Tracker

Tracker Tilmouth

The best story is the Warlpiri invasion of Europe when we went to the UN. I went to the United Nations originally and I said this is all wonderful, but it is really a talkfest where the Australian government gets up and tells the world how good they treat the blacks. When you compare that to Africa or South America, we are way out in front in terms of money, and spending, and treatment. They, the Australian government, kept doing this. I said to [Michael] Dodson, We’ve got to out-think this process. I said, We need to bring a bit of culture.

So I said, I am going to bring dot painters and all that so they can paint in the UN. When you go to the UN no one is allowed to bring anything political because no state is to be upset or whatever. So we brought it all. We got all the Warlpiris lined up, old Rastus, old Roy, old Topsy, all them mob, they are all finished now, and Frankie [Jakamarra] Nelson. And got on the plane. First we go to Alice Springs. Someone asked them: Where are you mob going?

We’re going to Chin-ni-pa.

They had them little football bags full of a couple of shirts. So we had to go down and get them cases and clothes from Sainties [Saint Vincent de Paul], and we loaded them all up and got them attired properly, Harry Nelson and everybody else. Anyway, they got on the plane to go to Darwin and that was fucking freaky for them, to be going on this big plane in Darwin to go to Singapore.

I did not really tell them where they were going. No. They thought we were going just over there. It would have been wasted showing them a globe and saying, You are actually going to go around here.

Where’s that? And what’s that?

I declined to inform them, wasting my time and theirs, in understanding exactly where I am taking you. Just turn up. So the Tennant Creek mob rang me and said they wanted to know where Geneva is? I said, Don’t tell em.

Anyway we loaded them all on the plane in Darwin and Harry Nelson was on the plane and he knew how to order a beer, and they said, When you are on Qantas you actually don’t pay for the beer. So that was wonderful and the next minute the woman, waitress, air hostess, was carting grog down to the Warlps who decided to bring out the boomerangs and there was loud singing of love, then of country, then unfettered crying for Yuendumu, all in Warlpiri, and the grog kept flowing.

Then the air hostess said to me, Can you tell your people not to make too much noise. I said, They’re not my people let’s get that straight, and if you keep giving them grog the noise will get louder. And the worse thing was there was green pituri [bush tobacco] marks in every basin.

So we get off there [in Singapore] and we get to the hotel and we are sitting back at the hotel, and old Rastus and I were having a cup of tea in the garden. We had no room service. I said, No room service, to the hotel people because of the drunks. Anyway, Harry Nelson had worked out that all he had to do was go off to a bar somewhere. Right! So Rastus and I was sitting there and the next minute we heard this yak-hi-ing, this singing and waving to us. Here is Harry, going past in a rickshaw, one of the little things, with a brand new fake Rolex on his arm and hanging out of it, and waving to us. I said to Rastus, Oh! Shit, we’ll lose him in the traffic. Anyway Rastus said, Oh! No. They’ll eat him. I said, What do you mean?

Payback. We ate a couple of them. This old bloke from the Tanami remembered the gold rush days, and probably heard stories about eating Chinamen.

Anyway we got Harry Nelson back into the plane for the flight to Paris, and we get to the Charles De Gaulle Airport in France. That was alright, I got everyone across that. Get to Geneva next, yeah no worries. I am buggered by then, absolutely buggered, jet-lagged, I couldn’t sleep because I was worrying about losing these Warlpiris in mid-flight. Anyway as we were getting into the hotel they came knocking on my door, Tracker. Oh! Yes! I had brought all the art equipment, all the rolls of canvas and all the paints and everything else, I had a box full of it.

I gave it all to them, Wonderful, do you want to do some painting? Off they went and it must have been a couple of hours and I was sleeping away and then I hear bang, bang, on the door. The manager, Monsieur.

Yes.

You must leave.

Why?

They are an-e-MALS. This little French bloke.

I said, What’s your problem? You know? That’s a bit rough.

He said, Monsieur, we inspect. I went over there and opened the room and what they had done is they had painted, and when they did the yellow background they painted it on the carpet so there was a yellow square when they lifted off the canvas from the floor. And then there was a red square and a black square, and a red and a brown square all over this carpet. He wanted them thrown out.

While he was carrying on like a pork chop, Frankie Nelson brings out this folder and here he is, [a photo of him as] artist in residence at the Georges Pompidou Centre, with the French premier, shaking his hand. This bloke just about went down on one knee. He had met van Gogh in life. So he went down on his knees to pay homage to Frankie Nelson, and then out of the blue, out came this dot painting of Geneva, do not ask me how, but this little dot painting which they said: This is Geneva. The bloke was nearly crying.

So that was all well and good, and the next day I went to the UN, and for two days I did not check on them. The next day I went to the UN and came back and as I was getting into the lift, in came this bloke with the hors d’oeuvres, and another bloke with the champagne in flutes and everything else, and they got off at the same floor as me. Well! Someone is having a party. They went past, Excusez-moi, and went off and I followed them, and they went to Harry Nelson’s room and I opened the door and here was the manager of the hotel with Harry Nelson selling dot paintings to Japanese and German tourists, no French francs, only Swiss francs, Deutsche marks and American dollars. They had made twenty-five thousand dollars for the day. That was what they had made.

So, wonderful idea. Then they went down to paint in the UN as the guest of Madame Diaz, the Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Rights. The guards wanted them to move along and she went out and said, Non, non, non. Please, they are my guests. They had this big Milky Way Dreaming that Frankie Nelson painted for the UN and gave it to her. Beautiful big canvas. Absolutely.

Previously, on our first trip to Geneva, we were all living in a little dog box and I went for a run as I was pretty fit in those days, and I went for a run along Lake Geneva and running along there this Israeli girl came running past me, and then she had spun around and chased me back. She thought I was Palestinian or Israeli or something like that. I said, No, I’m Aboriginal. Anyway, her name was Sarah and she was very friendly and so the next day she said, I’ll show you Geneva. I thought just a normal motor car will turn up. She turned up with one of those convertible BMWs and we were flying around Geneva. She was chauffeuring me around. Her uncle and her father owned the hotels along Lake Geneva, Jewish mob, and they were all full of Arabs. She said, Where are you mob staying? I said, We’re in this little hotel with a limited amount of room. She said, No, we can do better than that, you can have my uncle’s chateau for the time you’re in Geneva. So twenty minutes walking from the UN there is this massive villa, four stories high with swimming pool, grounds and everything else. We called it the Aboriginal Embassy and Mick Dodson was the ambassador.

We got to the UN and Mick had allocated tasks to all sorts of people, he gave Dickie Bedford the cultural attaché title, and he said, Dickie you know how to speak French? Yeah. So we pulled up alongside a car with this mob in and Mick said, Talk French to them. Dickie said, Yoplait or my play. This is Dickie Bedford. There were these lunatics in the car. We went to the UN and Dick Bedford said, We’ve got a problem.

What’s that?

Who’s going to clean the house and do the dishes? So I went to all the missions, the German, the French, the Irish, everything else, and said to all the young interns there, Where are you living? Oh! We live in the YMCA, or whatever, for the period of time they were there. Forget that, come and live with us. Free board and you can look after the dishes and do the cleaning sort of thing.

So we had all these young sheilas and we invited Robert Tickner, [Daryl] Melham and Pat Turner to a barbecue at the villa, the Aboriginal Embassy. We had all these young girls in bikinis swimming and carrying on and Melham turned up and he said, This is not fair. The Central Land Council had the top level, Coxy [Barbara Cox] and me and everybody else. We opened up all the big windows, beautiful cool breeze at night, magnificent, and the Social Justice Commissioner had theirs, then the Northern Land Council, and way down the bottom was the Kimberleys – because they did not amount to much. Anyway I told the missus but she does not believe it is true. So we did that for about four years straight, lived in this villa, every time we went to Geneva.

So the Warlpiris turned up there the next year when I took them. There was the first year we went, and then the next year when they came with us, and old Frankie Nelson was dot painting and full of good cheer, he fell into his painting twice, and he had dots all over his forehead and we had to extract him from the painting. Talk about body of work. So with all the tape around him and everything else, and pulling it out of his hair while they were still dotting away there, and a little porcupine walked past him and [Mick] Dodson reckoned, He’s not concentrating, Track.

Dodson in all of his glory was there, oh mate, I tell you. We went to this function at the New Zealand Mission and the Maori women were singing beautiful songs and we were all there. I was sitting there, New Zealand ambassador here, Tickner next to him and Mick Dodson next to Tickner, who nearly fainted because of what was being said in our conversation. Then I said, Mick, we’ve got to think, we are going to go and look at Dachau because we need to understand what happened and how close it is to us, and so forth and so on. Anyway. So we are driving in from Switzerland into Germany. Dodson was flaked out in the back, lying back, head out like that, snoring away there. We go through three tunnels, the autobahn tunnels and everything else. So when you go in there the lights are on and when you come out it is sunlight, and so forth. Driving along, about a hundred and eighty kilometres an hour, and he said, Traaacks, Traaacks.

What?

Pull over, we’re lost.

I said, What do you mean we’re lost? We’ve been travelling for three days. What had happened was, he woke up in daylight, woke up when it was dark, woke up in the tunnels.

So anyway, Don Som [Mick Dodson], Monsieur Don Som gets to Munich and that night he wanted to go down the pub. So I thought I better go with him. The sheila dropped us off and she went off to see her mother or whatever. Me and Dodson were in the hotel. I walked downstairs and he was playing darts. We were playing them for a beer and they were beating us, and he started goose-stepping to the bar.

He said, Tracks, they lost.

No, they’re killing us, Mick.

No, they lost.

No, we’ve been paying for their beers.

No, they lost the war.

I had known him since I was a young fella, years ago. His wife used to ring me to make sure I looked after him. Not for the first time, the Mr Pickwick Hotel in the middle of Geneva would ring me up because I would give them my number – to go and pick him up because they had been trying to throw him out, and he was wanting to fight them.

Frankie Nelson and Mick were out, and I said, I’m not picking you blokes up, go and get a cab. I went back [to the hotel], I had Coxy and everybody else, and you had to do your work, you couldn’t just be over there fucking around. So next minute, I am half asleep: Traaacks, you could hear this voice, Traaacks.

What?

Come down here.

I went down, and there is this little French taxi driver started shaping up to me. He said, Monsieur we fight. I said, No, I don’t want to fight. What had happened is that Mick had no money and Frankie Nelson had decided to pay the taxi driver in Australian dollars. The French taxi driver said, That is rub-bish, and threw it on the floor. Frankie Nelson took offence, How dare you disgrace Her Majesty’s currency, put your dukes up, and Dodson is shadowboxing on the side. So I paid him and told him to fuck off and I had these two idiots looking at me. Oh mate, I tell you. Don Som. Crow in jam tins. The boots and skinny legs. Every time I see him, You got them big boots? He tries to shrug me off by calling me Leigh instead of Tracker, he says, Hi Leigh, and I say, Fuck off Dodson. I tell him, I’ve got enough to put you away.

And then we took the Warlpiris. We took them to Tromso in Norway to meet with the Sami. We were lining up for a feed and they were in front of me and eating the meat and spitting it out.

They said, Tracker.

I said, Yeah, what? Why are you spitting the meat out?

No Tracker, Tracker they don’t use salt with their corned beef.

It’s not fucking corned beef, it’s reindeer.

What! The little thing that Santa Claus flies around with?

I said, Yeah one of them.

Oh! We didn’t know that.

Then daylight. I said, Now you mob, this is summer so there is no darkness. At twelve o’clock it’s still light. The sun does not go down.

Aaah! Tracker, we own the Dreaming, we own the story, we aren’t little kids. We don’t need you.

So I said, Righto, you mob all come back at twelve o’clock tonight.

Yeah we’ll be here, we know that story backwards. We are kurtungurlu/

kwertengerle for that one – like this.2

So I came back to the hotel and I pulled the curtains across the windows so that it was all dark and I said, Righto what time?

Jakamarra checked his watch and said, Twelve o’clock, yeah.

So night-time?

Yeah, night-time.

Right, open the window, and pulled them [the curtains] back. Hey, it’s daylight.

I told you the sun doesn’t go down.

Oh! That’s good, we can stay at the pub all day, and off they went. Don’t tell us, we are not little kids.

I said, How do you tell the taxi driver which hotel you’re in? They said, Oh! I don’t know. I said, Come downstairs, and I am thinking, what is the Warlpiri word for polar bear because they had a big stuffed bear in the foyer when you walk in, big, huge bear, and the closest I could get in Warlpiri was big white dog. So Harry Nelson, he came back and said, We had really good taxi driver. Yes, why? I just said you look for them pig pear. Drunks.

I got crook coming back [from Geneva]. I do not know what I ate and I was really sick in Bangkok. So we got out of there, got on the plane and got to Darwin airport and I am in a wheelchair being wheeled off, with Gerry Hand, the minister, and Clarky [Geoff Clark] and Josie Crawshaw mob decide one last attempt at sovereignty and jumped the fence, so off they race across the airstrip and I am in a wheelchair. Gerry Hand said, I hope you’re not running, and I said, I can’t. I said, Take me to the fucking hospital. Anyway, Clarky and Michael [Mansell] mob jumped the fence and they got arrested, made the news [and were saying], Oh! We need to be locked up [as political prisoners]. Gerry Hand said, Don’t waste my time, piss off. I am the minister. He knew them all.

So I turn up at Darwin Hospital and Rossy’s sister Sally and Shieldsy [Bernadette Shield] came in to see me. I am lying back there and there was a little Indian doctor looking at me, and they said, Oh don’t worry about him, he’s got AIDS. They reckoned, He has got AIDS, definitely got AIDS. So the little Indian doctor took off and came back with a mask and sprayed all around the room. I said, You didn’t believe those idiots, did you? He said, You never know. So Mrs T. flew up then and said, What’s wrong with you? I said, I’m nearly dead.

Yeah but I didn’t need to come up and see you.

Anyway so that was the end of my overseas trips but, oh what a joke, an absolute joke, the Warlpiri, they were classic, absolutely classic.

Where is that Geneva?

Over here.

That’s not far. Other side. It is very, very hard to teach Aboriginal people about geography, especially when Yuendumu is the centre of the world as we know it. Anyway that is enough. That is the joking side.

2. Kurtungurlu or kwertengerle is a Warlpiri term used to describe people who have the responsibility to make sure that ceremonies are carried out correctly, usually in their mother’s traditional country.