Remembered By Heart: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing Page 6

  May O’Brien

  MY STORY

  Mission records state that I was born in the Eastern Goldfields town of Laverton in Western Australia during one of my family’s visits to the area. This is incorrect. I was born in the bush and delivered according to Aboriginal tradition, near the mining town of Patricia, Western Australia, where my father (a white man, unknown to me) worked. My birth, like that of many other Aborigines at that time, is not registered.

  Australian policy right up to the 1940s stated that all part-Aboriginal children be taken away from their mothers and assimilated into the white community. All children who showed evidence of being part white were caught and transported to Perth. They were institutionalised and trained for domestic and government service.

  Since I was classified part-Aboriginal by government departments of the time, I was placed on their list to be taken away. Police scoured the bush but they could never catch me. At the age of five I was taken by friends who wanted to protect me to Mount Margaret Mission where I spent the next twelve years. Growing up at this place was special. One of the joys was to go to school. This may sound strange but it kept us safe from the hassle of authorities raiding our camps.

  As schooling was not compulsory for Aboriginal children, the Education Department had established no schools for us. The Mission chose to provide schools to give us the opportunity to learn as the white children did. There were no qualified teachers at Mount Margaret but the Mission staff did what they could for us. It opened up a new world for me. Many Mission staff received Western Australian Correspondence School lessons for their own children. These were passed on to us, but because there were too many children for full-time lessons we were split into two groups. One group was taught in the morning, the other in the afternoon. Each group got two and a half hours schooling a day. It wasn’t much, but for us it was exciting and gave us grounding in all subjects, particularly English. In many schools speaking ‘native’ was a punishable offence. At Mount Margaret it was different. Teachers encouraged students to speak only English during school hours. They said it was the best way to learn a new language quickly and correctly. Outside school we were able to talk to each other in our own language.

  I have only happy memories of my time at Mount Margaret Mission and will always appreciate the background the Missionaries gave me.

  Abridged from Badudu Stories, teaching notes

  May O’Brien and Alwyn Evans, 1994.

  Jukuna Mona Chuguna

  MY LIFE IN THE DESERT

  When I was a child I lived in the sand dune country of the Great Sandy Desert to the south of Fitzroy Crossing. My father’s birthplace is near the waterhole called Wirtuka. My father got his name, Kirikarrajarti, right there. It’s a name that came from the ngarrangkarni. In the ngarrangkarni, two men came to Wirtuka and found the place overrun with possums. They were all fighting and biting each other, some up in the trees and others down in holes in the ground. As they fought they were hissing, ‘Kkir! Kkir!’ so the two men called the place Kirikarrajarti, because of the hissing noise the possums made. My father’s jarriny is the possum, and he is called Kirikarrajarti after this place where the possums were fighting.

  My mother came from another group of people, who belonged to Japirnka waterhole. When my parents had been together for a while, I was conceived, and my jarriny comes from near the jila Mantarta. Near Mantarta is a smooth sandhill called Lantimangu. It’s a place where spirit children live. When a husband and wife walk near there, one of the spirits thinks, ‘I’ll go to them. I’ll make them a mother and father.’ One time my parents got a lot of edible gum from desert nut trees that were growing all around there, on the flat down from Lantimangu. That night my father had a dream and saw a child standing behind him, but when he turned round it disappeared. Next day he said to his wife, ‘This gum might be the jarriny for our baby.’ He had a feeling about it. Then my mother knew she was expecting me, and so my spirit comes from that sandhill called Lantimangu.

  There was a really bad spirit child living at Lantimangu. He was my spirit brother. He threw a fighting stick at my grandmother and hit her on the back because she was digging up a root vegetable from his place. He snatched the roots from her and left her there on the ground, crippled.

  My mother’s father also came from the Japirnka waterhole, but his wife, my grandmother, was from Mayililiny waterhole, to the east, near the Canning Stock Route. My grandfather travelled over there and brought her back to be his wife. My father’s mother belonged to Tapu and Wayampajarti, two waterholes north of Japirnka.

  My mother had four children, three girls and a boy. My father had two other wives besides my mother. His second wife, who was my mother’s sister, had three boys and a girl. My father’s third wife had a girl and a boy. All ten of us had the same father.

  Our regular journeys for hunting and collecting food took us around the country to the north and to the south of Mantarta waterhole. Although Mantarta is a jila, it hasn’t got a water serpent in it.

  When I was a child I learnt to kill small lizards to eat. I killed the thorny devil, dragon lizards, and small marsupials. I cooked them myself and ate them. Sometimes my grandmother or older sister would kill a blue-tongue lizard for me.

  After the wet season, we’d leave Mantarta and hunt and gather around the freshly watered country. As we travelled we drank water from pools in the swampy ground, then we returned to Mantarta. We hunted and gathered west of Mantarta, getting water from the jumu Nyalmiwurtu, Lirrilirriwurtu, Yirrjin, Warntiripajarra and Pirnturr. These were jumu we drank from as we travelled about after the wet season when jumu had water in them.

  Our journeys also took us to quite a few jila south of Mantarta — Wirtuka, Paparta, Mukurruwurtu, Warnti and Japirnka.

  Some years, in the cold weather, we travelled north to other permanent waterholes. We went to Walypa, then to Wayampajarti, Wirrikarrijarti, Kurralykurraly and to Wanyngurla. At Wanyngurla there were a lot of bush onions to gather and eat. We also went to Tapu, then Kurrjalpartu, Wiliyi and Kayalajarti.

  Following the rainy season and right through into the cold season we gathered many different grass seeds to eat. These are the names of the grasses: nyarrjarti, puturu, ngujarna, nyalmi, manyarl, jiningka, purrjaru and karlji. We call this kind of food puluru. We also gathered bush onions. Another food we gathered in that season was the nectar from various hakea and grevillea blossoms. We used to suck the nectar from the flowers or soak the flowers in water to make a sweet drink.

  When the hot season came, we gathered seeds from acacia trees. We also collected flying termites that we found in antbed. People used to go looking for them in the early morning with a heavy stick, and smash the antbed with the stick to get termites. They used a coolamon to separate some of the termites from the dirt and covered the rest with sand to pick up later. When they came back they uncovered them and separated the rest of them, and then took them back to their camp. They put the termites out in the sun to dry and left them there until they were crisp. Only then were they ready to eat, after the sun had done its work. Everybody ate them — they were delicious.

  We used to eat a desert nut called ngarlka. The nuts dropped to the ground when they were ripe. The whole year round we could gather them from under the trees, in the hot season and the cold season. We could eat them any time. The new nuts hang there on the trees unripe until the hot season comes.

  For food we used to hunt and kill feral cat, bandicoot, dingo, fox, two kinds of hare-wallaby, sand goanna, different kinds of snake, rough-tailed goanna, blue-tongue lizard and echidna.

  We travelled like that year after year, from one waterhole to the next, drinking at jila and drinking at jumu, at rockholes and at claypans, hunting animals and gathering the fruit and seeds of the land.

  A good rainy season made the grasses grow well and gave us many kinds of seed and plenty of nectar from the flowers. In a poor wet season, very little grass grew and there wasn’t much seed for us to gather. In a good year
with a lot of rain we were able to store away the seed to eat later on.

  To store the seed we would strip some bark from a paperbark tree to wrap the seed in a parcel, or we’d gather some strong grass and use that to make a container like a nest for holding the seed. We wrapped the seed tightly in packages, and tied them up. Then we cut four forked sticks from a tree, put rails across, and built a frame on top of them. We arranged parcels of food wrapped up in grass or bark on the frame. Then we built a small hut over the top of it to prevent the food from getting dry. We left it there so that we could come and get it later when we needed it and the trees no longer had seeds.

  Sometimes we stored seeds, particularly acacia seeds, in a hole in the ground. We used to line the hole with grass, put in a layer of seeds and cover it with bark and then sand. Later, when there was no food left in the bush for us to gather, we came back to get it. We pulled the seeds out of the hole. To get rid of the strong wattle seed smell, we washed them. We cooked them in the fire and then ground them with water till they became a paste, and we ate it like that.

  When people went hunting for animals in the hot season, they made sandals for themselves from the bark of the yakapiri bush. And that is what they called the sandals, yakapiri. These protected their feet from the burning hot sand. They speared foxes, feral cats, wallabies and sand goannas. The majirri has disappeared from the desert now.

  Sometimes in the hot season, we’d set off to a waterhole a long way off. We’d set off late in the afternoon, when the day was a little cooler, carrying water in our coolamons. As we walked, we drank the water until there was none left. When it was time to camp for the night, the adults found a claypan that had recently held water. They dug up some of the damp clay and threw it around on the ground to make a cool place for us to sleep. We set off again early in the morning while it was still cool, and went on to the jila.

  I’ll tell you some more about when I was a child. I was taught to use a coolamon for separating seed from the sand and bits of grass. My grandmother took my hands and held them under the coolamon. ‘This is the way you separate the seed,’ she said, as she showed me how to shake it. She taught me not to jerk the coolamon around, because then the seed wouldn’t separate properly. I didn’t really master that separating action till a long time later, when I was bigger. By then I could do a good job of separating the seed from the debris.

  I learned to cook meat in the same way. I used to kill small animals and bring them home uncooked. My grandmother and I lit the fire, then she said, ‘Bring me a yirnti and we’ll cook the meat. You must leave the meat in the coals until it’s well cooked. You can’t eat it if it’s only half done. You can only eat it if it’s cooked properly.’

  I also learned to cook ngarlka by moving them around in the fire. When we had raked them about in the coals for a certain length of time, they’d be just right to eat.

  Sometimes a mother dog brought back lizards and regurgitated them whole for her puppies. We snatched them from the pups and rolled them in the sand to clean off the slime. Then we cooked them on the fire and ate them.

  My grandmother used to tell me about the people with the pink skin, called kartiya. I was curious and kept asking her about them. I imagined kartiya were like trees or dogs or something.

  ‘What are kartiya like? Do they look like blood? Or are they like ashes? Tell me.’

  She’d answer, ‘No, they are like people. They have two eyes, a mouth and a nose. And two hands.’

  ‘Do they have hair?’

  ‘Yes, of course they have hair.’

  I had often seen blood. When I killed a small lizard, some of its blood dripped onto my hand or onto the wooden shovel. ‘Are kartiya the colour of this blood from the lizard?’ I’d ask.

  ‘Yes, just like that.’

  I was really curious about these kartiya.

  Abridged from Two Sisters: Ngarta & Jukuna

  Ngarta Jinny Bent, Jukuna Mona Chuguna, Pat Lowe and Eirlys Richards;

  translated from the Walmajarri by Eirlys Richards, 2004.

  Joan Winch

  MY MOTHER

  My mum was an undemanding sort of a person who couldn’t say no to people. She used to always do things for others, like washing, cooking and house cleaning. If somebody came to the door who needed her help it was never too much trouble. That’s probably the way she was brought up, to go and do things for other people, for white people, you know, because they used to train Aboriginal girls to be domestic servants in those days. Mum was taken away from her family when she was two years old, so I suppose she didn’t know any different. When you’re that young you don’t ask what happened to your mother or your father or even wonder how your life is going to turn out.

  So Mum was bought up by people who weren’t her family. When she was fourteen, she was farmed out from Moore River Settlement to a place called Petworth Park in Moora, where she worked as a farm girl. I have some photos of her sitting there on the farm. She was a nanny to the kids and also helped with the cooking. That was the fate of many young Aboriginal girls and that was the kind of work she did on and off till the day she died.

  Mum was a wonderful mother. She was very good with her hands and great at making jams and cakes. Every time we had the school fete they would send down and ask her to make a cake to raffle. On rainy days she’d entertain me by making little dolls out of stockings — we didn’t have any money to buy toys. She also showed me and my two brothers how to paint; she was a great artist herself. She knitted our clothes and she taught me how to knit and crochet and I was quite good at it. Since I was the only girl in the family, she liked to teach me homemaking things so we were real cobbers.

  When I was young I didn’t know where Mum came from or who her people were. Mum didn’t know herself, but my dad was a Nyungar man. He was Phillip Heath from Katanning, and he was the one who kept us three kids in line.

  The Chief Protector of Aborigines, A.O. Neville, had been very angry when Mum married Dad, because at that time a woman was supposed to marry someone lighter in colour than she was. The Aborigines Department was trying to breed out our colour so we wouldn’t exist anymore. That’s what White Australia was all about. Probably Neville was angry too because Mum had worked for him as a housegirl then gone and married someone he wouldn’t approve of behind his back. The Native Welfare controlled every aspect of your life in those days. It was very hard for Aboriginal people then and I learned very young that I’d have to be determined if I wanted to get anywhere.

  It’s funny the things you learn in childhood. I remember an annual work picnic for Dad’s work that we attended once as a family, I learned a valuable lesson there. I was a fast runner so I entered the open race and won. I was really excited and ran over to my parents, shouting, ‘I won! I won!’ I couldn’t believe it! The prize was an electroplated nickel sugar bowl, which was a big thing in those days. The next thing though — they were running the race again. Well, that was it! I wasn’t going to be beaten by anyone, so I lined up again and I won again, only this time by an even bigger margin. I’ve still got that sugar bowl, but nothing before or since has more graphically signified to me the uphill road that we have as Aboriginal people in competing in Australian society.

  I loved my mother very much, but I lost her when I was only twelve going on thirteen. With no sisters to talk to I really felt it deeply. It was a terrible blow. She was still with our family in spirit for quite a while though, which wasn’t unusual because as Nyungar people we are used to living with spirits. I grew up talking about gennarks and other sorts of spiritual things. After Mum died though, the spiritual world came a lot closer to me.

  Not long after she passed away, I was sitting in the dining room doing some mending when suddenly I felt a bit strange. There was something at the back of my neck and it made me look up. There was Mum, standing in the passageway, as clear as day. Well, I nearly died of shock! My brain told me she was dead, but there she was, standing there. And she wasn’t just like a flimsy bit of
white smoke that people sometimes describe when they say they’ve seen a ghost, she was a real person. I didn’t know what to do, so I rushed outside, jumped on my pushbike and started riding, all the time thinking, ‘I’m not going home because Mum is supposed to be dead.’ I rode until around six o’clock at night, it was getting dark by then and I started to worry. If we weren’t home by five Dad used to give us the father of a hiding, so I ended up going home.

  ‘Well,’ Dad said when he saw me. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Oh Dad don’t touch me! I saw Mum and I got a fright and ran out.’

  Luckily he understood about spirits so everything was all right. In Dad’s family whenever anyone died his dead mother came and knocked on the window to let them know someone close had gone. Every time he saw his mother knock on the window he knew another member of the family had gone, so he understood what had happened to me.

  In fact, after Mum died he used to go down to the backyard with a lantern every night after tea to talk to her. When he returned he’d say, ‘I’ve just been talking to your mother and she is worried about you kids because she doesn’t think I can look after you.’ We would look at him as if he was a bit funny, then we’d go into the bedroom and bounce up and down on the beds and throw pillows at each other and say, ‘Dad is going mad, the old man is going mad.’

  Then there was our old dog Dale, he was as bad as Dad because he really missed Mum. Our place was one house down from the corner and Dale used to wait up there in the long grass for her to come home from work. The only time he would plod down the road was to get something to eat, then he would plod back up again and sit in this little nest he’d made and wait. So there were the two of them, the dog on the corner waiting for Mum and Dad down the backyard talking to Mum about us kids every evening. This went on for three months, until finally Dad came back one night and said, ‘That’s it, your mother is gone now. She’s happy that I can look after you kids, so now she’s gone.’ He didn’t go down the backyard with the lantern any more and the dog came back from waiting at the corner.