By the time we arrived in Port Hedland, we were eager to begin our investigations. We’d been told to look up an older gentleman by the name of Jack, as he knew a lot of people in the area and might be able to help us.
As soon as we saw Jack, we liked him. He was very friendly. I explained who we were, why we’d come to see him and asked if he could tell us anything about the Brockman or Corunna families. We were amazed when he told us that Albert Brockman had been his good friend and that they’d worked together for many years.
‘Jiggawarra, that’s his Aboriginal name, that’s what we all call him up here. Now, he had a brother and a sister that were taken away. They never came back, I think the brother was called Arthur.’
‘That’s right!’ I added excitedly, ‘and the sister was called Daisy, that’s my grandmother.’
‘Well, I’ll be,’ he said, with tears in his eyes. ‘So you’ve come back! There’s not many come back. I don’t think some of them are interested. Fancy, you comin’ back after all these years.’
‘Are we related to you, then?’
‘Well now, which way do you go by, the blackfella’s way or the white man’s way?’
‘The blackfella’s way.’
‘Then I’m your grandfather,’ he said, ‘and your mother would be my nuba*, that means I can marry her.’ Mum laughed. We felt excited at discovering even that.
Jack went on to explain that he was, in fact, Nanna’s cousin and that his mother’s sister had been on Corunna in the very early days and had married one of the people from Corunna.
‘I could have been there myself as a young baby,’ he added, ‘but that’s too far back to remember. I was born in 1903 and worked on Corunna from 1924 onwards. Foulkes-Taylor owned it then. They was a real good mob, that Corunna lot, but, slowly, they started drifting away. They didn’t like the boss.’
‘What about Lily?’ Mum asked, ‘did you know her?’ Lily was Nan and Arthur’s half-sister.
‘Lily? I’d forgotten about her. Oh yes, I knew Lily, she was a good mate of mine. So was her bloke, Big Eadie. He was a Corunna man too. Aah, we used to have a lot of corroborees in those days. We’d all get together and have a good old corroboree. I can’t explain to you how it made us feel inside. I loved the singing, sometimes we’d get a song and it’d last for days. Lily was a good singer, you could hear her voice singin’ out high above the others. All those people are gone now. I suppose Arthur and Daisy are dead, too?’
‘Arthur is, but my mother is still alive,’ replied Mum.
Jack was very moved. ‘Why didn’t you bring her with you?’
‘We tried,’ I replied ‘but she reckoned she was too old to come North. Said her legs wouldn’t hold her up.’
Jack laughed. ‘That’s one thing about Mulbas**,’ he said, ‘they can find an excuse for anything! She’s one of the last old ones, you know. Gee, I’d like to meet her!’
‘Maybe she’ll come next time,’ I said hopefully. ‘Did Lily have any children, Jack?’
‘No. She wanted to. She was good with kids. Looked after plenty of kids in her time. She could turn her hand to anything, that woman. How many kids did Daisy have?’
‘Only me,’ Mum said sadly, ‘I’d love to have come from a big family.’
‘Ooh, you ask around,’ Jack laughed, ‘you’ll soon have so many relatives you won’t know what to do with them. You’d be related to a lot up here.’
‘Really?’
‘Too right. You might be sorry you come!’
‘There was another sister,’ I interrupted, ‘I think she was full blood, but died young, her name was Rosie.’
‘That’d be right. A lot of full bloods died young in those days.’ ‘I can’t believe we’ve met you,’ I sighed. ‘All these people have just been names to us, talking to you makes them real. We didn’t think anyone would remember.’
‘Aah, mulbas have got long memories. Most around here remember the kids that were taken away. I should have been taken myself, only the policeman took me in after my mother died. Then he farmed me out to other people so I was able to stay in the area.’
‘I suppose it wasn’t often that happened.’
‘No. I was one of the lucky ones.’
‘Did you know a bloke called Maltese Sam?’ Mum asked.
‘Oh yeah, he’s dead now.’
‘Could he have been my mother’s father?’
‘No, no, not him. I couldn’t tell you who her father was. Maybe the station-owner. There’s plenty of pastoralists got black kids runnin’ around.’
I asked Jack if there was anyone else we should talk to.
‘You fellas go and see Elsie Brockman, she’s your relation, Albert’s wife.’
‘Are you sure?’ Mum asked in astonishment, ‘I thought they’d all be dead by now.’
‘Oh, Albert’s been gone a while, but Elsie’s still here. Only be as young as you,’ he said to Mum. ‘Then there’s a big mob in Marble Bar you should see, and Tommy Stream in Nullagine. Any of you fellas speak the language?’
‘No,’ I replied, ‘but Arthur could and Daisy can. They wouldn’t teach us.’
‘Shame! There’s mulbas here know their language and won’t speak it. I’m not ashamed of my language. I speak it anywhere, even in front of white people.’
‘Do you speak the same language as my mother?’ Mum asked.
‘I speak four languages. Light and heavy Naml, Balgoo and Nungamarda and Nybali. Your mother’s language would be Balgoo, but she would speak Naml too. All those old ones from Corunna spoke both. Those two languages are very similar.’
Mum and I exchanged glances. We were going to tackle Nan about that when we got home.
‘You mob sure your granny never came back?’
‘Not that we know of, why?’
‘Well, I recall meeting a Daisy in ’23. I was workin’ between Hillside and Corunna at the time. Never seen her before. It was like she appeared outa nowhere. Took her from Hillside to stay at Corunna. She had family there she wanted to visit. Half-caste she was, pretty, too. She was pregnant, baby must have been near due.’
‘I don’t think it’d be her,’ I replied.
‘Well, I just wondered.’
I was wondering, too.
It was all too much. Our heads were spinning, we seemed to be inundated with new information. The children were becoming restless, so Paul suggested that we go and have some lunch and talk over what to do. We said goodbye to Jack. It seemed awful, leaving him so soon. We’d only just met and we really liked him. We promised to call back in if we had the opportunity.
Over lunch, we talked about Elsie Brockman. Mum and I both felt it was probably a different person. We reasoned that, as Uncle Albert had been the oldest and quite a bit older than Nan, it would be unlikely for his wife to only be in her fifties. It would have made her, at the very least, thirty years younger than Albert. We decided to go to Marble Bar, instead.
Fortunately for us, we arrived in Marble Bar on pension day. This meant that most of the people were around town somewhere.
A group of old men were sitting patiently under a tall, shady tree in the main street, waiting for the mail to arrive. We parked nearby and walked over and introduced ourselves. Jack had told us to ask for Roy.
‘We’re looking for Roy,’ I said.
‘I’m him,’ replied an elderly man with a snow-white beard, ‘what do you want?’
‘Gidday,’ I smiled and held out my hand. ‘I’m Sally and this is Paul and my mother, Gladys.’ We shook hands all round. ‘We’re trying to trace our relatives,’ I explained, ‘they came from Corunna, went by the names of Brockman or Corunna. We heard you worked on Corunna.’
‘Not me! I worked on Roy Hill and Hillside, but you’d be related to Jiggawarra, wouldn’t you? I worked with him on Hillside, he built the homestead there, a good carpenter. A good man.’
Another older man interrupted. ‘Who are these people?’ he obviously asked in his own language.
‘Brockman people,’ Roy replied. ‘Oh yes,’ the other smiled, ‘your mob’s from Corunna. You’d be related to most of the people round here, one way or another.’
‘You lookin’ for your mob now?’ another asked kindly.
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘My grandmother was taken from here many years ago.’
‘That’s right,’ he agreed, ‘hundreds of kids gone from here. Most never came back. We think maybe some of them don’t want to come home. Some of those light ones, they don’t want to own us dark ones.’
‘I saw picture about you lot on TV,’ chipped in another. ‘It was real sad. People like you wanderin’ around, not knowin’ where you come from. Light-coloured ones wanderin’ around, not knowin’ they black underneath. Good on you for comin’ back, I wish you the best.’
‘Thank you,’ I smiled, ‘we are like those people on TV. We’re up here trying to sort ourselves out.’ Then, turning back to Roy, I said, ‘Did you know Lily, Roy?’
‘What do you want to know for?’
‘She’s my aunty,’ Mum said proudly.
Roy was taken aback for a minute. ‘That’s right, I forgot about that.’
‘Go on, Roy, tell them about Lily,’ the others teased.
Roy shook his head. ‘I’m not sayin’ nothin’. I’m not sayin’ a word about Lily.’ The other men chuckled. Lily was now a closed topic of conversation.
‘What about Maltese Sam?’ I asked.
‘Maltese? He’s finished with this world now.’
‘I was told he was my grandmother’s father, you know, the father of Jiggawara’s sister.’
‘No, no, that’s not right,’ said Roy.
‘You got that wrong,’ others chorused, ‘who told you that?’
‘Oh, just someone I know in Perth.’
‘How would they know, they not livin’ here,’ replied another. ‘We all knew Maltese, it’s not him, be the wrong age.’
‘Do any of you know who her father might have been?’ I asked quietly.
There was silence while they all thought, then Roy said, ‘Well, she was half-caste, wasn’t she?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then it must have been a white man. Could have been the station-owner. Plenty of black kids belong to them, but they don’t own them.’
Just then, we were interrupted by a lady in her fifties. ‘Who are you people?’ she asked as she walked up to our group.
‘Brockman people,’ Roy said crossly, ‘we’re talkin’ here!’
‘You Christian people?’ she asked Mum.
‘Yes.’
‘I knew it,’ she replied excitedly, ‘I knew it in my heart. I was walkin’ down the street when I saw you people here and I said to myself, Doris, they Christian people, they your people. Now, what Brockman mob do they come from?’
‘My mother is sister to Albert Brockman,’ explained Mum.
‘Oh, no! I can’t believe it. You’re my relations. My aunty is married to Albert Brockman.’
‘She’s not still alive, is she?’ I asked quickly.
‘Yes, she’s livin’ in Hedland. She was a lot younger than him.’ Mum and I looked at each other. We were stupid. We should have believed what Jack told us.
‘Come home and have a cup of tea with me,’ urged Doris, ‘I’ll ring Elsie and tell her about you, she won’t believe it!’
We thanked the men for their help and said goodbye.
As we walked down the main street, Doris said, ‘You’re lucky you didn’t come lookin’ for your relations any earlier, we’ve only all just been converted. Those Warbos* people came through and held meetings. It’s made such a different to this town, there’s not many drunks now.’
Doris made us a cup of tea when we got to her place and we encouraged her to talk about the old days. She said she could remember Annie, Nan’s mother, from when she was a small child, and that she thought she’d died somewhere in the thirties at Shaw River.
‘All the old people had a little camp out there,’ she explained to us. ‘There was nowhere else for them to go. All the old Corunna mob died out there.’
‘Did Lily die out there, too?’ Mum asked.
‘Yes, she did.’
‘Roy wouldn’t tell us anything about Lily.’
Doris chuckled. ‘That’s because she was one of his old girlfriends. He doesn’t like to talk about his old girlfriends.’ We all laughed.
Just then, another lady popped in. She was introduced to us as Aunty Katy. She was Elsie’s sister. We all shook hands and began to talk again.
‘Lily was very popular around here,’ Aunty Katy told us. ‘She could do anything. Everyone liked her, even the white people. She never said no to work.’
‘How did she die?’ Mum asked.
‘Now, that’s a funny thing,’ replied Aunty Katy, ‘she came back from work one day and was doing something for one of the old people, when she dropped down dead, just like that! It was a big funeral, even some white people came. Poor old darling, we thought so much of her.’
‘She married Big Eadie from Corunna Downs, but there were no children,’ added Doris.
‘You know, if your grandmother was Daisy, then her grandmother must have been Old Fanny,’ said Aunty Katy. ‘I’m in my seventies somewhere, but I can remember her, just faintly. She was short, with a very round face, and had a habit of wearing a large handkerchief on her head with knots tied all the way around.’
I smiled. Mum just sat there. It was all too much.
Just then, the rest of the family arrived. Trixie, Amy and May. We shook hands, then sat around and had a good yarn. In the process, we learnt that Nan’s Aboriginal stepfather had been called Old Chinaman and that he had indeed been a tribal elder on Corunna and had maintained this position of power until the day he died. Also, Annie had had a sister called Dodger, who had married, but never had any children. We also learnt that Albert had been a real trickster, even in his old age.
We all laughed and laughed as funny stories about Albert’s pranks kept coming, one after the other. By the end of the afternoon, we felt we knew Albert nearly as well as them.
Just as the sun was setting, Doris said, ‘You fellas should go and see Happy Jack. He knew Lily well. She worked for his family for many years. He lives down near Marble Bar pool.’
We were anxious to learn as much as we could, so we took Doris’ advice and headed off in search of Happy Jack.
One look at Jack’s place and it was obvious that he was an excellent mechanic. His block was strewn with many mechanical bits and pieces, as well as half-a-dozen landrovers that he was in the process of fixing.
We explained who we were and showed him some old photos Arthur had given us of the early days. At first, he didn’t seem to take in what we were saying, but when it finally dawned on him who we were, he was very moved.
‘I just can’t believe it,’ he exclaimed, ‘after all these years.’
‘I know you don’t know us, Jack,’ I said, ‘but it would mean so much to us if you could tell us about Lily, we know very little and we would like to be able to tell Daisy about her when we go home.’
‘I’m happy to tell you anything I know,’ he said as we settled ourselves around his kitchen table. ‘She was a wonderful woman. A wonderful, wonderful woman. She worked for my family for many years. You know, she’s only been dead the better part of fifteen years, what a pity she couldn’t have met you all.’
‘We wish we’d come sooner,’ I replied. ‘Doris told us so many of the old ones have died in recent years.’
‘That’s right. And that Corunna mob, there was some very good people amongst that mob. They were all what you’d call strong characters, and that’s by anyone’s standard, white or black. Now, my family, we started off most of the tin mining in this area. We would go through and strip the country, and all that old Corunna mob would come behind and yandy* off the leftovers. I think they did well out of it. We were happy for them to have whatever they found, because they were the people tribally belonging to that area. It was like an unwritten agreement between them and us. Now and then, others would try and muscle in, but we wouldn’t have any of that, it belonged to that mob only. We let them come in and carry on straight behind the bulldozers. It gave them a living. We were very careful about sacred sites and burial grounds too, not like some others I could mention. The old men knew this. Sometimes, they would walk up to us and say, ‘One of our people is buried there.’ So we would bulldoze around it and leave the area intact.
‘Now Lilla, that’s what a lot of us called her, not Lily, Lilla. She was a great friend of my mother’s. She worked in the house and was a wonderful cook. Later when I married, she helped look after my kids too. She had a fantastic sense of humour. You could have a joke with her and she’d laugh her head off. All the descendants of that mob are interlocked now, they’re all related around here, I can’t work it out. It’s worse than my own family. What’s Daisy like, is she fairly short?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, Lilla was like that. Though mind you, in her later years, she became a fairly heavy woman, must have been good pasture she was on. She was wonderful to the old people, even though she was old herself, she worked really hard looking after them. We used to call her The Angel. She was what you’d call a Black Nightingale, really, and I mean that in a dedicated way. Some of those old ones at Old Shaw camp couldn’t move off their mattresses, they were crippled. That didn’t worry Lilla, she’d heave them off and heave them back on again. If she got into trouble, she’d come and see one of our family, because she knew we were on the radio and could get the Flying Doctor in. You see what I mean, she was a beautiful old woman, a very gentle woman, and when she died, I felt very sad, because I felt a thing was lost from amongst the people then.
‘Is there anyone else we could talk to who might help us?’ I asked after a few minutes silence. I was amazed at how steady my voice seemed. All I wanted to do was cry, but my voice sounded so firm and steady, like it belonged to someone else.
‘Yes,’ replied Jack thoughtfully. ‘You should go to the Reserve and see Topsy and Old Nancy. Nancy is well into her nineties and Topsy well into her eighties. I think I remember them saying they were on Corunna very early in the piece, they might know your grandmother, they were great friends of Lilla’s. The only thing is, they only speak the language, you’d have to get someone to interpret.’
‘Thanks very much,’ I said. ‘You don’t know what this means to us.’ We all had tears in our eyes then. While Jack had been speaking of Lilla, it was as though we’d all been transported back into the past. As though we’d seen her and talked to her. Lily was a real person to us now. Just like Albert was.
‘Jack,’ I said as we left, ‘would you mind if I put what you told me in a book?’
‘You put in what you like. I’m very proud to have known her. I’m extremely proud to have known that woman. The way she conducted herself, the way she looked after her own people was wonderful. Your family has missed knowing a wonderful woman.’
‘Thanks,’ I whispered.
We drove back to the caravan park in silence. Even the children were quiet. We unpacked the van and set up our things for tea. Once again, tea came out of a tin. I don’t think we’d have cared what we ate. We wouldn’t have tasted it. Mum and I couldn’t help thinking of all the things we’d learnt about our family. Our family was something to feel proud of. It made us feel good inside, and sad. Later that night, Mum and I sat under the stars, talking.
‘I wish I’d known them,’ Mum sighed.
‘Me too.’
‘You seem a bit depressed.’
‘I am.’
‘Dunno.’ That wasn’t true. I did know and Mum knew it. It was just that I needed a few minutes to collect my thoughts so I could explain without breaking down. Finally, I said, ‘It’s Lilla, I feel very close to her in the spirit. I feel deprived.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Deprived of being able to help her. We could have helped her with those old people. I feel all churned up that she did all that on her own. She never had children, we could have been her children. I mean, when you put together what everyone’s said, she was obviously working hard all day and then going out to camp and looking after the old ones, feeding them …’ My voice trailed off. Mum never said anything.
I tossed and turned that night. The feelings I had about Lilla ran very deep, like someone had scored my soul with a knife. Too deep to cry. Finally, I turned to my old standby, ‘Where is she now?’ I asked. ‘Where are Lilla and Annie and Rosie and Old Fanny? Where are the women in my family, are they all right? I wish I’d been able to help.’ Suddenly, it was as if a window in heaven had been opened and I saw a group of Aboriginal women standing together. They were all looking at me. I knew instinctively it was them. Three adults and a child. Why, that’s Rosie, I thought. And then the tears came. As I cried, a voice gently said, ‘Stop worrying, they’re with me now.’ Within minutes, I was asleep.
The following morning, I awoke refreshed and eager to tackle the Reserve. The deep pain inside of me was slowly fading. It would be a long time before it was completely gone. I never told Mum what I’d seen. I couldn’t.
I was, therefore, rather surprised when she took me aside and said quietly, ‘What happened to you last night?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Last night, something important happened to you. You were asleep, or at least I thought you were, then suddenly, I saw you standing with a group of Aboriginal women. I think there were three of them and a child. I knew you were trying to tell me something, something important, but I didn’t know what.’
‘Oh Mum,’ I sobbed, ‘it was them!’ Her face crumpled. She knew who I meant.
‘They’re all right, Mum, they’re happy.’ she just nodding her head. Then she covered her face with her hands and walked silently away.
By lunchtime, we’d pulled ourselves together sufficiently to be able to tackle the Reserve. We’d asked an Aboriginal woman called Gladys Lee if she would come and interpret for us. Jack had recommended her, as she worked with the old people through the recently established Pipunya centre. She was very happy to do so.
Armed with our old photos, we went from house to house on the Reserve, asking about Lilla. We drew a blank every time. I couldn’t understand it.
Finally, we reached the last house. We stepped up onto the small verandah and Gladys showed the photos to two old ladies and then asked about Lilla. No, they didn’t know her. Suddenly, I twigged from Gladys speaking that these two ladies were Topsy and Old Nancy. I asked Gladys to show them the photos again.
Topsy took a closer look. Suddenly, she smiled, pointed to a figure in the photos and said, ‘Topsy Denmark.’ Old Nancy took more of an interest then. After a few minutes, she pointed to the middle figure and said, ‘Dr Gillespie.’
‘That’s right!’ I said excitedly to Gladys. I pointed to the photo containing Nanna as a young girl and got them to look at it carefully. Suddenly, there was rapid talking in Balgoo. I couldn’t understand a word, but I knew there was excitement in the air. Topsy and Nancy were now very anxious about the whole thing.
Finally, Gladys turned to me with tears in her eyes and said, ‘If I had have known Daisy’s sister was Wonguynon, there would have been no problem.’
‘Who’s Wonguynon?’ I asked.
‘That’s Lilla’s Aboriginal name. We only know her by Wonguynon. I loved her, she looked after me when I was very small. I used to run away to her and she’d give me lollies and look after me until my parents came. She was related to my father. I am your relation, too.’
Topsy and Nancy began to cry. Soon, we were all hugging. Gladys and I had tears in our eyes, but we managed not to break down. Topsy and Nancy pored over all the photos I had, chuckling and laughing and shaking their heads. They explained, through Gladys, that they had been on Corunna when Nan had been taken. They’d all cried then, because they were all very close.
‘They lived as one family unit in those days,’ Gladys explained. ‘They lived as a family group with Daisy and Lily and Annie. This makes them very close to you. They are your family. Daisy was sister to them. They call her sister, they loved her as a sister.’
By this time we were all just managing to hold ourselves together. I tried not to look at Gladys as she explained things, because I was trying to keep a tight lid on my emotions. It wasn’t that I would have minded crying, it was just that I knew if I began, I wouldn’t be able to stop. It was the only way to cope.
Later, we retraced our steps back down through the Reserve, stopping at each house in turn and asking about Wonguynon. It was totally different now, open arms, and open hearts. By the time we reached the other end of the Reserve, we’d been hugged and patted and cried over, and told not to forget and to come back.
An old full-blood lady whispered to me, ‘You don’t know what it means, no one comes back. You don’t know what it means that you, with light skin, want to own us.’
We had lumps in our throats the size of tomatoes. I wanted desperately to tell her how much it meant to us that they would own us. My mouth wouldn’t open. I just hugged her and tried not to sob.
We were all so grateful to Gladys for the kind way she helped us through. Without her, we wouldn’t have been able to understand a word. Our lives had been enriched in the past few days. We wondered if we could contain any more.
The following day, we decided to go to Corunna Downs station. Doris offered to come with us, as she knew the manager out there. Also, she was worried we might take the wrong track and get lost.
The track to Corunna was very rough. Apparently, it was the worst it had been for years. After an hour of violently jerking up and down, we rounded a bend and Doris said quickly, ‘There’s the homestead.’
When we reached the main house, Trevor, the manager, welcomed us with a nice hot cup of tea and some biscuits. We explained why we were there and he happily showed us over the house. To our surprise and delight, it was the same one Nan and Arthur had known in their day. We saw where the old kitchen had been, the date palm Nan had talked about, and, further over in one of the back sheds, the tank machine in which Albert had lost his fingers. I suppose these would be items of no interest to most people, but to us, they were terribly important. It was concrete evidence that what Arthur had told us and what Nan had mentioned were all true.
There were no Aboriginal people on Corunna now. It seemed sad, somehow. Mum and I sat down on part of the old fence and looked across to the distant horizon. We were both trying to imagine what it would have been like for the people in the old days. Soft, blue hills completely surrounded the station. They seemed to us mystical and magical. We easily imagined Nan, Arthur, Rosie, Lily and Albert, sitting exactly as we were now, looking off into the horizon at the end of the day. Dreaming, thinking.
‘This is a beautiful place,’ Mum sighed. I nodded in agreement. ‘Why did she tell me it was an ugly place? She didn’t want me to come. She just doesn’t want to be Aboriginal.’ We both sat in silence.
We stayed on Corunna until late in the afternoon, then reluctantly drove back to Marble Bar. We wanted to stay longer, but our time was so limited and we now had many other leads to follow.
We all felt very emotional when we left from Doris’ house. She looked sad. She’d rung Aunty Elsie and told her we were coming to see her before we returned to Perth. Doris had also suggested that we see Tommy Stream in Nullagine and Dolly and Billy in Yandeearra.
Just as we were leaving, Doris said, ‘You know, I’ve got a stone from the old days. It’s a bit hollow in the middle, they used it for grinding seeds out in the bush. You think Daisy might like that? She’d know what it was for, it might mean something to her.’
‘I’d love it myself,’ replied Mum.
‘Me too,’ I chipped in.
Doris laughed. ‘Take it, then. It’s from a time we don’t see around here any more. You show it to Daisy, it’s fitting she should have it.’
With a mighty heave, Paul picked it up and deposited it in the back of the van. It was very heavy.
‘Are you sure it’ll be all right there, Paul?’ Mum asked anxiously.
‘It’s a rock, Mum,’ Paul grinned. ‘There’s not much you can do to damage a rock.’
Just to be sure, Mum wrapped an old kitchen towel around it to cushion it from any bumps in the road. She wanted to preserve it just the way it was. It was a precious thing.
We kissed everyone goodbye and headed off towards Nullagine. Mum and I were both a bit teary. Nothing was said, but I knew she felt like I did. Like we’d suddenly come home and now we were leaving again. But we had a sense of place now.
Tommy Stream was a lovely old man. After we introduced ourselves, we explained who we were and why we had come. He told us that he was Nanna’s cousin and had been on Corunna Downs when she had been taken away.
‘I remember,’ he said softly, ‘I was younger than her, so when she left, I was only a little fella, but all the people cried when she left. They knew she wasn’t coming back. My kids would be related to you,’ he told Mum, ‘they’d be like your cousins.’
Mum asked again about Maltese Sam. It was a ghost from the past she wanted very definitely settled.
‘That’s not right,’ replied Tommy after she suggested that Maltese might be Nan’s father. ‘I knew Maltese, he wasn’t her father. I don’t know who her father was, but it wasn’t him.’
We talked a little more about the old days, and when it began to grow dark, we decided to head back to the Nullagine caravan park. The children were tired and hungry. We thanked Tommy for talking to us. Like Doris, he suggested that we visit Billy and Dolly Swan at Yandeearra, we decided we would head that way the following morning.
Yandeearra was a long drive away, so we set out as early as we could. We telephoned ahead to let the people know we were coming and also to ask permission to come. We didn’t want to intrude. Peter Coppin, the manager, was pleased for us to visit and welcomed us all on our arrival.
Before we had met anyone else, an older lady came striding towards us.
‘Who are you people?’ she asked.
Mum explained who we were. The older lady suddenly broke into a big smile and hugged Mum.
‘You’re my relations,’ she cried. ‘Lily was my aunty, dear old thing. I knew you were my people. When I saw your car, I just knew. Something told me I was going to see some of my old people today. No one said anything to me, I just knew in my heart.’ We were amazed. Dolly then pointed to Amber and Blaze and said, ‘You see those kids, they got the Corunna stamp on them. Even if you hadn’t told me, I could tell just by looking at those kids that you lot belong to that old mob on Corunna.’
Dolly introduced us to Billy and we sat and talked about the early days and who was related to who. He was very pleased that we’d been to see Tommy Stream as well as the Marble Bar people. He explained that others had come through, trying to find out who they belonged to.
‘We try to work it out,’ he told us kindly, ‘we tell them best we can, but some of them we just can’t place. And that makes us feel bad, because we think they could belong to us, but we don’t know how. Now, I know exactly who you are so there’s no trouble there, I can tell you straight. You belong to a lot of the people here. My children would be your relations. Tommy, he’s close, and others, too, then there’s some that you’re related to but not close, if you get what I mean. You still related to them, though …’
We stayed the night at Yandeearra. The following morning, Billy and Dolly said, ‘We couldn’t sleep. We tossed and turned all night, trying to work out which group you belong to. Tell us about where you from again.’
We went through all that we knew again, very slowly. Then Peter Coppin came over and joined in the discussion. They worked out that Dolly was aunty to Mum, so the groups could be worked out from there.
‘There are four groups,’ explained Peter, ‘Panaka, Burungu, Carriema and Malinga. Now, these groups extend right through. I can go down as far as Wiluna and know who I am related to just by saying what group I’m from. We hear that further up north, they got eight groups. We don’t know how they work it out, four is bad enough.’ We all laughed.
Then Billy said, ‘I think we got it now. You,’ he said as he pointed to me, ‘must be Burungu, your mother is Panaka, and Paul, we would make him Malinga. Now, this is very important, you don’t want to go forgetting this, because we’ve been trying to work it out ever since you arrived.’
Dolly and Peter agreed that those groups were the ones we belonged to.
‘You got it straight?’ Billy asked.
‘I think so,’ I laughed, as I repeated the names.
‘Good!’ he said, ‘because some of the ones that come up here get it all muddled up. We want you to have it straight, because it’s very important. We don’t want you to go getting tangled up in the wrong group.’
‘Well, I’m glad we got that sorted out,’ added Peter, ‘now you can come here whenever you like. We know who you belong to now. If you ever come and I’m not here and they tell you to go away, you hold your ground. You just tell them your group and who you’re related to. You got a right to be here same as the others.’
‘That’s right,’ agreed Billy strongly. ‘You got your place now. We’ve worked it out. You come as often as you please. There’s always a spot here for you all.’
We all felt very moved and honoured that we’d been given our groups. There was no worry about us forgetting, we kept repeating them over and over. It was one more precious thing that added to our sense of belonging.
We were all sad when we left Yandeearra the following day. We’d been very impressed with Yandeearra and the way Peter managed the community. It was a lovely place.
Our next stop was Aunty Elsie’s place in Hedland. She had a lovely home overlooking the ocean.
I don’t think she could take in who we were at first. She had had little contact with Arthur and Nan, though Albert had talked about them a lot, she told us. As we talked, things began to fall into place. We were surprised at the likeness of some of Aunty Elsie’s grandchildren to our own family. We explained how we thought everyone we were related to must be dead and how we couldn’t believe she was really Uncle Albert’s wife. Aunty told us that she’d been many years younger than Albert when they’d married. There were four children, Brian, William, Claude and Margaret. Aunty was, in fact, roughly the same age as Mum, so they had a lot in common. We showed her photos of the family and laughed once again about all the tricks Uncle Albert played on everyone. Aunty also told us how Uncle Albert had owned his own truck and what a hard worker he’d been. It was a trait that seemed to run in the family.
By the time we finally left, we’d gotten to know her really well. Aunty gave us a big fish for our tea. We promised we would come to Hedland again and asked her to visit Perth so she could meet the rest of the family. We felt very full inside when we left. It was like all the little pieces of a huge jigsaw were finally fitting together.
The following day, it was time to head back to Perth, but there was one last stop to make. Billy and Dolly had told us to call in and visit Billy Moses at Twelve-mile, just out of Hedland. We were all exhausted by this stage, but we didn’t want to miss out on anything, so we gathered together the last remnants of our energy and drove out to Twelve-mile.
When we arrived, we were told that Billy and Alma had gone shopping and no one knew when they’d be back, but we could wait near his house if we wanted to. Only five minutes had passed, when a taxi pulled in, bearing Billy and Alma.
They eyed us curiously, obviously wondering who we were and why we were waiting near their house. I felt embarrassed, what if Billy didn’t know us after all! I decided to take the bull by the horns. I walked forward and held out my hand.
After introducing myself, I explained slowly who we were and why we had come. His listened seriously, trying to take in everything I said. Suddenly, his face lit up with a heart-warming smile and he said, ‘You my relations! Yes, you’ve come to the right place. You my people. I am your Nanna’s cousin.’ There were tears in his eyes. I held his hand warmly. Alma smiled and said, ‘You must be his relations.’
We walked back to his house and sat down for a chat. Billy said, ‘I can’t believe it. Some of my people coming all the way from Perth just to visit me. You always come here. You can come and live here, I’m the boss. This is your place too, remember that.’ We began to talk about the old times and Billy explained how he, too, was taken away at a young age.
‘I was very lucky,’ he told us, ‘I came back. I made it my business to come back and find out who I belonged to. It was funny, you know, when I first came back, no one round here would talk to me. You see, they weren’t sure who I was. They were trying to work it out. I’d walk down the street and they’d just stare at me. Then one day, an old fella came into town, he saw me and recognised me. He spoke up for me and said, “That fella belong to us, I know who he is. I know his mother.” After that, I never had any trouble. They all talk to me now. I belong here. It’s good to be with my people. I’m glad you’ve come back.’
We were glad, too. And overwhelmed at the thought that we nearly hadn’t come. How deprived we would have been if we had been willing to let things stay as they were. We would have survived, but not as whole people. We would never have known our place.
That afternoon, we reluctantly left for Perth. None of us wanted to go, Paul included. He’d been raised in the North and loved it. We were reluctant to return and pick up the threads of our old lives. We were different people now. What had begun as a tentative search for knowledge had grown into a spiritual and emotional pilgrimage. We had an Aboriginal consciousness now, and were proud of it.
Mum, in particular, had been very deeply affected by the whole trip.
‘To think I nearly missed all this. All my life, I’ve only been half a person. I don’t think I really realised how much of me was missing until I came North. Thank God you’re stubborn, Sally.’
We all laughed and then, settling back, retreated into our own thoughts. There was much to think about. Much to come to terms with. I knew Mum, like me, was thinking about Nan. We viewed her differently now. We had more insight into her bitterness. And more than anything, we wanted her to change, to be proud of what she was. We’d seen so much of her and ourselves in the people we’d met. We belonged, now. We wanted her to belong too.
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*nuba — a person who is in the correct tribal relationship to another person for the purpose of marriage.
**Mulbas — the Aboriginal people of the Port Hedland/Marble Bar area of Western Australia. (Derived from man or person.)
*Warbos — Name used by Aboriginal people of the Port Hedland/Marble Bar area of Western Australia for the Aboriginal people of the Warburton Ranges area.
*yandy — a process of separating a mineral from alluvium by rocking in a shallow dish.