We talk about dyin’. I tell Uncle my regrets about the fool things I’ve done in my life. We have a pretty full-on conversation. We’ve been thinkin’ we’re gonna die. We’re runnin’ low on water, so we think we’re gonna die. Somehow we manage to pull ourselves together, and then the rain starts, life pours back in, just as we think we’re bound to die. It’s a hard thing. We’re all pretty quiet, and we keep staring at that small, one-litre container of two inches of water. I’m at the point where I don’t want to touch it, ’cause you’ve got to be dying of thirst. Just to look at it makes me feel as if we’ve got something left. I think to myself, “I’m doin’ really bad, I’m weak, I’m numb, I can’t feel my legs, but we still have this little bit of water. It plays a big part. If we drink the water, that’s the point where you curl up. Knowing we have that little bit of water keeps us going.
I speak to my uncle; I tell him I’m really struggling.
“Take a drink,” he says.
“No, I’d rather not drink, if you know what I mean? I’d rather have something there than nothin’ at all.”
“Well, you got to have something. You look really tired, like you’re just holding out. You don’t look well.”
“I don’t know … I don’t feel well, I feel weak, and I don’t know if I can keep going on.”
My skin peels, and I have rashes all over. I’m the only one peeling, and Koraubara knows I’m not coping well. I’ve never taken death seriously ’cause I always feel like I’m playing with death; I’m all the time living life on the edge. I never really looked at it the way I’m lookin’ at it now. It scares the shit outa me, like it’s torture, when your body shuts down, and you can’t speak, can’t do anything about it. Uncle admits he’s scared of death. He breaks down one time, but he isn’t worried for himself – he’s got grandkids, and doesn’t want to leave them behind. That’s hard. He says it’s unfair; that he never wanted to put us in this position. He wants to take the blame, and now he’s crackin’ up. We go from upset to puttin’ Koraubara back together. Look, I say to him, I’m upset too, because I never had a chance to sort out the situation with the son I left on the island. I wish I had a better relationship with my mother, like, I should be more open when she says I miss you, when she says I love you. Then I won’t have to say, “What are you on about? I’m only goin’ to work, or goin’ down the road.” It gets me nervy, gets me worked up, and I walk out the gate shakin’ my head. I don’t want to have to show my emotional feelings. I’m not an emotional sort of person. I grew up in a hard environment, with my grandfather, so when a mate says he’s in love, but the girl is givin’ him a raw deal … I say, “If she doesn’t want you, you gotta look at yourself, tell yourself you’re better’n that.” I get wild at times, I don’t know why. People are scared when they have to fight, but I feel fightin’ is a way of seein’ how well you can stand up, how well you can go. I go into a fight with a cool head. When a guy starts comin’ at me, I think up funny comments, like, “Better pull your pants down, so I can check. I don’t want to be up for sexual harassment!” I get the bloke stirred, so he loses control, throws haymakers. I stay calm, and laugh, and say, “Jeez, is that the best you got, shit like that?”
Then I step right up and flinch him. He drops his head, and goes flat out. I step back and laugh, and say, “Jeez, you better look out. I’m a really good right-hander!” My mates love it; they know I’m a left-hander. I can drag out a fight from five minutes to fifty. I know from the get-go I’ve got his number, I know he’s losing control, and he’s getting emotional, throwing punches all over the shop. I torture him a little, then stand back and say, “Aahh, I’ve had enough!” and walk away. I never say I’m a good fighter, but I can look after myself. When I was young, it’s what we did in the islands, fight. We knew where we stood from class two, in primary school. We had a first bouncer, through to sixth, and the rest had to sort it out. The bouncer is the one who gets all the respect. He might be a skinny kid, but he’s the real star. He takes your money; he bashes you. You can’t say anything or complain about it ’cause that’s the way it works. If I get bashed, and go back to my grandfather, tell him I got bashed, he slaps me, and says, “There’ll be no kid of mine goin’ to school, and gettin’ bashed!” It might be different in high school, but in primary, you have to stand up, if you want to be someone. I started school early ’cause my mum was the teacher. I was in a class of seven year olds, but I was six, and had to struggle. I freaked out, and the teacher said, “Ben, you have to do class one again ’cause you started too early.” I was picked on. I freaked out, and hated it. They stabbed me with pencils, scratched the shit out of me. If you weren’t happy with the way they treated you, there was always the hospital. Behind the hospital there was a bushy area, and that’s where you went to settle where you stood. We were good at fighting, but we were only kids. You don’t get much of it now, kids ganging up, bein’ manly about it. It was scary, too, ’cause someone picks on you, and you might blow it; you mightn’t be able to handle it. So you meet behind the hospital.
“Yeah, no worries!”
You go there, and your heart beats like you’re about to have a heart attack as you go, and you take a few of your mates, and it’s all fair, nobody jumps in. We start with a couple of idiot things, bluffing each other. I lick my knuckle and stab it in the sand, get some grit on it. He comes up with a few tricks, and you say, “Jeez, that looks pretty mean, the way you hold your fist.” We stand there, and punch each other in the shoulders a bit. We start gettin’ stirred up, and then he charges at you, just goes for it. You get some idea where you stand when you’re down on the ground, and the other feller is on top of you, and he’s punchin’, and you can’t get out of it. You do anything you can, but there’s no scratching, and no biting. You get up again, go at it, and fall down again. You know you’ve had enough when you get a black eye, or your nose gets broken. You’re fightin’ the third toughest guy. We can’t work it out, so we come up with a draw.
I used to go with Pop everywhere, and I was careful never to talk over him when he talked about fishin’, or something. I got excited once – I was just a kid, see – but I hopped in, and I said, “Aahh, I caught this so and so fish the other week!” That was an automatic backhand. I knew I was gonna get clobbered, ’cause the old man was grittin’ his teeth. You acted grown up; you tried to be a man. One time I went swimming in the ocean with a mate, and I didn’t ask my pop if I could go. He looked at me, and he knew straight away.
“You’ve been swimmin’ in the ocean, haven’t you?”
I say, “Nuh.”
He grabs me by the head, puts his mouth in my hair, so he can taste the salt, chomps away at my hair, and I know I’m gone.
“Go in the woodshed, and grab a good stick for yourself.”
So I go to the woodshed, and grab one that’s not too full on. I come back with the one I think hasn’t got too much sting behind it. Sometimes they break, and you have to go back for more, usually about six. It depends where you cop it. You can cop it on the hand, the back of the thighs, or on your bum. Your hands are numb for a bit after. They’re all red.
“What are you cryin’ about?” Sniff-snuff. “I only hit you ’cause if you go out there, you get eaten by a shark.”
I guess it was good for me. It hardened me up a bit. I get shitty when I see how kids carry on now. They wouldn’t get away with it, if they had a pop like mine.
Now I’m living in Oz, I see lots of things I’d like to change in Kiribati. Like, chicks can’t have sex until they get married. That’s hard, ’cause they gotta keep their hymen; they’re not allowed to swim in salt water when they get their periods, or do the splits. When they get married, they have to be broken in that night. If they don’t bleed, they strip them of everything, and tell them to leave the male’s family. Go! You’re not good enough. If a chick has an affair, she’s the one who usually gets hurt by her husband. Everyone finds out about it. You can’t hide anything in Kiribas. Even if you’re not happy, you stay together. Nobody gets a divorce. Life on the island is unreal, man!
I belong in two places. When I’m in Oz, I think about what’s goin’ on in Kiribas, ’cause I grew up there, all of my family is there. You feel the pull. Australia is so different, compared to Kiribas; they don’t understand why I don’t come back, and why I only stay for a couple of weeks. I like Australia in different ways, because of work, food, the future, and freedom. You can do your own thing. It’s hard coming back to Oz when you’re in Kiribas. You feel you need an extra week, or an extra month. You’re never alone in Kiribas ’cause people have all the time in the world to hang out with you, doin’ different things. In Australia, people have their own lives, if you know what I mean. If you’re unemployed, you got nothin’ to do. What are you gonna do, sit there watching TV all day? In the islands, you have family members, they’re unemployed, too, but see, they’re not workin’, they go fishin’, or you can do this an’ that, and every day, you can get by with food. In Australia, noonday comes, and you’re lost; you just don’t know; you have to get in the swing with everyone. I have friends in Kiribas who are hard. They do things their own way; they’re headstrong, restless legends of Kiribas. Mal Maninga’s a pretty strong football player. He’s multi-talented, like when I saw him box one time. Lookin’ around rugby league, there’s a few fellers out to make it to NRL, and good for them. They’re like Hollywood big boys, like Rocky. He’s big back in the islands, old Rocky.
I went through some tough times in Armidale ’cause I was playin’ up. Robyn never had any kids, but she was supportive. We did a lot of fun things. Robyn worked hard in Neville’s shop. I’d like to go back there one day and make up for it, ’cause they work flat out. I didn’t see Neville and Robyn a lot of the time. I was in bed, or out playin’ up. Neville gets along with my mum like a house on fire; and Mum gets along with everyone. I think of Neville as a father figure ’cause he’s given me a lot of support over the years. Neville’s always there for me, and hasn’t given up on me. All the trouble I put him through … and he sticks by me every time. It’s not easy to explain, but I can depend on my white-skin family in Armidale.
“What do you mean white-skin family? Like, you were adopted?”
“Yeah, sort of.”
“Well, that’s all right. That’s different. That’s good. You’re really lucky to have a family like that in Australia.”
“Yeah, they probably think I deserted.”
I used to get shitty when my cousins went overseas. One of ’em was adopted in New Zealand. I thought I had a playmate, but then she was gone. Neville calls me headstrong ’cause I don’t go about business in a sensible way. At the end of the day I have fun. I’m up to date; I pay my bills. I do it in a rough way, not a sensible way, and sometimes we lose communication for a few weeks.
Now I have money I hold my head up, and stand on both feet. I actually feel confident when I go somewhere. I can shout Neville a feed, knowing I don’t have to depend on anyone. Yeah, money in this situation; it’s really good for me. Why did I go off the rails? I was confused, and young. There was some couldn’t hack it, me bein’ adopted by a white family. They thought Neville and Robyn must be strange having me there, stuff like that. It made me feel angry. Someone looked at me, stared at me in a different way, an’ I felt like sayin’, “What are ya’ lookin’ at?” They made me feel like some outsider. That’s one of the reasons I went to Tennant Creek, ’cause they were jealous, thinkin’ Neville gave me this’n’ that. It didn’t help with Robyn’s side of the family. I didn’t get along with Robyn’s side of the family. Robyn had a twin sister, and you know what twin sisters can be like? They thought I was gonna move in there, and take over, want this and want that. It could get pretty uncomfortable.
“Who’s the black kid, hangin’ round with Neville?”
These were some of Neville’s friends; they’d see me and say, “How ya’ goin’, Ben? How you gettin’ along?”
They didn’t understand me. They didn’t understand Neville. I never get big-headed. My mates, they’re thinkin’ I should be a bit more stuck-up, but I just laughed. I never want to make out I’m doin’ things tough; people have to work it out for themselves. If I ever get out of this thing alive, I just want to go along, show everybody my good sense of humour, and explain what I actually went through. I don’t want to make out I’m a big hero who did this and did that, when someone else might have done it twice as good. I want to tell ’em what happened. The ups and downs, and not just the downs, the little things, like, how to trap water, the little things. Important things. Like the day I didn’t want to kill the turtle.
“We have enough food. Let’s let the turtle live for a bit.”