I was ten years old then, when Walter Smith started teaching us. We were always in the house, in the homestead. We want lolly. We was willing to do anything for him. We started off feeding the chooks. Chooks used to be about half a mile from the homestead. And then we used to go and feed the sheep — the killer we used to have in the yard. We used to go and feed that one, put water and everything, make sure they okay. Then we come back to do a bit of sweeping round the house, outside.
And then when we was turning twelve he tell us to start watching him cooking everything, baking in the oven. We started like that, baking things. He didn’t make us work, we just worked for him. Then he started giving more jobs then; we keep going now. Teach us more and more. He used to chop all the meat in the butcher’s shop, and he used to fill that baking dish, and we had to go and put it in the cooler. We used to do all them things for him. He used to tell us to go and get vegies — might be cabbage or cauliflower or whatever he needed to cook. We used to go and get it and he used to tell us to chop it up and put it in a pot, cook it.
You might go to the homestead and first it might be wood-chopping time; chop the wood, fill the wood box. We used to use the axe, chop all the wood in the wood heap. If the men were too busy, well we have to chop it, the girls. Sometimes middle-aged womans chop it, and we used to cart it in the wheelbarrow to the homestead. Fill the wood box in the wall outside, to use it for cooking. We had a big wood stove, two-door, so we can fit everything in there, roasting meat or baking bread. We used to bake six bread every day, big loaves of bread in a long tin. We used to bake that with yeast — we used to make it in a bottle all the time. Nice bread, they used to make. Sometime we made a damper, baked it in the oven.
Len Smith and Walter Smith taught us how to cook whitefella way, and waitering job, and sweeping floor with a broom, and baking bread and cooking roast in the oven. How to go and butcher the sheep, and washing up dishes. My mother was started like that, then when we got big enough we used to do the same.
We used to milk the cow every morning, and boil the milk. And we separate the milk from the butter, and we saved the milk in the cooler. There was a big cooler at the homestead, the sort with flywire around it, and a big shallow dish full of water on the top and he overflowing all the time on to the cloths hanging down all round. Keep it cool, all the meats and things, nice. Butter and things wouldn’t go bad. We used to wash it inside all the time, keep it clean, put the new lot of stuff there. Might be four shelves that all the different foods got to be on. Meat in there, and whatever vegies you’ve got for use, from the garden.
Some of the older ladies, they were there too, teaching us. We used to make the soap ourselves — washing soap — from fat. The boss showed them how to do that, and now we used to watch them doing it, all the old ladies. We used to melt the fat — sheep fat, rendered — and put it all in a big tub, like a big bathtub, but specially for the soap. Let it get a little bit cooled down. We mixed caustic soda in water, half a four-gallon bucket, mixed it with the melted sheep fat, and we had to stir it up till it got hard like custard. We leave it for a night then. In the morning we come back, and this big thing’s set now. We had a table with a wire in the middle, and a rail, and we cut it all in slices — long ones first, and then we turned it around and cut it in little blocks. We used to make about forty in that one tub.
We used it to wash clothes, the old people’s clothes and the bosses’. We never had washing powder like today. When we were washing, we had a washing board — the glass one — we scrubbed it on that. Then they used to boil the clothes in the copper. When you put them in the rinse, you put the blue in the white rag, leave it in there, let him stop and make the water blue. It’s good, rinsed out all the smell of that soap. Face soap, that you wash yourself with, he used to order that one. We used to get the round one, nice smell, but you can’t get that one any more.
We had irons you put on top of the stove — you might have three. You used one, and put him back to get hot, and you used another one. We only had that one, nobody had electric one. We used to iron the clothes for the two bosses there, Len Smith and Walter Smith, and my father Alex Stewart.
Walter Smith taught us to sew and cut dresses. Say you wanted to make a dress, he used to show us how to fold the material, and where we had to cut, and where we had to put the waist and things, and the hem on the bottom, and the collar. He’s the one that taught us. He had no wife. For the bosses, we used to just sew all the buttons and things. In those days, we never had elastic, they only had buttons. We used to sew the buttons, and even a broken shirt that might have got ripped when they were galloping and chasing, we used to sew that. He used to teach us to sew them, patch it up. Any old clothes, get a patch and patch it up. Whatever thing, it had to last for a long, long time, because there was no shop there. Every bit of thing we had to look after them. Not like this time, wasting everything, just going in the dump.
And we used to sew for the old grannies. We used to look after them grannies. Every time when they need something, we might get a material and make a dress for them, or skirt, whatever is. Sometime we make a blouse, but most of the time they like that shirt belong to the men.
Whatever men and women and girls and boys that were working, we cooked food for them all in the homestead. Bread and things, we used to bake it in the homestead. We cooked one lot of meal for everyone, white and black, and he used to carve it all. Put them all in the plate, even the meat and everything, cabbage or carrots, whatever we got. We used to have a dish to take it home, never sit down there. We used to put it all on the dish and go and give it to the men waiting, might be in the big boughshed there. The men were only there for might be twenty minutes and they’re off again, see.
But in the homestead, we might be the waitress, we got to work with the two whitefellas. Get everything, set the table and things, get all the food ready for them before we go out. All the rest of the women go out with the food, but we got to wait till we set the table, and when they’re sitting down eating, then we get our meal, take them down. We might go home and come back; we clean up the table, wash the dishes and everything. By eight o’clock we finished for the night.
And all the granny and grandfathers, they get a ration, and we used to make a camp fire and cook for them. Walter Smith used to look after all the old people. He used to give all the old people rations free, from the homestead store every Sunday. A little bit of flour, sugar, tea; just from Sunday to next Sunday. Jam, treacle, honey, for the old people. He treated them like that. That’s why all the people from the other places come there — they know they get everything free.
They wait till we fellas come, the old people. Sometime if we got any left over from the men’s, we used to give it to them. We don’t have to cook it then. We used to have big billy like a bucket, boiling: cup of tea all the time. And damper, sometimes we baked it in the camp oven, and sometimes we buried it in the hot sand. Fireplace just in the ground there. Make a fire just in the ground, but you’ve got to get a special wood so you haven’t got ashes, so that meat can be cooked nice and brown. We used to get snakewood — that’s really good to cook everything. Nice taste, too. Every morning clean the fireplace. When we finish cooking we bury it in the sand. In the morning we clean it and put a new lot of wood in, and then start cooking again. For sleeping, we had separate fires, near the camp where you go to sleep. We didn’t sleep by the cooking fire. You had to make a little fire each side, for sleeping.
The Smiths were very good people. Soon as someone tell them that Welfare coming, he used to tell us to go down the river now, stay in the bush when the Native Welfare coming round, because they going getting all the children, the half-caste kids, take them to Perth. He used to tell us to go bush for a day. We used to be lucky we had a good boss — he don’t want we fellas taken away from the mum, from the country. We used to be hiding in the river. He used to go, ‘Come on, take it bush.’ ‘That flash car still there?’ ‘No, that’s gone.’ Hamersley and Mulga Downs, all the kids gone. That was about 1930s, that’s when it started.
Those days we was very scared about the policeman. We know what sort of policeman been early days, see, when the first Aborigine people and the whitefellas met up about 1870 or 1880, they was fighting. They used to take them away to Rottnest Island, over spearing the whitefellas and things like that. That’s what happened before, long time ago, before I born. We still got that in the mind. We know what the families been go through, all the old people, early days. If we do the wrong thing we know the policeman pick us up and take him lockup. We think the policeman pick them up, take them for good, see.
Holiday time, we used to go out bush, and we used to do our own way, Aborigine way. About four or five mile away from the station, where the holiday camp belong to the old people, we used to go. No windmill around; we were near the Beasley River, where the water is, and sometimes a rockhole. The proper name for that river is Maliwartu. They know, old people; they goes make a camp there. Now, we’re living in Roebourne, we’re staying here forever. But the old people used to keep moving. Wherever the meeting, they go to the meeting, and all the tribe meet up there, different ones.
We took a spring-cart and a camel; when it’s getting late we leave the camel and the spring-cart, we make a fire, get a kangaroo, cook him. Catching the wild food, and doing cooking in that grinding stone. We used to cook a kangaroo in the ashes, and we used to get wild potato and things for damper. We only had a kangaroo dog for hunting, no gun. The wild onion is really good; we used to mash it up raw and put it in the ashes, and he come up like a damper. And we used to get a goanna, cook it. That’s all the bush tucker belong to the Aborigine people.
I used to watch the old people doing it and I learned from there. They teach me tribal law belong to whatever tribe, and they tell me all the different tribes and that I’m Banyjima woman, I not allowed to go over to Kurrama or any other language. I got to wait for them to invite me before I can say something about the Law that belongs to them.
No blanket, just dig the sand and make a fire each side and sleeping in the sand, and get up in the morning. Summertime not bad — wintertime you got to have something to cover you up. Before the blanket come, we used to use the paperbark tree from the river. Make a fire each side in the camp where we going to sleep, dig the sand and cover us up with the sand.
If a big general rain coming, two or three days one, we go stay in the cave, because we haven’t got a tent and things. We used to move to the big caves in the hill near the river. The old people had special ones they know. Whatever things we had there, we got to take them all up to the cave, stay in the cave for two or three days. Doesn’t matter we got clothes and blanket and things, we used to put our blanket and things in the cave. We used to get spinifex and make a bed, so nothing would come up and bite the children. We’d take the food, put them all on the shelf in the wooden dish, keep it dry. When they go out, they cover them with a leaf or paperbark and put rocks round it to hold that thing down, so nothing will get in. We got to stay in that cave, and if we run out of meat or anything, all the men go out hunting through the rain. Just get a kangaroo and whatever they could find. And all the wife and the kids in the cave had a big fire going all the time in the doorway, keep it warm. When they come back to the cave, we’ll just cook it just there and eat it. They were still doing it when I was a little girl about ten years old, in the 1930s.
Then, if rain stop, we just got to stay there one more days, let the ground get dry properly, then we move out back to the place where we were before. It got pretty muddy, and nice soft ground now, digging all the potatoes. Get a lot now. Some we put on the shelf in the cave, so no one will get it. We used to make a wooden dish and put them all there. When we hungry we know where to go to get them. Put some stores in the cave, and cover it with that paperbark. It stay there, no one would get it, because it’s on a shelf, way up. Even little wild onions, in the dish, the old people used to leave them there. When we’re really hungry and we couldn’t get anything we can go back and we got the food there, see. But we got plenty sweet stuff. Every day they used to get wild honey. They used to fill the little bowl and keep it all the time. Mix it with the water and have a cool drink or something like that. No fridge, no anything. Only just have spears and boomerangs and whatever little wooden dish they make. That’s all they used to keep in there.
No clothes, only kangaroo fur and bird feathers they used to get. They used to get the kangaroo tail, pull the strings all clean, and they used to keep him and let him get dry. They keep strings dry; when they want to use it they put it in the water, soak it, make it soft so they can tie something really tight, and then wax, from the spinifex. Use that one like glue for sticking handle and things — that’s to do the spears and everything. Or tomahawk; when they’re making it, they use that. It’s really good, too.
They used to make wool out of their hair, and they used to make a skirt then. We used to do it too, when we was a little girl. They used to give us a stick and teach us to make the wool. Make a big roll first, like that wool that whitefella doing it, but we do it different way. We use our toe to wind it together, make it long. If it’s a skirt, we must make it little bit top of the knees, and then cut it after and make a belt. Skirt will be nice. That’s the skirt they used to make, and boys only have got a cock-rag thing, just in the front and the back, nothing in the leg side, and the belt. Before all the whitefellas come up, that’s the way they used to be. When the whitefellas come up they had jeans and things, then, but usually they used to do bush way, living in the bush all the time. No shirt, just with the skirt. All their skin was just black with the sun burn.
But when I was a girl I never wear that one. I seen them making it, still making it to show the young generation coming up what they used to do in the early days before the whitefella come. When I was born I had a whitefella father, and I had clothes and everything, blanket and things. But they used to still do it when we go to bush meetings; in the bush, they used to still do it. They wear them in the mallalu time — they call it mallalu — the young fella going through the Law. They wear them then, wear that proper belt from the hair, not the whitefella belt. They got to use everything bush way when they putting a boy through the Law.
Early days before the whitefella come, they had a different Law. Say I a woman, when I start getting a period I not allowed anywhere that big mob might be camping. They put that woman with the period separate, one side. She got her own camp. Only the old ladies used to look after, take her food or whatever she want, water or something. That’s a secret sort of a thing. No man allowed to go there, or little boys or little girls. She by herself till the period’s over, then she come back to the people. She got to be separate. If they moving from there, she got to go one side, and this big mob are going in the one road, and she’s got to go hiding all the time till in the next camp. Because those days no clothes — only had the kangaroo skin sort of a thing.
And when she getting a period she got to put a black mark on her face with charcoal. Her husband know then she’s getting a period, see. The husband don’t do anything, and she move out from the camp, separate, for a few days. Every month, they used to do that. It’s very hard, those days, but they know how to work it, themselves. The grannies used to tell me.
Abridged from Under A Bilari Tree I Born
Alice Bilari Smith with Anna Vitenbergs and Loreen Brehaut, 2002