Stranger Country

by Monica Tan

  I very quickly realised that I am writing this book for my students. Few of them have the same privileges that I had in life, and instead many more responsibilities and obligations. Who knows how many of them may one day embark on a similar trip around Australia, but that’s the beauty of teaching and of writing this book—the revelations that came to me on my trip need not be mine alone.

  My students leave my classroom with more knowledge, insights and opinions about Australian national identity and race relations than when they entered. They are empowered to be both sceptical and hopeful, to make connections between the past, present and future—and, most importantly, to strive for reconciliation with Indigenous Australia and have a voice in this country about where it is headed.

  When looking back on my trip there are things that, with hindsight, I view differently. It has become clear that, for whatever reason, throughout my travels I met more men than women. The book I have written reflects that disparity and may unintentionally continue a historical bias that favours the male perspective, including in colonial depictions of Indigenous Australia.

  Reconciliation is a painful process of healing, rife with awkwardness and difficult truths. Take one conversation I had with an older white woman in the Kimberley. She was wearing a ‘Close the Gap’ baseball cap and said it made her very sad to think about Aboriginal people’s life expectancy: ten years younger than the national average.

  She asked me about my heritage.

  ‘I’m Chinese,’ I said to her. ‘What’s your heritage?’

  The question seemed to catch her off guard as if she were rarely asked such a thing. And perhaps it was contrarian of me. If I couldn’t feel good and settled on these lands, then neither could she. I wouldn’t allow her to take for granted she was the ‘default’ Australian.

  ‘Oh, you know, British—boring!’ she replied. She said she’d done an ancestry site DNA test hoping something interesting might turn up in the family tree. ‘I thought, Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I had some French aristocracy or Aboriginal heritage? But sadly, no. The results were very dull.’

  At the time I prickled with irritation. These leftie-types were desperate for some long-lost great-great-great-Aboriginal grandmother to show up in the family tree, when just one generation ago their families probably would have covered it up. This woman wanted to be Aboriginal when it came to culture and connection to Country, or even flying the banner of a persecuted minority. But did she also want to be Aboriginal if it meant being the target of racial abuse on the streets, inheriting the psychological burden of colonialism or, as she had just pointed out, facing a life expectancy so much lower than that of the non-Aboriginal Australian population? Aboriginal identity wasn’t parts sold separately—you either ran the full gamut or you didn’t.

  But later I began asking myself if my attitude had been all that different. After all, I hadn’t just embarked on this trip to learn about Aboriginal Australia: I had gone into it as a Chinese Australian. I had so badly wanted my relationship with Aboriginal Australia to be different from that of a European Australian. I thought if I could just discover where our cultures overlapped—Aboriginal and Chinese—we would find those commonalities liberating. We needed a story of Australia, I believed, that wasn’t so oppressively strangled by the native–invader dynamic and mired in constant tragedy. It would be a story of friendship in adversity, of two ancient cultures actively resisting Western imperialism. One that could give our nation hope and show us another way to live together.

  When I thought back on my trip—of my new friends in Arrernte Country, Ngarluma Country, Yawuru Country, to that cinema in Broome segregated by skin tone, a ‘Yapa from China’—I knew this had been proven true … but only to a point. My trip had also thrown up another, more confronting and equally important truth. One that until now I had been unwilling to face.

  The Top End had shown me the extent to which the Chinese played a role in fortifying the hold that white Australia had over this continent. No, we didn’t come out on the First Fleet, but the first Chinese settler in Australia is believed to have been a Guangzhou man: Mak Sai Ying (also known as John Shying) in 1818, just thirty years later. Chinese men supplied pioneer towns with fruit and vegetables; helped build the Overland Telegraph Line and the Ghan Railway Line and other essential infrastructure; traded goods, ran general stores, cooked on stations, purchased real estate and dug for gold. We’ve been here from nearly the beginning of project Australia, and if you were to sketch a portrait of the stereotypical Australian Pioneer it would just as likely be a Chinese man in a straw coolie hat as it would be a European man in an Akubra slouch hat.

  We weren’t the ones to kick down the doors, but we walked in after the British had done so. If we’re going to take credit for contributing to the formation of the colony, we also have to take responsibility for the impact this had on Indigenous Australia. As part of immigrant Australia, how can I ever come close to understanding the pain and suffering Indigenous Australians have undergone in the forced dispossession of their lands, peoples and cultures? I’d been searching for absolution from the devastation that colonisation has caused to Indigenous Australia, and instead been shown the stark truth: we Chinese Australians played a role in it.

  These are the complex notions I bring to my classroom. Accepting the ambiguities inherent to life in multicultural Australia, and taking responsibility for making our country a more honest, mature and compassionate place is a considerable thing to ask of my young students. They are barely out of high school, and so much lies ahead of them. Yet time and time again, these young people show me their willingness and enthusiasm to do better than the generations that came before them.

  Having a front-row seat to their growth fills me with optimism.

  Birdspotting

  These are the bird species I saw on my trip, listed region-by-region (repeat sightings removed).

  Central Australia

  Spinifex pigeon

  Crested pigeon

  Egret

  White-faced heron

  Cormorant

  Wedge-tailed eagle

  Grey-crowned babbler

  Black-faced cuckoo-shrike

  Australian ringneck

  Singing honeyeater

  Splendid fairy-wren

  Rufous whistler

  Red-capped robin

  Black-faced woodswallow

  Budgerigar

  Mulga parrot

  Painted finch

  Western bowerbird

  Inland thornbill

  Brown falcon

  Pied butcherbird

  Zebra finch

  Major Mitchell’s cockatoo

  Grey-headed honeyeater

  Magpie lark

  The Kimberley & The Pilbara

  Brolga

  Galah

  Red-winged parrot

  Yellow-throated miner

  Little corella

  Willie wagtail

  White-necked heron

  Straw-necked ibis

  Red-eared firetail

  Whistling kite

  Little egret

  Australian white ibis

  Black kite

  Double-barred finch

  Rainbow bee-eater

  Masked lapwing

  Sooty oystercatcher

  Silver gull

  Eastern reef egret

  Peaceful dove

  White-plumed honeyeater

  Nankeen kestrel

  Lurujarri Trail

  Red-backed fairy-wren

  Australian pelican

  Osprey

  White-bellied sea eagle

  Jabiru (black-necked stork)

  Top End

  Blue-faced honeyeater

  Silver-crowned friarbird

  Rainbow lorikeet

  Red-tailed black cockatoo

  Little pied cormorant

  Pied imperial pigeon

  Great bowerbird

  Bush stone-curlew

  Magpie goose<
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  Radjah shelduck

  Cattle egret

  Wandering whistling duck

  Nankeen night heron

  Comb-crested jacana

  Whiskered tern

  Azure kingfisher

  Swamphen

  Red-collared lorikeet

  Grey butcherbird

  Arnhem Land

  Bar-shouldered dove

  Great egret

  Whimbrel

  Spangled drongo

  White-breasted woodswallow

  Blue-winged kookaburra

  East Coast

  Pacific black duck

  Australian brush turkey

  Black butcherbird

  Australian bustard

  Australasian figbird

  Olive-backed sunbird

  Orange-footed scrubfowl

  Emerald dove

  Cassowary

  Australian darter

  Crimson rosella

  Eastern rosella

  Yellow-tailed black cockatoo

  Australian king parrot

  Lyrebird

  Red-rumped parrot

  Laughing kookaburra

  Acknowledgements

  This book would not have been possible without the many generous Australians who, throughout my six months on the road, opened their doors to me—be it the door of their home, tent, caravan, 4WD or troopy—or simply shared their life with me. In particular, I would like to thank those who feature in this book. In order to maintain their privacy it is impossible to name them individually, but I will never forget what they have done for me and will remain forever grateful.

  A special thanks must be extended to the traditional owners whose land I travelled through. Considering the history of this country, it often feels as if all we non-Indigenous Australians do is take from Indigenous Australia—take their land, take their culture, take their stories. In writing this story, I was mindful of the preciousness of what was given to me, and the responsibility to treat that knowledge and those stories with reverence and respect.

  This is my first book, and so often as I was writing I felt as if I were flailing on an impossibly difficult endurance course: pain and sheer, brutal hard work. Luckily, throughout that journey I had many teachers, elders, mentors and cheerleaders. Thank you to Janine, Elle, Tom, Michael, Daniel, Rhiannon, Tim, Nicole, Erin and Kylie, and in particular my writing group partners Catherine and Jake to whom I would regularly send ten thousand fresh, unhewn words, and not once did I hear a complaint. I am so lucky to have such exceptionally talented writers in my life, and receiving their feedback on early drafts was a master course in writing.

  Thank you to my parents and the rest of my family for their financial support, unconditional love and unwavering confidence in me, including my brother Winston for his meticulous assistance in the fact-checking of this book. Thank you to those friends who continually deepen my understanding of Indigenous Australia, including Tyson, Peta-Joy, Murrumu and Warren. Thank you to the many academics who read early drafts, in particular David Walker. Thank you to the many current and former Guardianistas who provided me with opportunities to understand Indigenous Australia better through my journalism. Thank you to my agent Grace Heifetz, publisher Jane Palfreyman and editors Kate Goldsworthy and Tom Bailey-Smith. Without their faith in this project, artistic sensitivity and cool professionalism, I’m sure this book could have wound up on the rubbish heap of my broken dreams. Thank you to Macchina, the cafe where much of this book was rewritten, for their excellent coffee.

  Selected bibliography

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  Bednarik, Robert G. 2002, ‘The Murujuga Campaign of 1868’, Rock Art Research, vol. 19, no. 2

  Behrendt, Larissa 2012, Indigenous Australia for dummies, John Wiley & Sons, Melbourne

  Bird, Caroline & Hallam, Sylvia J. & National Trust of Australia (WA) 2006, A review archaeology and rock art in the Dampier Archipelago: a report prepared for the National Trust of Australia (WA)

  Broome Movies 2018, Broomemovies.com.au

  Chatwin, Bruce 2012, The Songlines, Penguin, New York

  Chinese Museum 2008, Queensland Dragon: Chinese in the North

  Clark, Marshall Alexander & May, Sally K 2013, Macassan History and Heritage: Journeys, encounters and influences, Australian National University, Canberra

  Cousins, S., 2005, Contemporary Australia, National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash University, Melbourne, http://www.abc.net.au/ra/australia/pdf/national_id.pdf

  Cronin, Kathryn 1973, ‘The Chinese community in Queensland, 1874–1900’ Queensland Heritage, vol. 2, no. 8, pp. 3–13

  Culnane, J. (ed), 1988, Australia–China Friendship Society, Harvest of Endurance, A History of Chinese in Australia 1788-1988, ID Studio, Sydney

  Davidson, Robyn 2011, ‘Into the Beehive: The Destruction of Burrup Rock Art’, The Monthly, February 2011, pp. 22–29

  Davidson, Robyn 1980, Tracks, Bloomsbury, London

  Dhimurru Aboriginal Corporation 2018, Dhimurru.com.au

  Djambawa Marawili, 2005, Baraltja, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

  Fijn, Natasha 2013, ‘Living with Crocodiles: Engagement with a Powerful Reptilian Being’, Animal Studies Journal, vol. 2, no. 2

  Flannery, Tim F. 2003, Beautiful Lies: Population and environment in Australia, Black Inc, Melbourne

  Ganter, Regina 2013, Histories with Traction: Macassan contact in the framework of Muslim Australian history, Australian National University, Canberra

  Goolarabooloo 2018, Goolarabooloo: The coast where the sun goes down, http://www.goolarabooloo.org.au

  Goolarri Media Enterprises & Broome Historical Society 2006, Old Broome, Broome

  Hagan, Susanne & Thompson, Gordon 2008, Whitefella Culture, Australian Society for Indigenous Languages, Alice Springs

  Heap, E.G. 1967, Some Notes on Cannibalism among Queensland Aborigines, 1824–1900, Oxley Memorial Library Advisory Committee for the Library Board of Queensland

  Horne, Donald 1964, The Lucky Country: Australia in the sixties, Penguin, Melbourne

  Hughes, Ian 2000, Ganma Indigenous Knowledge for Reconciliation and Community Action, University of Sydney

  Indigenous Australia, ‘McAdam, Charlie’, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://ia.anu.edu.au/biography/mcadam-charlie-17808/text29392

  Kelly, Damian F. 2016, James Price Point: The story of a movement, Broome

  Kendall, Timothy David & Australia, Department of Parliamentary Services 2008, Within China’s Orbit? China through the eyes of the Australian Parliament, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra

  Land, Clare 2015, Decolonizing solidarity: Dilemmas and directions for supporters of indigenous struggles, Zed Books, London

  Laurie, Victoria 2010, ‘Dividing the Territory’, The Monthly, October 2010, pp. 32–38

  Lawson, Henry & Graham, Michelle 1992, Henry Lawson: Selected works, Angus & Robertson, Sydney

  Le Feuvre, Matthew C. et al. 2016, ‘Macroecological relationships reveal conservation hotspots and extinction-prone species in Australia’s freshwater fishes’ Global Ecology and Biogeography, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 176 (11)

  Mahood, Kim 2012, ‘Kartiya are like Toyotas: White workers on Australia’s cultural frontier’ Griffith REVIEW, no. 36, pp. 43–59.

  Marika, Banduk, & West, Margie K. C., & Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory 2008, Yalangbara: Art of the Djang’kawu, Charles Darwin University Press, Darwin

  Marks, Kathy 2010, ‘Tears of the Sun’ Griffith REVIEW, no. 28, pp. 6–28.

  Martínez, Julia et al. 2015, The Pearl Frontier: Indonesian labor
and indigenous encounters in Australia’s northern trading network, Honolulu University of Hawai‘i Press

  Martínez, Julia 2005, ‘The End of Indenture? Asian workers in the Australian Pearling Industry, 1901–1972’, International Labour and Working-Class History, vol. 61, April 2005

  McDonald, Josephine & Veth, Peter Marius 2009, ‘Dampier Archipelago Petroglyphs: archaeological, scientific values and National Heritage Listing’, Archeology in Oceania, 44–69, pp. 49–69

  McIntosh, Ian S. 1996, ‘Allah and the Spirit of the Dead: The hidden legacy of precolonial Indonesian/Aboriginal contact in north-east Arnhem Land’, Australian Folklore, vol. 11, pp. 131–8

  Mitchell, Thomas 1839, Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia: With descriptions of the recently explored region of Australia Felix and of the present colony of New South Wales, T. & W. Boone, London

  Morcombe, Michael 2004, Field Guide to Australian Birds, Steve Parish Publishing, Brisbane

  Mowarin, Tyson et al. 2017, Connection to Country, Weerianna Street Media, Roebourne

  Mulvaney, D.J. ‘Willshire, William Henry (1852–1925)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/willshire-william-henry-9128/text16101

  Mulvaney, Ken 2015, ‘Ancient treasures: Past and present on the Dampier Archipelago’ Griffith REVIEW, no. 47, pp. 233–241.

  Mundine, Warren & Grant, Stan, 2017, Warren Mundine in Black + White, Pantera Press, Sydney

  Murujuga Corporation 2018, Murujuga.org.au

  National Indigenous Television 2016, Songlines on Screen, NSW Screen Australia Indigenous Department, Sydney

  National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families (Australia) & Wilson, Ronald 1997, Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Commonwealth of Australia, Sydney

  Norris, Ray & Harney, Bill, Jnr 2014, ‘Songlines and navigation in Wardaman and other Australian Aboriginal cultures’, Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, vol. 17, no. 2, July/August 2014