worship, bend low – dulbi-nya I reckon Aboriginal people loved the Lord that the Reverend brought so much because they needed him the most in their lives. I think we always thought that there just had to be something better. Worship came easy – so this news about a fella Jesus from the desert on the other side of the world who had all the instructions for heavenly ascent – well, that was alright with us. Problem is they didn’t let the Aborigine straddle the world he knew best – no more language or hunting, or ceremonies. No more of our lore, only their law was forced. We were meant to be saved but we were still in bondage. We worshipped though, we bent low, dulbi-nya. We’d done it before in front of the giving honeybee, the generous possum, the loving sun, the plentiful waters – our lives were filled up with dulbi-nya long, long before.
underneath the earth – ngunhadar-guwur What’s down there? Why those mining mob want to rip it all out and then it all belongs to them? I think all those shiny things ngunhadar-guwur shouldn’t belong to anyone, only our mother. I think that currency should return, make a balm from the wound. It’s strange isn’t it? That word, fortunes. I think we don’t have that word at all.
understand – gulbarra Our whole lives are spent doing that, trying to understand and be understood. When you’re between young and old though, that is the time for deep thinking. The thing I came to understand is that the world didn’t just begin when I was born. It’s a certain moment in life when we realise that – when we can see that divisions were made when we were just some milt in a fish in the chain of life and death. I’m leaving a complicated world soon, a world up in arms, and I see so much fighting. Love thy neighbour that’s a commandment from the Bible, bilingalgirridyu ngaghigu madhugu – that’s our commandment, it translates to: I will care for my enemy. They both mean gulbarra.
teacher – yalmambildhaany At the Boys’ Home is where I got my education, so they tell me that’s what it was. I learnt to write and read there, but not like I know it now – learning the Queen’s English came later. Back then we only wrote little maxims in learning cursive on our boards: I love to sit in the sun. God made the sun. Our yalmambildhaany name was Ma’am Sally-Anna Mathews, and she had the disposition of someone to match such a beautiful name. Ma’am Mathews had the iodine and boiled candy in her purse for all our punishments from the manager, for whom there would be no dew nor rain, except through him. She would even hug us! What a thing it was for us children without parents around to be hugged. I think my sister Mary never got a hug at the Girls’ Home because in a warm embrace she froze. I’m sorry for my sister that she didn’t have one little hope like Ma’am Mathews – a good-natured, but wrongly instructed nonetheless, yalmambildhaany.
time, a long time ago – nguwanda It’s not always a good thing, looking all the way back. Nguwanda was a time of peace, they tell me. In other people’s stories nguwanda was peaceful too, they’ve been told. Things change for good in many ways, so looking back to nguwanda is important – but it’s just for understanding, not to stop moving forward, not to return completely.
to return – birrabuwuwanha I wasn’t a very good father. I was distracted or I was working out on the field. When the Station was eventually closed down and the property went out to ballot for a Homestead Farm Lease, Bernard Falstaff, good man, let the Gondiwindi stay on in the sheds and work the field and run the cattle in exchange for a sort of ownership of Prosperous. Word got to me that they were looking for a manager for the seasonal workers. I rode out to Prosperous for the first time since I was taken away. The ancestors were with me and talking to me when I rode out there. They said I was going birrabuwuwanha and some were worried, and some were happy. I spoke to old man Falstaff, who was a science man who later taught me to play chess and was not keen on farming. He asked if I was married yet, I told him I wasn’t but I hoped to be one day. He hired me to oversee the workers and to manage the old church. Not five years later I met Elsie and there we settled into our own corner. Even if I wasn’t an attentive daddy, I think the girls had a good life where we lived. Mr Falstaff let me plant the trees and treat that corner as our very own. So that’s how we got to come home, to stay on country, thanks to Mr Falstaff we all got birrabuwuwanha. How the ancestors loved it there too, we didn’t even have to go out into the secret bush, we could stay right there and they’d show me everything I needed to find.
saltbush – bulaguy, miranggul There’s the old-man saltbush, cottony saltbush, creeping saltbush, thorny saltbush and the ruby saltbush. They are good bush food: the leaves of old-man can be used to flavour meat and the ruby saltbush stems and leaves can be boiled and eaten like vegetables; the berries are big and red and sweet. The ancestors used all of the saltbush in different ways. The plant also takes the salt out of the soil, it can heal the ground while growing. That’s something.
sap of trees – dhalbu The dhalbu of the bloodwood tree saved some of the Gondiwindi. When we were being gathered up to be taken away and taught the Bible and be trained as labourers and domestic servants, my great-aunties were frightened and ran. Tried to hide their light-skinned babies in the bush. Some did get away and were never seen again. And some couldn’t leave in time and disguised their babies as full-blood by painting them dark with the dhalbu. Some of them were later captured. They wander around the river that appears when I travel with the ancestors, blood and sap soaked, hiding in plain sight now but still frightened.
say, speak, tell – yarra I asked Doctor Shah to yarra – tell me all the bad news. He obliged. ‘No worries,’ I said to him when he offered the place in Broken hospice. ‘I’ll be leaving the world the same way I came – out by the river.’ He didn’t much argue with me, just a few minutes, I think because he may have had to, but that fella has known me a long time, so we settled it like men and shook hands and he let me go on my way. Elsie’s been crying since we got back to Prosperous, so I took her beautiful face in my hands softly and I said, ‘Aren’t you glad you met a fine bloke like me?’ She nodded, even if she was crying and laughing at the nerve of me. ‘I would’ve died happy the day I met you, Elsie, and now we have all this other time together. Aren’t we lucky?’ I said. And then we kissed and hugged and kissed and hugged until she came around to the fact that we’re still alive now and still in each other’s arms. When she was peaceful again, I came outside to finish my work.
scale a fish – ginhirmarra The ancestors taught me all the things I wasn’t taught at the Boys’ Home: they taught me men’s business; they taught me where to find food, the names and uses of all the plants and animals. My favourite was eating the freshwater eel and the Murrumby cod. You can put the eel or fish – guya whole, just as it is on the hot coals and break into the skin when it’s done. You can put it on as it is or you can scale and gut it with a sharp knife first. You take the back of the knife and scrape the scales towards the head, wash it and then leave the head on. From under the tail to the top of the stomach, cut along and then remove the insides, wash it again. The skin will just come away when it’s cooked. If you eat the fish, it’s important to know how to treat it after it’s died for you.
scars or marks, little holes left by smallpox – gulgang-gulgang Lots of the ancestors who visited me had this on their bodies, not everyone, but plenty did. ‘What’s that?’ I said, when I was little and hadn’t yet learnt not to ask someone about something different on their face or body. One of my great aunts said it was gulgang-gulgang. Then she drew a picture with the end of a stick from the fire. She drew it up in the sky above her talking, and all the stars beholden to help her draw out her story. She told me sickness came in the wind, with the shepherds and in the wool of their sheep, and it was a cold time then. ‘Every day and every night was chilly cold even with the sun out. Everyone was going through the shivers. They couldn’t speak about it either because their mouths were filled with blisters even though they hadn’t been eating hot things straight from the fire. And some of them couldn’t see because the blisters grew in their eyes too. The smallpox were all over the feet and the hands and the face, but not much everywhere else – so it was hard to walk or touch things, or eat. Impossible to see. Well everyone got sick then, and many people died,’ she said. ‘Forever?’ I asked. And she said, ‘Never forever, but it was still not the right time to go for so many babies, nannies and poppies, the weak ones. The old people, old people with mouths filled still with things they needed to teach.’ ‘That’s sad,’ I said, and Great-aunty said, ‘You’ll tell them I told you and then they’ll never do things like that again.’ I asked her, ‘Who do I tell?’ and she said, ‘Just tell the truth and someone will hear it eventually.’ I guess this is what I’m doing, finally.