Us Mob Walawurru, page 1
First published 2006, reprinted 2017
Magabala Books Aboriginal Corporation, Broome, Western Australia
Website: www.magabala.com Email: sales@magabala.com
Magabala Books receives financial assistance from the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts advisory body. The State of Western Australia has made an investment in this project through the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries. Magabala Books would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Shire of Broome, Western Australia.
Copyright © David Spillman and Lisa Wilyuka
The authors assert their moral rights.
All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this publication may be reproduced by any process whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher.
Designed by Jo Hunt
Cataloguing-in-Publication Data available from the National Library of Australia
For Gretta, Ruby, Archie and Basil.
DS
For my late father whose stories have inspired me.
LW
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Lisa Wilyuka, Scott Gorringe, Kev Carmody and the people of Titjikala, Red Sandhill and Ampilatwatja for their love, friendship and generosity.
DS
Thanks to David Spillman.
LW
LANGUAGE WORDS
Luritja is a dialect of the Western Desert Language of Central Australia. It is widely spoken with significant family and dialect variations. The Luritja written in Us Mob Walawurru was provided by Lisa Wilyuka and women from Titjikala. Walawurru is a Luritja word for wedge-tailed eagle. The phonetic pronunciation is ‘wal-a-woo-roo’ with equal emphasis on each syllable and the ‘r’ is rolled.
Anangu Western Desert people
arrkinti liritja beaded necklace
mammu monster
malu kangaroo
Ngalyarra Come here
nintaka perentie
nyrrratja over there
Nyuntu palya? Are you all right?
palya good
rumma mad, crazy
uwa yes
walawurru wedge-tailed eagle
Wai palya? How are you?
wiltja shelter/shade
wiya no
INTRODUCTION
Us Mob Walawurru follows the life of Ruby, a young Luritja girl growing up in Central Australia in the 1960s. Living on a cattle station, Ruby is faced with many situations and dilemmas resulting from cultural difference — education, language, family obligation, relationship to country and environment, and ideas of ownership.
By the 1960s many Aboriginal people in Central Australia had moved onto cattle stations where they could work for rations and shelter. It was a decade of significant change for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory and throughout Australia. Some of these changes are tracked through Ruby’s journey of growth into womanhood and through her quest for knowledge.
Us Mob Walawurru is a work of historical fiction and inter-cultural exploration. Some of the events are based on stories told to us by Luritja people of Titjikala in Central Australia. Some historical events are also included.
DAVID SPILLMAN AND LISA WILYUKA
‘C’mon, you mob. That bus’ll be leavin’ soon. If we gotta’ walk I’ll be lookin’ like Boney Bob. Uncle Archie won’t be wantin’ me then.’ Aunty Alice’s cry shattered the desert silence. A chorus of camp dogs broke into wild response — the blackfella’s alarm clock, I once heard Uncle Archie called them.
Us kids giggled, imagining Aunty Alice in Boney Bob’s body. I rolled over and jumped out of our camp bed, ready to go. Sunlight and dust squeezed through the crack in the corner of the dark corrugated-iron house. The cement floor was cold on my feet. The air was cold too, but it didn’t matter.
Facing the corner I inhaled the air deeply through my nose. The little warmth from the sun and the sweet smell of the earth woke me fully, and I remembered that today was a special day. Turning with excitement, I stepped straight into the open arms of Uncle Archie.
‘Ah, my little desert pea,’ he beamed, picking me up and squeezing me till I almost couldn’t breathe.
‘Sport today, Uncle,’ I said, as he put me down. We walked outside. By now the dogs had worked themselves into a real frenzy. Buster, Uncle’s favourite cattle dog, strutted around howling, waiting for one of the others to have a go so he could remind them who was top dog.
‘Wati tjuta nyantju nyurrampa mantjira kapi uwa,’ Archie shouted around the camp, telling the men to fetch and water their horses, as he had done most mornings I could remember. He squeezed my hand and walked off, ready for another day in the saddle. The rooster crowed over at the station, igniting other birds into song — a crow, plovers, mickey birds. I could pick them all.
By now the dogs had gone quiet. They know what Uncle’s voice means, I thought, that soon they’ll be in the thick of hooves and dust, doing what they love most.
Stepping back inside the house, I started to think about us mob in the mornings and the strange way Mr Duncan, our teacher, had responded once when I spoke to him in whitefella way. I’d asked him if he’d slept well.
‘Not at all well, Ruby,’ he’d replied, looking over the rim of his half-circle wire glasses. ‘Those wretched dogs, those guardians of the familiar woke me about midnight. I was totally unable to get back to sleep,’ he’d added, rolling his eyes.
‘Uh?’ I’d replied, confused by his words. ‘Wretched dogs? Guarb-yins of the family ... what?’ Feeling a bit shamed, I had quickly escaped over to the footy game already underway in the red sand.
Mr Duncan’s words played on my mind and I couldn’t focus on the football. Better talk to Aunty Alice, I decided. She is Mr Duncan’s assistant teacher and knows more about whitefellas and English than anyone else round here.
I found her sitting on the sunny side of the silver bullet — our big tin classroom on wheels — arms folded, eyes closed. I knew that she wasn’t asleep, although she often liked to pretend she was when she heard someone coming.
‘Aunty,’ I said.
‘Oh, it’s you, Ruby,’ she’d replied, opening her eyes and taking my hand.
‘Aunty, what are “wretched dogs?”’ I asked her quiedy in Luritja, for fear Mr Duncan might be inside the silver bullet.
‘You been talkin’ to Mr Duncan?’ she asked. I nodded. ‘Was he talkin’ about bein’ woken up last night?’ Again I nodded. ‘Ruby, those “wretched dogs” are our beautiful dogs, only wretched means the opposite to beautiful. That fella’s talkin’ wrong way again about our dogs.’ Aunty sat upright and got that look on her face like when she was gunning for a fight.
‘Please don’t tell Aunty,’ I pleaded.
‘Hum!’ she’d replied, slumping back down.
‘And ... what are guarb-yins of the family ... or something?’ I’d asked sheepishly.
‘Guarby ... guardy ... guardians of the familiar,’ Aunty spluttered. ‘It was in a book Mr Duncan gave me to read. He’s always sayin’ that.’ Aunty rolled her eyes. ‘And he’s still talkin’ about our dogs. Mr Duncan means that our dogs are afraid of anything strange.’
She’d looked up at me, guessing that I might not understand. ‘Ruby, the dogs bark at anything unusual, different to what they are used to. It scares them so they bark hoping they’ll frighten it away.’
‘Oh,’ I’d muttered. The dogs went quiet because they knew Uncle Archie’s voice.
‘I guess in one way we’re not much different to our dogs, Ruby, us mob. Remember how hard it was to get you kids to this school when Mr Duncan first came with his silver bullet? How some kids cried and some mothers and fathers got really angry, thinking that their kids would be locked up in that silver bullet and taken away, just like ...’
Aunty had turned away, her voice trailing off with the breeze.
‘You stood up, Aunty, and told us mob that the government people say us kids should go to school and that Joe promised us kids wouldn’t be taken away. I remember Uncle Archie sayin’ we should give it a go.’
‘True, Ruby, but our mob was still scared. We didn’t know what school would be like. But is it scary now?’ she asked holding my hand, her eyes closed.
I leaned against the door of the shack and thought back to that day, and I knew that Aunty had taught me something important, that we should be brave with new things, but that it was good to have our barking dogs too, to let us know when something’s not right.
I started thinking about Mr Duncan again. He’s not really scary, a bit strange and cranky sometimes, but not scary. He’s even going to take us on a ... sports trip.
Oh no! I ran inside and quickly grabbed my pillow and blanket, wondering how long I’d been standing outside the shack daydreaming.
A familiar voice interrupted my thoughts.
‘Come on, Ruby. Us mob’s ready to go to the station.’
It was Aunty. She’d been walking to the station when she realised I wasn’t there and had come back looking for me. She took my hand and together we walked over towards our people, standing near the cattle yards.
The main gate of the cattle yards was built of two desert oak posts with a header of the same timber wired horizontally between them at the top. If Boney Bob stood on Uncle Archie’s shoulders he still couldn’t reach it — it was so high because it was also used to hang the slaughtered cattle to bleed. Those oak posts were so fat that not
The yards were surrounded on three sides by tall, white rivergums, some with branches reaching over the rails. Beyond them lay half a ring of red sandhills. The gate faced the river, almost straight in front of the shallow crossing where stock could cross, even when there was water in the river.
The cool caress of the sand underfoot and the warmth of Aunty’s hand made me feel safe. As the sun’s rays broke through the knotty branches of the old gum trees, the desert birds broke into song. We walked past the yard and watched as Uncle Archie, the stockmen and the dogs stirred the beasts into motion. Whistles, yelps and the crack of the stockwhip echoed across the sandhills. Enveloped in the sacred dust of mother earth, our spirits flew free. Once again our country was energised with life and activity.
Up front was Tjilpi, that old man, boss for our mob. This was where he belonged, what he knew. This was his land, ‘country’ we call it. Tjilpi always walked with his head moving about, looking down for tracks, then off to the side or upwards. Suddenly he pointed to the sky singing out ‘Walawurru’. We all looked up. High above, our brother, Walawurru the wedge-tailed eagle, soared to greet us. It was going to be a great day.
At the start of time, our ancestors came out of the ground at a sacred place a long way south of Dry River Station. They changed themselves into Walawurru and flew out creating and singing-up — naming the country as they went. First they created a lot of country to the south and then moved across our country, Luritja country.
From here they flew on northward and then to the west, creating and naming country for other people. Finally at a place, many seasons walk from here, they returned back into the ground to rest and sleep.
Tjilpi told us a story about his great, great, greatgrandfather who walked the whole Walawurru songline looking for a wife. Even though he didn’t know many of the people’s languages along the way, he recognised their dances and knew he was following his songline.
Aunty Alice started singing an old song about Walawurru and our country, created by our ancestors. We all joined in.
Ngayuku ngura nyangatja.
Nyuntu kulila.
Walawurru nyuntu palunu.
Tjamulu tjana wantikatingu.
This is my home
You listen here
Created by Walawurru
Left behind by my grandfathers.
I always enjoyed the walk from our camp in the sandhills, past the cattle yards, across the treeless claypan to the station. This time we sang all the way.
When I’d asked Uncle why we lived away from the station, he said that our camp is on an old unused ceremonial ground. Our people came here many years before to be close to our ancestors, hidden in the sandhills, when some bad business was happening with stockmen from another station. This was before Dry River Station was built. Even though we have to cart water from the river each day, our mob is happy here.
‘We’re red sand people,’ Aunty often tells me, looking out at the flat, white rocky ground at Dry River Station.
The walk to the station was like changing country. On one side, waves of red and green sandhills spread out towards the setting sun and the edge of our country; on the other side flat stony ground with fewer but bigger trees opened up towards the river. Across the river, white plains stretched to low flat-top hills beneath the rising sun. The white shimmering claypan in between was sort of the changeover place.
It was always strange stepping off the last little bit of red sand and onto the gritty claypan. Even this early in the morning it was starting to glisten. Luckily we only had to walk across the edge of the claypan to get to the station. It would have taken us half a day to walk across the middle.
Dry River Station sat on a bend of Karru Pilti, or Scott River as the whitefellas called it. The station was put here because even though there’s little water in the river most of the year, there’s plenty of good, clean drinking water from two bores drilled deep into the riverbank.
The station was built by Jack Mogren, before Uncle Archie was born. The big house called ‘the white house’ or ‘the homestead’ was built of blocks of dirt, called bricks. It had been white all over once but now only the front and sides are sort of white. Round the back you had to look hard to see where the bricks met the ground. It was one colour, the same as the small sandhill that was building up behind the house. For many seasons, sand blown by the wind had been trapped by two large rocks and a dead tree behind the homestead. The rocks were now covered and the branches of the tree stuck out like a skeleton.
‘These red sandhills, them’s hungry ones, come back to eat up everything,’ old Tjilpi said, standing outside the homestead. ‘They were here long time ago. They are coming again.’
I looked at the homestead and saw those sandhills creeping up the walls. Some sort of a warning, I thought. According to Uncle Archie the white house had five or maybe even six rooms in it.
I asked Aunty Alice, ‘What do they do in those rooms, Aunty?’
Our family slept in one room when it was cold, which made sense because we kept each other warm. I figured that was at least one good use for a house, but five or six rooms?
‘You shouldn’t be worrying about their business, Ruby,’ Aunty growled, ‘although I gotta say I wonder myself from time to time. Maybe that house is like their country eh? Maybe it has their dreamin’ and at nighttime they walk round those rooms singing it up?’
‘You serious, Aunty?’ I asked in amazement, picturing Joe Mogren and his son, Lex, all painted up, singing to the walls and floor. Aunty giggled. She could make a joke out of anything.
The homestead had a shade roof all the way around the outside. Underneath Old Jack Mogren had dug big flat stones into the ground. Must have taken a long time. Uncle said he did it to keep the sand out of the house. We couldn’t understand why he would want to do this. It’ good to keep your country close all the time. The house had a silver tin roof. Many of their machines and tools were silver too, Us kids reckoned that whitefellas had ‘tin dreaming’ just the same as Walawurru is for us. We figured that was why the school was silver. When I told Uncle, he laughed.
On one side of the homestead were the stables and shed where the machinery and tools were kept. On the other side was Mr Duncan’s silver bullet. It was like a house on wheels. Hanging off the side wall was a big piece of green cloth to make some shade. At the other end it was held up with trees and ropes. Underneath this shade cloth, rows of school desks and chairs faced the side of the silver bullet, where Mr Duncan had placed a blackboard.
Our families felt much happier when they saw that the school was outside the silver bullet, with our feet in our own country.
Joe Mogren, old Jack’s son, took over running Dry River Station when his father died. According to Uncle Archie, ‘running a station’ meant that Joe had permission to use the country for growing cattle. Most whitefellas called him the owner though. Once I heard Mr Duncan talking to a stranger passing through. He had said that the Mogren family have always owned Dry River Station, but I knew our people had been here long before whitefellas came.
One day, when the sun was going down, I asked Uncle Archie, ‘Why do whitefellas say Joe is the owner of this country?’
Uncle sat me down in the sand beside him, took a breath and looked off towards the sunset. He started pouring the red sand from one hand to another. This is obviously a difficult question, I thought, but I knew I must be patient when an adult was waiting to speak. Finally, with his elbows on his knees, he clasped his hands together, then held one hand out and looked into my eyes. He opened his hand. In it was a stone.
‘Ruby, if I tell you that I own this stone, what does it mean?’ Uncle asked me in Luritja.
‘I’m not sure,’ I said, hesitating for a moment. Then I remembered.
‘Mr Duncan told us that the mission owns the silver bullet and everything in it. He says that if we take even a pencil home we are stealing. The way Mr Duncan talks about stealing, I know that it’s not good. Whatever owning is, it’s very powerful.’
