harrow, plough – gungambirra All you need to work the land well, it’s all here. Even before the Reverend, who thought he was farming for the first time, we knew how to gungambirra.
hole used as a sleeping place – nguram-birrang With our girls we’d head south, down the Murrumby. After the dam was built we’d head north with the granddaughters. We’d camp high on the Darling River. Lots of other families would be there too, their cars rigged with kayaks and canoes, fishing rods, fold-out chairs, four-person tents. They were the loveliest times, those trips away. Seeing something different, having an adventure, finding where the Murrumby ended, and the later years, where it had begun. I’d show the kids how the Gondiwindi slept in the early days, so I’d dig out the ground near the bank and light a couple of fires in the afternoon; while they were going I’d prepare our fire pit for the evening. Then I’d do some fishing upstream. When it was getting real cold and all the kids had bathed and got into their pyjamas and it was time to cook dinner, I’d shovel out the coals from the other fires I’d made and feed them back into the main one. I’d lay a couple of beach towels down into the little gulamon shapes I’d made and then tell the kids to get to bed. Well, weren’t they amazed! A warm little ditch to lie in and tell jokes to each other by the fire until dinner and then bedtime. Joey would be propped on his elbows after the girls had fallen asleep, and me still awake in another, and we’d talk boys’ talk until the fire went out and the Milky Way reeled like a film above us.
hollow tree set on fire, smoke coming from top – dural My ancestor, a great-great-great-uncle of mine, took me for a walk one day. ‘We’re going for dinner,’ he told me. I must’ve been about eleven and was quite used to time travel by then. So my great-great-great-uncle, who said his name was Cooradoc, pointed to a dead tree, its branches had broken off and the entire trunk was grey. Uncle Cooradoc tapped his axe on the dead tree and a scurrying noise came back. Then Uncle made a fire with flint stones and the long grass, and cut into the tree to make a hollow. He handed the fire to me and said to hold it there in the dead tree. Faster than I’d seen a hungry goanna, Uncle scaled the tree. He told me to let go of the grass then, which was a good thing because my fingers were beginning to singe. So the fire blew up the hollow fast and the next thing I know, Uncle is climbing back down with a possum in his fist. ‘Dinnertime,’ he said, and smiled. ‘That,’ he said, pointing at the tree aflame, ‘is dural. And this?’ he asked, holding the possum between us. ‘Bugari,’ I said.
Holy Spirit – mudyigaali One day I decided that I might kill a man. I was at the end of my thinking, and at the end of your thinking even the unthinkable becomes an option. Well, I rested on my knees like I had when I was a boy. I prayed and asked and tried to find an answer from the mudyigaali but none came. I went down to the riverbank and screamed to the spirits too, but they wouldn’t come, this was still the time of the whirly-whirly. The next morning, I dragged August outside. I didn’t hurt her, I just needed to do something. Earlier, when the morning star was still visible I’d boiled water in the steel saucepan. I’d let it cool in the moonlight, I’d sat a quartz crystal in there even. In the morning, I’d forgotten, and Elsie’s friends had turned up for morning tea. Well, I was quite desperately sure on the thing I thought I might do. So I took August out by the back of the shearers’ sheds and baptised her, or what I thought was baptism. I said, ‘Sorry, Augie, it’s to protect you, darling.’ And I poured the water from the saucepan onto her hair. Poor thing, she cried, children do that when the world gets loud and confusing. Well, I gave her a hug and sent her on her way and bought her something later that day from the paper shop. It was a little case with miniature books inside by Beatrix Potter. After that I planned the murder I was going to do. I couldn’t square that away with anyone though, not Elsie, not the ancestors, not the mudyigaali itself – it was something in that part of my soul that belonged only to me.
horses, place of wild horses – yarramalang When I was mustering, we’d saddle up at sunrise, have tea and johnnycakes and take off and work until sunset. Some of the stations were more than ten thousand square clicks in size. That sort of country reminds you why people think of this land as wide and blue with endless yonder. I’ve seen it with my own eyes! The only change in routine was colt breaking or heading back to Massacre’s smaller farms for shearing season. I didn’t use a stockwhip myself, I had a kindred spirit in a pair of kelpie mutts. Those dogs would sleep with me in the swag even – three heads poking out the end each morning. Me reading them a passage or two before the day of work they had to do. They worked just as long as us jackaroos, those dogs. Once we were moving a few thousand head of sheep north and we had to cross some wild country. Well, there was a beautiful green valley that opened up as we went north. The bloke I was working with was keen to follow it a way lower to cool off. I gave in but warned him just a quick dip and then we’d have to go. We started down the valley and there we saw them, about twenty wild yarraman, which meant we wouldn’t be cooling off after all, not with the dogs and the chaos that would have scattered the herd. Isn’t anything more beautiful in the world I reckon than a pack of wild animals. That’s what those places are called, yarraman heaven – yarramalang.