Black Duck, page 5
Laugh Ya Half Giraffe
That giraffe appears in every photo taken during the weeks leading up to Christmas. I wanted to call it Laugh Ya Half Giraffe but Charlee held firm on Amber. That family excursion and the hour spent on the Fletcher Jones lawns drinking coffee and eating toasted sandwiches touched me to the heart. You can never be sure that same collection of people will be in the sun together ever again. It’s a treasure for me and I hope the family remember it. Writing about it also gave me the chance to write Laugh Ya Half Giraffe. The family just looked at me when I said it but my sense of humour cheers me even while it leaves others worried about my general stability.
Anyway, that’s the story of the Muslim Gate. I wonder about the courtyard that it protected somewhere in Sydney but love the fact that it is now the gateway in the north to my fern-sheltered verandah and a view of the eagles’ eyrie to the south. It doesn’t matter that others think it strange, I think it’s perfect.
Lyn has been watching this year’s young eagle lumbering through the grass with inelegant plunges. I think the dunnarts are mocking it but that hapless bird will soon dominate the sky and has a spiritual legend to compare with any other creature on Earth. Lumber on creator spirit.
It was close to the hottest time of our year, the middle of January, and when I brought the boat back to the jetty, Koon ar rook (Wood Duck) was sitting on the jetty rail. I drifted in and it didn’t move until the bow rail nudged the jetty and then it flustered into the water. As I approached it seemed to have its eyes open but clearly hadn’t seen me. Do they have a second lid that screens their eye when asleep?
I don’t know and don’t really need to know, but I’m aware that experiences like this are rare and, at my age, may never be seen again. I had a swim up into the creek to celebrate my mortality.
Summer Flowers, Butcherbirds and Herons
Toward the end of summer, the Bloodwoods and Angophora flower in creamy clusters. Birds riot in the blossoms. The air is a squabble of sound with the background drone of bees and insects and I never fail to be reminded of Steve Wadsworth, an old teacher mate and bushwalker. When he died too early we picked armfuls of Bloodwood blossom for his funeral.
The butcherbird’s call is clear and bell-like in autumn but in summer it has a more insistent tone. It was coming from the Grey Box trees on the bluff above the Yumburra Creek that feeds into the Wallagaraugh. These trees are remnants of the old forest and because of their size and the sparsity of brush beneath them they did not burn in the 2019-20 fires. Too big to burn, their first branches too far above the ground and their separation from each other too great to allow easy spread of fire. It is a lesson for Australian forestry that we can calm forest fire by allowing bigger trees to form these safe environmental zones.
We need timber but we don’t need to waste it on wood pulp for hamburger wrappers. Bigger trees are safer but also provide the heart of the forest. At Gipsy Point groups of Ironbark trees on every ridge-top provide habitat for thousands of birds and marsupials. You cannot pass these trees in a boat without being impressed by the abundance of life in their branches. Beneath every one of these ridge groves are thousands of Aboriginal artefacts.
Please leave those old tools in place because they are records of our Old People’s lives and in situ they are like the Mitchell or La Trobe libraries, stolen they are like the glimmering stone picked up from the tideline: once removed it is a lifeless semblance of itself and soon discarded in the button jar or tossed out in the rubbish. Leave vibrance to remain vibrant.
Galoo, the White-faced Heron, is more lugubrious than vibrant and its guttural call is often heard during these hot days. It sounds cross or judgemental, but it’s the time for these elegant birds to fly ponderously about the riverbanks and paddocks in their ritualised mating.
The courting flights are long and languid and, like the egrets, they are stately birds who never seem in a hurry. They stand sentinel over favoured pools or pastures, erect and elegant. They object to any disturbance with harsh croaks and groans and stern glances. During Uncle Max’s funeral at Tilba, one walked around the edge of the cleared area of the reserve in very precise steps, jabbing at the prey it found there at regular intervals. Because we couldn’t move, that bird was more or less our timekeeper. Its progress around us metronomic. It is wise to observe these things and learn from them. Even if it’s just about patience and acceptance.
Family
We have had a difficult twelve months defending Black Duck Foods from people unsympathetic to our Aboriginal employment policy. It made us wonder at the depth of cynicism within parts of the Australian heart. We were supported by an Aboriginal legal company whom we will never forget, but it was our board who stood strong and united.
Noel and Trish Butler, two members from our board, were superb in this fight for decency and Aboriginal inclusion, but they did so in a year when they were still recovering from losing their house to the fires. Noel lost all his family’s artefacts too and both Noel and Trish lost their own artwork. They were devastated but hung tough for all our sakes.
We helped with some replanting and other things after the fires but this time we went up there just to thank them for their commitment to Aboriginal justice. The wider family has suffered the unbelievable pain of losing young members of the family in the last few months. This is common in Aboriginal communities and has its roots in the dispossession after the invasion of Australia but, more so, in the deeply institutionalised penalties and disadvantages for being black.
I was worried about them but when we arrived the place was full of family, bright young children and the latest babies. Young people were collecting wood for a ceremonial fire, there was cooking in the kitchen, laughter everywhere. That family looks after other families all the time, including Uncle Pirate, who deserves his own book. Pirate has lost a leg and an eye during his vivid life but remains a very complete character.
It was a long journey home but a beautiful drive along the coast.
When we returned, Terry and I were fixing some administrative details in the office and he noticed I had a manuscript for a story on Mallacoota Kitty, one of the few survivors of the Mallacoota massacres. ‘That story has to be told, eh,’ he said. Terry’s old, old uncles and grandfathers walked the Jinoor valley trails in the 1860s and were familiar with that horrible story. Noel tells similar stories of his family. There is no getting away from it. The grief is ever-present. Aboriginal people deal with it every day.
Smoke
One of the great pleasures of the river is to take a slow trip to Gipsy. That’s when you can surprise Water Dragons and Mirridar (Sea Eagle). I don’t get the time very often but there’s an even more beautiful journey on that river system: a trip into Mallacoota for coffee or lunch. The voyage downstream and through the lakes is one of the great journeys of the world. I love taking Cousin Noel and Trish on that trip because their enthrallment makes it so special.
The journey has changed for me since the 2019 Black Summer fires, as so much has. My sense of smell has changed. I constantly smell smoke in the air, on my clothes, on the night air. The unbridled pleasure I used to take in the forest, waters and shores is now tinged with sadness and dread.
One of the people who remained fighting the fires on the river was Bart Brackley, a wild lad of the district. When I cut my way into the farm on that terrible day, the first person I saw was Bart trying to start a pump on the bridge. He was exhausted. He told me he hadn’t slept for two days and his hands were trembling with weariness.
A journey on the river allows for special ceremony
‘Bart,’ I said, in my best schoolteacher voice, ‘go to bed and drink some water.’ It must have sounded like good advice because that’s what he did. I had taught his father and his aunty and uncles. Bart’s grandmother, Maree, was a terrific woman and Bart had saved her house and that of his uncles and aunt. It was a heroic effort.
I taught most of the people who live on the river. We were an isolated community trying to get an education in one of the most remote places in Victoria. The Education Department had to be convinced that anyone could live so far from Melbourne. We did and we worked together. Last Christmas we reminisced in the Genoa pub about the extraordinary number of Mallacoota kids who won apprentice of the year in their various trades.
So, seeing Bart alone on the bridge I was not really surprised. He’s a tough little bush nut, handy in a crisis. Bart told me that he was taking his 12-foot tinny into Mallacoota every second day to get fuel and supplies. The only time he really got scared was when the swag he keeps in the bottom of his boat caught fire.
My neighbours, the McLeods, yeah, I taught Darren and his brothers and sisters too, spent the night of the fire watching dead birds fall out of the sky as they anchored in the wide reaches of Bottom Lake. Darren was deeply upset by the lost birds but the soundtrack for it was gas bottles exploding in Mallacoota.
Another of the town’s larrikins, Chad, is as wild as Bart but people in Terra Nova Drive reckon he saved half a dozen houses on his own. It’s unfair to pick out individuals but I think the larrikins deserve a bit of good press every now and then.
I was in the CFA, so the day after the fires began I got the Nadgee and headed into town. I still had phone reception so I knew that a navy vessel was trying to evacuate people. I sailed the lake system as carefully as I could but the smoke was so thick and the landscape so changed I got lost crossing the Top Lake. Lost on my own river, I was disgusted.
I ended up in a little bay that was unrecognisable because every tree was burnt to the ground. I ducked and weaved in and out of a few more creeks and bays before I found the Narrows, which connect the two lakes. And I wouldn’t have recognised it because its beacon was gone but the rock formation at its entrance is unmistakable.
I crept through the Narrows trying to stick to the centre of the channel but when I emerged into the Top Lake I could only see a few metres in front of me. I inched my way hoping to find the John Bull beacon in its centre.
I brushed past a green beacon pile and realised I was too far east and had to tack a little to the west, and at last I found the Bull and got around it into Mallacoota’s navigation channel.
I couldn’t see the town yet, but worse still, I couldn’t hear it. There was not one other boat on the water, no vehicles, no voices, no birds. Total silence. The town seemed reduced, black gaps in every street. I moored the boat and walked up into town and got on a CFA Slip-On (an ultra-light fire tanker) with Les Barnes and went to Bastion Point to help with the unloading of fuel and the embarkation of the homeless.
There were friends of mine amongst the crowd trying to assist the naval officers but it was almost done in mime. Few people wanted to speak. They were in shock. It looked like a refugee column. The dogs were silent, benumbed, the cats in a trance. People held the pets in their arms seemingly unable to let them go.
After I left, Barnsey and I tried to get fuel for the farms upriver but it was hard. The town was short of fuel, everybody was desperate for it. I managed to fill my jerry cans and buy whatever I could from the store.
I sat for a moment and had a cup of coffee and a steak sandwich at Cafe 54. I had tears in my eyes, but it was unnoticed in the town that day. The redoubtable Tracey Hargreaves kept her store open to feed people and it was the best coffee I’ve ever had. I was so choked with gratitude I could barely speak to Tracey, yeah, I taught her husband, so we just nodded to each other. People got medals after that fire, but my hero was Tracey and her staff for providing five minutes of normality and peace. Thanks, mate, it kept me going.
Another one who never got mentioned was Lyn. She did the comms job at the CFA shed for a week. On the first day she heard a noise and turned around and the shed was on fire. A city brigade went and stood in front of that fire with their hoses on the fog setting. And saved the shed and survived. Lyn turned back to her computer. ‘Yes, roger that, Tarneit, but I’m afraid we have no other tanker to support you at this stage.’
Her voice never varied as she passed out bad news to those stranded by the fire. People remember that voice and how the steady and clear instruction calmed them, even though it’s not what they wanted to hear. Lyn set up the whole communication network, she was there at the start and still there at the end. Thanks to you too, mate.
Visitors to Mallacoota and Genoa tell of their horror at seeing the country after the fires. Grace McKenzie has been making a film about the farm and the aim to employ Aboriginal people within the culture. She first came at the end of the fires and was shocked at the devastation. She turned up again late in January 2022, but I don’t think it was much improved from the first time. A leafless forest strikes at the heart of life.
I need to apologise to Grace because my enthusiasm for the film was very low. So much has happened, so much needs still to be done, the demands of the culture are so deep and, in many cases, not for display. There have been some big, very filmic moments, but the stakes were too high; the culture and people’s wellbeing too fragile to expose to film. I know it frustrated Grace but there are some stories I’ll never be able to tell outside the community.
Yambulla
The owner of Yambulla station, two hours north of here, saw a mention of my dog of the same name and was determined to meet us. Jim Osborne is a very generous man and, after that meeting, he was happy for us to harvest his Buru Ngalluk (Kangaroo Grass).
Those hot days brought the grain to ripeness, so we were flat out. Chris and Terry in their element out there, happy at the prospect of a good harvest.
Terry’s family are the keepers of that valley’s dog story.
The land is a more or less circular compound surrounded by a ring of mountains. These are the dogs. Mirrigan. One of the mountains is called Mirragunegin, place of the dogs. We are yet to get permission to tell the whole of that story, but it is coming.
Meanwhile, back at the farm, Nathan was working to bring a section of forest back to how it might have looked 150 years ago. This is a seventy-year program to fell smaller trees and encourage the maturity of others and the grasses that will grow beneath them once the canopy has been reduced. We know what that old pre-contact forest looked like in this area; graziers, missionaries, surveyors all described it in detail. Although fire had been used to maintain its structure, it actually resisted wildfire and made life safer and more comfortable for the Old People.
In the process of felling trees, we strip the poles of bark to use in construction jobs and we use the bark to make rope. Nathan made some beautiful lengths from these barks and we used some of them for Unc’s bower, but others will be used to join branches of a tree into a ring, a symbol the Old People used extensively.
Terry
We try to maintain the old traditions, and tree manipulation was a common forest language. It is my ambition to write a book about the altered trees around Australia so that they can be protected from accident and malice.
The farm doesn’t work on Invasion Day. Normally I hide if I’m not at a community ceremony, but Grace wanted to film the boat trip into Coota so we sailed through the lakes under the supervision of Mirrigar (Sea Eagle). It was Lyn’s first time in a boat since the rescue boat trips with the CFA and Fisheries during the fires so it was a solemn journey. The trip changed for us, so we weren’t terrific company for Grace’s purposes. We’ve been changed by the fire like much of south-east Australia. It’s unavoidable. We can’t help it.
On this day we learnt that Gurandgi Dean Kelly was back in hospital and seriously ill with Covid. He was in the same ward as the one where Uncle Max passed. Yes, a lot has changed in the last couple of years.
Life’s Rich Tapestry, or Threadbare Carpet?
Nathan and Rochelle were getting married so I went up to Jigamy to mow the site and rake the buna ground. Raking the ground was restful, contemplative work and allowed me to return home rested where I set to work on the Mallacoota Kitty manuscript which I began in 2018 but lost.
It was a turbulent time as the reverberations from Uncle Max’s passing opened old wounds in Uncle’s family. Gurandgi have been trying to stand back from this aspect of the grieving but more and more we are being dragged into it to help settle disputes. This pain and suffering is inevitable but it is absorbing so much of our time and emotional energy.
I woke one morning very conscious of injured spirits and aware that something happened on the farm last night. Not a kangaroo in sight, very few birds calling. A visit from the dingoes?
A few days prior we had noticed the ravens arrive en masse. They seem to come with the maturity of the grasses. We thought they were Forest Ravens but a friend thinks they are Little Ravens.
We noticed the same thing twenty years ago at Cape Otway. One day there are none and next there is a cacophony of them all talking and interrupting each other. They are said to fly in from Tasmania and when they arrived at Yumburra there was such a prolonged and raucous conversation from eighty or so birds as if they had just arrived and were commenting on the Bass Strait crossing. Soon they were relatively quiet and feeding in the paddocks.
I was still fielding calls about Uncle Max’s ashes. The pain is seeping into everything we do.
As an antidote to that, Jonathan Jones (Wiradjuri artist) and his partner Jen arrived to talk over big plans for a grass and cultural burning installation. They are a delight to have in the house. I think Jonathan is one of the most unusual people I know. He is such a daggy ratbag but there is no one more passionate about his culture. I love him to pieces.
