birri-birri-ma-rra – meet
birri – white box tree, eucalyptus
birranilinya – run away with
birrang-ga – high up
birrang – journey to another place
birrang – blue sky, the horizon
birran-dhi – from
birramal, yirrayirra – bush, the bush
birramal-gu yakha-y-aan – gone to the bush
birrabuwawanha – return, come back
birrabunya – cormorant, little pied
birrabirra, malu – lazy, tired
birrabang – outside, up, above, far
birra-nguwurr – behind
birra-nguwur – back, that which is behind
birra-bina-birra – move gently, whisper
birra – back, the back
birra – fatigued, tired
birinya – scar, make a
birgu – shrubs, thickets
birgili, birgilibang – scorched by fire
birdyulang – scar an old scar
birdany – blossom of ironbark tree
birbarra – bake
birbaldhaany – baker
biran, birrany – boy
biralbang – duck, musk
bir – birth mark
binydyi – stomach
binhaal – eldest, the
bindyi-l-duri-nya – cut into a tree to get possums out
binaal, wirra – broad, wide
bimirr – end, an end
bimbun, gumarr, mudha – tea tree or paperbark tree
bimbul – bimble box tree
bimbin – brown treecreeper, woodpecker
bimba-rra – fire, set the grass on fire
bilwai – oak tree, river she
biluwaany – red-winged parrot
bilin-nya – go backwards
bili-nga-ya – backwards, going
bilbi, ngundawang, balbu – bilby
bilawir – hoe
bilawi – river she oak tree
bilabang – billabong, the milky way
bila – river
biiyirr, magalang – back bone, spinal column
biilaa, ngany – bull oak tree, forest oak
bidyuri – pituri
bidya – male
bidhi, babir – big
bibidya – fish hawk, osprey
bayu, buyu – leg
bayirgany – leeches
baryugil – eastern blue tongue lizard
barru-wu-ma-nha – gallop, run fast
barru-dang – juice from a tree
barru – rabbit-like rat (probably bilby)
barrinang – blossom of wattle trees
barri-ngi-rra – leave, let it alone, never mind
barri-ma – musket, gun
barrbay, wirrang – rock wallaby
barray! – move quick, quick!
barrage – to fly
barradam-bang – star, a bright
barrabarray – quick!
barra-y-ali-nya – rise again, resurrection
barra-wi-nya – camp, hunt
barra-wi-dyany – hunter
barra-manggari-rra – love
barra-dyal – flame robin bird
barra-barra-ma – handle, anything to hold
bargu-mugu – cripple, one limbed
baradhaany – red-necked wallaby
bangal-guwal-bang – belonging to another place
bangal – time, or place
banga-ny – broken
banga-nha – break into rain, begin to rain
banga-ma-rra – break
banga-l – fire sticks, friction
banga-di-ra – chop, cut, split
banga-bil-banga-bil – cutting instrument
banga-bi-lang – broken in pieces
bandya-bandya-birra – cause pain
bandu – march fly
bandhuwang – scrub or mallee trees matted together
bandhung – mallee tree and scrub
bambinya – swim
bambigi – to swim
baluwulinya – be pregnant
balunhuminya – die before another
balunha – die now
balun – dead
baluga – dark, fire has gone out
baludharra – feel cold, be cold
balubuwulin – dead altogether
balubunirra – murder, kill
balubalungin – almost dead
balubungabilanha – kill each other
balu-bunga-rra – extinguish
balmang – empty
balima – north
bali – baby, a very young baby
balgal – sound, noise
balgagang – barren, desolate
balgabalgar – leader, elder
balanggarang – bud, top bud of flower spray
balang – head
balandalabadin, gubudha – common reed
balan-dha – beginning, of time
baladhu nganhal – I am from
baladhu ngaabunganha – just looking
baladhu – I am
balabalanirra – beat a little, slap
balabalamanha – lift softly or slowly, move
balabala-ya-li-nya – whisper
bagurra – blossom of kurrajong tree
bagir-ngan – cousin or uncle
bagaaygang – shell, a small one
bagaay, galuwaa – lizard, shingle back
badyar, gunhama – black ant
badhawal, bargan, balgang – boomerang
badharra – bite
badhang, buwurr – cloak, possum skin
badha, yiramal – bank of the river
babimubang – fatherless
babildhaany – singer
babiin – father
babala – leather-head, noisy friar bird
baaywang – big hill
baayi – footprint
baawan, gargalany – silver or boney perch fish
baalmanha – floating
baala – footstep
baaduman – red spotted gum tree
baabin – nettle plant
baabaa, ngandir, nguramba – deep
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This novel contains the language of the Wiradjuri people. Before colonisation there were two hundred and fifty distinct languages in Australia that subdivided into six hundred dialects. The Wiradjuri language is a Pama–Nyungan language of the Wiradhuric subgroup and has been reclaimed and preserved through the efforts of Dr Uncle Stan Grant Snr AM and linguist Dr John Rudder. The spelling and pronunciation that Uncle Stan and John compiled is within these pages. If there are any errors, they rest solely with my interpretation. Historical spelling of the Wiradjuri language in this book has been sourced from the records of H. Withers, a local landholder from Wagga Wagga (records: 1878); H. Baylis, a police magistrate from Wagga Wagga (records: 1887); J. Baylis, a surveyor landholder from the Riverina (records: 1880s–1927); and C. Richards, a linguist and scholar (records: 1902–1903). Further and updated study of the Wiradjuri language can be found in The New Wiradjuri Dictionary authored by Uncle Stan and John.
The experiences of the fictional Gondiwindi family reflect those experienced by all Indigenous people touched by violence, segregation, abuse and the dehumanising policies and practices of colonialism. As part of these separation policies, the government and churches banned and discouraged the use of the native tongue. They did this by forcibly removing children from their families, where they were taken into missions and institutions in order to expunge the Indigenous culture. This practice began in 1910 and continued until the 1970s.
Cultural knowledge, community history, customs, modes of thinking and belonging to the land are carried through languages. In the last two hundred years, Australia has suffered the largest and most rapid loss of languages known to history. Today, despite efforts of revitalisation, Australia’s languages are some of the most endangered in the world.
The depictions of violence and intergenerational trauma suffered by Indi
genous people affected by separation policies has been documented in various publications including the 1997 Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. Depictions of mission life from the perspective of Reverend Greenleaf are derived from the writings of Reverend J.B. Gribble including A Plea For Aborigines of New South Wales. Gribble founded and ran the Christian Warangesda Aboriginal Mission in Darlington Point, New South Wales. Prosperous Mission, Station and Home were inspired by Warangesda, which ran as an Aboriginal mission between 1880 and 1884; as Warangesda Aboriginal Station under the Aborigines Protection Association between 1884 and 1897; under government management by the Aborigines Protection Act between 1897 and 1925; under private management between 1925 and 2014.
The girls’ and boys’ homes mentioned are fictional, but have been drawn from the descriptions of the Aboriginal Girls’ Training Home of Cootamundra and the Kinchela Aboriginal Boys’ Training Home. In reality the children’s experiences were much harsher in comparison to those depicted. Prior to the opening of the Aboriginal Girls’ Training Home at Cootamundra, children from all over the state were sent to Warangesda. In The Stolen Generations – The Removal of Aboriginal Children in NSW 1883 to 1969, prepared for the New South Wales Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs, Professor Peter Read estimates that there were ‘300 girls placed at the Warangesda dormitory and subsequently in service before 1916.’ In Beverley Gulambali Elphick, and Don Elphick’s The Camp of Mercy: An Historical and Biographical Record of the Warangesda Aboriginal Mission/Station, Darlington Point, New South Wales the authors write that ‘apart from the occasional child mentioned in the Minute Books of the Aborigines Protection and Welfare Boards and the enrolment registers for the Kinchela Aboriginal Boys’ Training Home, no records now exist, if indeed any were ever kept, of the other children removed from Warangesda between 1909 and when the Camp of Mercy closed in 1925. A conservative estimate for this period would be 200, making an overall total of 500 children removed.’
There were many births and marriages held at Warangesda; there were also many deaths at the mission site. As stated in Ray Cristison and Naomi Parry’s Conservation Management Plan Warangesda Aboriginal Mission and Station, ‘The main cemetery containing the remains of up to two hundred former residents, remains part of a ploughed field.’
The geography of the fictional town of Massacre Plains was drawn from towns in Wiradjuri country and also the Rock Nature Reserve – Kengal Aboriginal Place. The fictional Murrumby River of this novel was based on the tributaries of the Murray–Darling Basin. The names of places, including Massacre and Poisoned Waterhole Creek, are indeed actual placenames in Australia and are a reminder of the atrocities inflicted upon Indigenous people during colonisation.
Many of the native plants and cooking techniques can be explored further in Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu, and Eric Roll’s A Million Wild Acres. Additionally, Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind also explores the history and sophistication of Indigenous Australians.
I encourage readers to explore personal histories from former mission, settlement and station residents, collectively known as the Stolen Generation, including Is That You Ruthie? by Ruth Hegarty; Up From the Mission: Selected Writings by Noel Pearson; Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara; If Everyone Cared by Margaret Tucker; Of Ashes and Rivers that Run to the Sea by Marie Munkara, and the works of Jack Davis.
Further reading about Indigenous culture and history includes Indigenous Australia for Dummies by Professor Larissa Behrendt; John Harris’ One Blood: 200 Years of Aboriginal Encounter with Christianity: A Story of Hope; and the works by historians Henry Reynolds, Peter Read and Marcia Langton.
Australia is the only Commonwealth country to not have a treaty with its Indigenous populations.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My deepest respect to Elders past and present for their contribution to the survival and maintenance of the Wiradjuri language. Thank you to Dr Uncle Stan Grant Snr and Dr John Rudder for the first dictionary, and the final updates, and their unwavering work and vision. To Geoff Anderson and the Parkes Wiradjuri Language Group and Parkes Aboriginal Education and Consultative Group. To Bruce Pascoe for writing Dark Emu and for steering me in the right direction. Dr Naomi Parry for her expertise and assistance with the history of New South Wales missionary life. To the Rolex Arts Initiative and Wole Soyinka for their support and patience. Charles Sturt University and Booranga Writers’ Centre, Wagga Wagga, for having me stay and work on this novel countless times over the last decade.
To those early readers: Jenny Longrigg, Felix Riebl, Gavin Pryke, Nick Powell and Trent Everitt. To Stephen Kinnane, Gideon Haigh and Ben Ball for their belief in the book before it was a book. To Meredith Curnow and Nikki Christer for their unwavering support. To Rachel Scully and Melanie Ostell for pulling everything together, I cannot thank you both enough.
This book is for and with thanks to all Wiradjuri mob, and especially my family on both sides including dearest Nana, Mum, Dad, my aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews, Tania, Andrew, John, Arnaud, and my heart, Lila, for always keeping me afloat and utterly loved.
And to Poppy, in the eternal garden.
And my brother Billy Joe, forever, and ever.
Tara June Winch is a Wiradjuri author, born in Australia in 1983 and based in France. Her first novel, Swallow the Air, was a critically acclaimed debut. She was named the Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist, and has won numerous literary awards for Swallow the Air. A 10th Anniversary edition was published in 2016. In 2008, Tara was mentored by Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka as part of the prestigious Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Her second book, the story collection After the Carnage, was published in 2016. After the Carnage was longlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction, shortlisted for the 2017 NSW Premier’s Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and the Queensland Literary Award for a Collection. She wrote the Indigenous dance documentary Carriberrie, which screened at the 71st Cannes Film Festival and is touring internationally.
ALSO BY TARA JUNE WINCH
Swallow the Air
After the Carnage
HAMISH HAMILTON
UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia
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Hamish Hamilton is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published by Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd, 2019
Text copyright © Tara June Winch, 2019
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, published, performed in public or communicated to the public in any form or by any means without prior written permission from Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd or its authorised licensees.
Cover photography by John Carnemolla/Shutterstock.com
Cover design by Adam Laszczuk © Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Text design by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Map by Tara June Winch
ISBN 9781760143671
This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
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