In the aftermath of that short rebellion some have even called for the complete extermination of the Native, the arming of hunting parties or the use of a controlled virus to eliminate the problem. It would be neither desirable nor ethical to exterminate an endangered species. We cannot allow a situation to arise where the few Natives we have in zoos are the only survivors of the once numerous animal.
It is with those thoughts in mind that I make a suggestion that would be unpopular with some. In the old days on Earth before we settled it, a small country called Britain historically transported their undesirables to the island they called Australia. The country of America handled their Native problem by forcing their Natives into reservations. Note, the ‘Natives’ the Americans dealt with were a different coloured and culturally distinct race of their own species.
I propose that the ‘Native Problem’ in this colony can be solved in a similar manner. The island Australia is large but almost entirely useless to us, the Settler community. The rainfall is almost non-existent and the soil is almost completely infertile by our standards. Desalination of seawater and irrigation of the land would resolve some of the problems there but the natural environment we would be forced to work with there and the sheer size of the island would make conversion to a healthier environment prohibitive.
In addition, Australia, being about ninety per cent uninhabitable by our people, has a Native population more difficult to control. Not only do they possibly outnumber us there – although with the difficulties involved in recording a census we may never know – but the desert, ninety per cent of the vast island, gives fugitives the opportunity to disappear. Evidence has arisen that the Native has never been under complete control on that island. Native workers do not so much run away, it is more like they can come and go at will. They have learnt we lack the resources to run them down when they escape.
The island of Australia must be abandoned: it is too costly to manage, the Natives there continue to have the upper hand. This would produce a dividend that few have identified. We can take a lesson from the Natives and their activities in the past and transport any rebellious and difficult Natives to Australia to live out their worthless lives. This would have a twofold advantage: it would remove those rebellious Natives and would act as a deterrent for others.
I say let us turn inevitable defeat in Australia into a resounding victory and give Australia back to the excremental Natives. Let us abandon the island of Australia. Then we can take other rebellious Natives in a flier and abandon them there too.
– Dr Des AsPer
It had been many years since Sister Bagra had been on a ship and things had changed more than she had expected. She would have thought that such mature technology, in use since before she was born, would have no room for improvement but clearly she was wrong. Gone was the shudder of the ship when it entered hyperspace, instead it slipped in like a hot knife through warm butter. Gone was the constant vibration of the ship that put everybody travelling in it on edge, made people angry long after they became unconscious of it. The ship was silent – you might as well have been sitting in a room at home.
She was as always travelling light; it would not do for a nun to be seen carrying too many bags, it would bring the Order into disrepute. All she had was two habits, her underthings and a copy of the Holy Book. Even if she wanted to carry more she couldn’t; they would not have allowed her to take anything else from the mission. Even her plaque, a constant companion, had been confiscated.
‘Evidence,’ Grark had said.
Sitting in the third-class lounge – the only seat she had access to, her room being no more than a tube with a bed in it, not even really enough room to sit up – she carefully avoided making eye contact with anyone. She did not want to talk to anyone; if she was foolish to make eye contact someone surely would have a spiritual question to ask her or need help with an emotional matter or some other such foolishness. Being a sister of the Order she would be obliged to talk to them.
She could stay in bed for the entire trip but that would surely drive her mad with boredom. She had not been still with nothing to do since last she was on a ship, leaving home to her new posting in the colony, decades ago now. The only other way to keep from talking to anyone would be to take off her habit, but she had worn it all her adult life and didn’t know how otherwise to dress.
Besides that, she was in disgrace, returning home to be questioned, to be re-educated, to no doubt spend the rest of her long life in contemplation in a convent at home.
Heading home she had only one thing to be thankful for: she was being trusted to return on her own, not being returned home under guard, as shameful as that would have been. She was, for the time being at least, still a Mother of the Order and she would conduct herself in a manner befitting. One other thing kept her from crying, not that she would let anyone hear her cry, after all these years. She was finally going home.
There had not been enough troopers left alive to clean up all the mess, so they collected their own dead and carried them away from the carnage. A flier was dispatched at their urgent call – the rescue was as immediate as could be managed. The Settler dead were taken home for a decent military burial. The bodies of the Natives were left where they fell to rot. There were not many buildings left – those still standing were put to the torch or destroyed by plasma fire. The weather and time could be relied upon to do the rest.
If there were any survivors from the camp, they did not return, not even to wail over the dead. Crows and magpies, eagles and small furry things came and feasted, scattering some bones, cleaning up what meat they could as the rest rotted. Weeks later there was little more than bones, still brown with dried blood and flesh. No bones still lay where they had fallen, all were churned up by the actions of the feeding animals.
Months later the bones were white and wildflowers and tangling vines were overrunning the remains, blurring the edges between the dead and the living. Among them, so scattered with the bones of Jacky Jerramungup it would have been impossible to separate them completely, lay the bones of Johnny Star.
Grark had reported all he had discovered to the Bishop, and to the Governor of the colony, a pompous arrogant man who seemed more interested in the latest fashions back home. Handing letters to both the government and the Church to a courier, he packed for the journey home. Finally it was all over and he could return to his cool monastery. Sending his bags ahead to the shuttle he decided on one last meal – not that he could get a good meal anywhere on that damned colony.
Leaving sated in quantity if not even slightly satisfied with the quality of his repast, he took perhaps a little too long to notice the footfalls behind him. Stupid, thinking it was all over; couriers could be stopped, letters could be lost. He had never unearthed completely how high the corruption went. His complacency had led him down a dark back alley.
A silhouette broke the faint light at the end of the alley before him. When he stopped the footsteps behind him also did. It was far too late to regret that his masters had sent him to the frontier unarmed.
‘Let me guess,’ he said, ‘the government or the Church don’t want me reporting. Which is it?’
‘I don’t ask.’ The voice was cultured, gentlemanly, sardonic. Grark gasped, did not scream when the knife was stabbed through his lung from the back. Collapsing to his knees he said nothing to his murderer, keeping his last breath for a prayer to his god. Whatever happened to his body, his soul would surely be safe.
A hundred million years of weathering had carved the top of the hill, once solid rock, into tombstones. The branches, the dark hanging needles, of the desert oak embraced the desert flowers, a loving embrace but strong enough to strangle. The rock and sand here, the dust, were a deep red, almost carmine. The blowtorch-yellow sky, the grey-green, the gold of spinifex and the red earth paradoxically gave the world a violet tinge.
Esperance picked her way carefully throu
gh the rocks, through the spinifex and the thorns. Her clothes were ragged, torn short by the rough ground and a desperate need to cool down. A wide hat protected her eyes and a thin scarf kept the dust from her face; only her eyes were visible, watering from the heat and dust.
On her belt, worn openly now, was her grandfather’s handgun, out of ammo, but she could never part with it. She carried no pack, no food, no extra clothes; all she had was a stick, and a billy can held in her left hand. Strapped across her back, seeming to repel the dust that blanketed her, somehow managing to stay mysteriously shiny, was a Settler rifle.
They had lost another battle. For the rest of her camp it was their final battle, for her grandfather who had raised her it had been such an end. She had nobody; her parents were long gone, the aunties and uncle she had never met were long gone. Necessity had led her to create a new family from whoever she could find. Friends, comrades became family – new aunties and uncles, brothers, sisters, cousins. Now they too were gone.
At least some of her people had run, though she would never know how many, if any, had made it to safety. Some would be rounded up, would become servants or breeding stock. Those she could not save. Many would not be taken – would die first – old men, women and children would die, or were already dead. Some, hopefully, had made it to other camps, if there were any other camps left.
They were no longer her problem. She could not, would not risk herself to look for them. It would be suicide; she had to live to save everybody.
Somewhere in the gorges and caves of this desert land, almost too hot for humans, there would be survivors – free humans. The desert tribes were never oppressed even by the white men when they invaded hundreds of years before the Settlers, and the white men could live in the desert far better than the Toads could.
Somewhere out there were a people supremely adapted to this environment who had been there for tens of thousands of years. The opposite of foreigner, the opposite of alien, they were the people who belonged, who could survive here naked and unarmed.
Esperance’s people had just lost their final battle, so she would find more people. The battle that ended her life, killed her family, was over, the war for Earth had not yet begun.
We think of the Settlers, who we call Toads, as inhuman. They are not – what they are is nonhuman. In all other ways they are more like us than we would like to admit. There is nothing in their behaviour that humans are incapable of: we have invaded cultures more peaceful than us, we have murdered and enslaved. There is nothing in their hearts and minds that does not also exist in the hearts and minds of the human species.
– Translator’s notes, The Tale of Jacky Jerramungup
Author’s Note
This is a work of fiction yet was influenced both shallowly and deeply by Indigenous Australian survival narratives and works of post-colonial historical fiction. Some, but by no means all, of the works of fiction that influenced this novel are My Place by Sally Morgan, Benang by Kim Scott, Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara and the film based on that book (name shortened to Rabbit Proof Fence), Jandamarra and the Bunuba Resistance by Howard Pedersen and Banjo Woorunmurra and The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith by Thomas Keneally (and the film of the same name). Jandamarra was co-authored by a white man and The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith was written by a white man based on the true story of Jimmy Governor but they are powerful nevertheless.
The historical context was provided by more books than I could possibly name and the anthropological context to the understanding of technological imbalance was provided by Jared Diamond’s excellent Guns, Germs, and Steel. There are many other works that have had an influence on my life and work.
All these influences were important to the development of Terra Nullius and their authors deserve and receive my deepest gratitude.
The content and feel of this novel is not alien to an Australian audience and certain themes are almost certainly universal. However there are some cultural contexts that might benefit from explaining. When Australia was invaded by the British in 1788 (they would say “colonised”) the land was taken by defining the continent as “Terra Nullius”, meaning empty land. This doctrine, that formed the entire basis for Australian land law, was overturned in law by the Mabo decision in 1992. However, nothing has really changed. Many white Australians still act as if First Nations people did not exist. People, my nation included, are still fighting for Land Rights, the legal system still privileges settler land title, built on stolen land, over Native Title.
Despite the Australian idea of what the country is; slavery existed in this country up until the late 1960s. Indigenous workers were not paid and for a long time were not allowed to possess money. People were forced onto stations where they had to work for rations. In the late 60s laws were passed forcing station owners to pay their Indigenous workers and those workers were immediately fired and expelled from the stations.
The “Stolen Generations”, a concept well known in Australia, refers to Government policies that allowed police and welfare to take mixed-race, First Nations, children from their parents for no other reason than for being mixed-race First Nations Children. The cultural after-effects of these policies have not yet ended and maybe never will.
The quote from ‘Solid Rock’ by Goanna at the start of the book is the only quote taken from a genuine source. All other quotes to introduce chapters were created to reproduce the feel and content of the assorted historical texts and documents written about and pertaining to my people and other First Nations Australian people in the past.
Acknowledgements
First I would like to acknowledge my Noongar ancestors without whose resistance and resilience I would not be alive today. Most of this novel was written travelling around the continent now called Australia; I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of all the lands that so inspired this work. Thanks also to Kim, you showed me what is possible.
This manuscript won the State Library of Queensland’s 2016 black&write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship, a partnership between the black&write! Indigenous Writing and Editing Project and Hachette Australia.
I would like to thank the team at black&write! and at State Library or Queensland for their support and my editors at black&write! Project Ellen van Neervan and Grace Lucas-Pennington. Your assistance was invaluable.
Thanks also to Hachette Australia for publishing the Australian edition of novel and for supporting the black&write! Project. My publisher at Hachette, Robert Watkins, sometimes believes in me more than I do and provided an essential lifeline when I needed it. Thanks also to project editor Kate Stevens and the rest of the team at Hachette Australia.
Copyeditor Alex Craig smoothed off the rough edges I had left on the manuscript and Grace West designed a stunning cover; thank you both.
Thanks to Gavin and Kelly at Small Beer Press for this North American edition. I am so delighted that they decided to take my book out to another part of the world.
Last but far from least, thanks Lily, you helped me get up in the morning, you always believed, you were my first editor and critic. Volim te.
About the Author
CLAIRE G. COLEMAN is a Wirlomin Noongar (Indigenous Australian) woman whose people have occupied the south coast of Western Australia since time immemorial. Claire wrote her debut novel, Terra Nullius, while travelling around the continent now called Australia in an old, tumble-down caravan.
Terra Nullius Reading Group Guide
CLAIRE G. COLEMAN INTERVIEW
by Jenny Terpsichore Abeles
Q. I am very interested in how different writers talk about their “process.” Yours stands out to me, as described on your website and other places, as writing this novel while driving around the country in a caravan. Can you describe a bit more about how the experience of traveling through the landscape of your novel affected its creation? Do any particular moments or anecdotes stand o
ut to you where the landscape you were in became imprinted on your novel?
A. I have been asked many times what it was like to write a novel while traveling around the continent. It was hard to answer because at the time I had not written under any other conditions. I do know one thing though, I would not have written the same novel had I not been traveling, the conditions under which a novel is written is often deeply embedded in the book’s DNA.
Landscape is all through Terra Nullius, the places I travelled were in the feel of the landscapes in the book. I described few places accurately and many places were unsettled in space because I used them metaphorically not literally, but they were there nevertheless. Someone pointed out to me that most the characters in Terra Nullius are moving for most the narrative and I was moving too, so movement is important in many ways.
There is one example I can remember well. We were traveling through the Pilbra, in Western Australia. I stopped so my partner could photograph the colours, they were so vivid, the purple-red stone, the wildflowers, the grey dry-adapted foliage all conspired to cast a purple tinge over everything as far as the eye could see. I leaned against my car and looked at the other side of the valley. There was a rocky hill, it’s top cracked and jagged, like crooked teeth or gravestones, where a massive rock had weathered and cracked. That very hill, that scene, that place, is in Terra Nullius.
Q. You’ve spoken about the “hidden history” of native peoples in Australia, one that is more brutal than historiography typically wishes to account for. How do you think that history, and the hidden histories of colonized/indigenous people across the globe, could be revised more honestly? How could colonized and colonizer alike work to face and accept more truthful versions of history in order to proceed together into a more just future? What steps do you see (museums, monuments, legislation) being taken in that direction?
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