The Hard Light of Day

by Rod Moss

  ‘Take me Whitegate. I want to see that old man, Arranye.’

  We drove to camp. The kids gathered around the joey. I asked Arranye about a big buff-coloured roo I’d seen in the hills close to our house. Its great size and pale colour distinguished it from the euros.

  ‘Oh, that one belong it Dreaming.’ He was absolutely sure from my description. ‘Can’t kill it, that one, you know. He always there. His place.’

  For days after, the Whitegate kids looked after the orphan joey. Then it became prey for the hungry camp dogs.

  Over the years health workers had tried to reduce camp dog numbers. Sample cases indicated that health in the camps improved after dog eradication programs. Surely, I thought, a needle to make the dogs impotent would help ease the burden. I would think about this as I watched flearidden beasts snorkelling around their turds for sustenance. The scabies, the lice, the malnutrition – if noticed at Whitegate, it wasn’t being treated.

  Most of the dogs had drolly apt names. A miserable little black and white pup absolutely riddled with fleas, more fleas than fur, was called Flea. One with a stuttering yodel was called Flat Battery. Eric Neil had a grey-flecked thing that seemed to limp on every leg, a doozey of a dog, which he called ‘It’ll do’. And there was Betterboy, a hairless brute with a broken baritone. These canines provided a sentry of sorts, rushing my car as a horde, then promptly slouching back to the shadows.

  ONE AFTERNOON WHEN I was visiting Whitegate, Jennifer Johnson pleaded with me to take Eric to hospital. He suffered acute alcoholism and the associated physical deterioration. He got in the car to avoid further nagging from his wife, who stayed at camp. When I pulled up at the ambulance depot, Eric refused to budge, saying it was not his idea to admit himself. The orderlies, in spite of Eric’s bleeding ears, backed off apologetically, saying they were unable to help without his consent.

  A few weeks later, Robbie Hayes arrived at the door and asked if I would run Eric to hospital. I was told that he had collapsed while on the way to our place. I drove around the corner and spotted him lying crumpled and bleeding on the footpath, next to Jennifer. She ordered him into the car. He meekly complied when I got him to his feet. He was shaking badly and bleeding from the mouth.

  ‘This time at Little Well,’ Jennifer said, ‘he been have pictures in ’is head. He been shaken and fittin’.’

  Food had apparently been scarce during his detoxifying week there. When we pulled up in the drive of the hospital, I opened my door on a nugget of phlegm that would have filled half a shoe. Eric’s blood-spattered shirt spoke for him at casualty and he was promoted in the queue where he lay on the bench beneath an aquarium, with one of Raffi’s nappies tucked under his neck. I left him on his back gazing at the glass-eyed goldfish mouthing their mantras. Soon he was back in camp, a fez of bandages encircling his face. He said he felt better. Better than what?

  OF SNAKES AND MEN

  AGGIE ABBOTT AND

  ARRANYE AT ST ANTHONYS

  ROCKHOLE

  OVER THE FOLLOWING YEARS the number of Aboriginal people entering my life increased. The Johnsons were now only occasional visitors to Whitegate, except for Arranye, who continued to make it his base. And as our relationship strengthened during his final years, my interactions with Xavier and the other Johnsons continued, but with less frequency.

  Several times Arranye and I ventured the 110 kilometres east to Arltunga with tape recorder and camera. The road climbed out of the Bitter Springs valley, up a rise to where we stopped at Ayambale Rockhole. We continued on to where we met a flat expanse of grass called Paddy’s Plain, just inside the Loves Creek Station–Gardens Station boundary. Arranye told me that Gardens Station once had a market garden that supplied vegetables to the Arltunga miners. Later research led me to discover that in its heyday, the fields supported between 300 and 600 people.

  There was a depression in the range, west of Arltunga, known as the ‘wallaby footprint’. We stopped in the sand and boulders of a rockhole which the Arrernte called Arrerre-ntyenge/stinky water. Gold was prospected in the region in 1887. Miners Europeanised its name to ‘Arltunga’ when establishing the town, and the water source was named Paddy’s Rockhole. During this period, Arltunga, Winnecke’s Depot and Harts Range each supported a population far greater than Stuart (later renamed Alice Springs).

  The region was composed of metamorphic rocks, mostly amphibolite and quartz-mica, weathered into rugged hummocky surfaces. We walked among the few remnants of the old township. The humble police station stood out, having been reconstructed in the 1980s. Arranye rattled off some history of the place as told to him by his elders. Constable Charles Johnson had been the first officer stationed on the fields in 1899 until 1902. This was the whitefella from whom Arranye’s family derived their name. Paddy was the butcher. Arranye’s father had done chores around the station. His uncle worked as a yardman for the hotel and as a tracker assisting the constable. This same uncle was later recruited by the police for further tracking duties near Melbourne. The mine closed in 1916.

  His father, Ted, and grandfather Charlie Johnson were Arrernte. His mother, Magdaline, was a Luritja woman from Tempe Downs way. After the decline of Arltunga, Arranye’s parents re-settled in Alice Springs, where Arranye was subsequently born.

  We proceeded to the old cemetery. Arranye spoke about the road-making he and other Arrernte men participated in. With just picks and shovels they had forged a better road between Bitter Springs and Arltunga. The Catholic brothers would truck the men back and forth daily from the mission to the work site. Meagre rations were only given to them if they worked on the road and bore construction.

  ‘Oh the mission mob been work the shit out of us, Arltunga way. Then Santa Teresa after that again,’ said Arranye.

  This was part of the program of their enforced shift to Arltunga from the Little Flower Mission in Alice, during World War 2. 11 The concrete slabs of the old dormitories were visible from the road, as were those of the church and convent. The mission was abandoned in the early 1950s due to what Arranye referred to as cyanide poisoning – contaminated water from the gold battery. He showed me the sixty or so unmarked graves of his kinfolk, a few kilometres south of the ghost town. The government’s official account declared them casualties of typhoid and TB.

  ‘Typhoid belong gold time. Not mission time,’ insisted Arranye.

  Arltunga was subsequently abandoned and re-established to the south as the Santa Teresa Mission. A large number of Arrernte shepherded the goats, camels and donkeys to the site of the ‘promised land’. The remaining Arrernte were trucked in the mission lorry.

  We drove a short distance to Akura-ala/Willy William’s soakage and Arranye talked about the arawe-irrentye ceremonial dances that once occurred at this site.

  ‘That in Strehlow time, my boy. I only young fella then. He seen all that turnout.’

  Still in the region, he showed me Atnape, the place of his initiation into manhood.

  ‘People come and go. Story stays on. Foundation of culture. I might be only little time. Carry it on. Story more bigger than me. Got to be have it, that story,’ said Arranye.

  I hoped I was not the only one who was hearing this material. He rehearsed it in Aboriginal English, and then spoke in Arrernte on the tape.

  ON ANOTHER TRIP, WE CUT NORTH along Mt Benstead Creek in search of the Rainbow Serpent painted on a rock in Gardens Station. Robbie Hayes, Arranye’s nephew, was aboard. As we wound up the valley, Arranye told us the story of the two snakes ‘that been split that woman’.

  ‘Story begin at Junction Bore, Hale River way, old Willy William’s place. Two tree there are them snakes. This hill here,’ he said, pointing to a break in the ranges, ‘it have a bit of headband story. Woman jus’ seen them two snakes and put all those kids on her head, keep ’em safe.’

  We left the creek and found a track heading north-west through Gard
ens Station. According to Arranye, Akiltje Atwerreme, the small pyramidal hill on the bank, contained the cut-up pieces of snake. After rain its blood would flow. The red ochred sand would wash between the rocks. We found the pool where the snake painting was, but unfortunately it was submerged under metres of sand. Arranye apologised and suggested another trip ‘after rain time’, when the sand might wash away and expose the painting. It was a long and arduous haul in the 4WD through heavy sand to come to this realisation, but the journey was made rich by Arranye. He called halts several times to expound on the snake’s story as we wended our way up the creek. Sometimes we merely paused the vehicle for him to remark. At others he insisted on cutting the motor, getting out and waving his right arm after the shape of the country, elaborating more fully, the feel of the event and how it formed the topography.

  We pulled into Whitegate at dusk. Gregory was standing around Arranye’s fire, waiting for the tea to boil.

  ‘Rod, that painting you be make of us mob walkin’ in the street. You sell it?’

  ‘Centrelink is going to buy that one, Eyeglass,’ I replied.

  Then Gregory leant on me for ten dollars and asked for a lift back to Little Well. He thought the sale would cover the petrol, but the thought of an eight-hour return drive prohibited my spontaneous assent.

  THE ALICE SPRINGS SHOW was staged at Blatherskite Park, south of Heavitree Gap. Elaine and I took Jude and Michael Stewart with us for the day. July could be relied upon for cold weather in Alice Springs, and show days featured early in the month. Every remnant of clothing was trotted out of the wardrobe. A pewter vault gusted overhead.

  ‘ Arrarrkwe [Seven Sisters, Pleiades] make it proper cold. You see them set like that at night an’ you know it be perishin’ cold,’ said Jude.

  As we drove through the Gap, I asked if they would be riding in the rodeo sponsored by Tangentyere, which was being held later in the month at the same venue.

  ‘You blokes get on those rough horses?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said Jude. He looked out the window and continued by joking with Michael. ‘We only be ride casks.’

  Most of Alice Springs was there, one of the rare occasions when it was possible to be jostled in a crowd and luxuriate in anonymity. A stadium faced the horse ring. Behind it were several halls housing craft exhibits and stalls advertising the town’s small businesses. The paucity of vegetable produce reflected the changed economy of Alice Springs. With the arrival of the mega food chains in the 1970s, the home gardens declined. In fact, the prison farm won the judge’s plaudits in all divisions, uncontested.

  There was a members’ bar in a pavilion where the member whitefellas purchased beer in plastic cups. A beer tent next to a toilet block on the western fence was crowded with blackfellas. The tent and nearby toilets were a likely venue for paybacks on neutral ground. Jude said he always protected himself at the show with ‘a company line’. He then produced a sheafed knife, which had been stuck in his boot and hidden by his trousers, before neatly replacing it.

  As Elaine and the kids herded along sideshow alley towards the ferris wheel, I noticed the men eyeing the nearby pie stand. I told Elaine that the men wanted to eat. Jude and Michael cracked up, mutely floating a grin to each other. They found my reference to them as ‘men’ amusing.

  ‘We not men yet. Not be enough teaching.’

  While they had undergone initiation about ten years ago, the realisation of full manhood was something only acquired through successive ceremonial experience.

  We left them at the shooting gallery where they mingled with other Arrernte, several of whom lugged their shooting prizes, large afro-styled dolls.

  All day the light sauntered through its gamut of greys. The chilly wind whooshed the big wheel, giving its riders an even more tenuous grip on the planet. If you weren’t giddy from the congested gush of people that trundled the pavilions and sideshows, the Graviton and the ferris wheel would do the trick. I took a plunge on the Zipper, the gyrations of which parted me from my small change and brought me close to vomiting.

  That was enough involuntary movement for me. But not for the kids. Raffi, three years old now and already showing his enthusiasm for wheeled transport, chugged around on the ghost train. Ronja rejoiced on the arthritic carousel. Propelled by blasts of 1960s Motown pop, she mounted a chipped palomino and bobbed along with the frozen herd of chestnuts and black beauties.

  I noticed two Whitegate kids at a prize stall. On the table behind the attendant, some watches were perched on blocks. The boys were disputing with the attendant, arguing that they had successfully tossed a brass ring around a block. He insisted that they had knocked the whole thing over. While they argued, another Whitegate kid slipped through the back corner of the tent, grabbed a few watches and dissolved into the crowd.

  We retreated to the poultry hall, where I approved of somebody’s puckish humour. Amid the wire pens of beribboned entrants that clucked and squawked was a Kentucky Fried Chicken box with a clutch of gnawed bones, decked with a first prize sash.

  We met up with Jude and Michael at the arena and followed them towards a pen of massive Brahman crossbred bulls, mammoths of flesh and testes. It was a spectacle to see the station people and their beasts. Up until the 1960s, I guess, when the beef industry still thrived, it would have been common to see station hands in town. Now they were the exotics.

  A policeman of comparable appearance admired the bulls with his offsider. The two Aborigines who sauntered by the cattle pen presented an opportunity for the policemen to do a bit of flexing. We straggled behind with the pram. As we joined the foursome, the police, who had fronted Jude and Michael with chests puffed, drifted on as if nothing had happened. It took less than a minute, but it was a persuasive assertion of power. I later heard of the large Aboriginal brawl that had flourished behind the boxing tent.

  IAD LINGUIST JENNY GREEN was working with some Arrernte women recording their healing songs for the Institute. Jenny had lived in the Centre since the early 1970s and enjoyed enduring relationships with Alyawarr and Arrernte families. 12 Through these associations, it was inevitable that occasionally Jenny’s path would cross mine. We both knew some of the same prominent Arrernte personalities such as Aggie Abbott, the old man, and his niece Kemarre Turner. I was keen to join Arranye on a field recording at St Anthonys Rockhole, close to Santa Teresa. He had been asked for his input on this occasion, as he was the only one living who knew the words to the ‘healing wasp song’, despite it being a woman’s song. Kemarre Turner, the key contact on the project, gave me permission to tag along. This trip coincided with a graduation ceremony at Santa Teresa for a handful of students who had finished their teacher-training course through Batchelor College. There would be celebratory dancing.

  At Kemarre’s request, when she came to pick me up, Jenny parked the IAD Toyota on the opposite side of the road to our house. Kemarre felt that parking on the near kerb was an affront to the spirit of her deceased daughter who had sat in our lounge while I relieved the pain in her foot with a massage in the months preceding the 1991 dam protest. Something of her presence would have lingered and, with the appropriate people, I had yet to smoke the dwelling with native fuchsia. I dragged my swag across the road and joined Arranye and Kemarre in the vehicle.

  The 80-kilometre stretch to Santa Teresa was broad and encouraged speed, but in places it was dangerously cambered. Dust on the dry July track powdered our hair and lashes. Once at Santa Teresa, Arranye and I camped with Charlie Hayes. Jenny went over to the women’s area.

  Charlie brewed us tea on the fire he had made on his concrete verandah, the billycan resting on an old freon fridge coil. Old Jack Cavanagh, whose totem was arlpatye, the green-necked parrot, lived in a shed adjacent to Charlie’s verandah. We could hear him inside cooking on his fire. He poked his head out once to mutter something to his dog. Though Jack’s shed was only 4 metres from the verandah, he
declined to look our way. I wondered why he and Arranye, surely contemporaries, failed to acknowledge each other.

  We retired to our swags soon after dark, as the ilpentye/love song dancing was cancelled due to the cold. Arranye admitted he was sorry not to be looking at those young girls’ legs. But he said he was pleased to have been well fed and to be leaving the blare of the budding rock session of the younger men. As we lay there, we chatted about our hospital experiences, father–son conflicts and how initiation shifted the teenager out of direct relationship with the father.

  After a while, the moths flirting on the light bulb above us bothered Arranye. He asked Charlie to turn it off, and demanded he roll out his swag, make him tea, and so on, berating him throughout for remaining dumb.

  ‘Him won’t talk it. Can’t talk it back to old Arranye. Why that? I don’t know. Always he been like this, this one,’ he said in front of him, perhaps to shame him into speech. It didn’t work.

  ‘What you gonna do when I die? Look down at your feet? You gotta look people in the eye!’

  Charlie, about thirty, didn’t argue with Arranye.

  With the lights off and a further half hour of talk, Arranye finally said, ‘One thing I don’t like it. This butterfly still been falling on my akaperte [head].’

  During the night, Jack’s dogs answered the howls of their canine neighbours. When the south-easterly dropped, the mossies homed in on my ears. I wished I’d had some cottonwool to plug them. At one juncture, as my toes were being licked by Bitumen, the puppy that had dragged off my socks, I was dreaming of walking in a pebbly creek.

  In the morning I rescued my tattered socks and coaxed the fire for tea, big pannikins dowsed with powdered milk. I fried up eggs and toast for the two of us. Arranye mused that Kemarre and Jenny should have been lying with us rather than in the women’s quarters.

  ‘Good to have woman keep our fronts warm.’