Black Duck, page 6
After one exhibition on yam daisies and colonisation he gave me one of his delicately forged yams, which I treasure.
His new exhibition concentrates on artefacts and he has promised me one of the old shovels he made as a replica of ones found at the beginning of the invasion. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all Australians knew that Aboriginal people made shovels? Jonathan is leading the way.
Jonathan’s gift of a delicately forged yam tuber
He spends a lot of time with Uncle Stan Grant who has been very unwell. Jonathan is such a caring person. I am grateful to him for his care of Uncle Stan because I will never be able to repay the debt I have to Unc. That old man gave me crucial information about my mother’s family. Details and contacts; it was such a wonderful gift. And he did that at risk of exposing himself to the baying hounds of the right-wing journalists who purport to know everything about the family of a man they have never met.
That episode of personal attack is still painful, but elders around Australia who either knew my family in those early years, or simply wanted to offer support, are sacred in my mind. Uncle Jim Berg, who has his own community issues, has been wonderful. When the media got stuck into me Jim sent me a parcel of artefacts including a stone from his Gunditjmara Country to show his support and keep me safe. I treasure that stone, Unc, and I have it in my pocket every day. It hasn’t stopped the right-wing haters, but it has stopped me absorbing their hate. So grateful, I will never remind anyone how you pinged your hammy in the first fifteen seconds of a Koori carnival game at Kardinia Park in the eighties.
I don’t know why people laugh when that happens but we did. It stopped the game but it is the only thing I remember about the day. Jim was a sporting legend for us all and so the irony of the ungracious and total collapse stopped us all in our tracks. It was Jim’s knowledge of the boxing tent days which gave me access to some people with memories of my great-grandmother’s family. Thanks, Uncle, and sorry for laughing. It was our love that made us do it.
Anyway, Derek Kickett came on and dominated. It was a revelation to see him move around tacklers so effortlessly. Derek was a big lad when he played for Essendon and Sydney in the AFL but he was a lot bigger by the time we saw him at Kardinia Park. Kardinia or Kardineu, rays of the early morning sun. What a beautiful name for a footy ground, how sad it is that the ground now has the inspirational title of GMHBA.
Our sporting ovals are now named after businesses which come and go. One year it’s a car manufacturer and next it is a health fund providing health care to the rich. It must make clubs a lot of money to give up a name so evocative of Australia as Kardinia. The new ground in Melbourne used to be called Docklands, a perfectly suitable name as it is situated right in Melbourne’s Docklands, but since then it has had a dozen names and the current one is Marvel Stadium, named after a comic book company, yes, quite appropriate.
And speaking of fleeting appearances, a few days after the Little Ravens arrived we found a flurry of delft blue Hairstreak Butterflies on a group of wattles up near the Phoenix (resurrected from the fires) shed. In the wattles we had pupae, eggs and caterpillars. The first hatched males fluttered about the trees waiting for the females to emerge. The whole zoo was attended by Iridomyrmex Ants. In the one stringy little black wattle was a whole universe of activity.
Hairstreak Butterfly
Jonathon and Jen came and had a wonderful visit and the day they left I went for a swim and caught a beautiful bream on the bank opposite Pelican Point near Gipsy. It is one of many favourite fishing spots, not least because it is beneath the giant Grey Boxes where the Whistling Kites nest. These birds are constant presences and at the nest their behaviour is a fascination.
The bream cooked beautifully in foil with just a little lemon juice, salt and pepper and butter. The simpler you cook fish the better. The juice and butter from the fish is an elixir.
One year we catered for a very flash dinner with Noel and Trish. Noel cooked his oysters on a grill above a campfire and, as they opened, we lifted the bottom half of the shell and squeezed lemon juice and myrtle into the cup of the top half.
They were a sensation and so many people came up to rave about them, most never having eaten an oyster hot.
Oyster is one of my totems and I’m not allowed to eat them unless served by a senior Yuin man. Cousin Noel kept me supplied, such a luxury. Uncle knew what he was doing when he gave me oyster. He knew I was an avid fisher and collector and must have thought prohibition wouldn’t do me any harm. It hasn’t. My enjoyment of oysters has been elevated by the rarity of their consumption. I look forward to senior Yuin men arriving; they always bring oysters.
The totemic system is not an opportunity to bequeath names, it is a responsibility. You are denied a food or object to remind you that your responsibility is to ensure the health and future of the totem. It is an environmental and spiritual sanction.
Just before he passed Uncle said to me, ‘you can come off oysters now if you like’, but I declined because I knew that my son, Jack, was about to qualify as someone who could serve them to me. I wanted to reserve and celebrate that rite of passage. Two dozen will be sufficient thank you, son. Wapengo Oysters if you can. And a Boag’s or two.
The Hot Days of Early February
It is now the season of long hot days. The Yellow-rumped Thornbill was in the bottlebrush outside the kitchen window. They nest there most years but were absent last year so their arrival with their sweet song was so welcome. They’d been around the house for a week or so but were now into nesting behaviour. Their high splintery call is a charm to have close to the house. Another rare visitor is the Musk Lorikeet. I sometimes hear them down in the river Grey Boxes and their call is like two bits of broken glass being rubbed together. Rainbow Lorikeets are here every day and the raucous screeches are common but when a Musk flies by the difference in call is remarkable. I never fail to look up and greet them.
The pain in Uncle Max’s family continues and bleeds into Gurandgi. Everyone is trying to manage it but all with different methods. Did we expect such a large gap would be filled easily?
Three Bunjil cruised over the duck pen again and the young one was calling its greedy little call. I had to check that the duck pen netting remains secure. I had a swim off the jetty to calm the nerves generated by the hungry screech. I feel for the ducks every time I hear it, but also for the parents for whom the call is designed. The crying baby.
The next day brought cricket training and that was enough to convince me that this would be my last game. The right arm no longer rotates smoothly enough for me to control the ball. Being able to move the ball and land it on a length has ensured me a game of cricket for as long as I can remember, but it is over. I feel very sad. People who don’t play sport may scoff, but Saturdays were my day off. When I gave up footy at fifty-five my whole appreciation of the game changed. I am not a spectator.
I was an ordinary player and ordinary coach but I loved playing every one of my 520 games and really enjoyed those first couple of beers after the match immersed in the could-haves, might-haves and laughter of my mates.
After I retired I tried to watch games but the beer tasted terrible. I fear it will be true of cricket retirement. It’s been a big part of my life and now it’s over. The only chance every week to laugh and run around like a lunatic and scream out. It’s not something you can do in the street.
Stones and Homes
Damo Coulthard and Rebecca Sullivan from Warndu Foods in South Australia came to the farm to talk over Aboriginal food production and how we can increase the Aboriginal share of the market beyond 1 per cent. It is an alarming statistic and makes a mockery of the feel-good acceptance of Aboriginal foods when that percentage indicates that it is just one more cultural dispossession. You can’t eat our food if you can’t swallow our history.
While we went back and forth from the gardens to the kitchen, I noticed that Damo was interested in an old grinding stone I had on the verandah.
Someone had dropped into the farm two years ago and said he had something for me. It was a pretty typical day with a busy work program underway and a couple of other visitors wanting to talk Aboriginal food, so I was a bit distracted, and the fella left the stone and disappeared before I could get his name and where the stone came from.
By chance, I met a friend of that fella in Bermagui one day and he said he could get the coordinates and a map of where the stone had been found. What are the chances? Anyway, I said to Damo that I had noticed his interest in the stone and told him it had come from Innamincka. ‘That’s my Dieri Country,’ he said.
Grinding stone from Damien’s Country
The stone had been found on the edge of a river and taken to Queensland and suddenly the person with the stone must have got windy about it, decided he needed to get rid of it and brought it to Victoria. Just dumped it on me. I spoke to Uncle Max about it and we came up with a way of caring for the stone; we put it on Mum’s old chair.
Damo rang his Uncle Cliff and they discussed the problem and decided that the stone could be repatriated to its right Country. The people have invited me to attend the repatriation ceremony when it is arranged. I’m really looking forward to that day because the stone comes from the Country where Charles Sturt had his life saved in 1845 by people north of Innamincka.
It was a remarkable moment in Australian history. The people had been harvesting grain in the ephemeral riverbed of Cooper Creek. That fact has huge significance for our country but was largely ignored by historians because of the assumptions needed to support the colonial invasion; that is, Aboriginal people were making no use of the land.
North of Cooper Creek at a site near Birdsville, archaeologists working with Josh Gorringe and Michael Westaway revealed this year that grinding stone blanks were mined at a number of locations on Mithaka Country. Scientists estimate that almost 3 million stones were removed and ground into dishes for grain processing. The scientists also estimated that those people only needed 1500 stones for their own use over the period when the mines were active. That is before the land was taken from the Mithaka people.
The rest of the stones were traded with other people. The next part of the investigation will be to find out how far afield the Mithaka stones were spread. Not for the satisfaction of Western enquiry but to learn about those cultural and trade links and how this whole network was conducted with such success and peace. The world is waiting for news of how trade can be undertaken without wars and without the creation of both billionaires and slaves.
A slab of stone, but a meaning with huge significance for humankind.
I sat on the verandah that night thinking about the relief of being able to send the stone on to its true Country. We smoked it well with fungus before it left. There’s an important lesson in this for Australia, these objects were not abandoned; rather the owners were killed or dispossessed. The stones are markers of Australian history and culture and should be left where they are found.
Enjoy the exhilaration of being close to the oldest civilisation on Earth but to remove artefacts destroys the opportunity for the owners’ descendants, and other Australians, the chance to find that connection to Country and people and stand for a moment contemplating the human journey.
I was drinking a can of Dark Emu, thanks to Gab and Chris at Sailors Grave Brewing, and I sat back as Googoonyellas (kookaburras) gave the longest recital of their rollicking song that I can ever remember. An extraordinary sunset and the frogs expressed their appreciation.
I recognised Peron’s Tree Frog, Striped Marsh Frog, Brown Tree Frog and Whistling Tree Frog thanks to the FrogId app. Some say it’s not important to know creatures by name, but I like to dignify all things by acknowledging their individuality and, in time, I hope we can recover the language names for each. Knowing the name builds relationship, one of the fundamental bonds between us all.
On Saturday 5 February, I stewed some tomatoes, and then went to an old mate’s funeral. Sue Chapman was an iconoclast and an exceptional intellect. I will miss her deeply. As a kind of irony, she used to make the cricket team cucumber sandwiches for every home game. I had to train the lads in the knowledge that green stuff can be food.
Sue’s ceremony was conducted at Bastion Point in light drizzle, but nobody flinched. Duncan Findlay, great town raconteur and ordinary cricketer, told remarkable stories of her life and a friend sang ‘La Vie en rose’ with deep passion. Just as well it was drizzling. We could wipe our faces with discretion.
I left Sue’s memorial and went to the cricket ground very conscious of this being the last time I would play. We kept Tathra to ninety-two. We love beating Tathra so our batting performance had to be up to scratch. We beat them in the 2009 grand final and as I was captain, I treasure that memory and the photograph of Lyn laughing at our boyish pride.
We got the runs easily and young Ben Severs made a solid twenty-two to help get us there. His uncle is the publican and postmaster at Genoa. Everybody has to multitask in this district. I did nothing remarkable except stay alive and not hurt my shoulder. I enjoyed the beers and yarns afterwards in the new clubrooms while knowing I’d never again be part of the action.
I’ve played a lot of cricket and football on this ground graced by the giant Mallacoota Gum (Eucalyptus globulus psuedoglobulus x cypellocarpa). The memories are rich and many but this was the first time I had played there with the new clubrooms completed. Presto, team captain and nuisance, has a way of twisting official arms, and this new building is the product of his diplomatic insistence.
Grace wanted to do more filming so I told her the story of the mountains and valleys of the Australian Alps that I was told at the 150th anniversary at the Wave Hill Walk-off in 2016 at Daguragu. David Claudie, from Kuuku Ya’u Country in north Cape York, watched me for several days before calling me over to tell me a story ‘about your south Country there’.
He drew the whole story and the landforms in the sand. He was meticulous about the shapes and the telling of the legend. I asked him when he had last been to the alps.
‘I never been there, my old grandfather told me this story and he never been there either. We just know that Country. That is the story.’ If we ever needed proof of the close relationships built by the old storytracks that was the moment.
David is from the country where my white relatives on my father’s side ended up. Pascoe River near Lockhart River. Maybe that’s why he took his time watching me. I was aware of his gaze but didn’t know why I was the subject of it.
Similarly, Uncle Max told a story his grandfather, Uncle Muns, told him when he was eleven. Uncle Muns had brought Uncle’s old teachers, the Noble brothers, and the story was drawn in the sand on a roadside near Cathcart, NSW. The old men drew a figure and asked him to remember it before scrubbing it out and telling him he had to find the site of the original drawing during his lifetime.
Seventy-two years later he found it near St Helens in Tasmania. None of his old teachers had ever been to Tasmania but the strength of the storytracks ensured they knew how to draw it exactly. That story was at least as old as the submersion of the land below Bass Strait, 10,000 years ago.
It was the story of Gurawul, the whale, and how he saved the people from drowning. Go west, he told them, climb to higher ground. You will meet fellow Aboriginal people there and you will be asking them to share their land. So be polite, be respectful, do not fight for land.
The sharing was done, probably not without hardship, but was conducted, as Gurawul had asked, in peace. Yuin Gurandgi live by that lore today.
After filming that pattern with Grace, I spent the next day dealing with a management dispute. It is so disappointing that 230 years after the Invasion, Aboriginal people still have to defend their culture every day.
But it has to be done or colonial myth prevails.
Detail of the Gurawul painting (Image reproduced with permission from Yuin Gurandji senior men)
We have many keen visitors coming to the farm to learn about our methods, but on this particular day we had an Aboriginal university student, Cal Callope, who came to talk about her food sovereignty thesis. We weren’t to know that Cal would soon work for Black Duck as Projects Manager.
The farm is always busy. We were helping a few young men in difficulty or distress to talk through their problems and just relax on the farm. These are the sons of old mates who find the life of an Aboriginal person to be full of struggle.
I was glad to get to bed, but restless with the pain of having to insist on the Aboriginal right to run our business our way. The pain of the young men sleeping on the farm was also a weight. I watched the stars in their slow wheel and hoped.
I took the car to Bega to get serviced the next morning and it was a relief to get away. I had coffee next to Candelo Books in the main street – that bookshop is always a delight. Wangarabell attracted many compliments as she sprawled on the footpath. The break allowed me to relax so I went over to Maggie and Rosie’s Antiques and bought two cabinets, which had once belonged to a huge old wardrobe or something. They looked a bit divorced from their purpose, but I bought six glass spheres to cover the screw holes that had once joined the little cabinets to the main piece. I’m really happy with the way they look glued into position.
The possum skin cloak my family made me for my seventieth birthday is draped across them and so it feels like my bedroom is finished. It’s a real sanctuary for me. All those diverse bits of recovered wooden furniture following their individual lore and providing comfort.
I had to get up early to cut limbs off a cherry tree and some stringybarks so that Mick from Cann River could work on the roads with his truck and bobcat.
As the day warmed, the horses got harassed by the March Flies but Jitti Jitti (Willy Wagtail) flies from horse to horse snatching the flies. It’s a lovely relationship between horse and bird.
