Mothers and Daughters (19 page)

There was a fumbling at her middle, and Janey gasped, realising he was trying to undo her shorts with his free hand. This was getting out of control, going too fast. She took another deep breath as she felt the first button pop, the second—and then a piercing whistle rent the air.

The boy sat straight up, pulling his fingers out of her and wiping them on his shirt.

‘Shit. The coach must be looking for me.’ He smiled down at her, a lazy, self-satisfied grin. ‘You can let go now.’

Janey looked down and saw her hand on his erection, still determinedly aloft.

‘Sorry,’ she said, and removed it as if burnt.

The boy stood up, smoothed down his clothes and picked up his thongs from where he’d kicked them off. The ghost crab was gone, Janey noticed. She could hardly blame it.

‘Thanks, mermaid,’ he said. ‘I might see you around.’ Then he turned and jogged away up the beach, a surprisingly small figure against the rust-coloured cliffs. Janey lay back and
watched him go. Some boyfriend. She didn’t even know his name. He hadn’t bothered to ask hers.

How did they do that? Morag wondered. The Indigenous man was positioned in a deep squat with his haunches just a couple of inches from the ground, yet he looked as comfortable as if he were sitting in an armchair. Morag was fit and flexible, but there was no way she could maintain something like that for more than a minute or so, never mind the quarter of an hour he’d already been there. Maybe Aborigines were built differently, she pondered; maybe their muscles were longer or more supple. The theory had merit. It was always black men and women winning the sprints at the Olympics, wasn’t it? Caucasians were lucky to make it into the finals, and when they did there was never more than one or two of them, looking pasty and anaemic next to their glossy competition. She remembered once watching the Commonwealth Games with Andrew, and him jokingly suggesting that to make it fair there should be two divisions in the athletics events: one for the black runners, and one for the white. At least she hoped he’d been joking. If Fiona had said the same thing Morag would have called her a racist.

‘We’ll start today with a demonstration of the didgeridoo,’ said their tour guide, a caramel-skinned girl in her twenties dressed in neatly pressed khakis bearing the Wajarrgi logo. She held up a long hollow piece of wood, then passed it to the squatting man. ‘No two didgeridoos sound exactly the
same. That’s because no two are formed in exactly the same way—unless, that is, they’re made in a factory, and those aren’t didgeridoos, they’re pipes.’ She smiled, and her audience—their Kalangalla party, plus another five or six tourists—smiled back. ‘Real didgeridoos,’ she went on, ‘are created when a living tree, usually a eucalypt, is partially eaten out by termites. They’re not just logs picked up from off the ground—the trick is to find a branch before the termites have chewed all the way through, then to cut it off and cure it so it doesn’t develop cracks. This can be done by leaving the wood in a billabong for a week or two, or up here, among us Bardi people, the ocean.’ She grinned. ‘This is saltwater country. We reckon our didgeridoos have the strongest sound of all, because they’re formed in the sea, like we were.’

Saltwater country.
Morag repeated the words to herself, liking the sound, the way they conjured up exactly what was in front and behind and all around her: sand and scrub and the constant blue glimmer. Wajarrgi, as Amira had told them, was situated on the point of a peninsula. Everywhere you looked there was ocean, flat and sparkling in the afternoon sun, spread like a carpet of sequins to the horizon. She was glad she’d come. The laughter-filled lunch with her friends, the cultural tour—all of it was calming her, renewing her, taking her mind off Andrew’s appalling decision. She was grateful they weren’t still at Kalangalla, where she probably would have sat and brooded all day; she was enjoying being somewhere new, learning something about this country she’d washed up in.

‘Now, many people think that the didgeridoo is just like an overgrown recorder—you blow into it and the sound comes out. Well, I’m here to tell you that the didgeridoo is
nothing
like a recorder, thank goodness—and I say that with authority, because two of my kids are learning the recorder at school.’

Two of her kids? Morag started. The girl didn’t look old enough to have one child, never mind more than two. And why on earth were they learning the recorder when they lived in an Indigenous community?

‘For a start, the recorder is much more high-pitched—and irritating,’ the girl continued. ‘More importantly, the didgeridoo requires a special technique called circular breathing, where air is breathed in through the nose at the same time as it is blown out the mouth. It’s quite difficult—try it yourself.’ She stopped while they all attempted the method, wheezing and gasping like a conference of asthmatics.

‘That’s not difficult,’ Fiona panted, red-faced. ‘It’s bloody impossible.’

‘It is tough,’ their guide conceded, ‘but it’s what gives the didgeridoo its unique sound, that drone that everything else is built upon.’

As if on cue, the Aboriginal man still squatting in the red dust positioned the didgeridoo between his thighs, raised it to his mouth and began to play. A long low note emerged, hanging in the still air like a mirage, then transformed seamlessly into another, and another. The guide was right: there were no gaps, no breaks, just one sustained tone. Morag listened, transfixed, as the music hummed between them, snaked around their ankles, crept beneath their skin. She had heard didgeridoos
on the TV and in the occasional pop song, but never up close, live, like this. This was something else; it was an incantation, a spell. The sound that thrummed through the small clearing where they stood wasn’t a tune as such, it had no melody or refrain, but it held something richer, more resonant, something as ancient as the land itself.

‘That’s so cool!’ exclaimed a large auburn-haired woman standing in front of Morag. ‘Can I have a go?’

The didgeridoo cut out abruptly, and its player and the guide exchanged a glance.

‘Uh . . . I’m not too sure about that.’ The guide shot another look at her colleague, but he stared straight ahead, still crouching on his haunches. ‘Traditionally, the didgeridoo is a male instrument,’ the girl stammered. ‘Women are prohibited from learning it.’

‘Well, that’s pretty sexist,’ the woman said. Was that an American accent Morag could hear, or was she just imagining it, projecting her own prejudices?

‘I guess some women probably do play, but not at any of the ceremonies or corroborees . . .’ The guide’s voice trailed away uneasily. Dark patches had begun to appear under her arms, turning her khaki shirt olive.

‘We’re not at a ceremony now, are we?’ the woman said pointedly.

The guide dropped her head, gazing at the ground. ‘I guess not,’ she conceded, then turned and held out her arms to the man. ‘Leon, may I?’

For a moment Morag thought he was going to refuse, but then he passed it across without meeting the girl’s eyes. In
turn, she handed it to the red-haired woman. ‘There you go,’ she said. ‘In through the nose and out through the mouth, just as I told you.’

‘Film me, Alan,’ the woman instructed her husband, then took an enormous breath, as if she were about to dive underwater. She lifted the didgeridoo to her lips and exhaled with a grunt into the instrument. There was no sound other than the air escaping from the bottom.

‘Try it a bit more gently,’ the guide suggested. ‘Remember, you have to be breathing in at the same time.’

The woman inhaled and blew, inhaled and blew, but still to no effect.

‘At the same time, Janet,’ her husband called out, camera wedged to his eye. ‘You’re doing it all wrong.’ She squinted at him angrily, took another lungful of air, and immediately began to cough.

‘That’s just stupid,’ she said, pushing the didgeridoo back at the guide. ‘You can’t breathe in and out at the same time. It’s not possible. And turn that bloody thing off, Alan,’ she shouted at her husband.

‘I’m told it is a difficult thing to learn,’ the guide consoled.

‘Or mebbe the spirits don’t want you to play,’ the Aboriginal man interjected, flashing the disgruntled woman a grin as if to indicate he was joking. Morag knew he wasn’t. She found herself glad that the woman had failed, glad that she’d made a fool of herself. Served her right for being so pushy. The guide handed the didgeridoo back to its owner, who wrapped it carefully in an old blanket. No one else asked to have a try.

‘Next we’re going to witness a corroboree,’ the guide went on, pushing her damp fringe away from her face. She had lost some of her poise, Morag thought, but she was still game, still determined to make the tour a success. ‘A corroboree is an Aboriginal ceremony that involves singing and dancing. The correct term is actually
caribberie
, but the first European settlers misheard that, and “corroboree” has stuck.’

Fiona nudged Morag. Six Aboriginal men had materialised about thirty metres behind the guide, their bodies adorned with yellow and white markings. Two held spears, and one cradled a didgeridoo. All were naked except for a tiny red loincloth.

‘Showtime,’ Fiona whispered. ‘Look at those chests. I’m glad you made me come.’

‘Corroborees are performed for different reasons,’ continued their guide, oblivious to Fiona’s comments. ‘Some are instructional, to pass on the stories or history of that particular group of people, their Dreaming. Others are to influence the weather, to celebrate an event, or as part of a traditional ritual, such as when boys are initiated into manhood. Corroborees also used to take place to ask the spirits to bless the land—to protect it and keep it bountiful, so the tribe would be nourished and strong. This was before supermarkets, of course.’ A few dutiful titters. ‘Corroborees always involve music—the didgeridoo, clapsticks and rattles, plus the voices of those who are performing and watching. Some corroborees are sacred to a particular gender, either male or female, and cannot be viewed by members of the opposite sex.’ The girl glanced towards the red-headed woman as if expecting her to protest, then hurried on. ‘The ceremony we’re going to view today tells a story from the
Dreamtime, which is when the gods and spirits created the land and roamed upon it, sometimes getting up to all sorts of mischief, as you’ll see here.’

She stepped back and the dancers glided forward, flowing over the baked earth like lava. They moved lightly, barely appearing to make contact with the ground, the designs on their bodies writhing as their muscles flexed and leapt. As they approached, they held their hands up in front of their face as if shielding themselves from an enemy, and Morag was struck by how pink their palms were compared to the darkness of the rest of their skin. Pink, and somehow vulnerable, flesh that could be easily broached.

Next to her, Alan picked up his camera and began to film. Morag felt a second, renewed flash of irritation. Weren’t you supposed to ask permission before you took any images—a photo or video—of Aborigines? She thought she had read something like that once, that they thought it was akin to stealing their souls—or was that the American Indians? Anger surged inside her—at herself for not knowing, at Alan for filming on regardless, at his stupid wife, whom she still couldn’t forgive for insisting on her right to play the didgeridoo. The whole thing was a farce, she thought suddenly. Who knew if this actually was a traditional corroboree, or just something knocked up to appease the whitefellas, to make some money out of them? And who could blame the dancers if it was? The guide had been careful to use the word ‘settlers’, but really the Europeans were invaders, weren’t they? Trespassers, destroyers. Morag’s friends didn’t see it like that, but then they had been born here, they had no perspective. Her mind
raced. Their white ancestors had stolen the land, had corrupted the language, and here they were, still invading—filming a ceremony they probably had no call to even be witnessing; trying to peer beneath the men’s loincloths as they jumped and spun.

You could argue, Morag thought, that all of this—the corroboree, the tour, Wajarrgi itself—played an important role in education, in reconciliation, in the two cultures understanding and living alongside each other. But did it really? Or was it just entertainment—worse, exploitation? Complicit, maybe, the blacks wanting in on the tourist dollar every bit as much as the whites did, but exploitation nonetheless. Had the guide passed the didgeridoo to the red-haired woman because she didn’t want to offend or because she knew she had to do everything in her power to keep the tourists happy, keep the cash flowing in? The ululations of the didgeridoo throbbed in Morag’s skull, the clapsticks beat faster and faster, working themselves into a frenzy. Someone was making money out of these people. She’d bought into it because she’d wanted to learn something about Aboriginal Australia, but when it was all over would she know any more, grasp the issues any better, or was it just so that she could say she’d tried, shown an interest? You did the eco-tour, bought a dot painting, and then you could tick Indigenous culture off the list and go back to your sunbathing.