We very rarely saw any other people as we moved along that coast. We preferred it that way. I was very nervous of company, and perhaps my uncles were wary of the four of us being seen together; a cripple, a freak, and a couple of old Nyoongars.
It is an isolated stretch of coastline. We never took these little trips in the holiday periods. Even when Uncle Jack began taking me to visit relations, we were rarely away for much more than a week at a time.
On the rare occasions when we did encounter others, it was usually Uncle Will who’d talk with them, if we could not ignore them altogether.
We went along small and fragile tracks, with roots rising from the sand. One or the other of the old men drove, so slowly that the car would stall when the track got soft. Then we’d reverse out before getting too badly bogged, and gently try again, inching our way along by compacting the sand a little more each time. Spiky, tough shrubs scratched at our arms if we leaned them out the car windows.
I think it was only once that we came across anyone we knew. There were two women playing cards, sitting in the shade away from their rusty station wagon. They looked up, it seemed resentfully, until Uncle Jack called out to them from the back seat. He went over to them, called us across one by one. We left Ern in the car.
‘Harley,’ Uncle Jack said, ‘this is your Aunty Olive, Aunty Norma.’ The women looked at me.
‘Yeah, I remember your father, Tommy,’ said Olive, after a time. ‘He used to come and see us all the time when he was working on the roads out this way.’
‘Tomcat,’ said Norma, laughing. My father would’ve been about her age, if he’d lived.
‘Yeah, he was a Nyoongar all right,’ said Olive. ‘A lot of his family thought they were too good for the rest of us.’ She glanced at Uncle Will. ‘Your people are from here, you know, but Jack would’ve told you that.’ She looked again at Uncle Will, as if expecting he might say something.
‘Now your father,’ said Uncle Jack, taking the initiative. ‘He lived with Harriette when he was little, didn’t he?’ He was asking me, he was asking Will, he was asking the women to contribute.
Ah yes, my father. The few words it must’ve taken a lifetime to find, and which he gave me just before...
You recall the photo sequence, again? The one which we are nonsensically asked to read from left to right—and which shows my father as perhaps the first white man born. But new legislation, referring to the day before his birth, prevented Tommy being our first white man born, and put him in danger of understanding himself in ways that would only deform and oppress him. His grandmother gave him pride, and a sense of his spirit, and then Ern and Aunty Kate conspired to keep him ashamed and on the run.
It was only when he was grown—when he was an adult, with children—that he began to listen again, and to try to put words to how he felt, to who he was.
I have so very few photos of him, and the one above—the family photo—makes nostalgic, secure viewing very difficult. Thus my desire for alteration. After all, what does it matter what my father looked like, save that he was among those who:
and that he was one of a:
What does it matter, save that he could pass, that we could be anyone, and from anywhere?
I used to read the large letters on the back of my father’s overalls as MR D. Does this reveal my own attitude to authority, a conferring of respect? Or merely a propensity to rearrange the alphabet in my own interests?
He worked for the Main Roads Department, as one of what was known as the Boongs Gang. Ever ambitious, perhaps needing to prove himself, he got to be Leading Hand; and as one who could pass unnoticed, it was he—like a dawg—who brought the grog back to camp on paynight. As the boss, it was he who stood up to fight the challengers around the campfire late in the night, and took the curses of the men he roused next day.
And the Main Roads Department took him along what we recognise as familiar paths, similar paths to the Premier Man all those years ago, similar paths to those trodden forever, paths still there and clear. And even though he was breaking up the crust of the ground, and even though he was resealing it so that it might be travelled as quickly as possible, still it taught him. That place, and some of the men he worked with, taught him. The country taught him, even as it diminished under the exhortation that a million acres be cleared each year.
He scratched at old trails while, around him, massive, clunking chains dragged across the earth. There were great explosions, and it rained earth and mallee roots and small dead animals. Animals fled, they scampered in a mostly tiny-footed stampede away from chains, ripping machines, explosions. Smoke and dust spread further than you could see.
Of course, it is never easy to say what you are learning, nor to pass it on to others. I remember him on his knees, having shucked the MRD overalls, and sparring with me.
‘You hafta learn to stand up for yourself.’
‘You belong here.’
He showed me—what was I? A few years old?—how to hold my hands and fists, and to watch their eyes. And yet it must’ve been short years later that I heard him saying you can’t keep winning, you’re not gunna win all your fights, it’s best not to fight if you can, but when it happens it is whoever hurts the other most, first, whatever way, who wins.
Not so many words to remember. Not a lot of words to live by.
And then Grandad came to get me, and I went to boarding school, and in the holidays to live with him in the boarding house he owned. My grandfather was perfecting a process. He must’ve suspected that he’d failed with my father, and that this was a last chance to get it right.
But again, I digress and confuse all of us, one with the other. As if we were not all individuals, as if there was no such thing as progress or development, as if this history were just variations on the one motif.
And, after all, I have a story to tell. This little family history to share with you.
Yes, it is hard for me to write of my father. Hard for me to think like this of my father, of myself. So I must slide away a little, and come at it from some other way to build up momentum.
Ern had a new domestic servant, Topsy, who arrived with the salmon but from the opposite direction and—of course—by land. Ern soon got rid of his old wife, promoted the servant in her place and went to a war; and when he got back he took Topsy and their child away, as the best white men so often did, and they all went to live in the city.
Ah, I summarise it so glibly. Glide across these lines of print.
Tommy went to the local school. Topsy walked him there and back.
Now, really, Topsy had little choice but to be like a white woman; a very humble one because she could not show herself off, or move among them. They would always ensure she knew the difference, and the difference was that she was all the things they were not. They would say they were clean, industrious, thrifty. They were pioneers, even here in the city. She was not such; could not be; it was impossible.
On her own, living in the city, how could she think any other way? How could she think for herself against all that? The only way was to be them, and then more. To be all that, and then more. The more was the important part, that would be who she truly was.
She had worked like a man, beside Ern. She could dress like any woman and keep house. And she had to be more. A saint, generous and healing; full of love.
She was happy enough to stay inside. It kept the sun away, and goodness knows she did not need more of that exposure.
There were the children to think of.
In the photographs it is clear that she believes she is too tall. She stoops, inclines her head to one side and holds her hands in front of her waist, one covering the other. Topsy was a very determined woman and so she tried only to exhale, as if by doing this she could expel that part of her that was deemed so unattractive, and perhaps it would keep her nostrils narrow. But then her nose seemed to grow longer, and her face began to remind her of a kangaroo. Her body sometimes curled and twisted as if trying to find new shapes to accommodate that which burnt so ferociously within her.
Topsy made things clean and dainty. There were lace doilies. She cleaned beneath them each day. And sometimes she cleaned morning and afternoon.
The mop was not good enough. She liked to scrub the floor on her hands and knees. And have flowers.
She wished someone would visit to see how clean the house was, how welcoming, how much like their own.
Sometimes she read. There were all the labels on the food tins. But the sauce bottle, the coffee and tea. All those dark people.
There were those novels of Ern’s. Upfield, Idriess and so on, with savages in them.
There were newspapers and magazines. It startled her, the way they showed—if at all—those such as herself.
The mirror in the bedroom had patches missing and her face was incomplete. There were areas of blackness, pieces where there was no her.
She lifted the boy, and held him in her arms before the mirror. All four of them wiggle their eyebrows and laugh at one another.
Living in the city, sleepwalking, Tommy stumbled in the dark house and saw his mother, half-prone on the floor, her hands tied to the foot of his father’s bed.
Occasionally, Ern brought a child home. ‘Your sister,’ but it was not the one Tommy remembered, the dead one. The girl would smile, or look away, and was pleasant enough to Tommy. She would spend most of her time with Ern, who took her out to the cinema, to the beach, to town, and left Topsy and Tommy at home.
Living in the city, grimacing in the harsh light, half-blind Tommy walked in upon his father and a sister, curled together somehow, in the living room. The light was cruel to Ern’s pink and hairy skin.
They were living in the city. And Topsy, the mother, quite suddenly became ill. Or, perhaps she had been ill for a long time. At first, it was as if she were pregnant. It was a sickness which went away late in the morning. And her abdomen became swollen, too. At last, thought Ern, and he kissed her quickly before closing the door.
There was just her and the boy now, in the house, in the street, in the town. Just her and her hazel-eyed boy. Topsy would walk Tommy to school, and be most polite and restrained in her small conversations with other mothers. Who all seemed so very cold, as if ice still ran in their veins.
Whereas Topsy herself was hot, so very very hot. Tommy put his hand to his mother’s face, to where the red glowed deep in the brown cheeks, and felt how she burned. He spat on his fingers and reached again, knowing that his saliva would sizzle bubble bounce as does water on any hot surface.
Tommy followed his mother as she walked through the house. She kept one shoulder to the wall and traced the perimeter of each room. He felt the heat of a burning sun radiating from within her. Yet she shivered all the time as if cold and held herself, stroked her arms, her stomach, her thighs. Tommy, listening closely to her rapid and melodic speech, heard not a single word he knew.
‘They keep sending me home from school.’ Tommy spoke to his father’s back as that silent man paced the house. It was tidy, but stale. Dust in the drawers. Ernest saw that Topsy seemed drained, but he could not help but be pleased at her appearance. A little illness became her, he thought. It made her skin a little lighter. A small price, Ernest decided, for staying out of the sun. For being a little off-colour. He smiled; it was as if his very presence improved not only children, but his wife as well.
In the morning Ernest awoke to the sound of whispering. Topsy, beside him, fell silent as he turned his head. She lay on her back, just the thin sheet over her body, and her knees high and apart. Her dark hands rested, palms down, upon her stomach. In the washed light of early morning her skin shone with a film of sweat.
It was not until he rolled off her that Ern realised she was in fact a very great distance away, perhaps as far as where her eyes were focused. Her breath came fast and shallow. A moment ago that had excited him; now there was a prickle of fear.
He had to help her dress.
‘No. I can’t allow her in here. It’s against the law.’
The doctor’s surgery was in the hotel. No one knew Ern, he was just this white bloke with a gin, a darky, a boong coon native with him and they weren’t allowed in pubs. Shouldn’t even be with a white man like this, at all, anyway, not here.
‘There’s the hospital. There’s a section for natives. You’ll have to go to Native Welfare.’
Ernest argued. A white woman, the same as. My wife. My.
‘We’ll let the doctor know. Leave your address, yes I know the house.’ The woman was polite, cool. Ice, again, ice in the blood which has not thawed.
Despite all his training, the doctor’s nostrils wrinkled at the smell. He saw a grey sheet, a wasted body. Gloom. His eyes flickered over the woman, the creamy-skinned boy. His vision tripped him, and he was looking into hazel eyes. The hazel eyes interested him, and his high thoughts circled and descended to the carcasses left by great men’s minds; notions of genetics and of breeding. What he’d read before the war. It was true, you could see it.
The learned man shrugged his shoulders.
‘You’ve done all you can. Some of these people,’ and he looked at Ern, turned back to the patient, ‘they just give up on life after a time. Have you heard of the bone?’
He recommended alternate hot and cold baths. And the Aborigines Department, sorry, Native Welfare. Surely they should be contacted?
Tommy saw water on the floor, puddles of it in a path leading to the fireplace. His father was on his knees, and reaching into one of the bathtubs set out on the floor.
Tommy saw his mother being boiled, her skin and her bones dissolving. Ern lifted the mother, and wrapped her in a towel. The water streamed over the two of them, and showed the contours of them, showed their skin. Then, into the cold water, and Tommy saw the way her body arched with the shock of it. He was pleased, already, because it showed life, something like passion. Her body bent acutely, refracted at the water’s surface.
Her skin was baggy, wrinkled, was as grey and black as old shark skin. I think she remembered a thousand previous baths, and Ern saying, ‘Lie deeper in it, love, lie deep in it.’ She knew how it stung, and how—after the bleach—it was true, her skin did seem fairer. She could look into its pores, and see tiny mine shafts leading into her. Her skin had been penetrated, and must have now been dead. Dead to some depth. The bones gone. She couldn’t stand up.
Still, sometimes she moaned, and rose from the this or that water, up on shoulders and heels. Veins stood out on her limbs and neck like ropes.
‘She’s dying.’
She was wrapped in blankets, with cushions and pillows placed all about her. Tommy sat beside her, his arms around her, holding himself close as she stroked her swollen abdomen.
Then, on the drive, within a few hours of the coast, she seemed to recover. Sat up and held her boy close to her. She made him smile and laugh. And she swung her legs down to the ground and walked herself into the small hut Harriette lived in just past the edge of town.
Harriette could not help but flare her nostrils as she entered her own dark home. The air was stale. Topsy sat in a large soft chair, panting, and her skin seemed to glow with the heat she radiated. Her brow creased when she saw Harriette.
Harriette sat on the edge of the faded and shabby armchair, and Topsy fell against her. Harriette ran her fingers through Topsy’s hair, and the younger woman’s breathing slowed to match that rhythmic stroking.
As she caressed Topsy Harriette looked at Ern, and held his gaze. She was no young thing the white men chased. She saw Ern as a boy, like those who called at the camps; sometimes dangerous, but chiefly greedy and disrespectful and with no one to guide them. She waved a hand at Ern to send him away. He pretended not to notice, but Harriette saw that his mouth tightened even further as he left the room. Tommy, who had been standing behind his father, remained.
His mother fell and rose from the water.
When Ern placed the tub upon the beach, the sand screeched against the metal.
Buckets of water warming on a fire.
Ern hauled Topsy from the tub and stood her on the white beach sand. In that late afternoon night the steam rose from her like smoke. She had her hands to her head, and was stooped as if studying her feet on the ground. Her thin, wet clothing clung to her.
Ern took her to the ocean, and forced her to lower herself into it. Her head seemed to float upon the surface, as if her body had already dissolved. She looked at her boy, the land behind him.
Ern went to the fire he’d made on the beach. Stoked it up, and heated more water in metal buckets.
He took his wife from the cold ocean water to the heated tub, again and again.
Tommy saw his mother hauled from the water by her hair, staggering falling to the ocean, and then dragged back again. His mother rising and falling in steaming water, being cooked, being thrown into the ocean. Shivering and streaming on the sand.
Tommy sees her, lolling rolling about in the small waves. Her eyes one moment live things pleading, suffering, and then coloured shells as if the live thing has shrunk back within them. Ern still holding her by the shoulders, not realising at first. Small waves breaking, and bubbles forming in the foam as they break. Tommy can hear the small bubbles popping, and the foam is light and so full already of air that the gentle land breeze blows the white stuff back to sea, dispersing it. He sees the foam again, at the island’s tip.
Topsy left her clear footprints in the sand, and a smear on the water’s surface.
The boy watching is the man who one later day plucked me from that same ocean, and breathed the life back into me.
One of the few photographs I have of my father was taken when he was a young boy, and he is astride a shark which has been pulled up on the beach. The shark is on its belly, grinning at the camera and Dad has its dorsal fin in his hands. My father’s feet don’t reach the sand. The two of them—boy and shark—are both grinning, and although my father has considerably less teeth his grin is almost as big.
It was taken somewhere in the years after Topsy’s death, and when Ern wandered away. Years when Harriette would take the boy to the beach, and sometimes there was a daughter and her white man with them. It would’ve been the women in the dunes, the men back around the corner of the beach in the pub. Any kids would be running along the shore, or throwing seaweed at one another, or playing hockey with the driftwood.
Did Tommy see something in the water? Something which materialised, a suggestion, a shimmering which became solid and then he felt its power, and the line was burning his fingers? He wrapped his shirt around his hands. Didn’t sing out to anyone.
Half-an-hour, maybe more, the men, kids, they noticed and came calling out to him.
‘Eh, Tommy. You got something there?’
Sweat in his eyes, his arms aching to the bone, he heard the call. He could see mostly, it seemed, sky. The blue of the sea, too, and the white beach in an arc echoing the sky’s bend. All merging together, somewhere else. Just then, all meeting within himself.
He saw a couple of stick figures in the dunes, pointing at him, moving towards him. But they melted away when he tried to see them, and the line slipped further away from him.
Tommy was where the jetty met the sand, in the shallows, calling the shark in.
‘No,’ he snarled when someone tried to take the line from his hands. A small crowd had gathered around him. Men jumped back when they saw the size of the shark racing at them in the shallows. It turned, and headed for the deep, ripping the line again through Tommy’s shirt covered hands, and he fell forward into the water, was towed a bit, before he got to his knees and elbows, and then to his feet. Still abusing anyone who came to help.
‘It’s yours Tommy. It’s yours. It’s his.’
The shark was motionless in the shallows when the publican pumped bullets into it. Later, when Tommy had recovered, it was the publican who took the photo of the boy astride the dead shark.
In the photo there’s a fuzzy scratch of white. The fire in the background.
The fire crackled and blazed. My father’s face was hot, his back cold. His body ached, his hands stung and the stars whirled around his head.