The Yield

by Tara June Winch

  The late Reverend Greenleaf born in Sachsen in 1838 was the only son of Norman Greenleaf, a landholder, and has been laid to rest. A religious gentleman who was a well-known and combative figure in the interior, his death comes after this newspaper recently, and controversially, republished his heartfelt and passionate letter to the British Society of Ethnography.

  The letter was smuggled out via the renowned photographer Mr Paul Dubotzki. His message stirred our readers’ deepest sympathies and enraged the Anti-German League. It has been reported that Mr Greenleaf, who was interned on Torrens Island before being transferred to Holsworthy Internment Camp, died of natural causes. The editors here at The Australian Argus, however, would like to think he might have died of a broken heart, such was his fierce commitment to justice for his friends the Aborigines. We will remember him as a British subject and a soothsayer of our turbulent age.

  The deceased has no immediate kin.

  The Australian Argus

  2nd January 1916

  FORTY-ONE

  Nana had initially folded under the town pressure. ‘Maybe we give up a little for the betterment of everyone else,’ she said. A writer named Montaigne said the same thing, August told her, but he’d been wrong in giving a seed to receive a shoot of the plant – he wasn’t thinking that people are the seeds.

  But still they stayed on until the end, and further.

  Until Aunt Nicki broke the truths to Aunt Mary, and confirmed all Nana’s worst fears – that Jedda was gone. Never to return.

  Until a digger felled the last peppercorn tree and white things tumbled from the dirt and roots, like sticks of quartz, like bones. A waterfall of yellowed bones.

  That’s what they saw, unshackling from the waist and running to the sounds of gasps and cries. The hundreds of bones from the earth. A digger’s mouthful of bones, falling.

  Almost immediately after that, historians declared the cemetery was culturally significant – they said the cemetery site, containing the bones of up to one hundred former Aboriginal Mission residents, had never been noted on the Prosperous area plan. The cemetery was found in the more productive area of the property, and the remains in the paddock had been mistakenly ploughed and cropped by the Falstaffs.

  Aunt Nicki brought the cassette recorder out to Prosperous and handed over Albert’s Native Title application. She hugged August. She swore she was just trying to protect the family from what was inside. ‘You must come to terms with what’s in here, August,’ she said. Aunt Nicki cried then, and August thought that maybe she really was being sincere. Much later Aunt Nicki moved to the city and after August read Poppy’s book, she thought that perhaps someone had hurt her when she was a little girl, too. Or maybe she was protecting Aunt Mary. No-one really understood, not yet.

  The tape Albert had made was his recital, his private sermon, going through a list of words, trying as he did to work out or remember how they were pronounced. It was special to the whole town, having that recording of his voice, him speaking the old language, kept safe. Digitised. Captured forever.

  The smells, tastes and burdens left August. She ate again too, she wasn’t ngarran anymore. English changed their tongues, the formation of their minds, August thought – she’d drifted in and out of herself all that time. The language was the poem she had looked for, communicating what English failed to say. She’d come across the Pink Map and arrived. Her poppy used to say the words were paramount. That they were like icebergs floating, melting, that there were ocean depths to them that they couldn’t have talked about.

  Eddie left town and later August received an email from him. He had enrolled in the city university and his girlfriend was expecting a child. That’s all he said. They both knew what everything had meant, that there was a truth in the distance they kept. He signed off – We go right back.

  And then six months after the protest it rained for forty days and nights straight. The locusts disappeared. Some people said it was a miracle, others said it was global warming. August thought Poppy would have had her write it down in the exercise book. The farmers planted corn in the summer rain. Miracle or not, the rain filled Murrumby River for a while, before most of it was used to irrigate the crops. Joey reckons he saw a platypus in the water, kangaroos returned to drink from the bank and more birds appeared.

  Around the same time scientists wrangled permits and, with the anthropologists from the museum, they estimated the Gondiwindi milling techniques to be around eighteen thousand years old. They said it rewrote the history of world agriculture. They said the Gondiwindi also built large dams and then carried fish and yabbies in gulumans over large distances to stock the new waterholes. They said they domesticated animals, they said the Gondiwindi ticked the boxes to classify as a civilisation. The evidence of their civilisation, after so many years of farming, was difficult to find on the surface of the land. But they said it was embedded in the language of Albert’s dictionary, that with the Reverend’s list and all the words that Albert wrote, and other old people remembering the words too, that it would now be recognised as a resurrected language, brought back from extinction.

  The evidence and all that heavy rain meant the mine was delayed and no-one went back to dig any deeper. The land of Prosperous has begun to grow over itself, like the blanket covering the dead. They say the fate of Prosperous might linger in the courts for months or years more. The conservationists versus the mine, the Gondiwindi versus the mine – other people would get sick of waiting, not them. The mining company proved they had obtained S116 of the constitution ‘consent to destroy’ from the town council, but most of the shareholders had since backed out anyway. Yesterday, the case finally made the High Court. While they were waiting for the news to come on the television, Elsie was leaning into Aunt Missy’s garden, picking yam daisies for dinner. She looked up at August standing at the back door and waved the yellow flowers in the air, and winked.

  And August is still there in Massacre Plains, in the Valley with her nana and Aunt Missy and Aunt Mary too. All the family, all the Gondiwindi mob. All the women together, Joey too. She had run away looking for something, run her fingers through the reeds beside foreign rivers, down the spines of books, dipped into holy water in the European churches. She realised she’d fled there for Jedda, but that she had stayed there looking for those words that she’d understand, that would explain what it all meant.

  Albert didn’t tell them all the things he knew. He needed his family, his town to find out, to want to find out things for themselves. He wrote that in his dictionary – how he noticed the soil, then read about something else, and everything snowballed after that. How the things he needed to know opened up to him once he opened his eyes. Once he was seen.

  When August was a little kid she couldn’t rely on the certainty of even a day. She thinks now that that’s why she needed to control things around her, the things she ate, the things she said. She tried to keep herself and her life small and manageable. Much like a poem. The condensing of the wide, unknowable past that runs right up behind them. She doesn’t do that anymore, her life isn’t a poem, she knows it’s a big, big story. Her people go all the way back to the riverbank, and further, after all – the river and what happened at the river was a time traveller, their story has no bounds in time. She and Joey learnt it’s the grandkids who inherit everything their ancestors did before. They carried the past with them, though they never knew. All the years that she had been adrift and tethered at once amounted to something, though. She’d rediscovered her family and who she truly was because of who they truly were.

  August listened to the letters Jedda and she had composed to Princess Diana. They were funny – she thought they both sounded like sweet girls, giggling and taking turns to hog the recorder and to tell her how they were going to be princesses one day too. They turned into sad letters when they heard she died in the car accident. ‘We are so sad today,’ they said. After all that time August had Jedda’s words again, too. No-one ever found Jedda in the wat
er. But she wasn’t lost like they’d always feared.

  August couldn’t sleep in the nights leading up to her mum’s release. Missy drove Elsie and August to the Women’s Correctional Facility to pick up their mother and daughter and sister. August and Jolene sat in the back seat on the way home and August laid her head in her mother’s lap for the first time since she was a girl. She dreamt of Jedda and herself in a cave of towels and bedsheets.

  Knock knock.

  What’s the secret code? August and Jedda asked.

  Burral-gang?

  Gaygar?

  Wahn the crow?

  They were giggling, and their mother too as she pulled the sheets open on their cubbyhouse.

  August felt her mother brush her fingers across the hair on her face and looked up. She’d been there, she had the secret code, she was there then with eyes alive with something buried. They farewelled Jedda together, all together.

  August and Joey printed out the pages of their grandfather’s dictionary for the local kids. They included some of the stories they remembered, the stories August’s mother and their aunts remembered too, the ones that their Poppy hadn’t got around to telling.

  They wrote in the Foreword:

  Maybe you are looking for a statue, or a bench by the banks of the Murrumby to honour the people who have lived by the river. Better, there is water returning, nudging what was dead. Better the burral-gang congregate here often. Better these words and better we are still here and that we speak them.

  FORTY-TWO

  artist – bundadhaany What a wonderful thing to make something. I saw a painting in a book, it’s called Dluga Street; it was painted by a bundadhaany called Bernardo Bellotto. He was an Italian fella. He painted the city of Warsaw, Poland – there were twenty-six of them, in a style called vedute. He made those paintings, detailed lives of the people and the city, and he passed away just a handful of years before Australia was invaded. Almost two hundred years later the Nazis bombed Warsaw, killing hundreds and thousands of people, horrible annihilation. In this dark time almost the entire city of Warsaw was burned and destroyed. The people left were thinking about moving the city somewhere else, rebuilding a new Warsaw. But then they had all these paintings of the city, these great detailed things by the bundadhaany Bernardo Bellotto, and they rebuilt the city from paintings done generations before the city was bombed to bits. I want the younger ones, the next little ones to read this book and for them to look into the riverbed, to stare up into the tops of the gums, to look and know and name the birds. To recognise that city that no-one seems to see anymore. I wouldn’t be invisible anymore, none of us would be.

  ashamed, have shame – giyal-dhuray I’m done with this word. I’d leave it out completely but I can’t. It’s become part of the dictionary we think we should carry. We mustn’t anymore. See, pain travels through our family tree like a songline. We’ve been singing our pain into a solid thing. The old ones, the young ones too, are ready to heal. We don’t have to be giyal-dhuray anymore, we don’t have to pass that down anymore.

  ashes – bunhaan I want to spread everywhere I can over Prosperous, I want the body to float up to the leaves, I want to rest in the wheatfield, the last yield, before it’s dug open.

  Australia – Ngurambang That’s my country, anyway. It spreads to almost the size of England, from the mountains in the north, to the boundary of Ngurambang in the south. The water once flowed through the Murrumby from the southern rivers, filling the creeks, the lagoons, the lakes, and feeding everything in its wake. Ngurambang is my country; in my mind it will always be on the waterfront. Five hundred acres where the Gondiwindi lived, live. Australia – Ngurambang! Can you hear it now? Say it – Ngu-ram-bang!

  THE DICTIONARY OF ALBERT GONDIWINDI

  A work in progress

  yuyung – backwards

  yuwin – name, a word or sound

  yuwarrbin – blossom of yellow box tree

  yuwarr – aroma, perfume, odour, smell

  yuwambanha – frighten away evil spirits by a hissing noise

  yurung, walung, yubaa, galing – rain

  yurrumbanhayalinya – care, take care of another’s child

  yurrumbamarra – bring up, rear

  yurrubang – big and very tall

  yuri – needlebush plant

  yurbay – seed

  yuran, barra-ma-li-nya – convalescent

  yurali – blossom of eucalyptus

  yungir – crier

  yunggaay – mallee fowl

  yumbanidyilinya – cry, to be sorry for making one cry

  yumarradinya – cry while walking along

  yulung, yuwumbawu – thistle, milk thistle

  yulun – blackwattle tree

  yulubirrngiin – rainbow

  yulu – claws of animals or birds

  yuliyiin, nanay – lean, thin

  yugaway – sleeping place

  yugaawirra – recline, like a dog

  yirra – lengthen or become longer

  yirin – fish, scales

  yirimbang – holy

  yirigarra – beam or glitter

  yirbamanha – leave, to go bush

  yirbamagi – to go to

  yirayin, yirin – light

  yiraydhuray, yirigaa – star, the morning star

  yiray – sun

  yirawulin – sunset

  yirawari – cloud, thunder cloud

  yiran – long or far

  yiramurrun – boy, a tallish boy

  yiramugu – blunt, not sharp

  yiramiilan – sunrise

  yirambin – kangaroo teeth

  yiramarang – youth (before having tooth knocked out)

  yiramal – river bank

  yiradhu – day

  yingulbaa – crayfish holes

  yingilbang – ill, very ill

  yingil giin – consumption

  yingil – sick, ill

  yingang – locust

  yindyamangidyal – careful, respect, gentleness

  yindaay – horse, stallion

  yinaagang, migay – girl

  yiing – happiness or joy

  yidharra – hurt, injure

  yibiryibir – brush

  yibirmanha – paint, decorate

  yibirmaldhaany – painter

  yawarra-ndhu – be careful

  yawanhayalinya – care for as a mother a child

  yawandyilinya – care, for one’s self

  yaryanbuwaliya – everywhere

  yarrudhang – dream

  yarrayanhanha – go about

  yarrawulay – blossom of the yarra, river red gum

  yarraman – horse

  yarradunha – beat on the boomerang

  yarngun – root of tree

  yarany – beard

  yaradha – fish gills

  yara – large, great, high

  yanygayanygarra – help

  yanhanhadhu – goodbye

  yanhambilanha – walk

  yanhamanha – chase, pursue

  yanhamambirra – let go

  yangarra – grind seeds, to rub on a stone

  yandhul, yaala – now, at the present

  yandhayanbarra – eat for the sake of company

  yandharra – eat together

  yandangarang – false beard, a mask

  yambuwan – everything or anything

  yama-ndhu gulbarra – do you understand?

  yalul, durrur – always

  yalmambirra – teach

  yalara-nha – hiss like a snake

  yalgu, yabung – drought

  yaldurinya – confess

  yalbilinya – learn

  yalay – body part, the soft between ribs and hip

  yagay! – pain, an exclamation of pain

  yagar – edible lettuce-like plant

  yadilinya – ready to go

  yadhang – because, well

  yadhandha – berrigan or emu bush

  yaba – carpet snake or diamond python


  yaanharra – spear, long fishing spear

  yaambuldhaany, yaambulgali – liar, bullshit artist

  yaala! – go that way! that way!

  wuyung, buragurabang, wiibagang – currawong

  wuyul – cork-screw spicule of grass

  wuurrawin – through

  wuurranngilanha – encompass, surround

  wuurra – entrance, doorway, opening into

  wuru, nan – neck

  wurrumany – son

  wurrugan – fastening or tie

  wurrawurramarra – pain, feel little pain

  wurraangalang – fuzzy box tree

  wurraan – hair

  wundayan – niece

  wunaagany, waringinali – cousin

  wumbay – last, the last

  wumba – evening star

  wululu – duck, pink-eared

  wudhamugu – deaf, ears shut

  wudha – ear

  wubunginya – enter, dive, go under the water

  wuba – hole, a burrow, rat, native

  woomera – tool that throws the spear

  wiyay – back, part of the back

  wirrimbildanha – leave a portion of food

  wirridirrrangdirrang – redback spider

  wirrang, barrbay – brush-tailed rock wallaby

  wirramarri – fish, large cod fish

  wirralgan – oracle (magic stone)

  wirradyil – flat piece of bark on which the dough is spread

  wirimbirra, wurimbirra – care, preserve

  wirgany – air, in the air

  wirgaldhaany – carpenter

  wiraydhu marramali – it is not possible

  wiragala – eastern ringneck parrot

  wir – air, sky, the heavens

  winhanga-y-gunha-nha – remember

  winhanga-dili-nya – feel, know oneself

  winhanga-bili-nya – believe

  winhanga-bilang, winhang-galang – clever, intelligent

  winha-nga-rra – listen, hear, think

  winha-nga-nha – know, think, remember