Mt Dunbar Station

Seated on old wicker cane chairs on the back verandah, Jack and Phyliss Donaldson told me how it was that my grandfather, Mick Muldune, met my grandmother, Lucy, all those years ago.

The trip on the mail truck was rough and that was putting it mildly. The station roads were some of the most hazardous in the state. After heavy rains, there were washaways—where the roads were washed away. In some places there were no roads but deep creek beds full of running water. Road surfaces changed and varied en route. The traveller could find himself on corrugated gravel roads or potholes full of bulldust, or claypans and loose stones. This form of travel was a new experience for the Irishman. He remained silent throughout the trip north. Was he regretting this impulsive action? thought Jack. I hope not.

They stayed on at Mt Dunbar Station, the first station that wanted workers, for three years, then Jack finished up and went back to Kingsley.

During those three years Mick worked hard and willingly doing all the labour required. There was mustering cattle, cleaning troughs, fixing windmills, boundary riding and breaking in horses. He adapted immediately to station life and liked it.

The owners, Mal and Anne Forbes, had three children, Mark, 10, William, 8, and Caroline, 6.

The Forbes also cared for and provided work for 100 to 200 Aborigines living at “Native Camp”, across the other side of the creek from the station. The family clan ranged from able-bodied individuals, children, adolescents and toddlers, to the maimed, lamed and the almost blind old people.

The Forbes, referred to by all the Aborigines as the “boss” and the “missus”, lived in a large shady comfortable house called the homestead. The domestic staff consisted of six women who were responsible for the care and the cleaning of the homestead; the duties differed according to age, status and experience. Amongst this group was a young fullblooded Mardu girl called Lucy, a Milangga, who was becoming a favourite of Mrs Forbes because she proved to be reliable, responsive and an excellent worker.

Anne Forbes wasn’t the only one who noticed these qualities, apparently.

“I could see that Mick was taking a shine to young Lucy and I tried to talk him out of it,” said Jack. “I said to him, ‘Wait till we get back to Kingsley and find a nice white woman. Don’t marry a fullblood girl’. I was a bit worried the old men might take to him with their spears and boomerangs.”

But Mick the Irishman had already made up his mind, he was determined to marry Lucy, this thin straight black-haired girl with a flashing smile and large brown eyes.

From the information he gleaned from “the boss”, Mal Forbes, he learned that Lucy had been betrothed to a young man when she was a child, but when she reached marriageable age (thirteen or fourteen) her biljur (promised man) rejected her. His current or first wife did not want to share him with a co-wife.

Mick approached her family and asked for her hand in marriage in the traditional European manner.

He was told by an uncle, the spokesman and tribal elder, “You wait ’til meeting time, big meeting.”

These annual “big meetings” usually occurred during the summer months—coinciding with the slack period on all stations in the Murchison and Pilbara regions. This was the time the workers took their holidays.

Certain rites and rituals were performed involving members from other traditionally-oriented communities such as Wiluna, Leonora, Nullagine, Marble Bar, and also others further north.

When the ceremonial rites and rituals were over, meetings discussed the releasing of widows/widowers from mourning period, allowing them to remarry. There were grievances to be aired. Special attention was given to individuals who had disregarded or broken the “Law”. These individuals endured physical punishment and social ostracism.

This kind of deterrent would have to be the most effective I’ve witnessed, thought Mick nervously.

It was with mixed feeling and trepidation that he joined the group of male elders that morning. He wondered what the hell he was doing there. One white man, a foreigner, an Irishman, surrounded by hundreds of fullblooded Aborigines. He kept his eyes focused on the ground in front of him. He could feel the hundreds of pairs of dark eyes staring silently, boring into his soul.

He definitely would have remained at the station had he not been reassured by his half-caste friend Jack Donaldson that he wouldn’t have to become initiated into the Aboriginal tribe to marry Lucy.

“Only tribal boys go through the ‘Law’,” Jack told him confidently. “Just take your swag, you will camp with the young single fullahs. The old men, the tribal elders, will look after you and tell you what to do. Don’t worry it will be alright. You’ll see.”

Jack advised him well. Mick was instructed where to sit and with whom.

Mick learnt that Dreamtime beings handed down the belief system referred to as the “Law” which included rules for social behaviour, codes and mores of Aboriginal society. The Mardudjara or Mardus (Martus) of the western desert have a unique kinship system which provides a system of moral codes of behaviour, rules for socialisation and marriages. All individuals are categorised into one of four kinship or skin groups, Banaga, Garimara, Burungu or Milangga. Each individual is born into one of these sections and cannot change or transfer into another group. Children are instructed at a very early age to conform to the kinship system, which is very rigid and complicated. The kinship terms are in constant use every day in preparation for more important roles when adulthood is reached. By that stage the pattern of behaviour towards other members of the clan and indeed the community—according to the kinship rules—are established. It is most important that obligations and commitments are fulfilled according to the kinship system.

Lucy, who was in the skin group Milangga, was only allowed to marry a Burungu. A Banaga could only marry a Garimara.

A man must choose a wife from the right section. He cannot marry just any woman of his own choice. The marriage or union can and will be seen as incestuous and can never be accepted by the community. Many couples have eloped only to be apprehended and escorted back to Jigalong to face tribal punishment, which means ostracism and public flogging. These couples ran away to other towns, but one couple went into the desert. They were not followed and brought back like the other lovers, but were left there in self exile and annexation in the Great Sandy Desert.

Mick was given a skin name, Burungu, thus putting him in the appropriate section to be the “right way” or the correct husband for Lucy—a Milangga woman.

With the community’s blessings he returned to Kingsley with his intended bride. He returned only once to Jigalong and that was to attend his mother-in-law’s funeral.

Although he never accompanied Lucy on her visits to Jigalong, he was content to meet and interact with her relations at the annual race meetings which were held in October and May at the Kingsley race course. There was no pressure on Lucy to abandon or reject her tribal culture or to become involved in ceremonial rites and rituals. She chose the latter. So every year after Christmas, Lucy would spend four to six weeks at Jigalong with her family.