Njunjul the Sun
Page 1
Meme McDonald’s family is from Western Queensland. Meme writes books for children and adults. She has also worked as a theatre director, specialising in dramatic outdoor performance events. Meme’s first book, Put Your Whole Self In, won the 1993 NSW State Literary Award for Non-fiction and the Braille and Talking Book Award. The animation of her second book, The Way of the Birds, was nominated for an AFI Award and won a best-film award at the Cinanima Festival in Portugal.
Boori Monty Pryor’s family is from North Queensland. His mother’s people are Kunggandji and his father is from the Birra-gubba Nation. Boori is a performer, storyteller and didjeridoo player. In 1993 he received an award for the Promotion of Indigenous Culture from the National Aboriginal Islander Observance Committee.
The first book Meme McDonald and Boori Pryor wrote together was Maybe Tomorrow, which was shortlisted for the 1999 Children’s Book Council of Australia awards. My Girragundji (Winner of the 1999 Children’s Book Council of Australia Award for Younger Readers) was followed by The Binna Binna Man (Winner of the Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature, the Ethnic Affairs Commission Award, and Book of the Year in the 2000 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards). Boori’s narration of My Girragundji and The Binna Binna Man won the Australian Audio Book of the Year Award.
The main character in Njunjul the Sun is the same boy who has appeared in My Girragundji and The Binna Binna Man. He is now sixteen and, like all the characters in this book, is fictional.
First published in 2002
Copyright © Meme McDonald & Boori Monty Pryor, 2002
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218
Email: info@allenandunwin.com
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
McDonald, Meme, 1954–
Njunjul the sun.
ISBN 9781865086415
eISBN 9781743430217
1. Aborigines, Australian – Ethnic identity – Fiction.
2. Aborigines, Australian – Youth – Fiction.
I. Pryor, Boori, 1950– II. Title.
A823.3
Cover and text photographs by Meme McDonald
Cover design by Ruth Grüner
Photograph on page 79 by John Douglas
Frog illustration by Shane Nagle and Lillian Fourmile
Designed and set by Ruth Grüner
for
Jai
for
Joe and Ciaran
for
Nicky Bidju and Paulani
with love and thanks
M.M. & B.M.P.
CONTENTS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
OTHER BOOKS
1
Our home’s gone. Bulldozed. Bloke that owned it, sold it. Bloke that bought it, knocked it down. Another bloke cemented it up. Poured a big slab of concrete over our front yard, then over our back yard, then poured that cement over everything in between. Over all the nights round the fire laughing and shiakking, over the rose bush where my sister Chicky jumped out the window and landed on her butt, over that rickety old dunny out the back, over where that hairyman, that eunji, that ghost-fulla been choking m’sister and scaring the rest of us half to death with his yucky, wrinkly old hands. Concreted over all the teasings and fights and tears, over the headaches and heartaches and long, lazy nights.
Dingo Hire, that’s what the sign says. Bloke hires out wild dingoes. Nah, only gammin’, only pulling your leg! He hires out bulldozers!
Everything changed when our house went. Mum had to farm us older kids out with aunties and uncles. She only had room for the younger ones in that tiny little flat she found. Dad, he went off fruit-picking. He’s been gone that long Mum reckons he turned into an echidna. Lost his way home.
I been living down with Aunty Milly, down there in Happy Valley. One of those places whitefullas put us mob when we were getting in the way of what they wanted to do. Called it a reserve or something. Said they were protecting us. As if!
Aunty reckons, ‘What from? Our own land? Our 40,000 year old way of protecting our own selves?’
They got funny ways of naming things those whitefullas. Like opposite to what they’re really thinking. My Aunty Milly laughs at that name, ‘Happy’ Valley. Like ‘Happy’, when they mean ‘Real Sad Place’.
You see, Happy Valley is right next door to the cemetery. Cement-ery, get it? All cemented up? Real deadly place! That many of us mob buried over there, it feels like home, true. M’aunty, she always finds something to laugh about, but. ‘If this place’s “happy”, next stop’s gotta be a real good heaven!’
Me, I’m wondering why us Murri-fullas, us blackfullas, always talking about the next life. Waiting to die till we can find a place to be happy. I’m all for getting some of that happiness happening now. Right here, right now, like fully. Not in some way off maybe heaven.
She cooks the best flying fox stew, Aunty. Gravy and dough boys, um mmmmm, too deadly. Makes m’mouth water thinking about it. She taught us kids some bush ways, much as we were wanting to know. I lost my taste for knowing the old ways, but. I’m wanting what’s new. What’s exciting, what’s out there on the other side of town.
That’s what got me on this bus. This big, flash, air-conditioned coach heading straight out of town. A few other things gave me a bit of a push, but I’m not filling my head with that trouble now. I’m taking in the scenery whizzing by on the other side of this tinted glass.
First time I’m headed out on m’own. Except for footy matches and that. But then you’re part of a team. The only team I belong to today is me.
I’m sitting up the back of the bus. I got m’new Wolverine shirt from m’mum. Got m’three in one – CD, tape deck, radio. An altogether too deadly sound machine! Going away present. Whole family put in. Got the receipt on me too. Mum said to hang onto that one real tight. Policeman pick you up for carrying a machine like this around. No way no bulleyman in blue’s gonna take this one off me, but.
I’m singing up too. I Feel Good, da da da da da, like I knew that I would now, da da da da da. I got this deadly voice when I sing along with them old songs.
‘James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, man.’ That’s what m’dad reckons.
See, we have karioki nights back home. Only us Murri’s – that’s what us blackfullas call ourselves up home – us Murris, we call them ‘Murri-oki’ nights.
My Aunty Gracelyn, she got her own machine. She sings that old one ‘Crazy’, that’s her favourite, Patsy Cline. I’m thinking, don’t worry about Patsy, it’s m’aunty, she’s the real crazy one. She’s like a party happening twenty-four hours a day. You know Seven Eleven? Well, she’s Seven Twenty-four!
I’m missing that mob. Like half of me got left behind.
Waving goodbye to Mum and the rest, t
hey looked like strangers even before the bus pulled out.
I loved living with m’aunty. I love m’aunties, the whole mob of them. I love all m’family. But that living down there in Happy Valley made me sad. Real sad. And angry.
Getting on the bus, I didn’t let that sad face get hold of me, but. I bit m’lip and waved them goodbye and pretended those tears running down little Chicky’s face, and snuffling up my big sis’s nose, and making my bro’ look like he seen a car crash . . . I’m pretending all those tears are to let me know they lov me to death. Not that they’re lettin me go for good. Those tears, they’r holding me tight in their arms.
I’m looking up ahead, now. That road leading out of town’s wide and straight and polished up new. My brand new nylon shirt’s sticking into me. That don’t matter. Bright blue, made in Taiwan, wherever that is. Wolverine plastered across the back. Air-conditioning turned up that cold it’s giving me goosebumps. Bus’s full of migaloos, whitefullas, but who’s worried? Nah, not me, I kid m’self. I’m a brand new flash-fulla heading off down the highway to the big city. And I’ve got a seat all my own. No bony little sister on m’knee. No mum or aunty squashing me up. No cus’ teasing and that. No one but me.
Now I’m thinking of football, ice-cream, even the hairyman . . . anything to hold that mob of tears back from choking me up.
I got a rich uncle, you see. Uncle Garth. He’s a legend. He’s done real well down there in the big smoke. That’s what m’dad calls the city. Down there is different from up here. Uncle Garth’s got himself a migaloo jalbu, a white-woman girlfriend, m’Aunty Emma. She’s used to us mob. He’s got his own flat. He’s got a good job. He’s got himself a car. And soon he got me. That’s who I’m gonna be staying with. M’Uncle Garth and Aunty Emma.
I made sure I got m’self this good seat up the back of the bus. I wanna be seeing everyone else get on and off. Don’t want everyone else gawking at me all the time.
And I wanna check out the chicky babes. No, true. Who doesn’t? At least I’m honest. Better you be in the right position for checking out, than them catching you behind your back, picking your boogas, your nose, or scratching down there or something.
Jalbu down the front’s got nice long curly red hair and a tight tank-top. Not that I’m looking that hard. Her mum’s on guard, eye-balling any lookers. Like one of those circus trainers with the moustache, looking real nervous, worrying if their tiger might break out and do something real bad while everyone’s watching.
I’m not looking that hard, neither, ‘cause I still got Jody Butler on my mind. I saved up for a gold necklace and love-heart. Didn’t nick it or nothing. She made me black, red and yellow beads for round my neck. We’re tight as. Well, we were. But I been getting into trouble lately. Hanging out with my cus’ Cedric and that. I didn’t want her in trouble too. Didn’t want me in trouble, neither, come to think of it.
I gotta sort myself out, see. This is my chance, going away down south to Uncle and Aunty’s. M’mum reckons it’s my last chance. But I couldn’t tell her the whole story of what happened. You can’t always do that with your mum and dad. You gotta protect them sometimes.
Big bloke got on the bus where we stopped for lunch. Takes up the whole seat, mine as well. Don’t know what he had for lunch but smells like we gonna be sharing it for the rest of the trip.
I’m thinking of calling out ‘Apologise!’
Cedric called out in the middle of the movies one time. See, we got this thing going. If someone calls out ‘apologise’, you got to shoot your hand up real fast. Last to put their hand up, that means you’re the one that did the boodgie, farted, see.
This time, just when the two lovers on the screen are kissing, Cedric yells out, ‘Apologise!’ The whole theatre shoots their hand up. Lollies, chips, ice-creams go flying all over the place. Everyone’s that desperate not to be the last hand up and have the boodgie pinned on them.
The big bloke’s munching on a packet of chips. Salt and vinegar. He offers me one. I can’t resist.
‘Where you headed, kid?’
No such thing as a free chip!
‘Sydney.’ I try and let it roll off my tongue like it’s nothing special.
‘Geez, you better watch your arse down there.’
I munch on m’chip. The big bloke keeps on about the crooks and the crime, the prostitutes and thieves and bashings down dark alleys.
‘It’s dog-eat-dog down there,’ he growls. ‘They’ll eat you up. ‘Specially you being black.’
I’m trying not to get those shivers up m’spine. I’m trying not to let him swamp me. I’m trying to look like I been there, done that, like fully. But he keeps at me like I’m some dumb myall, some bush Murri country-bumpkin knows nothing. Trouble is, he could be right.
‘Yeah, lot of people in the cities reckon they wiped you lot out years ago. Lot of people where I come from out bush reckon they should’ve done a better job.’
I’m squashed up next to the window. Only thing I can see is darkness coming in all around. I can hear the big wheels going and the engine purring, but I can’t see nothing whizzing past. We could be going nowhere. Or could be heading into outer space, to the stars and back. Or locked in a time-capsule buried deep in the earth. Or heading backwards at full speed. Or just going round and round in our own heads.
‘Trouble is, you bastards aren’t that easy to get rid of. You keep on bouncing back up. Which gets me to my next subject. You can hit, you lot. Over the years some of the best pugs in the business have been black. But now you got this young prancer dancer Anthony Mundine pretty boy always mouthing off about something. Should have stuck to playing Rugby League for St George. He should have shut his big mouth and done what he was told to do. They paid him big money, too, but he still whinged about not being picked in the State of Origin. So he spits the dummy. Reckons he didn’t get picked ‘cause he’s black, so off he goes, sulking. I hate that. He was lucky to get given a guernsey in the first place. He should be grateful. Now he reckons he’s the world’s best boxer. What a joke! Out on the football field there’s a lot of space and a lot of bodies. In the ring there’s only two. You can run but you can’t hide. All that black razzamatazz and fireworks he goes on with doesn’t fool anybody. Let’s see how far he gets when he comes up against someone that can hit.’
I’m wanting to argue back, to stick up for ‘The Man’ Mundine and the rest of us. I’m trying to find that warrior in me to stand up and be counted. I can’t shape m’words or find the space between his, but. I’m feeling beaten and hopeless before I even get started.
‘Look at Georgie Bracken, Lionel Rose . . . World class Aboriginal boxers. But could they handle it? Could they handle the fame and fortune? No way.’
I’m thinking, hang on, that’s our legends he’s talking about. That’s not how it is.
‘Mundine’ll be the same. Hopeless. You buggers are hopeless, you know that? Money, booze, jobs . . . You can’t handle any of it. Always goin’ walkabout.’
I’m shutting down listening to him now. Mundine don’t even touch grog or nothing so what is he talking about? I’m making that big-fulla stale-hamburger voice of his mix in with the sound of the wheels, disappear into a drone of sound that makes no more sense than tyres rubbing on tarmac.
I’m in no-man’s land. I’m not back home no more. I’m not where I’m going. I’m out here copping whatever comes. Thoughts come hurtling at me like meteors. I am the meteor as well as where the meteor is about to hit. Boy, is that cool, or what? That’s deep. Didn’t know I was so deadly!
You don’t get yourself into trouble, I reckon. That fulla trouble, he just comes looking for you. He gets you by the scruff of the neck and says, ‘Come with me, boy.’
I only did little stuff. Nicking cream buns from the tuckshop, that’s not big time. I admit, when Cedric and I get together, we dare each other to do stuff. Seems safe when you’re a gang of two or three. And anyway, everyone else’s getting into trouble, not only us kids.
Down Happy Valley trouble is your way of life. There’s that much pain and fighting got hold of everyone, I reckon they should call it Un-happy Valley. That pain soaks into you like rain, through your clothes, into your skin.
I gotta get that sadness out. If I don’t get it out, there won’t be any of me left to get. When I was a kid, mob of us used to collect big bags of those chonky apples, go look for wild plums over in the graveyard, make up our own feasts. We’re bigger now, gone our own way, or locked up going someone else’s way. Now those chonkys, they looking smaller and the trips fishing down the mouth of the Bohle and roaming around in the mangroves are getting less. My skin don’t fit me no more. Everyway I’m pushing it only gets tighter. I’m not sure which way is up, true god. I gotta watch m’self. No mum or dad can keep you safe no more. No aunty or uncle can keep that trouble off your back.
See, I didn’t have my bike helmet on. Didn’t even own a helmet but I didn’t tell the bulleyman police that. No way I wanna have them looking at me like a no-good Murri-fulla. Said I left m’helmut home. But they were looking for something else. They were looking to teach me a lesson. It was my turn.
I didn’t backchat or nothing. But I was on my own, see. I’d had enough of hanging out and was heading home. Cedric and the others had gone into town for some action.
I could feel the bulleymen creeping up on me before I seen the car. Then they’re there beside me. Nearly pushed me and my bike into the ditch. They’re grabbing me and asking questions and shoving me into the back of the bulleymen’s van, the black mariah, we call ‘im.
I never been down the small house, the lock-up. I heard about it, ‘course. All us mob get a turn down there. It’s Cedric’s second home!
Bulleymen’s story was that the school got trashed. I was near the school. So I get picked up. Them accusing me of something I didn’t do don’t worry me that much. I know it wasn’t me that week. Next week it could be, but. I know that. They know that.