The Yield

by Tara June Winch

  And yet, the delivery of the much-needed items was delayed again and again. The season was very dry and the harvest did not wither for want of harvesters, but from the sheer violence of the sun. Our few head of sheep were dying of starvation. I prayed for help and direction, and – lo! – direction and help came!

  An old Blackfellow came to my hut saying, ‘Plenty of fish down long river.’

  At first I took no notice, but as he kept repeating it, I said, ‘Alright, I will send a horseman tomorrow.’

  Upon saying this he became very warm. ‘You no send horse, you send big dray with me.’

  I was struck by the old man’s confidence and thinking the Lord might provide, I approved a fishing expedition. The next morning, four men and the old Jacky led us to a section of the river that bottlenecked below Kengal. On reaching a short, steep slope to the river I had not before come across, three of the Blackfellows stripped from their clothes, bounded down the bank without a thought and plunged into the waist-high water, and within moments began spearing the fish. Such a sight I had never before witnessed. The three spearmen kept old Jacky, another fellow Wowhely and myself gathering up and bagging, and in the course of hours we had secured about six hundredweight. After thanking God we returned to the Mission and caused a general rejoicing throughout the settlement. The women immediately set aside two-thirds of the catch for drying and preserving.

  As we were feasting that evening, Hans Keller and I heartily agreed that we had been blessed. I asked him whether he thought it correct, in such thin times, that we should allow the Natives to go about their old ways if we could sustain ourselves. With the assistance of his sated appetite he saw little problem with it.

  From that day forward I took to the capacities of the Blackfellows as a keen observer. They showed me the tubers at the river we could eat after roasting on the fire, and a type of native potato that the women pounded and produced from the vegetable a fine, fluffy cake. I learned more of their language and, over the years, listed 115 words of theirs that I have attached here – and in exchange, they took to my sermons with an equal fervour. Although not without difficulty in the language. I understood that the parts of my sermons that divided us were not the sentiments, but the words. That’s what the Blackfellows told me when I explained God; they said Baymee to me, and furrowed their brows and nodded like we were talking in the seriousness that we were. And so, after much reflection and frustration I prayed and asked the Lord – ‘Why am I only hidden with Christ in Paul? Why can they not be hidden in God with Baymee?’ The answer I decided upon was that I should be flexible with words. That I should be open to translation, as it were.

  So, in secret I gathered with the men and gave sermons about Him, neither the Lord nor Baymee. I told the courageous stories and the enchantment of creation and they nodded and listened, enraptured in the tales. I never told Baumann, or Keller, or any Church or Government official who visited the Mission once I made this decision. At first, I thought that Baymee was their word for God, but deep down I think I knew it wasn’t. I think I always knew we were praising their own God in the absence of mine. Because, where had the Lord Jesus been in those years?

  We were dependent on only the land for our rations, and the materials from the Department of Public Instruction never surfaced, and I had still not yet built an official Prosperous Church. I had not yet installed the rose emblem of coloured glass in its eastern facade. At least the river flowed on time, the sun rose and dipped each day; at least they could point their God out to me, Baymee they uttered. Baymee they said as the men pointed up to what they called Kengal – the great granite apparition that looms north of Prosperous Mission. I’d take their arm and point it just an inch or so higher, so that in my faith I could say we were pointing to the heavens, but their arms always dropped a little when I let go, and they would correct me at forty-five degrees, their fingers at the tip of Kengal – Baymee they’d confirm indisputably.

  TWENTY-TWO

  medicine man, priest, conjurer – guradyi, gudyi, guraadyi That’s when the gudyi comes in from the church and tries to fix everything for the families. There was only one good white gudyi I’ve read of and that was Greenleaf, more or less. The medicine men of my ancestors showed me the plants most sacred to our people. The things Joey and the young ones need to know are all written here. There are no guradyi left, so our descendants must take the post. Claim that space where shame lived, where things were lost, where we were kept away from our culture.

  mouth – ngaan Use the mouth now, say our words aloud – you’re right sometimes when you just try. There are nasal sounds, the sounds you bring up to the back of your nose, like ‘ny’ – which is made by ‘n’ and a bit difficult, especially at the end of the words. ‘ng’ – which normally comes at the end of English words – comes at the beginning of ours – and is made by ‘n’. ‘nh’ is not heard in English at all – it’s like making a breath, sometimes in and sometimes out after an ‘n’ sound. Then there are stop sounds – those you make close to your heart like ‘dy’, which sounds like ‘j’ or ‘t’ depending on the word, ‘dh’ sounds like ‘d’ or ‘dy’ or ‘dth’ and then there is ‘b’, ‘g’ and ‘d’ – which sounds like English ‘p’, ‘k’, ‘t’. There’s also words that contain long vowels like ‘uu’, ‘ii’ – ‘uu’ sounds like the ‘oo’ in the word book and ‘ii’ sounds like the ‘ee’ in feel. The rest is just feeling the words.

  mystery, sacred, secret – ngayirr The word mystery and the word secret mean the same thing in the old language, that is important to remember. I could think of a hundred reasons why I’m alive, why things have happened, why time measures our lives to a limit but that our mother is infinite. But the truth is that everything is just a question.

  legs, to be long-legged – buyu-wari To be long-legged – that’s the Gondiwindi! You know when you look at the shadow of yourself and the legs are long? That’s what we have always looked like just standing there. I’m not certain it makes us great runners, but we have always been able to reach things in high places.

  luck, providence – mugarrmarra Years ago the whirly-whirlies came to Prosperous – they stayed there for over thirty years. In the second week of the whirly-whirlies hanging about, I cycled out to Massacre Food Mart and I bought milk and a $1 Harbour Bridge scratchie. The prize was $10 000 instant cash. The lady behind the counter explained what it was to me, they were brand new, she said they had only been out for one month. Well, I never, ever scratched the card. I kept that scratchie with me all these years, the day the whirly-whirlies left it would have been void in any case. I reckon I was looking for some sort of sign in turmoil. Money seems like a good enough answer as any. I lost all the magic. I lost all the goodness. I even lost prayer, but I wasn’t going to stop trying for my family. So I never reached for an easy fix. I just tried.

  lust after, passionate – ngurrunggarra There’s a story the ancestors told me about two lovers who, long ago, lived on either side of the Murrumby River. The Murrumby was a boundary between two territories, and both groups were friendly to each other, though both lived under strict tribal lore. The day came when one of the young men saw a beautiful young girl of the neighbouring group. He fell in love with her immediately and decided to be her husband. Unfortunately, the girl had been promised a different fate. The two met in secret, though, and many meetings passed without anyone knowing about it. When they were discovered the elders warned the young man not to ngurrunggarra the girl, otherwise he would suffer grave punishment. But they were so in love these two, they decided to elope, even if they’d be outsiders forever. They decided to meet at the river, and take off north to the bush. On the night they were to run away, they both waded into the Murrumby. When they reached the centre of the river a rain of spears entered the water and wounded them both. The two sank into the water holding each other. And if there was water in the Murrumby, the frogs would still gather there today and sing two different tunes from either side of its banks, the young woman and
the young man crying out to each other, mourning their lost love.

  know yourself, be at peace with yourself – gulba-ngi-dyili-nya When I was younger and my body hadn’t bent yet, strangers began to turn up at Prosperous. I’d look up from the field and see someone standing at the back door, many times it was a woman, older than me, clutching her handbag to herself, nervously walking beneath the peppermint trees and looking about. They were returning to make peace. I’d give them a cuppa, and if they felt like it, a walk around the property. They’d tell me how they tracked the place down, how they remembered being here. Some were old enough to remember my mother. They were freeing themselves from their lives of good grace or misery – either way, they needed to see where everything began for them. I would talk with them, would nod and acknowledge them. That’s what the old, returning people wanted, someone there to receive them, believe them, help, in some way, to put the pieces together. Gulbingi-dyili-nya is important work, long work. Every person faces that crossroad, wondering whether or not to walk through the arch of peppermint trees.

  koala – barrandhang, gurabaan, naagun After her bus trip and causing all sorts of trouble Elsie drove down to Massacre Plains in a bronze Valiant. We courted at the Aborigines’ dance. Then Elsie was tired from dancing and punch so I drove, even though I didn’t have a licence. We were driving along singing and yapping when a big BOOM sound came from under the car and we swerved a little. I pulled over and we looked behind us but couldn’t see a thing. Elsie was worried, so I turned the car around and there on the road was a massive barrandhang – that’s the name the ancestors had told me. Elsie, she was distressed and wanted to save the animal. She took a picnic blanket from the boot and we went to pick it up, but as she did, the barrandhang, in its shock from being hit I suppose, or filled up on eucalyptus, snuggled into Elsie and she was blissed out like she was holding a baby. I didn’t like this at all, but we got into the car and I got to thinking about a place that rescued native animals, mostly joeys that were still alive in their mothers’ pouches when the mothers had become roadkill. So I got my bearings and headed towards there. I glanced at Elsie a couple of times, and she was still holding the animal like a baby but I had to look back at the road to work out how to keep driving that car. After about an hour we found the place. It was well past midnight when I pulled the car up, but it didn’t take a minute for the old farmer to come out with a shotgun. Oh, God! I had my hands in the air like in the films and I got on my knees and yelled, ‘We hit a koala – help us please!’ I look over at Elsie and she’s stepped out of the car, the picnic blanket dropped away and the koala now hugging her bare around the neck. There wasn’t anything maternal about the situation then, not with a half-conscious thing with claws that was just waking up to the scent of a strange woman. Me and that man with the shotgun could then see how big that animal was. He put the shotgun down immediately and I rose up on my feet. Elsie was still blissed out, but her voice trembled a little. ‘Alb,’ she said, ‘I think it’s waking up.’ Well, the bloke moved real slow towards her, he said some calming words and told her he was going to take the koala. ‘Okay? I want you to let go and turn away fast when I say so.’ She nodded then, she knew she was in trouble. Just as the bloke came to grab the koala under the armpits, the thing latched its teeth into Elsie, and those claws too, ripping the back of her dress in one long drag away from her as he got the koala free. Well, there wasn’t too much blood on Elsie, but that koala had woken up for sure – its arms and legs outstretched and braying loud! The man called out that he’d get the vet out in the morning. Elsie and I dropped in there a couple of days later. The barrandhang was fine. The farmer released it a few days later. We were happy to know it was okay and, well, Elsie never messed about with wild animals again.

  jag-spear – dhulu I made a real dhulu myself as an older man. Not so long ago.

  ill, to make ill – duri-mambi-rra I try and try to see my mother there on my time-travelling, but I only see her walking in my memory, she’s always defeated in my mind. I see her in the field, threshing, I see her sitting at the end of a bushel with a tin of tobacco. I can see her sitting under the tree when she was old and had already drunk her death, when the grog duri-mambi-rra.

  incorrect, wrong – wamang I’m looking out on the backyard: the field, the crop, the dam in the distance to the right; the trees, the line, the river in the distance to the left; the kitchen garden here beside me. It all seems small and manageable. It’s hard to imagine that something so big might swallow this place up soon. Hard to imagine problems coming home here again to roost. Don’t know what it is about us that seems to rile the white man. The burden, the burden of their memory perhaps, or that we weren’t extinguished with the lights of those empires after all. Some days everything seems wamang still.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Joe was with the Uncles, carrying branches of black cypress pine and gum to the fire pit. August noticed Eddie there with the men who were carrying dried lengths of geebung too. In his suit he seemed to have the confidence of a soldier off to battle, not unlike the town’s statue. August thought about Poppy, trying to imagine him so young, thinking how she never knew him completely, only for some of his life, and wondered what it was like for him here in Massacre as a young man. Elsie was waiting at the fire. She was wearing a crepe navy-blue dress, her hair looped into a low bun.

  August stood with the women and girls who were bound together and heaving; sorrowful noises came from all the Aunties, even Aunt Mary was crying. The sun seemed to ease and August suddenly didn’t feel sweltering hot anymore. A breeze felt as though it came off the water of the Murrumby, where it couldn’t. She’d once heard Aunt Missy talking about the grief coming from upriver – or had it been from underground? She couldn’t remember. Aunt Missy squeezed August’s wrist. Missy was thinking about when her dad had taken her fishing, about when she was little he let her push her thumb into the soft soil and how he walked past her, dropping seeds into the earth, with the other hand she would cover them up. Aunt Mary was swaying by the fire. She was thinking about the first time she met her brother again at the Aboriginal Medical Centre Christmas lunch, how relatives had walked them to each other across the lawn, how they didn’t know whether to hug or dance in the joy. She was thinking about when she buried her own son, how much she’d loved him, more than she knew she could, more than she was ever taught. And Aunt Nicki, who had let go of August’s other hand, with eyes closed, asked the Lord, whom she never asked for anything, to end this chapter of their lives. Amen.

  Nana took the black cypress-pine branches, the gum and geebung from the cousins and uncles and placed the ends into the fire. The men and boys stood back and waited. When the branches were smoking but not yet alight, everyone moved forward and Nana handed them out until she was empty-handed. August stood back from everything, just watching.

  Once Nana took the jewellery box of ashes everyone went quiet, but music came from their feet when Nana spread the ashes into the fire. The flames rose and sank. She walked into the wheatfield, letting the grey gravel dust trail from the box alongside her. Nana dropped the box on the ground, threw her arms wide and moved to those private songs of their marriage with her eyes closed shut. Elsie was thinking about Albert, thinking about his free spirit flying, whooshing into the air as he’d always said he could. Like an arrow through a heavy heart the long elegant body of the bird glided into a chorus of sobbing and landed out by the dam. Elsie opened her mouth and a deep noise came out, words she didn’t remember that she’d gathered like years. August stared further out towards the dam as the ceremony continued and smoke rose, sweeping across the plains.

  The whole world seemed to stop then: the cicadas went quiet, leaves stopped rustling, chairs didn’t creak.

  August couldn’t taste or smell a thing. She spied the lone bird at the edge of the dam, dancing, as did her nana, who stopped moving when she noticed. It was as if the bird were coming towards the fire. Everyone else was looking too.

  It
was a brolga.

  A few family members pointed in the direction of the dam where the red bonnet of the brolga rose and fell, and its white and blue-grey feathers opened and collapsed. At the edge of the water, with its stick-thin, sinewy legs and dipping knees, it danced. It flapped its wings, showing its black underside. When it bowed its head August thought she could see its yellow eye. It had a trumpet call, its caw rising, rising. Then its beak dipped right down to the ground – and up, up its wings went, the long body of the bird rose, its legs cycling in the air before it fell again. As the brolga hit the ground, a wing, then the other, whooshed into the smoke blowing in the field. One leg up, and then the other leg joined so that the brolga was airborne for a moment, and then as its body, atoms, molecules joined the ground its head rose up with the billow of dust, rising. Over and over, the brolga repeated the dance. There was music. Everyone was still, watching – seeing suddenly not the freedom of the bird, but its belonging. She dropped to her knees and sobbed and wailed like she’d never done before. August saw something else in the bird, too. Her legs felt heavy and she fell where she stood, kept her eyes on the bird. Jedda, she thought, Jedda.