The Songmaster (30 page)

‘I work long hours, he works at home,’ she said pointedly, but without rancour. ‘I am lucky.’

‘I suppose you don’t buy this new-age stuff with blokes cooking.’ Susan got in first, not waiting for the smart remark from the judge, but he surprised her.

‘I cook Christmas dinner in a camp oven every year. Out in the backyard. And I make a mean damper.’

‘Right, Mick gets to make dinner tonight,’ said Beth.

‘What’s the plan today, Beth?’ Mick pushed his toast over a flame on the end of a stick as he squatted at the edge of the fire. ‘I’m game for anything.’

‘Ardjani, Rusty and Digger are coming over to give us a little talk, just a bit of background, really. I thought it might be useful before we plunge into living here. They want us to understand we are with them, as their guests, not outsiders, not tourists. They are very keen that we appreciate their knowledge, their culture, and what they call their gift for Australia.’

‘Do we have to take notes?’ asked Mick. Beth raised an arm in greeting, as the new arrival appeared. It was Barwon, grinning broadly, who’d just driven into camp.

‘Hey, everyone.’ He went around the group, shaking hands, bear-hugging Beth. ‘So, where have you been in your travels?’ she asked.

‘I’ve been back to the convent, where my mother worked, looking for records. There’s nothing there. The nuns . . . everything’s gone. The people who bought the old convent told me they burnt some files that had been left because nobody seemed to want them.’

‘You on some research project?’ asked Mick.

Barwon shrugged. ‘I’m just hanging loose. Looking for my roots, my family, all that painful Stolen Generations stuff.’ He tried to smile.

‘That’s a hell of a throwaway line.’

Barwon was relieved the subject was changed by the arrival of Ardjani, Rusty and Digger, who settled themselves in the ring of chairs around the fire, the smell of toast still strong and Billy pouring tea for the men the way they liked it.

‘What you want us to do today, Beth? These fellas going to talk to Eagle Rock people?’

‘Yes. Who do you think should go from your mob? Or should just whitefella lawyers go?’

Ardjani looked thoughtful, and turned to Rusty and Digger. ‘Who you say?’

‘Jennifer,’ Rusty answered immediately, and Digger and Ardjani nodded. ‘Better we no go. Then they can talk open about us.’

‘Ardjani’s right. If they go they might have to make compromises. That wouldn’t be wise,’ said Mick.

‘But someone should put the Barradja side. Or else it looks like whitey running things for the Aborigines, just as it’s always been,’ said Alistair.

‘Jennifer is an elder and can speak on the Barradja’s behalf, and we’ll be there for support,’ said Beth.

Susan spoke up. ‘If we go to Eagle Rock Station and talk to those people about seeing the rock art, can we then take Lilian and Jennifer to their sacred sites?’

Everybody looked at her. ‘I was speaking to
Lilian this morning. That’s part of her country, her father and grandfather’s country. She hasn’t been back for many years. Nor Jennifer. They’re now guardians of their ancestors’ land, and they want to go and do whatever it is that is part of their custodial responsibility. Isn’t that right, Ardjani?’

He nodded. ‘That’s right.’

‘And exactly what legal right have you to take white friends with you?’ Alistair’s mind was instantly questioning.

‘Who has first sovereignty over the land?’ asked Mick.

‘Use defines land, that’s how the government bureaucrats saw it when they designated the Kimberley grazing, pastoral and crown land. Before that we go back to the gadia white man concept of terra nullius – it belonged to no man,’ said Beth.

‘So we just ignore fifty, sixty thousand years of Aboriginal occupation,’ said Mick. ‘How do you feel about that, Ardjani?’

‘We feel empty, white government people try to take away our meaning, our being. But it is still here.’ He touched his head and his heart.

‘There’s no denying there was a powerful, complex culture in this land long before white men – be they Portuguese, Dutch, Asian or English – set foot here,’ declared Beth. ‘Our friends here were mustered up and dispossessed in the 1950s and they’ve been trying to get back to their country ever since. Excisions, Crown
land, reserves, pastoral leases, whatever, it’s all still originally Barradja land.’ Beth spoke with some heat.

‘We want to keep doin’ these things our people do, ever since creation time. It is how we keep our culture alive.’

‘I understand that, Ardjani,’ said Alistair. ‘But to these white people it is their land even if only leased, and if you take white people to your paintings and the pastoralists object, they could say you are trespassing, breaking white man’s law.’

‘I guess that’s hard for these fellas to come to terms with,’ said Mick.

‘Now, maybe it’s time things changed,’ added Susan.

There was a general nodding of heads in agreement. ‘Yeah, time the law was changed so you can all see the paintings. To make it more fair.’ Lilian didn’t speak up often, but when she did, she kept her remarks short and pithy.

Billy jumped down from the cabin of the Oka. ‘Excuse me, Beth, I think we’ve got a problem.’

‘You been on the radio phone? What’s up?’ Beth had arranged for messages to be left with Billy’s wife, as they’d check in when conditions were clear.

‘My missus is pretty upset. She got a call from one of the stations, saying I was not to bring tourists onto their land, and I’m going to be sued. For trespassing.’

‘Trespassing!’

‘It came from the Steeles at Eagle Rock. They said they knew we’d crossed over their land to get here yesterday, and they said we’re not to use their land without permission.’

‘What! Now Billy, how the heck did the Steeles get your home number?’ asked Beth.

Billy looked concerned. ‘Off the side of the Oka, I suppose, it’s got the company name on it.’

‘But you haven’t seen the Steeles,’ said Susan, then it dawned on her at the same time as Beth said, ‘The Wards must have told them. I told you the airwaves would be running hot.’

‘What’s the legal position here, Alistair?’ asked Beth.

‘Sounds like we definitely have to talk to these people right away.’

‘I agree, Alistair, but it doesn’t sound like they’re going to be agreeable to us going onto their land.’ Beth looked deflated for the first time on the trip.

Rusty was confused. ‘Now you fellas break white man law, too?’

‘Judge Duffy, surely you’re not going to let them bully us!’ chided Susan. ‘Get them on the blower, Billy, and we’ll tell them we’re coming over for a discussion.’

‘We’re telling . . . not requesting?’ The judge raised his eyebrows at Susan.

‘You bet. Do you law men agree?’ Beth turned to the three Barradja elders.

‘You go and take Jennifer to speak for
Barradja,’ said Ardjani. ‘Like Rusty say, better we old men stay back here.’

‘I reckon we need tea. Barwon, how about you put the billy on,’ said Beth.

By the time the morning tea was passed around they were well into the discussion on how to approach Len and Dawn Steele.

‘It’s complicated. The cattle industry in this part of the Kimberley has rarely been viable. Yesterday, we drove for twelve hours through spectacular country, but it’s very poor cattle country, and we saw, what? Fifteen head?’ Beth raised her eyebrows. ‘No wonder station ownership has a high turnover in this area.’

‘Could they sue us for trespass?’ Veronica looked to the QC and the judge.

‘It’s unlikely. Sounds more like they want to scare us off,’ said Alistair. ‘If Eagle Rock, and stations like it, are on pastoral leases and not freehold, surely access to cross the properties for hunting and cultural activities must have been formally granted to the people on this tiny plot of land, here at Marrenyikka.’

‘That’s the trouble, Alistair, no one can actually find any written evidence,’ said Beth.

Billy looked worried again. ‘I should apologise to the Steeles. I should have made a phone call and asked permission to cross their land. I didn’t know they’d be that upset. I’m sure a phone call would have prevented all this.’

Beth spoke firmly. ‘We haven’t done anything wrong. Alistair, will anything be gained by seeing these people?’

‘I don’t see why not. If they’re treated with civility, they might be prepared to grant access for us to see the Barradja sites.’

‘So we say we were invited here to see the Barradja’s wonderful art and we’re sorry they weren’t notified we were crossing their land. And we explain it was getting dark. We’ll test the waters that way,’ summed up Mick.

‘I wonder if we’d just turned up as tourists, and offered to pay to see the sites on their property, would they have let us go in,’ said Alan.

‘That’s exactly the situation,’ agreed Beth. ‘Some of these properties – unlike your friends at Yandoo, Susan – are struggling. They augment their income with selling petrol, or by having a shop, or by showing visitors over their land.’

Ardjani’s eyes blazed. ‘That no good. These people don’t know about our stories, our ceremonies.’

‘I know who I’d rather have show me the art,’ exclaimed Alan.

‘No argument there,’ agreed Mick.

Ardjani continued, ‘Some of these pastoralists say we Aborigines don’t know where the sites are on some stations. So they say we don’t care.’

‘That because it bin long time we away from our country and can’t get there,’ added Digger.

Beth explained, ‘Legally, the Aborigines have every right to go onto their land that is covered by pastoral leases. But in the old days, many pastoralists kept them off by sheer threats and might. Being such a gentle people they went along with it. In the 1980s when the outstation movement began, Aborigines wanted to go back to their land on pastoral properties.’

‘Pushing them into towns didn’t work, that’s for sure,’ said Mick. ‘The drinking started, and town facilities were stretched, and you can’t throw together people who don’t get on and come from different mobs, isn’t that so, Beth?’

‘Is that when they set up their own communities?’ asked Susan. ‘So how did people like the Barradja end up with such a tiny excision?’

‘It was a mutual agreement between leaders of Aboriginal groups who asked some pastoralists if they could go back to their property. Some pastoralists agreed, even wanting to put the square kilometre or so in the Aboriginal family’s name. But a lot of pastoralists wouldn’t agree to excisions, and the government stepped in, and it all became a complicated mess.’

‘So it was an earlier leaseholder of Eagle Rock who agreed to the excision of Marrenyikka,’ said Alistair.

‘You fellas figure out the strategy, eh?’ Ardjani stretched in his chair, and waited.

After much discussion it was agreed that just the QC, the judge, Susan and Beth would go with Jennifer. Billy, acting as mediator, had contacted
the Steeles by phone and had explained that the group wanted to meet them. As the driver carrying these unwanted guests over their land, he had suggested they sit and have a talk and explain what they were doing. The Steeles had agreed to meet after lunch at Eagle Rock, forty-five kilometres back down the track.

‘So tell us about the Steeles,’ said Mick from the rear of the Oka.

‘Len Steele. Tough, rough diamond. Ex-croc shooter turned miner. Worked for various mining companies and was in the right place, at the right time, when the iron-ore boom hit. A shrewd man. He used his contacts, played the mineral share market and made a small fortune. Dawn was working as a hairdresser in Darwin.’

‘Full marks so far,’ observed Mick.

‘Then she met Len, married him, and they took up the lease on Eagle Rock. Like the Wards, they see themselves as pastoralists, but it’s still a hard life on the land out here. Like most, they probably aren’t making a fortune.’

‘How do you feel about this meeting, Jennifer?’ asked Susan.

‘I’m nervous. I know they don’t know much about black people, our ways. I don’t know what I’m going to say.’

Susan squeezed her hand. ‘Let’s leave the talking to Alistair and Mick first.’

Husband and wife stood in the front yard garden of their homestead as the party arrived.