The Yield
So when the Gondiwindi were fed up, and hungry because their kangaroo wasn’t coming in their hunting ground anymore and because their lore said that even during change, the land still owned them. That they could use the land how they needed—they got into the cattle then. They rounded them up with their mutts and dingoes and chased the heifers until they became tired, until it became a hunt and they’d spear them. Must’ve been frightened, those cows, so it was a good thing they never ate the meat—would’ve been tough as a chop from the Boys’ Home. They ate the fat, and the liver and the marrow. The settlers got mighty angry that the wild Gondiwindi didn’t respect their new fences. Then came retaliation. Thousands died, even the Gondiwindi babies too. Well, the river ran with blood then, and the dirt turned forever from yellow to pink. Massacre Plains had been born and the Gondiwindi, looking down the eye of a gun’s barrel, were scared.
water—galing, guugu, ngadyang The Reverend wrote it in his journals as culleen—he was listening that fella, listening as close as he could. All my life I’ve been near the water, and we come from the water too, us people. First we were born from quartz crystal—that’s hard water, we are kin of the platypus, that’s the animal of the water, and then, my wife Elsie and I made Missy and Jolene and Nicki, born on the banks of the water, the Big Water—Murrumby.
a large waterhole, a watercourse downhill—nguluman There’s one near the property, just there at the corner of the wheatfield, a little shoot off the Murrumby. The waterhole never fills all the way anymore. If the river ever gets going, it’s only running a little, and the whole thing is never deep enough to fill the wetland and then trickle into the waterhole. They call that one Poisoned Waterhole Creek.
wattle flower, acacia tree—yulumbang The ancestors told me about all the plants and trees and how to use them. They told me that the plants were pregnant with seeds, that the plants were our mothers and so I was only to use them for the Gondiwindi, not for selling, just for living. Remember that, wherever you go and touch the trees and plants, they are sacred. The yulumbang is a great plant for lots of things, the green seeds can be roasted in their pods on the fire, then you eat them like you eat peas. If you roast them and make a paste, it tastes like peanut butter. The light-colored gum from the yulumbang can be sucked like a lollipop, but not the dark-colored gum—that one is too bitter. The gum is called mawa.
weak, hungry, depressed—ngarran You should never say this word too loud because it’ll catch you hard. When you say the thing, sometimes you become the thing. August, when she arrived to live with us, would scream and weep, and yell out “I’m hungry,” but she was ngarran, she was all those things. I knew she had ngarran from this life and the past too. We’d say, Close the voice, because it’s telling you wrong. Anyone can say that, I’m not ngarran, because I’m in control—I can make it small and put it into the palm of my hand. I don’t think it always works, but it gives the spirit a chance to rest. In the end, ngarran is part of life—we can’t make it disappear, it doesn’t vanish overnight, but we can tell it to shush in the meantime.
well/to make well, to make good—maranirra If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to drop one. Mistakes were made and I want to make maranirra now. We should all make maranirra.
wheat—yura My entire life has been galing and yura. Even in the Boys’ Home we used to have to bless our meals, mostly served with johnnycakes, or dense bread. We’d recite, “Blessed by God who is our bread, may all the world be clothed and fed.” I quite liked saying that aloud. Many people know the wheat firsthand, not just in this country. Every person knows bread one way or another. The Gondiwindi had their own flours, and they were meant especially for the body of the Gondiwindi. We have always worked in the wheatfields too, my daddy did, and his daddy too, and if the world ever stopped turning, it’d be the last grain on earth, I reckon. Prosperous acres were fertile for the most part and although us mob lived on rich land—we never became rich.
where is your country?—dhaganhu ngurambang? The question is not really about a place on the map. When our people say Where is your country, they are asking something deeper. Who is your family? Who are you related to? Are we related? There’s a story I read about someone who wanted to build a map that was the scale 1:1 so that the map covered all the oceans and all the mountains and land at its true size. That made the girls laugh when I told them—imagine walking underneath and holding the thing above your head in the dark? That’s a little what a map does, takes the light out so you can’t see. The map isn’t the thing, this country is made of impossible distances, places you can only reach by time travel. By speaking our language, by singing the mountains into existence.
wooden dugout, or bark container or dish—guluman Elsie and me—we celebrated our marriage anniversary when the grandkids were little. Mary babysat. We took the Greyhound bus like they did in American blues songs. We went all the way to Alice Springs and then to Uluru—right in the middle of the country. We met some proper blackfellas out there, and there were women that were making their own guluman there too, and we bought one to bring home. It made me want to do things like that back at Prosperous. The guluman we brought back reminded me what the ancestors showed me and said, that our family had our own, used to carry fish to waterholes. Our people used to farm fish too! And after that trip, the guluman was a reminder of a bigger story of our people—how far we’d come that we could revisit ourselves, be proud of our culture again.
world, all over the world, everyplace—bangal-ngaara-ngaara Once, the ghosts came when I was meant to be doing chores, and away we went to shake a leg. I had never been to a dance in my life, I must have been about thirteen years old. All my family was at the corroboree and there they showed me the dance of the crow. We all danced and while we were dancing we flew into the sky, doing things that humans can’t do. We went bangal-ngaara-ngaara and the ancestor, my great-great-great-nanny was there, and she was teaching me about dying. We were flying and she said, “No one ever dies.” I said, “I’m sure they do because my daddy died.” She took her claw then and ripped a feather off my wing and she said, “This is not you. If I rip all the feathers off you, it is not you.” “What is me?” I said, and she said, “You is only electricity and electricity cannot die. You go somewhere else, but your feather is not you.” We went to a thousand and one places in our dance, and she showed me that dust to dust is just where we are resting—in the ground some places, in the water other places, burnt in ashes other places—she just said, “They now soil, they now water, they now lightning.” Afterward we flew back to the fire. All my ancestors danced through night, and we ate quandong fruit by the fire. It was sweet and I stayed awake a long time after dessert. But then it was time for bed and they took me back to the Boys’ Home. When I lay in bed that night I was very scared that I was going to die, that they showed me dying for a reason. But I didn’t die that night. I think they just wanted to tell me things, but not always in the way I thought. I realized I was just learning. It didn’t need to be in a special order, they just had me learn what I needed for all the days, not just the one I feared.
Eight
August’s compulsion to eat began before she came to live at her nana and poppy’s. At her parents’ home there wasn’t much edible to a child, only devon meat if they were lucky, white-bread loaves gone too fast, fruit that was too old and destined to be thrown away, and food bank goods that needed to be worked into something else. Jedda and August both used to snack on uncooked sticks of spaghetti, dipping the ends into the sugarbag. Chewing them to a paste. Every now and then, though, once every few months, cheese would appear. A large block of cheddar wrapped in thin aluminum foil and soft blue cardboard. August would wait it out until her parents had settled in front of the TV and slip herself along the floor to the fridge. She’d jimmy the electrical plug first from the wall, slide around to the door, gently pop the seal open without the fear of the light coming on. Then she would bite hunks and hunks of cheese until it had gone and she was on the verge of tears from the ecstasy of it all.
When August’s parents found the fridge bare they’d scream, bang things, slam doors. Her father, who had a hard face, would take off his leather belt and loop it, make a fish mouth with a fist at each end and whack! the leather strips together. Though he never hit her. He’d just scare the girls. They’d rinse her mouth with black soap and water and say, “Where’d you bloody come from! Were you born in the gutter?” She’d known she wasn’t, but knew they weren’t really asking her that. She knew where she’d been born, the birth certificate was protected in a plastic sleeve beneath the bottom bed of their bunks. She knew it was April Fools’ Day in Massacre Maternity Ward when August Gondiwindi was born (feet first, Nana later told her). Parents: Jolene Gondiwindi, unemployed. Mark Shawn, unemployed. Siblings: Jedda, twelve months.
Their family had moved from Massacre Plains five hours south to Sunshine for those first years, into the tumbledown, long rows of fibro cottages where some of her father’s family lived too. They had visitors all the time. August remembered always trying to hear what they said. Everything was strange to Jedda and August at home, not just the food and the disorder of days; it felt like life was muffled by some great secret. They just went along with it and made do, would hold out their hands and ask visitors for twenty cents or a piece of gum if they really wanted the girls to go away. They’d collect their loot and run into the small yard; make tents from dishcloths; play dance teacher, Jedda the instructor, August the novice. Inside the house, when August held her tongue out, she could taste cigarette smoke and flyspray in the rooms. She wanted to taste everything, even then, even the acrid air.
And how they came to leave Sunshine and arrive back in Prosperous House was the confluence of all the shambles of their childhood. How they had to be reminded a million times by the teacher to have their parents bring them to school on time, or to sign this and that, or to pick them up because the school guardian couldn’t wait at the gates for no one all afternoon. Mostly their parents were more like playmates, their mother usually. Jolene would snuggle with them when she was high and play with them when she was drunk, run around the house below the wet walls that gave them asthma and the mold that grew like a grotty birthmark in the folds of wallpaper and across the ceilings.
When the sisters were playing like that everything was perfect.
Sooner or later their mum would leave the room. Then they could hear nothing but the Rolling Stones through the house until Jolene would forget to feed them dinner and they’d go and rouse her. Then it took a long time because their mum was always doing everything from scratch in that state and last minute and halfway through she’d forget and fall asleep. So Jedda and August would finish cooking while she slept, they’d make their favorite beans on toast, and when she woke they’d have washed their plates, brushed their teeth, and they would be tucked in; Jedda tucked August first and then herself. Hours later Jolene would come in and kiss their foreheads, unravel the hair from across faces. August pretended to be asleep. She loved her the most she ever would at exactly that moment. They were never mean and bad parents, just distracted, too young and too silly, rookies, she used to think.
Then, one winter an unusual fog cold engulfed the suburb, and it snowed for the first time in decades. Every tiled rooftop was frozen white except for theirs. The police noticed this when they drove by that bitter morning. Inside their house they found ninety-five marijuana plants beyond the manhole, kept vibrant by long fluorescent warming lights. When the police came to the door they knocked loud enough that the girls shook. And their parents were handcuffed and marched off to holding and then gaol, all before breakfast. The following day the house was in the newspaper and the social worker drove them to the emergency foster house. They shook there for days until their nana and poppy drove down and didn’t leave until the girls were safe. While Elsie and Albert were gone, spiderwebs strung out into corners, snakes explored inside the empty house, and the whirly-whirly arrived to warn children away. But the duet that left returned as a quartet, singing “Wheels on the Bus” and playing “I Spy” all the way back to Prosperous. From the age of eight and Jedda nine, they lived with their grandparents, Albert and Elsie, back in Massacre’s Prosperous House—the Mission church turned farm workers’ quarters, that had an old coat of lemon paint and an extension built for shearers. Five hundred acres of not being able to shake the past, of where everything had gone wrong, over and over. They’d been returned to their birthplace, and it seemed as if their lives had become best-case scenarios.
August thought nothing could change as much as it did as when she was eight years old.
She was wrong.
Nine
worship, bend low—dulbi-nya I reckon Aboriginal people loved the Lord that the Reverend brought so much because they needed him the most in their lives. I think we always thought that there just had to be something better. Worship came easy, so this news about a fella Jesus from the desert on the other side of the world who had all the instructions for heavenly ascent—well, that was alright with us. Problem is they didn’t let the Aborigine straddle the world he knew best—no more language or hunting or ceremonies. No more of our lore, only their law was forced. We were meant to be saved but we were still in bondage. We worshipped though, we bent low, dulbi-nya. We’d done it before in front of the giving honeybee, the generous possum, the loving sun, the plentiful waters—our lives were filled up with dulbi-nya long, long before.
underneath the earth—ngunhadar-guwur What’s down there? Why those mining mob want to rip it all out and then it all belongs to them? I think all those shiny things ngunhadar-guwur shouldn’t belong to anyone, only our mother. I think that currency should return, make a balm from the wound. It’s strange isn’t it? That word, fortunes. I think we don’t have that word at all.
understand—gulbarra Our whole lives are spent doing that, trying to understand and be understood. When you’re between young and old though, that is the time for deep thinking. The thing I came to understand is that the world didn’t just begin when I was born. It’s a certain moment in life when we realize that—when we can see that divisions were made when we were just some milt in a fish in the chain of life and death. I’m leaving a complicated world soon, a world up in arms, and I see so much fighting. Love thy neighbor that’s a commandment from the Bible, bilingalgirridyu ngaghigu madhugu—that’s our commandment, it translates to: I will care for my enemy. They both mean gulbarra.
teacher—yalmambildhaany At the Boys’ Home is where I got my education, so they tell me that’s what it was. I learnt to write and read there, but not like I know it now—learning the Queen’s English came later. Back then we only wrote little maxims in learning cursive on our boards: I love to sit in the sun. God made the sun. Our yalmambildhaany name was Ma’am Sally-Anna Mathews, and she had the disposition of someone to match such a beautiful name. Ma’am Mathews had the iodine and boiled candy in her purse for all our punishments from the manager, for whom there would be no dew nor rain, except through him. She would even hug us! What a thing it was for us children without parents around to be hugged. I think my sister Mary never got a hug at the Girls’ Home because in a warm embrace she froze. I’m sorry for my sister that she didn’t have one little hope like Ma’am Mathews—a good-natured, but wrongly instructed nonetheless, yalmambildhaany.
time, a long time ago—nguwanda It’s not always a good thing, looking all the way back. Nguwanda was a time of peace, they tell me. In other people’s stories nguwanda was peaceful too, they’ve been told. Things change for good in many ways, so looking back to nguwanda is important—but it’s just for understanding, not to stop moving forward, not to return completely.
to return—birrabuwuwanha I wasn’t a very good father. I was distracted or I was working out on the field. When the Station was eventually closed down and the property went out to ballot for a Homestead Farm Lease, Bernard Falstaff, good man, let the Gondiwindi stay on in the sheds and work the field and run the cattle in exchange for a sort of ownership of Prosperous. Word got to me that they were looking for a manager for the seasonal workers. I rode out to Prosperous for the first time since I was taken away. The ancestors were with me and talking to me when I rode out there. They said I was going birrabuwuwanha and some were worried, and some were happy. I spoke to old man Falstaff, who was a science man who later taught me to play chess and was not keen on farming. He asked if I was married yet, I told him I wasn’t but I hoped to be one day. He hired me to oversee the workers and to manage the old church. Not five years later I met Elsie and there we settled into our own corner. Even if I wasn’t an attentive daddy, I think the girls had a good life where we lived. Mr. Falstaff let me plant the trees and treat that corner as our very own. So that’s how we got to come home, to stay on country, thanks to Mr. Falstaff we all got birrabuwuwanha. How the ancestors loved it there too, we didn’t even have to go out into the secret bush, we could stay right there and they’d show me everything I needed to find.
saltbush—bulaguy, miranggul There’s the old-man saltbush, cottony saltbush, creeping saltbush, thorny saltbush, and the ruby saltbush. They are good bush food: the leaves of old-man can be used to flavor meat and the ruby saltbush stems and leaves can be boiled and eaten like vegetables; the berries are big and red and sweet. The ancestors used all of the saltbush in different ways. The plant also takes the salt out of the soil, it can heal the ground while growing. That’s something.
sap of trees—dhalbu The dhalbu of the bloodwood tree saved some of the Gondiwindi. When we were being gathered up to be taken away and taught the Bible and be trained as laborers and domestic servants, my great-aunties were frightened and ran. Tried to hide their light-skinned babies in the bush. Some did get away and were never seen again. And some couldn’t leave in time and disguised their babies as full-blood by painting them dark with the dhalbu. Some of them were later captured. They wander around the river that appears when I travel with the ancestors, blood and sap soaked, hiding in plain sight now but still frightened.
say, speak, tell—yarra I asked Doctor Shah to yarra—tell me all the bad news. He obliged. “No worries,” I said to him when he offered the place in Broken hospice. “I’ll be leaving the world the same way I came—out by the river.” He didn’t much argue with me, just a few minutes, I think because he may have had to, but that fella has known me a long time, so we settled it like men and shook hands and he let me go on my way. Elsie’s been crying since we got back to Prosperous, so I took her beautiful face in my hands softly and I said, “Aren’t you glad you met a fine bloke like me?” She nodded, even if she was crying and laughing at the nerve of me. “I would’ve died happy the day I met you, Elsie, and now we have all this other time together. Aren’t we lucky?” I said. And then we kissed and hugged and kissed and hugged until she came around to the fact that we’re still alive now and still in each other’s arms. When she was peaceful again, I came outside to finish my work.
scale a fish—ginhirmarra The ancestors taught me all the things I wasn’t taught at the Boys’ Home: they taught me men’s business; they taught me where to find food, the names and uses of all the plants and animals. My favorite was eating the freshwater eel and the Murrumby cod. You can put the eel or fish—guya—whole, just as it is on the hot coals and break into the skin when it’s done. You can put it on as it is, or you can scale and gut it with a sharp knife first. You take the back of the knife and scrape the scales toward the head, wash it, and then leave the head on. From under the tail to the top of the stomach, cut along and then remove the insides, wash it again. The skin will just come away when its cooked. If you eat the fish, it’s important to know how to treat it after it’s died for you.
scars or marks, little holes left by smallpox—gulgang-gulgang Lots of the ancestors who visited me had this on their bodies, not everyone, but plenty did. “What’s that?” I said, when I was little and hadn’t yet learnt not to ask someone about something different on their face or body. One of my great-aunts said it was gulgang-gulgang. Then she drew a picture with the end of a stick from the fire. She drew it up in the sky above her talking, and all the stars beholden to help her draw out her story. She told me sickness came in the wind, with the shepherds and in the wool of their sheep, and it was a cold time then. “Every day and every night was chilly cold even with the sun out. Everyone was going through the shivers. They couldn’t speak about it either because their mouths were filled with blisters even though they hadn’t been eating hot things straight from the fire. And some of them couldn’t see because the blisters grew in their eyes too. The smallpox were all over the feet and the hands and the face, but not much everywhere else—so it was hard to walk or touch things, or eat. Impossible to see. Well everyone got sick then, and many people died,” she said. “Forever?” I asked. And she said, “Never forever, but it was still not the right time to go for so many babies, nannies, and poppies, the weak ones. The old people, old people with mouths filled still with things they needed to teach.” “That’s sad,” I said, and Great-Aunty said, “You’ll tell them I told you and then they’ll never do things like that again.” I asked her, “Who do I tell?” and she said, “Just tell the truth and someone will hear it eventually.” I guess this is what I’m doing, finally.
Ten
To Dr. George Cross,
The British Society of Ethnography
From Reverend Ferdinand Greenleaf, 2nd August 1915
I
I felt the great desire to address you, so late in the hour and—as is suddenly apparent—at the late hour of my life. The last time we spoke was many years ago now, in the Banquet Hall of the World’s Fair mirage in that compelling city of Chicago. I think on the evening with a golden warmth hung around it, though I had still been a confused man of the cloth, and of the Empire. We spoke of your wife, and I send my best wishes to her and your family at this turbulent time. I feel compelled to clarify why I refused to bring the measurements of my residents to the New South Wales exhibit, refused to catalog the minutiae of my brothers’ lives for all to see there against the ebb of Lake Michigan. In looking back, indeed, they are my brothers—we are bound by what we have undergone together all these years. Of course I mentioned none of this at the time, but no man would in those circumstances. Yes—no man would tell all the things I’ve come to know. Perhaps to tell all might be the sure way to ruin the great work we’ve accomplished here. But we live, Dr. Cross, in different times now. I admit to striking out some pages in my journal, and at times not having transcribed all events—anodyne nonsense at any rate? Yet I remember all the events more palpable than anything before or after. Only today I thought on it again and wondered briefly if it should be noted before handing over my living body. Perhaps.