Black Duck, page 2
The Wallagaraugh River
Her hard work and persistence was a big factor in us being able to insist on running the company as an Aboriginal business instead of a token effort run by self-serving white entrepreneurs.
My connection to the land goes back a long way. Around 1963 my Uncle Alf had introduced me to the Wallagaraugh River.
He was a ratbag, drinker, swearer, smoker, gambler, blasphemer, driver of a grey Pontiac, everything my father wasn’t. I loved my father, but was entranced by the bravado and stories of my uncle’s wild life. And his close association with my grandfather; a drinker, swearer, country sideshow huckster, driver of a horse and cart.
Uncle introduced me to people he said were our family as we rode in Hancock’s fish truck. This life was a revelation, the antithesis of respectability, the thing the rest of the family so badly wanted.
My father also took me to Mallacoota (Coota) but in a Morris Oxford rather than a fish truck. The Oxford could not compete with the glamour of a fish truck.
It was a long road to get back to the Wallagaraugh after those first visits, but this is the story of a year in her company, the company of Yumburra, the Black Duck, supreme spiritual being of Yuin Country.
Late Summer
Fly away seeds of Murnong
The mornings smell of dry grass and the Yellow-faced Honeyeater’s
chickup-chickup call rings through the forest.
Gipsy Point
Gipsy Point is spelt with an ‘i’ because the skipper of the boat of that name couldn’t spell. She collected stores of wattle bark from the district and took them to Melbourne for sale to the tanneries. When I bought the farm, Green Range, on the banks of the Maramingo Creek in 1975, there were still bales of wattle bark tied with sisal rope waiting for a collection that never came after chemical leather tanning took over from wattle bark.
The bales had been made by Old Freeman who lived along Freemans Track. Some say he was an Aboriginal Yuin man. His neighbour, Caleb Cook, from Green Range, also collected bark and eventually sold his land to James Hardie and company, who were wattle bark traders and tanners before they began their asbestos adventure.
The last wattle bark jetty in the Backwater, upstream from Gipsy Point, was pulled down around 2015, a sad day for the white history of the town. When I first came to the district, I found wattle and Melaleuca poles stacked neatly in the shallows. The logs encouraged cobberers (Teredo worms) to burrow inside them. It was a favourite food of local Aboriginal people and tastes like oyster.
Who put those stacks there? Jinoor Jack, Uncle Muns? These two prominent Aboriginal men spent a lot of time around these rivers. We might never know who created the stacks but it was a comfort to see them there. There’s a lot of history that goes unnoticed around here.
The Gipsy Point Hotel was pulled down around 1998 and replaced with tourist accommodation. The district lost its favourite pub and social identity. Lyn and I bought the land in 2001, and when the house was finished in 2004, we would go down to the public jetty every Friday night to eat a meal and have a drink. Soon it became a town ritual.
In winter we have seven to eight stoics, in summer when our families are with us, there might be fifty. The town only has around fifteen residents; if they are all home.
These days it is shocking to think how many we have lost of that company over the two decades of the jetty pub. The park bench we got Robert Stevens to build for us is now covered in plaques for the old, missing friends. Bob is a local furniture maker and we’ll need to engage his services again quite soon!
When we gathered on 1 January 2022, we were aware of the departed but exhilarated by the clutter of children storming in to the tables to devour the chips and chicken but avoiding the salads as if they were radioactive.
Three of our grandkids were there and, even though they knew few of the gang of town grandchildren, they were soon bombing off the jetty and using my boat, Nadgee IV, as the staging point for further sorties. They had plastic rafts and boogie boards 30 metres from the jetty so that there was a never-ending stream of swimmers, divers, climbers and fetchers.
I was mesmerised by the beauty of the scene, filled with warmth by the good humour and communal care they shared for each other. It was an unforgettable night because I not only saw growth in my grandchildren, but I also witnessed the decency and maturity of all the other Summer Gipsy Kids. I’ll never forget the humanity of it. Wild children watched over by the ones who loved them and they, in turn, watching over those smaller or meeker than themselves.
The babies, too small to risk in the water, were goggle-eyed with wonder at the antics of the older children and struggled to be free. Wiser arms held them and offered them wonderful things to eat and, when that failed, a song or a toy, but those babies’ eyes swivelled back to the jetty at every shriek and explosion of water. They were crazed with aquatic ambition.
Bunjil
I took Nadgee back to the farm, and when I got back to the house Bunjil was sitting on the edge of the duck yard but fortunately had not been able to get in. I have to be respectful and polite to Bunjil, the Wedge-tailed Eagle, but she had been testing me. The previous week she had taken two ducks and four ducklings.
Ruski, one of the ducks, had a deep wound to the chest which we fixed with Pippin’s antibiotic spray. Pippin is a horse, not a chemist. I couldn’t believe Ruski had survived. The eagle had grabbed her in her talons, which went straight through her wing and into her chest. The ducks went off the lay immediately and were glassy-eyed with horror for weeks.
Over the year the eagles had killed five ducks and six ducklings despite the various coverings I had erected for their yard. I erected a chicken wire roof over the entire area but not before Mick, the mad road builder from Cann River, discovered an eagle in the yard and captured it in his coat. He took a video of himself unveiling the giant bird on the back of his ute as if he was a famous prestidigitator. The bird was huffy with disdain and wheeled away in great chagrin.
Bunjil, the Wedge-tailed Eagle
As usual, the duck yard was a charnel house. I had bought the ducks to entertain the grandkids when they stayed with me during the Covid lockdowns but when they left, they left the ducks too. All the ducks had names so there were some strained conversations after every Bunjil visit.
Earlier in the year I returned to the farm from working interstate and found three eagles in the duck yard and a trail of death. The birds stood up to the height of my shoulder and were a daunting pack. That year’s young was with its parents but the look they gave me was full of defiance.
I had to tear down all the bird netting I had installed, yes, alright, of course it would never have done the job, but bird netting is cheap and quick and I’m time poor. I had to herd the eagles toward the clear space above them. The first leapt to the top rail, more than 3 metres, in a single bound. It felt like having a vulture above me. The other two were harder to encourage but soon I was able to turn my attention to installing more substantial wire and soothing the ducks.
The ducks are constantly alert
It helped to take the carcass of the drake from the roof above them.
I took all the dead birds and spread them on the ground. The eagles watched on with contempt and fury but next morning all the dead were gone. The eagles still check out the strength of the yard roof every summer when the entreaties of that year’s young get too persistent. The high-pitched eer eer eer is a constant sound in the warm months.
Grasses
I checked the grasses on the south hill paddock and then we all went to harvest Murnong seed. For $5 a bag, the grannies are very enthusiastic. But there is a mountain of seed to collect from the daisies and lilies. The seed will soon go into tubes ready for planting into the gardens in April and May.
In summer we also harvest Buru Ngalluk (Kangaroo Grass), Garrara Ngalluk (Spear Grass) and Mamadyan Ngalluk (Dancing Grass), thresh it and mill it into flour. It makes beautiful bread.
The Old People’s tubers, Murnong (Yam Daisy) and Munyang (Vanilla Lily), have delicious roots, so we are trying to ensure these superb grains and tubers are grown and harvested by Aboriginal people. It is important that we demonstrate that we have maintained contact with our food culture. We employ mostly Yuin people from Eden and Bega. Terry, Nathan and Chris are long-term employees and all deeply involved in culture.
Terry Hayes has been here from day one. He worked on the building of the enclosed gardens. Terry is a Yuin man and part of the Gurandgi lore group. His Mumbullah and Hayes family both have important cultural links. Nathan Lygon is also a Yuin man. I knew Nathan through work on Yuin language and our membership with the Twofold Aboriginal Corporation.
Spear grass
Chris Harris is a Nyaampa man and I met Chris when he was working for Mundabaa, the Twofold Aboriginal Corporation building group, who built the new rooms on the farm house. Chris was plastering but kept on asking what we were doing on the farm. When I asked if he was interested in working for us he jumped at the chance. He drives an hour and a half every day to get to work. That’s dedication.
Chris and Terry milling flour
Black Duck Foods was established as a basis for this social enterprise. It was purchased and established with the funds raised from selling an old house and the income from book sales of Dark Emu. The aim is to grow and sell food, but the underlying ambition is to protect Aboriginal food sovereignty and create real employment opportunities.
Summer is incredibly busy for Black Duck because so much of the food needs to be harvested in that season, but amongst all the harvesting there is another dominant pattern to family life. It is called swimming. I bribe the kids to help me harvest seed while the farm crew are on leave, but after the seed harvesting we all go down to the river and the old stand-up paddle board is again the venue for gymnastics and piracy.
Yumburra
The farm is on the Wallagaraugh river and 2 kilometres downstream it merges with the Jinoor into which the Maramingo has already flowed. The three salt rivers to which my book Salt is dedicated are also the subject of a song the Yuin Gurandgi sing to celebrate this side of the Great Dividing Range.
Yuin Gurandgi are the cultural lore group established by Uncle Max Harrison. There are over 150 lore men and a growing group of women. It is not the only lore group in the south-east but it is probably the biggest and most active. Uncle Max led an active and successful life but toward the end of it he worried about how Yuin lore would continue. He began to collect local men around him so that he could impart the lessons given to him by Uncle Muns.
The farm is on the southern Yuin Country to which my Uncle Alf and Dad introduced me when I was a boy. The farm has a prominent bluff above the river, which I noticed way back in 1963 without realising its importance. The two coolamon scars at the edge of the clearing were obvious enough but the knoll also had an Aboriginal history. When I inspected it more closely, I noticed some stones scattered in a corner of the clearing, and when I showed those stones to Uncle Max he said he’d seen something similar before and he thought he could put it back together.
We had twenty-five Gurandgi staying on the property at the time so we re-established the arrangement and found that it aligns perfectly east and west.
Below the knoll, or buna, a shallow creek joins the Wallagaraugh and in the middle of the river there is a sandbar, often exposed at low tide and patrolled by two plovers, Birran Durran Durran.
Old George Johnson, the first beef farmer and logger to live on the property after the original inhabitants had been evicted, had a jetty that reached into the creek, a very safe anchorage. The jetty survived many floods in the seventies and eighties but when I came back to the rivers it had collapsed.
I brought a chain and my old Case International tractor down to the river, and by making a loop around the furthermost timbers I was able to lift it gently with the hydraulics of the tractor. There were some timbers missing but it had been constructed out of Grey Box poles and planks. Grey Box is incredibly tough timber. Be careful trying to hammer a 6-inch nail into box because the hammer is likely to rebound.
In the seventies I had a farm on the Maramingo (fish spear) Creek and my neighbours, the perpetually supportive Becker family, helped me build a bridge across the Glue Pot Creek to give me access to the old overgrown farm I had bought.
In 2016 I attended a fire on the property as part of the Country Fire Authority (CFA), but when the fire was controlled I took the opportunity to go back to the bridge. I got a large screwdriver from the truck and got beneath the bridge and whacked the screwdriver into the timber. I nearly broke my wrist. Grey Box. Fifty years later but still as sound as when those poles were dropped in place.
With a couple of new poles I was able to stabilise Old George’s jetty and with saved timbers from an old jetty at Gipsy Point I was able to re-plank it. It now serves as home for Nadgee IV and the water sports of my grandkids.
Boats
I bought the original Nadgee from Frank Buckland of Sunny Corner in Mallacoota. Frank had been a lake net fisherman but by the seventies was ‘resting’, hiring out tourist boats and recovering furniture and livestock when the Jinoor was in flood.
He was a rascal too. He told tourists that his boats ran on salt water. He would demonstrate by pouring saltwater into the tank. The old Simplex motor started without trouble. Tourists thought he was Christ. He offered to walk on water but couldn’t because he’d neglected to bring his sandals.
Saltwater is heavier than petrol and sinks to the bottom of the tank. When there is too little fuel to reach the outlet of the fuel line, a little saltwater will bring up the level of the petrol and the motor can use fuel it couldn’t access before. But like most Buckland stories, don’t try this at home, or alone.
Frank told me he had bought the boat in Narooma, on the south coast of NSW, and sailed it down the coast and brought it over the bar at Mallacoota. When net fishing in the Mallacoota Lakes was being wound back, the Nadgee entered retirement in the Narrows, the connecting channel between Mallacoota’s two lakes.
Frank recognised someone foolish enough to want to restore an 18-foot wooden boat and sold it to me. He didn’t exactly clap his hands but he had the air about him of someone who thought he’d never have to scrape and paint the bottom of an old large boat ever again.
Nadgee lived for many years on the lakes and rivers of Mallacoota but when the motor needed repair, I beached her under the Wallagaraugh River bridge near Lennie Johnson’s farm, George’s brother. The Nadgee disappeared.
‘Flood took her,’ Lennie told me. We looked at each other deadpan. There hadn’t been enough rain to wash a leaf from the bank but by Len’s terms the boat had been there too long; and disappeared. Part of the Johnson broken farm revenue recovery policy perhaps. My fault, never leave a lovely boat alone. I gave the motor to Billy Bruce, but it and he are a different book.
I bought Nadgee II from an Aboriginal family in Geelong but she was so old, and the trailer older, that when I towed her to Mallacoota the trailer mudguards rested on the tyres for support and the rubber tried to ignite.
Anyway, that boat came to a sudden stop in Mallacoota’s Bottom Lake some years later and Dicky Morris, outboard mechanic nonpareil, had only one word to describe her condition, cactus. I gave the hull to an Aboriginal family in Eden whose forbear had played for Richmond. Sufficient payment.
Nadgee III was a lovely boat but she had a broken transom amongst a few other issues like engine failure and fiberglass necrosis. I took her to Bairnsdale and traded (gave) her in on an old Whittley 5.3 metre half cab. Many of you are sick of boat stats by now but you have to understand that boats are dear to my heart. Anything that floats is precious. Nadgee IV is in good health so there will be little need to mention it again.
January is the season of young eagles. Every year the insistent cry of eer eer eer resounds in the valleys. Ducks get nervous, Birran Durran Durran (Masked Lapwing or plover) takes to the air to chastise the young bird.
When Birran Durran Durran calls, everyone – animals and humans – look to the sky. The humans will also check the track for visitors. Birran Durran Durran raises the alarm for everyone about everything. Dogs learn that they need not bark.
In these warm months, mullet mob in schools in the golden shallows and the grasses become blond. Mornings are warm with a minimal dew. You sniff the air for smoke.
Kangaroo Grass hangs in florets
Those long summer days swimming, listening to the cries of the grandkids mingling with those of Golden Whistlers, Yellow-faced Honeyeaters and Crimson Honeyeaters are also harvest days and while the Buru Ngalluk (Kangaroo Grass) seed hangs in the floret we have to harvest the paddocks.
The grass that summer was in top condition and I was struck by the numbers of orchids amongst the crop. There was a beautiful pale Hyacinth Orchid at the edge of the south boundary and it was uplifting just to pass it with every rotation around the crop.
We do knock the heads off a few orchids, but as most reproduce from the bulb it is not the problem many might think. And, in any case, when I bought the place there were no orchids to be seen. Cattle had eaten all the flowers, all the rushes, most of the cumbungi, and I didn’t realise there was Water Ribbon on the place until a few weeks after the cattle had been removed. We underestimate the floral price we pay for having such a big hard-hoofed ruminant in this country.
Uncle Max
Uncle Max Harrison is the great-grandson of the single survivor of a massacre of Aboriginal people on the Brodribb River in Far East Gippsland in the 1850s. This incident doesn’t appear in the various histories written about these killings because there is no official, police or government, record, but the event is indelibly etched into the memory of local Aboriginal people. Descendants of the perpetrators remember it too.
