Black Duck, page 14
I am not a social person. I grew up lonely in lonely places and loved it. I ran into Melissa in Adelaide one night before the city’s writers festival, and she’s more socially reticent than me. We had dinner together. Kindred cranky spirits.
The night of the Northey Street Farm’s annual Winter Solstice Festival I stayed in a hotel which had better security than Junee prison; and the security of that prison I could take as a specialty subject on Hard Quiz. There was no restaurant open within cooee so I ate a packet of chips from a vending machine. Next morning, I tried hard to find a place that sold food and ended up eating something warmed in the glass cabinet of the BP servo.
I caught a ride out to the airport with a sister girl and mate of Melissa’s. Both of us were starving and suffering from enclosure. Aboriginal incarceration rates are higher than people realise! What did we do wrong?
I flew to Melbourne and saw Marnie and family and ate a home-cooked meal with the babble of family life barely penetrating the fog of my weariness.
I picked up my new Subaru and drove home but I only got as far as Lyn’s place at Gipsy Point. The car I sold to Jack a decade ago began to decline and he wanted mine. I sold it to him but had to wait six months to get another one because everybody was buying cars and toilet paper during Covid. I wanted an electric car but Subaru seem to be refusing to make one and, in any case, country distances are still a challenge for them.
I can’t believe that current electric car makers all have different charging systems. Men have learnt nothing since the big fellas decided to make uncomplimentary railway gauges in NSW and Victoria. Where was the woman to say, ‘Lads, put it away, your ego is not as important as a single gauge between Australia’s two biggest cities.’ No, state rights are essential for the survival of the male and it’s important for them to show who is boss!
We had two days of conference up at Yambulla to discuss Aboriginal food production and we smoked all the attendees in a dignified ceremony. Nathan, Terry and Rosco did it beautifully. We talked about cool burning but none of the guests had seen a cool burn so we lit one up.
Terry lights a fire
‘You won’t get it to burn today,’ the experts insisted but of course the fire crept in a steady pace across the grassland. ‘But now you’ve burnt the young grass,’ the experts chirped, but I just swept my hand across the burnt section to remove the ash and there below were the unburnt shoots of young grass.
Next morning, as we talked esoteric data theory, kangaroos descended on the burnt patch to nibble the exposed green shoots; a perfect example of why and how we burn. Australians will learn a lot in coming decades from such demonstrations.
Not all fire, however, is good fire, so the country has to be assessed very carefully to know the best time to burn and where. Burning country just because you can is not good science or culture.
When I came home I saw Cattle Egrets interacting with the bulls at Genoa Farm. I remember the first year they arrived in the Genoa valley in the seventies. They’d never been seen so far south so their sudden arrival was a mystery and a joy. I love the casual relationship between the two vastly different creatures.
Blackfellas
I had a long day of travel on 25 June to do an opening for an event run by David Gough in Tasmania. Years ago, David asked me to look at some stone etching of his people in the north of the state. His struggles to represent the culture moved me deeply and I was keen to support his event.
There were young black musicians playing at the opening and I was proud of their expertise. Patrick Churnside was a participant and I have been following his work on the Burrup Peninsula for decades.
I have had long interest in the Burrup art and Patrick is one of those at the forefront of its care. It is complicated because mining interests have built the local Aboriginal cultural centre and part of the community feel obliged not to criticise the number and placement of fertiliser factories being built close to the art galleries. It’s none of my business except that I have general concerns for the culture.
It seems grotesque to treat the millions of stone etchings like that, risking their oblivion with chemical erosion, but it is a very hard place for Aboriginal people to negotiate. Anyway, my job was to be in Wynyard supporting David Gough and his community. It was a terrific evening but the travel eroded me and I went to bed early.
Lyn had come over to light my fire and prepare dinner which was a lovely thought. It was great to be home. I have two swallows who roost on the back verandah light every winter. They make a terrible mess but they are such good friends I cannot deny them the shelter.
I have built them a little shelf below the light to catch most of their droppings. It is a patented SSS; Swallow Shitting Shelf.
While I was writing this, an old mate, Michael Drake, passed away. At that very moment a swallow flew in through his open door and no amount of encouragement could get it out. When Lyn heard she asked Michael’s wife June, ‘Did Michael like swallows?’ June’s jaw dropped and she replied, ‘He did, he spoke to them for hours every day.’
The next morning, Kuboka (Grey Shrikethrush) songbird was very hungry. I feed it a little cheese from time to time in winter. It seems grateful and never asks at any other season. The Jacky Winters’ chiming voice is a feature during winter as they come close to the house gardens. I revel in their company and miss them when I’m away.
A mob of us went to Merimbula to support a Koori film, The Lake of Scars. It was a good film and presented by that great heart, the late Jack Charles. Jack has never been anything but kind and supportive toward me. We often ended up walking together in rallies or talking in a corner at Blackfella events. He was a great man, loved by everyone who knew him. Those who overcome adversity are often particularly tolerant and supportive of others. It is their natural instinct.
It was a long drive home in the dark and we were driving slowly to avoid the kangaroos and wombats. We picked up a dead bandicoot and Lyn was entranced by its sharp little teeth and soft ears.
We usually inspect the pouches of dead marsupials and I remember one time when I found a roo on the Cape Otway Road and extracted a near-naked young. Lyn saw me with the animal and dashed out of the car and her hands were clutching and unclutching to express her need to hold the animal.
It seemed that only a woman could know how to care for the baby. It made me reflect on her visceral reaction to the orphan’s needs. She wasn’t being rude to me it was just that she couldn’t control her impulse.
That kangaroo was raised by us to adulthood through months of dependency and needy temperament. One morning it scratched at the fly wire screen near our bed and left. For a week or so we would find it grazing at dawn close to our window and it would acknowledge us but in a slightly confused manner and eventually it was gone for good.
Windy weather at the farm meant I had to cut obstructions off the track, then we tried to get a burn going in the grassland but it was too damp. That night we had a long Gurandgi meeting to plan our whale ceremony. We hold these meetings at 8 pm, which suits the men with young families, but I am always knackered at the end of the day. My energy has diminished in recent years. But to plan for the whale is an honour and obligation.
We got the fire tanker bogged in what one of the farm workers dubbed Apocalypse Valley after the 2019 fire destruction. We hauled the tanker out with the tractor and tried to make the track safer. It was a bit of a slog in the damp conditions.
That night we had a meeting and dinner with the new Black Duck manager and his family.
Next morning, we performed a Grandfather Sun ceremony so that the manager’s daughter could understand our commitment to the great creators. It’s a simple ceremony but we love it because it compels us to observe the entire sky and the presence of animals and birds. It settles and focusses us for the rest of the day. On Gurandgi camps we have had up to seventy-five men at Grandfather and the ceremony can take up to two hours. It is bonding and binding.
Lyn’s neighbour, Pat Wilkinson, lost her dog, Sheba, on 1 July, so Lyn and I went and buried the dog for her. Pat and her dogs are as close as we are with ours, so it was a stressful event, but allowed Pat to mourn her dog without the pain of handling her burial.
I put another coat of dark blue on the Muslim Gate as the bowerbirds and Wood Ducks gathered on the grass. Are they eating the seeds of Kikuyu Grass and Flickweed? Or insects? As I finished off the gate, twenty-eight Nenak (Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos) flew over the river.
I worked on an extension to the duck house to prevent their feed from getting wet. It clumps together if it’s damp and doesn’t drop down into the feeding tray. I worry while I’m away that they will be hungry if it rains.
I took a slow trip down river to have dinner with Lyn and saw thirty-five Binyaroo (Little Black Cormorants). I harvested some lily tubers from the garden. They are lovely at this time of the year and I am sure they will become one of Australia’s favourite vegetables. They are clear and snap fresh and delicious.
More cockatoos over the river as a beautiful sunset bled into the sky.
Hens and Dogs and the Pugilism of Kangaroos
Lyn’s poor old Tiny Tips, the red hen, died after an incredibly long life. She hadn’t laid an egg in years but she refused to give up on her life and struggled up the hill every afternoon during even the hottest weather. She had gravitas, Tiny did.
I shower outside and, at that time of the year, I am able to watch at least three bouts of boxing from groups of young male kangaroos. They try for the higher ground and have begun feinting with the claws on their large feet. It’s all hijinks and play before it gets serious.
Those kicks can be deadly as poor old Wangarabell found out when she was a pup. She chased a big roo and it backed into the river and she made the mistake of swimming out to it. The roo grabbed her and ripped her with its hind toe.
We weren’t there to see it as we were looking for her on the other side of the house. A neighbour rushed up with the little dog bleeding profusely. A whole flap of skin had come away from her throat to her groin but she had not been disemboweled as often happens.
I slapped the skin back in place and we rushed her up to the vet who sewed her back up like a potato bag. She made a perfect recovery and the only indication of the event were little buttons of scar tissue on her belly. Made of corrugated iron those blue heelers.
Kangaroos are a dangerous animal. Big males will chase each other around the house for hours until one gives up exhausted or wounded and lies panting. The victor goes to the mob of females but is in no fit state to mate until it has recovered.
The defeated usually go off on their own and literally lick their wounds. We watched one old deposed male take to the shade of Lyn’s orange tree many years ago and it seemed a lonely, depleted existence after the excitement of living with the mob.
A few months later it was dead and I carried it up to our roo cemetery in the bush behind the tip. Over winter it is common to lose young roos too so there is quite a collection up there for the consideration of Bunjil.
I love the family of roos. If you surprise them the little ones will lean back and appraise you with comic intent. The old males when they rear back like that can look like old masons holding their hands across the furry aprons of their bellies.
Such gentle families
The currawongs are collecting around the house now. There might be thirty or so and they space themselves equidistantly across the grass and stand there stock still before dashing forward a couple of paces to pick something from the grass. This behaviour fascinates me, the social organisation of it, the knowledge of Country.
Of less fascination is their habit of nipping the flowers off the apple tree beside the woodshed. This is an old tree and produces delicious apples if allowed. The currawongs have also developed the habit of stealing the soap from the outside shower. Even if I hide it under a flannel they will dig it out so I have to remember to take it inside.
Wangarabell is terribly restless of an evening these days and does a lot of pacing about and complaining until you sit down to watch the news and then she puts her head in your lap and is asleep instantly. Is she sore or spoilt?
A Beer at Genoa
Late autumn and winter is the time I prune the fruit trees, a real marker of farm rhythms. I also slashed some bracken near the horse paddock and the disturbance of insects delighted the swallows. It was a rainy day while I was on the tractor but quite comfortable on the old Case.
I had been on the farm on my own for days so I contemplated a trip into the big smoke of Genoa to pick up the mail from the pub. I love having a beer with Dave and talking sport and outrageous local scandal. It astonishes me how busy the district can be.
Ken Bridle and Ted (Flat Duck) Dexter were there too. I taught young Ken, but not much, and Ted has only been here thirty years so he has to watch his manners. I really enjoy those quiet beers and the chance to find out what is happening away from my stretch of the river.
The pub is an absolute classic. It was built of pise in the 1920s but a fire destroyed the top floor. It has seen better days but it holds so many memories of music and laughter.
It was the focus of survival during the fires and has been the heart for most community events during its life.
The Genoa auctions used to attract big crowds and blokes you’d only ever see on auction day would creep out of the bush to poke at piles of old tools with a stick, as if in contempt, and then make surreptitious bids because they’d seen a perfectly good shifting spanner amongst the pile. One of those old blokes was me.
You’d often see the same BBQ plate, ratchet screwdriver or patio chair every year. They’d sell so cheaply they’d be irresistible to some people but then when they were viewed in the cold hard light of your own backyard they would reveal themselves as junk. Back to the auction the very next year.
After the auction we’d retire to the hotel and discuss the most notorious purchases. ‘He’ll never finish that white boat hull. It’s cheap alright, but he doesn’t know which end of a screwdriver to poke at it.’
Never heard so much wry and good-humoured wisdom.
Painting the Desert
For the last few years Lyn has travelled with a mob of mates on a painting camp in winter. That year they went to Ross River out of Alice Springs and I was allowed to tag along to write.
Poor old Bell can’t come but Gurandgi brother Cooma and Alison and young Marlo are going to care for her at Lyn’s place.
The long trip to Alice was interrupted by Rex plane delays again so we arrived late. We stayed at the old Ross River Homestead and the mob went off painting every day and I holed up in the room and plugged away at the astronomy book.
One day we all went out to N’Dhala Gorge, which Lyn and I had visited with Jack on our ’93 round Australia trip. We travelled in a van the size of a large shoe box but as we fished and swam almost every day it was comfortable enough. It was wonderful to walk the petroglyph trail again and wonder at such a cohesive and gentle philosophic expression of life.
A central theme is the humble caterpillar. I’m always moved by the gentleness of our culture, selecting small things to represent the Earth’s power. It shows a completely different attitude to the world and the understanding of human existence within it. No heraldry, no army, no weapons, no butchery, no kings and rooms of gold, but caterpillars and birds that weigh as much as half a dozen cotton balls.
I am entranced by that modesty. Aboriginal people are human with all the same characteristics of the species; love and hate, violence and peace, kindness and cruelty but have an entirely different set of spiritual priorities and governance. I didn’t grow up with that knowledge but became exposed to it gradually thanks to an uncle and several generous elders.
It is common for Australians to scoff when I talk about this philosophy but I am certain that, in time, the world will understand the value of viewing existence in this light and, hopefully, ensuring that the originators of this thought can practise it in peace while sharing it with others. Sharing it, not having it usurped.
I am 100 per cent saltwater so this red Country in the Centre is not mine, but being out of Country and the demands of the farm allows me restful anonymity. I sat in the dry riverbed of Trephina Gorge and doodled with a drawing of my three salt rivers. I watched sunsets on rocky outcrops and in this slightly dislocated mood was able to write pages for the astronomy book.
Deb, the artist-organiser, indulged my presence and allowed me to dip in and out of the art projects. I was in awe of how each of the artists approached their work and how dedicated they were. It made for a quiet, peaceful camp. At night, I sat in the smoke of the campfire, because it always guaranteed me a seat and no mosquitoes, and listened as the others chatted about their lives and art.
Lyn’s sketch from a dry riverbed
There was a deep sense of wanting Australia to pull up its socks in regard to acknowledging how the country was founded. I have heard it all before but, even so, it is encouraging, even though talk with fellow artists is cheap. Talking with those who disagree with us is the hard slog. It is only those uncomfortable conversations that can bring change. To both sides.
When we got back to Alice Springs I ran into the Aboriginal artist Maree Clarke and another old brother from the early language foundation days. The conversations we had on the footpath galvanised feelings which had been hovering like metal filings around the attraction of a distant magnet.
Maree’s understanding of the colony is as good as anyone’s and her views brought the magnet closer and the metal fragments attached themselves neatly to the pole, providing the perspective that had been hovering in my thoughts. The way her mind works has always fascinated me, that breadth of perspective, that inspired art.
