medicine man, priest, conjurer – guradyi, gudyi, guraadyi That’s when the gudyi comes in from the church and tries to fix everything for the families. There was only one good white gudyi I’ve read of and that was Greenleaf, more or less. The medicine men of my ancestors showed me the plants most sacred to our people. The things Joey and the young ones need to know are all written here. There are no guradyi left, so our descendants must take the post. Claim that space where shame lived, where things were lost, where we were kept away from our culture.
mouth – ngaan Use the mouth now, say our words aloud – you’re right sometimes when you just try. There are nasal sounds, the sounds you bring up to the back of your nose, like ‘ny’ – which is made by ‘n’ and a bit difficult, especially at the end of the words. ‘ng’ – which normally comes at the end of English words – comes at the beginning of ours – and is made by ‘n’. ‘nh’ is not heard in English at all – it’s like making a breath, sometimes in and sometimes out after an ‘n’ sound. Then there are stop sounds – those you make close to your heart like ‘dy’, which sounds like ‘j’ or ‘t’ depending on the word, ‘dh’ sounds like ‘d’ or ‘dy’ or ‘dth’ and then there is ‘b’, ‘g’ and ‘d’ – which sounds like English ‘p’, ‘k’, ‘t’. There’s also words that contain long vowels like ‘uu’, ‘ii’ – ‘uu’ sounds like the ‘oo’ in the word book and ‘ii’ sounds like the ‘ee’ in feel. The rest is just feeling the words.
mystery, sacred, secret – ngayirr The word mystery and the word secret mean the same thing in the old language, that is important to remember. I could think of a hundred reasons why I’m alive, why things have happened, why time measures our lives to a limit but that our mother is infinite. But the truth is that everything is just a question.
legs, to be long-legged – buyu-wari To be long-legged – that’s the Gondiwindi! You know when you look at the shadow of yourself and the legs are long? That’s what we have always looked like just standing there. I’m not certain it makes us great runners, but we have always been able to reach things in high places.
luck, providence – mugarrmarra Years ago the whirly-whirlies came to Prosperous – they stayed there for over thirty years. In the second week of the whirly-whirlies hanging about, I cycled out to Massacre Food Mart and I bought milk and a $1 Harbour Bridge scratchie. The prize was $10 000 instant cash. The lady behind the counter explained what it was to me, they were brand new, she said they had only been out for one month. Well, I never, ever scratched the card. I kept that scratchie with me all these years, the day the whirly-whirlies left it would have been void in any case. I reckon I was looking for some sort of sign in turmoil. Money seems like a good enough answer as any. I lost all the magic. I lost all the goodness. I even lost prayer, but I wasn’t going to stop trying for my family. So I never reached for an easy fix. I just tried.
lust after, passionate – ngurrunggarra There’s a story the ancestors told me about two lovers who, long ago, lived on either side of the Murrumby River. The Murrumby was a boundary between two territories, and both groups were friendly to each other, though both lived under strict tribal lore. The day came when one of the young men saw a beautiful young girl of the neighbouring group. He fell in love with her immediately and decided to be her husband. Unfortunately, the girl had been promised a different fate. The two met in secret, though, and many meetings passed without anyone knowing about it. When they were discovered the elders warned the young man not to ngurrunggarra the girl, otherwise he would suffer grave punishment. But they were so in love these two, they decided to elope, even if they’d be outsiders forever. They decided to meet at the river, and take off north to the bush. On the night they were to run away, they both waded into the Murrumby. When they reached the centre of the river a rain of spears entered the water and wounded them both. The two sank into the water holding each other. And if there was water in the Murrumby, the frogs would still gather there today and sing two different tunes from either side of its banks, the young woman and the young man crying out to each other, mourning their lost love.
know yourself, be at peace with yourself – gulba-ngi-dyili-nya When I was younger and my body hadn’t bent yet, strangers began to turn up at Prosperous. I’d look up from the field and see someone standing at the back door, many times it was a woman, older than me, clutching her handbag to herself, nervously walking beneath the peppermint trees and looking about. They were returning to make peace. I’d give them a cuppa, and if they felt like it, a walk around the property. They’d tell me how they tracked the place down, how they remembered being here. Some were old enough to remember my mother. They were freeing themselves from their lives of good grace or misery – either way, they needed to see where everything began for them. I would talk with them, would nod and acknowledge them. That’s what the old, returning people wanted, someone there to receive them, believe them, help, in some way, to put the pieces together. Gulba-ngi-dyili-nya is important work, long work. Every person faces that crossroad, wondering whether or not to walk through the arch of peppermint trees.
koala – barrandhang, gurabaan, naagun After her bus trip and causing all sorts of trouble Elsie drove down to Massacre Plains in a bronze Valiant. We courted at the Aborigines’ dance. Then Elsie was tired from dancing and punch so I drove, even though I didn’t have a licence. We were driving along singing and yapping when a big BOOM sound came from under the car and we swerved a little. I pulled over and we looked behind us but couldn’t see a thing. Elsie was worried, so I turned the car around and there on the road was a massive barrandhang – that’s the name the ancestors had told me. Elsie, she was distressed and wanted to save the animal. She took a picnic blanket from the boot and we went to pick it up, but as she did, the barrandhang, in its shock from being hit I suppose, or filled up on eucalyptus, snuggled into Elsie and she was blissed out like she was holding a baby. I didn’t like this at all, but we got into the car and I got to thinking about a place that rescued native animals, mostly joeys that were still alive in their mothers’ pouches when the mothers had become roadkill. So I got my bearings and headed towards there. I glanced at Elsie a couple of times, and she was still holding the animal like a baby but I had to look back at the road to work out how to keep driving that car. After about an hour we found the place. It was well past midnight when I pulled the car up, but it didn’t take a minute for the old farmer to come out with a shotgun. Oh, God! I had my hands in the air like in the films and I got on my knees and yelled, ‘We hit a koala – help us please!’ I look over at Elsie and she’s stepped out of the car, the picnic blanket dropped away and the koala now hugging her bare around the neck. There wasn’t anything maternal about the situation then, not with a half-conscious thing with claws that was just waking up to the scent of a strange woman. Me and that man with the shotgun could then see how big that animal was. He put the shotgun down immediately and I rose up on my feet. Elsie was still blissed out, but her voice trembled a little. ‘Alb,’ she said, ‘I think it’s waking up.’ Well, the bloke moved real slow towards her, he said some calming words and told her he was going to take the koala. ‘Okay? I want you to let go and turn away fast when I say so.’ She nodded then, she knew she was in trouble. Just as the bloke came to grab the koala under the armpits, the thing latched its teeth into Elsie, and those claws too, ripping the back of her dress in one long drag away from her as he got the koala free. Well, there wasn’t too much blood on Elsie, but that koala had woken up for sure – its arms and legs outstretched and braying loud! The man called out that he’d get the vet out in the morning. Elsie and I dropped in there a couple of days later. The barrandhang was fine. The farmer released it a few days later. We were happy to know it was okay and, well, Elsie never messed about with wild animals again.
jag-spear – dhulu I made a real dhulu myself as an older man. Not so long ago.
ill, to make ill – duri-mambi-rra I try and try to see my mother there on my time-travelling, but I only see her walking in my memory, she’s always defeated in my mind. I see her in the field, threshing, I see her sitting at the end of a bushel with a tin of tobacco. I can see her sitting under the tree when she was old and had already drunk her death, when the grog duri-mambi-rra.
incorrect, wrong – wamang I’m looking out on the backyard: the field, the crop, the dam in the distance to the right; the trees, the line, the river in the distance to the left; the kitchen garden here beside me. It all seems small and manageable. It’s hard to imagine that something so big might swallow this place up soon. Hard to imagine problems coming home here again to roost. Don’t know what it is about us that seems to rile the white man. The burden, the burden of their memory perhaps, or that we weren’t extinguished with the lights of those empires after all. Some days everything seems wamang still.