Black Duck, page 3
It took us fifteen years of searching to locate the site. It was known to some white families but never divulged. One old white man, devoted to Uncle Max’s pursuit, kept up a relentless round of conversations amongst the holders of that knowledge until he wore them down, or they simply got sick of seeing him across their kitchen table, his map spread out before them and his lips flap flap flapping.
Book cover photo of Uncle Max Harrison (Peter McConchie)
Eventually one of them pointed to a position on the map and that was that, Lenny Marlo had found the site. All Gurandgi owe a lot to Lenny, the wise old farmer, horticulturalist and lore man.
Thanks to Lenny, Uncle Max was able to visit the place in 2018 and find the exact location of the elimination of all but one of his family. He took us back there for a ceremony in 2019. We cleared the ground and conducted the appropriate ceremony while a Sea Eagle stared down at us from the top of a huge eucalypt for the whole seven hours of the ritual.
That night descendants of the perpetrators came and spoke to the seventy Gurandgi and family assembled at Cape Conran. ‘You could have heard a pin drop’ is a very overused expression, but on that night that description was perfect for a group that included half a dozen babies and a dozen teenagers.
When Uncle Max invited the families of the perpetrators I doubted that any would turn up, but one family did and it taught me that Uncle’s heart and mind were broader than mine. That same family turned up at the farm a few years later and wanted to buy Yumburra grain. Gabby reminded me that we had met before at the Cape Conran ceremony. She and her husband Chris run the Orbost brewing company, Sailors Grave, and they came to the farm to buy grain to make a beer they wanted to call Dark Emu. That coincidence was amazing enough but then I realised that I had taught Gabby’s brother and sister at Mallacoota School in the seventies.
They asked me about my preferred style of beer and, being a bogan, I recommended a dark beer like Tooheys Old. They have made a very good beer and we get a small percentage from the sale of every slab. The money we receive has been spent to support Aboriginal students at Orbost High School and two in Sydney through the Goodes-O’Loughlin Foundation (GO Foundation). We are also sponsoring one of our own farm team to learn film making.
The huge reach of history from the turning of Chance’s wheel is dramatic but it all began with Uncle Muns, the son of a little boy who survived the massacre. Only one child survived the incident and was reared by the family of the perpetrators, not an uncommon event on the frontier.
Despite those circumstances, Uncle Charlie Hammond was secretly instructed in lore by several old Aboriginal men. Uncle Charlie then passed that lore on to Uncle Muns who gave it in turn to Uncle Max and he gave it to us.
Uncle Max died just before Christmas 2021. Gurandgi had been with him only a couple of days before to perform a ceremony at Burnum Burnum Sanctuary park in Sydney. In preparation, Nathan and I got busy cutting bush poles so we could make a bower for his coffin. We stripped the inner golden bark off the poles and took it with us to the burial at Tilba Tilba, in the shadow of Gulaga Mountain. One of the lasting memories of my life will be the sight of ten Gurandgi sitting in a circle and weaving that bark into rope. As each few metres was finished, we used it to lash the poles together. All for you, Unc. Thank you.
Rope made from woven bark
We lost a huge mind and heart and we never expected that the gap would be painless, but even so, we were not fully prepared for the pain that overflowed during the rest of the year.
You’re in a family too so you know how it goes. Add pain to undirected love, maybe some old trauma and a few grievances and the grief sprawls and corrodes. Unc left us a very specific plan for handling the earthquake and gradually the tremors abated but all of us have been shaken and hurt. Fortunately, that wise old man anticipated all of it and left a plan for the recovery too: love coupled to his old trinity of Patience, Tolerance and Respect. I call on them every day to check that I am truly following the lore he gave us. The lore is no mystery, it is almost always about decency.
In preparation for Uncle’s ceremony, Gurandgi began collecting plants and ochres from all the Yuin lands and some were sent from distant communities where Uncle was remembered and revered.
Our son, Jack, was arriving by air from Apollo Bay for the ceremonies, so we had this rare family gathering in the midst of the turmoil. Jack has become king of the Gurandgi kitchen so, once he had landed, we collected food for Uncle Max’s last camp. I drove on to Tilba to prepare the ceremony site and after assembling all the materials, the clay, leaves, poles, bark and firewood, I headed to Narooma where Lyn, Jack and I were staying in an eccentric little house on the Narooma foreshore.
You see so little of your children when they have their own families so Lyn and I soaked in the time we had with our son. All of us under the same roof once again.
I was up at dawn and went out to finish the bough shed and clad it with fresh greenery. Other Gurandgi were there preparing the ochres and some were getting the fungus and bark tinder ready for the smoking.
The day was long, involved and inevitably, in such a large group, where grief had frayed the nerves, there were some people at odds with each other and they tiptoed around, everyone doing their best to ease Unc’s passage into his next life.
Once the ceremony started, we were bound in a structure that had every movement predetermined. My daughter, Marnie, arrived and I could see her and Lyn at the edge of the gathering, but it was many hours before I could get to them.
The ceremony proceeded on its inexorable path and the graciousness of it all was a balm. Galoo, a White-faced Heron, did a complete circle around us and, later, many of us mentioned having seen the slow progress of the bird.
That night Lyn, Jack and I had a meal in the noisiest restaurant I have ever been to, but in some ways, it was a relief. We were too tired to talk.
We returned to Gipsy and helped Lyn clean ‘Riverbed’, our bed and breakfast, before taking Jack back to the airport. Such a rush, so little time with our son. But grateful for what we had. Thanks once again, Unc.
When I got back to the farm there were three Wedgies in the duck yard. The drake, Quacky, was dead. Quacky was granddaughter Charlee’s duck. It was 9 January, Charlee’s birthday. I knew I couldn’t tell her such news on her special day. It took me hours to clean up the mess amongst the traumatised ducks. Death upon death.
Dogs
I said I’d never mention boats again, but you didn’t believe that, and it surprises me that it has taken so long to mention dogs. But we’re still grieving.
In 2007 we were helping to build the CFA shed at Gipsy Point and the roof plumber volunteer, Jim, was coming all the way from Wroxham at the top of the Jinoor valley above Wangarabell. He had to bring his new litter of pups with him every day. Jim lived in an old house on one of the old farming properties in a district that went bust.
Perhaps he thought if he brought the pups he might sell some. He did.
Every smoko I sat on the sand heap with a cup of tea and the old bitch, tired from the tearing claws of eight fervent blue heelers, came and snuggled under my arm. Do something, she seemed to be saying.
We chose a very pretty, dappled girl and a big, dopey-looking boy whose geniality tugged at your heart. We called them Wangarabell, for the valley town closest to their birth place, and Yambulla for the mountain under which they were born.
They were living a life of wild dogs on that remote farm and their history is cautionary. One pup was taken by an eagle, another two were bitten by snakes, a different two were run over by their owners, one was lost to history, and Mum and Dad succumbed to old age, old Butterfly and Ozzie.
Just Wangarabell and Yambulla remained of that whole family. And we lost Yambulla just before Uncle Max passed. Bulla had gone blind and deaf but he would still race out into the middle of the paddock and throw himself down and squirm in the ecstasy only a dog on its back seems to know. He knew the paddock so he felt confident and safe, but then he started to lose balance and one morning his head was askew and he was staring up at the sun. He was very confused. My heart sank.
I’d had two difficult nights with him. On both nights he asked to be let out but I had to go with him because he was really disoriented. I followed my old friend around and around the farm. If I touched him he wagged his tail, if I spoke he smiled, but his life was a shambles and he knew it. I hated to see his indignity.
Wangarabell and Yambulla
We have the world’s best vet in this district, Wendy Mashado, and she had explained the head tilting phenomenon. Vets don’t know why it happens but it always comes just before death. Wendy had also explained that she would be away for a week. I watched Bulla’s perplexity as he stared up at the sun whose brightness must have been registering somewhere in a confused corner of his brain.
I dug a hole and got the gun. I had to help out my dear mate. He slumped neat as could be and trembled for a little before we buried him on his old cushion and planted a banksia above him. Lyn knew what was happening and had stood out of sight on the front verandah. Nathan arrived for work and saw Lyn, didn’t say a word, and went and hugged her.
The Bidwell-Maap who stayed at Lyn’s house for years used to call Yambulla and Wangarabell the Bidwell spirit dogs because of their names. We called them friends because of their nature.
Harvest
We grow the old Aboriginal grains and tubers at Yumburra for many reasons. They are perennial so they sequester carbon, they are soil builders, and they are more nutritious than their Western equivalents, but we also wish to make a political statement: these are our foods and we maintain cultural contact with them. But of all the money made from so-called ‘native food’ or ‘bush tucker’, terms we refuse to use, only 1 per cent goes to Aboriginal people.
Murnong seed: Yam Daisy
If Australia wanted to make a real contribution to Aboriginal employment and prosperity, here is the opportunity. We are supported by a few philanthropic organisations but we need Australians to buy Aboriginal food from Aboriginal companies. That is why we started Black Duck Foods, to make a difference to Aboriginal communities and our economy.
It’s hard work, as any farming operation is, but it brings our people into intimate contact with the land and our culture. The economic benefits flow through to our families where children see their parents work on something they love and the household is not dependent on government, which is a spiritually enervating existence. We believe in the dignity of work.
Ready for harvest at Yambulla
Chris and Terry have been working hard at the Mallacoota Airport harvesting grain. The Shire have allowed us to harvest the airport for the last five years but gaining access is becoming harder as insurance premiums become more expensive and restrictive. We are sorry not to be able to harvest there in the future but the airport grain, and that harvested at Robert and Irene Allan’s farm at Timbillica, enabled us to refine the processes required to achieve clean grain.
We are also very lucky to harvest various grains at Yambulla (near Wroxham) and Bendoc. The generosity of those farmers gives us an opportunity to learn more about our plants and how to train other Aboriginal communities in their use.
The tenth of January was such a day and we were helped by Peter Thompson who heard about the farm on a podcast and offered to help. He removed Madagascan Fireweed and thistles, both bad invaders of open country. He helped us harvest Murnong seed too and we were very grateful because volunteer labour is very useful in picking up the jobs we can’t get around to during harvest time.
Later that day I went and fixed the bilge pump on Nadgee as there had been rain that week and I needed to empty her unless she sank again. Yes, another story, another book!
Snakes
A telltale shiver of grass exposed a black snake moving into the duck pen. The girls had had enough terror and excitement in their lives and they moved toward the intruder with their heads nodding. A duck is a peaceful and incompetent animal in many ways and Michael Leunig used them as conjurers of our better angels. Even so, the snake thought better of it and headed for the bean patch instead. No picking beans today!
The snakes on the property cause consternation in almost everyone who works and visits, but I have lived with them all my life and have never had any trouble.
Once on King Island as a child I grabbed a Tiger accidentally while climbing a riverbank, but all I got was a hiss and a stern look. I don’t like having Tigers and Browns around the house, because the grandkids never look where they are going and those snakes are unforgiving. The beautiful Red-bellied Black Snake, however, is a gentle companion, so she is allowed free board.
The black snake is known to keep Tigers and Browns from its territory. If you have black snakes you are unlikely to have the others. The only black snake to turn on me was because I had just cut it in half. That benighted serpent was living in the woodshed at Cape Otway. None of us wanted to feel a thick and writhing body while gathering wood for our fire as we got to the bottom of the pile just around the start of spring.
That snake, or half of it, took deep offence and I regret it to this day. Like the cat we found at the Cape whose owner had hooked the cat’s paw through its collar to stop it wandering. That cat wandered anyway and the hard plastic collar bit deep into its armpit and the infection was putrid.
It was a lovely, glossy black cat and had kept itself clean and fed while on the run, all but for the wound beneath its front leg. It came to the back door mewling for help. I picked it up, inspected the wound, smelt the corruption and calculated the numbers of Potoroos and Blue Wrens it had killed while on the loose.
She trusted me that cat, she was appealing to me, but I picked up the tomahawk and clipped her neatly on the back of the head. I regret that even though the septicemia would have been a far more horrible death. But we had looked into each other’s faces. I regret it. It hurts me still. All the deaths of all the injured animals I have had to deal with in a country life have never left me.
Even the snakes. Terry was aghast when I killed the Tiger Snake in our Nullamaa (north) garden. But that is where our granddaughter Alia had been recklessly plunging her hand amongst the vegetables while hunting out strawberries that very morning.
We are two and a half hours from the nearest place that has anti-venom. Sorry Tiger Snake, sorry Terry, but Alia comes first.
Covid
We had been incredibly lucky with Covid. While the rest of the state was in lockdown, we were able to access shops because we lived inside what the authorities referred to as the ‘border bubble’. Our workers could cross it because they were deemed essential agricultural employees.
We had two workers living on the farm, Chris and Lindsay, who had arrived as volunteers but proved so useful that they became employees and they stayed because life at the farm was better than the walls of a flat in Canberra or Newcastle.
We had dinners cooked on the campfire, we went fishing and played pool at the back of the local pub. Life was pretty good. And so much work got done because the rest of the world was shut down and there was nowhere to go.
In the second lockdown my daughter Marnie, husband Justin, and children Marlo, Alia and Charlee all stayed at the farm. Chris played extraordinary games with them, Lindsay taught them to ride his horses and Marnie homeschooled them. Unforgettable days.
I found the kids’ table manners appalling but three months of my instruction reaped little result. Grumpy grandfather became my appellation. I still think knives and forks are a good thing and the sight of someone else’s half-digested food is not. There!
But, once again, we got a lot done. Mundabaa, the local Aboriginal building company, built a bedroom and office for me and a workshop and nursery for the farm. But the distance from Eden and the new Covid restrictions made progress slow, so it made sense for the painting and fittings to be finished by Justin and Lindsay.
The four rooms were designed by Christy, the architect from Gipsy, but material shortages and travel restrictions meant we had to compromise Christy’s aesthetic. I was away so much during the building that I needed Christy to manage the job. One day when we were standing in the lounge room contemplating the colour scheme, I told the story of George who started the farm and the separation from his wife and the onset of depression and his suicide in this very room, according to my neighbour.
We were considering the sorrow of mankind when our gazes drifted to the ceiling and stopped at an unusual small round hole. We fell silent.
It took ages for the spirit of the farm to settle when I took it over in May 2018. Many tricksters seemed to be at work around the place, but I lived in a caravan until a cricket mate, Dossi, finished painting and the new hardwood floor had been installed.
Even after that work was finished, I found many reasons not to sit in the lounge room. My entire lounge furnishings were a steel garden chair and a box for a coffee table. The dogs hated it and complained and grizzled because they didn’t have a comfy chair. I relented after a year and bought an on-special lounge suite from Smith’s in Pambula. They loved it and we could all snuggle on it in front of the fire. Peace at last.
Peter Ahmat, Torres Strait Island and Yorta Yorta man, and Bobby Maher, Yuin man, were the main builders and did a great job given the hardships and remoteness. Bobby’s deck is a constant source of wonder to me and I am so grateful for his cleverness in managing all the angles and levels required to match the new building with the old and rickety.
