The early morning air was cool, with a steady rain. Under a weeping pine, Mathinna pulled the wallaby skin around her shoulders and gazed out at the hairy brown ferns and the cloud gardens of moss hanging above, listening to the shirring rain and the chirping crickets. Fingering the delicate shells on the necklace looped twice around her neck, she thought about her predicament. She wasn’t frightened of being alone in the forest, despite the tiger snakes that hid under logs and the venomous black spiders in their invisible webs. She feared more what awaited her back at the settlement.
Before Mathinna was born, Wanganip had told her, Mathinna’s sister, Teanic, had been yanked out of her father’s arms by British settlers attempting to capture him. Teanic was sent to the Queen’s Orphan School near Hobart Town and they never saw her again. It was rumored that she died of influenza at the age of eight, but the Palawa had never been told that directly.
Mathinna did not want to be kidnapped like her sister.
After Wanganip died, Mathinna’s stepfather, Palle, had done his best to comfort her. With one arm around her as they sat near the crackling campfire, he told her stories about the Palawa gods, so different from the one they were now forced to worship. The two main deities were brothers descended from the sun and the moon. Moinee made the land and rivers. Droemerdene lived in the sky, having taken the form of a star. He crafted the first human from a kangaroo, fashioning knee joints so the man could rest and removing the cumbersome tail.
Since the first Palawa was created, Palle told her, they had walked many miles a day. Lean and fit and small of stature, they roamed from the bush to the sea and to the top of the mountains, carrying their food and tools and eating utensils in bags woven from grass. Smeared with a layer of seal grease to protect them from the wind and cold, they hunted kangaroo and wallaby and other beasts with spears honed with stone knives and with wooden clubs called waddies. From campsite to campsite they carried water in kelp vessels and smoldering coals in baskets made of bark. They ate abalone and oysters and used the sharp edges of leftover shells to cut meat.
Long ago, their country had extended across what were now the waters of the Bass Strait, but one day the rising sea sliced the island from the continent. Ever since, the Palawa had lived on Lutruwita in splendid isolation. There was usually enough to eat; the water was fresh and wildlife plentiful. They built domed huts out of tree bark and twisted wide strands of bark into canoes. They crafted long necklaces, like those Mathinna’s mother made, from vivid green Mariner shells the size of baby teeth and wore ceremonial red ochre in their hair. Many tribesmen wore raised scars shaped like suns and moons on their shoulders and arms and torsos, carved into their skin and filled with powdered charcoal. Their stories, spoken and sung, were passed from one generation to the next.
Unlike the British, Palle said, spitting on the ground with contempt, the Palawa did not need brick structures or constricting costumes or muskets to feel content. They coveted nothing and stole nothing. There were twelve nations, each containing half a dozen clans, each with a different language, and there was no word for property in any of them. The land was simply part of who they were.
Or perhaps more accurately, he said, they were part of the land.
It had been two hundred years since the first white men came to their shores—strange-looking creatures with freakishly pale skin, like white worms or ghosts out of legends. They appeared as soft as oysters, but the spears they carried roared with fire. For many years the only white people hardy enough to remain through the winter were the whalers and sealers, many of whom were so crude and vicious they seemed to the Palawa half man, half beast. Even so, over time, a bartering system developed. The Palawa traded crawfish and muttonbirds and kangaroo skins for white sugar, tea, tobacco, and rum—vile substances that took root in their brains and stomachs, Palle told Mathinna, fueling cravings and dependence.
Since the day the invaders arrived on—and named—Van Diemen’s Land, they were as relentless as a rising tide. They seized the land and pushed the Palawa farther and farther into the mountains. The grasslands and open bush, their kangaroo and wallaby hunting grounds, became grazing pastures for sheep, penned in by fences. The Palawa loathed these stupid bleating animals that clogged their routes and pathways. They refused to eat their stinking meat and burned the fences that impeded their movements. Fearing the shepherds who had no qualms about killing them when they came near, they fought back the only way they could, with ambush and subterfuge.
A decade before Mathinna was born, the so-called Black War decimated the tribes. The white men, the Palawa realized too late, were devoid of morality. They lied while smiling at you and thought nothing of luring you into traps. The Palawa fought in vain with rocks and spears and waddies against roving parties of convicts and settlers who had been officially authorized by the British government to capture or kill any natives on sight. These men roamed the island with kangaroo dogs, hunting the Palawa for sport. As the Palawa continued to elude them, their tactics became more cunning. They camouflaged steel traps with eucalyptus leaves. They bound the men to trees and used them for target practice. They raped and enslaved Palawa women, infecting them with diseases that left them barren. They burned them with brands and dashed the brains of their children on the rocks.
When most of the Palawa had been killed off, the remaining few were rounded up and brought to Flinders. Here, they were forced into stiff British clothes with needless buttons and shoes that cramped their feet. The red ochre was scrubbed from their hair, which was clipped short, in the British style. They were made to sit in the dark chapel and listen to sermons about a hell they’d never imagined and moral instruction they didn’t need, singing hymns that promised salvation in exchange for suffering.
The Palawa had been told that their time on Flinders would be temporary, that soon they’d be granted land of their own—or rather, given some of their own land back.
It had been ten years. They were still waiting.
The rain fell in sheets. It trickled down Mathinna’s neck, finding the gaps in her cape, soaking through her cotton dress to the skin. Deep in her chest she could feel a thickening, the beginnings of a cold. Her eyes were itchy with exhaustion and her stomach was empty. She could hunt for swans’ eggs, but that would mean heading into the open grasses. If she went to the beach in search of mussels, she’d be easy to spot from the ridge. Though she had never caught a muttonbird, she’d watched Palle do it: he dipped his hand inside a hole in the ground as wide as a large oyster shell, and if the air was cold, he pulled his hand out quickly; it might be a snake den—but if it was warm, it was probably a muttonbird nest. He’d reach in, grab the bird, and yank it out, twisting its neck to snap it.
The problem was, Mathinna didn’t have fire. Even the hardiest elders, the ones who tore into the muttonbirds as soon as most of the sticky feathers were burned off, didn’t eat them raw.
She gazed at the gum trees in the distance with bark as smooth and gray as wallaby bellies, and her eyes clouded with tears. She missed her pet, Waluka, an albino ringtail possum with pink ears she’d found abandoned and raised from birth. She missed the warmth of Palle’s arms.
Her mouth watered at the thought of steaming oysters plucked from the coals.
By the time she made her way back to the settlement, the rain had stopped. Some of the Palawa and a few missionaries were milling about, but there was no sign of the Franklins. Mathinna’s heart surged with hope. She slipped into the schoolroom, where a few children were learning their lessons. The schoolteacher looked up from his primer. He appeared to take no notice of her wet dress, the soiled wallaby skin, the frightened look in her eyes. He seemed unsurprised that she’d returned.
“Mary,” he said, rising. “Come with me. They’ve been looking for you.”