I grew up in an Aboriginal community, and for many years lived with our Elder, my great great grandmother, Granny Lizzie. Never taking anything she said too seriously, for I was young and interpreted her warnings as attempts to reign me in. Now many years later, I realise there was wisdom in her words, not superstition, as I thought then. Today, I’m remembering her more because of the many things she told me have come true.
Granny Lizzie was born tribal and was a child when the law came into being in 1856 that all people born in Australia, even Aborigines, had to be registered. She never knew on what day she was born, just that it was during the ‘hot season’. Granny could remember little things about her childhood, being carried high (on someone’s shoulders) for she remembers seeing things from high. Her feet were wrapped in tree bark to protect them from burning on the hot earth when she had to walk a distance. And she remembers being ‘held out’ by the women when small so as not to be bitten when nature called.
Her fondest memory was sucking on thinaa (honeycomb) and when she spoke of this she would smack her lips together and laugh just as if she could still taste it. There were memories of walking to the place of many rocks (Brewarrina), where they ate fish for days and chewed on googie eggs (a type of sweet potato) that doesn’t grow in the north-west any more. Granny was given her English name when baptised by a missionary. Her mother’s name was Sally and she was reared by the tribe until they settled on the white man’s station.
Uncle Toona, her son, lived with us and with his pocket knife he carved for her a walking stick and a foul smelling pipe that she loved and constantly seemed to have in the comer of her mouth. Her hair was white but the smoke from the pipe turned it yellow. Uncle was a soldier in the Second World War and was paid only half wages because he was an ‘Abo’,* Granny said. He died before his fiftieth birthday of recurring malaria and the Returned Servicemens League buried him in the Aboriginal section of the Moree cemetery in 1949.
The gunthi (hut) we lived in was situated on the outskirts of town on the river bank. There were other dwellings like ours and the area was to be known as the ‘Top Camp’, where only Aborigines lived. Granny Lizzie’s hut, like all the others, was made of flattened kerosene tins and Arnott’s biscuit tins found at the town dump. It had one room with an earthen floor; the sleeping section was divided off with hessian wheat bags sewn together. The same type of curtain hung at the only door to keep the cold air out.
An open fire place served for cooking and it also warmed our one room. On very cold nights our iron bed would be pulled over in front of the fire for extra warmth. I loved to sit and put a large piece of bread on the end of a long fork made from wire and toast it over the hot coals of the fire. Granny Lizzie would take a straw out of the broom, set it alight and fire up the Capstan tobacco in her pipe with it. In the firelight she sat and she would tell me stories.
As a girl in her tribe it was a custom that all children had to be home before the sun went down. No matter where they were, they would have to be back in camp and not allowed out at night. The fear of the goopi (red eye) or buluuy (blackness) and also the wandabaa (ghost) was instilled in them so they wouldn’t leave the camp during the night. This custom worked and protected the children after dark, but the daytime was another matter.
When Granny Lizzie told me about the taking of the children, it frightened me even more than any of her other stories. Even during sleep, I would move closer to her, when Granny Lizzie had her children, she lived in fear.
In the early twentieth century (1909) it become a government policy (Aboriginal Protection Act) to round up the Aboriginal and half-caste* children and send them away to institutions, specially set up by the government to domesticate them.
White men on horseback would ride into the camps or reserves without warning and take the children away, never to see their families again. Boys would be sent to Kinchella Boys Home near Kempsey (now Benelong Haven), and the girls would be sent to Cootamundra Girls Home. There was also an orphanage in Singleton, set up by Mr and Mrs L.W. Long of the Aboriginal Inland Mission (AIM), later to be taken over by the Aboriginal Protection Board and taking in both boys and girls.
The taking of children happened many times at the large camp of my people at Terry Hie Hie, where the government of the day set aside 102 acres for a reserve in 1895. My mother was only ten months old in 1921 when a raid was carried out. An old full blood named Gidjay (black ant) heard the sound of the horses’ hooves before they came into camp. Running, he picked up my mother out of the dirt where she was playing and took her to the creek bed where he hid her in a hollow tree trunk, saving her from being taken.
Aunty Violet, granddaughter of Granny Lizzie, was born an albino. She had snow-white hair, pink eyes and pink skin; even her scalp was pink. Her father, Grandfather Duncan, would hide her under an overturned wash tub and then sitting on it, he would roll a smoke. When Aunty Violet cried with fear, he would tap on the side of the tub, as he had taught her to be quiet. He saved her many times this way.
Everyone lived in fear. Their Dreamtime had been shattered. It was decided by the Elders to split up the camp, making it harder for the men on horseback to take the children. Many families began to move away, some to Basendben Station near Tingha, some to Euraba, near Mungindi. Others went over the border into Queensland, and over eleven families came to Moree. Granny Lizzie’s family was amongst this group.
Granny Lizzie loved all animals and couldn’t stand to see them tied up or caged. No animal ever harmed her, for she had a way with them. I once saw her walk to a wood heap where a savage dog was chained to a log. The dog snarled at her but she showed no fear and walked up to it and set it free. When we went walking to visit relatives she just took her time, to give them a chance to untie their dogs, cover the bird cages and let the fowls out. They could see her coming, smoke rising from her pipe and the walking stick, they all feared by her side. Many a dispute was settled by the banging of her stick on their table or sometimes, bumali (hit) over their heads.
There was a large cedar tree in front of Granny Lizzie’s hut and when she went visiting she would break off a small bunch of leaves and this would then be used to swoosh the many flies. I would have my bunch and walk behind her to keep the flies off her back. On the left of the cedar tree, not far away, stood a large gum tree. Granny told Uncle Toona to tie empty ‘herring-in-tomato-sauce’ tins to the base of the old gum tree. In the evenings after tea we would take the table scraps we had saved and put them in the empty tins for the muthay (possums) to eat.
They would see us coming and sit and wait for the food. One old fat Muthay would playfully bite the end of her walking stick when she poked him gently. She had been feeding that one for years and had named her grandson Muthay, after that fat old possum she loved. To this day, I still believe that the possum must have been her totem for she would never eat it, she cared for them.
When we went for walks along the Mehi River, we would collect yarraman (horse) and baraay (cow) manure. Granny would turn the drier pads over with her stick and I would pick them up and put them into a sugar bag. On hot summer nights the manure would be placed in fire tins and burnt, for the smoke was a deterrent for mungin (mosquitoes). The smell and the smoke nearly killed us as well as the mosquitoes, for it nearly took our breath away.
On moonlight nights, we would sit outside under a bough made from the gum tree branches that came off the side of the hut. Animals would make strange sounds and Granny would mimic them as she told me their names in her Kamilaroi (Gomilaraay) language, which she very seldom spoke. When a bulul (owl) hooted, she would shiver, ‘Hear that mopoke?’ she asked. ‘When I was a girl, the tribe would gather up their belongings and move camp if a bulul was heard during the day. It was unnatural for them to make a sound during the day, so they would move on because it meant a death would occur in that area.’
Another sign of death was the howling of a buruma (dog). When you hear a buruma howling, there will be a death soon. She went on to explain that animals can sense death and that is why they must be free to save themselves.
Granny’s beliefs have come to mind since I started working in a home for the aged. Many of the Elderly Aboriginal residents, especially the women, would start to cry and look for their mothers if left outdoors on the verandah during the summer evenings. These women lived in the past, and within their minds they were children again, so as soon as the sun set they became frightened and wanted to come indoors. The custom of being home before darkness fell was still with them.
When an old Aboriginal man was dying in the nursing home, a bulul sat on the television antenna on top of the building. I noticed it there each morning as I drove out the gate, coming off night duty. After the old fellow died, the bulul wasn’t to be seen there again.
I remember Granny Lizzie’s words the day I came home from school aged fourteen. We lived over three miles out of town then. The street where we had all moved to was so quiet, I couldn’t remember it being so quiet before. I went next door to see my great grandmother. Granny Lizzie’s daughter Rose Ann, now our Elder, who had suffered a stroke. My cousin and I use to sit for hours fanning her to keep her cool. She was gone, her bed was empty, the mosquito net was tied up in one big knot over her bed.
The quietness was broken by the howling of a buruma. Its howl was long and mournful and it sent a chill through my entire body. The adults came home about two hours later and said she died just after they reached the hospital with her. I sat on the side of my father’s bed many years later, waiting for the ambulance to take him to hospital, the cancer was taking him from us and his pain was unbearable. As we waited together his faithful little dog who always slept under his bed to be near him, began to howl. My father’s eyes met mine. Being Aboriginal, Dad knew its meaning and we spoke no words. He died twelve days later. His little dog saw him for the last time that morning.
Granny Lizzie died in 1952, in the McMaster Ward, a special ward for Aborigines only, at the back of the Moree District Hospital. Doctors guessed her age to be between ninety-eight and 101 years old.
All those things made me think of Granny Lizzie and what she told me. Being home before sundown, the owl, the dog and all the animals, she cared for and loved. When I see a possum, I see her. When a cedar tree is in bloom, I pull the heavy scented flowers and put them in a vase on her grave, making sure I pull a bungan (bunch) of green leaves from a tree to swoosh away the flies as I approach her final resting place. To show that I did learn some things she taught me, for the carrying of a green bunch was not only to swoosh away the buurulu (flies) but to let people know that you came to visit them in friendship.
* Editor’s note: it is offensive to call someone ‘Abo’ or ‘half-caste’