by Sally Morgan
I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. I felt too shocked. I knew he wanted to go, but the reality of never being able to talk to him again was very painful. He was one of the few links I had with the past.
I saw Mum that afternoon. ‘You’ve heard about Arthur, haven’t you?’ she said.
‘Yeah, I heard. Did you see him before he went to Mucka?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
Mum looked a bit awkward. ‘The night before you came home from Sydney.’
‘Was he still in Perth then?’
‘Yes.’
‘I wish I’d seen him.’
‘He wanted to see you too.’
‘Why, what did he say?’
‘I think he came round to say goodbye. He knew he was going to die once he got to Mucka, he wanted to see us all one last time. He really wanted to see you, Sally. I was supposed to take you around the night you got home.’
‘Aw Mum, why didn’t you?’
‘You looked so tired when you got off the plane, and I was worried about the baby. I knew if I did, you’d insist on going over there.’
‘Oh Mum, he might have wanted to tell me something.’
‘I don’t think so, dear. I’m sorry. He knew you cared about him and you’d make sure people read his story, he knew that, so don’t go upsetting yourself.’
‘Yeah, I guess so. When’s the funeral?’
‘In a couple of days’ time, you coming?’
‘Yeah, I’ll come. I hate funerals.’
I went with my brother Bill and Mum. I couldn’t feel sad for him any more. I knew he was tired of his life, and I knew he was happy. When we got home, we described the funeral to Nan. She hadn’t wanted to go, she hated people looking at her. Nan had a good cry, then she said, ‘Well, I can’t be too sad for him, he wanted to go. I got no brother now.’ After that, she rarely mentioned him.
It was about a week after Arthur’s funeral that I decided to tackle Mum about Parkerville Children’s Home. She had never told any of us she’d been brought up in a home. She’d always led us to believe that she’d spent all her childhood at Ivanhoe. It wasn’t that she’d actually lied about it, it was a sin of omission more than anything else.
I popped the question over afternoon tea. Mum was shocked. But before she had time to gather her wits, I said, ‘You deliberately misled us. All these years, I thought you were brought up at Ivanhoe with Judy and June. Why on earth didn’t you tell us the truth?’ It was yet another tactical error; if Mum hadn’t been on the defensive before, she certainly was now.
‘You’re making a big deal out of nothing,’ she replied. ‘I spent holidays at Ivanhoe. Anyway, there’s nothing to tell.’
‘Oh, come on, Mum, this is me you’re talking to, not some stranger off the street! You think I can’t tell when you’re hiding things? I know you too well. I want you to tell me what it was like.’
‘I told you before, Sally,’ she said in a very annoyed way, ‘there’s nothing to tell. You’re a terror for taking the bull by the horns. Who told you I was brought up in Parkerville, anyway?’
‘Alice told me. How did you think I felt, finding out like that. I was shocked.’
‘You didn’t say anything to June, did you?’
‘Of course not, but it was all I could think about. You’re lucky I didn’t ring you up and abuse you over the phone. You’re supposed to be helping me with this book and here you are, hoarding your own little secrets. And you complain about Nan.’
‘All right, all right! I’ll tell you about it, one day.’
‘Now?’
‘No, not now. And you promise me you won’t tell any of the others.’
‘I’ll only promise that if you’ll promise to spill the beans one day. I mean soon, not in ten years’ time, I could be dead by then.’
It was difficult for me to decide how next to trace my family history. Nan and Mum had united. Now that Mum was feeling threatened, she suddenly found she had more in common with Nan that she’d ever imagined.
Consequently, I spent the next few months transcribing Arthur’s cassettes and putting his story together. It was very important to me to finish his story. I owed him a great debt. He’d told me so much about himself and his life, and, in doing so, he’d told me something about my own heritage.
When I had completed it all, I rang Mum.
‘It’s finished,” I said when she answered the phone.
‘What’s finished?’
‘Arthur’s story.’
‘Can I come and read it?’
‘That’s what I’m ringing you for.’
Arthur Corunna’s Story
My name is Arthur Corunna. I can’t tell you how old I am exactly, because I don’t know. A few years ago, I wrote to Alice Drake-Brockman, my father’s second wife, and asked her if she knew my age. She said that I could have been born around 1893-1894. Later, her daughter Judy wrote to me and said I could have been born before that. So I guess I have to settle for around there somewhere. Anyway, I’m old, and proud of it.
The early years of my life were spent on Corunna Downs Station in the Pilbara, that’s in the north of Western Australia. We called the top half of the station, where I lived, Mool-nyamoonya. The lower half, the outstation, we called Boog-gi-geemoonya. The land of my people was all round there, from the Condin River to Nullagine, right through the Kimberley.
After my people had worked for so long on the station, they were allowed to go walkabout. We would go for weeks at a time, from one station to another, visiting people that belonged to us. We always went to Hillside, that was Dr Gillespie’s station. The eastern part of Western Australia, that’s different. We call that Pukara. Our land was Yabara, the north.
My mother’s name was Annie Padewani and my father was Alfred Howden Drake-Brockman, the white station-owner. We called him Good-da-goonya. He lived on Corunna Downs nine years before marrying his first wife, Eleanor Boddington. She had been a governess in the area. While on the station, he shared my Aboriginal father’s two wives, Annie and Ginnie.
Ginnie, or Binddiging as we called her, was a big-built woman. She was older, argumentative. She bossed my mother around. I used to cry for my mother when she was in a fight. I’d run round and grab her skirts and try and protect her from Ginnie. Ginnie only had one child by Howden, and that was my half-brother Albert.
My mother was small and pretty. She was very young when she had me. I was her first child. Then she had Lily by my Aboriginal father. Later, there was Daisy. She is my only sister who shares with me the same parents. I was a good deal older than her when they took me away to the mission, she was only a babe in arms, then. My mother was pregnant with other children, but she lost them.
My Aboriginal father was one of the headmen of our tribe. He was a leader. He got our people to work on the station and, in return, he was given a rifle, tea, tobacco and sugar. He was a well-known man, tall and powerful. Many people were scared of him. Sometimes, he would go walkabout, right down to Fremantle, then up through Leonora, Ethel Creek and back to Corunna Downs. Men were frightened of him because he was a boolyah man*.
My uncle and grandfather were also boolyah men. For centuries, the men in my family have been boolyah men. I remember when my grandfather was dying, he called me to him. I was only a kid. He said, ‘You know I can’t use my power to heal myself. I will pass my powers into you and then I want you to heal me.’ He did this, and I ran away and played, even though he was calling me. I was only a kid, I didn’t understand. My grandfather died. It wasn’t until years later than I began to learn just what powers he had given me.
One day, my uncle said to my mother, ‘Never worry about Jilly-yung. (That was my Aboriginal name.) Never worry about him, I will look after him when I’m dead. I will always be close to him. He may not know I am there, I may be a bird in the tree or a lizard on the ground, but I will be close to him.’ That was my Uncle Gibbya. He was married to Annie’s sister.
My Uncle Gibbya was a p
owerful rainmaker. He didn’t always live on Corunna Downs. One day when he was visiting our people, Howden said to him, ‘You can work with me on the station as long as you can make it rain.’ My Uncle Gibbya said, ‘I will make it rain. Three o’clock this afternoon, it will rain.’ Howden looked at the sky, it was blue and cloudless. He shook his head. Later that day, white clouds began to gather, like a mob of sheep slowly coming in. At three o’clock, it rained. My uncle got his job. He was the best rainmaker in the area.
On the station, I wasn’t called Arthur. I had my Aboriginal name, Jilly-yung, which meant silly young kid. When I was a child, I copied everything everyone said. Repeated it like a ninety-nine parrot. The people would say, ‘Silly young kid! Jilly-yung!’
I loved my mother, she was my favourite. My mother was always good to me. When others were against me, she stood by me. She used to tell me a story about a big snake. A snake especially for me, with pretty eggs. ‘One day,’ she said, ‘you will be able to go and get these eggs.’ I belonged to the snake, and I was anxious to see the pretty snake’s eggs, but they took me away to the mission, and that finished that. It was a great mystery. If I had’ve stayed there, I would have gone through the Law, then I would’ve known. I didn’t want to go through the Law. I was scared.
When we went on holidays, we called it going pink-eye*, my Aboriginal father carried me on his shoulders when I was tired. I remember one time, it was at night and very dark, we were going through a gorge, when the feather foots**, ginnawandas, began to whistle. I was scared. The whistling means that they want you to talk. They began lighting fires all along the gorge. After we called out our names, my family was allowed through.
One day, I took a tomato from the vegetable garden. I’d been watching it for days. Watching it grow big and round and red. Then I picked it and Dudley saw me. He was Howden Drake-Brockman’s brother and we called him Irrabindi. He gave orders for my Aboriginal father to beat me. Maybe he had his eye on that tomato too.
I was beaten with a stirrup strap. I spun round and round, crying and crying. I was only a kid in a shirt in those days. My Aboriginal father never hit me unless an order was given. Then he had to do it, boss’s orders. He was good to me otherwise, so I never kept any bad feelings against him.
Dudley Drake-Brockman wasn’t like Howden. They were brothers, but they were different. Dudley was a short little man. He couldn’t ride. He was cruel and didn’t like blackfellas. My people used to say about Dudley ngulloo-moolo, which means make him sick. We didn’t want him there. In the end, he got sick and died.
I used to play with Pixie, Dudley’s son. We used to fight, too, but I never beat him. I was afraid of his father. My mother used to say to me, ‘Jilly-yung, never beat Pixie in a fight. When he wants to fight, you walk away.’ She was a wise woman.
Howden was a good-looking man, well liked. He could ride all the horses there, even the buck jumpers. Old Nibro told me that. He used to help him break them. There was one big, black horse he named Corunna. He would always ride him when he went out baiting dingoes.
I remember Howden used to dance on his own in the dining room. He’d be doin’ this foxtrot, kicking his leg around with no partner. I used to watch. There was a big dining room then, and a great, huge fan that we had to pull to cool people off who were eating there. They gave us a handful of raisins for doing that.
We had other jobs on the station besides pulling the fan. For every tin full of locusts we killed with a switch, we got one hardboiled lolly. I remember once, I was a tar boy for the shearers. In those days, it was blade shearing, not like the machines they have now. The shed was stinking hot and the click, click, click of the shears made a rhythmic sound. I couldn’t help goin’ to sleep. Next thing I knew, I got a smack in the face. They were all singin’ out ‘TAR! TAR!’ and I was asleep. When the girls brought down the dishes of cakes and buckets of tea, I made sure I was there. I wasn’t going to sleep through that.
Archie McGregor was one of the few white men on the station, he married Mr Richards’ sister. Mr Richards was a bigwig in Marble Bar. Archie worked on the windmills and the pumps. When the pumps went bung, Archie had to go down in the deep well and fix them. He was the one that taught Albert and me how to build windmills. Those windmills were a terrible height. They had to be to catch the wind. I thought he was teachin’ us things so we could help run the station one day. I was wrong.
When Howden married Eleanor Boddington, he built another house. He didn’t stay living with Dudley. He built it by himself too. He was a carpenter.
You know, he was a cowboy as well, because he had these two big pistols. He pulled them out, BANG! BANG! firing at the tree, tryin’ to shoot it. They were old muzzle loaders, like the ones the Yanks use in cowboy films. You put the powder in and a bit of lead and the cap in afterwards. Then it revolved and you went BANG! BANG! just like that! He used to hit this tree way down near the toilet. The bullets would bounce off. He was a smart man, I tell you.
I spent a lot of my time on the station with my brother, Albert, and my sister, Lily. When we were kids, we’d run round finding lizards, sticking our fingers in the holes in the ground and wood. One time I did that, it was a snake. A snake won’t chase you to bite and kill you. They just want to get away. You only get bitten if you tread on them, they’re just protectin’ themselves. People always try to kill snakes whenever they see them. They should leave them alone. You point a gun at a snake and he’ll get goin’, he knows what you goin’ to do.
Albert was older than me and they started educatin’ him early. Mrs McGregor, Archie’s wife, was the teacher. She trained Albert to write on a slate with chalk. He had to speak English and learn the white man’s ways and table manners. The other children weren’t taught, only Albert and, later, me. She also gave us what you call religious instruction. We learnt all about the saints. She had a big roll of colour pictures that we used to look at.
I went with my mother everywhere until they rounded me up to be educated. When I heard they were after me, I ran away. I didn’t want to be educated. Also, I thought they wouldn’t give me any meat at night-time. They caught me in the end, put me with Albert and Mrs McGregor. I wasn’t allowed to talk blackfella after that. If I did, Dudley beat me. I liked my language, but I got a good hiding if I spoke it. I had to talk English. When I was sleeping on the homestead verandah, I used to call to my mother in my own language, ‘Save me meat.’
Of course, when they caught me, Albert could already talk English. He used to study at the cook’s table. One night, the cook was a bit late with our supper. Albert said, ‘Go tell him.’
‘Tell him what?’ I said.
‘Tell him to hurry up with the tucker.’
‘Give me hurry up tea!’ I shouted. I should have said, ‘Hurry up and give me tea!’ but I didn’t know. Anyhow, the old cook came down and chased me round and round the kitchen. I was gone through the door with the cook chasin’ after me! He never caught me, I was too quick.
That was Albert. He was always puttin’ things into my head, but he never did anythin’ wrong himself.
Albert lost two fingers because of me. I chopped them off in the tank machine. He stuck his fingers in to try and stop the cogs going round. I turned the handle and chopped them of. They used that machine to make tanks. You put in a straight bit of iron and bend it to make a boomerang circle. You only need three or four sheets to make a tank. Fancy, me choppin’ his fingers off. We were just messing around, I didn’t know he had his fingers in there.
When we were being educated, Albert and me slept on the homestead verandah. We had a bed side by side. Some nights, I’d wet my bed and jump into his. I’d dream someone was hitting me so I’d fight them in bed, I’d punch them and call out, then when I looked at my bed, I found it was wet.
Even though Albert was the older one, I took no notice of him. I was the mischievous one. He was too frightened to do anything, sometimes he needed protecting.
I knew all the people on the station, they w
as a good mob. There was Chook Eye, Wongyung and Mingibung. They were housegirls. They used to take in cups of tea and look after the house. Then there was Tiger Minnie, she used to help Howden bait the dingoes. No one could bait like her. Then there was Sarah, she was a big woman, she helped look after the garden. She grew pumpkins and cabbages for the cook and shooed the birds away. She was half-caste, like me. When her own baby was born, it was nearly white. A white blackfella. We all reckoned those extra babies belonged to either Fred Stream or Sam Moody, the cook.
We used to call Sam Moody backwards, Moody Sam. He was a white man and a good cook. He’d cook bread, cut it in big slices and give it to the natives through the small kitchen window. He cooked meat too. We’d all get bread and slices of meat. We’d poke our billies through that little window and get tea too. If Moody Sam didn’t cook, we’d get slices of mutton, make a fire outside and cook it ourselves. For extra meat, my people used to catch kangaroos and wild turkeys and fish from the creek. We’d go down to the creek and we’d stand with our legs bent and apart, then we’d catch them between our knees. We’d grab them with our hands and throw them on the bank.
Old Fred Stream, I think he was German. He used to take me on trips to Condin. Corunna Downs wool used to be stored there, ready to be loaded on the sailing ships bound for Fremantle. The stores were great big sheds and they housed goods as well as wool. One time, Fred Stream told me there were two saddles to be picked up, one for me and one for Albert. When they pulled them out, the rats had chewed away the straps. Those rats ate anything.
I don’t know if Condin is used now they have a railway to Port Hedland. In those days, it was just surveyed. I never went back to see the new railway, or anything else.
On the way back to Corunna Downs, we camped at DeGrey Station. You should have seen all the pretty dresses come runnin’ to meet our wagon. There was red, pink and green, all the colours of the rainbow. They was all runnin’ to come and see me too. I was only a little fella, I wasn’t much in those days.
