carving on trees at graves – muyalaang The books say a civilisation must meet four criteria: it must show house building, domestication of animals, agricultural activity, and reverence for the dead. Reverence for the dead, this is the carving on the trees, this is the ceremony, the care. The Gondiwindi didn’t throw them in the earth and walk away. There was great mourning and care of the body, dance and ceremony and a permanent place for those to rest. I have discovered, just recently, that the old people built a cemetery too, but I cannot find it. It seems when I ask the ancestors, they show me many places – too many unmarked gravesites all over this country – and they cry, and say they weren’t responsible. But when the ancestors were in charge of their living and dead bodies they can find the spot, and we take flowers to those holy places. We have always been a civilisation, us.
catch you, crush you, kill you, eat you – dha-l-girri-dhu-nyal We were having a barbecue at the house one Christmas night. It had been a hot, ragged sort of day. We had family over, a few were getting on the bottle. They weren’t driving and they knew they could stay out in the shearers’ annexe, which we always kept neat and tidy. By 10 p.m. everyone had gone to sleep. During the night something woke me. It wasn’t the ancestors because the whirly-whirly was still out. It was a creak of the floorboards. I went out to the kitchen and looked up the staircase to the attic. Well my guts got punched because Jimmy Corvette was climbing the stairs. He saw me and came back down immediately, the stink of beer of his breath. He acted a fool then, like he was drunk. ‘I was gunna tickle the girls,’ he said, giggling. ‘Get out,’ I said. I told him he was a fool who couldn’t handle his liquor. At the back door I grabbed him by the shirt. ‘Not back to the annexe. Walk home,’ I growled into his face. And when I said dha-l-girri-dhu-nyal – he knew I meant it.
catch, take unawares – girra-warra Jimmy ran off with that spear in his leg and turned up in the hospital, infected. He wouldn’t say I had done it, even on his deathbed. I signed the visitors’ log, I walked in and asked him where Jedda was. It took me a long part of a day to get the words out of him. ‘I didn’t mean to, it was an accident,’ he said. ‘Where is she?’ I demanded. I won’t forget his four-word response: ‘In the water, Uncle.’ I peeled his bandage back and spat into the wound. I told him when he got out of hospital I was going to torture him to death if he didn’t take me to Jedda. I meant it. Visiting time was over at 8 p.m. Well, he died of sepsis through the night and I never found our darling all the rest of my days.
cold, be changed, be dead wanting cover – baludhaay When our loved ones are gone, and bent and lying out in their graves, the eternal home of the soil, they need to be kept warm, so we cover them. The old people they baludhaay their people, their loved ones. To keep them warm, and to help them in the next part of their journey – which was to change form. I just wanted, all this time, to wrap Jedda up safe and warm.