Black Duck, page 15
Her conversation drew my lens into sharp focus.
So, Here’s the Dream
After leaving Maree we walked around the town looking for a meal and a beer. Alice is not scary, but the town has a lot of bored black people on the streets, some of them bored and drunk. Most are kids. It is clear that something has broken.
I sat down to write this part of the book after watching poor old Mallacoota try to run a music festival in blizzard conditions and a power outage in the Easter of 2023. The town just kept plugging away, Plan B followed by Plans C, D, E and F.
There was an Aboriginal presence in the programming and they became the heart of it. Kutcha Edwards, as usual, produced one of the great shows, but his niece, Holly Johnson, wasn’t far behind. I’ve known Holly since she was a girl, so I was moved to see her commitment to culture.
I yarned to some of the Gippsland Aboriginal families and marvelled at their strength, and how it had survived such persistent attack.
Unemployment, ice and alcohol are scourges in our community. Suspicion of government is rife, involvement in available health services is low. Why? Well, you run your country perfectly for 100,000 years and then one day the whole thing is snatched away from you. You get treated like animals, shot and raped, the church tells lies about your culture, the school history lessons advise of your inferiority, people gnash their teeth about whether or not to include you in the constitution. Then see how resilient you are.
Traumas like that do not go away quickly, but how have some families risen above the reverberations of dispossession and others have descended into endless desperation and the poverty that haunts misfortune? Many families have not had an employed person beneath their roof for over three generations. You cannot mount a resistance to dispossession while living under such relentless disadvantage.
So, here’s the dream. We point out to the government that of all the millions made from Indigenous food only 1 per cent goes to Aboriginal people. We tell them that we will take over all their Aboriginal employment programs and train our people to reform Australian forests and national parks by thinning and cool burning. We employ thousands and thousands in the forests and, in the agriculture and food industry, we employ thousands more.
Professor Marcia Langton, Associate Provost at Melbourne University, cautions that many of our people aren’t work ready and it’s true. So many Aboriginal people have no experience with the demands of work and planning for it. It is not beyond us, but it is learnt behaviour, you learn it by watching your parents do it, not from a dopey training program designed only to calm the hearts of decent Australians.
I have seen Aboriginal people trained and trained to do menial tasks by non-Aboriginal people who are simply going through the motions, knowing that there is no job available. On the other hand, I have seen Aboriginal people trained by other Aboriginal people with entirely different results. It works when slackness isn’t tolerated. Government programs can’t do this because they are toy programs, there is no urgency or real expectation of them being completed or honoured.
On the farm, the jobs have to get done, your brothers and sisters depend on your commitment. In the forest it works the same, it requires a team to make the job safe. If someone is away the job can’t be completed and everybody suffers.
For that commitment and skill you get paid, your children have shoes, their teeth are fixed and nobody, nobody can tell you what to do.
I have stood in Centrelink queues with Aboriginal people who have needed support in putting their case. It is demoralising, a waste of time and energy, and the department owns you. Many of the staff are good people but their rules mean they have to treat adults like children and that means people learn to behave like children; always in the naughty corner.
I see a different future. I see us being able to honour our relationship with Mother Earth to improve Australian agriculture and forestry. We can develop a truly Australian cuisine based on the old food production techniques and, instead of stealing it from us, Australia pays us for the produce and, in doing so, we reduce carbon emissions, we preserve scarce water resources and we build soil, because ours are Australian plants, they do not have to be coddled like hot house flowers. These are not platitudes, we actually perform these miracles on the farm, but it’s not magic, it’s the result of simply treating Australia like herself.
In the dream I see our community buy one of the four bakeries which have closed down in our district over the last few years. We train our kids to be bakers and retailers, then we buy the local pub and turn it into a top-class cafe and restaurant. We train our people to be chefs and waiters, managers, retailers.
We buy the old petrol station which closed a decade ago and turn it into an electric vehicle recharge hub. Then we buy the tour boat and train half a dozen young people to get a Coxswain’s certificate (to allow them to operate a boat in sheltered waters) and run bird and history tours around the lakes. Recently we could have bought all of those things for less than a million dollars. I have seen stores of boots and clothing for abandoned training programs worth twice that amount.
What an investment it would be. What a return on the country’s investment. What pride and independence for the people. I think we could make massive change to our country very cheaply but Australia will have to let go of its mission complex. Don’t contemplate what can be done to fix Aboriginal people but instead begin thinking about how depleted Australian forests and farms can be revived with Aboriginal involvement.
It begins with changing the constitution. I am convinced that when the Australian people recognise Aboriginal people as the first peoples and acknowledge that the country was stolen from a viable society and economy all sorts of justice will flow.
That justice is pent up in the Australian people. You can feel it. Australia wants to take this step but some politicians and journalists cannot let go of the keys to the mission gate.
Those people are hanging on to a roast beef and royal coach idea of Australia and, like the megafauna, seem unaware that they themselves are disappearing. Do not let the dying dinosaur sweep you away with its vengeful tail. Feel sorry for Dino if you wish, but don’t let him, yes him, flirt with the worst side of your human nature.
Dino, piss off and hunt sparrows, we’re going to look after the Golden Whistler, the lyrebird and dingo; we want to be free, we want to be Australians.
The Currawong Grid and the Whale Pattern
We are now in the depth of winter and the currawongs have settled into a pattern. They are still gathering on the grass to the south of the Illamee garden, spacing themselves evenly and standing stock still before dashing forward a couple of paces and stabbing at something on the ground. This feeding behaviour is so well organised, so neatly geometric.
Meanwhile, Gurandgi are working hard to get our whale ceremony prepared. Marnie is keen to come so we picked her up from the airport and drove on to Narooma in preparation for the following day’s ceremony at Nangudga.
At dawn we performed the Grandfather Sun ceremony and then went to the estuary to honour the arrival of the whales. We worked hard at it from 11 am to 5 pm. Family and guests were invited and there were probably thirty-five of us on the beach. It is always such a moving ceremony. As the oldest woman in attendance, Lyn led the women into the circle and I could see how moved she was. The old dancer in her couldn’t be suppressed but I knew her knees would be quite remorseful the next day.
Preparing the dance ground
I was thrilled that brother Jacob Cassidy came down all the way from Forrest Beach near Townsville to bring his grandfather’s whale story to us. It was a moving thing to hear and meshed seamlessly with ours. It is our ambition to stitch all these stories into the old religious pre-colonial cloak.
I will visit Jacob soon on his Country where he will give me the full story and we will talk to the community about our food journey. Jacob’s community are very culturally active and have a venture where they convert old cars to run on electricity. In turn they are interested in our employment creation.
I was emotionally exhausted by the ritual for Gurawul but I had to get on a plane to Parkes to meet up with my brother Stretch. Geoff Anderson is a long streak of duck shit and I have called him Stretch for the twenty years we have worked together on language.
Brother had organised a big few days of language and cultural activities and there were so many young people involved it was really heartening. Stretch showed us the house where he was born and where the divide between black and white in Parkes was enforced right up to the 1980s.
Stretch trawls through Trove and often sends me details about our family and on this trip was able to talk about where part of our family lived. I was so grateful because I knew they had lived somewhere in the district.
The night session in the museum was a moving program, the local families sharing their stories and jokes.
Next day’s travel was arduous but when I got home I met Lyn on the track in drizzling rain. We greeted Grandfather the next day in the same fine mist but after ceremony I had to go straight into a series of Zooms and meetings. Kuboka was singing his heart out in the Lucerne tree near the clothesline and an Eastern Spinebill was enjoying the first bottlebrush flowers. Participants on the Zoom could hear the joy of my friends. Country always heals, and their voices were the balm of normality. Home.
We had guests from Yambulla down at the farm and Noel and Trish and the fellas cooked up a chicken and lily curry and baked two beautiful loaves of bread. These moments are very significant in the reclamation of our food culture and having family and community around always makes it special.
Chicken, lilies and greens
I look forward to the day when Australians think nothing of eating seared lily root and roo curry with Kangaroo Grass bread and Warrigal Green tapenade.
That food culture belongs at the farm. It grows in our ground and is told in our hills. Looking west from the paddocks a flat hill can be seen as a blue blur in between two closer mounts. Yuin man Graham Moore told us that this is the giant damper that two greedy brothers tried to hide in the trees so that they could have it all to themselves. To punish their selfishness, Daramah, the great creator, called up a violent wind which felled the trees and brought the damper down on the brothers, killing them.
Many of our legends are about the sin of greed, but they also remind us that the story of breadmaking is attached to our soil, that we are following a tradition so ancient that it has its own story etched in the land. The Old People prepared their bread and tubers right where we do and the cautionary tale of the greedy brothers peeps at us from the surrounding hills. We are reassured that we are following ancient lore.
Some have said that baking was unknown in southern districts but there are several stories which make it obvious that breads were made all over Australia. The greedy brothers’ story is told in many locations and we are glad to have our local version of the tale but, more importantly, it is a daily reminder, as we look up from the labour in the paddocks, that bread is part of our culture.
We are aware of ancient food provision on the farm when we turn up stone tools. Terry found a wonderful little edge ground axe right at the site of our new shed. That small tool is our talisman and protector.
Meanwhile, we are still working on the filming for The Dark Emu Story. That bloody bird won’t leave me alone. Allan Clarke arrived from Blackfella Films so that we could work through the script. It is pleasant work because Allan is such a good bloke, but tiring, nonetheless. I’m aware that I often complain about tiredness, but it is a fact of my life these days.
Ground axe excavated near our new shed site
Neither am I as tolerant of cold weather. There was a severe frost on the last day of July and it made me ache.
I pruned the grapevine and sprayed the fruit trees for curly leaf and later worked on the compost bins.
Lyn and I went for dinner at the Sea Horse Inn, one of those sanctuaries of mine during the fires and Covid lockdowns. I don’t know how they stayed open but they did. Those respites are legendary oases in my mind. On this night there was a clear sky with a wonderful sunset and small waves sighing onto the beach.
Early Spring
It is the season of eggs and babies so there is vibrant energy and
anxiety everywhere. Snakes and goannas appear, orchids bloom,
the bream are breeding in the deep holes upriver.
Birran Durran Durran Brings the Spring
The Spur-winged Plovers are very active. They strut about in a very upright posture while the currawongs take up their stations on the grass again. Those birds still steal the soap from the outside shower and nip more buds off the apple tree but they are family and have to be tolerated. As Uncle Max said, Patience, Tolerance, Respect.
The bowerbirds too are on the grass in front of the house and appear to be eating seed. I think they are targeting Flickweed. The Eastern Spinebill is slipping through the wire mesh to visit the bottle-brush tree in the Nullama garden while the Yellow-rumped Thornbill visits the bottlebrush near the kitchen window. It is as regular as clockwork at the beginning of spring. I know there is supposed to be another month before spring begins but the birds have called it, they are thinking about the excitement of eggs.
The plovers were running beside each other with their heads slightly down this afternoon and Koon ar rook (Wood Ducks), are running at each other with their necks outstretched. There’s an air of vibrance pulsating on the farm.
The young male Buru are still boxing each other enthusiastically and I never tire of watching them as I shower in the morning.
Terry, Nathan and I went out into the bush to cut some big coolamon blanks so that we can prepare some for the cultural camps that we hope will be coming up in March. When we first began our lore camps fifteen years ago there was a lot of plastic food packaging and utensils but, gradually, we are replacing the buckets and bowls with handmade objects. Our preparatory activities are contributing to the sense of anticipation.
As we finish up, Jitti Jitti (Willy Wagtail) is calling incessantly as the sun sets and the male Buru are scratching the tails of the females with great concentration. Frogs are calling loudly and swallows are hawking. The mood is intense and during the day we looked up from our work to comment on the activity.
The fellas made a beautiful coolamon and a paint pot out of the timber we gathered today and we’re looking forward to using them on our camp. These objects become familiar to Gurandgi with repeated use and we proudly tell new arrivals of the provenance of each.
I did a lot of tractor work the following day and, while the clutch pedal plays gyp with my knees, there was a beautiful fingernail moon in the north west to salve my pain.
Next morning, while I was in the shower, two young deer ran down the track and past the Water Ribbon Dam and continued all the way to the Phoenix shed where they disappeared from sight.
Wonga Pigeons called incessantly all day, joining the excitement of the season.
I had to leave early next morning and fly to Adelaide and then on to Wilpena Pound to be part of Warndu’s cultural festival. It is hard to resist invitations from community even when we are busy with our own work.
Damien Coulthard took me to some petroglyph and art sites in the gorge. Isaiah, Kristian Coulthard and Pauline McKenzie told me the stories of their Country including the two snakes that formed Wilpena Pound. These two snakes are huge players in Yuin story too.
The young Dieri people asked about our culture camps and I explained how one man’s determination to save his culture created a movement which saw seventy-five men at the last lore camp. In all, there are more than 150 Gurandgi, not always singing from the same song sheet, but all committed to cultural revival. I encouraged them to understand that they were capable of doing the same. They had the stories, they just had to enlist the enthusiasm of their cousins. Easier said than done, but what is the alternative?
Flinders Ranges, Wilpena Pound
I returned home and even though it was freezing cold I couldn’t be bothered lighting the fire. The currawongs were calling chewy chowa, a really distinctive call which I only hear at that time of year.
I went into the bush and cut some bends for boomerangs so that we can take them to our next lore camp. They become precious when we make them ourselves, from material off Country, but the great joy is seeing them get used by the brothers. A set of boomerangs clapped in ceremony, an ochre pot being used during preparation, a coolamon full of Bura (fish) and Walkun (abalone); it really imbues the object with memory and spirit.
I love hearing young fellas tell new Gurandgi about these things, it convinces me the culture isn’t dead.
Goomera, the Possum
Mount Ellery used to be known as Mount Goongerah or Goomera. It is a peak near the town of Goongerah and Uncle Max told me I had to climb it and find its story and tell it to other Gurandgi.
Lyn and I had climbed the mountain with another Aboriginal man, Clayton Harrison, decades ago, and he showed us the giant boulders which were the eggs of the Rainbow Serpent. Uncle Max knew about them but there were other things we needed to look out for.
We made repeated attempts to climb the mountain but all sorts of things intervened. The fires stopped us in 2019, then Covid and other people’s health.
Mount Ellery, Goongerah
I climbed it with Lyn and Wayne Thorpe in 2022 but Wayne’s health condition prevented him from getting to the summit and Lyn’s knees limited her.
It was a wild day and the dead spars of trees killed by the fires were clashing like the spears of warriors and deadly shafts were raining down around me, but I got up there and took some photos. Uncle Max was pleased that I had recognised some elements of the story but there was still something else we needed to observe.
