River People
Location: North Bourke
Time: Morning, Thursday16th September.
Speakers: Jen Crawford, Gertie Dorigo, Rina Kikuchi, Margaret Knight, Layna Onji
JEN:
Gertie, you were saying there was no border between New South Wales and Queensland.
GERTIE:
Yes, that was way back.
That was a long time ago, before the white man came and put all the borders in.
We’ve still got people up there in Queensland.
MARGARET:
My father was born in Cunnamulla.
JEN:
And your grandmothers were sisters, right?
MARGARET:
Our mothers.
GERTIE:
See, our fathers were cousins. My father and Margaret’s father were cousins.
MARGARET:
But we’re all different colours.
We’ve got darker cousins. Couple of the boys have said to me, “How come you’re our cousin? Look how white you are?”
I say to them, “Well, you don’t have to claim me.”
[All laugh]
GERTIE:
We’re all mixed anyway. My dad and his three sisters had a German father, Carl Leppitt. He came from Germany when the war was on. His family ended up on a ship to Adelaide and they moved out from there to Wilcannia. There’s a lot of Aboriginal people there, and that’s how my grandmother got with him.
They were down at Louth, when the second war was on. Uncle Albert wanted to go join up. Our grandfather Carl, the German, was trying to tell him not to. “Why do you want to go over there and kill people, when they don’t even recognise you here in your own country?”
Apparently, he went on a bike all the way from Louth to Cobar, to join up.
[Pause]
JEN:
So we’re at North Bourke, we’re looking out from this balcony over a large plain and we can see floodwaters come right up from—they’re from the Darling, right?
MARGARET:
Yes.
GERTIE:
It’s beautiful to see.
JEN:
Have you seen it like this often?
MARGARET:
In ’74, it was flashing over the levy bank, near where I live. They had sandbags and worked on the levies all night. The water was right up around the Sydney road. It washed a lot of snakes out: there were all kinds of snakes.
GERTIE:
I remember years ago, right back in the ‘60s, when the flood came up. And when it went down, there were water holes. Me and my brother, we caught some fish in the water runoff, just with our hands.
Mum came home from work and said, “What are you eating? Throw the dirty things away. There’s dead cattle and everything in that flood water.”
But we had a feast. We were cooking them out on the coals.
JEN:
That’s an old way of catching fish, isn’t it?
GERTIE:
Yeah, when there’s only a little bit of water, you just have to stir it up and the fish come to the top.
JEN:
How’d you learn to do that?
GERTIE:
It was just a natural thing we did with our people, when we were kids. We dived for mussels too, eh Margaret?
JEN:
So am I right in thinking this river water comes from Queensland?
GERTIE:
It starts way up in a place called Moonie. Then all the other rivers join up, with the floods and the rain and everything.
We didn’t go to the Warrego when we went with you, did we?
JEN:
I think we did, once.
GERTIE:
Did we, Margaret?
MARGARET:
Yes.
JEN:
Yeah, I remember hopping out of the car, and all those birds took off.
GERTIE:
So we did go there.
JEN:
Did you used to fish around here?
MARGARET:
Not here. In the river itself –
JEN:
Because this would normally be dry?
MARGARET:
Yes.
GERTIE:
We used to fish sometimes—and crayfish, and swim—at the billabong on the way out here, that big one at the first bridge. It’s the last to remain after a flood. The water stays there for a while.
JEN:
Are there different places for men and women on the river?
GERTIE:
Not in our time, no. There were special places, but they never told us much about them. Sometimes, you’d get this feeling that you shouldn’t be there. There’d be things like that.
And there were some places that Granny took us, but mainly out further. Or further down the Darling—they travelled right down south, and right up to Queensland, the old people. On both sides, the Knights and the Edwards.
JEN:
Was the travel to see family?
GERTIE:
Yes.
They might have only had a horse and cart. Some just walked. That’s how they got around.
JEN:
How often did you used to go fishing?
MARGARET:
Me and Alma-Jean, we went lots of times. I’ve lost count.
GERTIE:
I’d say, “If I don’t get a bite in the next 10 to 20 minutes I’m off.” They used to fish all day and they might not even catch one. They’d still be there.
MARGARET:
Because it’s so peaceful on the river.
JEN:
Margaret, you were telling us a story about the Mundaguddah.[1]
MARGARET:
Yes, that was up at the 10 mile point.
JEN:
Is that close to here?
MARGARET:
Just up further. Gertie’s mother and my mother were fishing and they were each sitting on a bend. I was in the middle.
All of a sudden I heard this noise. It was like when you throw petrol on a fire.
Whoosh.
It made that sound. I just sat there and the next minute the water was like a whirlwind in front of me.
JEN:
How high?
MARGARET:
[gestures]
JEN:
Three, four feet.
MARGARET:
It shocked me. My auntie and mother called, “Get out from there!”
Next minute, you could see this thing going underwater. It went up around past my auntie.
She said, “Roll up!”
When we came back into town, I ran into Alma-Jean’s old auntie and I told her what happened. She said, “Don’t go back out there again, that’s the Mundaguddah.”
I’d never seen anything like that before.
JEN:
What did you think?
MARGARET:
I didn’t think anything at the time, but it scared me. That’s why I don’t go in the river anymore. I just sit down and fish.
I tried to tell the kids what I saw. At another place, too—do you know the boat ramp out here, where the kids go swimming?
JEN:
Yes.
MARGARET:
My uncle was droving one year and I don’t know, something pulled his horses under.
JEN:
Really?
MARGARET:
It pulled his horses under. They wouldn’t go out that way anymore. So many people drowned there, good swimmers. Another uncle and his partner were out there, by the tree that the kids used to swing off. When he was droving. They saw the biggest snake on that tree. You tell people about it and no one listens.
But I don’t want to scare you—
[All laugh]
JEN:
I’d rather know, thanks, Margaret.
MARGARET:
But I wouldn’t know where the spot is today. All I know is it was up the Ten Mile way.
JEN:
Were there old stories about the Mundaguddah being there?
MARGARET:
They talked about it.
JEN:
So it was part of the place?
MARGARET:
Yes. You know, when the river was dry, there’d be a big waterhole, down there at the boat ramp, right where the kids go swim. Gertie and I were out there and we saw it.
I said to Gertie, “There could be a current under there, a whirlpool. I wouldn’t be swimming out here. Look at that. You might go down and not come up.”
JEN:
When we were here in 2018, it was dry. It got worse in 2019. Seeing all the water like this must feel very different.
MARGARET:
Yeah, this is really good to see.
[Pause]
JEN:
Robert took us out the other morning, and we got some quandongs.
MARGARET:
Oh, you ended up going with Robert.
JEN:
We saved you some. We should eat them, because they won’t last that long.
MARGARET:
Brother Robert, he makes a quandong pie.
RINA:
[holding out the bag to GERTIE]
Would you like some?
GERTIE:
You got some before us!
When they’re real dry, they taste like dried apricots.
RINA:
You can dry them?
GERTIE:
Yes.
JEN:
We were putting some in a salad. Paul said to warm them up in a pan so the juice’d come out a bit more. That was lovely.
RINA:
Actually each fruit tastes quite different. The one I had at the beginning was really sour.
JEN:
There’s a few different trees here.
GERTIE:
I’ve got a lot of quandong seeds.
MARGARET:
You can make jewellery with the seeds.
GERTIE:
When they’re dry, you can eat the little nut inside them, too.
JEN:
Keep those seeds.
I’ve seen some of that jewellery, there’s somebody in Canberra who does that.
MARGARET:
My niece, I don’t know whether she made them or not, but she gave me some earrings. They’re cut in half, and have Aboriginal designs on the outside.
GERTIE:
This one’s all black inside. Because of the rain, I think. Too much rain.
JEN:
I just had a lovely one.
MARGARET:
Yeah, I did too.
JEN:
I couldn’t believe how easily Robert was able to see those trees.
MARGARET:
He knows just about every tree.
GERTIE:
I’ve still got some frozen from last year.
RINA:
We should freeze them, Jen.
JEN:
Yeah, I will. There’s a freezer in there.
I reckon these are sweeter now than when we picked them. I guess they get riper off the tree.
RINA:
I think so. These are riper than two days ago. Those were nice and fresh but these are much sweeter.
MARGARET:
I like them dried.
RINA:
Do you take the pit out before you dry them?
GERTIE:
Mm.
We were walking around this real old homestead once. We went down to their tip. It was old tins, and things like that. I saw what looked like an apricot on the ground and looked up and there was a big quandong tree, in amongst all that old rubbish. That’s the same place where Kevin. . . out on that road to Weil’. What’s that road? Going out to the Enngonia Road, you turn off to go to Weilmoringle. . . the Leadknapper Road.
MARGARET:
Wayne knows a lot of trees out there. That’s where Shane got some yesterday, the creamy ones.
GERTIE:
Yeah, the creamy ones.
MARGARET:
Robert said they were real sweet.
RINA:
It’s the same fruit, but has a creamy colour?
MARGARET:
Yeah. They’re big, too.
There’s little trees, right where you turn off to Leadknapper. You go down a bit and there’s a great big tree. Then there’s some little ones a bit further along.
Robert said he nearly ate all of mine yesterday.
He said, “They’re nice.”
I bet he comes back from Dubbo with more of the red ones.
GERTIE:
That’s where Kevin and Michael got them last year.
RINA:
So it’s a spring fruit?
Just from this time of the year?
GERTIE:
Mm.
They had plenty to eat, the old people. A lot of things grew on the ground, too.
MARGARET:
Even beside the road.
GERTIE:
The wilgie-wilgie.
MARGARET:
A little yellow fruit.
GERTIE:
But you don’t see them around much. They’re real tiny, and very rare.
MARGARET:
And the mulga apple. You don’t see them on the trees anymore, eh?
GERTIE:
A lot of things have changed. I don’t know if it’s the climate, or what. We used to get gums off different trees—
MARGARET:
Snottygobble –
GERTIE:
Snottygobble.
Mum said the real name for the little snottygobble was dapti.
MARGARET:
Yeah, I heard that.
GERTIE:
We knew some things in Aboriginal language. Like the wild orange, eh? We used to call that barnvorall.
MARGARET:
You can get wild bananas, too.
GERTIE:
There’s nothing like bananas, eh? We’d cook them in the ashes.
MARGARET:
You wouldn’t starve out in the bush.
RINA:
I was picking some gum nut before—those really big pods—and when I opened one, there were these sticky-looking seeds. Paul said, “Oh, you want to die. They’re poisonous.”
I was, “No, I don’t. Thank you for letting me know beforehand.”
There are so many different plants here. I saw so many of these little, fluffy, grass-looking things. Then when you look closely, they all look ruby red, like a fruit. And there’s yellow ones too. But now I think maybe I shouldn’t touch them!
GERTIE:
There’s different things in different areas. It’s not all the same.
MARGARET:
We were going to Louth one year for the races: me, my sister, Gertie’s sister and anther girl, Karen. We pulled up—someone wanted to go to the toilet.
I called out to them and said, “Come over here. See this bush?”
There were little bells on it. I said, “We used to suck these. You can suck the juice out.”
It was really sweet. Anyhow, Karen let me and my sister go first.
Next minute, my lips were stuck together—it was like glue. It was the wrong tree. I couldn’t talk. I thought, “I must have got the bush mixed up.”
I thought it was the bush that we’d had years ago out at Enngonia, with the little red flower like a bell.
Karen said, “I’m never going to listen to you anymore.” She still talks about it. She says, “I’ll never forget that day. Lucky I let you go first.”
GERTIE:
I showed you the medicine bush out there at Toorale—the real green bush. These green bushes here, they’re close to that one.
JEN:
Those four little ones there?
GERTIE:
Yes.
JEN:
Is that dogwood?
GERTIE:
Yes, you burn it, when you want to welcome people. It’s also a medicine bush. Mum used to boil it up, when we were in the bush. We had to drink it. And if we had any sores or anything like that on us, we had to bathe in it. It works.
If you had a sore throat, you’d use it for that too.
It was very bitter, so you had to put a bit of sugar in it.
This little boy over in Cobar had all these blisters from not being changed often enough. Over there, there’s a bush—it’s the same as this one, but it’s a bit different, because it’s on the red country, see? I said, “I’ll go try it.” So I boiled it up and peeled it off. I got that little boy and I bathed him for a couple of days, then let him walk around with no nappy on. In a couple more days, he was all healed up. Came from Wilcannia. I’ll never forget that.
JEN:
So if people are being moved off country, and those plants are a little bit different in every place, even though they might look similar, that must make it really hard to keep that knowledge.
GERTIE:
Yes.
That one there has a white flower on it—
MARGARET:
Which one?
GERTIE:
Those little bushes all there together. Mum used to called them the widbil. She said that was their tribal name: widbil.
MARGARET:
I always thought it was that big one.
GERTIE:
No, that’s the mapu. The mapu’s the one that you get on the rivers. We use to get gum off them too, out at Enngonia.
[To JEN and RINA]
It’s the one standing up there, see?
Just there.
JEN:
Next to the four little ones.
GERTIE:
We used to get the gum off the big trees. We’d put a little nick in them to get it.
So we had the leopard wood, the white wood . . .
MARGARET:
Gidgee.
GERTIE:
Gidgee.
MARGARET:
Gidgee gum was the best.
GERTIE:
Yeah. All the gidgee grows on the Cobar side.
MARGARET:
Out at Enngonia.
GERTIE:
Out at Enngonia. It grows mainly on the red country, the gidgee.
The traditional people used the seeds from these gum trees. We didn’t learn it from our old people—they didn’t do it anymore. But they did use it back before them. They’d grind up the seeds from gum trees and make bread from them.
JEN:
Oh, they made bread out of the gum trees?
GERTIE
But I don’t know whether they used a certain gum tree, whether it was the Coolabah, the red gum, or one of the others.
JEN:
With the quandong, when you’re shaking the fruit from the tree, Robert said that you’re looking after the emus as well, because they’ll come and pick some of it up. You’re looking after the people, you’re looking after the emus, and you’re also looking after the tree—because that emu will swallow the seed and then defecate it somewhere else, creating another one.
GERTIE:
Yes. And the old people told us never to break the limbs of the tree.
JEN:
Robert said you’d get a good hiding.
GERTIE:
That’s true. We weren’t allowed to break anything. You had to climb up the tree, if you wanted something from up the top.
MARGARET:
Or shake it.
JEN:
So you taught your children these things?
MARGARET:
Yes. I got a bit upset, at the place we’ve been talking about, Leadknapper. These blokes went out there day before us. Shane, one of my sons, knew who they were. They broke a lot of limbs off the quandong trees. Jeez, I was upset.
I said, “We certainly weren’t allowed to do that.”
GERTIE:
They mightn’t even be from our tribe. In town, there’s about nine different tribes now, from all different areas. Most of them don’t even know what it’s like to go out. Their parents don’t leave town, they don’t take them anywhere to learn things.
That’s how they get into trouble.
JEN:
That knowledge keeps you out of trouble?
MARGARET:
Yes.
GERTIE:
Yes, if they went to the bush more. . . .but that’s the thing now: we’re all fenced in. This is this one’s property, that’s that one’s property. It’s all other people’s land.
MARGARET:
Some of these properties have signs telling people not to go in. And nobody lives there.
GERTIE:
“No Trespassing.”
“Private Property.”
I feel like just getting a pair of pliers, and cutting the wires. I suppose it’d just cause more strife. If they’ve got stock in there, sheep or cattle. . . But that’s what you feel like doing, when you see that.
You might see an old emu, when it’s real dry, walking up and down the fence.
MARGARET:
Can’t get out.
GERTIE:
Can’t get out.
Up and down, up and down.
MARGARET:
Some get caught up in the fence, trying to get through.
GERTIE:
There’d be some on the other side of the road, and they’d be trying to reach them. Going up and down, up and down. It’s so sad.
MARGARET:
They’d be wanting to breed with them.
GERTIE:
And the river, a lot of them want to get to the water.
They had their boundaries too, I suppose, the kangaroos and emus and all.
MARGARET:
Out at Toorale, there’s a lot of porcupines. You’re not allowed to touch them out there ‘cause they’re native.
GERTIE:
National park.
MARGARET:
But you can touch them on the road. Lots of times we got them going across the road, on the way to Dubbo.
GERTIE:
Well, tell them now what you do with them.
[laughs]
MARGARET:
Talk about how you clean them?
They say you boil it first, and then take the quills off. But I had nothing to take them off with, so I got the salad tongs. I was doing it all day and my fingers were that sore, It took about eight hours.
I said, “I’ll never do this again.”
GERTIE:
Good to eat.
RINA:
Really?
GERTIE:
Mm.
JEN:
What’s it like?
MARGARET:
I reckon there’s more fat.
GERTIE:
There’s fat, I love the fat. It’s got dark meat, but the skin is like a pig’s.
MARGARET:
It’s a bit tough.
GERTIE:
You have to cook it in boiling water.
I’ve never cleaned one. I won’t even watch them kill one. But I’ll eat it.
We were at our meeting out at Toorale a couple of weeks ago, and we were all sitting around the fire getting ready to go to bed.
Donna got up first: “Think I’ll go to bed.”
And then I said, “Yeah, I’ll get up.”
Then she saw this shadow over on the bank—there’s a big bank between where we were sitting and the river, it’s a bit higher than this one.
I saw it too. I stood there. We looked again.
She said, “Listen, you fellas”—they were all still talking—“Listen you fellas, there’s something over here, just in the shadow.”
Then someone put the light on their phone on. It was a little porcupine.
On the other side of the fence were two big ones. The little one was trying to get through to them and they were trying to get through to it. It’s because they fenced all of it in, see? Round the quarters where we stay.
Anyway, that night the people dug up a couple of spots along that fence there, and after a while the porcupines were gone.
They live under the building.
This young girl was with us. She was taking pictures, and she was that excited taking pictures of the three of them.
So the next day we had our meeting. We wanted the fence taken down.
JEN:
Do you remember eating porcupine when you were a kid?
GERTIE:
Yes, I ate it as a woman too.
MARGARET:
And we ate possum.
JEN:
Is that right? I’ve never seen any up here.
GERTIE:
They’re here.
MARGARET:
They’re always in a hollowed tree. When we were living down the village—after they moved us from the Pound to the village—there was a tree there that had a hollow in it.
You cooked it up.
GERTIE:
I like the goanna too.
MARGARET:
We were coming back to town and this little one went across the road. I’d never tasted a goanna. My cousin said to me, “Do you want us to get that for you?”
I said, “Yes, but kill it. Don’t show me. Put it in the bag!”
Anyhow, I took it home. But I didn’t know how to cook it. I put it in the electric frying pan. Later on my partner lifted the lid up and he nearly collapsed. “What next you gonna bring home?”
I said, “Frogs’ legs.”
He said, “You’re a cannibal.”
I used to make him sick.
[All laugh]
Of course, on a sheep, you’d eat most of the insides as well.
But anyhow, it went that stiff from being cooked in the electric frypan, you couldn’t even eat it.
I don’t know how you cook it. In the ashes?
GERTIE:
In the ashes.
MARGARET:
I always wanted to taste frogs’ legs, though. Every time I went to Sydney, I’d walk past the shop, and they’d have them hanging up.
JEN:
I had them once, in Singapore.
MARGARET:
Are they alright?
JEN:
Yeah, they’re nice, actually. Sort of a little bit like chicken, I suppose. Bit different.
MARGARET:
I always wanted a taste.
GERTIE:
I went to this French place and they had snails. I tried to eat them.
MARGARET:
Witchety grubs are nice.
JEN:
Witchety grubs?
MARGARET:
Witchety grubs. I ate about four, still alive. It’s just like butter inside.
JEN:
Oh really?
MARGARET:
I didn’t eat its head.
GERTIE:
No, you don’t eat the head. You hold it—
MARGARET:
You can cook it in the ashes. It’s nice.
JEN:
So are there some foods out here that you wouldn’t touch?
MARGARET:
I can’t think of any.
GERTIE:
No.
JEN:
Do you want another cup of tea?
GERTIE:
I’ll just have one more quandong.
JEN:
Yeah, you have a couple. I’ll put them back in the fridge ‘cause it seems to be good for them.
GERTIE:
Dry them out—they won’t last long.
We were lucky, because we were in the bush, and learnt all these things. Nowadays, if you’ve got somebody in their 30s or 40s, they wouldn’t know anything. They might only know where the quandong tree is, or something like that. They didn’t go to the bush.
JEN:
But that’s a lifeline for your kids, for the next generation.
MARGARET:
Yes. I said a word to Robert the other day: nunang.
He said, “What’s that?”
I said, “It means, ‘Someone’s coming.’”
Nunang.
GERTIE:
Like if the dog’s barked at something.
We used to go like this: “Nunang.”
[Both aunties laugh]
JEN:
Do things come back to you sometimes?
GERTIE:
Yeah, sometimes.
MARGARET:
A fish, they’d call that guyu.
Horse: yaradamun.
GERTIE:
They made up their own names, when the white man brought the different animals out. They used to call a sheep a dhoomba.
MARGARET:
Dhoomba.
GERTIE:
Yaradamun, for a horse.
White man: Waybella.
JEN:
Wayba?
GERTIE:
Waybella.
[Spots PAUL C turning up]
He’s Marrdi, you’re Waybellas.
Waybellas is used for all white people. But white woman is wajin.
JEN:
Wujean.
Marrdi.
It’s hard for me to say it.
GERTIE:
Wajin. White woman.
Gin was the name they used for us: gin, black gin.
MARGARET:
Aboriginal woman.
GERTIE:
But that was to insult us. They used to give the Aboriginal women gin to drink when they wanted to sleep with them.
JEN:
Then that becomes her name.
GERTIE:
Yeah.
JEN:
That’s shocking.
GERTIE:
They even called us that. We don’t hear it now. But they used to call us that, when we were younger.
MARGARET:
Yeah, I was called “a white gin.”
It was unfair.
GERTIE:
We didn’t like it, we’d fight.
MARGARET:
I reckon there was racism on both sides. Some black people called me “white” and I’m Aboriginal. It offended me.
JEN:
There’s been a lot of suffering, eh?
GERTIE:
I was watching some TV last night, and they showed a bit of old Jack Charles.[2] Did you watch that?
JEN:
No.
GERTIE:
That show, Who Do You Think You Are?[3] It was on last night, and the old photographs just made you cry.
They showed how they were, right back in the past, when it was tribal. It just made you cry. When they first went to the missions. . .
I had tears in my eyes.
So now they’re trying to come to terms with it. You see ads on TV. They’ve got the flag up on the harbour bridge now.
JEN:
What do you think, when you see that now, after so long?
GERTIE:
Well, it’s good.
MARGARET:
Being recognised.
GERTIE:
There are all these people that have been fighting for these things. It’s good.
I’d like to see some more of our people in Parliament House.
JEN:
Yeah, that’d change things a bit, wouldn’t it?
GERTIE:
They’ve got a street down there named after Essie Coffey.
MARGARET:
Essie Bushqueen.
JEN:
She taught kids culture, right?
GERTIE:
Yes, they still show it a bit on TV.[4]
JEN:
Oh—there’s a—
RINA:
Pelican.
JEN:
Yeah, but there’s a lizard up—
MARGARET:
Oh, there is too, look: frillneck.
JEN:
Layna, if you come ‘round here you’ll be able to see it. There’s two little hills. There’s a path between them, and on the second hill, there’s a frillneck lizard sitting with its head up.
MARGARET:
Where that dry grass is.
LAYNA:
Oh yeah.
RINA:
I wouldn’t even know. I would have thought it’s a little log or something.
GERTIE:
Look, it’s moving its head.
RINA:
Oh yeah, it’s moving.
GERTIE:
He can hear us.
MARGARET:
Talking about him.
JEN:
Paul said it’s women’s law on this country. Did you grow up with that sense of things here?
MARGARET:
It was nearly always women on the river.
JEN:
Does it still feel like women’s law here for you?
MARGARET:
Yeah, Gertie’s the boss.
[All laugh]
GERTIE:
Well, they want me to be this and that, you know? I go to all the meetings—I’m on the Tribal Council. I don’t want to be on everything. I used to be, when I was younger. I used to travel around: Aboriginal Legal Service, ATSIC, Council.[5]
But I don’t want to be a leader or anything like that, I like to be here with you, sitting down talking.
MARGARET:
It’s good talking like this.
GERTIE:
They want you to welcome Country, and all that.[6] I’d just rather us sitting down talking.
*
Location: North Bourke
Time: Afternoon, Thursday16th September.
Speakers: Jen, Gertie, Rina, Margaret, Layna
GERTIE:
We call crayfish, buglee. The name that white people use is yabbies, eh? We call them buglee.
JEN:
Buglee.
I heard you say at lunch, “This word’s Kunya. But this one’s Barkindji.” So you keep words from more than one language?
GERTIE:
Yes, different words from different languages. We were saying that yourdi is meat in Kunya language.
MARGARET:
Down Wilcannia way, you know how we say “Aboriginal”?—they say, Noongar.
[To Gertie]
Did you know that one?
GERTIE:
Yeah, Noongar. Then if they like you, they’ll say nunpayu.
If a boy likes you, he’ll say nunpayu.
[All laugh]
RINA:
Nunpayu.
[All laugh]
GERTIE:
I keep looking over there, at—it must be a log. A black log. And there’s grass, and the wind’s blowing. It hasn’t moved. So it must be the grass that’s moving.
It looks like it’s moving, see?
Straight across.
JEN:
Oh, yeah.
JEN:
We were talking about that word “gin” before and Rina, you were wondering—
RINA:
About who would use that word to you. You were saying that when you were young, “gin” was an insult. Were white boys calling you that?
MARGARET:
Yes.
RINA:
Black males too?
GERTIE:
It came from the white man. That was what I was told. They used to call everyone that back in the past.
MARGARET:
They’d say “black gin,” “white gin.”
GERTIE:
At school, if they didn’t like you for any reason, they’d just call you that: “black gin.”
MARGARET:
But now. . . if someone called me that today, I think I’d get—
GERTIE:
They’re fighting words.
RINA:
Did you have a word that you would call the boys back, when they called you “black gin”? An equivalent word?
GERTIE:
No, not for the boys.
JEN:
Nothing you could say on a tape anyway.
[All laugh]
MARGARET:
Lots of them.
[All laugh]
GERTIE:
One fella—we were still only young. I think we were still going to school. We were at the pool and he called me a name. We dunked him under the water and held him down there for a long time.
[All laugh]
I can still remember that. Didn’t do no harm to him. But we held him under the water for a long time.
MARGARET:
You did a lot of harm to the boys, at school. Put chilli on their pencils. They were running for water.
GERTIE:
I was a naughty girl.
[All laugh]
MARGARET:
Had me wagging school—until the Welfare warned me.
GERTIE:
Don’t be putting that on the recording.
[All laugh]
MARGARET:
We can sit down and laugh about these things now. A lot of things Gertie doesn’t remember ‘til I bring them up.
GERTIE:
Yeah. Lot of things, eh?
JEN:
You weren’t too worried about getting into trouble, Gertie?
GERTIE:
No, I wasn’t.
MARGARET:
Only person she got into trouble with was my mother. But that didn’t change anything.
When I moved school, who should be waiting out the front for me: Gertie.
JEN:
So your mum changed your school, so that you wouldn’t be getting into trouble with Gertie?
MARGARET:
Yeah. But it was no good. Gertie’d be waiting for me.
GERTIE:
I was waiting for her.
Listen.
[A loud scraping noise]
MARGARET:
I’ve got one of those in the pipe, right out the front of my house.
RINA:
A frog?
MARGARET:
Mm. It makes a lot of noise.
JEN:
It was sitting under Paul’s bed all night. I said he probably did something to deserve that.
[All laugh]
GERTIE:
Well, I hope he’s not bringing more rain. They usually sing out, when they bring more rain. They got enough rain, didn’t they? Shouldn’t be singing out. We’ve got plenty of water down there.
JEN:
Might be laughing at your story.
GERTIE:
I’ll get a bit of chilli for him.
MARGARET:
I’ve got chilli bushes at home, exactly the same as the one Gertie took the chillies from, little coloured ones.
JEN:
Oh they’re hot, the little ones.
MARGARET:
[Looking at Gertie]
She’s looking real innocent.
JEN:
When you used to bunk school, you’d go off down the riverbank fishing?
MARGARET:
No, just walking.
GERTIE:
We used to walk along the town part. They’ve got a track there now. We’d go behind all the houses. They used to throw vegetable remains, tomatoes and things back there, and they’d have tomatoes growing from them. So we’d go and we’d pick out a few of the tomatoes. Leave a few on there for next time.
Walk right along the river.
Just something to do.
JEN:
It’s a beautiful place, isn’t it?
MARGARET:
We had an old friend, who used to live across the other side, lived in a tin hut. It was like a cubby house, but he had rooms there. We used to go down and call out to him.
Some days he’d pretend he had visitors from overseas there.
[Laughs]
GERTIE:
He never had anyone.
MARGARET:
Tell them about the time we went over there. About the records.
GERTIE:
Don’t tell them everything, Margaret.
[All laugh.]
No.
[All laugh.]
Tell them about the big emu.
MARGARET:
He had a pet emu.
GERTIE:
The big emu would be “swimming across the river for us,” eh?
We used to call him “Swede.” He was short. He was supposed to come from Sweden. He said he was a sailor.
MARGARET:
He was shaped like Popeye, the Sailor. He had the muscles.
GERTIE:
He had tattoos, too.
MARGARET:
He used to make fish nets for the people in the community, when we first knew him, using real string.
JEN:
So he would swim across to you?
MARGARET:
No, he had a boat, a tin boat.
GERTIE:
And he’d come to town. He’d always shout you a drink or something. The girls at the café, he bought them all–
MARGARET:
Yeah, he bought my sister a watch. But he never ever tried to come onto you.
GERTIE:
No.
MARGARET:
He was just friendly. Once, me and my other cousin went across there. He had these big cans of KB.[7] She was sitting up there drinking with him. She ended up getting drunk with him. He used to tell us a lot of stories, about where he came from.
He had little things hanging up. He’d say the girls left different things there. But no girls other than us did go over there. It was like a cubby house.
It’s still there. It’s just down from the waterworks.
I said to Gertie one day, there’d be money there. He used to hide coins and things under milk tins. There’d be snakes there, too. But I wouldn’t mind going over there and having a look.
GERTIE:
He was a good old fella.
I remember once, we went down to the river. We were singing out for him. I said to Margaret, “Take your shoes off. See what he says.”
And he said, “What, haven’t you got any shoes on?”
We said, “No, we haven’t got any.”
Poor old fella, he said, “I’ll meet you down town on Thursday. You can get a pair of shoes for yourself.”
JEN:
New pair of shoes.
GERTIE:
Yes, that’s what he was like.
I wasn’t in Bourke when he passed away. I was always wondering where he was buried.
JEN:
Did you ever find out?
GERTIE:
No, I think he died somewhere down in Sydney. Otherwise I’d visit his burial site.
You see, I wasn’t always living in Bourke, I moved around.
JEN:
What made you move around, Gertie?
GERTIE:
Being of Aboriginal descent, I went walkabout.
I’m still not settled, you know.
I’d like to go travelling out west, into the outback. I’m just waiting for my daughter to come up.
JEN:
You’ve both got kids.
MARGARET:
Yes.
JEN:
How many kids have you got?
GERTIE:
I’ve got five girls and two boys. I don’t have any grandkids.
MARGARET:
I would have had six. I lost two: a girl stillborn, and a boy at 23.
[Starts to tear up]
I get emotional.
And I have 14 brothers and sisters. Big family.
Dad was in his early 50s, when he passed away. He had a massive heart attack. Mum was almost 90 when she died. They married at an early age, when they were 19.
Both 19.
How many kids in your family, Gert?
GERTIE:
Well, there were 14 in Mum’s family: seven boys, seven girls. But there were only eight of us.
MARGARET:
Some of the aunties would have had 20 something kids. But they lost some: some were stillborn.
GERTIE:
I think Auntie Alice had 16 all up, but a couple of them passed away. Auntie Daisy, I think only had 12. Margie had 13.
MARGARET:
I think our family was the biggest. And it’s the biggest of those still living, too.
JEN:
Talking to people in Bourke, I often see Paul say to somebody, “Oh my cousin.”
GERTIE:
Yeah, well, he’s our cousin. Because his mother’s our cousin.
RINA:
I think Paul mentioned that he is related to one third of the people in Bourke.
JEN:
Everybody seems to know who comes from which family and where they join up. I couldn’t tell you that about my family, I wouldn’t have any idea. I mean, I can do my first cousins and I know maybe a handful of my second cousins. But that’s it.
Everybody knows here.
GERTIE:
Different people say to me, “I want to sit down and talk with you.” Not from my family, but other people, people whose parents came to the town a long time ago.
I say, “Well if you want to come, come and see me. You’re welcome.”
But none of them have turned up. They talk about it for something to talk about, but they haven’t been down yet.
I’ve got a lot of photos too. I want to give the photos to the people in them. I don’t want to keep them all, even though I took them, they’re my photos. I say, “If your family or your kids are in them, you can just cut that part off and have it.”
But now people are putting everything on USB, aren’t they?
RINA:
Yes, USBs. And everything is on the internet.
MARGARET:
I don’t go on the internet, because I’ve only got a little phone. I don’t know if someone’s passed away, unless I go down town.
GERTIE:
I don’t even know how to put numbers on a phone. I can’t take the time to sit down and learn it, like a kid, over and over.
Yet I can remember things that happened years ago.
JEN:
Your old people, when they were teaching you, did they make you learn things over and over?
GERTIE:
No, we just picked it up.
We used to go bush, we’d be gone all day. It’s a wonder we never got lost. We’d stay out there all day. We knew we had to come back before the sun went down.
I never ever saw a snake when we were out in the bush.
Maybe they were frightened of me.
[Laughs]
JEN:
Did you know how to avoid them, or was it just that they didn’t come near?
GERTIE:
We stayed away from them.
MARGARET:
We’d look, when there was grass near the river, and places.
We went fishing once and old Wayne went down to tie his line on the stick. There was a big snake right near there. He threw the stick down.
[Laughs]
A big snake was lying on the edge there, ‘cause there was grass there. That’s the place, the 19 mile limit. That’s the place for snakes.
Black snakes.
GERTIE:
Black soil plains.
They live in the cracks. From when it dries up.
JEN:
So they’d be hidden.
GERTIE:
Yes.
RINA:
Do you mind talking about “walkabout” a bit more? I mean, that’s a word that I hear in films, actually. This is my first time talking to someone who’s done a real walkabout.
GERTIE:
Well, that’s what I was just saying. When we went bush, we just went. Our Mother would be doing something at home—this is when we lived in the bush—and she’d just say, “Let’s get gone then.”
And we’d go. We’d go all day.
RINA:
Would you just hang around?
GERTIE:
We might go down and catch buglees.
RINA:
What are buglees, again?
MARGARET:
Crayfish. Yabbies.
GERTIE:
Or we might go out looking for gum on the trees. Whoever saw it first would yell, “That’s mine!” We’d all run, but whoever saw it first, it was theirs.
People’d go out hunting. They’d go out to get some meat: kangaroo, emu, whatever was there.
JEN:
Did they take the kids with them?
GERTIE:
The kids used to go themselves, when they got a bit older, Mum said. They used to have dogs with them, see? The dogs used to round the kangaroos and emus up. And the dogs used to bring the meat back to the camp.
Auntie Elsie said it was like the dogs knew that the kids couldn’t carry the meat on their own.
JEN:
So that’s how they learned.
GERTIE:
Yes, but when we went, we just went off and did our own thing.
We had to be home for supper.
JEN:
Would you bring food back home?
GERTIE:
Only whatever we found on the trees. Whatever we caught in the river, crayfish and the like, we’d make a fire and cook in the ashes. We’d cook potato and onion in the fire, too. Now, you can use oil. I used to like potatoes cooked in the ashes.
You can cook everything in the ashes, you know? You can cook damper.
RINA:
So when you were cooking in the ashes, would that be outside?
MARGARET:
Outside. You make a little hole. Some people put gum leaves in.
GERTIE:
Or we’d just make a fire and wait till it burns down to ashes. You can cook anything that way.
If you’ve got a hole that’s different. You put bushes down in the hole and then you cover it over with bushes. You could also use bark, or put dirt over it. You can also use foil now.
MARGARET:
You can cook long-necked turtle whole in the shell that way. With the stomach inside it—you take that out after it’s cooked. Break the shell open and it’s just like chicken.
RINA:
I’ve heard it’s delicious, actually.
MARGARET:
A couple of my cousins were saying, “Don’t talk about eating one of them, you’ll make us sick.”
I said, “You wait till it’s cooked.”
They kept coming back for more.
[All laugh]
Yeah, they ate nearly all of it.
GERTIE:
I ate some turtle eggs once, from down the Darling, down near Wentworth. It was just like scrambled egg.
JEN:
How big are the eggs?
[GERTIE gestures]
About the size of a 50c coin?
GERTIE:
Yes. But that’s the only time I’ve ever seen them.
MARGARET:
Once my sister was fishing and she said, “Quick. I’ve got a bite.”
She was pulling the line, and soon as she saw the long neck, she said, “Quick. It’s a snake—”
[Laughing]
It was a turtle. But it had the longest neck. My brother pulled it in while she took off up the bank. There was a big turtle on the line.
JEN:
So when you were kids, you were living some of the time in the bush, some of the time in town? Then you moved into town at one point, and that was that?
MARGARET:
Yeah, we moved into town.
GERTIE:
Tell them all the other places you lived.
MARGARET:
We lived out at Wanaaring, first. My Dad did a lot of fencing around there. We went to school there. Then we went to Cunnamulla, a place out from Cunnamulla. Dad did fencing up there as well.
And then to Engonia. Went to school with no shoes. We had no shoes, and the ground was that hot. They had all these little bushes and we used to jump into the shade.
GERTIE:
The red sand was that hot.
MARGARET:
My first pair of shoes were plastic sandals.
We moved to other places, too, before we came to the village here in Bourke. It wasn’t called “the village” then, it was called “the reserve.”
But before the reserve, we lived at the pound yard—just opposite the showground. Dad was working on the railway. First we lived in tents. Then we moved down a bit from there and had tin shacks. We lived in those for a long time—until the shire bulldozed a few of the houses down. At that point, we had to move to the reserve.
JEN:
So you were made to move.
MARGARET:
Yes.
JEN:
That must have been hard.
MARGARET:
It was. Then we moved down there, to tin shacks on the reserve.
JEN:
You said “pound yard.” What does that mean?
MARGARET:
Well they called it that because there was a yard for horses and cows there. If they saw stray horses and the like, they’d put them there, in the pound.
JEN:
People lived there too?
MARGARET:
Lived beside there, just down from it.
For water, we had to roll a 44 gallon drum up to the pound yard. We’d fill it up with water, and roll it all the way back down to where we lived.
JEN:
That’s a hard life for kids.
MARGARET:
It was. We’d take it in turns.
Then the council moved us. They bulldozed a couple of houses and said, “If you don’t move, we’ll bulldoze all the houses.”
JEN:
Why were they doing that?
MARGARET:
They didn’t want Aboriginal people living there.
JEN:
So how did your parents cope with that?
MARGARET:
Well, they had no choice.
GERTIE:
No, they didn’t have a choice.
Some of the people moved further out. Some of them lived out here at North Bourke. My old dad moved out here, a couple of uncles too. Where that other caravan park is, down on the Wanaaring road.
MARGARET:
We used to go there and visit them. One lady, Auntie Doris—she had a pretty little garden.
GERTIE:
Auntie Doris.
MARGARET:
When the Queen came to town, she shook hands with the Queen. She was real dark and instead of saying, “Your Majesty,” she said, “Yeah, Mama.”
[All laugh]
To the Queen.
GERTIE:
That’s what our cousin told us.
MARGARET:
He was with her. I could see them, standing over with the Queen. He felt like laughing, but he saved it.
He ran into me later and he said, “Oh, Favourite”—he used to call me, “Favourite”— “I’ve got to tell you something. Auntie Doris shook hands with the Queen and instead of saying, “Your Majesty,” she said, “Yeah, Mama.”
JEN:
Would that have been in the ‘50s?
MARGARET:
What year, Gertie?
GERTIE:
I don’t know, but Gloria met her, too. I wasn’t living in Bourke then.
MARGARET:
My brother, Mark, presented her with one of his paintings.
GERTIE:
I don’t know why Gloria met her—she must have been representing some other community in the town.
MARGARET:
It was good she came to Bourke, to have someone like that. You don’t see things like that. You only see them on TV.
GERTIE:
It was in the ‘80s, I think.
MARGARET:
Yes.
JEN:
Someone told us the other day that she visited in 1990, or ’92. But that might have been too late.
MARGARET:
It might have been. I’m not sure, I think it was in the ‘80s.
GERTIE:
In the ‘80s.
My sister was over in Cobar in the early ‘80s. Roy and them moved over there too. They didn’t go back to Bourke. So it must have been in the ‘80s.
JEN:
You didn’t feel angry that she was here?
GERTIE:
She didn’t mean anything to me. I didn’t idolise her. Some people said they didn’t think much of her, because she had the power to do much more for Aboriginal people. All of the royals. The old fellas down at Cumragunia wrote a letter to King George talking about the state they were in. They never even got word back.
JEN:
Never heard anything?
GERTIE:
No.
They went on strike. The people in Victoria were the only ones that helped them, so they moved down there, on the Murray River. That old fella, old Jack Charles, he traced his family right back there too. And then right back to Tasmania.
So Aboriginal people are getting a say, now. But they’re still fighting for the land. And when you look at how big this country is—we’ve got nothing.
We’re just a little splash in the ocean.
MARGARET:
We should own parts of it. We should have our own homes.
GERTIE:
Yes.
Our old people knew how to do everything, because they had to work for white people. They knew how to look after the cattle, the horses, everything. If they’d had a bit of their own land, it could have been passed on.
But these young people wouldn’t know what to do on that bit of land.
JEN:
That knowledge has been lost as well. Because there wasn’t any land for your parents to give you.
MARGARET:
That’s right.
JEN:
Because nothing was given to them.
GERTIE:
They knew everything. They had to look after the horses, to shoe them. They had to clear the land. They had to ringbark all the trees, to clear that land and grow things on it. Our people did all that.
JEN:
So they learned two ways.
GERTIE:
Yes.
So I always say, when they worked on that land for those white people, why couldn’t the white people say, “Well, you can have this part.”
“We’ll give this to you.”
Not that it was their land in the first place. That’s the sort of thing I think about.
JEN:
They were also living the old ways when they worked on the white properties, weren’t they? They would have been getting the quandongs, and doing the fishing.
GERTIE:
They still did all of those things.
And you know, the black women worked for the white people, too: doing the cleaning, the cooking, the laundry. By hand. No washing machine.
JEN:
So out at Toorale—the homestead—and at Bourke—a lot of the buildings: all of that is really the work of Aboriginal people.
GERTIE:
That’s right.
MARGARET:
We built those places.
JEN:
What do you think the future—with Country—is for Aboriginal people here?
GERTIE:
Mm?
JEN:
I don’t know how to put this—what’s the way to preserve that knowledge, and to make things right? Is there a way to make things right?
GERTIE:
Well, everybody’s different.
I might have a different opinion to Margaret.
JEN:
Mm.
GERTIE:
If Aboriginal people want a piece of land, they shouldn’t have to buy it. It should be given to them.
MARGARET:
I reckon my house should have been given to me. I’ve been in it 30 something years. My mother lived just around the corner from me, for 50 something years. I’ve got a brother there. They’re old houses.
Have to pay for water—
GERTIE:
Living in the bush, look how much we have to pay for groceries. Electricity is that dear too, to have a bit of power on.
MARGARET:
Robert said, “We’re Aboriginal, we shouldn’t be paying big water bills.”
JEN:
No, you shouldn’t.
[Pause]
So, did your kids stay in Bourke?
GERTIE:
My kids are all over the place.
MARGARET:
I’ve got one son who moved over to Cobar and one out at Weilmoringle. I’ve only got one here. Well, Wayne, comes and goes. He’s been working away. Shane is here.
GERTIE:
Michael works out at Toorale. Was he out there when we went last year?
JEN:
I don’t think so.
When Wayne, or Michael, are working out at Toorale, does that help you feel connected?
MARGARET:
Yes.
GERTIE:
It used to, yes.
MARGARET:
Our cousin Rodney also works out there.
GERTIE:
Yeah, we’ve still got a foot in the door.
There’s a new thing they’ve come up with now: giving the land back to the local Aboriginal people. But then you have to lease it back to National Parks. That’s the catch.
JEN:
So if you’re leasing it back, that means you can’t do some things?
GERTIE:
They always come up with a new idea. Native title—that was a lot of crap too.
But we got native title for our people up in Queensland, in Cunnamulla. We got that early in the year.
JEN:
What impact will that have? Will that change anything?
GERTIE:
When you think of it, not really, because you still have to get permission to go on the land.
JEN:
Still have to pay your electricity bill.
RINA:
Water too.
GERTIE:
Yes. If we want to go out camping and fishing, we still have to ask them for permission. And we’re the people who are supposed to own the land.
MARGARET:
What’s that station out here?
One man was working out here and he noticed a lot of Aboriginal artefacts. He said to the lady, “See all that there? You should give that back to the Kunya people.”
He said there was a big shield with an old Aboriginal man on it, and a lot of other things. But she said that she was buildings a little museum, and that people could go and see it all there. I don’t know if she built the museum or not.
GERTIE:
When we found things, we just buried them.
I found two axe heads.
[Pauses]
Parrot.
Two of them.
RINA:
Oh yeah, the green one!
Grass parrot?
GERTIE:
Mm.
What were we talking about, anyway?
Axes. When we found things, they told us to bury them. So that’s what we did.
MARGARET:
I’ll never take another one home.
[Laughing]
I only took it home because I thought the boys wanted it.
JEN:
Do you want to tell us about that again, the axe head you found? We were talking about that at lunch.
MARGARET:
We were out cotton-chipping, at the levy bank. The grader must have brought it up, as they were clearing the ground. There were a few boys walking along. I was the only girl. There were some old bottles, and a couple of the boys picked them up. I spotted this Aboriginal axe head and I picked it up too.
One of the boys said to me, “Don’t keep it. Don’t take it home. You’ll get sick.”
I thought they just wanted me to throw it back down, so they could take it.
I took it home.
That night I got really sick.
So he was right, the boy who told me not to take it. I rang my sister to come pick me up that night. We went back out and I threw it over the fence.
I believe it now.
GERTIE:
[Pointing]
That one’s the male. The male is the prettiest one.
JEN:
I’ve been seeing them about this time, each day.
RINA:
Oh really? Do they live around here maybe, and just come back in the evening?
JEN:
Well, I wondered, because he seems to be with another bird. But it doesn’t even look like the same species. I only just caught a flash of the other bird.
GERTIE:
The female was there—they were both there. But they flew away, and he came back. I don’t know where she got to.
JEN:
She moves a bit faster than he does.
GERTIE:
There’s one over here in the little bushes.
Notes
[1] The Mundaguddah is a water-spirit, that bites lips and terrifies.
[2] Uncle Jack Charles (Bunuronong/Wiradjuri), 1943-2022, was an actor, musician and activist, instrumental in the emergence of Australian Indigenous theatre in the early 1970s. In addition to his numerous stage and screen credits, Charles was renowned for his work in prison mentoring.
[3] Who do you think you are is a television documentary series, originated by the BBC in 2004. Each episode follows a person as they retrace their lines of genealogical descent. The Australian version, produced by SBS broadcasting, began in 2008 and featured Uncle Jack Charles in 2021.
[4] Essie Coffey (Murrawarri) 1940-1988, was a singer, filmmaker and activist, who lived in Brewarrina, 100 kilometres east of Bourke. She co-founded the Western Aboriginal Legal Service and co-directed the documentary, My Survival as an Aboriginal (1978), which she followed with My Life as I live it in 1993. Coffey refused an MBE on the grounds that she was not a member of the British Empire.
[5] The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) was an administrative and advisory body, comprising elected Indigenous Australians. Founded in 1990, ATSIC was dismantled by the conservative Howard Government in 2004.
[6] A ‘Welcome to Country’ is a formal address by a traditional owner, usually an Elder, acknowledging and giving consent to people entering their land and to events (typically exhibitions, festivals and conferences) taking place there.
[7] KB lager was a brand of beer popular in New South Wales over the Twentieth Century. The KB stood for Kent Brewery.