Remembered By Heart: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing (6 page)

In a kangaroo's arm, there's that long, skinny bone. Anyway, Aunty Ellie got one. She filed it right down, filed it right down. Made it real skinny. Then with the corner of the file, she made a hole in it, for the thread to go through.

She made Mummy two, three of them.

You could do that out of hard wood too. Aunty Ellie used to do that out of sandalwood. Make a needle, make the point, and then burn a hole through the head part. Then you pull the thread through. She used to do it with sinews, too. She used to make us boots out of the kangaroo tail, and moccasins, you know.

She'd sit down and scrape the skins. Nothing was ever wasted. Used to sit down and take the sinews out of the tail, and use the boomer skins and that to make the carrying bags.

Noongars were very efficient, only because they were taught by their people. It was more or less about survival.

And in 1935, Mum was pregnant and we went back to Gnowangerup. And she had my brother Aubrey.

After Aubrey was born our family consisted of four kids, and we went back to Brown's. We had relations all round, we used to see them at Christmas time. Browns were terribly good white people, because Daddy had been working with the two Brown brothers ever since they came back from the war. We stayed at the Browns until 1936.

In 1937 we went back to Gnowangerup. I used to go to school with the white children; Aunty Mag and Lenny and myself went to school. Audrey was born then.

The Aboriginal people had shifted from living on the reserve near town, most of them. There was a block of land about three miles from Gnowangerup, and Sister Wright made a mission there. And Audrey was one of the first babies to be born up there. I think she was the third baby to be born at that particular place. Well, we stayed there then and Daddy used to go to Borden and shear all around. Around 1938 we stayed in the mission and went to school. We stayed and my mum had treatment for her bad eyes.

We'd been at the mission before, right at the very beginning of it, for a few weeks. This was even before the people started to build the mission house. We planted a lot of trees which are still there today.

My mother knew Sister Wright when she was back at Carrolup, and she wrote her a letter and told her there
was a lot of Aboriginal people in the district, and how the ones she had made friends with had asked her to let this good Christian white woman know that they all would welcome her and wanted her to come and help them as all of them wanted to live as free people.

Brother and Sister Wright lived in Gnowangerup for all these years, and saw many of our people born and grow up and die. There was over two hundred people at the mission, everybody was happy, and the children went to school and Sunday School. The men worked all around the district; the ones who didn't find work picked wool and sold it to buy food and clothes for their families. I went to the mission school with my two brothers. Most of the girls and teenage boys went to work as soon as they left school. Those days you had to work hard and the pay was always poor.

Lots of times the boss from Carrolup — Mr Bisky, he drove a brown Ford car — would come and want to take away some fair children or perhaps a widow or someone who done something wrong.

Brother never wanted them to take kids and that. As soon as anyone used to come down in that car, Brother Wright always knew. They couldn't come on the mission because that was owned by the church, and they had to have Brother Wright's consent to come there and look around. They wanted women that had no husbands, or children that had no mothers, or the fair ones.

But Brother always knew that he was coming. Sometimes he'd come to the school and make an excuse. Maybe he'd say, ‘Teacher's not well today' — we only had but one teacher — ‘so you can all have the day off' — and he'd go down to the camp, all around on his old pushbike and say, ‘Now I want all the big ones to take all the little ones away, and you boys to act as watch' — you know, lookouts — ‘take 'em into the scrub.'

Or better still we used to take them into the paddock. And we stayed in the big scrub there, and there was a dam there. And then the mothers'd cook up food and the big boys'd bring it.

The big boys'd stay around, play football or pretend that they were doing something but always keep an eye on that car and where that man was and when he was on his way. And Brother'd go with him as far as town, come back, get on his pushbike and go out to the boys and say, ‘Well, he's gone, youse can all come home now.'

All the time, we had that fear. Sometimes, when we used to see the police come in a horse and cart, come up in a sulky, we used to all go and hide, thinking oh well, if you weren't working they'd get you. I used to work sometimes in town, with Mum, before I went to the Richardsons. My mother used to wash all over the district. Down there with the MacDonalds for a while.

If they found a girl was not working, the police would come, take the girl away. That man in charge of that settlement, he always found excuses, you know?

Even if, say, someone used to run away with someone else's wife and they'd go and tell the police. Well, that was a criminal offence. They'd take you away to the settlement for six months or something.

Brother Wright had some Christian friends who had a timber mill down near Manjimup, a timber town called Wilga. This was where the timber was sent to from Gnowangerup mission and our men paid Brother whatever money they could afford for the timber, and also for the iron for the roofs. So cottages were built on the mission; one or two rooms, and much better than bag huts.

Aboriginal people were not allowed in Gnowangerup town after six o'clock. We weren't allowed to go to the pictures and the women all had to have their babies in the camp.

In about the early forties the government gave money for a two-ward maternity hospital, which was built on the mission and it was really nice. All the people were happy at the mission and Brother Wright ran a little store where the people could buy food and he protected the Aboriginal people all the time, always.

But the townspeople and other people made complaints, reckoned that Brother Wright was making profit from the Aboriginal people, and the mission got closed down.

All he was doing was buying the wool people plucked from dead sheep. He gave them a reasonable price for it.

Christian people used to send second-hand clothes to
the mission but, well, not many people wanted to have charity. It sort of made you feel independent if you could pay something for things.

He'd maybe sell a good dress for about tuppence or thruppence or something like that. Well, when people had the money they bought things that they needed and I couldn't see that that was robbing anyone.

And while Brother and Sister were there, conditions on the mission were really good. You had proper medical attention. Well, Dr Boyd used to willingly give that. And Sister used to get medicines, ointment, and eye drops and ear drops. But, those days, not many children had runny noses and bad ears, I can say that for a fact. Very few of them did.

Runny noses and that only came about when people started living in the houses with concrete floors. But Brother and Sister really helped, you know. The kiddies went to school regular. Brother Wright used to ride a bike around to every camp and you had to explain why you weren't at school.

Brother had a dam built there and that was clean water. The women carted water and washed at the dam. They washed their kiddies and they washed their clothes and everyone wore white sandshoes and socks to Sunday school. We only had the one-room church and that was crowded with people.

People loved to be looked after. Brother, he preached a lot, and he was a Christian, but we accepted that, a lot
of people accepted that. The living conditions were really good. Some people used to have a garden. When they got their little shack, you know, they used to show pride in it, in their place, the little home that they had. But the government wanted them at Carrolup; that's why they said Brother was robbing the people.

Well, they were getting something for something at the mission. Because whatever they sold — the dead wool and that — they bought food. And they were sort of independent and even the men used to ride pushbikes to work. Brother used to fix up the old bikes and sell 'em, and when people were sick at Borden, Brother used to get in the old car and go and pick 'em up and bring them in. The only help people ever had was Brother and Sister.

After reports were made to the big bosses in the Native Welfare department that Brother Wright was robbing the Aboriginals in Gnowangerup, Brother and Sister were forced to leave. It seems to me they wanted Brother and Sister Wright out so they could close that mission down. Their place was taken by Mr and Mrs Street, who built dormitories. Then only the children of school age had to be looked after by the Streets and all the parents had to go back into the bush to live and find work where they could and fend for themselves.

Well, then they all drifted away, and Mr Street looked after the kiddies and that. And, well, they had no other place to come to, so Main Roads said they could shift back
to Gnowangerup, to a place just up from the railway station. That was the old reserve, where Brother founded the first old mission.

Well, they went back there and they all camped around. Tents and bag huts and bush camps and such like. They had to go and leave the little homes that they'd built up at the mission, just to come back and live under the trees again. Well, there weren't any trees, just bushes. I guarantee there wasn't a tree at that reserve that was as high as a kitchen table. So really, they had no home, they were sort of shuffled to and fro. But all those years, they kept their tongues behind their teeth.

They didn't talk, most of 'em, because they were afraid to speak out. The police walked roughshod all over the top of 'em, and did what they wanted and not one said one word.

Abridged from
Kayang & Me
Kim Scott and Hazel Brown, 2005.

I was ten years old then, when Walter Smith started teaching us. We were always in the house, in the homestead. We want lolly. We was willing to do anything for him. We started off feeding the chooks. Chooks used to be about half a mile from the homestead. And then we used to go and feed the sheep — the killer we used to have in the yard. We used to go and feed that one, put water and everything, make sure they okay. Then we come back to do a bit of sweeping round the house, outside.

And then when we was turning twelve he tell us to start watching him cooking everything, baking in the oven. We started like that, baking things. He didn't make us work, we just worked for him. Then he started giving more jobs then; we keep going now. Teach us more and more. He used to chop all the meat in the butcher's shop,
and he used to fill that baking dish, and we had to go and put it in the cooler. We used to do all them things for him. He used to tell us to go and get vegies — might be cabbage or cauliflower or whatever he needed to cook. We used to go and get it and he used to tell us to chop it up and put it in a pot, cook it.

You might go to the homestead and first it might be wood-chopping time; chop the wood, fill the wood box. We used to use the axe, chop all the wood in the wood heap. If the men were too busy, well we have to chop it, the girls. Sometimes middle-aged womans chop it, and we used to cart it in the wheelbarrow to the homestead. Fill the wood box in the wall outside, to use it for cooking. We had a big wood stove, two-door, so we can fit everything in there, roasting meat or baking bread. We used to bake six bread every day, big loaves of bread in a long tin. We used to bake that with yeast — we used to make it in a bottle all the time. Nice bread, they used to make. Sometime we made a damper, baked it in the oven.

Len Smith and Walter Smith taught us how to cook whitefella way, and waitering job, and sweeping floor with a broom, and baking bread and cooking roast in the oven. How to go and butcher the sheep, and washing up dishes. My mother was started like that, then when we got big enough we used to do the same.

We used to milk the cow every morning, and boil the milk. And we separate the milk from the butter, and we saved the milk in the cooler. There was a big cooler at
the homestead, the sort with flywire around it, and a big shallow dish full of water on the top and he overflowing all the time on to the cloths hanging down all round. Keep it cool, all the meats and things, nice. Butter and things wouldn't go bad. We used to wash it inside all the time, keep it clean, put the new lot of stuff there. Might be four shelves that all the different foods got to be on. Meat in there, and whatever vegies you've got for use, from the garden.

Some of the older ladies, they were there too, teaching us. We used to make the soap ourselves — washing soap — from fat. The boss showed them how to do that, and now we used to watch them doing it, all the old ladies. We used to melt the fat — sheep fat, rendered — and put it all in a big tub, like a big bathtub, but specially for the soap. Let it get a little bit cooled down. We mixed caustic soda in water, half a four-gallon bucket, mixed it with the melted sheep fat, and we had to stir it up till it got hard like custard. We leave it for a night then. In the morning we come back, and this big thing's set now. We had a table with a wire in the middle, and a rail, and we cut it all in slices — long ones first, and then we turned it around and cut it in little blocks. We used to make about forty in that one tub.

We used it to wash clothes, the old people's clothes and the bosses'. We never had washing powder like today. When we were washing, we had a washing board — the glass one — we scrubbed it on that. Then they used to boil the clothes in the copper. When you put them in the rinse,
you put the blue in the white rag, leave it in there, let him stop and make the water blue. It's good, rinsed out all the smell of that soap. Face soap, that you wash yourself with, he used to order that one. We used to get the round one, nice smell, but you can't get that one any more.