Gibber’s Creek Gazette, October 1972
Land Rights Not Discrimination, by Jed Kelly
Yesterday I sat outside Parliament House, so blindingly white in the Canberra sunlight. I sat next to a smoky fire like many of us around Gibber’s Creek have used to boil our billies. Beside me sat four black warriors for freedom: Aboriginal Australians who are members of the small Tent Embassy erected on the parliamentary lawns to claim recognition for their race, and the land that has been taken.
What is it to be black in Australia today? It is to be denied jobs — so much ‘nicer’ to hire a white face than a black one. If you are an Aboriginal stockman, you may not get equal pay, even though you may be the most skilled rider and horse-breaker in the district. Schools find excuses to expel Aboriginal students. In Queensland, hard-working, moral black women who share a house are deemed, by law, to be prostitutes, with no reason offered except the colour of their skin. The federal government grants leases at low rent, often to overseas interests, over vast areas of land where those people of Australia have lived for thousands of years. Those living on the prison-like ‘reserves’ may not even leave without permission, nor may their relatives visit if they are deemed to be ‘troublemakers’.
Troublemakers such as those who campaign for equal rights.
A Whitlam government promises to overrule all state laws that discriminate on the grounds of race. There will be free legal representation for Aboriginal Australians who are denied their rights . . .
JED
Jed stared at the Drinkwater dining table. Placemats on the shining surface, just as they should be. Family present, as they were at least one Sunday a month after church, Matilda at one end of the table, Jim down from Sydney sitting in what had been his father’s place, Nancy and Michael on either side of the twins. Tom and Clancy were three years old now and needed herding. Scarlett sat beside her on the other side. Maxi lay in her usual spot, nose just beyond the division of dining room from hallway.
All as it should be. Except the food. Stuffed shoulder of lamb, sure, with Jim carving it and sending the plates down the table. But the rest . . .
No roast potatoes. No roast pumpkin. Instead the potatoes were in a casserole, sliced and cooked into a creamy pie. The carrots looked shiny, dotted with chopped green. And there, next to the dish of peas mixed with tiny squares of bacon, were . . . zucchinis? What was an exotic vegetable like zucchini doing on the Drinkwater dinner table?
‘Where did the zucchinis come from?’
‘The commune.’
Of course. Last time she’d dropped Scarlett there she’d noticed glasshouses.
‘Sam McAlpine is such an industrious young man,’ said Matilda. ‘He really is wasted there. He thinks he’ll have tomatoes ripe by November.’
Michael helped himself to gravy. A much thinner gravy than usual, meat juice with a hint of what might be wine . . .
‘Tomatoes in November? At Gibber’s Creek?’ Jed felt both disbelieving and slightly scandalised.
‘Sam tends to know what he’s doing,’ said Michael mildly. ‘He’s putting in solar hot-water panels for us at Overflow.’
Jed tasted the zucchini. It was delicious. She had only discovered the concept of ‘home’ three years ago. Perhaps it was time to revise her assumption that ‘home’ never changed.
‘Leafsong also cooked lunch today,’ said Matilda, placing enough potato to adequately fuel a football team on her own plate. ‘She asked me if she could do some cooking for me. There’s quite enough work for Anita looking after the house.’
Leave home for a few months and it all changed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked Scarlett.
‘Leafsong only started today.’ Scarlett took another bite of lamb. Scarlett’s hands were steady now, strong enough to lift up the water jug and fill her glass and Matilda’s. ‘It’s a sort of trial. She cooked lunch, then left it in the oven. She doesn’t do washing-up.’
‘Sensible girl,’ said Jed.
‘I said I’d hire her regularly if we all liked her cooking,’ said Matilda.
‘DO you like it?’ demanded Scarlett.
Matilda smiled at her. ‘After two mouthfuls, probably yes. Tom, darling, don’t put peas up your nose.’
‘Blow,’ insisted Nancy, holding a hanky up to her son’s face.
‘What else has been happening?’ enquired Jed.
‘Best wool prices we’ve ever had,’ said Nancy with deep satisfaction. ‘And Tom and Clancy can sing “Baa Baa Black Sheep” now. Show Auntie Jed how you can sing, boys.’
Jed chewed lamb — extremely tender lamb and perfect gravy — while the twins sang enthusiastically, but not quite in tune. Technically, she was the boys’ first cousin, once removed, and Jim and Michael were her great-uncles — her long-dead mother had been Tommy’s granddaughter from his first marriage — but the word ‘auntie’ sounded good.
‘Anything else new?’ she asked, when the boys had finished and were trying to skewer their lunch with spoons and forks again.
The silence stretched just a little too long. Even Scarlett didn’t look at her.
‘There’s a meet-the-candidate party at the Town Hall tonight,’ said Nancy calmly. The woman who had survived three years in a Japanese prison camp, faced the years when she was sure that starvation and illness had left her unable to have the children she longed for, who had created the rehabilitation centre for crippled children, was quite capable of telling Jed Kelly that the town was essentially meeting to celebrate the man who had jilted her. ‘We’re all going.’
Not me, thought Jed. But if she didn’t go with all the others, that would look even more pointed. Farinaceous furries! And phonetical too . . . If someone had warned her (Danger. Nicholas alert!), she could have hauled Julieanne home with her as a sort of shield. ‘The election hasn’t even been called yet.’
Nancy shrugged. ‘I suspect McMahon will hang on till the last legal minute, hoping the opinion polls change. But the sooner the electorate gets to know Nicholas, the better. Excellent article you wrote in the Gibberer last week, by the way.’
Jed acknowledged the compliment with a nod. So Nicholas would be in Gibber’s Creek. But he’ll be different now, she thought desperately, with his new legs, new life. New fiancée. And yet that memory remained — of that glimpse into the future. Nicholas with a beard flecked with grey, that future love between them too powerful to doubt.
It had been three years since she’d had a glimpse of the past or future. Was that because she was no longer lonely, no longer had to peer through time to find a friend? Was seeing ‘ghosts’ something you grew out of, like acne?
‘I have an essay to finish before I go back tomorrow night,’ she said. ‘Pass the peas, please, Scarlett.’
‘You’ve already finished it,’ said Scarlett, lifting the peas with those wonderfully steady hands.
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I read it. Well, you didn’t SAY I couldn’t. I read all your essays.’
‘Why?’
Scarlett shrugged, a narrow-shouldered shrug that would have been impossible such a short time ago — this girl really was a miracle. ‘Because I’m bored. School is boring. Your uni stuff is more interesting.’
Jed sighed. School was essential if Scarlett was to go to university. And school — any school, not just there in Gibber’s Creek — was boring for anyone with enough intelligence and curiosity to scan and remember within the first few days of term the entire contents of her textbooks. ‘It’ll be better next year when you can choose your subjects.’
‘How much better?’
‘Not much.’
‘I have a mauve velvet you might like to wear this evening,’ said Matilda, a little too temptingly. ‘Grrr,’ she said to Clancy, who had slipped under the table and was pretending to be a tiger, gently savaging her foot. His brother joined him. A cry of ‘I’m a lion!’ followed by ‘No, we’re tigers!’ mingled with the sounds of scuffling.
The adults ignored them. ‘An evening dress?’ asked Jed.
‘Too formal. What used to be known as a cocktail dress. A loose-draped top and quite beautiful embroidery.’
It was not a bribe. Matilda knew her too well to think that offering her what was possibly a fortune in 1920s designer clothes would lure her to a campaign party. But it was, perhaps, a way of saving face.
‘How can I refuse a mauve cocktail dress?’ Jed said casually. ‘What time and where?’
‘Eight pm,’ said Jim. ‘The Town Hall.’
‘I thought you’d be voting for Billy McMahon.’
Jim looked startled. ‘Why?’
‘You think Australia should be in Vietnam. You don’t like . . .’ Jed hesitated, trying to find a tactful way of saying ‘anything progressive’.
‘I want what’s best for this country,’ said Jim, only slightly pompous. ‘McMahon’s let inflation run away from us. Impossible to run a business efficiently with decent contracts when you don’t know what the currency will be worth in two years’ time. Gough Whitlam is no fool,’ he added. His tone might also be adding — ‘and he’s no working-class Labor union lout either’.
‘Can we pick Leafsong up on the way?’ demanded Scarlett.
‘Sure,’ said Jed, giving in completely. ‘The more the merrier. How does she get here, by the way?’
‘Bicycle. A three-wheeler with a trailer to carry vegetables. Sam made it.’
‘Out of recycled bits from the dump?’
‘How did you know?’
‘I guessed,’ said Jed absently. Nicholas. Why couldn’t he have stayed safely up in the mountains? ‘What’s for dessert?’
Nancy stood and began to gather the plates. ‘Black Forest cake with preserved cherries and home-made vanilla ice cream.’
Ha, thought Jed. Carol’s self-sufficiency couldn’t manage ice cream yet, despite all they had achieved. ‘Extra ice cream, please,’ she said, and began to help clear the vegetable dishes.