‘You wanna stop in for one?’ asked Bull.
Danny calmly exhaled, ignoring his cousin’s voice. He glanced into the side streets. The constabulary weren’t even lurking. A blackfulla driving a new, registered and reliable vehicle could warrant a mandatory search among this ‘small-town’ silt.
‘Not far now,’ whispered Danny.
Solar flares were burring in the crests ahead of them. There was no oncoming traffic. Danny wondered for a moment whether or not he should tweak the headlights to high beam and then decided against it. Black wings of a crow sprang before the car. Roadkill tarnished bitumen. A crossroad loomed. Danny recognised the silhouette of a broken sulky in a barren paddock. Fingers of rustling cane. Unkept fences. He aimed the car in a gentle manner onto a winding road that soon lost the smooth surface into wafting dust clouds.
‘Remember when Stewie swore he saw a devil-dog on this track one night?’ Then the hairs sprang on the back of Danny’s neck. He regretted the memory instantly. The lore in isolation of this place had earned his respect; some fear, but mostly a healthy respect. Bull’s father, who was dead now for thirty years, had tried to make his peace with the spectral matters here too. But there was little point in keeping shades of the afterlife away. ‘Old Bull’ often recounted the tales of settlers who went missing in these hills and how the winter months harboured their cries on the chilling tongue of wind.
Danny navigated in fragmented memory and weariness. This was a place where the mind’s eye tricked you. A small patch of land sat ahead dropping into a gully. Failing daylight, but nonetheless, Danny had brought his cousin to a place that was a birthright. Wads of blade grass were almost covering the shoulders of the road now and a track veered off into nothing.
The headlights of the car were literally consumed in the wilds of undergrowth. And this was good. Safety in cover. A faceless bank manager had dispossessed the family any rights on the property for a generation. Danny and Bull had aspirations of working these ridges as kids; more so Bull than Danny but reality and economic rationalism hijacked those dreams. Danny would soon be forty-eight years old. And degenerative natures had made their way into Bull’s body for some time now too.
Danny thought about his fading passenger, the pile of belongings in the car that were his only worldly possessions. Methadone. Demons. AHHH, BULL, WHAT DID THEY DO TO YOU IN PRISON??? Once upon a time their elders called the cheeky pair ‘Amigos’.
Suddenly the wheels of the vehicle ran over metal. It must have been the forgotten cattle grid that was too choked by weeds to be seen and it brought them both out of their stupors.
‘We’re here, mate!’ said Danny.
‘I know,’ chirped Bull.
Danny allowed gravity to do the rest and the vehicle rolled into a rough meadow next to the heap of a dilapidated dwelling. A sturdy hardwood frame of the four walls had collapsed in, bringing down a hood of corrugated iron. Small saplings were reclaiming floor. The sun was poor but enough to pose light on the dim mushroom cloud of a mango tree on the other side of the wreckage.
Bull’s mother was too frail to even meet them up here. As Danny cranked the door open a maze of shrub and grass met him in contention. He realised he couldn’t have even unfolded her wheelchair from the sedan to welcome her son home.
‘Come on then.’
Strand and leaf fought against Danny as he waded out from the car. He felt the cool air suppress his frame. Green needles pricked. Footing was difficult at first. Blood began to circulate through his legs. The leather boots and heavy denim jeans he wore gave him enough confidence to blindly track through the tangles. He stomped metres and then turned back to the car.
Danny reached in and cut the ignition, flicking the headlights off. There was a calm and comfortable dimness that surrounded them. Bugs chirped. The sky almost mirrored the land in mats of luxuriant cloud morphing and jumbled as the earliest evening stars made an appearance. The moon was too low yet to really show any influence. In the pitch of this setting Danny felt his cousin ease too.
‘I did promise your Mum, my Brother … Sorry we couldn’t stop.’
Danny and Bull were both of Wakka Wakka blood and had returned to the tribal country of their Wakka Wakka forebears. Bull’s mother had seen the burial of too many Wakka Wakka kindred laid to rest in the Mission cemetery of scarred-red earth studded in white identical wooden crosses. The days of mourning and misery, misery and mourning, wave upon wave of Sorry business, no justice and no reckoning for the innocent and the wretched.
Danny stretched back into the car for a beige paper bag stamped ‘PERSONAL PROPERTY’ with the aid of a few remaining lights that flickered in the dashboard and the only light for miles around. He struggled to pull a flat container carefully away from the coupled garments and paperwork that some prison official had impersonally packaged.
‘You alright there, Bull?’ he gently whispered.
Firmly holding the container he stepped back into the grass and made trail upon the sodden growth. He moved about, the moisture of dusk gathering on the thickets until a clearing that gave access down into the folds of the land. Much motionless shadow and gullies beyond.
Danny paused and listened to his lush surroundings.
‘Here were go, cobber,’ he said. His throat dumped a solemn gulp. He puffed out his chest and called out to Bull: ‘Ere, mate. You’re home now!’
Danny carefully snapped the lid on the container and assumed an odour would follow; a smell that may possibly illustrate some of the prison stench; damp cold concrete and White Ox tobacco. Angst. The essence of what had become of his cousin, the ingredients of a man’s life and pain. He let the ash sift before him into the night.
‘There ya go, bud.’
Subtle breezes picked up the fine white powder and a rush of motion parted the grasses downhill and away. Little paper-winged moths flocked out of the growth and danced in the flow of Bull’s departure. Danny saw fleeting seed lift from thickets, in unison with the clicks of tiny grasshoppers excitedly jumping into the dusk. Somewhere in the lower ridges a menagerie of bird noise erupted and a flowering bud of moonlight broke through cloud above the distant peaks of tree line. Bull’s spiritual presence made small tumbling spirals that retreated into the shrub; finally at rest in playful communion with the country in the remains of the day. A pledge fulfilled.
‘There ya go, Bull … There ya go … You’re free.’
Danny and Bull … Bull and Danny … Amigos.
Each City
Ellen van Neerven
Ellen van Neerven is an award-winning writer of Mununjali Yugambeh (South East Queensland) and Dutch heritage. Ellen’s first book, Heat and Light, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize. They have written two poetry collections: Comfort Food, which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize; and Throat, which was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.
1.
It isn’t what we want to do but I need clean socks. And towels. We have run out of clean towels. Talvan sits on the washing machine as I count how many coins I have left. Enough to wash but not to dry.
The smell of laundry powder and a changing season. Talvan’s boots tapping my shin. I run my fingers over the toe and smile in a way she knows. She stretches her foot out and asks me if I can dash into the store next door and pick her up some chocolate.
That Queensland sun prodding and calling from the window.
Talvan didn’t have much to do at work today. She’s started an identified position as a junior architect of the Indigenous Cities Unit, and the process has been stalled. Yep, if you hadn’t heard, and you’re only watching the mainstream news, they are not being built. Talvan was part of the team that designed the first two. It was a great idea: reduce the strain on Kadi-Naa
rm-Meanjin (Syd-Mel-Bris) by trying to get people living elsewhere, but everyone’s going to be sorry in a little while.
The two cities, you know the one that’s just north of Wagga, on Wiradjuri Country, which they are calling Wiradjuri City, and the other city, the one that removed my mother and the community, Mununjali City, 100 kilometres south of Meanjin. You remember the propaganda: Get people living west! Away from the coastal clusters! Open space, community centres, all connected via fast speed rail! Create new jobs and housing! Be the fresh start you’ve dreamed of! Yeah, Jimbelung. You stepped right into our dream.
We are laughing. She’s scooping grey Bonds undies out of the machine and putting them into my sports bag, flirting with her lips, and I’m thinking about so much while we’re walking home: kissing, and watermelon, and the beach. Some lyrics are maybe coming too, yes, the air feels poignant with meaning, and memory.
We pass the motorcycle shop where a guy’s washing his bike; we walk around and smile at a mother and her two kids, still in their school uniform. The bins are still out, outside our place. That’s not what troubles me. The gate’s been left open. I drop the bag of wet clothes immediately.
‘I think I left the back door open a bit, the sliding door …’ Talvan is saying. ‘What the f—’
‘Careful, Talvan, stay with me …’
But I’m already running. I run inside and see that they or it or whatever it is has come, and they have seen everything.
My laptop is gone from the dining-room table. My box of notebooks from my study. Somehow I know exactly what they’ve taken.
‘I burned some toast this morning …’ Talvan touches my shoulder.
‘Talvan, I’m going to check my studio.’
‘No, not just yet.’ She suddenly gets very frightened and holds me back.
‘I’m going.’
‘Okay, I’m coming with you.’
I slide the back door further ajar.
‘It was open, I’m so sorry!’
‘It wasn’t your fault. They would have come in anyway. They knew what they were looking for.’
‘We were only gone an hour at the most.’
‘I know.’ I reach for her hand as we walk across to the shed I’ve claimed as my creative space. A place I could make sound away from the main house as not to annoy Talvan and our ex-housemate, Holly, when she was living here.
Inside, all the recording equipment, the speakers, the mic, the Weaver system – are gone. Just a lonely sheet rack and a chair and rolls of paper left.
‘We need to go,’ Talvan says.
‘I know,’ I say, trying to move my head away from the devastating sight. ‘I don’t think we can go to your mum’s. I’ll ask Aunty Lou.’
‘Why?’
‘They might know …’ I take my phone out of my pocket, flick the screen.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Trying to change my password. And then I’m going to call Aunty Lou. From a payphone.’
My fingers hover over the tracks I’ve had finished this week. Sitting there in the cloud, as wavs and mp3s. I don’t delete them. I do delete my contacts though, after copying them down on paper. Mum. Aunty Lou.
I try to talk to Talvan about what we should do next but she’s saying she can’t understand me and I realise I’m speaking lingo from out my way. Always talking Yugambeh when I’m proper stressed. I don’t think I’ve ever been this stressed before. I wasn’t helping my Noongar one out at all so I’d better speak ‘English’.
‘Pack a bag with some clothes. Some food. Get out a bag for me too, please. We’ll head out and I’ll call Aunty Lou and see where we should go, what we should do.’
Talvan nods. ‘Do you want me to pack for you too?’
‘Why?’
‘I know how you find it tricky to pick things for a trip.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ I manage a smile. She knows how hard it would be to leave some of my sneakers and blackfella hoodies behind, if that’s what we are doing, leaving things behind. ‘Thanks.’
She runs upstairs and comes down exactly five minutes later with two backpacks.
‘They’ve taken the chargers.’
‘Put your phone on low light, you’ll save battery.’
Our suburb feels rowdy when we leave. I have become scared of my neighbours. My street doesn’t feel safe. Stepping over the bag of wet clothes as we leave, the bag that we’ve forgotten, the clothes we can’t keep.
Aunty Lou’s voice is immediate. I don’t think the phone even rang.
‘Who’s this?’
‘It’s your niece.’
‘Hello, love. You calling me from a payphone, what’s the deal?’
I cover the phone with my hand and talk in hushed tones even though there’s nobody about.
‘Bub, I told you what to do if this happened. You remember?’
‘They are really following me, hey? Why me? I have a few songs up, nothing flash.’
I can hear Aunty Lou take a big sip of Earl Grey tea before she begins talking me up. ‘Your work is powerful, young niece, and it’s getting lots of attention. You got a strong, unfiltered voice exposing the realities of our people under this current government. It’s not going unnoticed. And you know they are tightening the laws. Your hip … hip-hop and just what you say could soon be enough for a prison sentence.’
‘Hip-hop, yeah, Aunty.’
‘Legally you should be protected. But you know they’ve got full and unrestricted access. They are tapping your phone, they know everything. They are going to make your life uncomfortable in any way they can.’
‘Wait, so I’m on the list now? ASIO? I feel I’m like what you fellas had in the seventies. The stories you tell me about.’
‘When they zoom in their evil eye, it stays there for a while.’
I look over at Talvan, standing back, and she smiles, but only out of habit.
‘Stay offline. And think about getting away, another country, somewhere off the radar, until this blows over. Until it’s safe. You shouldn’t have any troubles getting out of the country. They don’t have any power to stop you.’
‘But they can stop me coming back in, right?’
‘Yes, that’s right, niece.’
‘Okay, Aunty, I gotta go. We’re gonna go bush for a while.’
‘Yes, good. Stay offline.’
Talvan kisses me quickly, still managing to drive the shitty car her friend let us borrow.
‘Babe, you can slow down for a sec, it’s okay.’
‘Yeah?’
Her eyes are still focused on the road ahead, the Klump Road exit shining up ahead.
‘Yeah, babe, let’s stop here and take a moment. Have a snack.’
She exits onto Klump Road and takes us round the back way of the school I went to for a few semesters when we lived on this side of town. She stops in the car park.
‘You did Year Five here, right?’ she says, gesturing to the lights of the hall.
‘How did you remember that?’
‘Because it was the start of Year Six when you and your mum and nanna moved next door to our place. I still remember the day. It was kind of the best day of my life.’
I break off a bit of the KitKat I bought her a few hours ago at the shop next to the laundromat. I offer it to her and she meets her mouth to mine. Everything is so overwhelming that my only thoughts are to comfort her and as we kiss she keeps her eyes open, staring into mine, the chocolate growing warmer in my palm. She wriggles her hips closer and we kiss deeper. Not until my hands are rolling up her skirt and I reclaim the terror that’s been building up in me does she close her eyes, and after a few loose breaths, I close mine too. I rub the melted chocolate on her thighs. Move down to gently lick it off.
Approaching from the north, Mununjali City is abandoned construction and a whole
lot of circles. Trucks and freight trains for miles.
Promises are dug out into the dirt, the dark soil of my ancestors. It’s quiet. No trees, no birds. We drive for ages through this endless abandoned project.
‘I’m sorry,’ Talvan keeps apologising.
‘Nah, you mob did your best within the system. We all thought it would be a good thing, or at least okay. The housing stuff was huge. If they went ahead with your ideas, this, this, would be …’
An eagle flies lower, inspecting the road for roadkill, but it’s really just overkill that they’re looking at. The road, for a few kilometres, has been painted by Aboriginal artists (not local). Bright colours, and the words ‘Indigenous City: Coming 2030’.
Mum makes us pizza that night. As always I’m shocked at the state of her house, which the Federal Police moved her into until the Indigenous City Project was completed. Was this meant to be compensation for her losing her home, losing mostly everything? We sit on the floor on my nanna’s blanket she made for me when I was young. It still smells good, like how things used to be.
Mum is looking too deadly with a top that she made herself and she asks me to sing a song a little bit later when we go outside around the fire and Talvan holds my hand tightly and I’m not sure if I should sing before or after I tell them both I’m catching a plane tomorrow.
2.
For my safety, and the safety of my friends, I won’t be specific when I talk about where we are. Do imagine a densely populated South-East or East Asian city, where we are waiting for rain in the peak heat of July. Do imagine us smiling sometimes. If you think you recognise the identity of this city through the details of this story, it doesn’t matter, as most likely by the time you read this, I and many of the people I’ve mentioned, who I don’t identify by full name, would have moved on. You will not know this moment unless you are among us.
Flock Page 4