The Yield

by Tara June Winch

  plover bird – didadida I learnt this word at the Boys’ Home. Didadida! We’d scream it and run, swing the switches in the air to scare them back. Most people would agree the plover is the worst bird to ever live, worse than any vulture or magpie. Every Australian would know that, I’d bet. They’ll swoop at your face if you come near their nests, but even if you run away from the nest they’ll chase you on and on. The thing is, when I became a parent myself I thought about the didadida again and how they are just protecting their young. The didadida – it even sounds like a name the young chicks would give to their comforting parents.

  policeman, policewoman – gandyan, gandyi I’ve met nice ones and I’ve met rotten ones. Problem with coming across a rotten gandyan is that they are armed, not just with guns – tasers these days, too. Pocket-electrocution that is. When I was a kid, everyone said, ‘Now wave at the policeman.’ I think when people put a cross on their wall, or pin a thing to their lapel, or a band on their arm – they are really saying, ‘Don’t shoot me.’ We’d wave at them the same way. I even taught the girls and the grandkids that, ‘Look there, wave to the police car!’ Of course it was different when I was alone and saw a gandyan – then I would become real invisible.

  old man – dyirribang I was born in the middle of peace and war, right between the thought before the acts and the shadows that came after. When the soldiers who survived returned home the first time, they got given our land under lease, called Soldier Settler Allotments. Dyirribang Falstaff, that fella made a mistake, he got that land on the Homestead Lease on the vacated Station and failed to pay off the freehold. Failed to make the payments to make it his under Australian law forever. The Falstaffs never got to own the land, and the Gondiwindi never did too after that – the government owned it, ninety-nine years, enough time to tuck a mistake in the bedding of the next generation. Eddie will get to know the same feeling – being without a place or paddock to call home. That’s how the mine just slid right in here, slithered up like a snake – worse than a snake – ready to make a million, a billion or more for a couple of greedy mates.

  magpie – garru, wibigang, dyirigang Garru is a messenger bird. They can be vicious like the plover but the ancestors said they brought spiritual messages, that the garru love to talk if you can make friends with them. So I tried that, and now they come down here into the garden when they aren’t nesting, and I’ll say garru nguyaguya milang mudyi – magpie, my beautiful friend – and he’ll be calm and gentle. He told me about his ancestor, the first magpie, and about how important it is to protect his babies from the goanna, that’s why he is the way he is, and I told him how I understood completely.

  mailman, messenger (with a message stick) – dharrang-dharrang Julie at the local library – a wise and kind woman – unearthed pieces of my puzzle in the library catalogue that I wouldn’t have found otherwise, she gave them to me like a message stick from long ago. Those things she showed me helped me compile my dictionary, helped me put together the picture properly. Julie was my dharrang-dharrang.

  marks or tracks, impressions of passing objects – murru This is the tracks the snakes, the goanna, the birds and us make as we crisscross the world. We all leave murru behind, so leave a gentle one.

  TWENTY

  For days the heat slammed the inland and the residents of Massacre gossiped about the mine and how bad it would be for the environment and others bit back that they needed jobs. Though all sides of the arguing agreed they were owed something more. When the previous evening, like a virus, the true rumour that Rinepalm Mining had set an open day at the town hall filtered into the Valley, and back streets, the men and women, though on the edge of heatstroke, leapt from their houses and headed into town. Late in the evening when people were tired and quenching thirsts, and anticipating the new jobs they would have, they drunkenly sang along with the jukeboxes, some brawled onto footpaths, and eventually all returned into the night.

  First thing on Saturday morning, while Elsie and August were outside arranging rows of chairs two deep around the fire pit, a woman from Broken Crematorium arrived. She stood beside Prosperous House, in her hands a wooden case no bigger than a jewellery box. August looked at the woman and her chest caved then and her neck became heavy with the coming of a sad feeling. Elsie arranged another chair, wrung her sore hands and walked with her head high to greet the woman and sign the paperwork. Aunt Missy descended the verandah stairs and caught her mother around the waist with one arm. August couldn’t bear to watch; she fixed the last of the chairs and headed through the field towards the riverbank. Her nana had urged her to go, but she hadn’t got around to it. More, she didn’t want to see that the water was no longer there at all. She dragged her fingers through the overripe kernels of wheat that dropped easily to the dirt. Around the mining-company drill sites, the wheat was slashed and the short stalks looked etched into the land. Further out the wheat had been flattened about the size of Prosperous House, pipes rose up secured with bolts, a single capped pipe stood in the centre of the sculpture, barbed fence secured the whole thing, and from each length of linked wire Danger signs hung. August couldn’t get close to the tall pipes that had appeared as pinheads from a distance, the ground around each entry below was worn with work-boot prints and a scramble of metal bits. August wondered what it was that was a danger, she imagined gas compressed under the pipes, flammable dinosaur bones and coal stones, all the element codes of a periodic table rising. She imagined falling into the tin pit, all this gone, free-falling a kilometre below.

  She cut through the remaining acres that led down to the Murrumby. The ground between the wheat rows was cracked dry and she spotted something shimmering off the sun, a shard poking out from the dirt. She reached down to pick up what she realised was a piece of quartz. She held the crystal and glanced back to Prosperous; it wasn’t so far away, not as far away as she could see in the memory that burst into her head like an unwelcome guest.

  For Easter, Aunt Nicki had gifted the girls two large eggs wrapped in coloured foil. August ate hers immediately, easily, but Jedda didn’t want to, she kept hers still wrapped for the first week or so, nestled in the chest freezer. Then she took a lick, another day a little rabbit bite. The rationing went on for months. August became obsessed with her egg lying there and would lift the freezer lid and check on it almost every day.

  Then one day she’d had enough. They were coming in from the fields, trying to trip each other up. August could see them from where she’d stopped at that moment. ‘Race!’ August had screamed when Jedda was bending down, placing a piece of quartz in her bucket. August could hear her running, the treasures rattling in her plastic bucket a way behind her. In the sprint she’d hatched a plan and put on her best actress voice as Jedda neared behind her at the verandah steps.

  ‘Snake, snake!’ August yelled.

  ‘Where? Where?’ and Jedda halted, tiptoed to come closer to the back decking.

  ‘It slid right over my foot, I swear, right under the steps there,’ August pointed, paused and as planned, Jedda had crouched down to look. ‘I reckon it put poison or something on my foot, I’m washing it,’ August added, taking the stairs slowly. ‘You know I heard we are getting brown snakes down this way now, they migrate and stuff – did you know that, Jedda?’

  And then as soon as August had entered the back door she slid the glass across quick and snipped the lock shut. When Jedda heard the snip of the lock she looked up.

  August cackled and ran over to the freezer, taking out Jedda’s prized Easter egg. She could hear Jedda threatening through the glass door.

  ‘Don’t you dare touch it! I’ll punch your face in!’

  But she unfilmed the top of the hardly eaten egg and started to bite it.

  ‘August, I’ll kill you, I promise I’ll kill you.’

  August couldn’t help herself. She took hunk after hunk into her mouth, the frozen chocolate cracking against the tongue, difficult to swallow.

  Jedda became enraged, screamed all the
swearwords that if their nana and poppy had been home would have got her a smack. Jedda began to thump her whole little body against the glass. August laughed and ate as fast as she could. Then Jedda ran along the deck and launched herself against the door. She hit her nose and lip and August saw blood smeared on her face, a blur on the glass. August tried to reason, okay okay, and shoved the last small piece of egg back into the freezer. She readied herself at the back door, ready to flip the lock and run for cover. But Jedda had found a huge rock from the garden bed and had heaved it as high as she could, as if all her new fury was in that action alone. Jedda dumped that rock into the sliding door, the rock that must’ve been as heavy as herself. The glass door shattered, shimmered splinters over the linoleum. They got in trouble, both equally, had to clean dishes to no end. Until there was an end.

  August swallowed the memory, tossed the quartz back into the wheat stalks and walked to the edge of the riverbank where the water level dropped down, way down to bare sand at the bottom. The roots of white-box gums dangled out to nothing through the sides of the bank. They’d started to stop growing leaves when August had left this place and no koalas would climb the trunks for food anymore. There wouldn’t be anywhere for the platypus to swim.

  She walked north along the Murrumby, where the water would have once flowed. She saw mussel middens and cicada shells discarded along the riverbed. Large boulders strung in lines across the base of the river, once stacked for catching fish. She walked through a soft trough of sand, where orange wanderer butterflies flocked; they rose up, startled as she passed them. The static of the bush grew louder, a hummed pitch, a constant, unseen excitement from insects in the trees, like sonic waves in space or from submarines that only enemies and whales and dolphins could hear, she thought. Through the black cypress pine Kengal Rock loomed, swept up one side like a wave forming, and sloping long out the other side to a plateau. The air became cooler as she walked towards what was once upstream. Further up, the pine trees had kept their cover; birds called out, Wahn the crow cawed, kookaburras bounded from branch to branch laughing late in the morning. A slow goanna ambled down the base of a squiggly gum. He looked wide and fed, No good for eating like that, her poppy used to say, Got to catch them before they have a feed, otherwise they taste like dead flesh. August could hear his storytelling clear in her mind. The goanna passed her as if he knew that she knew, but they’d never eaten goanna anyway.

  This is what she remembers. Her and Jedda finding the secret bush, looking for that place no-one else could see. Children could be brave then. They could run to the end of Massacre and not be chased by farmers or ferals, they could climb, and knew how, Jedda knew. Broken bones were the building blocks for a kid’s life in the bush. August had always been a little uneasy in the bush though – she felt as if she were always winded, holding her breath anticipating disaster. But she could bear it, with Jedda, and together they’d found an oasis in the scrub.

  Little rivulets twitched, wanting to lengthen in the redder sand. She kept walking, and through the canopy saw purple and blue tents pitched atop Kengal’s flat granite peak. Beside the tents she could make out a few people standing up there. One of them waved down at her – a big slow swing of an arm. August raised her arm back to whoever it was, a kneejerk reaction, and then turned back the way she’d come. As she began to walk she heard a cooeee and looked back, and the arm waved again, beckoning her up to join them. There were enough people to help set up, August thought, so she followed the river further and climbed through the Used Oil Depot fence and up the ridge.

  After a short trek a young woman about the same age as August eased towards her, shifting her weight to balance herself down the steep decline.

  ‘How’s it going?’ the woman said, smiling, swatting flies from her face. Before August could answer, she added, ‘Want some tea?’ August shrugged, followed her up, turning to look down at Prosperous. From there she could see the back of the house, though the Aunties wouldn’t see her there. She remembered Jedda and her climbing through the she-oak trees to Kengal, watching for falcons’ nests, waiting for falcons. Their poppy pointing out Bogong Range in the distance, but they never could really spot it themselves.

  The woman had two long braids down each side of her chest, and she wore cargo shorts that rode to the top of her thighs; long candy-stripe stockings ringed her legs and led under her shorts. Between her breasts fell a twist of leather strings and metal necklace chains and a pair of army-patterned binoculars.

  ‘What are you guys doing here?’ August asked when she saw a whole collection of people and their tents, hidden from view at Prosperous.

  ‘I’m Mandy,’ the stranger offered, ‘and all these guys are water protectors, here to stop the mine.’

  August laughed at her sincerity. ‘You seen how much water there is in Murrumby?’

  Mandy didn’t laugh; instead she continued talking as if she’d lived more years than she had. ‘This rock, Kengal, is actually a volcanic filtration system for the river. It’s a natural spring filter and it’s four hundred million years old. In fact, it still filters the water underground – half a kilometre underground.’ She searched August’s face, offended, looking for her to what? August wondered. ‘You must know that, though.’

  ‘No,’ August said, ‘but what do you do then, to protect the water?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean – how do you protect the water?’

  ‘We just make the mine stop.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘Direct action.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Blockadia. Chain ourselves to the machines – but we’ll have loads more people soon. Our networks will arrive.’

  ‘Networks?’

  ‘Earth custodians.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘And them.’ She gestured to her camp. ‘We spend all year on the lookout for projects to target and then when we need them our supporters arrive and join in. Normally I’m a custodian of the old-growth forests, but then we heard this mine was going through – so, yep.’ She nodded, then, and hooked her thumbs into her cargo-belt loops.

  ‘Whose mob are you?’ August asked, accepting tea from another woman with a nod, and taking a sip.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, are you Koori or what?’ ‘No, I just care.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘You think I’m not allowed?’

  ‘I didn’t say that, I said it’s nice – it’s nice that you give a shit.’ August looked away, trying to spot Eddie around Southerly.

  ‘I saw you arrive the other day.’

  ‘You saw me?’ August asked.

  ‘Sorry,’ Mandy laughed, and held the strung binoculars up from around her neck, ‘there’s not much to look at!’

  August made a point of ignoring the binoculars and looked around their camp. They had gas stoves, dozens of milk crates stuffed with things scattered between tents, sun chairs, lines strung with laundry. There were about ten of them, playing cards inside the makeshift kitchen, two large white plastic drums were marked drinking water and cooking water, onions and bananas hung from tarpaulin stakes, more milk crates.

  ‘You know this is private property?’ August said finally.

  ‘You mean the oil depot?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘They can kiss my arse to be honest. There shouldn’t even be a fucking oil depot on a, you know, a sacred site.’ She scratched the side of her neck elaborately and stared at August.

  ‘Who told you it’s a sacred site?’ August knew Poppy had a story for Kengal, but he’d had a story for everywhere.

  ‘I found a heritage study from the eighties. It’s all mapped if you want to see.’

  ‘I believe you,’ she said, and threw the remainder of the tea into the rocks alongside her and handed Mandy the cup.

  ‘Listen, if you want to come and hang out, we’re here all the time.’ Mandy put her hands together as if in prayer.

  ‘Maybe
.’ August felt like she’d been made small by this woman. She started back down the ridge and Mandy walked beside her along the vague path.

  August didn’t know how to respond, didn’t want to walk with the woman and paused for a beat, hinted, ‘Bye, then.’ She took a step and added, ‘There’s a funeral today, so maybe don’t look down at our house, okay?’

  ‘Of course, it’s not like we’re spying on you or anything, it’s just that I noticed you.’ She cocked her head in front of August to make her look. August froze in the weirdness of the situation. Mandy reached out, tucked a band of August’s hair behind the ear. Her stomach tightened and her hips ached suddenly. ‘You have such beautiful eyes,’ she said, willing August to stare back into hers.

  August’s breathing stopped for a second. Two maybe. And then Mandy just walked up the ridge again.

  August made her way down, feeling sick and thrilled at the same time. ‘Mandy,’ she said as she walked down the ridge, and through the fence, down the shoulder of Upper Massacre Road to the entrance of Prosperous, past the rows of peppermint trees, the cars parked disorderly by the house. Mandy, the strange woman on the rock.