.
Recalling her stooped walk, I looked at the humped hill and imagined the grub bunching, then flattening as it accordioned over the terrain in its chosen path.
‘Two caterpillar story been running along that hill. An’ every gap, like Emily Gap, that is eagle hunting that caterpillar. He greedy for that one in caterpillar time,’ he told us.
At Jessie Gap the eastern flank became, in Dominic’s language, an emu and the sand quarry its fat. There was now an active commercial business at the quarry and Dominic said he was disappointed that Marleen Hayes had never asked for money for the sand trucked from the site. Dominic was aware that Aboriginal people elsewhere demanded and received royalties for mining on their land, but this wasn’t a direct concern for him, as his totemic country was north, near Mt Stirling.
‘Blind snake Dreaming, my country. You see it one time. I be take you,’ he said.
Neither Dominic nor Lizzie went down into the valley with us. They chose to sit in the meagre shadow of a corkwood, while Elaine and I cooled off in the pool below. We plummeted from an overarching branch of whitegum. Ripples lapped to the edges, reflecting fluorescent on the red sandstone walls. There was a riot of vivid colours. Turquoise dragonflies fanned the brown water. The greasy cascades of rock arranged themselves in bands of indigo and orange to green-black. We moved from one cliff side to the other, hugging the shade with the insects. A wasp attacked a large black spider by our towels. Its sting paralysed the spider, freeze-framing it in a rearing pose. Then it dragged the spider, four times its size, to its nest a metre away.
Dominic had told us that the veins of white quartz trapped in the rumpled pink boulders were the fat in the remaining flesh of the fighting dog and the perentie lizard. I became mesmerised by the blue sky, which was intensified by the ochres of the narrow, spiralling valley. The water hardly ruffled the six pools it coursed through before plunging over a 5-metre waterfall. Thus, the sky seemed to have fallen in six immaculate flakes to the valley floor. After a few hours, we clambered up the wall to where Dominic and Lizzie were waiting. Together we trooped down to the car park, made some sandwiches and tea, then bumped on down the track to the Ross River Highway.
On the return trip, Dominic spotted a huge perentie as we sped towards Jessie Gap. We all got out and Dominic and I grabbed some rocks. We stalked within 5 metres from where the perentie lay immobile in the hope of going undetected. Dominic’s first throw caught it on the thigh. He motioned me to throw. I was too astonished at its great size, its flicking tongue and dazzling pattern to comply. When I did, I was lamely ineffective. The lizard took off at terrific speed with us in pursuit. It was limping but had no difficulty gaining a rabbit warren. By the time we got back to the car, Lizzie had summed up the event, graciously excusing our failure.
‘Rod. You be pick up wrong rock.’
In camp, Mercia talked about her intention of buying Steve Tucker’s blue station wagon, affectionately called the ‘pachyderm’, as in elephant, for the deterioration of its upholstery and crumpled panels. But he was not willing to surrender it just then.
‘Next time you see that Kwementyaye, make him a cup of tea and put in it six spoons of salt from me,’ she laughed.
Though there were several wheel-less hulks used for sleeping, no one in camp owned a running car. Visitors and relatives owned the only cars I ever saw there. Mostly they were from Santa Teresa, Harts Range and Atitykala, all communities at least an hour distant. Ford station wagons were a great favourite. You could get an early 1980s model from one of half a dozen yards on the North Stuart Highway that specialised in the thousand-dollar range geared to the blackfella market.
Steve and I were talking about Mercia’s salted tea as we ate together that night in the Wild Waters Café. We had a window seat with a view onto the dry river. He’d parked the sleek blue pachyderm over the road by the public toilets. We gazed at it as we talked. It seemed to be moving slowly south. Was it the Cooper’s stout we’d been drinking?
‘Shit!’ said Steve, and almost in one motion had knocked his plate from the table and was out the door.
By the time I exited the café, both he and his car were 50 metres in front. When I caught up, we were both gasping.
‘Ah, shit,’ Steve muttered. ‘Look at the bloody window. That bastard’s smashed it to hot-wire the ignition. He’s run off to join his mates in the bloody river somewhere.’
Steve reported the offence to the police and we returned to Wild Waters for dessert.
A few months later the car was successfully stolen from the Shell service station while Steve was inside paying for his petrol. It was found, wrecked and abandoned, 20 kilometres west of town in the creek at Honeymoon Gap, with a few more creases in its tired skin.
ON MY RETURN HOME FROM COLLEGE one evening, Xavier and Petrina were by the front door. Inside we discussed ideas for paintings. The idea of Xavier holding a birdcage inside the prison was one. When he had gone to Big House last time, I had visited him and noticed a rather large aviary in the vegetable garden. What about a modest visual pun on ‘jailbird’?
Christopher lobbed by soon after and we smiled as we hugged each other. He removed his t-shirt.
‘Give me that one you been got,’ he insist
ed, lightly tugging at the singlet I was wearing.
I wasn’t willing to relinquish it and so he then asked for a glass of water. I laid my journal from the past year in Perth on the lounge room floor so the three of them could peruse the photos contained in its pages. I named the students at Carine when Xavier pointed to each one. They snickered when they saw Elaine, standing resplendently pregnant between two boulders at Green Rocks pool, south of Perth. They reckoned she was caressing giant testicles.
It seemed a good moment to show them an artefact I’d recently been given. Melbourne friends had passed to me a bullroarer they thought would be more appropriately housed in Alice Springs. Phillip Jones, an anthropologist from the South Australian Museum, confirmed that it was Southern Arrernte, and was probably made during the early telegraph line trading days for the booming artefact market. The souvenir bartering system had operated from the beginning of contact.
Christopher and Xavier inspected it. They laughed in embarrassment and escorted me to my bedroom. Xavier ran his fingers over its geometric incisions and admired its subtly twisting blade. They spoke softly of its secrecy. Yes, women knew what it was when they heard its whirring. But women should never see this thing. It was intended to keep women away at the end of initiation ceremonies. It should not be in the lounge room where anyone could have access to it.
ON 22 FEBRUARY 1988 AT 5.30A.M., Elaine had a strong urge to go over to Emily Gap. It was a special place for her, the place she had chosen to celebrate her thirtieth birthday. She had invited three friends, including me, for a moonlight supper on the sandy beach at the southern entrance to the gap. We had only recently been introduced at that stage and I was delighted to join them. That night, as we bade each other farewell, we kissed for the first time.
Here we were, three years on, a day or so away from our baby’s due date. It is said that ayepe-arenye, the caterpillar, as with all the Dreamings, worked its power whether you are conscious of it or not. For Arrernte, Emily Gap was the location of the caterpillar increase place. But we did not know then of the symbolism attributed to this place.
We drove the twenty minutes along the Ross River Highway and parked under the rivergums. We climbed the eastern flank to see the sunrise. I was amazed at Elaine’s determination, given her bulk, and was alarmed by every puff of shale that slipped from beneath her feet. We wanted to fix an image and activity to the birth. As the sun hoisted itself quickly above the eastern stretch of range, it gave a pale blue tinge to the foliage at its base. For twenty minutes or so, this trick of light made the MacDonnell Ranges appear to float above the plain. Budgerigars cut an iridescent green cape through the rivergums far below. Fairy martins hovered above the ridge, pecking at the insects skeining the currents rising in the early sun. A fat grasshopper, quartz and ochre spotted, the colours of its circumstances, jittered between us. Its camouflage was unmasked by prodding ants. Yes, these amazing images have been successfully fixed in my memory.
That evening after supper, Elaine’s contractions began and we stayed home until they intensified. My high school art teacher and subsequent friend, Royden Irvine, had arrived from Sydney a day earlier, especially to witness our child’s birth. The hospital was an 8-minute drive from home. Elaine lay groaning in the staging room and reluctantly asked for gas to relieve the pain. The nurse unceremoniously placed her in a semi-sitting position and wheeled her down the corridor. We’d hoped to use the newly appointed birthing suite but another couple had arrived minutes before us. We were herded into one of the hospital’s standard wards. Throughout the labour, Royden was actively engaged, fulfilling his support role.
On 23 February, at 5.21a.m., after a long night of labour, Ronja squeezed out and the nurse plopped her on Elaine’s breast. I was overcome with joy, excitement and tears. Here was my first child covered in a milky film of vernix. She sniffed a few seconds around Elaine’s nipple and then was on to it. By ten we were home, both weary and ecstatic, drinking up the pleasure of our lovely child, and gazing appreciatively into each other’s eyes.
After a few days we swaddled her up and went to Wigleys Gorge for her initial impressions of country. Again, at the time, we were unaware of the importance of this site for women’s healthy reproduction.
The day after we returned from the maternity ward, Jude knocked at the door. He had picked some pink bougainvilleas from a nearby garden. He was tipsy.
‘I love that little baby girl,’ he said. ‘What ’is name, again?’
‘Ronja.’
‘Oh, Arranye,’ he repeated.
He asked again if it was a boy. It was as if he had hoped it would be. He wanted to take our baby son through business.
‘No. Definitely it’s a girl.’
‘I know,’ he said, pausing, ‘it’s a girl.’
Resigned to the fact, he asked me to take a photo of him with Ronja lying in a coolamon, a carved wooden cradle, from Pitjantjatjara country with the pink flowers as a blanket.
He then asked me to relocate to the bedroom. He wanted to talk ‘business’. Young men were going to be made in the following weeks. He started singing songs. He was very worked up, relating how they cut boys but mostly demonstrating with his hands. Maybe I wasn’t expressing sufficient conviction. He unzipped his pants and showed me the cut head of his penis. It was a crude and open lateral incision, still looking sore. All the while he looked me straight in the eyes as he chanted softly in Arrernte and pumped his thighs. I was compelled by his deep engagement. He zipped his pants, removed his shirt and tied up his hair to dance.
‘Old grey-haired men be do like this.’
He was breathless.
All this unsettled me, removed a protective layer, and plunged me into deeper feelings that I didn’t feel equipped to deal with. Had the birth precipitated in him some wish to communicate his own deepest experience? Was he demonstrating that men’s initiation was of equal importance to procreation? I was too surprised to ask him.
A little while later when we came back out to the lounge room, Elaine exclaimed that the string beans had overcooked. I served Jude supper, which he gingerly accepted. Much of it finished on the floor. The long arcs he made to his mouth with the spoon kept missing the spot. His eyes fixed on mine throughout. Again he checked on Ronja’s gender with me. Then he asked for the bullroarer. Four or five times he spun it in the front garden until it roared. His effort was such that he nearly took off!
I wanted to show him my current painting, Hunting, in which he featured. We walked to the college studio to see it. He identified the various figures but was most impressed by his spotted mutt, Wungi.
‘That dog real smart. Good legs.’
I dropped him at Whitegate. Please would I bring a camera to Whitegate’s community celebration after the men’s initiation, he wanted to know. Again he declared his love for our little girl and said that the flowers would remind us that this was so.
IT WAS EARLY MARCH when the new college librarian asked after the Spencer and Gillen volume that had been borrowed in my name by Graeme Hayes. It was more than a year overdue. I was surprised to learn that Graeme had acted on my suggestion, defying his timid nature by summoning the courage to enter the college, a whitefella institution. I asked around camp and one thread led to another. Graeme was not in town, I was told. Jude felt responsible for the book and promised to pay for a replacement with his next dole cheque. I struggled to convince him that it was no longer available for purchase. Dominic was sitting at Jude’s fire and sensed my urgency.
At first he said, ‘It been get rusty from Jude. He put it under rubbish bin an’ I burn it.’
He let me squirm a minute then added that he had looked after it for a while when he camped at the Hayes outstation the previous year. Dominic drew a diagram in the dirt of where his bed was. He jabbed his drawing with the stick he had been chewing. This was where the book lay, beneath his pillow.
‘I be l
ook after that law book proper good, Rod.’
I stressed the importance of the book to the library. Jude countered that it was important to Alphonse Hayes too.
‘Alphonse be leader of the pack.’
Jude and I drove the 35 kilometres east to Antulye, the Hayes outstation where Alphonse camped, hoping to retrieve the book. Compared to Whitegate it was an immaculate turnout. There was a duck and geese enclosure, vines growing on wire mesh to provide shade; the ground had been swept and there were irons in the fire for marking music sticks. Alphonse rose from where he was sitting with his wife, Mary Johnson, and sons, Graeme and John. He slowly approached the car. With Jude’s help, I told him what we wanted. He never spoke but wandered away towards the business camp and retrieved the book from an ironwood tree. It was now coverless, and rolled to fit a termite hole in the trunk.
The men portrayed in the book were grandfathers to Alphonse’s generation, several of whom he recognised. Alphonse was a senior law man and had consulted the photos as they offered him helpful indications of ceremonial decorations and dance formations.
When I took it back to the library, the librarian was shocked by its condition and said my friend could keep it. As one of the library’s regular staff customers I felt awkwardly compromised in admitting how the book’s neglect had occurred. She was new to our institution, but not new to Aboriginal lifestyle. We shared a shrug and a smile when I recounted Alphonse’s somewhat reluctant retrieval of the book but I felt sad for the library. The book was part of its small and excellent holdings of literature about the Centre. Still, I was happy to be able to hand it back to Alphonse. The photos of his relatives had come full circle.
THE NORTH WIND WAILED THROUGH the April night, dividing the known world. Hills were pulverised, discuses were shaved from stones, and saplings strafed into spears. At dawn the fury had subsided and we wandered outside. An apricot sky crept over the crinkled ranges. We wore the sky’s glow as we stood on the verandah, passing the baby between us. As the sun got higher, the clouds darkened and thickened. A sudden shower caused the bitumen road before the house to steam, diffusing the mounting humidity.